The Book Room

Today, I went to overhaul the ELA book room. It was amazing. There were books that were many decades old. There were books that still had the plastic covers on them. There were books in foreign languages and books that smelled like sawdust. There was many a mouse pellet. It was like an ELA time capsule.

The goal of the overhaul is to get books to people to USE. To get books into the hands of teachers and kids. To make room for new books. To make room for the gradual shift that needs to happen to accommodate Common Core, new teachers, change, transitioning to a new Principal with a vision, to increase the pass rate, to evolve or die. The goal is far from accomplished.  But the amazement lingers hours later.

What I saw was that many years ago, from what I could tell, twenty-five years ago, students were reading The Count of Monte Cristo, and A Tale of Two Cities, and a decade ago students were reading Walter Dean Meyers, Monster. And today, students (at least in our school) are struggling to read AT ALL. I feel judgmental about this observation.. And  I have so many questions. Why? Let me say this. I LIKE Monster. I think the screenplay device is clever and works well as a tool at looking at the craft of constructing a novel. It's high interest. However, it is low, low level reading. Yes, perhaps the older books I found belonged to a highly advanced group of seniors in a special class. Or not. What accounts for what APPEARS to be a shift in reading ability among high school students? Screens? Smartphones? Increased malnutrition? The cycle of poverty is not new to this population. Is it worse? Is reading changing in such a way that novels are becoming obsolete or unnecessary? Do we get our sense of story elsewhere now? Is figurative language and metaphor no longer of use?::reaches for tissues::: <== is THAT what we have instead? Should we lament this change if it's real?

Some of the classics are still there. The Crucible. Romeo and Juliet. And I am not saying that one must teach the classics. I've heard an amazing argument from an incredibly wise Principal on why Shakespeare is perhaps not the best choice of literature for a curriculum these days. As much as this argument causes me great physical discomfort, (smirk), I have to admit it has *some* merit. (But DAMN IT, if done right Shakespeare is the ultimate guide to the wow of figurative language-- if you don't believe me, try Jonathan Lithgow's recent amazing words on playing King Lear in New York this summer). But I do think kids need to be exposed to AMAZING writing even if it is not so easy to get. They need to see the pay-off that comes with a crazy symbol (say,Marquez), a non-linear structure, multiple pov's, and they need to read about experiences that are vastly different from their own. Yes, you have to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Students need to learn the "classic story structure," so they can appreciate deviations. But they need exposure to some of the weird, good stuff. And some of the weird OLD stuff. There were sixteen copies of "The Metamorphosis."  Or. Maybe. They. Don't. But they DO need to raise their reading levels in order to pass these crazy tests. They DO need to raise their reading levels in order to understand their smartphone bills (WOW are those bills complex). And somehow we need to help them to do this.

The Instructional Guides were also a mirror into the ups and downs and ins and outs of Educational Reforms. There were tons of manuals on the 90 minute block --the readers and writers workshops that are now starting to go out of fashion. There were clear attempts at Humanities as interpreted to mean--read a lot of fiction/historical fiction and poetry related to historical events. There were books insisting on the use of phonetics and direct grammatical instruction for struggling readers. There were books insisting on NOT using phonetics and direct grammatical instruction for struggling readers. There were guides to using audio guides. Some kinds of "behavioral field guides," likened to searching for an exotic bird. If the child behaves this way, turn to page six, if the child also exhibits this behavior, turn to page forty-four. I might be projecting, but it did seem to me that the more recent the manual, the more likely to have a tone that insinuated the lack of common sense on the part of the teacher--the books felt more "micro-managed' and less accepting of the tangent, the teachable moment, the creative journey that can and does happen when allowed. Some of the skills remained clear. Writing requires revision. Aim for simple sentences.  The Elements of Style NEVER goes out of style (and wow the Maira Kalman illustrated edition is too awesome).

There was a single, torn copy of a book whose title could not be deciphered. When I opened it, all I could make out were the words, "keep reading, if you dare." Well said, mysterious mystery author, well said.

Queen Mab was a hit--particularly when hinting that she could be the one to blame for those unseemly nocturnal emissions. I think I saw some relief on the faces of confused boys. At any rate, they certainly enjoy the sword and torch jokes and the girls seem to tune in now and then as well. Listening to professional actors read the parts is really helping the kids pick up on the subtext and the plot.

The new "mastery works" v. "practice and effort" seems to be working too. A few kids seem to actually be keeping up with maintaining their points and looking to see what has been assigned and what, if anything, they are missing. I like it because the turn-around time is so quick and as I glance over the work, I can see who is on the ball and who is not.

I like the spring semester. It is filled with teaching artists and theater and fun stuff to read and do. The kids are more mature and trained (after a season on routines) and they seem to b responding well to all the positive feedback that I am coating them in. I am working very hard to stress the positive and ignore or at least respond much less to the poo-pooers of the class.

We're almost finished with act one. We're nearly on schedule. Woah.

All hail the sun. Nothing like eleven degree weather to encourage a bunch of teachers to start their internet engines revving in hopes of finding a cheap ticket to a sunny place far, far from the depths of the moaning, moody mass. But such searching and commitment leads to the sad reminder that those with whom we might travel are fellow teachers thus rendering the vacation obsolete. In many ways what we need to break from is one another.

My students are learning to thumb their noses and enjoying comparing sword lengths with one another so I suppose that means that Romeo and Juliet is somewhat successful thus far. A few complained of the boredom factor but several piped up with pride at understanding the basic message that a lonely teenage boy might want to crash a party in hopes of seeking out the girl of his dreams. They also seemed to perk up at the notion of Diana, Goddess of chastity and the whole concept of the nunnery (where’s a girl to go today)?

The AP brand child was knee deep today in Things Fall Apart, teaching one another the finer points of imperialism, cultural relativity and questioning the limits of Western Feminism. I was pleased that they are beginning to teach one another while I am merely a spectator of sorts—like a friend with privileges.

I taught them “Coyotes” and they laughed that they had howling sounds in their heads all days. It was an effective song to use as a guide to understanding archetypes and legends. I think.

We trudge on. The spring semester is so bearable comparably speaking. I can only hope that it feels this way in March and that I do make it somewhere sunny.

Ah, the sonnet. What could be better than watching my students clap their fingers together or stomp their feet trying to dicern where the accent falls in a word? What is more refreshing than watching students count syllables hoping that they will add up to ten? What better than watching as they smile when they finally figure out what ABAB CDCD EF EF GG means? Or wagging their fingers shouting "it's a rhyiming couplet," pleased as punch that they know what that means? Or giggling when I say, "thou must deposit thy gum in the receptacle." These are the days when I love my job. Kids love poetry, for some reason, they aren't turned off by it, they like the idea of it and they feel that they can do it. Sure, their poems are trite, but at least they are trying. How many adults sit down and write sonnets at night? Better still, I hear them in the hallways, correcting each other about the patterns, teasing each other about inept rhymes. I'm hooked. I even got a few to admit that Shakespeare was the original G. Now that's progress.