What
to Write 100.
This is the 100th article I wrote for The Wellesley Townsman. I wrote
these in seven months, because I had stored up so much that I wanted
to say. I suspect that many teachers and parents store up things they
want to say. If you're a parent, when there is a risk that your children
will be embarrassed or otherwise adversely affected by the things you
say, you may keep it inside. If you're a teacher, when you face the
possibility that your teaching career will be at risk, you're careful
as well.
I thought that some of what I'd stored up would be earth-shaking, iconoclastic,
and would spark all kinds of controversy. I thought there would be letters
to the editor of The Wellesley Townsman. That didn't happen, and believe
it or not, I wasn't disappointed. I got appreciative comments from people,
and friends urged me to publish my collected articles as a book. I did
so.
When I sit with a child who can't decide what to write about, we start
talking. Children who are relaxed usually don't have any trouble thinking
of things to talk about. At first, some children think I'm being manipulative,
and I suppose they're right. One of my ultimate goals is to help them
get started with the writing process. In some children's minds, writing
is hard work for the wrist, fingers, and brain, in no way related to
chatting.
I think many teachers have overemphasized the difference between writing
and talking. There's a difference, but the similarities are important.
Both have to do with reaching inside, and finding the words that will
let other people know what's in there. Both use the intricacies of language.
Saying you have no talent for writing is like saying you have no talent
for talking or thinking. Maybe it's the chronic teacher in me, but I
don't accept the concept of a person who has no talent for writing.
There are differences between writing and talking. For some kinds of
communication, including the kind I'm trying to do right now, writing
works better. There is a decreased risk of putting my foot in my mouth.
It hasn't happened yet that I can't think of anything to write an article
about, but if it does happen, I'll talk with a child, teacher, parent,
or any adult. They were all children once, and they were all affected
by the experience of being a child.
And the child who can't think of anything to write about may notice
that there is a scratch on his/her desk. Something must have happened
to cause that scratch. What could it have been? Does that scratch have
a story? If this subject isn't interesting to the child, there's lots
of others. Usually the children who have the most trouble deciding what
to write have no trouble thinking of things to talk about.
I'm kept writing articles. One hundred is a neat number, but it wasn't
the end of my story; there was a lot more to say. Perhaps if people
had twelve fingers instead of ten, I would have considered one hundred
forty-four my landmark number. For now, though, I'm going to stop writing
and go talk to some people; I'll talk to you later.
Tattling 101.
There are countless hours spent in courtrooms and dollars paid to lawyers
because we want things to be fair. Someone else has done something that
shouldn't have been done or gotten something that we should have gotten,
and we want justice. Wouldn't it be nice if we could just go up to some
taller person who would settle it in a few minutes? I think it's no
coincidence that judges sit higher up than plaintiffs, defendants, and
lawyers.
The first time a child tattled to me in school, I thought I was supposed
to be the detective, lawyer, judge, jury, and lord high executioner.
I didn't want anything unfair to ever happen under my jurisdiction.
I wanted to be King Solomon the Wise. I summoned the suspect. With both
children present, I heard their arguments. I deliberated for a minute,
and then handed down my ruling. I don't remember what my ruling was,
but I'm sure it was very just.
After a few weeks of this foolishness, I got a note from the child's
mother. She wanted to talk with me. I knew I had failed. I had tried
to establish justice in my classroom, and this child was living proof
that I hadn't done it. I was ready to defend myself. I was ready to
list the strategies I had tried to protect this child from the forces
of evil.
That's not what the mother wanted to talk about. She liked justice,
too, but she had another concern in mind. At home, her child was a chronic
tattle-tale, and she was trying to teach her child to solve some of
her own problems. All the attention I was giving her daughter was working
against this goal. Could I please ask her daughter to solve some of
her own problems?
A word to Solomon the Wise was sufficient. I spent that evening rethinking
my approach to the justice issue. I decided to listen to complaints
- just listen. At least until I'd had time to decide whether the complaint
warranted action, was a plea for attention, or perhaps was an attempt
to improve a child's self-image: "That child over there did something
terrible, and I didn't. I'm pretty good, huh?"
Justice must prevail. But when it comes to tattling, that may only be
part of the story. It's a delicate balancing act. We want children to
know that they can come to us with their problems, but we also want
them to know when to do that - that they can solve many of their problems
on their own.
Tutors 102.
Sometimes now, I tutor children. Good teachers in a good school do a good
job, but sometimes parents want to make sure that their children get a
little more instruction than they get in school. Or they worry that vacations
will undo the good the school has done. So a child comes to me to write,
read, figure things out - whatever we decide is the best way to spend
time.
Hiring someone to do what your tax dollars are supposed to pay for, or,
from a child's point of view, spending time after school doing what your
friends only do in school, raises a few issues. I tossed around a few
ways to examine these issues, and decided to describe four points of view
- two parents' perspectives and two children's perspectives.
The first parent is not critical of the school. Teachers have done what
could be done to help the child learn. The child needs more instruction
than the school day and school year allow. The tutor hired will consult
with the teacher to learn which approaches and materials have been used,
which have been successful, and what the teacher recommends. Whether or
not this parent can afford a tutor, the needs of the child are more important
than anything.
The second parent wonders why the school has not done its job, and is
annoyed. Teachers get paid a lot of money (from this parent's perspective),
and ought to do the job they're paid to do. The child in question is not
deficient; it's the school system that is deficient, and the school system
ought to pay for the tutor.
The first child thinks about the other kids, who get to have fun after
school. It's no fair. Just because they learn more easily, they get to
go swimming, play with their friends, watch TV, play video games. But
this child has to sit with a teacher after school. And when there are
no other kids around, you can't get away with anything. I wish I were
smarter, thinks this child.
The second child wants to do better in school, and hopes that the extra
help will make that possible. This child has already been helped to feel
competent, and realizes that he/she just needs extra time and extra instruction.
It would be nice not to need that, but since it is needed, it's a good
thing it's happening.
As teachers, parents, and tutors, we do what we can. Our children are
doing what they can. I've never felt right about giving a child an unsatisfactory
effort grade; if they don't seem to be trying, I think at least they're
trying to try. I believe that we're all in this together.
Modelling 103.
In several of these articles, I've mentioned the importance of modelling
for children. I've talked about modelling ethical living, apologizing,
and a few other concepts, I think. As we think of teaching in terms of
instruction - actively and conspicuously doing things to cause children
to learn, it's easy to forget the importance of modelling. But children
learn a lot by watching what we do and listening to what we say when we're
not necessarily talking directly to them. Whether we know it or not, at
least some of them want to be like us. So we are models all the time,
even when we don't necessarily mean to be.
I'm not saying this to scare you, nor make you paranoid. It's not that
every single move you make, every word you say, will have profound effects
on children. But it's good to occasionally remind ourselves to model.
Just yesterday, for example, I was tutoring a child. I was typing what
he said, and I mumbled something about how bad I was at typing. Then I
remembered my role as a model, and quickly corrected myself: "No,
I'm not bad at it; I'm just having some trouble right now. I'm actually
good at typing." I didn't want this child to start generating lists
of things he can't do. Besides, I am pretty good at typing. It's only
my fingers that sometimes have some trouble with it.
I've often worked with children who thought they were no good at math.
I'm convinced that all children are good at math. Some are better at some
aspects of math than others, but math is such a many-faceted discipline
that most children can excel at parts of it. But they may have heard,
at home, "Go ask your mother/father. She's/he's the mathematician
in the family." And if they've heard that, they may think, I'm not
the mathematician in the family. An adult role model has provided an excuse
to give up, and the child now knows that giving up is perfectly acceptable.
Being a parent or teacher is an awesome responsibility. The lectures are
the easier part, and often the less effective part. The hard part is serving
as models. It requires a kind of self-confidence and self-monitoring that
may not come naturally. It's easier to tell children not to be like us
than to be the people we want children to be like. But to a certain degree,
they are going to be like us. They'll be more likely to smoke if we smoke.
They'll be more likely to give up if they see us give up. And they'll
try if they see that we're trying.
Yelling 104.
Yelling at children is basically ineffective and counterproductive. It
may feel effective, because it may yield immediate results, and it may
temporarily let off some steam. There are even times when it's necessary
- when a child is about to run out in front of a moving car. But the long-range
effect of consistently yelling at children is to get children to think
you yell a lot, and maybe to get them to take after you, and yell a lot,
too. As I wrote last week, whether or not we mean to be models, we are.
I yelled at children a lot, by my standards. By some other teachers' standards,
I was soft-spoken, and very patient. Some teachers I knew rarely or never
yelled. Some engaged in passive/aggressive behavior which may have been
worse than yelling, and some effectively said what they were thinking
and feeling without raising their voices. I admire and emulate that style.
It's easier to stay calm as a volunteer, because there is a teacher there
to yell or not yell; it's not my issue any more.
Yelling can be a form of corporal punishment. Teachers and parents are
usually significantly larger than children, and since we adults are less
likely to be punished for yelling, we can really let go. My year of voice
lessons did give me some good pointers about projecting, and I sometimes
got embarrassed when I heard a door close across the hall. Some children
have sensitive ears, and are actually physically hurt by loud noises.
When we yell, we may think we're only attempting to communicate better;
they don't seem to hear us when we're quiet, and after all, at least we're
not hitting. But we are using our size, rather than our intellect, to
attempt to accomplish our goals. We are trying to let our might make right.
Children who are used to loud noises, and those whose ears can take it,
can still be damaged by yelling. Physical abuse is not the only kind.
It's scary to be yelled at by someone who is big, and we don't know what
else has happened in each child's life to accompany yelling. Yelling may
be part of our upbringing, and part of our culture, and may seem relatively
innocent. But it can quickly remind an abused child of incidents that
will never happen in class, and that child may lose the sense of safety
we try to provide in school. Yelling doesn't end up doing what it's intended
to do, and it often does what is not intended.
A Walk in the Woods 105.
I do hope you get a chance to walk in the woods with your child. My children
aren't children any more, but we still spend time in the woods when they
come to visit me. Maybe some time I'll have grandchildren. Until then,
I take other children on the bike trail. Last week, the touch-me-nots
were starting to have full seed pods. I told a friend about it, and my
friend let me take her child on the bike path.
We came to the touch-me-nots. They're pretty, orange flowers. They're
also called "jewelweed," either because of their flowers, or
because their leaves sparkle when they're in water. They're called "cornucopia,"
because of the shape of the flower. And a friend by E-mail tells me it's
also called "medicine plant," because the juice in the stem
is supposed to relieve the stings of nettles and mosquito bites. Which
reminds me - if you touch poison ivy, immediately rub the point of contact
with the leaf of this medicine plant. You can find them lining the Fuller
Brook path, near Brook Street, in late summer and early fall. If you touch
a ripe seed pod, it will quickly open up, and seeds will burst out. Children
(and adults who haven't lost touch) get excited about it. But don't all
go at once. And don't get Freudian about it. In the wilderness is the
preservation of humanity, not a bunch of symbols to analyze.
A rabbit was sitting at the edge of the trail. We stopped. We whispered,
and decided to move closer, ever-so-slowly. The rabbit knew we were there,
but trusted us, I guess. A biker was headed in our direction. I signalled
to her, and she stopped to see what was going on. She watched the rabbit,
too. After two minutes or so, we moved on. The rabbit stayed there.
Robert Frost lived near here for a while. Back then, the bike trail was
a railroad track. And Emily Dickinson spent her life here. I don't know
whether the railroad track was even there yet back then. Sometimes I read
their poetry. When it's raining out, or too cold and/or snowy to go on
the bike trail. I'm not the type to stop by the woods on a snowy evening.
Some of my articles - most of them, maybe - express my thoughts about
specific issues. There are a lot of important things to say about children,
parenting, and teaching. But there is also some important silence about
it all. So I hope you get a chance to go to the woods with your child.
Even a noisy child may surprise you with silence in the woods. Just say
to your child, "I'm going for a walk in the woods. I sha'n't be gone
long; you come, too." One could do worse.
Weirdness 106.
Sometimes a child seems to take pride and pleasure in being different
from other children. This attitude (the old meaning of "attitude")
can be exactly what it seems to be; it can be the child's style of self-esteem.
Since everyone is different, it's good to accept and celebrate the differences.
So a child can be proud of being "weird," and know that he/she
means nothing negative by the word. Other children say, "He's/she's
weird," and may mean it affectionately (and be heard affectionately),
or not be the ones whose opinions count to this child.
But weirdness can also be a disguise. It can cover up feelings the child
is not able to reveal to others. The child may desperately want to connect
with other children, but feel unable to do it. So the child decides, instead,
to develop a reputation for being different. That way, it's easier to
explain being rejected or excluded by other children: I'm different, and
that's why people don't like me. I'd rather be the weird person I am than
follow the crowd just so I can have friends. And the loneliness lives
and grows.
As a teacher, every Halloween, I wore a three-piece suit to school. People
grew to expect it of me, and I enjoyed the reputation that went with this
expectation. To me, a three-piece suit is a costume. People in other places
had to wear this costume every day, and teachers didn't. The statement
I was making by wearing this costume was that it is indeed a costume.
Every uniform or fashion is a costume, to some degree. It's a way to look
like other people when, in fact, you may be different.
But I wore a costume every day. While I enjoyed a certain degree of weirdness,
I didn't wear then what I wear now. I wore corduroy pants and a flannel
shirt in the winter, and non-corduroy cotton pants and a short-sleeve
cotton shirt in the spring and fall. I may not have followed the fashions,
but I did not want to be too different. In the summer, I wore what I wanted,
and here in Amherst, I wear what I want. It's a college town, and what
is labelled "weird" in other places is somewhat the norm here.
The child who takes pride in her/his weirdness may be doing exactly what
she/he appears to be doing. The child may be daring to be different, and
that's good practice for times when the crowd is doing something the child
really doesn't want to do. The uniform is a costume. But once in a while,
it's useful to take a close look, to see whether the refusal to wear the
uniform is also a costume.
Labor 107.
I remember a time when the teachers' association in Wellesley could not
get a contract we considered reasonable. That's a pretty common situation,
but this time, we felt the injustice more strongly than usual. We voted
to have a work-to-rule action. That is, teachers would only do what their
contracts required them to do. As is true in many other kinds of work,
most teachers ordinarily do quite a bit more than their contracts require.
They care about the children they teach (caring is not required by their
contracts), and this caring motivates them to do much more work than they
are paid to do. So the work-to-rule action was not easy for teachers.
It wasn't easy for parents, administrators, or children, either. But it
was an important attempt to communicate with the community.
People who have economic and political power usually want to keep it.
One way to do that is to make sure the people who don't have power don't
get together. History is full of examples. Religion is often used to teach
people without power that it's morally better not to have power. The ones
who do have power usually have a somewhat different theological slant.
They seldom believe that they are destined to burn eternally as punishment
for having had power.
Political leaders create "public enemies" to justify their own
actions: "I would love to make your lives more livable, but to do
so, at this point, would seriously threaten the very fabric of our society."
Most people belong to some group or other that "threatens the very
fabric of our society." Whether or not you're worried that our social
fabric is going to unravel, it's wise to take such statements with a grain
of salt. I, personally, think such statements are dangerous, and protect
some fabric that really ought to be rewoven.
A favorite way to turn people against labor is to call people communists.
Communism is a category of economic philosophy. I almost wrote that it's
an economic philosophy, but if you really look at who the communists are
and what they say, you discover that there's a lot of philosophical diversity
within communism. Karl Marx didn't have a monopoly on communism, although
it could be said that he was the foremost authority on Marxism.
But regardless of economic philosophy, most people belong to that huge
group called "labor." The colors of their collars don't matter
as much as you may think. Their particular incomes and life styles aren't
as significant as they sometimes appear; whether you're paying rent or
mortgage payments, most of you can't buy an airline or skyscraper.
The messages sent by teachers when they strike or declare a work-to-rule
action deserve your attention. They care about your children, and care
about making school the best place it can be. They also want to make sure
they and their families have what they need to live. You may disagree
with them about particulars. But they are no more of a threat to your
fabric than you are.
Chores 108.
I suggest that we throw out the word "chores." It's developed
the wrong connotation. I don't mean throwing out the whole concept; there
are kinds of work that have to be done regularly, and it's only fair to
share the work among those who benefit by its being done. Some of those
who benefit may not be as skilled as others, but that shouldn't mean that
the more skilled ones get more work. When that happens, there's sometimes
a tendency to hide skills, or to avoid developing them.
Then what's my problem with the word? I guess "chores" has come
to mean "unpleasant, repetitive, meaningless work." When I do
what I used to think were "chores," I try to accentuate the
positive. Granted, some of them have less positive to accentuate than
others, but for example, when I take out the trash, I think less about
the various pieces of paper in the trash container, or the dumpster that
is my destination, and more about the feeling I'll have when I'm done.
My apartment will be a more pleasant place. Of course, I'll continue to
throw things out, and the work will some day soon need to be done again,
but it will have proven worth the effort.
I'm sorry if I'm coming across as a cock-eyed optimist. I'm not Candide.
I'm not Pollyanna. My approach to this issue is quite practical; people
work more efficiently and more consistently when there's some pleasure
associated with the work. People who procrastinate have to pay the price.
Unless the work they have to do is more pleasant when there's more of
it, doing the work regularly is its own reward. I can fit all my trash
into one container, and that makes it easier to transport.
I just remembered that this is supposed to be a column about working with
children. Well, I think it's good to ask children to help, or require
them to help, as soon as they are old enough to help. I think it's a matter
of personal style, not right or wrong, whether you "ask" or
"require." I don't have any magic formula for determining when
they are old enough, which kinds of work are most suitable for them, how
to establish quality control, or what to do if the work does not get done.
But there is work to be done. It may be dirty work, like taking out the
trash. But somebody's got to do it, and it's no fair if adults have to
do it all.
Being Nice 109.
I used to be chronically nice. If that phrase sounds comical to you, I
think it's because niceness is considered a positive quality, and "chronically"
usually precedes something negative - pathological. But throughout my
life - even during the time of the popular "me" focus (Is that
entirely over yet?) - I've found it difficult to remember that I have
needs, wants, and priorities. Sometimes I would do something "nice"
- donate some important item, time, or energy - and later wonder where
it was, and why I didn't have it. And that kind of "niceness,"
in my opinion, goes well with the word "chronically."
Over the years, I've met many children with this problem. They volunteered
to help clean up messes that weren't theirs, gave away things that were
special to them, let secretly coveted privileges be given away to other
children. They did get lots of appreciation, and maybe the good feeling
that comes with knowing you've helped, but I always wondered whether they
were going to wake up one morning feeling cheated.
We all have a sometimes unfortunate tendency to attribute our issues to
children. Each time I made a tentative diagnosis of chronic niceness in
a child, I worked to make sure I wasn't projecting my own problem on to
the child. For some children, niceness is a top priority item, more important
than possessions, time, or fun. For some reason, they want to be nice.
And really, how long can you argue with that?
But sometimes there is an unwritten, unspoken, and unconscious contract:
If I am nice to people, then at some point, people will be nice to me.
It's often true. There's a human tendency to be grateful, and reciprocate.
But if that tendency is the motivation for unselfishness, there may be
trouble ahead.
Sometimes, a child is unselfish because of low self-esteem: Let me help
you, because that's the only way I can even be close to worthwhile. When
I've worked to help a child with this mindset to become more assertive,
the child may have been thinking, now I can't even do the only thing I
do reliably well - give.
You probably know some children who are kind, thoughtful - nice. It's
not really bad to be that way, but I think it helps to check things out.
When things in general are difficult, it's easy to forget about the needs
of the people who seem to be saying, "It's all right. My needs aren't
important." But they shouldn't always finish last.
"Bad Teachers" 110.
I'm not as ready to label someone a "bad teacher" as I used
to be. I never labelled anyone a "bad child," and I've recently
expanded that policy to include most teachers. I don't think I have lowered
my standards; I think I've decided that teachers, like children, want
to do the best they can, and even if their best isn't on a par with other
teachers' best, the comparison isn't so important.
Maybe it's because I'm retired, and the competetive mentality is gone.
Maybe it's because the retirement system has superannuated me, and with
superannuation comes wisdom. But for whatever reason, I'm able to more
clearly see the efforts teachers make, and not fault them as much for
things I used to consider their faults.
For example, a teacher I heard yesterday said, "Boys and girls, would
you please line up here?" Around 1972, I decided never to call my
class "boys and girls." I thought the phrase, though commonplace
and accurate, highlighted a difference that was irrelevant to the situation,
and made the difference more important than it needed to be. No teachers
I've known have ever addressed their classes as "blacks and whites,"
or "Jews and gentiles." Perhaps I was making much ado about
nothing, but I don't think so.
But that's not the point. The teacher who addressed her class as "boys
and girls" may listen well to any child who has a concern. She may
be able to explain things in ways that work for children who usually get
confused by teachers. There are so many things to think about in becoming
a teacher (I almost wrote "being a teacher," but I don't think
it's ever a fait accompli) that examining the implications of "boys
and girls" (and agreeing with me after the examination) may not have
a high priority.
I write articles, and hope that teachers will read them. I talk with teachers
and express my opinions on issues that come up. As a volunteer, I try
to model what I consider good teaching. But I no longer sit in judgment
of other teachers as much as I used to. And you, vegetarians and meat-eaters
of Wellesley, I hope you are doing it less. Most teachers are trying to
be good at what they do.
Volunteering 111.
Volunteering in a school is one of my favorite ways to spend time. It's
a luxury; I'm sure that there are people who wish they could volunteer,
but simply don't have the time. They have to, can, and often want to do
things for which they get paid, and when they're done, school is out,
so volunteering isn't an option.
I remember from my paid days that it can be hard to plan for a volunteer,
and I try to be a volunteer who can be somewhat reliable without needing
plans. Having taught for twenty-five years, that's not too hard for me.
I see papers that need to be filed, a child who's bugging another child,
a child who finishes early and doesn't know what to do next, a child who's
struggling - it's not hard to notice where I can be useful.
There are, of course, problems and issues around volunteering. One problem
is that teachers are so used to being judged, and any time you volunteer
in a classroom, the teacher may consciously or unconsciously see you as
a spy. You may say and think you're there to help. You may indeed be there
to help. But the teacher may see you as someone who is counting the number
of times he/she says "Um." "Um" is a commonly used
linguistic filler in many lines of work, but for some people, the more
they try not to say it, the worse it gets. And some teachers are trying
hard not to say it. There may be other habits the teacher is earnestly
trying to break, too. The presence of a volunteer can be disconcerting,
and the um-count may skyrocket.
Children are quick to see any adult in the classroom as a potential authority.
So a child may come up to a volunteer and ask for permission. If the teacher
has well-defined policies that are easy to memorize or put on a chart,
volunteers can echo these policies, or direct the child to the chart.
But it's rarely that simple. And some children see the volunteer as a
way to circumvent the policy - to get help that isn't really needed, or
get permission that wouldn't ordinarily be given.
Finally, there's the feelings teachers have when they are in charge of
a class. Diversity is nice, many hands make light work, and children have
a better chance to get their needs met if there are more adults tending
to them. But there is a special connection some teachers feel with their
classes - a bond that makes the presence of other adults difficult. I've
felt that bond many times, and I respect it. Just as you sometimes want
to spend time with only one special friend, a teacher may want to spend
time with only the children, and vice versa.
I'm going to keep volunteering in classrooms. I hope those of you who
want to get chances to do it. For some teachers, a volunteer can be a
gift that's better than any coffee mug.
Adult Time 112.
I remember a day when I went to Cambridge with three other third grade
teachers. We had substitutes, and we were in Cambridge to attend a workshop
at Harvard, and to shop for materials for our unit on Russia. The workshop
was useful, and we found some good materials, but what I remember most
is lunch. It's not that I don't have lunch every day, or that I don't
go to restaurants with friends from time to time. It's not that the food
was any better than other food I've had. It's that we were four teachers
spending relaxed adult time on a school day.
In many professions, the lunch break is a time to relax, eat, chat, schmooze,
even digest the food. I've seen people in other professions during their
lunch breaks. They hardly look at their watches at all. They don't gulp
down their food, or wonder whether there's time to have dessert. Now,
we chose to be teachers, and to be there for children. We get vacations
that are the envy of many other professionals. I'm not complaining about
the short lunch breaks teachers get (well, maybe I'm complaining a little).
I'm trying to make the point that those days when teachers leave substitutes
in charge of their classes and attend workshops or do other things for
their professional development have benefits that transcend the enhanced
curriculum or new technique. Teachers are more likely to support each
other and learn from each other if they are friends. They usually don't
have opportunities to get together outside of school; they have lives
they need to live. The little lunch breaks they have in school have very
little room for "How's your father doing?" or "Are you
going skiing this weekend?" There's hardly time for "Do you
have a globe you don't need at 2:00?"
Four teachers having lunch together in Harvard Square shouldn't have had
to be nervous about whether there were any members of the Wellesley community
nearby, watching us relax over dessert. We were working hard not to wonder
how our classes were doing - to savor this time when, as one of us put
it, "we get to be adults."
The Mercury Syndrome 113.
Sometimes, children with special needs show up in schools, and administrators
scramble to find ways to meet these children's needs. One child speaks
only Portugese, or Khmer. Another has severe emotional problems. Another
has no home, and her/his behavior and skill level may have consequently
suffered. We are a culture rich in diversity, but sometimes the stresses
that come with diversity don't leave us feeling rich at all.
The schools are filled with professionals who have spent lots of energy
learning how to meet children's needs. There are the ones most people
are used to - the classroom teachers. Most people have had classroom teachers.
They're the ones who taught us to read. We may have seen children go out
of the room to spend time with other teachers. We may have gone out of
the room ourselves. But the classroom teacher seemed like the "real"
teacher.
In most schools (all schools in Wellesley), there are specialists who
have studied various techniques for helping children with special needs.
Sometimes they work in their own rooms, and sometimes they consult, plan,
and co-teach with classroom teachers. They contribute valuable insights,
and often make the impossible seem likely.
But there is a problem which I will call "The Mercury Syndrome."
Mercury was one of the Roman gods. When all the god-jobs were handed out,
Venus got love, Mars got war, but what did Mercury get? Mercury was the
ancient equivalent of an LD teacher. Sure, he was supposed to be the messenger
god, but who knew how many messages there were to be delivered? So Mercury
started accumulating other jobs. He became the god of lots of other things,
some of which didn't seem to have anything to do with each other. I'll
bet there were times when Mercury's desk was cluttered with messages (probably
including some important ones) that Mercury intended to deliver when he
got around to it.
It's easier to have a nebulous, multi-faceted job when you're immortal,
and perhaps omniscient and/or omnipotent. But teachers of children with
special needs aren't. They're actually pretty much like you and me. So
when a new child comes to school with needs that weren't expected, the
LD teacher is not necessarily the person who should work with that child.
I hope some day education becomes such a high priority that there is a
well-funded network of experts to meet children's needs, and teachers
who have special expertise are then free to use it.
Hamming It Up 114.
There have been people who have told me that I must be great with children,
because I'm so funny, or because I'm such a dramatic guy. I rarely reject
a compliment, but whenever I accept that one, I try to correct the donor's
misconception. To me, it's like saying I must be great at tennis, because
I'm so good at chess. There are overlapping skills, but the two are really
different games, and in fact, someone who doesn't know how to play chess
can still be great at tennis. Being funny and dramatic is fine, but it
is neither a prerequisite nor a reliable advantage in working with children.
Some children do not deal well with pizzazz. They don't know what to make
of it, and it makes them uncomfortable. They would rather have things
be calm and easy to understand. We funny, dramatic people need to adjust
our approaches if we want to connect with these children. If we don't,
they will be overwhelmed by us, or tune us out. It took a few years of
teaching for me to completely come to terms with this truth. But I'm glad
I did, and so are some children.
Even on stage, it's important to be aware of children's different styles.
My favorite children's entertainers balance their acts so that children
get some whimsy and some serenity. Some madness, and some method.
I once read about a study that suggested that children get more out of
listening to a story if it's read in a calm, undramatic voice. Not monotone,
but not the way I like to read to children - doing my W. C. Fields impression
when I say Templeton's lines in Charlotte's Web, or imitating Alfred Hitchcock
when I'm Thorin in The Hobbit. It was only one study, and it didn't get
me to change my style, but at least it got me to stop thinking teachers
who just read the stories were doing it wrong. When children hear words,
they paint pictures in their minds, and if the words are well-chosen,
voice, facial expression, and body language may not be big factors.
This article is not meant to put down the hams of the world. We can be
good teachers, too, and often are. Some children learn a lot from us.
Rather, this article is meant to reassure the soft-spoken teachers who
quietly care about children, and communicate that caring in their teaching.
You don't have to be a star to be in our show. You don't even have to
be in the show. You can just be there for the children.
Food 115.
As I write each article, I fantasize that I'll have an effect on people's
thinking and behavior - maybe change some minds or habits. I have no such
delusions about this article. If your mind was or is going to be changed
about food, and your habits changed, it probably won't be because of this
article. Your food intake may be altered by "doctor's orders,"
but you've probably heard all the propaganda the non-medical world has
to offer. Still, I have to add my two cents.
People don't joke as much about excessive use of alchohol as they used
to. They seem to have realized that it's not so funny. Well, I don't think
ingestion of food that has negative effects on our health is funny, either,
but it's still the subject of plenty of joking. Some people believe that
laughter is a way of coping with fear. I don't know whether that's true
of all laughter, but I have a hunch that the food jokes are inspired by
unconscious fear.
Several years ago, I read that diet can affect symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
Doctors told me it wouldn't, but the things I read told me not to believe
doctors who told me that. I didn't know who to believe. During the past
several years, I've done my own experiments with diet. I've eliminated
certain foods from my diet, and noticed what's happened. I'm still experimenting,
and keeping track of what results I perceive. I now have no meat (poultry
and fish count as meat, by this system), no dairy, and I avoid additives
and preservatives. I'm gradually cutting back on caffeine, sweeteners,
and gluten grains. For me, they're the hardest to avoid.
I suggest that food intake is difficult to control, and that it's nevertheless
important to control. Health problems, and even learning problems, may
be caused or aggravated by inappropriate diet. I am not a doctor or any
other kind of health care professional, traditional or alternative. But
my experiment, so far, is supporting the hypothesis that avoiding some
kinds of foods does help.
I suggest that we set good examples for our children, and buy only healthy
food for them. I know that's easy for me to say; my children are grown.
In bringing up this issue, I feel the way David must have felt when he
faced Goliath. Advertisers have power. Doctors who say diet isn't so important
have power. Not to mention children who want junk food and really know
how to nag. Or that little voice inside us that says, "Aw, c'mon!
One little bite won't hurt you!" But I'm beginning to think diet
really does have an effect.
Home 116.
There's no place like home. Home is where the heart is. Home, sweet home.
But for many of us, home isn't what it once was. As I was growing up,
I lived with my two parents. We moved four times as I was growing up,
but we lived in one house for ten years, and to my brothers, my sister,
and me, that place still seems like home. Neal Marlens, the guy who later
grew up and produced "The Wonder Years," lived next door to
us, and I was one of his babysitters. So that nostalgic TV series meant
something extra to me.
Since I moved away from my parents, I've lived in thirty-one other places.
That may be above average, but I don't think it's out of the ballpark.
I've moved because of job changes (both mine and my wife's), divorce,
landlord problems, neighborhood problems, and occasionally, the availability
of a genuinely better place to live. There were many times my wife and
I longed for a place that we could call "home," but like many
people in our generation, we had no such luck.
My daughters did live in one "home" for over ten years, but
they can't go back there now; some strangers live there. And though I
sometimes drive by the place where I lived from 1955-65, just to reminisce
a little, strangers live there, too. I can't go home again.
I suspect that twenty years from now, not too many of you will live where
you now live. And those of you who do probably won't build a house for
your child on the back ten acres. Times have changed, and we've got to
face it.
What does this mean for children? Where are they going to find the stability
they need? Part of the answer isn't very cheerful. Most of them aren't
going to have the kind of stability many of us had. If they started out
with two parents, they may not end up living with both of them at the
same time. They probably won't be able to visit the place where they were
born; other people will probably live there.
Maybe, not knowing what it's like to stay in one place, they won't miss
it. Maybe the last generations to have consistent, stable homes won't
pass on the consequent nostalgia to their children. But there is a home
we can give our children that is more important than a house or traditional
family structure. As our children grow up and face the challenges of their
futures, maybe we can be their homes.
Whomsayers 117.
Several years after I learned to talk, I learned that I was doing it wrong.
In junior high and high school, I took courses in English, and in most
of these classes, my teachers taught me rules of grammar. These rules
said that the way me and my friends (my friends and I) talked was incorrect.
I believed my teachers, and learned the "right" way to speak.
Later, in college, I learned that language is run by democracy, and if
enough people consistently use a language "incorrectly," the
"incorrect" way becomes the correct way. In one way, it was
a relief. It meant that I didn't have to fight the battle my teachers
had fought; I didn't have to insist on "different from," rather
than "different than," or struggle to eradicate "the reason
why," a redundant but popular phrase.
But it also meant that rules I'd worked to learn could quickly become
anachronisms - antiques. And they did. Notice that three sentences in
this paragraph begin with conjunctions. Please don't tell any of my English
teachers. And two weeks ago, in my article about food, I wrote, "I
didn't know who to believe." I really struggled with that sentence.
I knew the "correct" thing to write, but I also knew that in
this linguistic democracy, we whomsayers have been voted down by a landslide.
It's still okay to write "To Whom It May Concern," and I suspect
that that will last, but most of the whoms are gone from our language.
If, like me, you learned the rules of grammar, you may feel somewhat cheated,
as I do. Why did we go through all that trouble if the rules were going
to be amended or discarded by the phillistine masses? But that's what
has happened. Harry Reasoner, Edwin Newman, and others have spoken and
written about the demise of "good" English.
I do like grammar, and it's a little frustrating to know something that
ought to impress people, but usually doesn't. But language really is run
by democracy, and though we whomsayers, as a minority, still have the
right to say "whom" whenever we want, it's going to start sounding
funny.
Curiosity 118.
I don't think curiosity killed the cat. I don't know which particular
cat the old adage refers to, but I am confident that it was not killed
by curiosity. Perhaps it died because of its unintelligent approach to
finding out what it wanted to know. Perhaps, in its attempt to learn,
it was unlucky, and met with some fatal accident. Perhaps it spent years
trying to learn, and died of old age. Let's not condemn curiosity without
a fair trial; it may have had nothing to do with the poor cat's death.
The chances are that one of the first songs you ever learned is the one
about the same curiosity that inspired Galileo, Copernicus, and scores
of others to spend their lives trying to find out about those things that
twinkle up above the world, so high. That curiosity inspired our space
program. There are some aspects of that program that I find objectionable,
but I respect the spirit of wonder that inspired it. Curious as I am,
though, I have no desire to boldly go where none have gone before, for
three reasons I can think of: I haven't been to all the places people
have boldly gone to, I don't really want to leave Amherst for more than
a few weeks, and I'm scared. But how I do wonder what those diamonds in
the sky are.
If you listen to children, you will hear curiosity you may have forgotten,
either because you long ago gave up trying to find out, or because you've
been busy. Children ask questions. There's a certain stage children go
through wherein they explore the word "why." As they go through
that stage, we may think they're just trying to annoy us. They ask questions,
and instead of being satisfied with our answers, they ask, "Why?"
Every answer we give is followed by "Why?" It used to drive
me crazy.
Now, retired, I like that stage. I hope it lasts forever, maybe modified
as children learn more and more sophisticated ways to ask why. I like
to give serious thought to each "Why?" The children see that
I'm taking the curiosity seriously, and when we finally get to "I
don't know," and the whys continue, I continue the thoughtful I-don't-knows.
It's not an endurance test; it's an honest question with honest answers.
I know some children may be asking the question to test our patience.
I do believe in setting limits, teaching children to find their own answers,
and teaching them ways to avoid irritating us. But I don't believe children
should be ultimately stopped from asking why. If they're bugging you,
tell them to ask me.
Continuing Education 119.
A friend of mine, who does workshops for teachers and other human services
workers around this country, likes to tell about a woman who decided to
see a career counselor. As the two were discussing her various career
options, she told the counselor, "What I really want to do is be
a veterinarian, but that would take another six years. Six years from
now, I'll be fifty years old!"
The career counselor replied, "Well, six years from now, you'll be
fifty years old anyway. You might as well be a veterinarian."
I like that story. As long as we're alive, there isn't a point at which
we are saturated with knowledge, skill, and wisdom, and no more will fit
in. We admire Leonardo DaVinci, Thomas Jefferson, and others who seemed
to keep coming up with new areas of expertise. But really, they are not
so far removed from what we are. There isn't a final career or specialization
for which we are destined; our lives keep presenting challenges, and we
keep finding ways to respond to them.
And so we continue our education. We get interested in something, and
try it, or read a book about it. Maybe we take a course about it. Maybe
we teach a course about it, because we've discovered expertise we didn't
know we had. As most people know, teaching is learning. And even if we
don't go to an institution of learning and/or take or teach a course -
even if we don't read a book - we keep learning. There's no way to stop
it.
Three years ago, I thought I had taken my last course . I was trying to
earn sixty credits beyond my master's degree, in order to increase my
salary, and it was taking more energy than I had. I had enjoyed most of
the twenty-five graduate courses I'd taken (even if I may not have enjoyed
all of the commuting, tuition bills, and deadlines), but it seemed as
if I had to say good-bye to my education. Yet last month, I took a course
in the Feldenkrais philosophy of movement. You never know.
Student Council 120.
The decision whether or not to have a student council is difficult for
me. I'll examine some of the pros and cons, but so far I've never felt
comfortable with the decision to have a student council or the decision
not to. I'll write this article as a dialogue between two teachers in
the teachers' room.
Pat: Did you read the agenda for the staff meeting? We're going to decide
whether to have a student council this year.
Dale: Oh, no. Not that again. Who suggested it this time?
Pat: I did. I think part of the reason adults don't vote is that they
never voted as children. They got used to having decisions made for them,
and grew up believing they had no power.
Dale: So what power are you going to give children?
Pat: At least the power to let the decision-makers know what's on their
minds. That's a start.
Dale: I don't think it's a good start. It's too much like the power we
have to affect our representatives - nada. The people with the best campaigning
resources get elected, and they claim to be representing us, but they
aren't. So you think we should get children to imitate this process?
Pat: Are you saying adults shouldn't have representative governments either?
Dale: No. I'm saying children shouldn't. They're even more impressed by
image than adults are. You know who wins in student council elections
- not the child who represents all the children, or even the majority.
It's the child with charisma, or a campaign poster that says, "Win
With Winnie!"
Pat: If children learn that they can't affect the decision-making process,
they'll grow up to stay away from voting booths.
Dale: Maybe, but if they learn that they can affect it, they'll be disillusioned
before they even have a chance to try adult democracy.
Pat: Not if we respond to their concerns. We've got to give them some
chance to affect what happens in school.
Dale: They are what happens in school! They affect everything that happens
here!
(silence)
Dale: So are you volunteering to be the faculty advisor for the student
government?
Talking 121.
There's such excitement when a child first utters a word. It's the beginning
of a new level of communication. We start to know so much more about the
person than we could ever learn through grunts, cries, and all those other
pre-verbal sounds. The moment is written down in a baby book, maybe, or
at least etched in our memories.
The exhilaration is often short-lived. It doesn't take long for children
to learn that there are times and places to utter words, and more and
more, times and places not to. And school, a place where often many children
are in one room, is too often a place not to talk. The amount of verbiage
permissible varies from teacher to teacher.
The required silence has various purposes. Some teachers and some children
don't function well when there's a lot of talking at the same time. Sometimes
there's something important to hear, and it won't be heard if there's
lots of extraneous talking. And sometimes silence is necessary so that
everyone can concentrate. Many children have trouble concentrating when
there are distracting sounds, and I don't think as many get distracted
by silence.
But I think sometimes silence is not so golden. That excitement we feel
about the first word a child says has to do with an important human activity,
and there are many times when silence is not appropriate. As a teacher,
I tried to keep the delicate balance between stressing communication and
providing the peaceful atmosphere that lets distractible children concentrate.
I tried to be economical with my own words (if you know me, you know I
talk a lot), and teach children to do likewise.
But there were also many times when children were supposed to talk. There
were writing conferences, brainstorming sessions, planning sessions. There
were even brief times when I asked children to just talk to each other.
If some adult walked in during those times, I felt a little guilty. But
I think they were important times; they gave children the message that
I, a teacher, approved of oral communication - encouraged it. It also
distinguished such times from the writing conferences, etc., when their
conversation was supposed to be more focussed.
The next time you're in a room with twenty or more adults, try noticing
what happens to the noise level. Adults, who are supposed to have a better
idea of when to be quiet, often have things they want to say. The moderator
or chairperson, if there is one, often has to remind people to be quiet.
Some of the most talkative adults I know are happy, likable, successful
people. And so are some of the most talkative children I know.
What to Teach 122.
Since I can remember, most elementary schools have predictably taught
reading, writing, spelling, handwriting, mathematics, science, social
studies, music, art, physical education, and library skills. The last
four were labelled "specials," which usually meant that the
regular classroom teacher was not in charge of teaching them; there were
other teachers for them, and the classroom teacher got a break.
Questioning the rituals and traditions of a system can be difficult when
one is part of the system. It can really annoy participants in the system,
who often get more questions than they want from outside the system. I
know this from personal experience; I learned, over the years, to choose
my battles, and to stand my ground when I had the best chance of having
an effect. And so I occasionally ignored my own priorities and taught
children things I didn't really think I should be teaching them.
But now I'm retired, and though I don't want to make unnecessary trouble
for people who are still working within the system, my old questions are
still there, and I want to ask them. If I get some people to think or
rethink, I'll be satisfied for now.
Why is it that so many schools teach the same subjects to children who
have such diverse interests and needs? Why are four of the subjects so
often taught by specialists? Why is science, for example, taught by the
regular classroom teacher, while art is taught by a specialist? What is
the implicit message children receive? That art is too important to be
taught by a regular teacher? That it's not important enough? That it requires
special skills that the regular classroom teacher just doesn't have?
I think any system can benefit by occasionally shifting focus from the
trees to the forest. It can be irritating to the people who are caught
up in the details of the system. I remember hearing groans at staff meetings
when rituals and traditions were questioned. Isn't there enough to think
about without asking old questions we asked years ago? Yes, there is enough
to think about. But nevertheless, there's more.
Appreciating Teachers 123.
When a child tells a teacher, "You're the best teacher in the world,"
or says, "You're the best teacher I've ever had," that appreciation,
though appreciated, is usually quickly transformed in the teacher's mind.
The child hasn't known very many teachers, has had even fewer, and it's
very possible that the child will soon meet "better" teachers.
The teacher translates the comment into "I like you," which
is just special enough.
When a parent or other adult voices appreciation, and gives supporting
details, it does something else for a teacher. It makes the teacher feel
good, as does the child's comment, but it also says to continue doing
what has been appreciated - maybe find ways to do it more, or better.
Maybe help other teachers learn to do it. It's not that the child's comment
is worth less; it's that the adult's specific comment has more practical
applications.
Lately, I've become aware of another kind of appreciation. The children
we teach - even the really young ones - grow up. And sometimes the resulting
adults have early childhood memories that outdo "You're the best
teacher in the world," or "You've really helped my child."
I have warm memories of some of the teachers I've had, including my second
grade teacher, Mrs. Keedle. I wish I had some way of letting her know
that I appreciate the support she gave me in second grade, and that I
spent years teaching second grade. She's probably in her mid-sixties now,
and I'll bet she'd like to hear that she's remembered fondly. I wrote
to the Oakwood Elementary School, and they don't know where she is. Her
first name is Barbara. Please let me know if you know where she is.
If you know a teacher who is doing things that help children feel good,
figure things out, learn what seemed too hard at first, I have an assignment
for you. Take a few minutes and write down your thoughts about this teacher.
Be as specific as possible. Get these thoughts to the teacher. It may
do more than put a smile on a teacher's face, although that's pretty good
by itself. It may help to make sure that more children get the kind of
treatment that you appreciate.
Mathematics 124.
Mathematics is a language and way of thinking that intimidates many people.
Whether you're in second grade trying to figure out how to deal with the
subtraction of two-digit numbers, or in high school or college trying
to figure out what calculus is all about, it can be hard because it doesn't
seem to have anything to do with anything you've ever experienced. In
second grade, you probably don't care that much about who has more apples,
and later on, you probably won't be building a bridge and doing whatever
calculus is involved in that. I haven't taken calculus yet, and so far,
I've managed to survive. I suspect that calculus wouldn't have helped
me with any major problems I've had.
I think my attitude toward calculus and other people's attitudes toward
other kinds of math are partly the results of teaching that was done by
teachers who either didn't like math or were so into it that they had
forgotten the first steps. The first steps, for most people, have to be
grounded in meaningful experience. Luckily, children like to play games,
and there are thousands of games that involve mathematical thinking. And
the average person's life is full of math.
Calculators don't do what I consider math; they only do arithmetic. Teachers
in schools traditionally give children papers and have the children write
numbers on the papers. For many children, math is what you have to do
if you want to go out to recess. I believe that math has more to do with
recess than with the rows of addition and subtraction problems many children
have to do.
If you're out at recess, and you have a prime number of children who want
to play soccer (and you want several teams) or an odd number (and you
want two teams), there's no way to make equal teams. If you do play soccer,
and you want to make sure the goalie stays in Goalie Land, you have to
figure out some boundaries. If recess is twenty minutes, how do you separate
your game into four quarters? Two halves? Probably, you won't need to
do that, but if you do, can you estimate, or must you use a watch? If
your watch doesn't have a timer, can you figure out how to tell when ten
minutes are up? Math is everywhere; you can't get away from it.
But there's something about the way math is often presented that makes
it seem as though it's on a par with taking out the garbage. Just something
you gotta do. I think it's too easy to blame individual teachers. Teachers
learned math in our schools, and many inherited what our schools had to
offer, including negative attitudes toward math. But I've seen math lessons
that were fun for all the children involved, and were still lessons. It
can be done.
Nature, Nurture, Etc. 125.
There's a saying that the acorn never falls far from the tree. It's a
statement about people's tendency to resemble their parents. But sometimes
the acorn does fall far. Sometimes an apple seems to fall from an oak
tree, or an acorn and an apple. Sometimes a tree can be a veritable horn
of plenty. Enough with this possibly obscure metaphor. Your child or children
may not resemble you or each other as much as you expected, hoped, feared.
Maybe the successes or troubles you've had were not genetically or osmotically
transmitted to your offspring. I think we make trouble for ourselves when
we look for signs of ourselves in our children. The statement, "He's
just like you" or "She's just like me" are not very useful
statements, and can cause problems.
One of the reasons we have children - for some people, a major reason
- is to achieve immortality. It's not our fault; nature probably intended
to have us longing for immortality and reaching for it through reproduction.
Like all the other species, we're supposed to survive, and the chance
to be immortal is a very effective motivation for getting our species
to survive.
But to some degree, I think it's a trick nature's playing on us. Our children
may end up liking things we don't like at all, choosing careers that have
nothing to do with our own, and so on. While we nostalgically listen to
Frank Sinatra or the Beatles, they may listen to disco or punk rock. In
our culture, every generation has its own style. To those in the preceding
generation, it may sometimes seem as if there was a mistake in the hospital
nursery.
Teachers often end up with younger siblings of children they've taught,
and wonder how these children could possibly be related to each other.
And they invariably end up with the children of some kind of parents.
Teachers think, this couldn't possibly be Craig's brother, Ellen's sister,
Marie's and Stephen's daughter. This reaction is based on the expectation
that children will resemble their parents.
To some degree, they may carry on some traits. Once, at a parent conference,
I described a disturbing tendency I saw in a child. I said, "Elijah
doesn't seem to be able to express complete thoughts. He often answers
complicated questions with one-word answers. Do you see this problem at
all at home?"
Elijah's father answered, "No." A one-word answer.
But it wouldn't have been out of the question for the father to have answered,
"I'm very aware of Elijah's reticence to express himself verbally.
I'd really appreciate any insights you have about this problem."
Because Elijah, notwithstanding genetics and the effects of the family
environment, is not his father. Pets 126.
There's something about a pet that meets a human need. A dog can be the
kind of friend we sometimes wish people could be. It's probably good that
people don't give us the same kind of unthinking loyalty we can get from
a dog, but nevertheless, there are times when some of us wish they could.
And a cat will give another kind of love. A cat is looking for warmth
and nourishment. Cats don't seem as loyal, but they seem less dependent.
Some people prefer that. Dogs and cats can get on our nerves, but they
serve functions, and they can be lovable. Other animals make good pets,
but I don't have as much experience with them. In fact, my sweeping generalizations
about dogs and cats may not apply to your own dog or cat.
I don't know when or how people started to make pets out of members of
other species. I think, but am not sure, that we're the only species that
does that. Other animals may use their fellow earthlings, but I don't
think they have pets. The ants who herd aphids probably don't name their
aphids. I don't think the hippopotamus loves its secretary bird. But I
have no way of knowing.
Children do name and love their pets. I recently saw a child burst into
tears when a goldfish died. It was named Swimmy, and it was one of the
goldfish in the classroom fishtank. I think, but again am not sure, that
Swimmy never developed the kind of attachment the child developed. But
it didn't matter whether the attachment was mutual.
I miss my dog, Chipper. I wasn't there when he died; I was in college.
But when I was growing up, he was happy when I was happy, sad when I was
sad. If he thought someone was going to hurt me, he growled. If he had
died when I was a child, I would have learned something about death and
sadness that I didn't learn until later.
I think there are valid reasons not to let a child have a pet. Allergies
may get in the way. The family's life style may leave no time or room
for a pet. The child may want a pet that is too expensive, isn't allowed
by a landlord, or just isn't practical for other reasons. There can be
a philosophical objection - what right do we have to own another creature?
But I don't think the possibility that the pet will some day die is a
good reason. "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have
loved at all."
(Tennyson)
Reputations 127.
What you have already done and been usually contributes to what you do
and who you are now. You may do all you can to wipe the slate as clean
as you can get it. You may turn over a new leaf, and really keep to your
new ways, but your past doesn't go away. Bygones, unfortunately, are rarely
just bygones.
Part of the reason starts out internally. To some degree, you are who
you are, and the cleanest slate in the world won't change that. I've heard
it said that no matter where you go, when you get off the plane, there
you are. Part of the reason has to do with the way other people see you.
Some of them, at least, cling to their view of you, and the way they see
you defines you, to some degree. And of course, you may end up internalizing
the way you're seen. So you become and do what your reputation tells you
to become and do.
The child who got in trouble last year may resolve, "This year I'll
be good. I'll do everything the way I'm supposed to. I'll make my parents
and teachers proud of me." I remember starting school years that
way as a child. I was going to take notes, do all my homework and remember
to hand it in, and not talk when I wasn't supposed to. I sometimes wanted
to tell teachers about such resolutions, but for all I knew, they didn't
know about my problems. And why should I tell them?
The parents also have reputations: "Oh, you have Sidney this year?
He's a joy, but his parents!" Over coffee in the teachers' room,
your ideosyncrasies are described to the teacher who will soon be teaching
your child. It isn't fair. You may seem overprotective, scattered, neglectful,
or whatever, but that's not what you are. Or at least it's not all you
are. They have no right to talk about you that way.
And then there's the teacher's reputation. "Make sure your child
is in Ms. McNortlehelm's class. She really has her act together. Ms. Repirtinjek
means well, but she just can't seem to tune in to the children's needs.
Ms. McNortlehelm has a gentle but structured style; Ms. Repirtinjek tries
to, but doesn't, and never has, and the children know it from day one."
Of course, part of the reason they know - maybe a major part - is the
reputation produced by the rumor mill.
There is a good reason for these rumors. It's good to be prepared for
what may happen. It's good to have a way to avoid destructive situations.
Sometimes rumors are all you have. But rumors may be all they are.
Sarcasm and Other Put-Downs 128. Before I learned how to recognize and
express my anger, I used sarcasm. I thought I was just exercising my sense
of humor, and when people reacted by being offended and hurt, I thought
they just didn't get the joke. In my conscious mind, I was totally innocent,
and could only pity the people who couldn't see how innocent I was.
There is a certain category of exclamation (Duh, Ah-Doy, Duh-hickey, etc.)
and an accompanying facial expression that serve to tell people that they've
said something obvious, or missed something obvious. When children use
these, they are putting people down. Children, like adults, need to establish
their own places in society, and for some people, put-downs are attempts
to find those places. The more people you can get to feel stupid, the
smarter you can feel.
It doesn't work. Eventually, people realize that they know something important
that you don't know - that you are hostile. They may even figure out that
you're insecure. And most of the people who figure this out will not be
motivated to come to your aid. Even very nurturing people can get turned
off by the hostility, and go help some other insecure person. The people
who are strong enough to help hostile people are few and far between,
and hostile people aren't as scarce.
Hostility is easier to deal with in children. It's not dry yet, and it's
easier to work with. Of course, you're hearing this from someone who taught
in Wellesley, Acton, Amherst, and other suburbs. I have friends who assure
me that children in less supportive communities can display hostility
that rivals the worst that adults have to offer. I'll take their word
for it.
But the repressed hostility couched in sarcasm and other put-downs is
a force, even in comfortable communities, and we owe it to children to
help them come to terms with what they are repressing, and find ways to
express it without making life harder for themselves and others.
Distractibility 129.
Please bear with me while I suggest an alternative way to look at distractibility.
If you have a child who is distractible - perhaps one who has been diagnosed
and labelled - it may be hard to hear this. If you are one of the diagnosticians,
you may feel that my perspective on this issue is naive, counterproductive,
and maybe even dangerous. But I've sometimes used this perspective in
working with children, and seen good effects.
A person who is distractible is someone who does not attend to the matters
some other people want them to attend to. The distractible person may
want to pay attention, to some degree, but doesn't. The result is that
this person ends up having difficulty doing many of the things that would
add up to success in school.
As a distractible person, I'll flit from point to point on this subject.
There are so many things I want to say, and I'm afraid I'll forget some
of them if I try to write an organized, coherent article. Maybe when I'm
done I'll reorganize the article so that you can follow me better. Maybe
not. Maybe my distractible style will help me make my point.
A child in one of my classes had a reputation for having low intelligence.
Test scores and a host of knowledgeable adults had helped to build this
reputation. So a science consultant who came to my class was baffled when
this child seemed to have more success than any other child with a certain
lesson. It was a lesson that involved noticing details of a phenomenon.
I suggested that a child with "low intelligence" might have
more success because there were fewer preconceptions. Preconceptions can
be distracting.
When I took my class on that three-day field trip to Cape Cod I keep referring
to, the distractible children in my class were hard to pick out. If I
asked children to find as many insects as they could on a beach, some
distractible children had an easier time of it. If you do too good a job
paying attention, you may sometimes miss a lot.
I'm glad I was distractible as a teacher. It made it easier to keep my
class focussed; I'd immediately be distracted by comments or movements
that were not "right," and correct them. Distractible children
can't get away with as much if they have a distractible teacher.
When I work with a distractible child, I assume that the attention span
will be short. If the rest of the class is supposed to do something that
requires concentration, I build distractions into the modification for
this child. As a volunteer, I'm freer to do this: "Write word number
three, and then squeeze my hand as hard as you can." The child is
more willing to write word number three, and afterwards, to write word
number four, if there is an activity in between that has nothing to do
with either word.
If we accept distractibility as a given, and plan accordingly, it's less
of a problem. I'm not denying that it's a problem, but imagine being captured
by aliens who wanted to experiment with you. They wanted to see whether
you, like them, could count the number of meteors in a meteor shower.
If that ever happens, I hope you're sufficiently distractible.
Lucy, Murphy, and Reality 130.
In the 1950's, Lucy got pregnant. Desi was the father, and he was married
to her. He had been for quite a while. But still, it was a scandal. I
was a child, and I didn't understand the scandal. I remember thinking
pregnancy was some kind of disease you got by doing something nice people
didn't do. I resolved that I was never going to get pregnant, and it could
be said that in a way, I never really have.
Later, I learned that there were people who had gotten pregnant even before
Lucy had. Even my own mother had been pregnant. More than once. I figured
that if my own mother could do it, it couldn't be as bad as people seemed
to think.
Much later, Murphy Brown wanted a baby, and got pregnant. There was no
Desi. She wanted to be a mother, and she had no Desi, Ozzie, or anyone
to be the father. The social forces that had made getting married less
of a priority for many people had not had a corresponding impact on people's
desire to reproduce. The phrase "family values" was thrown around,
and there was an attempt to make it into a scandal on a par with the Lucy/Desi
scandal.
But I don't think the scandal ever quite materialized. Commercial television
is supposed to sell products, and even though many products get sold through
manipulation of culture, when there is a controversial issue at hand,
it's often a safer bet to reflect culture. You can't go around telling
people their lives aren't legitimate.
My point is that just as Lucy was far from the first person to be pregnant,
Murphy was not the first to decide that having a baby was an important
enough priority for her to do it the hard way if the easier way didn't
seem to be available.
I think that we, as a culture, are headed for big trouble if we cling
to old "family values" so hard that we ignore reality. We've
got to become more of a supportive culture. There are lots of single parents
in our culture - some by choice, some not - and we've got to make decisions
with that reality in mind. We've got to think more about valuing families
and less about the abstraction labelled "family values." Sorry,
Dan.
Making Believe 131.
You may want to read this article yourself before you let your children
see it. You may have been telling your children some things that aren't
true, and you may want to keep the myths going. I'll try to cloak my references
in verbiage. I, myself, have always tried to be honest with children,
but I respect your right to hold on to the enchantment that usually comes
with believing some stories.
But no, Virginia, it's not true. The only miracle on 34th Street is the
occasional available parking space. That money under your pillow was put
there by a human being while you were asleep. And storks have nothing
to do with the birth of human babies.
I like making believe as much as the next guy - maybe more than some.
Every year I read The House at Pooh Corner to children, there was a certain
point where a few tears came to my eyes. Christopher Robin was trying
to explain to his friends why he wouldn't be with them as much any more.
It's not that he was dying; it's that he was beginning to think stuffed
animals aren't alive.
I think some of the myths we've handed on down to children have been fairly
harmless. Though I'm Jewish and don't celebrate Christmas, my wife did,
and we did Santa Claus. At a certain point, one of the children asked
me whether there really was a Santa Claus, and I was honest with her.
When she asked why we pretended there was one, I answered, "Because
it's fun." She was satisfied with that. I don't think there are too
many children who saw a price tag on one of the gifts "from Santa"
and decided never to trust their parents again.
As I was with many issues, I used to be more of a fanatic. I used to dwell
on the importance of "truth," and think nasty thoughts about
parents who "lied" to their children. Now, don't get me wrong;
I haven't come full circle. I still won't tell children things I know
aren't true. When children ask me about the myths, I refer them to other
authorities, explaining that my point of view is only my point of view.
I don't mention the night I stayed up to see my mother slip a quarter
under my pillow.
But I'm a teacher, and whenever I get a chance, I teach. Virginia, there
are many very generous people in the world. But reindeer are not strong
enough to pull that guy and enough presents for all the children of the
world. And they can't fly.
Reinforcing Self-Control 132.
Most of the reinforcing we do as parents and teachers is in response to
what children do or say. That's natural. It's hard to give children credit
for not doing or saying something they shouldn't do or say; maybe they
didn't even think about it, and reinforcement may bring unnecessary attention
to it. But I do remember one episode that I want to run by you. It was
a time I celebrated a child's self-control. It felt like the right thing
to do at the time, and I'll never know whether it was the best thing to
do. Education is not an exact science.
Daphne knew how to bug Zeke. She was an expert at it. She could do it
with a well-timed facial expression or a comment that would seem perfectly
innocent to someone who didn't know them. She never got in trouble for
it, and Zeke usually reacted in a way that did get him in trouble. Both
were in my class, and though I saw what was happening, there wasn't much
I could do about it. Daphne's shenanigans didn't break any rules, and
Zeke's reactions were unacceptable.
But once, I managed to time my intervention just right, I think. Daphne
provoked Zeke in her usual way, and Zeke, though obviously annoyed, did
not react. I immediately congratulated him for his self-control. I explained
to the class that "someone" (I did not draw any attention to
Daphne) had done something that had bothered Zeke, and even though Zeke
had wanted to yell or hit, he had stopped himself. I encouraged the rest
of the class to learn from Zeke's example. Later that day, I sent Zeke
down to the principal's office, where the principal congratulated him
and gave him a certificate of appreciation. I called Zeke's parents that
evening, and they joined in the plot to make a big deal out of Zeke's
self-control.
Now, maybe I over-reacted. Maybe my response to the event got other children
to wish they had trouble with self-control, so that they could improve
and get a certificate from the principal and all. But I don't think so.
I think Daphne saw that her system had backfired. Daphne was not evil;
she had been provoking Zeke because of some of her own problems. Now she
saw Zeke getting the kind of appreciation she liked to get, and she had
something to think about.
Zeke's self-control did improve noticeably that year. I don't know how
much that one incident contributed to his improvement; as I said, education
is not an exact science. But it makes me wonder.
Lesson Plans 133.
Most teachers write lesson plans. These plans come in all kinds of formats.
Some include behavioral objectives: "Given ten word problems involving
addition or subtraction, the child will correctly solve each problem with
at least 80% accuracy." Some list materials needed. Some are simply
schedules: "8:30 - Reading, 9:30 - Math, 10:00 - Recess." There
are at least as many kinds of lesson plans as there are teachers.
For me, and for many teachers I knew, the lesson plans were often a base
from which to depart. It was easier to be spontaneous in my teaching -
to respond to "the teachable moment" - if there was something
concrete from which I could deviate.
During my final few years as a classroom teacher, lesson plans began to
play a new role. I found that predictability was becoming more and more
important as I involved more and more adults in my classroom. The adults
who came in to help teach science needed to know that science would indeed
be taught approximately when they came in.
Also, about the same time, the curriculum in the Wellesley Public Schools
was becoming more predictable. Children in third grade learned about Russia.
They learned about the physics of sound. The units we developed contained
fairly specific lesson plans which often made their way directly into
our plan books.
I never learned to like writing lesson plans. I don't know whether anyone
likes it. For me, it often felt as if I was building a wall around myself,
and around the children. Children came to school with a myriad of thoughts,
feelings, concerns, interests, and my plans dictated which, if any, would
be addressed. If a child was going to spend spring vacation in Venezuela,
we did not do a unit on Venezuela. If a child brought an interesting rock
to school, we did not do a unit on rocks.
When we write lesson plans, we imply that the experiences we have in mind
will cause learning that is in some way worth more than the learning that
would happen without our intervention. In fact, that's the implication
on which the existence of school is based.
But it never quite feels right to ask a child to put aside a favorite
topic and focus on the topic the teacher has written down in a plan book.
Intermarriage and Children 134.
There are all kinds of intermarriages, and it could be argued that every
marriage is an intermarriage; when two people marry each other, they attempt
to find a way to bring along their separate selves, and to some degree,
hold on to the parts of themselves they consider most important. Sometimes
they don't learn what is important until they are already married, and
for the marriage to survive, they must find ways to deal with the new
discoveries. In the best of marriages, there is compromise, and in some
of the worst, there is surrender; one partner surrenders what is important,
and gets nothing in return.
In this article, I'll focus on what is usually called "intermarriage"
- the marriage of two people who have significantly different religious
or racial backgrounds. When a man marries a woman, that is not usually
considered intermarriage, even though the experience of being male can
be quite different from the experience of being female. And marriages
of people from different countries or religious denominations, for example
Italians and Germans, or Episcopalians and Methodists, are not usually
seen as intermarriages.
When two people decide to intermarry, they are deciding to find ways to
make their lives compatible. When they decide to have children, they test
that compatibility. Our connections with our children are strong, and
we learn, as we parent, more about what is important to us, and how important
it is. We want our children to experience some of what has been meaningful
to us.
When I was a child, there was a menorah in our house, and no Christmas
tree. I loved the flickering of the Hannukah lights, and the songs we
sang around the candles. I didn't know, when my children were young, how
important that was to me, and they did not experience Hannukah as young
children. I wish they had.
They have fond memories of the times we spent by our Christmas tree, and,
in fact, so do I. For a long time, I rationalized the absence of Hannukah
symbols. I said I'd rather celebrate the birth of a baby than a victory
in a war. But I don't think that's the bottom line. The bottom line is
that I did not work to make sure that my cultural heritage was part of
the intermarriage.
If you raise children within an intermarriage, I urge you to explore your
heritage and make sure you know what's important to you. It does make
things a little more complicated, maybe, but it's your children's birthright.
Cheering Up Children 135. Beatrice came to school one day looking as if
her world had fallen apart. Committed as I am to taking children seriously,
my first approach was to show her my concern, and ask her questions, hoping
to find out the nature and cause of the calamity, and perhaps contribute
some helpful insights.
This is often a good approach. Children have lives they live outside school,
and these lives, important in their own right, can also be obstacles to
effective functioning in school. And so my first approach to Beatrice's
dismal look was appropriate as a first approach. One never knows what
may be happening in a child's life.
But I don't think the look on Beatrice's face represented any kind of
calamity. After seeing the look for several days, I began to think that
I was being manipulated. Beatrice loved to get attention, and calamity
or not, the face she showed me each day was getting her the attention
she wanted. I know the word "manipulate" is not quite what I
mean; there was no devious intent. But I don't know any word closer to
my meaning.
It's important to pay attention to what is going on for children. There
are too many things that could be really wrong, and we can't rely on other
people to discover those things. Every time we see the signs of problems
in children, we owe it to children to pay attention to those signs. But
with Beatrice, I had already paid quite a bit of attention to the signs,
and I had a hunch that there was no real crisis.
I tried another approach. An approach I used to use too often with children.
I said a few things that I knew would probably get Beatrice to smile.
Sure enough, daylight shone on her face. A dazzling smile, full of joie
de vivre. Beatrice has a great smile. I commented on the beauty of the
smile, but then quickly apologized for distracting her from the calamity.
I wanted her to know that it's all right to feel sad, upset, etc. But
the smile didn't go away.
That approach works for now, with Beatrice. Perhaps I'm still being "manipulated;"
she still enters school with a look that spells disaster. But instead
of spending ten minutes probing, to no avail, I spend thirty seconds eliciting
the smile. Eventually, I'll make sure she can bring out her smile by herself.
And I'll never dismiss the possibility that something is really wrong.
But sometimes, it seems that the best way to treat a child who looks upset
is to "cheer him/her up."
A Male Teacher 136. When people meet me, and find out that I work with
young children, they are usually impressed. "Good," they say.
"Young children need the influence of a man." I'm always a little
annoyed by that reaction; I've worked hard to become good at teaching
young children - I'm still working hard at it - but the reaction people
often give refers to a trait over which I had no control. I was born male,
and though I think it's a fine gender (one of the two best, I think),
I take no credit for it. It's something that just happened.
The reaction can mean different things, depending on the source. Some
people may mean the opposite of what they say: "Isn't it a little
weird for a man to be teaching young children? What's wrong with you?"
Once, in a job interview, a prospective employer seemed to be uninterested
in my experience, philosophy, or education. He asked me whether I was
interested in football. I had told him I prefer second grade, and he was
obviously trying to find out whether I was a "real man." I'm
not interested in football, and I didn't get the job.
Some people who applaud maleness seem to be implying that men will somehow
do a better job with children than women will. I strongly disagree; there
are many variables involved in good teaching, but gender is irrelevant.
It's important to listen to children, to know what language can do, to
understand the various aspects of the curriculum...it's impossible to
ennumerate the qualities good teachers need. But a Y chromosome is not
one of them.
Teachers of young children in this country tend to be women, and I do
believe that that tendency indicates a problem, just as the maleness of
presidents indicates a problem. There ought to be a balance, and there
isn't one. There's nothing about the task of helping children deal with
life on earth that makes women automatically better candidates. If that's
what people mean when they tell me it's good to see a man teaching young
children, I guess I'll have to agree.
But the teacher's gender has nothing to do with the quality of the teacher.
If you think it's good to see a man working with young children, ask yourself
whether it's good to see a woman working with young children. It really
is just as good. It's more common, true, but it's just as good.
The "Spoiled" Child 137.
I don't like the term "spoiled child," and I don't use it. The
term implies that the child has a life that is too easy - maybe there's
"too much" attention, material wealth, companionship, whatever
other people don't have enough of. I've known and I know many children,
and I can easily apply many descriptive terms to them, but I can't think
of a "spoiled" child.
As a teacher, and as an occasional political activist, I do what I can
to help make things fair, but I don't believe that the unfairness I encounter
spoils children. Many children in Wellesley have things other children
wish they had - their own home, a parent who stays home, chances to travel.
But I don't think these children are "spoiled."
Perhaps the reason I think this way is that I'm "spoiled." I
don't have a lot of material wealth, but I don't want a lot. I have a
lot of the things I want most in life - friendship, solitude, and the
freedom to do what's important to me. People who want what I have and
see me seeming to take it all for granted may think I'm "spoiled,"
just as people who focus more on my health problems may pity me.
We try to make life as easy as possible for our children. Some of us are
good at letting children know we love them. Such children won't learn,
firsthand, what being unloved is all about. Some of us can afford to take
our children to warm, exciting places in the winter, or to our private
beaches in the summer. Those children won't get a sense of what it feels
like to be poor.
But whatever we manage to provide for our children, I think every child
knows about adversity. The poor little rich child may envy the child who
has lots of free time, lots of attention. The child whose parents are
always accessible may envy the one who seems to be popular. The popular
child may envy the one who gets to go to Disney World every year.
I'm not saying the world is fair. It isn't. Children don't get what's
due them. Neither do adults. But if parents, teachers, children, society,
and fate cooperate to make it so that some children do get some of the
good things they deserve, I don't think it's useful to say they're "spoiled."
When It's Cold Outside 138.
We're so lucky to be adults. We get to decide whether to travel, move
to a new home, splurge. It was worth the eighteen (?) year wait. But sometimes
we abuse the privilege, the way high school seniors lord it over the underclasses:
"We've been here longer, so we get to make the rules. And we get
to break them. We have the power!"
When cold weather sets in, many of us don't particularly like it. As I'm
writing this, it's snowing outside my window. And it's cold out there.
I'm not only an adult; I'm retired! If I decide to go to the Fort River
School and work with the children there today, it's because I like doing
that even more than I hate cold weather.
When it's cold outside, recess becomes a bigger issue. The teachers who
have recess duty are often the ones to decide whether the recess will
be outdoors. This may seem like a small decision, but only if you haven't
been in the situation. The other teachers - the ones who will get to sit
in the teachers' room and have hot drinks while their comrades are out
braving the elements - hope the children will go outside. We sometimes
tell ourselves that the fresh air will do the children good, but who do
we think we're fooling? Having been there, I know why teachers hope children
will go outside. And I know the grateful feeling the off-duty teachers
feel when the on-duty teachers decide to take the children outside.
Cabin fever, the tendency to act a little crazy when you're cooped up
inside, is part of the reason. Teachers (even teachers who love children)
and parents (ditto) can begin to notice themselves losing patience when
children show symptoms of cabin fever. And so if it's not cold enough
to be a real threat to children's health, out they go.
Another reason is the nature of indoor recess. If recess is outdoors,
the classroom can be left intact. Papers can stay right where they are,
and children can resume their work when they get their layers of winter
clothing off. Science experiments are left alone. If children have troubles
with each other, the on-duty teachers deal with it.
I fully understand why teachers want, maybe need those minutes of time
when children are outside dealing with winter and teachers aren't. And
there are even children who want to be out there. I don't understand why,
but I know there are such children. But there are many children who feel
the way many of us feel about cold weather, and those who think about
it realize that it's unfair.
I'm not proposing a solution. This is not a staff meeting or PTO meeting;
it's an article I've written. I'm just reminding you, in case you've forgotten,
or informing you, if you never knew, that it is a problem.
Inspirations 139.
There's no telling where you'll get ideas from. Someone says something,
and you get an idea that seems totally unrelated to what was said. You
see something, it shakes something loose in your mind, and profound thoughts
come pouring out. Or you're sitting, looking out the window at the snow,
and suddenly you solve a problem that has been plaguing you forever.
When there are all kinds of jobs to do, you probably don't get as many
chances to be inspired. Or if you do, there's little time to act on the
inspirations; the things have to get done. People often talk about the
creative things they're going to do when they get around to it. If fantasy
were reality, there would be millions of little houses, by beaches or
in the woods, filled with solitary individuals who are writing books.
They'd all be living simply, and they wouldn't have neighbors nearby,
except when they wanted to.
I live in an apartment. Most of my neighbors are pretty conspicuous; the
walls are thin, and when a phone rings, or there's a knock on a door,
it's anybody's guess which tenant is the one who ought to respond. There's
hardly a moment when I can pretend I'm far from the madding crowd. But
I'm writing a book, and I don't need an isolated house by a beach. All
I need is time, and at long last, I have a life wherein every minute has
sixty seconds, every week has seven days, etc.
Today I worked with Bertrand, a child who was supposed to be writing a
story. He wasn't in the mood to write, and my usual tricks weren't working;
he knew those tricks, and he wasn't going to fall for them. Then I thought
of Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. I tried something I don't think I tried
in twenty-five years of teaching. I told Bertrand I wanted to work with
someone who was writing, and I headed towards another child, who was already
writing.
It worked. Bertrand may not have been in the mood to write, but he wanted
me to stay with him, and he knew I could happily work with someone else.
So he started writing. The story he had been holding inside himself flowed
out. I mentally thanked Anne Bancroft, even though I knew "The Miracle
Worker" was a movie based on a play based on Helen Keller's childhood,
and Anne Bancroft is just an actress.
Inspiration is all over the place; I didn't have to have a cabin in the
woods. All I needed was time and the freedom to use it the way I wanted.
The Teacher's Voice 140.
Throughout my teaching career, I had strengths and weaknesses. In this
article, I'll focus on one of my weaknesses. I liked the sound of my own
voice, and since I was the one who decided who had permission to talk,
I talked a lot. Some of what I said was quite worthwhile - a lot of it
- and I said it effectively, but I talked too much.
This made it so that I had to work harder to keep children's attention.
And in the thick of battle, I sometimes thought the children had the problem.
Sometimes, of course, it actually was their problem; I was saying things
they ought to have heard, and they needed to learn to listen better.
But now, observing other teachers at work, I realize that some of the
best teachers don't seem to say much. They know what they need to say,
and they say it. Then they get children to talk, or they move around the
room while children work, and perhaps converse with individual children.
If you walk by these classrooms, you don't hear the teacher's voice much.
In fact, you may even walk into the classroom and wonder where the teacher
is.
Most children (and most adults) don't like to spend much time listening
to other people's explanations. Once in a while, a topic will capture
children's imaginations, and thereby, capture their attention. But that
is the exception. If a teacher has to keep stopping to remind children
to pay attention, it's likely that that teacher is talking too much.
Why does this happen? Well, as one teacher who has talked too much, I
can give you my take on the problem. I often knew what I wanted children
to learn, and telling them seemed like an efficient way to make that happen.
This is often false, but it usually seemed true. And since, as I said,
I liked the sound of my own voice, I got some pleasure out of talking,
whether or not children heard what I was saying. To some degree, I got
better and better at holding children's attention rather than working
to need less of their attention.
I'm not condemning myself. Nor am I condemning other teachers who talk
a lot. Excessive talking is only one problem, and all of the best teachers
I know (myself included) have problems. But it's important to recognize
it as a problem and work on it. We've got to become more efficient with
our words, so that we don't waste children's attention, and so that there's
plenty of time left to hear what the children say, or to let them think.
The Sound of Insecurity 141.
It occurred to me, after I wrote my previous article, that I'd missed
an important reason for teachers to spend too much time talking. I'd focussed
on the reason I'd done it as a veteran teacher - enjoyment of the sound
of my own voice. That's a common reason, and it deserves consideration.
Children often enjoy the sounds they make, too, and there's only a certain
amount of air molecule vibration that ought to happen simultaneously in
a classroom.
But some teachers - especially inexperienced teachers - talk too much
for another reason. To the novice, teaching can seem like an overwhelming
challenge. There are things we know as adults, and somehow we're supposed
to arrange experiences for children that enable them to know these things.
The student teacher, or inexperienced but employed teacher, can be full
of self-doubt. Teachers around him/her seem to know what they're doing,
take children's respect and attention for granted, and spend relaxed time
during breaks thinking and talking about their favorite topics, which
may or may not have anything to do with teaching.
Meanwhile, the poor inexperienced teacher spends hours planning lessons,
examining approaches and trying them out to see what works. What works
with other adults is talking. Talking clears up misunderstandings, builds
bridges between people, gets things done. It's natural, in a way, to believe
that talking will work with children. And it does. The neophyte often
sees his/her mentors seem to accomplish their goals with children by saying
things, and naturally deduces that words are the way to do it. If certain
words don't work, other words are tried. Children listen, at first, because
that's what they're supposed to do.
Then a few children stop listening, because they've listened as much as
they can. And pretty soon, it seems as if only a few dedicated, patient
children are listening. The teacher, still desperately clinging to the
possibility that some well-chosen words will do the trick, talks on. And
soon it seems as if the real problem is that kids just don't know how
to listen any more.
It can be hard to believe that silence can do the job. If children don't
seem to get the point after five different explanations, how can they
get it through silence?
But silence is often exactly what is needed. The new teacher may be having
brainstorms. Maybe, thinks this teacher, saying it this way will explain
it. Maybe that way. And children certainly need to know this tidbit of
information. And that one.
I understand the problem. I've got a lot to say to people who are beginning
to work with children, and as a writer, I believe in the power of words.
I've written thousands of words about working with children. But most
of my words are for adults, who are better at paying attention, and besides,
if they get tired of my words, they can put them away. Children often
need that freedom, too.
Children's Wisdom 142.
Like the rest of us, children say things that shed light. They see things
in new ways, and, lo and behold, they uncover bits of truth. Though I
think this is true of everyone, when you hear profound words coming from
your own child, you may think you are the parent of a reincarnated sage.
I've heard parents speak with reverence about their own children's wisdom,
and I've seen looks of pride and admiration.
The admiration reinforces the wisdom. Once, when I was a child, I told
my mother that even though I was an atheist, I believed that if all the
people on earth could get together and work together, they would be God.
I still remember the intense look of pride on my mother's face. I'd pulled
off some wisdom, and if that's the reaction I was going to get, I was
going to say wise things whenever I got the chance.
Most children aren't actually wiser than most adults. If they were, growing
up would be a counterproductive thing to do. In fact, with the exception
of my own children (who were both gurus by age three), most children aren't
even as wise as most adults. Wisdom comes from experience, and the wisdom
we see in our children is at least partly a reflection of our own wisdom.
I suspect that my mother unknowingly got me thinking atheistic, humanistic
thoughts, and didn't really need to be so surprised by what she saw as
"my" wisdom. And I'm sure that plenty of other adults, had they
heard my words on God and people, would have responded quite differently.
I think part of the reason children's words often astonish us is that
children haven't learned how to dress up their thoughts. Their wisdom
doesn't contain obscure references. They are often less intent than adults
are on getting people to know how wise they are. In other words, they
don't try as hard.
I'm not saying these things to belittle the gems that come from the mouths
of babes. I do believe in children's wisdom. But I think some adults deserve
to take more credit than they do. Keep respecting the children for the
great thoughts they think and the things they say. But realize, too, that
your preadolescent, your adolescent, your young adult, and you have wisdom,
too.
No Owner's Manual 143.
Imagine going into a store to buy something you really want. You buy it,
bring it home, and when you open the box, you discover that they forgot
to enclose the owner's manual. You return to the store, as a good consumer
should, but instead of being handed the owner's manual by an embarrassed
clerk, you are directed to aisle seven, the owner's manual aisle. All
of the books there seem to be the one you're looking for. There are other
customers there, some of whom have already bought several owner's manuals
for the same product. Some are discussing the pros and cons of various
owner's manuals. Some advise you about which manual to use. Others disagree.
Still others say the product works better if you don't use an owner's
manual.
I guess most of you have figured out my point - that children come without
an owner's manual. As parents, and indeed as people, we're on our own.
We can think about how our parents raised us, and use them as examples,
positive, negative, or mixed. We can ask other parents what works or worked
for them. We can take courses, or read books that were written by "experts."
But if we look closely, we find out that the children raised by our friends,
our teachers, and the "experts" have problems, too. So do the
children of the people who avoid looking for advice.
Perhaps when your child is eleven days or years old, you become aware
that things seem to be going wrong. Your child is not happy, or you are
not happy with your child. You consult various manuals, experts, friends,
maybe your own parents. You want to know what you're doing wrong, or have
already done wrong. You didn't have a child to create unhappiness. You'll
try anything.
If you have another child, who is doing fine, there's your proof that
it isn't your approach that's categorically wrong. But knowing that doesn't
really help. In fact, the knowledge, used wrong, can make it worse: "Why
can't you be like your brother?"
I realize, in writing these articles, that I'm writing another owner's
manual. I'm trying to be different - to let you know, as I write, that
I don't have answers to the tough questions. But the act of writing is
starting to make me feel like an expert. And as an expert, I feel a certain
responsibility to share my expertise with those of you who aren't experts.
So read the next paragraph carefully.
If you have worked hard, and are still working hard, to raise a happy,
admirable child, and it doesn't seem to be working, perhaps your child
isn't eating enough brown rice.
Rose-Colored Glasses 144.
There really is a lot of beauty in this world we live in. There are occasional
rainbows, the flowers that bloom in the spring, autumn flora (which don't
seem to get as much publicity, and perhaps, as a group, aren't as dazzling),
people's smiles, random acts of kindness, dragonfies' wings...Some of
the dreariest pessimists I've known have seen some of the beauty.
The word "but" was too obvious a choice to begin this paragraph.
I couldn't bring myself to start the paragraph with it. But not everything
in this world is beautiful. There are wars, diseases, crimes, injustices,
and many more items without which the world would be better off. Some
of the dreamiest optimists I've known, myself included, have seen things
they've wished weren't there.
There's a tendency to try to protect children from the less attractive
parts of life on earth. Not only to try to protect them from negative
experiences. That's natural, and I believe it's right, and not just right
for children. The people who have spent their lives trying to accentuate
the positive and eliminate the negative, and those who are doing it now,
are some of my favorite people.
If we keep telling children about beauty, though, and try not to let them
know about the other stuff, I think we're making things worse for them
and for the world. They won't be prepared to cope with the down side,
and they won't be prepared to be part of the struggle to make some things
better.
I've heard people who seem to have taken this line of thinking too far.
They want children to be keenly aware of all the ugliness in the world,
and they make it their business to let them know about it. They bombard
children with gruesome details, unaware that children often aren't ready
to distinguish these details from the everyday lives they live. So children
worry about snipers, wars, famines, etc. They worry that the fictional
violence they see in the media is real, and the awful events reported
in the news are immediately threatening. That all of this is probably
going to happen next door tomorrow.
I've also heard people who go overboard the other way. They present the
world as a big version of Disneyland. They carefully screen out all references
to the problems in the world. These people will tell children what a dedicated,
noble man Martin Luther King was, but won't mention that he was assassinated.
It doesn't take most children long to discover, on their own, that life
is not a bowl of cherries - that sometimes it's the pits. As they make
this discovery, I hope they're not disillusioned. We can protect them
from disillusionment by making sure we teach them about reality - both
the good parts (that they're ready for) and the bad (that they're ready
for).
Doing It Their Way 145.
One afternoon, driving home from my job as a high school teacher, I was
listening to my car radio. Frank Sinatra was singing "My Way,"
Paul Anka's version of a French song about a life lived by the person
living it, unencumbered by the rules other people had made. Right away,
a parody, "Their Way," started writing itself in my mind. I
would write about a person who learned that the way to get ahead in life
is to forget about your own priorities and do what you're "supposed
to do." I couldn't believe that Frank, Paul, or anyone else had managed
to live without giving in to systems.
I had started the school year determined to be the teacher I'd always
wished I'd had. Now it was May, and I'd spent the year learning that teachers
(and everyone else, I later learned) had to play by the rules, whether
or not the rules made sense to them. If teachers want to keep their jobs,
earn their incomes, and pay their rent, they have to do things they would
rather not do. Sometimes the "rather not" part is just a matter
of personal preference, but sometimes it reaches deep down inside and
grates against personal convictions.
Back then, I didn't see the issue as one of personal choice, and to some
degree, I was indeed doing what I "had to" do. I was a new father,
and I could not make decisions that would undermine my chance to support
my new family. My wife and I were not tuned in to the other life-style
options that were becoming available, but I'm sure that even if we had
been, we would have found that our convictions would always bring up difficult
issues for us, and we'd have to make decisions we'd rather not.
So I gave children grades, even though I didn't believe that it was fair
for one person to judge another in a way that could have far-reaching
effects. I required students to read and write things that many of them
would rather not have read and written. A recent college graduate, and
somewhat of a recent rebel, there I was already telling college-bound
seniors that they'd have to play the game by the rules if they wanted
to make the grade.
It never felt good. And I didn't really see it as a decision until recently
- until I retired and stopped having so many rules to follow. But it was
a decision, in a way. Regrets, I have quite a few, and not too few to
mention. My parody, "Their Way," is still popular, twenty-five
years later, among collegiates who like songs that have points to make.
Maybe I could make lots of money writing songs that don't have points
to make. But then I wouldn't be doing it my way.
Doing It Your Way 146.
I got some immediate and helpful feedback about my previous article, "Doing
It Their Way." A friend suggested that I write an article examining
strategies for keeping integrity and living and teaching in a way that
doesn't seriously conflict with your strongly held convictions. That's
a tall order, but since I think I've already written several articles
in which I ask you to remember that I'm not always giving answers - sometimes
simply underscoring old questions - I will take the plunge into this question.
The first step (as I see it) is to choose your battles. Figure out which
of your convictions you feel strongly enough to stick with them. Figure
out, also, which causes seem likely to bring you some desired results.
This doesn't necessarily mean dispensing with lost causes; when dedicated
people hang in there because they believe in what they're doing, impossible
things can happen. But it's useful, as you struggle, to know what seem
to be your chances for success. The knowledge can either strengthen your
resolve or, when necessary, help you take another look at your convictions.
Another element is timing. If you're at a meeting where people are discussing
the format for report cards, trying to figure out where to put effort
grades, or whether to even include effort grades, that may not be the
best time to say, "I don't think we should have report cards."
It's a judgment call; maybe that's precisely the right time to say it.
You have to consider who you're dealing with - who's likely to back you
up, who's been working on report card formats for five years, who swears
by report cards, who has power and influence, how much power and influence
you have (you may have more than you know).
Consider, also, how important it is to you to keep your job, and whether
that's even an issue. Perhaps you only want to work in an atmosphere where
you can be true to yourself. Maybe the security and comfort of a stable
job are less important to you (and the people who depend on you, if there
are any) than your principles. And examine the extent to which there's
real danger of losing your job. I used to oppose tenure, because I thought
it protected the status quo and put young rebels in jeopardy. I still
question the concept of tenure, but it does also protect people, once
they get it, from being fired for standing up and speaking out.
I don't remember a specific moment when people started taking my thoughts
and utterances seriously. I can't zero in on that moment because I can't
read minds. Some may have been taking me seriously all along, and I just
needed to catch up with them - learn to believe in myself. But wherever
you are in that struggle, please consider the possibility that your two
cents are worth a lot more than two cents - that you may have a good idea,
and doing it your way may set things right.
Correcting Children's Writing 147.
There's been a gradual change among teachers' approaches toward correcting
children's writing. It's been based on sound thinking and research. Like
most changes, it's been disorienting for people who are used to the old
ways. Some teachers cling to old ways, some parents are glad they do,
and some wish they wouldn't. Some teachers don't, some parents wish they
would, and some are glad they don't. And plenty of parents and teachers
are ambivalent. I think that covers just about all of us.
Let's say a child writes a story and hands it in. It's a challenge for
the teacher to decipher the story; the handwriting, spelling, sentence
construction, sequencing, grammar, and logic are all what some adults
call "atrocious." Maybe the story goes something like this:
"A giy kam to a stor and ast the man for 3 bocks uv kende. He got
it and thay went hom. And he pade 20 dolrs for it. But he codnt find them."
As a writer and editor of articles for adults, I have the urge to get
out the old red pen, or to reject the story entirely - tell the author
that this story about three boxes of candy is totally unacceptable. But
as a teacher of young children, I don't react that way. My first approach
is to show interest: "Did this really happen? What kind of candy
was it?" I want to teach the child to write, and the very first step
is to teach the child to take pleasure in writing. It doesn't mean writing
will always be pleasant, but if it starts out as an ordeal, it may go
no further.
Once the child knows I'm interested in the story, depending on the child's
level of sophistication, I may ask whether it was the candy or the money
that was hard to find. I may ask whether the man paid before he left the
store. I may ask who went home with the guy. There are many approaches
I could take with this story. Twelve words are spelled wrong. Two aren't
spelled at all. Three boxes of candy probably wouldn't cost twenty dollars.
I'm careful not to overwhelm the child with correction. As hard as a child's
errors may be to accept, too much correction tends to make children stop
trying. Children need to know that they have potential, and it doesn't
take long for them to start believing that they don't. We adults know
a lot. We have all kinds of skills. Children can easily be made to think
they'll never have that knowledge and skill.
At a certain point, correction starts to become a compliment. The child
knows that there are technical errors in his/her work, and feels respected
when an adult points out these errors. That's when to take out the red
pen (or green, purple, or whatever color the child chooses), ever-so-carefully,
and point out things that could be improved.
Racism and Tolerance 148.
The statement "Everyone is a racist" can annoy, offend, even
infuriate people. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can do
damage, too. When people hear someone say that we're all racists, they
may take it quite personally. They may be quite proud of their heart-felt
belief that we're all equal, all deserving of respect and justice, and
the statement "Everyone is a racist," to them, sounds strikingly
similar to racist statements.
But I think the statement is often made with the best of intentions, just
as "I'm not a racist" (like "I'm not a crook") may
be a hollow declaration. Not being a racist is a worthy goal, and if saying
and thinking "I'm not a racist" brings you closer to the goal,
more power to you. You didn't burn crosses on lawns or block entrances
to universities. You may have worked hard to make sure everyone had equal
access to voting booths, schools, etc. By those standards, not everyone
is a racist.
I, personally, won't settle for those standards. My best friends tend
to be white, middle-class, Jewish baby-boomers, and I find that a little
embarrassing. When I realize that I've made friends with someone who doesn't
have those qualifications, especially someone whose race is different
from mine, I mentally congratulate myself. But then I mentally scold myself
for congratulating myself. If everyone really has equal access to my friendship,
there should be nothing noteworthy about making friends with someone who's
not "like me."
I've sometimes heard it said that there is no race problem in Wellesley.
But such statements are always suspicious to me, especially in communities
that are not very racially diverse. When a well-known athlete got some
attention from the police in Wellesley, possibly because his race was
different from that of most people in Wellesley and the same as someone
who was a suspect, it caused quite a stir in Wellesley. Wellesley already
had a reputation, deserved or undeserved, for being an exclusive community,
and this incident did not help.
Many of us work to make sure that children grow up tolerant. We want them
to be ready to live in a world that is diverse, and is becoming more diverse.
And besides, most of our religions and most of our secular philosophies
teach tolerance as a virtue. Not just putting up with diversity, but respecting
it and celebrating it. But like many of the things we try to teach children,
we stand a better chance of teaching it if we make sure we've learned
it.
The Reading Habit 149.
I don't quite have the reading habit. I read often, for information, inspiration,
and/or entertainment. When I was a student, I sometimes read because I
was supposed to. But for me, putting down a book is rarely difficult;
it gives me a chance to rest my eyes and brain, and it enables me to write,
listen to the radio, talk with friends, teach...do things that are closer
to being habits than reading is.
As a teacher, part of my job was to give children the reading habit. Of
all the parts of my job that were difficult, this was the most challenging
of all, because I was giving children something I didn't have. And it
was something I thought everyone should have.
Most of the adults I know have the habit. Teachers in teachers' rooms
often recommend books to each other - both books on education and the
latest novels. Many children spend their free time reading. Non-academics
read. I know people who envy my retired status because I finally have
time to read. But I spend much more time writing than reading.
I suppose it's a good thing some of us have the writing habit. Those of
you who have the reading habit would be in trouble if nothing were written.
But one can do both. And I do try. I pick up a book, borrow one from the
library, sometimes even buy one.
Sometimes, when I'm reading a book, I take great pride in the fact that
I'm reading. Then my mind focuses on the pride instead of the book. My
eyes glide across the page, never missing a word. I turn the page when
my eyes come to the end of a page. But in my mind, I'm congratulating
myself for finally sitting down and reading a book. After several pages
have gone by my eyes, I realize that I haven't been reading. Sometimes
I turn back to the last page I remember. Other times, I give up. And I
don't think the quality of the writing is a factor; I've had this problem
with authors I know I like.
I enjoy reading to children, and I hope you do, too. I enjoy having adults
read to me, and I know about books-on-tape. Maybe soon I'll start listening
to them. It will still mean less time doing all those other things I like
to do, but I intend to do it.
I don't know why this happened to me. I don't like the fact that I have
to remind myself to read. My impulse is to find some people to blame.
But my parents like to read, and do it all the time. My teachers liked
to read, and read to us often. My own daughters have always loved reading,
as do most of the children I've taught.
If you're an adult or child who is not hooked on books, I hope this article
lets you know that you are not alone. After years of working to get children
hooked on books, I'm still trying to find a way to get the habit for myself.
Bridges 150.
When I first started writing these articles, I told you that I hoped to
build bridges with them. I hope that's been happening. But it occurred
to me that I may also be burning bridges with them. I've let you know,
for example, that I am an atheist, that I'm not the patriot you may be,
and that I don't have the reading habit. If I ("they"?) cure
multiple sclerosis, and I want to find employment in public schools again,
these confessions may work against me. And if I find a publisher, and
let more people read what I'm saying in these articles, I may be digging
myself in even deeper.
But I'm not seriously worried about it. The chances are slim that a cure
will be found before the year 2013, when I would have to retire anyway.
The chances are even slimmer that I will ever want to trade this retired
life - a life of writing, volunteering in a school, spending relaxed time
with friends, spending other relaxed time by myself on the bike path -
for the grind that used to earn me a bigger income.
But it's too bad that there isn't a safe forum for all teachers to let
parents know what they're thinking. As in many jobs, teachers keep a lot
inside, or only tell other teachers whom they trust. As I used to talk
with other teachers, I was often surprised and delighted that another
teacher agreed with me on a point that I had thought set me apart. Sometimes
I heard parents' opinions, and knew it would be considered "unprofessional"
to express my own agreement or disagreement. The "professional"
thing to do is to maintain some kind of distance.
I understand the possible risk we take when we tell other people in the
community what's on our minds. The rumor mill may distort what we say,
or at least spread it around in a context that puts it in the wrong light.
It's not easy to be a teacher, though it can be well worth the effort.
But when community reactions put a teacher on the defensive, it can be
a nightmare.
I believe in the power of communication. I think great things can happen
when people understand each other. I don't know exactly how to facilitate
that communication when it comes to the thoughts of teachers, parents,
administrators, and children. Sometimes my own articles are reflections
of what I hear people say. But wouldn't you like to hear it first-hand?
Teenagers 151.
All of us adults have been teenagers, and if all goes well, all of our
children will be teenagers. But sometimes, when we're caught up in some
of the difficulties teenagers go through, we may start thinking they're
a different species. Our children may see them that way too, either out
of loyalty to us or because of their own difficulty understanding their
older siblings.
When I first started teaching, I taught teenagers. I'd just recently finished
being one, and though I thought that some day I would want to teach younger
children, I thought I wasn't ready yet. Maybe not, but I certainly wasn't
ready to teach teenagers yet. Some of them reminded me of the ones who
had terrorized me only a few years earlier. Some reminded me of the ones
I'd considered superficial. Only a few reminded me of the ones who'd been
my friends.
It's important to see the children in our teenagers. With all their fads,
crises, and rebellions, they haven't forgotten the children they recently
were, although it may not seem so recent to them. Some of the things that
delighted or concerned them still do. But they're changing quickly, and
it can be disorienting. Some of them are already nostalgic for their lost
youth.
It's important, too, to see the adults in them. Some of them are old enough
to drive, vote, drink, and see movies children aren't allowed to see.
Since those four activities are four landmarks, they seem, to teenagers,
to be the way to be adults. Well, maybe not voting; that only happens
periodically, and is done privately.
If we've successfully treated our children as human beings with rights,
responsibilities, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and potential, then as
they get older, it stands to reason that we should continue this approach.
I don't know what happens to sometimes prevent that from happening, but
I'm convinced that it's not all the fault of the teenagers.
As I entered the Fort River School one day, to work with second-graders,
there were a few parents selling wrapping paper to raise money for teaching
materials. One of them looked at me and said, "Mr. Blue?" She
told me she'd had me as a teacher. I tried to place the face. I
assumed she'd been a second-grader in one of my classes. But it turned
out that she'd been one of the teenagers who'd had me as a teacher. She
had good memories of that time, and so did I. I'd almost forgotten.
The Comfortable Perspective 152.
I grew up in comfortable suburban homes. I taught mostly children who
were doing so, too, and my own children did, too. As we live in our "comfortable"
homes, we do find aspects of our homes to complain about; it's easy to
forget about how uncomfortable things could be and focus on the problems
we see. When a child is being told to eat something that doesn't appeal
to the child, it doesn't help to think about starving children elsewhere
in the world. I used to wish my parents would save the money they spent
on certain foods, and send it to China, India, or somewhere. I altruistically
hoped the children there wouldn't then have to eat the foods I didn't
want.
As I've been writing these articles, I've been seeing issues from my own
perspective - that of someone who was always able to find a job and a
relatively comfortable place to live. I usually taught children who were
able to live even more comfortably, and it was easy to forget, as it was
easy for the children to forget, that things could be much worse. Sometimes
I envied the children I taught. Being part of a downwardly mobile generation,
I wished I could have some of the luxuries children I taught had, some
of which were luxuries I'd had as I was growing up.
Having seen childhood, parenting, and teaching from my perspective all
my life, I can't write accurately from any other perspective. The best
I can do is acknowledge that there are other perspectives - that there
are people who would read what I've written and, to phrase it politely,
have severe misgivings about much of what I've said. I've been careful
to write "I think" once in a while - to remind the reader that
my opinions are only my opinions.
But maybe that's not enough of a caveat. Some of my statements probably
should have started with the words "from my comfortable, provincial,
middle-class perspective." Once, working in a day care center, I
said to a child, "People are not for hitting." The director
of the center, a Quaker, a pacifist, and a very gentle person, later suggested
that I revise my statement: "People are not for hitting in this school."
He knew that the child was occasionally spanked at home, and didn't want
the child to think he had bad parents.
I'm not sure which of my statements hold true for all children, all parents,
all teachers. I've lived a relatively sheltered life. I've taught children
who, I knew, were probably going to do fine. But I wonder what my philosophy
would look like if things had been different for me.
Specialists 153.
It's a fact of life that there are people who are especially good at some
things. Often, they're people who aren't so good at other things, and
they cling to their specialties for the sake of their self-esteem. There
are some people who don't seem to be good at anything, and that causes
problems. And there are others who seem to be good at everything, and
that can cause other problems. But for this article, I'll focus on the
children who are undeniably good at only some things.
The child who's great at math, soccer, drawing, or whatever can easily
slide into the role of specialist. It can be fun to be in that role, and
can do wonders for the child's self-confidence. It can start to define
the child. I've known children who were undisputed champions at what they
did well.
Stephanie, who was in my sixth grade class, could draw horses better than
anyone. The horses she drew not only looked like horses; she took that
for granted. She drew horses that were doing things - rearing, or pulling
carts. If a horse needed to be drawn, Stephanie got the job. I tried drawing
horses occasionally, but I never showed anyone. I knew what they'd say:
"It's not like Stephanie's." And it wasn't.
I'm cautious, now, about letting myself think of a child as a specialist.
It may not be fair to the child; it can distract me from noticing the
other things the child does well. It can also be unfair to other children;
they've got skill, too, and sometimes it's right on the specialist's turf.
Or if they don't excel, or even come close, they still ought to feel that
they have potential.
I still remember the day when I heard someone tell my mother, after spending
some time with my brother and me, that one of us was smart and the other
was good-looking. It was meant as two compliments, but neither my brother
nor I heard any compliment. We heard that one of us was stupid and the
other was ugly. It's better to consider the whole child, not dwell too
long on one strength the child has.
I wonder what Stephanie is doing now. I wonder whether she used her talent
to build a career for herself. I suspect that she was good at drawing
things other than horses. She may also have had talent as a photographer,
or an architect, and maybe she developed that talent. And I'd like you
to consider the possibility that she is now a professor of economics at
Duke University, or a jazz musician. Or both. And good at what she does.
Friendship 154.
I can't think of anything better than friendship. For some people, a friend
is one special person, and if there are too many more than one, the friendship
starts to seem thinner. For others, the more, the merrier. There are people
who feel that they can speak about just about anything with one or two
special friends, and others who have mental friendship yellow pages: if
there's job trouble, call Eleanor. For advice about children, call Seth.
And so on.
If you ask children what a friend is, you can get a variety of answers.
A friend can be someone who comes over to play a lot. It can be someone
who makes you laugh. It can be someone who pays attention to you when
everyone else is ignoring you. I could go on and on with this, but I'm
not working for Hallmark.
I've had many conferences with parents who were concerned about their
children's friendships. Some worried that their children didn't have any
friends. Others questioned whether the friends their children did have
were good or bad influences. For many of these parents, and for me, school
was, to a great degree, a place to learn how to relate with people - to
explore friendship. That doesn't mean dispensing with academic concerns;
it means being aware of children, too.
The social world of school is always there. When children are deeply involved
in a study of the Middle East, that's not all they're thinking about.
Pat is wondering whether Lou likes him/her. With young children, romantic
feelings may not be concerns, but they may. Whether or not they are, the
Middle East may not be getting as much attention as we adults may sometimes
think.
So Jim hopes that Jed will be in the group that studies Saudi Arabia.
That's the group Jim is in. But Joe had better not be in that group, because
Joe lives next door to Jed, and Jim won't stand a chance of spending any
time with Jed if Joe is there. To us adults, this usually isn't the point.
They're supposed to be thinking about Saudi Arabia. But the social world
is there, and ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
I think it is appropriate to spend some time in school, and some time
at home, thinking and talking about friendship. We're trying to help children
learn how to live their lives. Some lucky people make and keep friends
easily right from the start. But most don't.
Portrait of a Snow Day 155.
There's something about Norman Rockwell's paintings that fascinates me.
Like Garrison Keillor's "News from Lake Wobegon," on public
radio, they seem to make significant statements about the human condition
without coming right out and saying them. The statements are cloaked in
art, and they appeal to all kinds of people - even some who are not necessarily
interested in hearing the significant statements. In fact, maybe I only
hear the statements because that's what I want to hear.
I'm going to try it. Just in this article. In my next article, I'll go
right back to making my blatant statements. But today, since a few inches
of snow are blocking my door and rendering the path to my bus stop less
navigable than usual, maybe I'll take the day off and try some art for
art's sake.
I imagine that children all over are wondering whether there will be school
today. Most of them hope not. Their parents and teachers may or may not
share these hopes. As a teacher, I almost always did, even though I knew
we'd have to pay back the calendar in June. When my daughters were children,
a snow day meant we could build snow people with them, or sled down nearby
hills. Later, it meant that I could spend a day doing other things I wanted
to do. Especially if the town I lived in was in better shape than the
town where I worked.
I remember sitting with Katy and Lara at the table and listening to the
radio. The towns that were not going to have school were listed alphabetically,
which tested our patience, and the superintendent in Wellesley usually
called in later than other superintendents, which added to the drama.
Over the years, in our various thin-walled apartments, we'd hear shouts
of delight from children who went to schools in other towns. And when,
at last, we heard "Wellesley" (if we heard it), we did our own
shouts and dances.
I usually didn't do any schoolwork on these days. I did things I'd always
been meaning to do, but had never gotten around to. The picture we'd been
meaning to put up in the living room finally got put up. Maybe we made
a cake, pie, or bread. The children got out their things and made delightful
messes. I don't remember to what degree the messes seemed delightful back
then, but that doesn't matter. Nostalgia always enhances images.
I'm going to thoroughly enjoy this snow day. Maybe school will be in session.
Maybe the walk will be cleared in time for me to get to school, and if
so, maybe I'll go. But for me, retired, every day is a snow day. I can
even take a snow day in June if I want. I hope you get to have that freedom
sometimes.
I don't think this article is on a par with Rockwell's paintings or Keillor's
monologues, but that's all right. The snow outside is pretty, and I think
I'll take a few minutes to watch people doing what they have to (or want
to) do. Nothing to Do 156.
When a child complains "I have nothing to do," a parent's reaction
is often something less than sympathetic. Parents and other adults (but
especially parents) often long for some time with nothing to do. To them,
that's what a good vacation is. In fact, "vacation" comes from
the Latin word for "empty."
Of course, many adults, when they are fortunate enough to have vacations,
do all kinds of things. They travel, swim, ski, go to shows, and build
wonderful memories. These adults rarely allow themselves to be stuck with
nothing to do.
I haven't had "nothing to do" for a long time. I'm writing this
article on a day when I'm snowed in, and can't work with children. On
days like this, though I miss the children, there are still plenty of
things to do.
But I remember when it was a problem for me. My mother had me think of
things I liked to do, and write them on little cards. Then she gave me
a cardboard box, and told me to fill it up with the cards. Whenever I
thought I had nothing to do, I was supposed to reach into the box, take
out a card, and do what the card suggested. It was a clever idea. I don't
think it worked, but it was clever.
As an adult - especially as a disabled adult - I know how lucky I am to
be alive at a time and in a place when and where I can stay warm without
chopping wood, get food without hunting or gathering, and stay safe without
fighting or fleeing. I spend many moments appreciating that bit of grace.
I don't spend much time with nothing to do. I like to write, and there
are more things I want to write than there are moments in a day. I'm writing
this article on November 29, 1995, and I think you may be reading it in
January of 1998. And there's more I want to write tomorrow. When I don't
feel like writing, I can do other things. There's plenty to do.
Nevertheless, it's hard for a child when it seems as if there's nothing
to do. It's important for adults to hear children's complaints, and take
them seriously. Unless we've really got our acts together in this place
and time when we adults are often overloaded with things we have to do,
children can be bored, and boredom can make life difficult.
Giving Children Power 157.
The world is run by adults. Some of the adults are dictators and monarchs,
some are politicians, and to varying degrees, the rest of us adults get
some power to affect what goes on. But just about everyone who has significant
power has a certain amount of seniority in common; we've all grown up.
I have a good friend, Phil Hoose, who works hard to make sure children
are heard, too, and have some influence. He wrote a book called It's Our
World, Too, focusing on children who have refused to let their youth prevent
them from taking stands and making marks, and have consequently caused
good things to happen.
He and I are on the executive board of a network of people who believe
that children should have some power. For several years, we made sure
that there were always children on the executive board. But at some point,
it became clear that these children were getting bored at board meetings.
They liked each other, and enjoyed being with each other and us, but financial
reports, staffing problems, and all the other issues that came up were
simply not child-oriented. We could have carefully planned our agendas
so that the children could help us make decisions they cared about, and
then go play, but that hasn't happened yet.
Growing up, done well, ought to be a constructive process, and that should
make it so that the decisions made by adults help to make the world a
better place to live in. We ought to be good at that stuff. And having
been children ourselves, and loving and caring for those who still are
children,
we ought to be good at watching out for their interests.
But I don't think that we adults, experienced and caring though we are,
are always the best ones to make decisions that affect children. As the
ones with the power, we'd be wiser and fairer to find ways to gradually
hand some of that power over to children. They'll end up with it eventually
anyway, and they'll remember how we used it when we had it. Whether our
motivation is mostly selfish or not, we ought to keep in mind the power
our children will some day have, and help them get ready for it.
Children do like to be children, to some degree. Sometimes it can be comforting
for them to have adults do the important stuff. Setting limits for children
can actually be a nice thing to do. But somehow, we've got to find ways
to gradually give children ways to start taking charge.
Parent-Teacher Organizations 158.
The PTA, PTO, or PTC is sometimes unfairly seen as a bunch of people who
spend all their time having bake sales, selling wrapping paper, and organizing
social events. They're not taken seriously enough - not recognized as
dedicated advocates for children and teachers. Perhaps that's because
some of the fund-raising and social activities of these organizations
are more conspicuous than the other work they do. To those who aren't
involved, these organizations can seem less important than they actually
can be, and this perception can be self-fulfilling.
First of all, consider the fundraising activities. The underlying principle
of these activities is that schools do not get enough money. At least,
that's the way I see it. They can't respond to children's needs as easily
as some corporations or governmental organizations respond to their executives'
whims. That statement may sound to you as if I'm cynical about some corporations
and governmental organizations. Yup. You read me loud and clear. As a
nation, and for the most part, as a planet, we haven't done a great job
ordering our priorities.
Parent-teacher organizations tend to have many parents and only one or
two teachers to represent their colleagues. Parents want teachers to be
more involved, but are usually aware that teachers are busy planning lessons,
taking courses for professional development, etc. Of course, there are
some teachers who just aren't interested enough to get involved, and some
who fear being overwhelmed by meetings run by their employers (in a way,
I do consider parents to be the employers of teachers and administrators).
Whatever teachers' reasons are for their relatively low attendance records
at these meetings, I urge teachers to try harder to attend, and parents
to consider that teachers who don't attend may be busy getting ready to
teach, not overseeing the refinishing of their yachts.
There's another issue. In a world wherein some nations, towns, and people
have significantly more or less wealth than others, government funding
of schools, however meager, can be an equalizer. In Massachusetts, each
town gets some money to fund education. If some towns have wealthier populations
than others, and people are willing to use some of that wealth to support
schools, that phenomenon can undo the equalizing effect of government
funding. So can the money that comes from the pockets of teachers. Most
teachers I've known have occasionally or often used their own money to
buy materials for their classes.
As I write these articles, I realize that the length of each article,
and the amount of time it takes me to write it, reflect the degree to
which I consider the issue I'm tackling important. If the article flows
out in less than an hour, and fills most of a page on my computer screen,
it's probably important to me. This article took thirty-seven minutes
to write, and fills up the whole page. On my living room wall is a poster
which reads: "It will be a great day when schools get all the money
they need and the Pentagon has to hold a bake sale to buy a B1 bomber."
Until that day, let's treat bake sales with a little more respect. And
long live the PTA, PTO, and PTC!
Changing With the Times 159.
As our society moves forward, backward, or sideways, school curriculum
often responds. In the early and mid-1970's, as gender equity issues seemed
to make their way to the surface, people expressed their concerns about
the sex role stereotyping that was prevalent in school textbooks. In basal
readers, the female characters usually stayed at home and did housework
while the male characters went out and led much more interesting lives.
It took a lot of work to change this, but it did change. School textbooks
now present the roles of men, women, boys, and girls much more fairly
and accurately than they used to.
As issues emerge, textbook companies are fairly quick to pay attention.
Giving them the benefit of the doubt, some respond because their decision-makers
care about children, and want to make sure children get the best possible
preparation for life. Not giving them the benefit of the doubt, they aren't
going to sell as many books if they don't take cues from the purchasing
public.
To some parents and other community members, who are critical of schools,
the constantly evolving curriculum may look like a sign of weakness. Don't
we know what children should learn? Are we going to jump on every bandwagon
that goes by? Some teachers voice the same concern.
I'm a somewhat of a revisionist on some issues. If old books teach children
things I think children shouldn't learn, or don't teach them what I think
they should learn, I think we ought to provide newer books, or find better
old ones. If we learn that a historical character was less admirable than
we used to think, or that certain stories teach children what we now consider
the wrong things, I think we should change our teaching and use better
materials.
I prefer to think of this as book-shelving, not book-burning. The Voyages
of Doctor Dolittle, with its blatant racism, can still sit on the shelves,
but if I use it at all, I will make sure the racism in the book is acknowledged
and addressed. And as I teach history, I'll make sure children don't think
this continent was first "discovered" by Europeans.
This does not have to mean abandoning classics. It means taking another
look at them. If a book is well-written, it need not alter when it alteration
finds. Shakespeare, though well ahead of his (their?) time on many issues,
also reflected Elizabethan thinking on many. But Shakespearean plays and
poetry are among the best the English language has to offer, and I, personally,
refuse to discard "The Taming of the Shrew" and replace it with
"Kate Enlightens Petrucchio." But I would make sure there was
plenty of substantial discussion.
Liberal Arts 160.
This country is full of liberal arts colleges, and elementary and secondary
school teachers work hard to prepare students for these colleges. They
try to encourage and enhance children's natural curiosity and enthusiasm
about science, mathematics, literature, geography, history, language,
etc. If teachers succeeded at all they tried to do, we'd all be Renaissance
people, spending our days writing literary masterpieces, designing better
buildings, composing symphonies, and negotiating peace treaties. Maybe
during our lunch breaks, we'd find cures for diseases.
As a veteran student and teacher, I have mixed feelings about the liberal
arts approach, or at least about the way it's sometimes applied. On the
one hand, I sometimes think we're too quick to direct students to specialize
- to make decisions about which of their many skills they want to develop
and turn into careers. Children really have lots of natural curiosity,
and potential expertise may be hiding in places where we tend not to look.
Beethoven might have made a great sculptor. We'll never know. So maybe
we should work harder to keep options open.
On the other hand, I'm kind of glad Beethoven didn't have to spend a lot
of time learning how to see the statue in a lump of clay, and how to get
it to take shape. It would have meant less time devoted to the beautiful
music he did create. I'm so glad Ludwig's parents and teachers didn't
work to make sure the boy was well-rounded, or if they did (was he one
of the composers who was supposed to be a lawyer?), I'm glad they didn't
succeed.
I remember how the liberal arts approach was applied to my own education.
I had to take courses dealing with subjects I really couldn't have cared
less about, taught by teachers who often fervently believed that everyone
should know as much as possible about these subjects. Of course, these
teachers didn't have to know much about each others' specialties. It just
didn't seem fair. I wanted to have the freedom they had to follow my own
interests.
Once in a while, now, some of what I was required to learn comes in handy.
But were all those hours spent trying to stay interested in and learn
about Milik Capek's philosophy of physics really time well spent? Or would
it have been better to wait until I came to a point in my life when I
thought to myself, "I wonder what Milic Capek's philosophy of physics
was all about..."? I don't know.
Being There 161.
Children usually start out life right near the people who gave it to them.
That's often really good time. Love flows back and forth, and parents
and children work together to make life work. There are problems, issues,
and headaches, but if there weren't rewards that made it all worthwhile,
there wouldn't be quite so many children.
But when a child is five or six years old, there's a sudden change. The
child suddenly starts spending several hours each day in school. It's
expected, in our society, that parents and children will adjust to this
sudden separation. In fact, for many, there are pre-schools, nursery schools,
and day care centers, etc., and the separation happens even earlier.
Yesterday, when I first thought of writing an article about truancy, I
was thinking like a teacher. Teachers, after thinking through and writing
their lesson plans, can get irritated when a parent keeps a child out
of school for any reason other than illness. It can take concentration,
dedication, resourcefulness, creativity, and time to plan lessons, and
when a parent keeps a child out of school after all that, any reason other
than illness can seem frivolous and disrespectful.
In the winter, a teacher who sometimes may daydream about basking on some
sun-drenched tropical beach can get quite annoyed by a letter from a parent
which says, "Eloise will be going to Bermuda with us. We'll be back
in two weeks. Please give her any work she will miss." A self-respecting
teacher may think, Eloise cannot possibly do any work that will be an
adequate substitute for being in class. And the teacher may also be thinking,
why can't I go to Bermuda?
Notwithstanding this double-edged resentment teachers may feel, that time
spent in Bermuda, which can be seen as a field trip, giving a child a
little extra awareness that there is a world beyond home and school, is,
more importantly, usually a time when the child gets to be with her/his
parent(s). And that doesn't have to happen in Bermuda; it can happen in
your kitchen. The first five or six years aren't enough, and the tired
hours after a day of work and school aren't enough. When the child grows
up, there's no telling how much time the family will be able to spend
together.
Jobs can make it difficult. So can geographical distance.
As a teacher - even as a teacher who tried hard to be a parent first -
I occasionally felt resentful when I found out that a child was missing
or would miss school to spend good time with his/her family. But childhood
is a precious time, and however valuable my lessons may have been, I couldn't
stay resentful long. I think parents should spend as many good moments
with their children as they can.
"Knock, Knock!" 162.
Knock, knock! Who's there? Howie. Howie who? Fine, thanks. Howie who?
Despite all the new-fangled ways to pass on culture, the oral culture
still exists. I used to think my brother Howie made up the tune to the
ever-popular "George Washington Bridge." Later, I learned that
he had used the tune to "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World."
Still later, I learned that many people were singing my brother's song
("George Washington Bridge, George Washington, Washington, Bridge,"
etc.). And who knows? Maybe he didn't even make up the idea of putting
those words with that tune.
Here's a question I really can't answer confidently: when children ask
me a riddle, and I know the answer, should I let on that I know the answer,
or should I feign interest, and then laugh? After all, the child went
through all the trouble to learn that bit of oral culture. Is my own dedication
to honesty so strong that I can't go along with a harmless little riddle?
I remember the times when I let children win in various games. I had to
estimate how much effort was enough to give the child the feeling that
there was some competition going on. Laughing at vintage riddles may be
in the same category; children want to surprise us with their jokes and
riddles just as they want to win games. And should we bend our honesty
a little and go along with them?
Come to think of it, the issue doesn't end with childhood. Aren't there
times when an adult friend starts to tell a joke, and you just don't have
the heart to mention that you've heard it already? The friend enjoys telling
the joke - maybe even tells it better than you've ever heard it told.
That should be enough. But sometimes, instead of saying, "I like
the way you tell it," don't you sometimes pretend that you've never
heard it before?
I can confidently state that we owe it to children to help them believe
in themselves. They're little, and most of us are big. We may try to encourage
the playing of games that have no winners. There are many games like that,
and more are being created all the time. But sometimes children really
want to play competitive games, and they don't want to lose all the time.
And when a child tells a riddle - even the third or fourth time the child
tells a riddle - the polite thing to do is listen, with interest, and
then laugh.
There may be adults who have strong convictions about this issue. They
answer riddles when they know the answers, and when they play soccer,
no matter how old their opponents are, they play to win. My own approach
is to feign ignorance about the jokes and riddles, and to ask children
whether they want me to let them win (or nowadays, to try my hardest,
to no avail. Nowadays, sometimes children let me win). Obviously, I lean
toward stressing confidence-building over honesty. But I'm honestly not
sure.
Commercialization 163.
As I write this article, December is taking off. As they do every year
around this time, stores and mail-order companies are looking forward
to the spending sprees that are about to happen. Advertisements are all
around. And, of course, there are lots of people bemoaning how commercialized
this time of year has become. Paradoxically, some advertisers cash in
on the emphasis on how terrible it is that we've lost touch with the "true
meaning" of this time of year. Charlie Brown gets on our TV screens,
hoping to convince everyone that his pathetic little tree is better than
the artificial one they all want to buy. But even Charlie has commercial
breaks.
Most children don't think, yet, in terms of commercialization. They want
the latest electronic gismo not because they want to increase some company's
profit margin, but because it looks like fun, or they've used it at their
friends' houses, and they know it's fun. They don't want to have the lonely,
neglected feeling that everyone else has the gismo and they don't. Money
is not love, but advertisers have succeeded in their schemes to link the
two together in many people's minds.
This is not a new phenomenon. When Ebenezer Scrooge was all done with
his three dreams and had the true spirit of Christmas, one of the ways
he expressed it was by buying things for people. I imagine the three kings
comparing notes: "All you guys got Him were frankincense and myrrh?!
I got Him gold!" Bemoaning commercialism is an age-old tradition,
and nowadays, it's big business.
I do not have the Christmas spirit, as many of you don't have the Hannukah
spirit. If three ghosts come to visit me on December 24, they'll be wasting
their time. I don't know what the numbers are, but there's a large portion
of earth's population that doesn't celebrate Christmas.
That being said, I have to admit that the spirit of Madison Avenue gets
to me. When it snows, or at least it gets cold out, I enjoy the rituals
that come with the season. I like the singing - both the old carols and
the Hollywood songs. There have been a few years when I've rented a Santa
Claus suit. One other year, I was walking with my bag of laundry on a
snowy day, and some children saw me from their living room window - a
bearded man with a big sack on his shoulder. They ran to get their mother
or father, but I turned the corner and was gone. I had laundry to do.
I wonder what the children thought of the whole experience.
I hope this time of year (though I know you're probably reading this in
February) brings you peace and joy. And I hope you have a good balance
between bemoaning commercialism and getting some of the gismos you're
hoping for.
Allowance 164. Probably, most of you get paid. If you're lucky, as I was,
you get paid to do things you like to do. Maybe, as I do now, you get
paid for having already done those things. That's even better. But if
you're unemployed, you have to rely on society's sense of fairness. The
money you get that way is called "welfare." The money you get
because of people's kindness is called "charity." And if you're
a child, you may get an "allowance." That can be welfare, charity,
or payment for services rendered.
Allowance is a tradition, and though each person may have a different
idea about what allowance stands for, it's hard not to follow the tradidion.
It's difficult for children to get jobs that pay well. There are factors
that interfere, such as school, child labor laws, and low skill level.
There will be plenty of opportunities to get jobs and earn money later
on. For now, allowance can be seen as payment for being unable, not unwilling,
to be gainfully employed. That's what welfare should be, if the welfare
system works well.
There's also love. Money is generally frowned upon as a way to express
love, but love does have a way of making a person be generous, wanting
the loved person to get some pleasure. And whether we like it or not,
some of the things that make some people feel good are only available
in stores, and do cost money. And so we give our children some money,
with which they can buy what they want.
Some parents see allowance as a way of paying children to do chores. While
I don't like that approach, I think I understand it. I don't like it because
I think what we call "chores" ought to be jobs that need to
be done for the benefit of everyone in the family. Paying a person to
do them gives the wrong message about these jobs. But it is work, and
maybe parents who treat allowance this way are trying to get children
to know the relationship between work and pay.
Once a child receives allowance, I believe it should be up to the child
what happens to the money. We may want to teach our children about budgeting
and saving, and some of us may feel as if allowance is a way to do that.
I don't think so. I think allowance ought to belong to the recipient,
to spend, invest, save, or give away. We can forbid our children to break
the law with their money, but I don't think forbidding them to spend all
their money on candy or arcades is very educational or helpful. Allowance
is a great opportunity to make mistakes, and I think mistakes are much
more educational than lectures and rules.
Death 165.
Of all the things I don't know about, death is king. I've never died,
and the people closest to me haven't died, either. I've known people who
have died, but of course, I immediately lost my ability to communicate
with them, so knowing them didn't bring me much closer to understanding
death. And I've read lots of Russian Literature. The Russian writers of
the nineteenth century wrote a lot about death. But it was all hearsay
and speculation; as soon as they died, they stopped writing.
But people who are close to me eventually will die, and so will I. So
will you. Children get curious about death when they're very young, and
though their pets may die, some of them, like me, don't experience the
death of people close to them until well beyond childhood. If a child's
father or mother dies, or someone else who has meant a lot in the child's
life, other children naturally tend to be supportive and sensitive. So
do adults. You don't often hear "Heard your dad croaked. Too bad."
Even children who haven't yet learned the finer points of sensitivity
know that "croaked" is not an acceptable synonym for "died"
in this situation. They know they're treading on sacred ground.
I'm speculating. Maybe by the time you read this article, I'll have learned
first-hand about the death of people closest to me. I hope not. Meanwhile,
I have questions. Does there come a point when a person who has led a
happy life wants to die? I know I have sometimes wanted to stop doing
things that were fun, even though they didn't stop being fun. I was ready
to move on to other things that might also be fun. But do people ever
feel that way about all of life? Of course, if you really believe in Heaven,
that can make that sort of thinking a little more likely, but what about
those of us who don't? Do we ever feel as if our lives have come to a
peaceful end, and that it's time to die? One of my friends, who died when
she was in her eighties, said, near the end of her life, "People
always told me that when I was near the end of my life, I'd start believing
in God. Well, I'm there, and I don't, and I'm proud of it."
Does there come a point when you want the people close to you to die,
for their own good? A point when they've already decided that it's time
to die, feel fine about it, and you stop trying to change their minds?
I'm asking you because you may know. Maybe you have more experience with
death than I do. But in another way, you couldn't have had any experience
with it. I haven't mentioned children much in this article, but death
is The Great Equalizer. It isn't something you learn about through direct
experience. And yet somehow, like me, children ask questions, and hope
they'll get answers that will satisfy their curiosity, and maybe reassure
them. Of all the articles I've ended, this is the hardest one to end.
Such is life, I guess.
Positive Thinking and Surrender 166.
Children are frequently told that there's no limit to what they can learn
and do if they believe in themselves. I've sometimes seen a poster, in
schools and other places, which shows birds flying, and says, "They
can because they think they can." The poster is supposed to help
people believe in their own ability to overcome obstacles.
I, personally, wonder whether birds think about flying at all. I can think
of several sentences that would make more sense to me than "They
can because they think they can." They can because they haven't learned
that they can't. They can because of the Bernoulli effect. They can because
flying is what birds do. They can because they have wings. But no matter
how positively we humans think about flying, we are all flying disabled;
we need adaptive equipment - airplanes, helicopters, hang-gliders, etc.
Positive thinking alone won't do it.
So, to some degree, I think we owe it to children to help them come to
terms with what they can't do yet, and even some things they'll never
be able to do. Effort can sometimes be rewarded with stickers and kudos,
but if it doesn't eventually get rewarded by success, it can lead to great
frustration, defeatism, and depression. Failure breeds failure just as
much as success breeds success.
We also owe it to children to make sure limitations are real before we
start teaching them these limitations. Glenn Cunningham was told that
he would never walk again, and he subsequently broke the record for running
a mile. Some people see that story as an example of the triumph of the
human spirit, and to some degree, I agree. But I also see it as an example
of how wrong some prognoses can be. So far, medical science is not an
exact science, and I think at least some of the success of faith-healing,
Christian Science, etc. has to do with inaccurate diagnoses and prognoses.
I'm trying to find the right balance between positive thinking and surrender
for myself. On the one hand, I believe that I'll be able to walk again.
I can still take a few steps, and somehow, I'll get so I can walk a mile.
On the other hand, I try to arrange to have the equipment, housing, and
support I'll need if I get so I can walk even less. I'm hoping for the
best and preparing for the worst.
Children will learn, and they need to know that. And they also have limitations
- both temporary and permanent. They need to know that, too. Neither children
nor we know, for sure, which are their limitations and which kinds of
learning lie ahead. But we do owe it to children to both encourage them
to do what we're pretty sure they can do, and to help them come to terms
with what they can't do.
Secret Codes 167.
A language is a code. And if you don't know the language, it's a secret
code. As you probably learned when you were a kid, it's not nice to tell
secrets. I thought about starting this article by using the term "foreign
languages," but that's a vague term that I don't find very useful.
In one way, no language is foreign, and in another way, they all are.
It's all a matter of perspective. Huck Finn was confused about French.
He wondered why people used the "wrong" words (the French words)
for things. He thought they'd learn and use the "right" words
(the English words) if they really wanted people to understand them.
Some people think the world would be better off if we all spoke the same
language. I'm not sure about that. Maybe it would help. But there have
been wars fought between peoples who had a language in common. There's
more to understanding than speaking the same language. In fact, we sometimes
use the word "language" to mean something different from the
meaning that refers to English, Portugese, Swahili, etc. Sometimes when
we say two people "don't speak the same language," we mean they
may both speak English, but they don't understand each other.
There's a natural tendency, especially among monolingual children, to
see language the way Huck Finn saw it. If someone doesn't speak the language
you speak, or speaks it with difficulty, perhaps with an accent, either
the person isn't really trying, or the person isn't very smart. You're
not impressed that they speak some foreign language. Big deal. If they
really had their acts together, they'd learn how to speak the way "regular
people" speak.
A neighbor of mine is from Belorus, and is, as you'd expect, fluent in
her native language. She also knows Russian, French, and English. Because
she lives in a primarily English-speaking country now, she wants to learn
to speak English in a way that will enable her to be accepted at colleges,
get jobs, etc. She wants to lose her accent and refine her grammar and
word
usage. I'm helping her improve her English. "Knowing" Russian
helps, but what helps even more is learning from her that I speak Russian
with an American accent. Some of the sounds I'm so proud of being able
to produce are "okay." but do give me away as an American. And
it's easier to teach her when I more fully realize how big the challenge
is.
Children ought to learn, at some point, that though they may be articulate
and fluent, most people consider their language foreign. Maybe that knowledge
will make them more tolerant. Ethnocentrism is natural; in many cultures,
the word for "human being" is the same as the word for a member
of that culture. But just as we ask children to open their minds to math,
art, and science, I think we should be making sure they understand something
about the codes they're not used to.
The Good Ship Lollipop 168. There's a certain image of children that doesn't
work for me. Some people seem to think of childhood as a time of innocence.
They think adults have cornered the market on cynicism, cruelty, etc.
I love children, but I disagree. I don't believe in original sin, but
I don't think it takes long to catch on.
Much of what Hollywood has had to imply about children has reinforced
the image of children as little angels. Shirley Temple movies, Walt Disney
Productions, and many less-known vehicles for depicting children often
reinforce what I consider this inaccurate view of children. I think it's
part of the reason some adults who hear some real children think there's
something extraordinarily wrong with, or at least precocious about these
children.
There are many exceptions to this pattern. "The Black Stallion,"
"Bad News Bears," and a French movie I once saw, "Petit
d'Argent" (Small Change), are three examples that come to mind. I
suspect that the directors of these movies have known real children, and
have watched them and listened to them.
Some children occasionally reinforce the illusions some adults have. A
friend of mine remembers that when she was a child, and adults asked her
to make a wish, she always said she wished for world peace. Knowing the
reaction she probably got from some adults, I'll bet she wasn't often
inspired to amend her wish and ask for a new bike instead.
It's not that children don't want world peace, an end to human suffering,
and all that. Those are fairly common hopes, and not just among children.
When I hear children voice these dreams, I believe them. Many children
and adults do hope that war, poverty, disease, pollution, and all the
other parts of life that get in the way of pleasure will some day be eradicated
from the face of the earth.
But if that's all we hear when we listen to children, we aren't listening
well enough. Children are real people, and no matter how much we try to
envision them as little cherubs, they aren't. Just as there are times
when we're thinking more about getting our cars inspected than about wiping
out malaria, there are times when the sweet little kids are thinking about
a new bike more than they're thinking about world peace.
About a Disagreement 169.
I was talking about school with a friend who grew up and went to school
in Europe. It became clear, after a little discussion, that we had two
very different conceptions of school and childhood. Having grown up and
gone to school where I did, and how I did, I saw childhood and school
less as preparation for life and more as part of life. My European friend
saw childhood as a time to learn as much as possible; later on, there
wouldn't be as much time to concentrate on learning, so children had better
learn as much as possible in school. She said that children in European
schools were expected to acquire skills and accumulate knowledge at a
rate that did not allow a lot of time for playing.
Disagreeing does not have the urgency it used to have for me. I do not
feel that it is my sacred mission to convert my friend - to convince her
that children need time to play, and that there ought to be much more
to childhood than acquiring knowledge and skill. I don't think my point
of view, however successfully articulated, is going to change her mind.
She has achieved a degree of knowledge and skill that is right for her.
Now, she's seeking more knowledge and skill in college. From her point
of view, that is what will make life work, and that's how education should
look.
And her point of view, or close facsimiles thereof, are shared by many
people in our culture. In fact, as a teacher, I often got in trouble by
articulating my point of view at the wrong time. There were parents and
administrators who did not want a teacher to talk about children's need
for fun. That's what vacations were for. School is for making sure children
can get good jobs and do the jobs well.
Perhaps part of the reason I don't feel the urgency I used to feel is
that I don't have to protect my job any more. I'm confident that having
me for a teacher was not just fun and games - that I helped children learn
things that later proved useful in doing well on tests, and in finding
and keeping jobs. But I'm also confident that I taught children things
that don't have much to do with their employability, and I'm proud of
that teaching.
Two people don't have to be from different continents or countries to
have different cultural perspectives. There are cultures galore right
in our own country, and to some degree, each person is a culture. I used
to think all disagreements were born of misunderstandings. I still think
many are. But some aren't, and though it can be a challenge to disagree
comfortably, and respectfully, it's nice to know it can be done.
Some Good Advice 170.
Advice is a touchy subject. In this paragraph, I'm going to give you advice
that I think is phrased ineffectively, and in the next paragraph, I'll
try phrasing it better. Here goes: don't tell people what you think they
should do. When you tell people what you think they should do, you're
casting yourself in the wrong kind of role. You're coming too close to
trying to make a decision for a person. People would rather make their
own decisions. And they're much more invested in the eventual success
of a venture if they own it.
What I've found effective is letting people in on my own experience. Sometimes
I may have the other kind of advice somewhere in the back of my mind,
but I've found that the back of my mind is a good place for it. People
who hear about my own experience can choose whether or not to use it in
making their own decisions.
When you give advice to children or other people for whom you may be an
authority figure, it's useful to make sure, ahead of time, that you really
mean it as advice, and not as a command. People are free to ignore advice,
or at least not to follow it. If you act hurt when they don't follow it,
you may succeed in eliciting guilt - maybe even enough guilt to change
minds. If you show anger, or even change the advice into a command, it's
a little like breaking a promise; if it was really advice, people ought
to be free to use it as such. "I wouldn't do that if I were you"
should be a neutral piece of information, not a threat. And guilt should
have nothing to do with advice.
There's a place for forbidding, or insisting. We all have limits. There
are things we will not allow our children or others to do, and things
they must do if they want to get along with us. All I'm saying is that
I've found it useful to get my limits straight before I speak, and only
phrase something as advice if I'm ready to have it ignored, or at least
not used.
I never thought I'd say this, but the authority role, used well, can actually
be helpful. I spent an awful lot of my life overtly and covertly rebelling
against authority. I saw authorities only as people who wouldn't let me
be myself. And that's what a lot of them were. But authorities can be
people who have had lots of experience, and if I'm allowed to learn about
that experience without having it automatically supercede my own thinking
and experience, it can be a treasure. Once in a while, someone may ask,
"What do you think I should do?" When that happens, and I have
an answer, I try to phrase it as only my own thought, not as a directive.
Well, that's the kind of thinking that works for me, anyway. You decide
what works for you.
Can I Help? 171.
There are times when you've got some work to do, and you want to do it
by yourself, or at least without the participation of children. It's hard
work that will be even harder if children participate, perhaps resulting
in an inferior product, and/or it's enjoyable work, and younger hands,
voices, etc. will make it less enjoyable. Maybe it's work you never got
to do as a child, and now that you finally have a chance, you don't want
to invite the next generation to share in the fun you never had as a child.
Or do you live a totally child-oriented life? I doubt it. I'll bet most
of you don't do your tax returns with children's help. Or let them help
you put together expensive new things that have complicated directions
you can hardly understand yourself. Though many hands can make light work,
there are times when too many cooks spoil the broth.
But we want children to be helpful, and we want them to feel useful. When
they're very young, we can enlist their help in ways that don't interfere
with our projects: "Could you please make sure there are always ten
sharp pencils?" While we do the real work, the dutiful children are
sharpening the pencils - a job children enjoy, and it actually can be
useful to have sharp pencils. And when the job is done, you can all rejoice
in having done it together.
But that only works for a while. Eventually, children begin to know which
is the real work, and they want in on it. And they often want to do the
important jobs before their participation would be useful, or even tolerable.
Our bluffs get called, and children want to know why they can't contribute
to projects in more meaningful ways. There are enough sharp pencils, and
besides, it doesn't matter if the pencils aren't very sharp.
I always had trouble when that point came. I had to decide which was more
important - doing the job the way I wanted it done, or giving children
the opportunity to be included in the project. There was, of course, middle
ground, and sometimes that was good enough. And sometimes I could wait
until the children were not around. But when your life is full of children,
as most of you know, there are already many things you hope to do when
the children aren't around. There aren't enough hours in a day.
I could advocate for the children, and ask you to sacrifice some autonomy
and maybe quality for the sake of including the children. I suspect that
you already do that sometimes. On the other hand, I could advocate for
you; you have a right to do things the way you want them done. You've
already been through childhood; you've paid your dues. But I don't have
to take sides at all. I'm content to have pointed out something that can
be an issue.
Daring the Devil 172.
In many cultures, including my own, it's considered bad luck to comment
on how well things seem to be going. Even some people who believe in a
Supreme Being Who is beneficent are nevertheless susceptible to this kind
of superstition. And we have a proverb that tells us, "Pride goeth
before the fall." And to make matters worse, people have a tendency
to be insecure anyway.
Yesterday, I spoke with a parent I admire. Her sensitive, patient parenting
is not just a show; I know both of her children, and it is very clear
to me that these children feel loved, and are used to being heard. I don't
know how much of these blessings come from the mother, how much from the
father, how much from the couple, and who else has contributed. I'm trying
to contribute, too. But even when the whole village participates, there's
nothing quite like good parenting to give children what they need most.
But this mother wonders whether she's really doing her job well. She sometimes
loses patience and yells at her children. She always apologizes afterwards,
but she feels as if she yells too much. She worries that her children
will be damaged by this aspect of her fallibility.
At the risk of daring the devil, I'm going to say it: she's a good parent.
And there's a lot of you guys around. I'm a good parent. The mother of
my daughters is a good parent. As I write these articles, occasionally
pointing out problems and making suggestions, I respect the people who
are doing what I consider the most important job in the world - helping
children grow. Teachers do this job, too, but they get to go home afterwards.
Some go home and parent. I don't know how they do it, or how I did it.
It has wonderful rewards, as does teaching, but it's a lot of work.
It's not an exact science. The more I learn about various approaches to
learning and living, the less I believe in exact science, anyway. I wonder
whether even chemistry and physics are really exact sciences. But parenting
certainly isn't, and though parents I admire may share a few approaches
- caring, loving, listening to children - they have all kinds of philosophies
about parenting, ways to set limits, attitudes toward schooling, etc.
And new owners' manuals are constantly coming out.
Culture, superstition, and insecurity notwithstanding, I'd like you to
entertain the possibility that despite your occasional loss of patience
and sensitivity, it's not out of the question that you may be a good parent.
Not Knowing 173.
Children often look up to us for answers, and sometimes, we don't know
the answers. It's nothing to be ashamed of. And it's nothing to hide.
Hiding lack of knowledge sets a bad example for children. Children have
all kinds of things they don't know, and they can quickly pick up the
habit of concealing their ignorance, especially if they see adults doing
it. And when they conceal their ignorance, they're harder to teach.
But we do conceal some of our ignorance, and they know that. In fact,
"ignorance" has come to carry a derogatory connotation, which
I don't think it deserves, and the concept that goes with the word has
a bad reputation, too. So sometimes, instead of saying "I don't know,"
we speculate, we make up answers, or we say "Let's look it up"
with a tone that implies that we do know - that we're cleverly sneaking
in some teaching of research skills.
So far, in these articles,I usually only confess to the human foibles
I know are fairly common. I know that pretending to know is a common foible,
so I feel okay about admitting that I've done it. I'll let you know about
my other foibles as soon as I'm sure they're common.
It may be nice to have children think we know everything, but that illusion
is short-lived, and I usually try to help children get beyond it. I don't
have to pretend I don't know things; there are lots of things I actually
don't know, and children are pretty good at asking the questions that
uncover those things.
I'm not saying that teachers have a responsibility, for children's sake,
to make sure they don't know much. Ignorance is an ever-flowing river,
and we're in no danger that it will run dry. Omniscience is far out of
reach; we'll often hear questions we can't answer.
Occasionally, it is good to hold back some knowledge - if a child wants
to know something she/he can find out fairly independently with a reasonable
amount of time and energy, that's not a time for a teacher to supply the
answer. Of course, it's a judgment call - sometimes a child should look
it up in the dictionary, encyclopedia, or some other resource book. Sometimes
it just takes a little extra thinking. Maybe an intelligent experiment
will lead to a good answer. But maybe the child wants/needs to know right
away, or will be content to live with ignorance. Skillfully deciding when
and when not to answer children's questions is one of the many arts/sciences
involved in teaching children.
But sometimes that's not the question; sometimes the teacher just doesn't
know. I do believe that it's good for children to hear, once in a while,
that their mentors have bits of the universe they have not yet come to
understand - that we're not answering because we can't. What we mentors
do about our areas of ignorance once we reveal them is important, too,
but the vital first step is to come clean with an honest "I don't
know."
Knowing 174. Now that I've written about ignorance - about the importance
of allowing and encouraging yourself and children to admit that they don't
know everything, let's consider what you do know. There's a lot of things
you and children know - more every day, in fact. After years of learning,
whether you've been doing it seven years, forty-seven, or eighty-seven,
you know a lot.
Part of the challenge of teaching is getting people to realize that they
do know a lot. That may seem like an activity that's supposed to come
after teaching, but knowledge isn't necessarily as obvious - even to the
knower - as some people think. The Latin root of the word "education"
( "educere" - to bring out) - is sometimes a very appropriate
way to think of education; as teachers, our job often involves bringing
out knowledge that is, in a way, already there.
For years, and to some extent, still today, I was and am curious about
refrigerators and air conditioners. It made no sense to me that a hot
coil made a machine produce cool air. My curiosity never became intense
enough for me to study the problem by reading books about it. I wanted
someone to explain it to me. If not, I would be quite content to simply
go on keeping my food cool and fresh and enjoying some autumn air in the
dog days of summer, never knowing how this magic happens. I'm sure most
of you live at least part of your lives in ignorant bliss, carried to
California by a machine that goes up in the sky and delivers you to California
a few hours later (or, according to the clock, a few minutes later). Or
you type a letter to a friend, push some buttons on your computer, and
your friend has the letter
But I have pushed myself a little to learn some things; I haven't been
completely satisfied with the mysteries that surround me. I do understand
the hot coil/cool air trick better than I used to. Inside the unrefrigerated
refrigerator is the same warmth you feel in your home. A coil conducts
this warmth to a place where there's a substance that is normally a gas,
but has temporarily been made liquid through compression. The warmth causes
the substance to turn back into a gas. It's happier as a gas, but it soon
gets compressed again (poor substance), and more warmth is conducted out
of the refrigerator to turn the substance back into a gas. Since cold
is only the absence of warmth, the space inside the refrigerator is cold.
And the coil, which is transporting all that warmth to the poor substance,
is understandably hot.
Some scientists among you may be cringing. The way I've explained the
phenomenon may still make it sound a little like magic. And those of you
who understand it less than I do may have learned something from my explanation,
or may still be mystified. But I don't believe that a little learning
is a dangerous thing. I'll probably never build my own refrigerator, but
I'm glad that if some child asks me how a refrigerator works, I at least
have a clue.
Storytelling and Songwriting 175.
I have lots of friends who are professional storytellers and/or singer/songwriters.
I dabble in both myself, and enjoy both. When you see adults who make
up great songs or stories, and perform them in ways that make audiences
show up, buy tickets, and want to hear more, it's easy to forget that
everybody starts out making up songs and stories, and the art does not
belong solely to the ones who get paid for it.
Yesterday, I spent some time entertaining two children (in the back seat
of a car, not in Carnegie Hall). I started out by telling a story I'd
already made up, then retold "The Ugly Duckling," and then finally
used a technique I'd learned from a friend of mine who is a totally amateur
storyteller, and may not even consider herself a storyteller: rather than
make up the whole story myself, I'd say "Once upon a time there were
two....", and then I'd pause, waiting for one of the children to
fill in the blank. I'd leave blanks at significant points in the story,
and one of the children eventually took over the telling of the whole
story.
And I've heard children's songs. They start out life as natural singer/songwriters,
and they take joy in making up their songs. There usually comes a point
when they learn that their songs aren't very "good," and it
doesn't take long for them to stop creating the songs. You may or may
not remember that time in your own life, or even in your child's life.
It's very easy to forget in our culture.
But I haven't forgotten, and I know many other adults who haven't. And
when I hear adults say "I'm not creative," I know it's not true.
I don't try to bully these adults into showing their creativity; the events
that have resulted in their (and sometimes children's) belief that they
haven't been touched by any Muses are quite formidable.
But I've listened to many children, and they all start out making up stories
and songs. It's a very natural part of life - one that prevails in some
cultures, and in some, like ours, is subtly (or not so subtly) discouraged.
I'm not going to ask you to make up songs and stories for your children.
If you've already learned that you can't, I'm not going to try, in one
little article, to get you to unlearn that untruth. But I hope you can
hear your children's creations, and avoid passing on the myth of non-creativity
to your children. Hugs 176.
Our culture is quite ambivalent about hugs, and about physical contact
in general. I suppose the ambivalence is partly due to our cultural diversity.
We are influenced by some cultures that are full of hugs, and by others
that hardly hug at all. Because culture is part of who we are, it's possible
to develop close friendships without knowing at what point, if ever, it's
okay to hug. Sooner or later, with good communication, the issue should
come up, or body language should make it clear that it's not an issue,
but it's surprising how deep a friendship can become before there are
any hugs or any attempts to deal with the issue.
Teaching young children nowadays adds another aspect to the issue. With
reports of sexual abuse of children by adults, many teachers are careful
not to touch children. As a teacher, I have always tried to be available
for hugs without soliciting them. Some children have hugged me,
and I've hugged back. I've often felt like hugging a child, after an incident
when the child did or said something endearing, but I almost always used
words to express my feelings; I left it up to the child to initiate a
hug.
With children, as with adults, culture is a factor, and I noticed clear
differences in the number of hugs, depending on geography. When I taught
in Acton, Massachusetts, there weren't many hugs. In Monroe, New York,
most children hugged most teachers. In Wellesley, hugs were quite rare,
but that may also have been due to the time; by the time I taught in Wellesley,
abuse had surfaced as an issue.
We are not only products of our cultures; we are also individuals. Some
children, regardless of the cultural norms they grew up with, want or
don't want to hug and be hugged. Some are tactilely defensive, and are
very uncomfortable about any physical contact. Some are quite the opposite,
and seem to need lots of hugs.
We like to have rules of thumb. We like to be able to know what to do
in any situation. But this subject, like many others, does not lend itself
to any rules of thumb. Your friend may be wondering why you seem so physically
distant and yet so personally close. Or maybe your friend wishes you wouldn't
be so physical about your affection. You may also have strong feelings
about all this.
With adults so ambivalent about physical contact, it's got to be confusing
for some children, too. I think it's important to pay close attention
to children, and make sure they somehow get the right message about how
much we care for them. Adults, too. And that message may or may not be
effectively delivered by a hug.
The Teachers' Room 177.
In most schools, there is a place where teachers can go to be away from
non-teachers. They sit around a table or on a couch and talk freely. We
(I almost wrote "you") non-teachers are fine people; we shouldn't
be offended. But it's nice for teachers to know that there is one place
where they can hang out and hang loose. The parents may not mean to apply
pressure and create stress. The children may really care about their teachers,
and want teachers' lives to be easy. But the teachers' room, when free
of non-teachers, is a place where that lack of stress, that ease can happen.
Teachers are conditioned to speak and behave differently when parents,
children and other non-teachers are around. They occasionally change the
subject quickly if an outsider enters the room. In many ways, we're all
in the same boat, but there are things teachers just don't say or do when
non-teachers are around. Sometimes a teacher is a parent. One year, I
taught in the school where my daughter was a student. I never heard mention
of my daughter's name in the teachers' room (though I'm quite sure only
positive things would have been said about her).
Granted, some of the things said in the teachers' room may be things that
should never be said. They should never even be thought. Occasionally,
there are nasty thoughts about people that get verbalized in the teachers'
room, and verbalizing them sometimes does more harm than good. But even
some nasty thoughts are better when they're given some fresh air.
As a volunteer, I sometimes eat lunch with children, and sometimes with
teachers. I don't think I'm being a double agent, and when I spend time
with some of the parents after school, I don't think I'm being a triple
agent. Sometimes I invite the principal to parties I have. I don't think
that makes me a quadruple agent.
But there are times when I sense that there is something trying to happen
in the teachers' room, and my presence there is stopping it from happening.
I am not employed by the school system. Teachers don't have to answer
to me; I'm not in a position to evaluate them.
But from a teacher's point of view, maybe I'm someone who will talk to
parents about what I hear. Maybe I'll write an article about it. And so
I make a point of listening for those times, and finding a way to make
a subtle exit, leaving the teachers' room as a sanctum. I urge you to
do the same. Most of the discussions that take place in that sanctum,
whether they're about teaching or not, help to make school a better place
for everyone who enters the building.
Substitutes 178.
On some days, your child walks into the classroom and sees an unfamiliar
adult face. The teacher isn't there, and some other adult is there instead.
For some children, once in a while, this is a treat. Either a day without
the teacher is not such a bad idea, or this particular substitute is fun
to be with. Or both.
But usually, it's not such a treat. Some children are angry at the teacher:
what right does she/he have to be away? The teacher belongs here, with
the class. Some children are worried: is our teacher okay? Will we ever
see our teacher again? Some are quietly sad: I miss my teacher. My teacher
makes me feel good.
The relative stranger who walks into this situation has a hard job to
do. For many substitutes, the job is akin to being a professional enemy.
The substitute did not personally see to it that the teacher got sick,
or had to attend some conference or workshop, but there is no one else
to blame. The substitute must cope with the situation, either by following
the plans left by the teacher, by coming in with his/her own plans, or
by winging it.
The day, no matter how well planned, is somewhat unpredictable. There's
no telling how each child will react to this strange adult. And for the
children there's no telling how this adult will react to unusual behaviors
that are already old hat to the regular teacher.
A child may have strong convictions about the way the day is "supposed
to be," and the plans left by the teacher won't be enough evidence
to contradict this child's preconceptions. To this child, there's a certain
way things ought to be done, and there's no substitute for the teacher.
The substitute is only a babysitter, or stepparent, and the teacher had
better hurry back and make things right again. School is hard enough without
having the teacher - the one stable force - doing something else somewhere
else.
There are all sorts of situations and factors that contribute to a person's
decision to become a substitute teacher. It's not pure masochism. And
substitutes are teachers. They often have that same sense of mission,
that same love for children, that many teachers have. But it's a hard
job - not one I'd want. So next time you're getting a gift for your child's
teacher, get one for a substitute, too.
Do You Work? 179.
Once, a representative of the phone company was asking me some routine
questions. One of them was what kind of work I did. Another was whether
my wife worked. At the time, we had two children, both under four years
old. I knew what the representative meant, but I could not bring myself
to give the simple, expected, inaccurate answer. I said that my wife did
work. When asked what kind of work my wife did, I started to list some
of the work I knew was involved in parenting two young children, and in
trying to maintain a household on our limited budget. For someone who
had not yet done much of the work myself, I think I did a pretty good
job on the spur of the moment.
Raising children is work. The decision to have children is partly a decision
to work. There are all kinds of joys involved in spending time with children,
and people usually don't get paid to raise their own children. I guess
those three facts - the joy, the lack of pay, and the fact that it's so
often the result of a decision (many people have children because they
want to) - make some people think it's not work.
Some people interpreted the feminist message to mean that staying home
and raising children was not a good way for a woman to spend time. It
wasn't so bad for a man: that would count as a feminist gesture. There
was also a Zero Population Growth movement that seemed to be gaining momentum
when my daughters were toddlers. We kept getting the feeling that people
felt there was something wrong with our way of living.
Being male, I'm not the ideal voice of feminism. But I've spent my life
working with children, and there's not a bit of doubt in my mind that
teaching and parenting are work. I think teachers and parents are the
most powerful people in the world - much more powerful than mere presidents,
kings, and corporate executives. With that power comes awesome responsibility;
the future is nothing to take lightly.
The joy that often comes with parenting is payment. Money would be useful,
and when it talks, people listen. But so far, most places haven't figured
out how to earmark sufficient funds specifically for parenting. And the
decision to become a parent, when it is a well-made decision, is pretty
major; it's not just a whim.
Once the decision has been made to help build the future by raising children,
there's lots of work to be done. Sure, money has to be earned, but that's
only part of the job. And so when I got that routine question from the
phone company's representative, my answer was, "Yes, my wife works."
Missing Family Life 180.
I have to admit that some holidays make me miss family life. During most
of the year, I'm glad to be free and alone, welcoming visitors when they
show up, but knowing that they're only visitors, and I'll soon be free
again to do whatever I feel like doing, not having to answer to anybody.
Though lonely holidays can be a price I must pay for that freedom, for
me, it's worth it.
But when a nearby family invites me to spend a holiday with them, I don't
say no. At holiday time, I'll take whatever family feeling I can get.
When a family works well, home is a great place to be, even if it isn't
your own home. The excited voices of children are a treasure, even if
they aren't your own children (or grandchildren). It's nice to have other
adults around to enjoy the children, too, and to enjoy each other.
Part of the reason there's no place like home for the holidays is that
it's sort of understood, in most families, that holidays are not times
to bring up problems. It's when you're supposed to remind people how much
you care about them. As long as there's even a chance that such a message
is true, and will be believed, holidays lend themselves to the suspension
of any disbelief.
I remember the excitement my children felt as holidays approached. I like
to think the excitement was mostly about the good times we'd spend together
- the warmth, and the feeling that we'd all be together. But I know the
good food and the presents didn't hurt. And as long as I'm confessing
things, let me confess that I sometimes got some great presents, and ate
some great food.
Most of my articles give you some suggestions to help you think things
out. I didn't start this article with that goal in mind. But I realize,
now, that there are some suggestions hiding in this article: before you
start a family, do your best to make sure you'll be able to keep it. And
before you end one, make sure you're ready for the time you'll spend without
it.
As holidays approach, I let myself feel some sadness about not being part
of a cozy nuclear family, all under one roof. I make sure I have a place
to go - that I can be part of some other family's festivities. I'm not
sitting around too often while so much of the rest of the world is celebrating.
But I do miss being with my own family during the holidays.
The Joy of Teaching 181.
Teaching gets in your blood. Once a teacher, always a teacher. Of course,
everybody is a teacher, to some degree. When you say something, sign something,
write something, or even just exist, you sometimes get somebody to know
something they didn't already know, or something they didn't know they
knew. Teaching is a natural part of living. But for some people (myself
included), teaching is one of the main reasons for being here.
Some people think we teach because we're so noble. We are paid less than
some people who don't work as hard (but also more than some people who
work harder). I'll accept that compliment, but I don't think I do it to
be noble. It's fun to do, and it makes me feel good. I don't think there's
anything particularly noble about wanting to have fun and feel good. I'm
lucky that I don't get my kicks in ways that are less socially acceptable.
Then I wouldn't get as many nobility points.
I'm having fun teaching a neighbor how to speak English without an accent.
I told you about that a few weeks ago. I like teaching, I like language,
and I like my neighbor. Teaching English diction to someone who is used
to Slavic diction is a fascinating process. It gets me to rethink some
of what children go through, and what we all went through, as we learned
our native languages.
And of course, there's my volunteering at the Fort River School, and my
volunteer tutoring after school. I hope I never have to ask for money
again. When I get paid (though it does help pay bills), I find myself
focussing less on the real reasons I teach.
I do remember that there are things teachers have to do that they wish
they didn't have to do. That's true of all lines of work. I think people
all over the place occasionally dream about the great and glorious things
they could do if they didn't have to do what they already do to earn a
living. There were plenty of times I had those dreams.
But my dreams seem to have mostly come true, and it's a little surprising
how similar they are to what I was already doing. I know the message I'm
about to give you is a little like telling the parent of a fussing baby
to treasure the time he/she has with this little bundle of joy. It's easier
to say when you're not the one dealing with the little bundle of joy.
But really, teachers, keep in mind, as you carry your piles of papers
home to correct, or spend sleepless nights trying to figure out how to
solve a problem you're having with a child, that you're doing a job some
people dearly wish they could do - that it's exciting, important work.
Don't forget about the joy.
The Accidental Teacher 182.
The title of this article ("The Accidental Teacher," for those
of you who are reading my column in the newspaper, and so may not get
to see the titles) came to me before I had any idea what I was going to
write about. Sometimes that happens, and I have to let it happen. I must
have known it was going to lead to an article; I didn't start writing
"Teacher in the Rye," or "A Teacher Grows in Brooklyn."
I guess I'll be an accidental writer for a while. It's not a great risk;
if the article doesn't work, I'll erase it.
In my last article, I wrote that everyone's a teacher, to some degree.
I realize that such a statement can sound quite presumptuous to someone
who does not agree. Sorry about that. But not sorry enough to take it
back. I'll stand by the statement. I don't mean you should work in a school,
or work with young children. I know adults who don't want anything to
do with either, and I think they ought to follow their bliss, and not
do what they don't want to do.
If an opthalmologist told me that everyone's an opthalmologist, to some
degree, I wouldn't immediately connect with the statement, although I'll
bet a case could be made for it. Let's see. We all have eyes, and we're
all interested in whether our eyes work as well as we want them to...
Oh, never mind.
But really, everyone's a teacher, to some degree. It may be fun, occasionally,
to know things other people don't know. For a while, you can smile knowingly.
You can even smirk smugly. But sooner or later, you probably want to be
recognized, in some way, for having that knowledge, and in order to get
the credit you deserve, you have to let other people in on the knowledge.
And more to the point, what you know can do more, and grow, if you spread
it around. To do that, whether you mean to or not, you end up teaching.
And so you're a teacher.
As you teach, you sometimes discover that your pupil or pupils don't seem
to be learning what you're trying to teach. Some education professor told
me, years ago, that if I'm not getting people to learn, I'm not teaching.
In a way, that's mean. If I plan my lessons carefully, deliver them thoughtfully,
and have a system for evaluating the success of my lessons, I should be
allowed to call that teaching. If people don't learn from what I do, I
should be allowed to blame them, not myself.
Yet in another way, actual teaching does have to result in actual learning.
The plans we write for our classes, if they're well-conceived, ought to
be more likely to cause learning than the random events and dialogues
that occur elsewhere.
But there are accidental teachers all around - teachers who don't write
lesson plans, and may not even think they're teaching. Moreover, there
are teachers who do write plans, but end up teaching things they didn't
plan to teach - may not even know they're teaching. Accidental teachers.
Playgrounds 183. Outside most schools I know, there are playgrounds. To
me, that means planners think school is an appropriate place for children
to play. I couldn't agree more. If you watch children at play, you may
notice that young humans play the same way other young animals play -
they imitate adults. They know that they're destined to some day be adults,
and they're practicing. Play is work.
Watch any group of adults, and imagine them as children on a playground.
It won't take long to guess which adults used to get to the swings first,
and maybe refused to give anyone else a turn. Maybe you'll be able to
tell which ones used to keep forgetting to bring a jumprope from home,
and ended up having to borrow one. It's not that these ideosyncrasies
are indelible. Proactive supervision of the playground can have an effect
on children's behaviors and attitudes just as reading lessons can help
children learn to read.
I like Robert Fulghum's book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,
but for me, second grade had some important moments, too. So did sixth
grade. I guess, compared to Fulghum, I was a slow learner. I remember
a lot about recess. We played a game called Keep Away. I did not like
the game at all. The object of the game was to get the playground ball.
Once you got it, the object was to keep it. What I learned from Keep Away
was that some people are into that kind of thing. I wasn't, but I wanted
to be with the other kids, and that's what they were all playing.
As I watched children playing at recess, I tried to teach them what I
considered better ways to play. I saw baseball games in which three or
four highly skilled players were on one team and everyone else was on
the other team. I knew that situation from my childhood. I spent years
on the other team. Being one teacher trying to get three or four skilled
players to agree to fair teams reminded me of the hopeless situations
I faced as a child on the playground. "It's fair! We got only four
people, and they got thirteen!" And when teams were chosen the other
way, like most of you, I was always the last one picked. Mathematically
speaking, we couldn't have all been the last one chosen, but that's how
we remember it.
Luckily, there's playground equipment. Let's go over there and get away
from all this competition. Listen to the conversations going on on the
jungle gym. You'll learn a lot about the children. Ask a child who isn't
playing kickball, "Why don't you play kickball?" Maybe the child
feels excluded, has actually been excluded, doesn't want to play kickball,
or never even thought about it. There are all kinds of possibilities.
The bell rang. It's time to go in. To a child, recess comes at least three
times per day - before school, during recess, and after lunch. Technically,
the time before school shouldn't count, but every moment spent on that
playground counts. They're getting ready for the playgrounds life will
bring them later on. And they listen to the news. They know that Congress
sometimes gets a three-week recess. Cooperative Games 184.
My friend Mara Sapon-Shevin does workshops around the world on inclusion
and cooperation. She tells participants about the game "musical chairs,"
which, in its traditional form, is competitive, and results in more and
more exclusion. In a variation on this game, described by Mara, one chair
is removed each time the music stops, but no people are removed. Everyone
has to figure out a way to fit all the people on the remaining chairs.
That's more like it. We're all going to have to figure out a way to live
together on this planet, or we're in big trouble. When the music stops,
as it often does, we've got to figure out a way to make room for each
other. If each person's goal is just to make sure she/he has a place,
eventually there will be many more have-nots than haves everywhere. It
could easily be argued that such is already the case in most places.
I've written a few articles that have referred to competitive games. Those
games really are part of life as it's been so far. Professional sports,
Olympic sports, and the games organized by the neighborhood kids usually
create lots of losers. They create winners, too, and to some degree, they're
fun to play and fun to watch. I know many kind, gentle people who are
nevertheless into the thrill of victory (though not too many are crazy
about the agony of defeat).
I don't think we're going to quickly move to cooperative games. Competition
is too much a part of who we humans are, and perhaps especially who we
Americans are. For a long time, I thought I wasn't competitive, but I
was. I just wasn't a winner. Since I lost a lot, I thought I'd successfully
rejected competition. But a friend made me realize that losing is still
part of competition; if I'd completely rejected competition, I would be
neither a winner nor a loser.
A long time ago, a child I knew said to me, "It's not whether you
win or lose that counts. It's whether you win." It often seems that
way. We compete all the time against life's tendency to get in our way.
We push ourselves to do more than we can, and we sometimes end up winning.
When we do, it's a good feeling. But I think there are enough challenges
in just plain old living. I don't think we need to emphasize competition
against each other as much as we do. We can get where we're going without
stepping on each other.
A Difficult Subject 185.
I don't like writing about difficult subjects, but sometimes, though no
one is making me do it, the subject seems to demand to be written about.
As I do write, I hope that the people who read what I write, and understand
it, will be the ones who need to hear it, and that others will be uninterested.
Sometimes, I hear an adult say, "If I were just thirty years younger..."
I understand what they mean. It would be very nice if people's attraction
to each other fell neatly into appropriate categories, but it doesn't
always do so. People have feelings they're not supposed to have, and they
have to make sure their superegos, not their ids, govern both their speech
and behavior.
It's important, when attraction comes the wrong way, to remember that
we're not thirty years younger (or forty, fifty, or whatever; the math
is not relevant). Some of that attraction may be appropriate and healthy.
It's probably not a coincidence that many teachers and parents often find
it easier to relate with children with whom they don't share a gender.
I don't know about gay and Lesbian teachers - whether they find it easier
to relate with children of their own gender.
But that natural attraction, when it happens, needs to be channeled in
ways that don't hurt people. We have to be very careful to avoid giving
anyone inappropriate attention. It can be difficult; in our lives outside
teaching and parenting, we've had our moments of yielding to attraction
(attraction to adults), and for some of us, great moments and years have
resulted. We're used to behaving in ways that reflect the attractions
we feel. Marriage often sets pretty clear boundaries, and adulthood ought
to set others.
I was seeing a movie, "The Man in the Moon," when I thought
of this subject. I wasn't doing anything wrong. But I'm not immune to
the tendency to wish I were forty years younger. When I hear about an
adult who has crossed over the boundaries, my first response is to condemn.
The speech and behavior that victimizes people needs to be condemned.
It's also important, though, to acknowledge that the feelings that sometimes
lead to that speech and behavior are common feelings. Ignoring them doesn't
make them go away. But recognizing them, and thinking clearly about them,
can help to keep children safe.
Taking Risks 186.
I've often heard it said that we should be encouraging children to take
risks. To me, there are three categories of risks - health risks, physical
risks, and personal risks - and I've usually shied away from the first
two and been fairly "brave" about the third. I would much rather
have my foot in my mouth than in a cast.
I think most of us agree that health risks are good things to avoid. We
don't want children to eat, drink, or inhale things that could be harmful
to their health. Some of us are more fanatic about that than others, and
there is lots of disagreement even among us fanatics: is dairy good for
people? Should people be eating meat? But the people I know who become
aware that their children's (and their own) health is at risk try to minimize
that risk.
Then there are the physical risks. I've heard the propaganda about grabbing
all the gusto you can. You only live once, they say. People have tried
to get me to try diving from the high board. I've been afraid of getting
hurt, or drowning. I have absolutely no regrets about not taking that
kind of risk. I've never broken a bone and had a cast. I've consciously
avoided getting physically hurt. Other people can have my share of that
kind of gusto. I don't want to live on the edge; I get enough enjoyment
away from the edge.
I realize that my wimpiness about physical risks is not something I'm
supposed to encourage in children, but if it's all right with you, I'd
rather have someone else watch them take physical risks. I don't want
them to break their legs, etc., and if I stayed to watch, I'm sure some
would pick up my attitude.
Personal risks don't seem as much like risks to me. I guess I put quotes
around "brave" in the first paragraph because personal risks
hardly phase me. Bravery is supposed to be about facing fears, and I haven't
been afraid to say things. If anything, I've been kind of reckless, and
had to learn, over the years, to be a little cautious.
I know how to get children to take that kind of risk. They have to feel
safe, and know that their feelings will be respected. When they're sure
about that, they are quite happy to take risks. Children with stage fright
are more willing to perform on stage if they know their fear is respected.
They'll give a tentative answer to a question if they know tentative answers
are okay - that mistakes are honored as learning tools.
I know we only live once. To me, though, that's one more time than I've
ever lived before, and I'm going to keep grabbing my kind of gusto. And
a big part of that is helping children grab some, too.
Bells 187.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote about bells. So did John Donne: "Ask not for
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." Pavlov did some work with
bells, and learned and taught us about conditioned responses. I sometimes
like to think his dogs were secretly conditioning him to ring bells by
salivating whenever he did it. Bells have been part of human society and
culture for a long time. Cave dwellers probably discovered that loud sounds
could be made by hitting certain objects, and those sounds were probably
often useful, often musical. It's ironic (pun intended) that so many years
later, there are still people into heavy metal.
Schools used to have bells up on the top, which were rung when it was
time to come to school. The bells were rung by people, and they echoed
throughout the countryside, telling Tom Sawyer, Laura Ingalls Wilder,
and everyone else that it was time to get to school. When we figured out
how to rig up bells that didn't have to be rung by people, we started
using bells a lot more. Bells in elementary school told us when to come
into school, when we were late, when to go to lunch, when to come back
inside after lunch recess, and when to go home. In junior high and high
school, bells told us when each period started and ended.
I once worked in an elementary school that was run by the teachers. The
principal was a leader, but not the way principals are usually leaders.
He was not our boss. We, in a way, were his boss. It was refreshing. One
of our decisions, that year, was not to use bells. We decided that bells
were intrusive, and caused unnecessary stress. We all had watches, and
knew how to tell time. We didn't need bells.
If you walked into the school, you were immediately impressed by the peaceful
atmosphere. The absence of bells was not the only reason for this atmosphere,
but it certainly contributed. Children got involved in projects, and there
wasn't any mechanical tyrant to tell them to get uninvolved. We did have
some things scheduled, like lunch, special events, and dismissal, but
we didn't need bells.
This subject is not one of my major crusades. I just thought you'd like
to know that bells, which we take for granted in schools, are not inevitable.
It is possible to eliminate the loud alarum bells, and doing so can make
time flow nicely instead of jerk and jar. I challenge schools to try it.
I offer the No-Bell Peace Prize to any school bold enough to give it a
try.
The Trying Game 188.
I've written lots of prose for this column, but one of my poems, "The
Trying Game," says part of what I want to say in this article. So
I'll start with the poem:
We try. No matter what, we try.
From when we're born till when we die.
We try to be, or try to do,
Though I'm just me, and you're just you.
The effort, and the strength we ask
Is either equal to the task
Or somehow, paradoxically,
Our limitations set us free,
As leaves, which insecurely cling
To promises once made by spring,
In autumn gracefully let go,
And form a tablecloth below,
Embroidered with tomorrow's seeds -
With maple fringe and acorn beads.
I'm not quite sure from whence it came -
This queer, confusing trying game.
We try to work, or try to rest
(Whichever trying we do best).
Surrendering, with firm resolve,
Our limitations all dissolve.
We fail, we mourn, we die, and then
We get up, and we try again.
I meant the poem for adults, but I realized, after talking with a friend,
that it's for children too. Of all the objections I've had to grades and
report cards, I object most of all to the effort grade. It's the worst
invasion of privacy. Everybody tries. What we see as laziness is effort
we don't like. Children who don't seem to be trying get negative feedback
from adults, and are often driven further into shells that look like laziness.
I remember bringing home report cards that had good performance grades,
but bad effort grades. I later learned that I'd done well on IQ tests,
and deduced that teachers had thought someone as intelligent as I was
should have had even better performance grades. So I must not have been
trying.
I don't know whether it's true that everyone tries as hard as possible,
but when I teach, I operate on the assumption that they do. We can't look
inside people to see what their effort looks like (or whether it's there),
but I really don't think we have the right to say that they're not trying.
When teachers say that, I think they're taking the easy road; I think
it's lazy to say children are lazy. A child who seems lazy needs some
extra teaching, and so does any teacher who thinks that child is lazy.
The Right Question 189.
Sometimes, when a particular child is a challenge, a teacher can spend
an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with a successful approach.
Teachers - especially experienced teachers - often have vast repertoires
of strategies, and want to make sure they've exhausted these repertoires
before asking for help. It's partly a matter of pride, and partly a matter
of convenience. Asking for help can feel like a sign of weakness, and
besides, who has time to ask for help when they're busy trying to solve
problems?
When a teacher can't seem to find the answer to a question about a child,
it's possible that he/she could be asking the wrong question. A simple
example is "Why can't Rufus pay attention?" A more useful question
would be "What strategies could be effective in helping Rufus learn
to attend better?" "Pay attention" is an unfortunate phrase;
one can only pay what one has, and for some children, attention is scarce,
and paying it had better yield immediate and satisfying results.
My friend, Ann Morse, is an expert at asking questions. She has spent
most of her adult life working with children who have special needs, and
with the parents and teachers of these children. Teachers and other humans
have a tendency to think that answers, not questions, are intelligent,
but Ann and many other consultants have taught me that asking the right
question can reveal answers that may be much closer and simpler than we
ever imagined.
Questions, at first, may not seem to be what are needed. The minds of
inexperienced teachers may feel too full of questions. They want answers.
And when teachers have been teaching for many years, they can start to
believe that they've already asked all the important questions. They want
answers, too. They feel as if they've already exhausted their own resources,
and they want someone else to come along with some new resources.
I know it can be irritating, in times of crisis, to be asked questions.
When you're down and troubled, you want someone to come along and say,
"Here's what you should do." And you want it to be something
you've never thought of. But teachers very often already have the answers,
and don't know it. Their years of experience and their intelligent minds
are filled with creative and appropriate answers, just waiting for the
right question.
Passing the Buck 190.
We don't like to think we cause problems. We don't like to think we even
contribute to them. When we see problems, we like to solve them. If we're
not successful, we like to find someone to blame. Scapegoating has caused
some of the ugliest chapters in history, but it's also pretty common in
everyday life. It's so much easier, when we can't make things right, to
lay the blame on someone else who is presenting insurmountable obstacles.
And so a child who is having trouble in school can become a bone of contention
between parents and educators. The parents may believe that the child
has no problem, or has a problem that is easy to manage. The real problem,
think these parents, is that the teacher, the school, or the school system
is incompetent - unable and/or unwilling to resort to simple solutions
that work fine at home.
Meanwhile, the teacher and other school personnel may be convinced that
the child's problem, or the difficulty in solving it, is mainly due to
a mismatch; the child has the wrong parents. These parents, thinks the
teacher, don't know their own child - can't see the solution that's staring
them in the face.
The disagreements between school personnel and parents can sometimes turn
into battles. Both usually have the child's best interests in mind, but
neither thinks the other does. Perhaps one wants the child to get extra
help outside the classroom and the other doesn't. Or one thinks the child
is being underchallenged. Parents, especially, have a tendency to think
their children are geniuses, (Mine certainly are. Well, obviously, they
had to be. Look at the gene pool.) and whatever trouble they're having
in school has to do with boredom.
Imagine how children must perceive these battles. Children usually love
both their parents and their teachers. When these important adults in
children's lives seem to be at war, it can feel somewhat similar to what
children feel as their parents go through divorce. Loyalty to parents
is, of course, stronger, but teachers are still important to children.
I propose a truce. I suggest that educators and parents listen to each
other - really listen. Not just let each other have their say. Once in
a while, a parent or teacher may not have the needs of the child at heart,
but there's a lot to be gained by trusting each other as long as possible.
Boredom 191.
I've often heard children say they're bored. When I first started hearing
it, I took it quite personally. I was their teacher. An exciting, dynamic
teacher, I thought. I'd had boring teachers, and I certainly wasn't in
their league. I thought I should hurry up and become more exciting, more
dynamic.
I later learned that children use the words "bored" and "boring"
to describe a multitude of problems, and while it sometimes may help to
try to be a little more exciting and dynamic, that's only a piece of the
solution, and not always an appropriate piece.
"Bored" may actually mean "frustrated" or "baffled."
A child may be "bored" because he/she can't understand what
"everyone else" (seldom an accurate phrase) understands. It's
hard for a child to say, "I don't understand what we're doing because
I'm not smart enough," but that's what may actually be going on in
a child's mind. It's easier to say, "I'm bored," or, "This
is boring," and to the child, that complaint is accurate enough.
"Bored" can also mean "uninterested" because what
is being taught is "too easy." Sometimes, though a teacher may
try to plan lessons that cater to children's ability levels and learning
styles, a lesson misses the mark,
and teaches children what they already know well. This phenomenon can
thrill some children; it's a relief, sometimes, to be able to coast through
a lesson. But eventually, children want challenge. Learning is fun, and
"learning" what has already been learned can be a drag.
A lesson can be boring even though it's neither too easy nor too hard.
It can be unrelated to anything that touches children's lives. Children
do get excited about other forms of life, other cultures, other times,
and so on, and when they get excited, they start to connect. But if connecting
is too difficult, they end up bored.
The teacher's voice and style can also lead to boredom. Teaching styles
and learning styles vary, and teachers need to keep that in mind in planning
lessons. There are many teachers in each class, and often only one of
them is an adult. The adult is in charge of coordinating the learning
experiences, but even if the adult is totally fascinating, most children
are not able to stay fascinated by one person all day. It does get boring.
I haven't told you all the possible ways to interpret "boring"
and "bored." I think to do so would require more space than
I have, and more to the point, it would require more time focussing on
this issue. And it's getting boring. But I ask you to treat children's
complaints of boredom not as problems, but only as symptoms of problems.
How Many More Roads? 192.
"How many more roads?" is a question many parents have heard.
If you're on US 1, the answer can be misleading. What the impatient child
really wants to know is how much more time will pass before you all get
where you're going, but seconds, minutes, and hours are not concrete enough;
roads are (sometimes literally). Sitting in the back seat of a car for
a long time, no matter how well you plan, is not easy.
I'll bet some of you are hoping I'll have some helpful hints on this subject.
Sorry. No hints. When my daughters were young children, we did the same
things you probably did, do, or will do. We brought games along, told
stories, sang songs, and hoped they would find ways to amuse themselves
and maybe - just maybe - fall asleep.
When we came to a place that had bathrooms, we stopped, and hoped that's
when they would decide that they needed to use the bathroom. We bought
junk food at fast food restaurants, because that's the kind of food you
could buy on the highways that got you where you were going in a reasonable
amount of time. Besides, when they were little, I hadn't yet discovered
health food.
I remember sitting in the back seat during long trips when I was a child.
I don't remember complaining about how boring it was, but I'll bet my
parents remember. What I remember were Burma Shave signs. I thought it
was so neat that they put funny little rhymes along the road - one line
on each little red sign for about a quarter of a mile: "Statistics
prove....near and far....that folks who drive....like crazy are....Burma
Shave." And I remember trying to find license plates from all fifty
states. We were so excited when we finally found Hawaii.
It was fun to sleep in motels. Little cabins, or rows of tiny little rooms.
I remember getting up before everyone else, and walking on the wet, dewy
lawn near a motel. And then, when everyone else was awake, we had greasy
breakfasts that I loved. The food probably didn't taste any better than
the food we had at home, but it seemed better because we were in some
exotic place, like South Dakota, or Utah.
My family only went on a few long trips - maybe five in eighteen years.
But I enjoy remembering those trips. It was time when all we could be
was a family; there wasn't anybody else around that we knew. I remember
my sister Sue asking how many more roads, but I don't remember asking.
Just a little bit of nostalgia. Maybe you never got to travel with your
family. Maybe you did, but you went by plane. I don't know why I told
you all this. I guess I just thought you'd be interested.
On the Other Hand 193.
I like to agree with people I like, and some of my favorite people believe
that full inclusion of people with special needs in the regular classroom
is the way to go. The problem is, some others of my favorite people say
no, it isn't. I've been a crusader for full inclusion - not as long or
as fully as some of my friends, but I've believed, and still believe,
that it's wrong to remove a child from class for special instruction.
But I've been listening to people who disagree. That's easier to do when
you're not on the front lines of a crusade. And now, I want to present
the other side of the issue. I think I'll do it better than I would do
defending racism, sexism, or militarism, because I don't think full inclusion
boils down as easily into a question of right and wrong.
I have multiple sclerosis, and so far, I've wanted to live, work, and
spend my spare time among people most of whom don't have multiple sclerosis.
I've been moved by the degree of understanding I've experienced; people
see or ask what's difficult for me, and do their best to make things easier.
Some are more sensitive than others. Some are even downright insensitive.
There are times when even my good, sensitive friends want to hike in the
woods, or dance. And some of my friends live in places that are hard for
me to get to. Having been TAB (Temporarily Able Bodied) for most of my
life, I understand the TAB mindset. I don't like labelling people this
way, and I don't intend to use "TAB" very often, but I do notice
that even the most sensitive people I know have their own priorities,
which sometimes exclude me.
I want my friends to continue to dance and hike. I want them to live in
their third floor apartments, where they've come to feel at home. I don't
want my own disabilities to make major changes in their lives. I don't
want my friends to get all excited about going somewhere, and then have
to decide not to. Or to do it some other time, when I'm not around. During
my more able days, I've made accommodations for people with disabilities,
and I remember how much of a relief it was when I didn't have to.
When a child has severe special needs, accommodations have to be made.
There's a lot to be gained by making those accommodations - gains for
the more able children, the less able, and the adults. But it does mean
making adjustments, some of which aren't easy to make, and can annoy people
who aren't disabled.
I could have let that be the final paragraph, but I want to reaffirm my
commitment to full inclusion. I don't want to move into disabled housing.
I don't want to spend all my time with people who all have the same disabilities
I have. And I don't want children to be removed from classrooms because
they don't learn the way other children learn. But I don't think people
who want to bring children with special needs to special places are the
enemy.
Reports 194.
One of the many rituals in schools is the report. Children are asked to
learn about a subject or read a book, and then teach other children about
the subject or book. Reports can be written, spoken, or both. They can
include visual displays, demonstrations, and countless other devices.
Children who may have difficulty with other activities in school may excel
at reporting. And vice versa.
There's a tendency, among some teachers and parents, to believe that there
is a "right" way to do reports. That there is a certain amount
of parent involvement that is ideal. That note cards must be used. That
all good reports must include posters. The list goes on, and varies from
parent to parent, teacher to teacher.
When I was in elementary school, I saw what I thought was a great report
a classmate did. It included a diarama in a wooden box. I decided at that
moment that the way to do a good report was to get a good wooden box,
and my parents obligingly provided a great wooden box. I used it for several
reports, and though teachers didn't seem to be impressed, I thought that
was their problem, not mine. To me, a good wooden box, appropriately painted
and decorated, was a good report.
Since then, I've been to undergraduate college and graduate school. I
didn't do any wooden-box reports there. I'd learned my lesson pretty quickly
before junior high. Reports, it turned out, were speeches or papers, not
boxes or posters. Reporting was still not my forte, but I knew enough
to get by.
As a teacher, I tried hard to give children a better sense of what reporting
was all about than I'd gotten in elementary school. It took years to develop
a format that worked for me, but once my format started working, it was
pretty good, as were the reports kids did in my class. So I'll tell you
about my system. Since other systems didn't work in my class, I won't
be surprised if mine doesn't work in other classes.
First of all, I had children spend about a week deciding what to report
about. They had to pick a subject they didn't already know about, but
could learn about without too much trouble. Then they decided what they
wanted to learn, and dived into the subject. They read books, called experts
(when experts were available) - used whatever means they could think of.
I asked parents to use their own judgment in deciding how much to participate,
and to let me know how much they did. The note cards and posters looked
about the way such things usually look. Note cards, though, could not
be used during the report. Children could choose between three ways to
present the reports. They could speak directly to the class, speak to
me in a talk show format, or speak to me privately. Most chose the talk
show format.
I was quite impressed with the quality of the reports. But I offer this
system fully aware that it's only what worked for me. I encourage you
to figure out what works for you, and to avoid thinking that there's one
"right" way to do reports.
The Integrated Day 195.
I think the integrated day became popular in the early 1970's. It was
a "new" approach to organizing curriculum. I put quotes around
"new" because newness is usually relative, and because I believe
the integrated day is the way people first started learning. They got
interested in something (at first probably due to their animal needs)
and they pulled together whatever resources they needed to learn about
it. If they wanted to know whether something was edible, they did what
they needed to do to find out. They didn't wait until it was time for
science.
Since then, we've organized curriculum so that in most schools, there
is a specific time to study science, math, reading, etc. The various organizing
activities and policies grew out of needs educators felt. Many teachers
find it easier to teach children to read, for example, if all the children
in the room are learning about reading at the same time. Science experiments
often take up space, and often require a kind of attention that's difficult
when other things are going on.
And so, when you walk into a typical classroom, it doesn't take long to
figure out what's going on. It may be math time, reading time, writing
time - you can be pretty sure that all the children in the room are supposed
to be concentrating on the same category of learning.
That's not what integrated day is. Though the phrase is not used to describe
school programs as much as it was for a while, there are times in most
classrooms when learning is integrated, and there are still some teachers
and schools committed to an integrated approach. When you walk into such
a school or classroom, or arrive at such a time, you may see some children
creating a papier mache island. Other children are making musical instruments
to play calypso music. Some are reading about Caribbean islands. Some
are figuring out how long it would take to get to the Caribbean Sea by
plane.
This approach doesn't result in some children learning only music, others
only math. A skillful teacher knows how to bring children and learning
together using this approach. I've seen it happen. The integrated day,
done well, is planned - planned in a way that is amazing to see.
I've sometimes tried to use this integrated approach, and I've sometimes
succeeded. Most of the time, though, my classes all had math, reading,
etc. at the same time. For me, that made it easier to keep track of who
was learning what. But I admire teachers who are skilled at implementing
the integrated approach.
"Nobody Likes Me" 196.
Many children think they're unpopular. They think no one likes them. It
can actually be a form of egocentrism. We're used to thinking of egocentrism
as something obnoxious - something that does wonders for the individual's
self-esteem, sometimes at the expense of others'. But it can backfire.
It's possible to egocentrically think you're the only one nobody likes,
and everyone else likes each other. That's often what happens to children.
I've heard and seen it, and I remember being there myself.
The problem is more common than most people think. Children who seem to
be social butterflies are often secretly lonely. They see the signs of
their own popularity - the number of people who invite them to parties,
or try to sit with them at lunch - but they think they've pulled off a
hoax - that people have been temporarily duped into thinking they're likable.
Or they think people are only pretending to like them. Whatever the scenario,
they think, the truth will eventually surface, and seeming friends will
disappear.
Your child may verbalize this problem, and you may have to let it stick
around much longer than you'd like. You say, "Nonsense. Lots of people
like you." Then you start listing all the people who, in your opinion,
like your child. You hope your child will think, "Oh yes. Lots of
people do like me. I was mistaken. I'm pretty popular." But that
doesn't happen.
What I've sometimes found effective is acknowledging the feeling of isolation:
"I know how you feel. It can make you feel so sad when it seems as
if you have no friends." When you feel isolated, it can make you
feel even more isolated when someone tells you you're not alone. Of course,
it depends on the person. Some children need to hear that they have friends.
They want you to list their friends. It's comforting.
After years of dealing with this myself (I almost wrote "coping,"
but I didn't always cope), I came to the point where I believed that people
liked me. And it's a self-fullfilling perception. It's easier to like
someone who feels liked. It's no fair. The people who need friends the
most are often the ones whose neediness keeps friends away.
We want to protect our children from pain, and most of us know the pain
of loneliness. You may think I'm confusing children with adolescents -
that children don't know this kind of pain yet. But I'm convinced that
they do. And even though we can make some things right for our children,
sometimes all we can do is acknowledge the pain they feel. That doesn't
seem like much, but it does help.
Fear 197.
I don't think there's anything fun or funny about fear. Children do love
Halloween, and some may think they love its scariness, but I think it's
the candy, the costumes, and the chance to stay out "late" that
they love (Actually, Halloween always seems to come right after the clocks
are set back, so it seems later than it is). Some dress up as vampires,
ghosts, and witches, but I think at least as many dress up as thoroughly
unscary characters.
As for horror movies, I don't think the reason they're popular is that
people like to be scared. I think it's that they like to not be scared
by things that someone thinks are scary. I think people who really get
scared by horror movies don't go to them. I've been to one horror movie
in forty-seven years, and I don't intend to go to any others.
There are many things to really be afraid of - things that really happen,
or could happen if we're not careful, or lucky. There could be a war,
a natural disaster, a disease, a crime. The real possibilities are numerous.
We really don't have to waste our fearing energy worrying about dead people
coming back to life to wreak revenge, or the person next door turning
into a giant cockroach. But that's what sells movie tickets.
Like many adults I know, I started out thinking that children liked to
be scared, so I scared them a little. I hid behind doors, and jumped out
and yelled, "Boo!" I told them spooky stories, using my spookiest
voice. I sang them spooky songs. Some of them liked it, and since I'm
a natural born ham, the more they liked it, the spookier I got. But I
think the ones who liked it weren't really scared.
Not every child liked it. There were worried faces. It took me a while,
but I came to realize that "scary" stuff is only fun if it isn't
really scary. Children are just trying out the world, and they're not
sure it's safe. In many ways, it isn't. They're not ready to hear all
about that yet, and they certainly don't need to hear scary fantasy. When
they've learned to distinguish fantasy from reality, scary fantasy may
turn out to be fun. But that doesn't have to happen on any particular
schedule. We don't owe it to children to teach them how to stay calm while
they watch horrifying scenes.
I hope movie producers and directors hear what I'm saying. Probably not,
though. They see that movies that scare children bring in a lot of money.
Peer pressure pulls children to movies they secretly would rather not
see. We may speak for the children's right to be entertained sensitively.
We may be articulate, and speak with determined voices. But the ticket
sales speak for themselves.
Punishment 198.
In strictly behavioristic language, a punishment is an event that decreases
the frequency of a behavior, and a reward is an event that increases the
frequency. I'm not a strict behaviorist - far from it - but I do like
the simplicity and practicality of those definitions. They explain a lot
about why certain things work or don't work with children.
For example, take sending a child to her/his room. If a child has done
something that the adult in charge does not like, and the adult prescribes
solitary confinement as the remedy, this is usually considered a punishment.
What's supposed to happen is that the child suffers from loneliness and/or
boredom, and is then less likely to repeat the undesirable behavior.
But that isn't what happens. Good can come from the isolation: the adult
and child get to spend some time away from each other, and if absence
doesn't make the heart grow fonder, at least it can take some of the edge
off the hostility. The adult doesn't resort to behaviors and statements
that could be more destructive than "Go to your room," and the
child, who usually has a fairly child-oriented room anyway, gets to snuggle
up with a stuffed animal, work on some project, or write angry words in
a diary.
But the event doesn't necessarily decrease the frequency of the behavior.
In my experience, punishments don't work unless they're done with precision.
I've seen them work, but only with a few children whose target behaviors
were extreme, and easy to notice. The punishments had to be quite consistent.
The child had to know, without a doubt, that a certain event would result
in a certain other event that would be undesirable. This requires having
an adult whose job it is to notice that child's behavior. One teacher
responsible for an entire class may be able to do it, but I haven't met
that teacher yet.
There's another aspect to this issue. The adult is a model. I keep telling
you that, because it's true, important, and easy to forget. When it comes
to punishment, the adult has to behave in a way that can serve as a model
for the child's behavior. So hitting is an unacceptable punishment. Whatever
event the adult decides on has to meet two criteria: it has to decrease
the frequency of the undesirable behavior, and it has to be an acceptable
model for the child to follow.
That ain't easy. That's why, as a teacher, I learned to use rewards and
praise as much as I could, and with varying degrees of success, tried
to avoid punishing. If I couldn't do it right, I wanted to try to avoid
doing it at all. With less success, I also tried to parent that way. Good
luck.
A Gift for the Teacher 199.
It's hard for a teacher to have a policy about accepting gifts from parents
and children. On the one hand, teachers don't want gifts to do some of
the negative things gifts can do. They don't want anyone to think they're
for sale - that good grades and preferential treatment go to the highest
bidder. And they don't want any other kind of competition, or the traumas
that accompany it, to go on. No child should feel that appreciation of
and love for the teacher has to be expressed through a gift.
On the other hand, gifts happen, and they sometimes say important things.
A child spends an hour painstakingly drawing a picture for the teacher,
hoping that the special feeling the child has can be communicated by the
picture. Or by the doohickey the child made. I've sometimes received homemade
doohickeys, and though I've often been at a loss to figure out what they
were, I've responded gushingly - sometimes speechlessly (words would have
failed me), but gushingly.
And there are the store-bought doohickeys. A "doohickey," for
those of you unfamiliar with the term, is a thing that may or may not
have any particular purpose, but serves as a sentimental symbol. Both
homemade and store-bought doohickeys may eventually end up in dumpsters,
but not in the dumpster near the school, and the thought, which is what
counts, never ends up in any dumpster.
Mugs deserve a category of their own. I have enough mugs to serve as many
people as can comfortably fit in my apartment. When I have a big party,
the World's Greatest Teacher sits between My Favorite Teacher and A Teacher
With Class, and occasionally sips some tea. And that's after giving most
of my mugs to other people over the years, and losing or breaking some.
I have no illusions that I am, in fact, the best teacher in the world;
often I see that a fourth grade teacher has gotten a similar mug after
a child has had time to take me off the pedestal. I'm not at all cynical
about all of this, but I know that feelings do have to adjust to make
way for new feelings.
There's one more category I can think of now. Some parents can afford,
or buy whether or not they can afford, expensive gifts for teachers. When
I've gotten those gifts - gift certificates, clothes, etc., I've sometimes
temporarily forgotten that it's the thought that counts. I've turned back
into the child who got a bike for Hannukah, overflowing with gratitude,
eager to get outside, cold and snow notwithstanding, and try the bike.
I've usually recovered in time to remember to gush equally about the homemade
doohickey.
It really is the thought that counts. Nowadays, I'm in the unusual position
(unusual, at least in our society) of having just about everything I want.
Children and parents still give me mugs and doohickeys. They remember
the volunteers when they're getting or making gifts. I hope that those
of you who do decide to give gifts remember student teachers, volunteers,
support staff, substitutes, etc. And I've given up on trying to figure
out what the policy should be, or whether there should even be one.
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