Honoring Space and Time

Posted on August 19, 2013 by conversationeducation

I walked out on the back deck this morning and to my horrors of horrors there were leaves strewn about. The first leaves fallen, physical evidence that slowly but surely the seasons are and will be changing. And with that change I hear all of my teacher friends talk about going into their classrooms with excitement and anticipation at the prospect of a new year. How will they set up their classrooms this year? What kinds of “areas” can be created in this space where they will live with their students over this next year?

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This time of year seems to get earlier and earlier every year though. It used to be that none of this was even contemplated until the official “end” of summer, Labor Day. But no more. College students are out shopping everywhere you go. Sons and daughters with Mothers seeking out that perfect comforter and wall hangings to create their own sense of space, the home away from home. My son, a senior, just out the door for his official soccer tryouts. And yet…it is ONLY August 19^th! Much too early!

Space matters. I find myself wanting to nest in my own home as I wake each morning with the urge to move furniture around and make things a new. I stop myself though, reminding myself that it IS still summer and that my summer arrangements must stay as long as possible for it is, after all, our shortest season of all.

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And this summer I found myself not writing at all. This blog was unintentionally left to have it’s own summer vacation and that gets me thinking about what I need as a writer and one of the major things I need is space. And while that may seem incredibly obvious, with 2 kids in the house it is quite difficult to come by. And while I realize I could create the space and time and get up really early with the birds and get to my keyboard, the truth is that when I am up early I am out tending my gardens. You see there is so little weather here in New Hampshire that is conducive to early mornings outside. My routine is to water my plants and survey each garden to see what has happened over night. And things do happen.

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I tried roses this year though. They are tough little buggers and as soon as we got them into the ground they up and died. Not really, but they looked as though they were dead. And so I left them. I pruned them here and there, gave them food and water and just waited. Not until yesterday did I start to see 2 tiny roses on one of the plants. Why now? I wondered? Perhaps they just needed time to adjust to the new soil. Perhaps the food finally kicked in. Perhaps they got just the right amount of sunshine and water for a few days in a row. Who knows! Maybe all they needed was a bit of space.

My roses FINALLY bloom on one bush!!

How often do we hold these spaces for our students? Our teachers? Spaces where they can be who they are, take the time that they need and figure out how to write or grow or bloom on their own? We talked a lot about this “holding of space” in my summer course (last entry!) on Passion, Purpose and Play: Creating Real Readers and Writers. EVERY day during our 2 weeks together these students, made up of teachers and interns had the time and space they needed to do their work. We devoted the last chunk of our day to “workshop”. Time where students could choose what it was they wanted to work on and how. They could choose to read or write anything they wanted. It might be reading for the next day in class, a novel or magazine they were interested in, or the writing they were working on. They could go to the library, go outside to read and write. They could confer in their triads, in partners or with me. They could write in notebooks, on their laptops or even on the floor if they so chose! They could choose to use this time to express themselves artistically with watercolors and other art supplies provided.

Christian and Lexe during Workshop Time, Summer 2013

I loved this time every day as it gave me time to sit with individuals and confer on their processes on what was working and what was not. IF the work, the homework, is so important, then why don’t we ever provide the time and space for that work to begin to happen in class? It seems so obvious and yet on my evaluations there was a resounding appreciation for that time given. Respect. That is what happened. There was a great respect for the work when there was a place for that work to happen. Many left each afternoon with clearly defined goals on where they wanted to take their reading and writing that night.

Maria reading Poetry, Summer 2013

And while the cliché of students blooming has been used ad naseum, I am going to bring this back around to those damned roses. The ones that refused to just blossom. The ones, that given the time and space eventually did bloom! Next to it though, is the other rose. You know the one. The one that no matter what you do, it just stays the same. No buds, no roses, no sign of color. The scrawny little plant next to the blooming phlox that are going to bloom and shine no matter what I do or don’t do. But it is there….and nothing I did changed that plant for the better. In fact it looks much worse than when we brought it home. When first planted it it had gorgeous pale yellow and pink roses and now it simply stands alone, no flowers, no color. Lifeless. And yet it is not. And so I will wait and be patient and hope and try some new things and hope and wait that perhaps one day…maybe even next summer that it will again yield a beautiful bloom or two, but you just never know.

Sad little rosebush..no buds!

And that is the imprecision of teaching and learning in a nutshell. We can do all we can and still there may be those roses that will never bloom, at least not while you are around. And that is ok. Maybe it is not their time. Maybe what is happening on the inside is more important than the product. It is not always what we “see” that matters in the long haul.

And so we begin a new year…and I do so love the feeling of new beginnings. It is what makes me a true New Englander. As much as I hate the seasons I need the seasons. So little leaves on the back deck, I welcome you, but not entirely as I sweep you off and honor the space of summer as long as I can!

THINKING is Passionate, Purposeful and Playful

Posted on June 18, 2013 by conversationeducation

Lately I have been thinking about what creates real readers and writers. Much of this thinking comes out of the work I am doing in creating and planning a graduate course I am teaching this summer called: Passion, Purpose and Play: Creating Real Readers and Writers.

(See here if you are interested in one of our UNH Summer Literacy Institute courses as we still have some openings.) http://www.unh.edu/english/media/pdfs/Archive%20NHLiteracy/2013SummerInstbrochure.pdf

I think back…what made me a reader? A writer? And there are sharp moments in time that changed my thinking and the way that I saw myself forever. One of those moments was when I was a sophomore in High School and my teacher was Mr. Dave Krauss. We were reading Lord of the Flies. Nothing revolutionary as many high schools today are still doing the same thing and reading many of these same classics some 30 years later. But something in this experience for me was different.

I recall heated class discussions and at one point I even remember my face flushing to a bright crimson red as I stood up and shouted out, “That is NOT fair!” The entire class stopped and looked back at me and Mr. Krauss said, “Tomasen, I need to see you after class.” I was mortified. As a resident “good girl”, always sitting in the back of the class, don’t make any trouble kind of student, I felt as if my face might pop as it got even redder and my eyes begin to sting with tears.

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After class I walked up to Mr. Krauss’s desk full of shame and defeat he asked me to sit down and asked me what was so upsetting. Our discussion started with the idea of fairness and he assured me that “nothing in life was fair”. I argued that life should be. He did not disagree but talked about how there would be merit to thinking about things not in terms of fairness, but in terms of how each individual person is in this world. He didn’t yell at me. I didn’t get in trouble. In fact, it was the opposite. He encouraged me to speak my mind more frequently and the he welcomed my thoughts and ideas just like everyone else’s. For the first time in my life I realized that perhaps I had something to say “in class”. This was huge for me. My thinking mattered for the first time in my entire school career.

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Fast forward 30 plus years to where I am planning for this course and out of nowhere jumps into my hands the original copy of Lord of the Flies that I read in High School. For the life of me I didn’t remember ever even having it, and yet here it was. The cover looked outdated and as I opened the book the spine cracked with a pop as the old book cardboard smell wafted into my head. What was revealed inside was sheer magic.

Marked in red pen and some pencil and then some blue pen was MY thinking as a sophomore in High School. Words and phrases were underlined and in the margins were the words, authority, changes in attitude, role of society rules? It had never dawned on me that perhaps the reason this book stuck with me, that this experience was one of great magnitude might also have been because I was able to actually WRITE in this book and keep track of my thinking.

I wish I could remember the circumstances around this annotating. Was the school getting a new set because these were worn out? Was this common practice? Not that I remembered. What did Krauss know that nobody else did? And as I looked at the red ink I was instantly transferred back to remembering the actual red pen, the one that I used to use in my practice teaching in my bedroom. “The” red pen of authority. It was old and clear and the ink was clotty. As I looked at my own handwriting I could recall moments of writing in this book and feeling so “grown up”. Grown up in a way that made me feel smart. I recall writing things just because I could even if they were not great thinking. I loved the act of writing in this book!! I don’t remember doing this again until college and again the nostalgia of marking and writing in between and around the lines makes me feel giddy!

So could it be that something as simple as annotating a text is playful and inspires passion and great purpose? These words, in our schools, are not in vogue. It is rare we talk about the passions, the purposes or the play anymore. And while I have always hated the red pen as a student and teacher of writing, it was this old crimson that recorded my thinking and allowed me to participate in discussions that made me a real reader with authority.

It was during this course that I decided I would be an English major. I wonder if Mr. Krauss understood the power of what he was creating for me as a student in the name of passion, purpose and play? And underlying all of these “p” is thinking. Thinking is fun! It promotes passion, creates purpose and is playful and discovering one’s own thinking is priceless.

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I would love to find Mr. Krauss. The last I heard of him he was working at the Admissions office at UNH and when I was a student I visited him. He has long been gone and I have no idea where he ended up. As a fellow educator I wish he could read this and understand just what he did for me and how it created the path that I am still on…one that is still seeking equality. One who still stands up, turns bright red and shouts, “That’s NOT fair” regardless of the lessons learned years ago that we live in an unfair world.

Somebody’s gotta do it!

It’s only fair.

Think about it.

Let’s Simplify, Not Justify: In Defense of the ART of Teaching

Posted on June 11, 2013 by conversationeducation

“I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. “

John Steinbeck

What is the art of teaching??

In the children’s book of the Three Questions, a retelling of the original story by Leo Tolstoy, a young boy is on a quest to find the answers to these three questions:

When is the best time to do things?
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Who is the most important one?
What is the right thing to do?

As Nikolai goes off to meet with the wise old tortoise to find the answers to his questions he discovers that when he is not searching for the answers, he actually finds them. He rescues a mother panda bear and her baby from a terrible storm as the tortoise looks on and observes the boys actions.

Nikolai is still disappointed at the end of this ordeal because he is frustrated that he has not been given the answers. The tortoise wisely tells him that his questions were answered through his actions. He ends the story reminding the boy.

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“Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. For these, my dear boy, are the answers to what is most important in this world. This is why we are here.”

This is why we are here and this is why I love to teach in a workshop because this kind of teaching and learning requires us all to be present. These are the essential questions that matter in my teaching in the moment, an essential part of the “art” of teaching. Keeping true to this art of teaching requires careful listening, intuition and improvisation on the part of every person in the workshop; most importantly, the teacher. There is no guidebook to where you can check off what you are going to do because the truth is that you don’t know what you are going to teach until you are in that moment with that child. Terry Moher, in her work on conferring refers to this as “teaching not knowing.”

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One problem is that there is so much noise and distraction in schools right now . I would love for every person, administrator, parent, citizen and politician to go and just shadow a teacher for a day. Yes, one whole day so that they can see first hand just what is being asked of teachers. So much of what is deemed necessary is done so by others, it has become more about justifying every action, each student, their numbers, their percentages, their scores and less about “who” that student is and what is is they might need.

The distractions away from the simplicity of teaching our students are more numerous than you can even imagine. There is a hurried frenzy that seems to buzz through so many schools. Lost is the feeling of nurturing, slowness and taking each moment at a time. Disappearing from early childhood classrooms are blocks, dress-up centers, imaginative play areas, sand tables and any element of play. Teachers are more frazzled and students, if they buy in to this system, are as well. The pressure to perform is on and yet…to what end?

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When I model lessons in classrooms one of the most common responses is, “that was great, BUT, I don’t have that kind of time to allow kids to think things through.”. I would argue that we don’t have time NOT to let them think!! And in this I believe that we all must make choices and for me it is as simple as asking myself and grounding my teaching in these 3 questions, When is the most important time? Now. Who is the most important one? The one I am with. And what is the right thing to do? It is to do good for the one at my side. What if we just made it that simple? What if that was at the very CORE of what we were doing in all of our schools with all of our kids?

More time to simplify. Less time to justify.

It just simply makes sense to me.

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Reflections on Drama, Drama Worlds and the Land of Misfit Kids

Posted on June 4, 2013 by conversationeducation

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in him time plays many parts.” William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

I have always been a great fan of using drama and movement in the classroom. Here I look at the dramas that unfold regardless of what we do or don’t do.

As I enter the room I look around. Who is here? Who is not here? Who is talking to whom and who is not talking to anyone? What is the “pulse” of the group today? Is the energy high? Low? Medium? Do I read stress, playfulness, and exhaustion? What does this group hold today? What dramas are unfolding before my eyes? What will happen in this class today?

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By observing drama worlds within our classrooms we then invite our students to “read” the drama actions going on in their worlds with a heightened sense of awareness, reflection and learning. Each classroom is unique just as each individual within each classroom is unique. Understanding one’s self, the group and being able to “see” from someone else’s point of view allows us to teach empathy and real life skills that will be forever invaluable for our students. We can call this “dramatic consciousness” where we ask of our students and ourselves to be aware of what is happening in and around us, within the books we read, the characters we create and the meaning that we ultimately make for ourselves.

“Dramatic consciousness means bring aware that there is dramatic action taking place in one’s life, in one’s work, in the lives of the people who make up the school community. It implies being present to that drama, engaged in its passions, struggles and adventures, rather than being psychologically distant, removed from the action.”

Robert J. Starratt, The Drama of Schooling: The Schooling of Drama

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One year, my first year at a new school I had the privilege of getting a class of “misfits”. I say this with love for each of these children, but the truth of the matter was that I had gotten all of the students whose parents had not made requests for other teachers. I was new, the unknown and the keeper of all of the students whose parents did not know to make requests or were just not interested in doing so. This group of kids was one of the most challenging and consequently rewarding groups I have ever worked with. We spent much of the year working on group dynamics and accepting people for who they were. When I say misfits I am talking about all of those kids who had something incredibly special about them that had yet to be nurtured. They were a group for whom school was not a comfortable stage. They were a group, who by the end of the year became the tightest knit group of students I have ever had.

“And so faith is closing your eyes and following the breath of your own soul down to the bottom of life, where existence and non-existence have merged into relevance. All that matters is the little part you play in the vast drama.”

-Anonymous

As individuals they were as different as they were talented. The everyday work of school, sitting at one’s desk and performing a series of tasks was not going to work for not just a couple of them, but literally for none of them. If they were not coded then they were labeled with some kind of something that supposedly hindered their ability to learn. They were also the group that took to drama more than any other. It was a way for them to be and to show their learning through movement. It was what eventually made this group do things that were beyond comprehension. Every day was filled with dramatic activities and chances for kids to “become” someone other than themselves. Puppetry, theater, role-playing, Picture Book Dramas, Joke – Telling, Songs, Poet’s Theater were parts of every day often inspired by the students themselves.

One beautiful spring day I was called to the principal’s office to discuss an upcoming “fight” that was to take place the very next day. The rumor was that many of the kids in my class were involved. Involved? That was putting it mildly. They had all gotten together as a class for each recess for weeks and worked on the planning and execution of this upcoming “event”. It was to be a showdown between two boys in our class who had agreed to “fight”. There was a marketing committee who went around at each recess talking up the upcoming event. There was a sales committee that created and sold tickets to the event. There were judges, participants and even prizes to be donated by various other students in the class. There were flyers made, and all of the the other third grade classes were buying the tickets and oh yes, did I mention, they were also placing bets on who would be the winner? In their own time they had created an entire drama world where each of them were the stars. The organization, thoughtfulness and planning that went into this event was amazing. But, we were at school and what were we going to do about this? The fight was cancelled, much to the relief of the contenders and monies were returned to the rightful owners. Letters of apology were written and yet, through it all there was a part of me that was actually proud of these kids and what they had almost pulled off.

“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”

-Oscar Wilde

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So, I took the pulse of the group and ran with it. We broke down the drama of the event they had planned, unpacked it and gathered on the carpet and discussed all of the skills they used to plan and eventually execute such an event. After mapping them out I proposed that we use all of these skills in order to plan an event that might actually help someone or a cause. The thinking began and the ideas started to flow. What would we do? At the time we were studying the rainforest and after careful consideration it was decided that we, as a class, would buy a portion of a rainforest. The efforts to raise money began as the kids headed up different committees and the money was eventually earned and we purchased an acre of a rainforest that would never be destroyed. We received a picture and a document stating it had been saved and the best part was that out of this planning and execution nobody got hurt and even better part of the world was saved.

“Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.”

John Updike

It seems to me that too often in our school worlds we see things in black and white. Sure, what they planned was inappropriate for school, but as a group it was an amazing feat. Here was a group of kids who lingered on the outskirts of the popular kids, who became, as a group, the focus of the third grade recess. They had planned an event that every other third grader wanted to be a part of. As a group these students created and made a drama world where they were center stage and not behind the scenes where most of them had been most of their school careers. And even as I write this I realize that this is not completely true because many of those kids were front and center, but not in a place that was helping them. Many were in trouble with the “law” for numerous accounts and even in this we need to ask, what is the drama action that is happening and what need is it fulfilling? Attention. Working together they were able to get this attention in a positive way.

We spend a great deal of time focusing on everything that is wrong. What is right? These kids were brilliant….but school was never a place where their genius was discovered. I just think we can do better. And part of better is helping kids to see their roles in life, in school and as individuals. Lights, Camera…ACTION!

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The Joke is on You

Posted on May 21, 2013 by conversationeducation

“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear,” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in “The Wisdom of the Ego.”

“Why did the cookie go to the doctor’s office?”

“Because she was feeling crummy!”

“Do you get it?”

My 4 year old daughter, Emma loved to tell this joke when she found herself in new strange hospital situations. Humor is one of those incredible gifts that we all have for making human connections. This was her way of taking some kind of control over her illness and she loved to tell this joke over and over. The delight in her eyes in seeing who “got it” was sheer heaven, thinking she was so clever and loving the joke over and over herself. There was something in this joke she could see that made her enjoy it every time she told it. She “got” it and was always sure to ask, “Do you get it?”

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The getting it is like the ultimate secret that she is privy to; the delight is making sure that everyone is able to enjoy the magic of the punch line in the same way as the teller. And there is an art to telling a good joke and the feedback is instant…did you get a laugh or not? You can always tell those who get it as an expression of knowing crosses their faces, and then there are those that laugh to be polite and those who are laughing as they are still trying to figure it out. We have all been there, at one end or the other and of course the worst place to be is to be the jokester that gets no laughs at all. It is a tough lesson, but one that you can do something about right away.

In the classroom one part of our morning meeting was joke telling. There were some rules surrounding the telling. First the joke had to be appropriate for school. Yes, of course there were those who pushed the limit, but for the most part kids were able to discriminate between those that would be acceptable and those that would not. Just trusting them allowed them the freedom and the responsibility to make good choices.

The second rule was that you had to practice the joke at least three times and that you had to get a laugh at least one or two of those times before volunteering for morning meeting. This was for two reasons; one was to work on the delivery and to work on making it funny. We would talk about what made a good joke and what didn’t. We talked about the emphasis being on the punch line and how to deliver an effective punch line. These could be classified in our under reading with expression, the importance of audience and comprehension studies. (How is that for meeting standards?) It was a clear test of whether the child understood the joke or not based on the reaction of the audience. If it was not funny we worked together as a group to think about what could be done with the joke to make it funnier. This is revision in real life. Then the child would take his or her newly revised joke out into the world and wait until it was funny enough to bring it back to the class.

Everyone had ownership of the joke by then and often there would be many versions of the same joke told over and over again. This gave us time to talk about the fact that authors do this all the time. Once someone has a great idea then other authors try to take the basic idea and make it their own. We talked about how this often happened with jokes and that jokes changed regularly in their details because joke-telling is typically an oral form of literacy that is passed on from person to person. The game of telephone is a great way to show how things change based on the oral telling and that people all hear things differently.

I would always begin the year telling a joke to model how to tell a joke. I would overemphasize the telling in order to be able to point out to the class just what it was I was doing and that there are things that you can do to tell a good joke. The joke I told was about a chicken that goes into the library to get a book. He goes up to the librarian and says, “Book, book book”. This is said like a chicken saying bok, bok, bok with a high voice. (This is hard to put into writing!) The chicken takes the book and returns within 10 minutes shouting the same thing to the librarian, “Book, book, book”. The librarian thinks this is strange but gives the chicken another book. Sure enough if you have heard enough jokes you know that this chicken is going to be back in no time. This structure allows us to look at it closely and see there is predictability in jokes and that if you wanted to make up your own joke then like fairy tales, the magic number of 3 often appears. Well, the chicken magically does show up again but this time the librarian wants to know what is going on, knowing the chicken could not have read either of those books so quickly. She gets on her coat and decides, after giving the chicken yet another book, to find out what is going on by following the chicken. The chicken leaves the library, heads up a big hill, out into a field and through the forest to a clearing. (Again here is a way a leading the audience into what we know is going to be the punch line. I talk about slowing down here and that when I do the audience almost leans in waiting, waiting, waiting and thinking get to the punch line already!) At the edge of the clearing is a pond. The chicken walks over to the edge of the pond where a frog is sitting. The chicken pulls out the book and shows it to the frog. The frog looks at it and promptly replies, “READ IT. READ IT”. Of course this is said like a frog instead of ribbit it is read it. These slight changes in voice are very important because without them the joke is just not funny! So, okay you are thinking this is a dumb joke, and it is. It is also, however an excellent model for kids because it is clean and it contains so many elements of a good joke. This gets kids thinking about their own jokes and jokes they have heard in the past. Often one of the hardest things to do is to just remember the joke. I tell the kids that having one or two good jokes in your pocket is a great way to be in a new crowd. Everyone loves a good joke. But is has to be a GOOD joke. A bad joke won’t get you very far. This also encourages kids to think about themselves in social settings and to think about when it is appropriate to tell a joke and when it is not.

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“Jokes compact the elements of storytelling into bite-sized mini-narratives. They are not just funny. For writers and editors, they are models that can help teach storytelling” Chip Scanlon, the Poynter Institute.

Joke telling is a form of storytelling; something that we can use to help our young readers and writer’s to see the elements of a story in a very compact version. To tell a good joke the teller must prepare the reader by setting the stage introducing main characters and setting, the chicken, the librarian and the library.

Next is to provide some kind of background for the reader, in knowing the structure of many jokes, one is sure that the chicken will be coming back at least a couple more times. Also using the voices allows for the characters to know more about them. She is a female chicken with a high voice; the librarian is suspicious about a reading chicken from the beginning.

The joke relies heavily on creating scenes that the reader can follow. The chicken comes and goes, comes and goes and does these actions very quickly, leading the librarian to become even more suspicious.

A good joke creates suspense, engaging the reader as they sit and listen, leaning in to find out what in the world is going to happen next and often this is done through conflict. The conflict here is for the librarian who is miffed that this chicken keeps on coming back without having read a book!

Next it builds to a climax and a clear resolution. We know that when the chicken leaves and the librarian follows that we are going with her and that we will find out instantly just what the chicken is up to.

Finally, is that wonderful element of surprise, the “aha” moment where we wonder how we didn’t get it all along. It is funny that the chicken is trying to get the frog a new book and so we laugh with this quick resolution and twist that we can visualize as being very funny.

Derek was a small fourth grader who had a hard time fitting in. Not only was he smaller than all of his classmates, but also he was somewhat goofy looking and gangly. He had a hard time finding his place in the world and was often seen getting into it with kids. If there was trouble, then Derek was in the middle of it. In the classroom he struggled. As a reader he struggled the most. For Derek, this opportunity to tell jokes, this place where being the class clown was encouraged was his place to shine. By the end of the year he had found every joke book in his local area. I will never forget the day he showed up with a book the size of Webster’s heaved up under his arm. It was titles “A Million and One Jokes.” Derek would sit for hours pouring over this book in search of the perfect joke. It was a ridiculous book for him as it was laden with jokes that were so out there that I didn’t get a lot of them. Many of them politically motivated from cultures all over the world. The schema one would have to have for many of these jokes would put Google to shame! The print was as small as anyone could imagine, but he continued to read over it, searching for that one joke that he did get! And he would know when he would get it. You want to talk about serious close reading. He was getting to know himself as a reader through this insurmountable task he had set for himself. He would carry that book everywhere…and did I mention it must have weighed 25 pounds??

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At first he would tell jokes that none of us got. Eventually, though he was able to work on finding a good one, practice it and in no time Derek became one of the classes favorite joke tellers. This was his forte’. This was his place to find comfort and acceptance for who he was. This also gave him a very real reason to read and to read for meaning and with purpose. It also gave him a real reason to write as he then went on to write his own jokes. At morning meeting it would be Derek that everyone wanted to tell a joke. Each day we had time for three jokes. On days when nobody else would volunteer, they would all chant Derek’s name and he would get up and do his own version of a Leno monologue telling joke after joke. He was good. I don’t know where Derek is today, but I have a hunch that someday I may see him on stage at the Laugh Factory!

We need to value children, for who they are, not who we want them to be. We need to look at each child and find the strength inside of him. Derek could also easily have dropped out of school. It was not a place that he “typically” succeeded and joke telling allowed him to have a place in our classroom community for who he was. Don’t get me wrong. This was not that all magical cure and Derek continued to struggle each and every day in the classroom and on the playground, but offering this as an option allowed for Derek and other kids to use their humor in an effective and constructive way. It also allowed Derek to take some of the painful anger in his life and poke fun at that as well. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in Team of Rivals, a study of Abraham Lincoln where she focused on “the vital role humor and storytelling played in Lincoln’s melancholy personality.” , “He laughed, so he did not weep. He saw laughter as the ‘joyous, universal evergreen of life.’ His stories were intended ‘to whistle off sadness.’”

Photo Credit: http://www.worthychristianforums.com

We should each laugh as many times in the day as we can. I remember reading somewhere that we use so many more facial muscles to frown than to laugh…therefore frowning causes more lines in the wrinkles of life. So heck, let’s laugh or in the end…the joke is on you!!

The Power of Modeling, Connection, Trust and Play

Posted on May 14, 2013 by conversationeducation

When my daughter Emma was three, she was playing happily in her corner of the kitchen where I had created her own little “house” complete with a wooden hutch, oven, highchair and cradle for her own dolls. She spent hours creating her own reality of being a Mom. One day I was about to wander in when I stopped and peered around the corner (yes mothers do spy!) and as I watched her rock her baby and look into her eyes adoringly, one of those warm washes of love and perfection poured over me. It was a moment that I wanted to sink into and enjoy.

Emma took her baby, placed her into the high chair and began feeding her and gently said, “Eat, dammit. Eat your food, dammit.”

Emma

I stood there in horror, unable to move and continued to watch. After the lovely meal, Emma placed her baby into the cradle and in a very nurturing way, covered her up with the blanket and said, “Now time to go to sleep, dammit.”

Again, that word hit me, smacked me right across the face and left a sting. What had happened to my perfect mother moment?

“Emma”, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Putting my baby to bed. She is tired.”

“I see that. I heard you use a “D” word that I was wondering about.”

“A D word?” she contemplated. “Oh, Dammit?”

“Yes that is the one.”

“Oh, that is my baby’s name Momma.”

Silenced again.

The power of modeling…

I have been known to tell this story when working with teachers to show how modeling is one of the most powerful tools we have and that we can use it to show our literate lives for our students every day. It is what we do, not just what we say. We need to talk about what we read, write and wonder; to show them first hand that literacy is not about school, it is about life and how we choose to live this life. When students see that we are interested in writing, reading books, articles, blogs, on-line periodicals, newspapers etc., they can “see” how we live each literate day. When we talk about a great book we found at a used bookstore or bring in our favorite children’s book, they can catch a glimpse of our lives beyond the four walls of school. And they begin to consider theirs as well.

Bridging the gap between “school” reading and “life” reading is critical. As an instructor in the English Department at the University of New Hampshire’s Learning Through Teaching professional development program, I have the privilege of going into classrooms and supporting teachers in their coursework. Every time I enter a classroom I have my Writer’s Notebook and other sundry of books with me. It could be a couple of children’s picture books, the current novel I am reading, or more recently my Ipad. Kids ask me about the ever-present essentials (appendages?) that I carry with me. They are curious and I can open them up and share small pieces of myself with them. It is an entry point for conversations about reading and writing.

When I am modeling a lesson for a teacher or group of teachers, I start by talking to the class about my passion for reading and writing; my excitement over a new author I have found, what I am working on myself in writing or how a word looks or sounds. And it is authentic. I love words. I love to read and write and when kids feel that from me, they too want to be a part of that energy. It is infectious and it is not hard to get them to buy in as I ask them to repeat a word with me, a nice long juicy word like onomatopoeia, that they can take home with them and share with their families. “There is a world in a word,” Lev Vygotsky wrote and it’s up to us to open up those worlds.

Toting Libba Moore Grey’s, My Momma Had a Dancin’ Heart under my arm, I entered Emily Spear’s wonderful and familiar first grade classroom where I was greeted with hugs and an offer for one of those famous birthday cupcake that are handed to you with great love and grey grubby hands. I received the confection’s love, knowing it would never get eaten and smiling at the gesture.

I settled into the comfy rocker and had a brief time to reconnect as they told me about their latest ventures in writing. Voices rang all around me as they shared their latest “sound” words. Three little girls got closer and asked about the pink necklace I was wearing twirling it in their hands and marveling when I told them it was a crystal. “ooooh…you must be rich!”. I explained it was a gift from my sister and that SHE was the rich one because she had ME for a sister. They giggled.

Taking this time to connect with these kids is a critical part of the modeling process. It only took a few minutes, but in that time my words and actions showed them I was interested in THEM. This gives me an advantage because I have re-established our working relationship and can then move into our writing time together. I am reconnecting and we are exchanging trust in these small moments.

I read aloud, knowing that I wanted to model Moore’s use of playfully hyphenated words as a craft the kids could name and experiment with. I stopped and wrote some examples on the white board:

tip-tapping

song-singing

finger-snapping

We talked about these words and wondered why the author would use the hyphen. They quickly identified that it made it into one word, made the reader say the word more quickly and created rhythm. For each dance in the book I asked for a volunteer to get up and “perform” each season’s ballet. They were eager to move and the movement brought this story to life for all.

We then brainstormed a name for these words and the list consisted of

1.describing words

2. two words in one

3. DASH-ing words.

It was democratically decided that DASH-ing words described them most accurately because of the dash (hyphen) and use of the suffix ”ing” on the end of each word. And while some may be thinking this is not correct it is playful and something the kids will remember. Let’s just call it poetic license! Next, I asked them to go and try out some of the DASH-ing words in their own writing.

And the play began. Some kids came up with what we called Double DASH-ing words such as tweet-tweet-tweeting. Morgan, who I thought was struggling was left to her own thinking for some time and arrived at my side with this incredible poem:

Swish-swash

Slush-sliding

Icicles-banging

Against the long

White world

But the world

Is not always white

Wow! I just love the image of the long white world…

We all came back to the carpet, shared our DASH-ing words and created a chart with all of the examples the kids had come up with, creating a classroom “model” that they could refer back to and add to.

Photo Credit: http://recoveringyou.com/trusting-an-addict/

I left the room, again humbled at the brilliance of these kids and just what they can do if given the time, space, place and a model of what is possible. Trusting our students. What a concept and something we can all do, Dammit!!

Ramblings on Lobsters, Testing, Brownstones and Poetry over the John

Posted on May 7, 2013 by conversationeducation

One sticky New Hampshire July summer evening while hosting the annual lobster and clamfest for our UNH Summer Literacy Institute, Donald Murray was in the house. Now you must know that to have Don in my house was an honor. He was a man I had admired since I was an undergraduate and then here he was all hot and buttered fingers and faces on the back deck with the rest of us.

Donald Murray

And then it happened. He walked right up to me and asked, “Who wrote the poem, ‘Over the John’?” I froze. What? The ultimate test had come my way and as my face heated up and I began to sweat, I flipped through the suddenly empty files in my brain, wracking it for any poet I could think of. The words, who wrote Over the John? Over the John?, Over the John?, reverberated in my head. As I agonized I realized he was staring at me…waiting for an answer and so finally, in the ultimate defeat I simply admitted, “I don’t think I know that poem.” At which point Donald Murray let out a larger than life guffaw of a laugh and re-stated, “No, the poem over the john in the bathroom, who wrote that?”

And in my state of stunned stupidity it still took me a moment to actually realize that he was not testing me at all but simply asking me a question to which I knew the answer. “Oh! My daughter wrote that in 3^rd grade.” To which he responded that she was quite a little writer. And then he left me there in all of my shame to melt in my sense of stupidity. I hate tests. I have always hated tests and this was a self-imposed one. The pressure makes me stupid.

The “actual” poem over the john!

So what if we are all made stupider by tests? And if that is not the case then what about the some of us that are? I will admit it; I am one of the worlds worst test takers. When I see a question and then the 4 possible answers I try to think about the “right” one and while one might seem “more” or “less” right, I get stuck on imagining the possibilities of what “could” or “could not” be right. I see grey in a world of black and white. I stammer in the ideas that the test is probably trying to trick me and so I get obsessed with thinking about outwitting, outplaying, and outlasting the test. Yes, I want to be the sole Survivor, but I get too caught up in the game and then I simply freeze and ultimately I am blindsided and voted off the island. I lose.

This past weekend in NYC at Barnard (see previous post as well as here: Totalwebcasting.com/live/columbiatc/20130504/ for live on streaming) was eye opening on so many levels. It made me wonder about so many things…many of which have to do with testing and beyond. I heard stories, saw grown men weep, and felt passion so great it was palpable. I met people that I have only “known” on-line for the first time in person.

I was welcomed into Renee Dinnerstein’s (See her blog here: http://investigatingchoicetime.com/) home in Brooklyn…our first face to face meeting ever and she hosted me for 2 nights. We talked for all the time I was there. She introduced me to her husband, Simon and his incredible works of art that line their Brooklyn Brownstone and beyond. She took me to the public schools of NYC, gave me history of the area, of her life, the schools, the system. We visited an exhibit at the Brooklyn art museum by Anatsui, amazing!! Thank you Renee for your kind hospitality and for bringing together great minds for brunch where I also met Vicki Vinton, (See Vicki’s blog here: http://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/) on-line colleague, for the first time. But most of all I learned that I am not alone in this endeavor. There are so many of us out there who are so discouraged, outraged and ready to take action.

Tomasen and Renee at Anatsui exhibit

And while I was hoping to have a great post synthesizing the weekend, I realize I still have a great deal of processing to do.

And so as my 16-year-old Zachary heads out the door for his annual NECAP testing this morning he seems to be fine with it. Both of my kids are better test takers than I am. In fact, he enjoys the testing perks…early senior privileges and the fact that teachers are not allowed to give homework during testing because they want students performance to be stellar. (Is it just me or can you see how ironic this is?) Our schools are ready and willing to help students get more sleep FOR the tests, but not for everyday schooling. Sometimes I think I am crazy, or just looking for answers in my brain that are just not there. Am I asking the right questions? That is the real question, or am I just searching for something over the john?

You tell me.

Alternatives and Activism: Reclaiming the Conversation on Education

Posted on May 1, 2013 by conversationeducation

This weekend I will join educational colleagues, professionals, parents, students and friends at Barnard College in New York City to “take back” the Conversation on Education. Does it strike me that this is close to the name of my blog? Why yes, and while it initially inspired me to make this trip, it was more about the idea that “we” can actually DO something about what is happening in the corporate takeover of our public school systems. This is the blurb that made me sign-up.

“If you want to move beyond the focus on test scores, performance outcomes, standardization, and data aggregation, if you are tired of seeing your students deprived of real educational opportunities, if you worry teaching is being reduced to test prep and educators are losing their autonomy and academic freedom, and if you believe all our children should have access to a curriculum and extra-curriculum that are far more engaging that stripped down cram courses or subsistence level job training, then this is the conference for you.”

And if that didn’t convince me then this panel of experts certainly did!!

“Hear speakers such as Susan Ohanian, Barbara Bowen, Carol Burris, Zakiyah Ansari, Juan Gonzalez, Barbara Madeloni, Ceresta Smith, Brian Jones, Nikhil Goyal, Ann Cook, and Shino Tanikawa and join with your colleagues to mobilize resistance.”

Photo Credit: http://www.susanohanian.org

But of course the real kicker is that last line, “join with your colleagues to mobilize resistance.” What a great line! At first I recall being in college and while taking one of my initial courses in education we were assigned the task of doing something we had never done before. The goal was to get out of our comfort zones and to reflect on that experience. I chose to go to a local anti-nuclear demonstration. I did not have to do much to dress the part as anyone who knew me in High School or college knows that I came by the “crunchy” quite naturally. What I remember the most about this rally was the collective energy and power that I felt there. It was exhilarating, amazing and empowering. It was a place where I began to develop and strengthen my voice.

Flash forward, too many years to count, and I find myself at dinner in Ohio with my daughter and 6 of her college friends at a round table where the discussion centered on the increase in tuition for students going abroad, a policy that was delivered to students at an informational meeting. They were outraged at the way it was handled and so I asked them, “What can you do about this?” Their collective reply was “nothing”.

Photo Credit: http://www.funnytimes.com

They felt they did not have a voice in the policy at Kenyon College even though they entered 2 years prior with a very real sense of what the cost would be for the 4 years. I talked to them about a Grandfather Clause and what they might be able to do. This tuition increase was a major hit to most of these kids and yet the overwhelming consensus what that they did not feel empowered, they did not believe they had any voice; they did not believe that anything they might do would matter.

And so, in my not so subtle manner I started asking questions and suggesting ways to let their voices be heard. By the end of the meal they were fired up and had grand plans to set up a table during parents weekend to bring attention to this issue, as parents were never formally informed and would not even know until the tuition bill arrived in the mail. And while they had visions of posters and signs and standing up for their rights…none of this actually ever happened. Why? Because ultimately they did not believe it would matter.

Isn’t college the perfect place to get involved in make change? Have we lost this generation to the cow towing and conformity that they have had a steady diet of? Or have they just not yet discovered the power of their voices? Or, are they right?

Looking again at that last line…I get a different feel. We will gather to “mobilize resistance” and it hits me, these are wartime words. These are the words of troops and lieutenants. And I wonder…have we really come that far? Is this an all out war?

I don’t know the answer to these questions. I do know that I have such passionate discourse about what is happening and that while blogging about it has helped me to research further and write down my thoughts I realize it is not enough.

I want to join the collective voice of others at the rally. I want to begin the process of change with like-minded people who are not going to just sit at the table and watch this happen. I want to join with the forces that believe we CAN and WILL do something. I want to show this younger generation that there is power in numbers and activism and alternatives to just accepting whatever comes down the proverbial pipeline. I want to model that they too can have their voices be heard.

Photo Credit: teacherscount.wordpress.com

So…here I go…off to the Big Apple. Perhaps I will dig out one of my old Indian skirts, find a complimentary embroidered shirt and sandals for the occasion….and had I thought of it earlier I could have even gotten a perm, “Wonder Tomasen…activate!”

For more information on this conference check out the blog http://reclaimingconversation.blogspot.com It will also be live streamed.

The HOPE Line is Open and Ready for Business, Honoring One Person’s Experience at a Time

Posted on April 25, 2013 by conversationeducation

I always tell people I have the best job in the world. I have autonomy. I am respected to make sound decisions based on the needs of my students. I have choice and a voice that I am encouraged to use. I have time to create lessons, facilitate discussions, envision graduate courses and then execute them with amazing professionals. I am trusted. This gives me hope.

I wish every teaching professional could say the same thing. My work is centered in the idea that we learn by doing and so whatever I am teaching or doing I engage in myself first be that a reading assignment, a writing assignment or something that I will be teaching to students.

Ultimately it all comes down to purpose: the why and the how of the whole thing. And yet I find myself fighting for sites in which to work. Moving upstream against a current that has such great momentum that is would seem there is no hope. Imagine that not many years ago our Learning Through Teaching graduate level course were in over 30 schools in the area from New Hampshire, Massachusetts and up into Maine. We had a great many talented consultants and our outreach was far and wide.

Our model was “in vogue” as it empowered teachers and brought them together within their own schools for professional reading, writing and dialogue. Slowly over the years, the demand has not lessened but the funding has dried up. The professional development of our teachers is one of the last things on a long list of budget demands.

But there is always hope. In fact I saw it in my class just last week. This group is a unique group of educators who meet monthly to discuss a common professional reading in my home. They receive graduate credit for their work, but more than that they receive support in a way that they cannot find elsewhere.

One teacher actually commented that she found herself wanting to be careful in talking with other teachers at her school about our course because they did not have the same network of support. So on the one hand she wants to rave about what is a critical part of her ongoing professional development, but on the other hand she feels she cannot.

Another teacher was literally brought to tears as she expressed how lonely and isolated she was feeling in her own classroom and frustrated with the lack of thinking and keeping students in mind.

A MUST read for all.

But, these teachers, after reading Readicide by Kelly Gallagher, immediately shifted their focus on reading to include the love of reading and celebrating that with students. And you might think, really? Isn’t that just a given? And the answer is not anymore!! This shift brought them back to themselves and who they know they are as educators. And their students responded in kind coming into school proclaiming,

“I finished my book last night and it was amazing!! What should I read next?” And we, together as a group, celebrated these moments.

And in that one line there is hope! Can you see it? Just a glimmer? Honoring One Person’s Experience. Let’s follow that light. We are strong. We know what is best for our students and if we can ignite a sense of readership, writership and thinkership among them then we are slowly creating a new genre of students in the name of those who care, those who want to think, those who want to read, those who want to write and will…

And just like those Bostonians who ran towards the disaster and renewed our faith in human kind, let’s do the same for education kind. So in this spirit please share your “one liners” of HOPE from your students, administrators, parents whatever. What is being said to keep the hope alive? The HOPE Line is open and ready for business, Honoring One Person’s Experience at a time. What is yours?

Photo Credits: www.hopeinspiredministries.org,mylifelonglearningcorner.blogspot.com,info.live58.org –

The Goody Bag Generation: Conformity, Performance and Privileges in State Testing

Posted on April 18, 2013 by conversationeducation

These past 7 months have been some of the craziest of my life in a long time. This past fall my daughter became depressed while away at school in Ohio. Helping her through her difficult time from 800 miles away via the telephone was challenging…to say the least. Then my father, now 84 became very ill and almost passed away at Christmas in the midst of their trying to sell their condo and buy a new house. Then February 1^st, I get a frantic phone call from my Dad telling me they are across the river watching their condo burn up in flames. That night they moved in and stayed for 6 weeks. The day after my parents moved out my son crashed my new car and it has been in the shop ever since. And then my dear friend Karen lost her son, Jimmy to cancer.

And yet here I am 7 months later and my daughter has made some very difficult and adult decisions to improve her life and is doing fabulously. My Dad recovered miraculously and is doing better than ever. My parents have moved to their little house up north and although my car is in the shop, it is all good. What is not so good is my friend Karen. How does one even begin to live after losing a child? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

~Epictetus

And so here I find myself evaluating what really matters in life when I receive a letter from my son’s High School punctuating, yet again what really matters in our public school systems.

The first paragraph states that several years ago our 11^th grade students were not performing well on the State Test, NECAP. It goes on to say that the “Data Strategies Team” (don’t even get me started here!!) investigated and interviewed students to understand their lack of motivation. This study revealed that our students got smart and stopped performing on state tests because they realized these tests had nothing to do with their futures because they did not have anything to do with their class ranks or GPA’s. (I was on the school board at this point in time and remember celebrating these students and how smart and courageous they were!)

The second paragraph goes on to say that after these findings they decided to create a big fat carrot in the name of senior privileges for those juniors who achieved a score of “proficient” or above in all three areas of reading, math and writing on these state tests.

The third paragraph tells me “You are receiving this letter because your son or daughter will be allowed Junior Privileges beginning April 29^th”. This means that my son can leave campus during unassigned periods and it allows him the freedom to “go to various destinations within in the building.” It is his get out of jail card and all because he was able to perform FOR them.

I am outraged by this…what are we doing hanging out carrots for a one time test? What about those kids who may not test well? What if those same kids who bombed the test are stellar students working hard each and every day? What about students with Special Needs? WHAT are we rewarding here? And why?

Why? I will tell you why…because these tests have nothing to do with our kids, how they learn or their futures…it is all about feeding the big number crunching machine to demonstrate that our schools are not failing.

Well…I would argue the opposite. School is failing my son miserably and yet he gets these privileges because he conformed and performed and did what was expected of him…NOT because he was learning, thinking, creating, wondering, exploring and discovering the joy of learning. What is the greater message we are sending here?

Is it just me? I am sure that some parents might be celebrating his or her child’s ability to test well and “earn” these special privileges. The letter is written on beautiful school stationary to be framed and hung on the wall. Another badge of honor to be worn by parents to show their child measures up. But not me.

It is just another reminder that it is not about our kids and their learning. What matters is that our students consistently conform, perform and then get a goody bag for doing so.

Photo Credits: www.visual-learners.com, douglasemerson.blogs.com,

Conversation Education

Talking through what it means to lead a literate life and beyond.

Honoring Space and Time

THINKING is Passionate, Purposeful and Playful

Let’s Simplify, Not Justify: In Defense of the ART of Teaching

Reflections on Drama, Drama Worlds and the Land of Misfit Kids

The Joke is on You

“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear,” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in “The Wisdom of the Ego.”

The Power of Modeling, Connection, Trust and Play

Ramblings on Lobsters, Testing, Brownstones and Poetry over the John

Alternatives and Activism: Reclaiming the Conversation on Education

The HOPE Line is Open and Ready for Business, Honoring One Person’s Experience at a Time

The Goody Bag Generation: Conformity, Performance and Privileges in State Testing

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“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear,” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in “The Wisdom of the Ego.”

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