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.