Somatic Education 301.
I rarely liked gym class as a child or adolescent. I remember dodge ball games, where I was supposed to try not to get hit with the ball. If (when) I did get hit, I usually got knocked over. I remember the trampoline,
where I was supposed to rely on my sense of balance and my sense of adventure. As far as that kind of activity, I didn't have much of either. We played team sports, and sometimes that was a little more fun, but we knew we were being graded on how good we were, and I didn't have
a clue about how to get good at football, basketball, and all that. (I was okay at baseball. I think that was because my neighborhood was more of a baseball neighborhood.)
Al Capasso, on the other hand, was great at gym, and loved it. He was usually in my gym class - the only class I shared with him. When the gym teacher introduced new skills, he used Al Capasso to demonstrate. Al made it look easy - easy for him. The muscles on his arms bulged and rippled as he did pull-ups or climbed ropes, and the rest of us, to varying degrees, felt inadequate. Al smiled as he did what seemed impossible to us. But I'll bet he couldn't spell worth beans.
There were moments of glory for me. When we did cross country, everyone was supposed to run three miles - up to a dirt road, down the road to a path, and eventually back to the track, where we were supposed to finish with a lap. I was always one of the first ones done. So was Al,
but it clearly wasn't his forte. He was embarrassed to have people like me finish soon after he did.
Not much of what happened in gym class counts as what I consider education. "Physical fitness" was stressed, but we were taught that the way to get "physically fit" was to exercise. That's all. As far as I'm concerned, we didn't need a teacher for that. In fact, we usually referred to the "teacher" as "coach." And if we didn't go out for any sports after school, "coach" shouldn't have been such an appropriate title.
I know I'm not the only one with bad memories of physical education. I've talked with many friends who went through what I went through. But I wonder whether there's a better way to approach it. Caleb Gattegno, one of my mentors, used to talk about "somatic education." He described it as a way to help children get to know their own bodies. I've seen teachers who do that well. Their classes include football, yoga, dance, mime, basketball, cooperative games - anything that might help children get comfortable with their bodies. In my senior year in high school, I came down with mononucleosis. I couldn't participate in physical education classes for the rest of the year. I got my choice of several electives to take instead. Mostly for that reason, it was the best year I had in high school. But I'm convinced that a good somatic education program would have helped me, with or without mononucleosis. And it would help everyone else, too. Everybody has a body. That's why we're called "everybody.
The Honor Society 302.
There was one special day each year when some students in my high school were inducted into the National Honor Society. Parents of those who were going to be inducted were notified in advance, so that they could plan to attend the induction ceremony. But they weren't supposed to tell us they'd been notified. So I studied my parents' faces for the week before the ceremony. My mother insisted that she hadn't received anything, but she was supposed to insist that.
The day of reckoning came. Would my various grades, when averaged together, qualify me for consideration? What about teachers who didn't like me? Of course, they all claimed to like us all equally, but nobody was fooled by that. And what about gym? National Honor Society members were supposed to be well-rounded, and I'd never gone out for any sports. In fact, physical education was my worst subject. But maybe my involvement in music and drama would make up for that.
I told myself it didn't really matter if I didn't get in. True, most of my friends were probably going to get in, but some of them wouldn't. If I wasn't inducted, my true friends would still be my friends; only the superficial ones would snub me. But what if I didn't have as many true friends as I'd thought? Oh, come on! Membership in that society plus twenty-five cents would get me on to the subway in New York City (at that time, the subway fare was twenty-five cents for everyone). But I really wanted to see my parents sitting in the back of the auditorium, smiling proudly.
Getting into that club shouldn't have meant so much to me. There was already enough to worry about - getting the parts I wanted in plays, being a National Merit Scholar, getting into the college I wanted, and so on. I really didn't need this. Neither did my friends, who kept checking the back of the room to see whether their parents were there. We should have already known we were worthwhile, intelligent people. We should have learned that way before high school. But we kept checking the back of the auditorium.
Since that day, I've gone to college - the one I wanted to go to. I've gotten my master's degree, and several credits beyond it. I've gotten a straight A average in graduate school. I've written songs that have been sung by famous people, and articles that get read by lots of people. Some of them tell me I'm intelligent and wise. Nobody has asked me, during the past twenty years, whether I was ever inducted into the National Honor Society. I don't think they consider it very important.
I thought about ending this article the way Frank Stockton ended "The Lady or the Tiger," leaving you wondering whether I got in. That would be a cute literary device. But I won't do it. It wouldn't be nice. I didn't get in.

Field Trips 303.
A field trip is supposed to be a way to enhance curriculum. It can also be a way to give children and teachers a break from routine. And it can do both, and often does. Children benefit by learning from direct experiences, and schools have to rely heavily on vicarious experiences; they can't really bring the world into the classroom.
Unfortunately, many field trips only add to children's store of vicarious experiences. Children, teachers, and volunteer parents get on buses and are taken to a place designed for field trips. There are lectures, photo displays, charts, and maybe some hands-on experiences. There are lots of other children from other schools. Some are running around, making lots of noise. Some are waiting on line, hoping to get a chance to put their hands on the hands-on activities.
Some of the children have been to this place many times, with their parents and with other teachers. They've been there, done that. There may be some advantages to taking children to places that were designed for field trips: maybe they're safer, more age-appropriate, more convenient. But they don't necessarily offer something children haven't already gotten. And adults who accompany children to these places often hear complaints about this fact.
Occasionally, I've planned or witnessed another kind of field trip. Children studying a nearby city actually go to the city and see what it's like there. They don't go to the Children's Museum or the Museum of Natural History. Instead, they go to neighborhoods that are different from their own, and they see that there really are such neighborhoods. Or they go to some place where nature has been allowed to do its thing, and they see trees that are not labelled. I understand the fears many adults have about such field trips. There are reasons they choose to take children on the tried-and-true field trips. Some of adults' fears may be irrational, perhaps based on bigotry or other forms of ignorance. They worry that their children will be exposed to urban unrest, and be psychologically or physically harmed, or drown in the ocean, or be eaten by bears. I certainly didn't want any of that to happen to my children, or the children I taught.
I don't have an easy answer to this problem. The kind of field trip I have in mind would be an attempt to start to solve major societal problems that spring from ignorance of the natural world and the urban world. On the one hand, suburban parents want to make sure their children are safe. On the other hand, childhood is a good time to learn what life on earth is about, and there isn't some Museum of Life on Earth that will teach them that.

Busywork 304.
If teachers and everyone else involved in planning children's education were perfect, every moment each child spent in school would result in the best learning imaginable. Maybe there would still be some worksheets, but they would be so much better than some of the worksheets you and I have come in contact with. A lot of the worksheets we've seen can only be described in language I've avoided using in these articles. I don't think a perfect teacher would give children any word hunts to do. They can be fun for some children, but they don't do much to increase children's knowledge or skill.
But nobody's perfect. Some of the work teachers give children has very little substance to it. Its only purpose is to fill up some time. Sometimes the teacher is working with some children, and hasn't organized things so that other children are ready to be productive while they wait for their turn. Or some other planning problem has left a gap that has to be filled. The teacher can tell children to take out books and read, but that only works sometimes. At other times, busywork fills in the gaps.
As a teacher, I felt guilty any time I gave a child busywork to do. Even if it was busywork the child enjoyed. Children, like adults, can get plenty of enjoyment doing things that don't do them a bit of good. But no matter how hard I tried to plan every minute of the day, I always had gaps, and busywork was the easiest way to fill them in. I knew teachers who didn't seem to need busywork, and I admired them, but I knew many more who, like me, had places where they kept emergency supplies of word hunts, crossword puzzles, math fact drills, and other papers that may have been a little educational occasionally, but were mostly there to keep children occupied.
When we were children, most of us spent a lot of time doing busywork. Teachers sometimes actually developed rationales for it: word hunts help children develop their figure/ground perception and their spelling skill. And of course, children have to know their math facts, and drill is the only way to learn them. Many parents accept these rationales. In fact, some even complain if their children don't seem to be getting enough busywork.
But I don't believe that it's a good way for children to spend time. I forgive myself and other teachers who have used and still use busywork from time to time to make it through the day, just as I forgive myself and other parents who sometimes use the television as a babysitter. And people disagree about which work really counts as busywork. But let's try to avoid kidding ourselves about it, and let's try not too rely on it too much.

A Teachable Moment 305.
Teachable moments don't always happen according to the schedules in teachers' lesson plans. Learning is going on all the time, and good teachers have been known to teach great lessons that were never planned. They listen to children, and respond to what they hear by saying or doing things that guide children toward important concepts. And sometimes whatever is written in lesson plans, no matter how well-conceived, will just have to wait.
One of the many luxuries of being retired and volunteering in a school is that I don't have to write lesson plans any more. That means I can spend more time and energy noticing and responding to teachable moments. Since I'm not in charge of the class, I don't have to make sure child A, B, and C are doing important, constructive things while I respond to child D's teachable moment.
But I'm also free to notice how classroom teachers respond to those moments, and then later, write about them. And I recently witnessed a great one. It happened during recess. Two children were talking about war, and one of them said to the other, "You guys bombed us at Pearl Harbor, but then we dropped an atom bomb on you." The other child disagreed, and soon the two of them approached the teacher. The teacher was asked to settle the dispute by providing facts.
As you may have guessed, one of the children had recent ancestors who were Japanese, and the other didn't. In this country, at this point in our history, we have African-Americans, Latin Americans, Native Americans, Asian-Americans, and so on. We are a nation of "you guys." I love the line in "Finian's Rainbow" that goes, "My family has been havin' trouble with immigrants ever since we came to this country!"
I saw the look on the teacher's face. She glanced toward me as if to say, "Teachable moment!" It was recess, and the clock was about to end recess, but this teacher, at this moment, was not going to be ruled by any clock. She talked with the two children about the term "you guys" as it was being used in this conversation. By the way, the child who didn't appear to have Japanese ancestors had a last name that seemed to indicate that some of his ancestors were also involved in some significant events in World War II. But last names, facial features, and all that are not reliable clues to ancestry, and ancestry is neither destiny nor responsibility. Neither child had ever bombed the other.
The teacher did provide the requested facts about Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, but not until she'd made it clear how she felt about the sadness of war, and the inappropriateness of the phrase "you guys" in this discussion. And the two children, who had already been friends, had something important to think about.

When the Cat's Away 306.
A teacher named Jill or Jim is headed back to her/his second grade classroom after having gone to the office to take a phone call. He/she has spoken with his/her class about what should happen when no adult is in the room, and most of the children know what's supposed to happen. Even most of those who are chasing each other around the room know. And the teacher knows they know.
When the teacher is about fifty feet from the classroom, he/she sees a child's head quickly move a little bit past the doorway and then move back into the room. The teacher hears, "She's/he's coming!" There are some whispers and some scurrying sounds. And these children are not about to throw a surprise party for the teacher. They have been taking advantage of the teacher's absence to do what they'd rather do than what the teacher had told them to do.
One child, who doesn't like chaos, has been spending the past three minutes trying to get the rambunctious ones to stop it, forgetting that trying to control other children's behavior was not part of the teacher's instructions, either. Everyone was supposed to be sitting down and quietly doing some assignment.
When the teacher gets to the room, of course everyone is sitting quietly and working (or at least appearing to be working). The teacher may or may not scold the class for the misbehavior that had been going on. Not everyone in the class had been involved, and some children take group scolding so personally: "I wasn't doing anything! I was just sitting here doing my work!" And that may be true of some children.
Teachers aren't supposed to leave classes unattended. There's always supposed to be an adult in the room to keep things safe, orderly, and productive. But that doesn't always happen. Teachers have legitimate reasons to leave the classroom when no adult is available to take over. If a child is ever badly hurt when no adult is nearby, there may be a legal battle that results in all kinds of unpleasantness. But the odds against that happening are pretty strong, there often aren't enough adults to go around, and there really is an occasional legitimate reason for a teacher to leave a class unattended.
All I've done in this article is describe a problem. I don't know what can be done about it. We could fund schools so that there are always two adults per classroom, but I'm pretty sure that won't happen right away. Sometimes a teacher asks a colleague to "keep an eye on" her/his class, but that isn't an ideal system; teachers have enough work to do with their own classes. Some teachers have ways to keep everything going smoothly even when they're out of the room. As a teacher, I tried to use these teachers as models, but I never learned how to do whatever they were doing right. Most teachers I know haven't, either.

Looking Up to a Sibling 307.
I've already written about sibling rivalry, but I was recently reminded of another aspect of some sibling relationships. Parents and teachers serve as models for children, but so can older siblings. A younger sibling - even one who complains all the time about an older sibling - may also see that sibling as a model. Even if the older one has no interest in being anyone's model - even if she/he has no awareness of the role. As an adult, I became aware of the ways my brothers had been models for me, and the ways I had been a model for my younger sister.
Trying to be like your older sibling can seem much more realistic than trying to be like your parents. If you're seven years old, it's easier to believe that you'll be in fourth grade some day - maybe be in "major league" little league or the school orchestra like your older sibling - than to believe that you'll be an adult - maybe a parent - and do some of the seemingly impossible things adults do.
Being someone's model is an awesome responsibility even for an adult, so imagine how hard it must be for a child. Children are trying to figure out their own lives, and are usually much further from that goal than adults are. So it's hard to think about setting a good example for a younger sibling. Instead of teaching newly learned skills to a little brother or sister, there can be a temptation to keep those skills as proof of superiority. After all, thinks big brother or sister, there's got to be someone I can be better than. And who better than that kid who's always bugging me anyway?
But the role of model can also be a blessing for both siblings. There were times when I was sure my brothers were proud of me, and it made me so proud of myself. And I'm sure that the joy I got from teaching my younger sister was one of my main reasons for becoming a teacher. I think it helped to be separated by several years; if a child tries to be as good as or better than a sibling who is seven years older, the risk of success is not too great. The older child has had a running head start.
As adults, we sometimes worry about the little models we see. We worry that younger children will learn bad habits from older children. And probably, some of them will learn some. I don't know how much good it does to remind older children that they should set good examples. That may help, but it may also build resentment. It may be that it's hard enough for a child to be "good" for his/her own reasons - that trying to set a good example for someone else is too much.
But it can also feel good, as a child is trying to live up to the example set by the important adults in his/her life, to notice that someone is trying to live up to his/her example.

The Adventure of Emily and the Robin 308.
Until recently, I thought there would come a point when I'd cured myself of all my bad habits and eliminated all of my counterproductive thought patterns. Then I'd be perfect, and write articles telling the rest of you how to be perfect, too. But at best, I've only got about fifty years left. I don't think I'll make it. In fact, I'm still not sure which habits and thought patterns I ought to get rid of.
Recently, I spent some time with Emily, an eight year old child who was concerned about a robin on a bush outside my apartment. The robin couldn't fly, and was easy prey for any of the many cats that live near me. I know my own reaction to the situation: the robin was probably going to die, and there wasn't anything we humans could do about it. I thought the best thing we could do would be to leave the robin alone - let nature take its course. Maybe there would be a miracle, and the robin would somehow recover its ability to fly, and go on to live a happy and productive life. Or maybe a cat would end up having some fun (fun that, from many humans' perspectives, would appear sadistic and gruesome).
It wasn't a big issue for me; I worry more about humans whose lives are in danger. I'd sacrifice several robins to save one human. I think Emily would, too, but there weren't any humans facing death right outside my apartment, and there was an injured robin. From Emily's perspective, this was not at all an issue to be taken lightly. I don't know to what degree she was secretly enjoying the drama; maybe she'd find a way to save the
poor bird, despite the seeming indifference of adults, and her story would be written up in the paper, with a photo of Emily and her avian friend.
In a way, I really don't mean to make light of the situation. Here was a child caring about a helpless bird. That kind of caring is one of the many things I love about children. I helped Emily try to contact the Audubon Society, some animal shelters, some veterinarians. She had very little success; she reached mostly answering machines. It was a Friday evening. We spent the better part of an hour trying to find a way to save the bird. The only live human voice Emily reached was that of a woman who told her to leave the bird alone - that there was nothing she could do. That's what I'd suggested, but she was more ready to believe an official-sounding voice on the phone than mine.
During all of this commotion, I was trying to be the perfect adult, listening to Emily's concern, taking her seriously, providing some useful perspective, guiding her toward a wise course of action. It helped that I didn't have any of my own urgent business to attend to; most of you other adults do. But even with the freedom to devote all of my thinking to the Adventure of Emily and the Robin, I still didn't know whether to try getting her to be less concerned (creatures die; that's life), get more involved in the drama, or what. I hope she knows I care about what she was going through. And I hope I was right about whatever role I played in the drama.
Consistent or Flexible? 309. It's common wisdom that you've got to be consistent with children about your rules and limits - that if you give children an inch, they'll take a mile. And there's plenty of anecdotal data to back up that wisdom. Like most adults I know, I've occasionally had to enforce rules I really didn't want to enforce. The worst example I can think of happened when I was a beginning teacher. The whole class felt out of control, and I shouted, "The next person who talks will stay in from recess!"
The next person who talked was a child who had hardly ever said a word. There she was, finally saying something. It ought to have been a time for me to celebrate. I don't remember exactly what she said, but I remember that it was something worth saying. But all the other children were watching me to see whether I was as good as my word, and I did what I felt I had to do - kept her in from recess.
That wouldn't have happened later in my career. First of all, I wouldn't have made such a dumb ultimatum (dumb, considering my personal style). And if I had made it, I would have explained to the whole class that I'd made a mistake because I really wanted the class to quiet down. Some children would have felt that I was being unfair - playing favorites. But sticking to my unwise ultimatum would have been unwise, and I'd undo any damage done to my image as a fair authority figure later.
I don't think this is solely a function of experience; I know veteran teachers who stick to whatever rules and limits they set up, no matter who the transgressors are. They firmly believe that they need to be totally consistent, or they'll open up a floodgate, and all Hell will break loose. That way of thinking works for them, and it doesn't take long for children to learn the limits.
I never thought I'd say this, but I think it may be all right to be that strict. It's harder sometimes, because not every child who steps outside the limits is doing so on purpose, and sometimes great things may happen outside the limits. A child may say something profound and important at a time when no one's supposed to be talking. But when a teacher is consistent about rules, there's an understandable context, and whatever consequences result from transgressions are more likely to be seen in perspective.
It's not my way, though. I like to consider each case on its own merit, and each child as an individual. I've sometimes been accused of being soft - being a push-over. But I think my way works; I think children respect my flexibility, and still know about my limits. I think there's room for both approaches, and all the approaches in between.

Integration 310.
In 1974, I attended a rally in support of the integration of the Boston Public Schools. The featured speakers were Jonathan Kozol, James Meredith, and Benjamin Spock. I felt as if I was on the right (correct) side of the issue, and that only narrow-minded bigots were on the other side. I thought that integrating the public schools was the only way to make them fair - that funding and talent was being hoarded by whites, and the unfair status quo was being perpetuated.
Elsewhere in Boston, there were rallies in support of the "neighborhood school" concept. People who were vehemently opposed to court-ordered busing carried signs and picketed. Some of them even had beards and wore love beads, looking very much like the people I'd wanted to picket with only a few years earlier (I'd been more afraid of tear gas, etc. than my peers, so I hadn't actually joined them, but my spirit had been with them). Something in me wanted to tell them they had no right to look that way if they were going to oppose integration.
When I was a child, I went to schools that were near where I lived. They were somewhat integrated; there were sections of my town where non-whites lived, and there weren't separate schools for those neighborhoods. Children who weren't white tended to spend recess and lunch with other children who weren't white, either. Some were black, some Hispanic, some Asian. Almost everyone rode buses to school; the school was next to a potato farm, not a neighborhood. But no one had to ride very far.
When I taught in Wellesley, there was a program called METCO, by which children were bused from Boston to various suburban schools, including those in Wellesley. It was a voluntary program, and it made it so that some classes in Wellesley (which was mostly white) had a few children who weren't white. It also made it so that many children spent an inordinate amount of their time on buses. I don't know how the situation was explained to each child, but some children and parents seemed to feel more positive about METCO than others. I think METCO did a lot of good: there were children who got to spend better time in school than they might have in Boston, and children in Wellesley got at least some exposure to racial diversity. But I digress. This was limited, voluntary integration. When I started writing this article, I intended to write about compulsory integration.
What was going on in 1974 was different from what is going on now. I still believe that integration is important. I don't like it when it feels as if one race is getting an unfair advantage - as if skin color is a barrier to equal justice, and/or to friendship. But I'm more ready to listen to arguments against compulsory integration, mainly because many of the people I thought it would help most are now opposed to it.

Childlessness 311.
Many folk tales and other stories begin by telling about a couple or individual who has no children and dearly wishes for a child. And then some miracle or other happens, and a child appears. It could be the regular miracle - a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby. Or it could be something a little more out of the ordinary - perhaps a fairy comes and
turns a wooden puppet into a real child.
No matter what kinds of difficulty you may be having with a child or children of yours, please believe me when I tell you that there are still plenty of people around who dearly wish for children. There are couples dealing with infertility, people who waited to have children and found that they may have waited too long, people who once hoped to have partners and have gradually lost that hope, but still hope to have children. For one reason or another, not everyone who wants children has them.
Childlessness was not one of the sad realities (sad, for me) of life I was willing to cope with. I've always wanted to own a house, but if that never happens, I'll still be okay. I used to dream of travelling, getting married and living happily ever after, and lots of other things that many people dream about. And some of those dreams have lost some of their grandeur not coming true.
But I don't think I could have coped well with childlessness. I know there are people who haven't ever had children and don't ever want to. I've spoken with some of them enough to know that they mean it; they know what they want out of life, and there's no room in their plans for children. For their sake, and for the sake of their non-existent children, I hope they remain childless.
On the other hand, there really are many people who want to have children. It's a very natural thing for human beings and other animals to want. It hasn't been long since surviving and reproducing were all we were supposed to do, and although I try to be open-minded about the idea of not ever wanting children (some of my friends say they don't ever want children, but my best friends have or hope to have them), I can't really identify with that mindset.
I wish there were a way to straighten out the situation - to bestow children upon the ones who want them, and make sure those who don't want them don't have them. Maybe a magical fairy who would go around finding the children who are born unwanted, or who don't have parents, and skillfully matching them up with people who would make great parents but for lack of children.

Young Mathematicians 312.
As a volunteer, I adopted about eighty first graders and decided to stay with them as long as possible - maybe even until they graduated from high school. When they were in second grade, I spent three hours per week in Paul Oh's second grade, helping him teach math. I've already written a little about his calm, thoughtful approach, but there's more to say. Like many teachers, he struggles with a variety of attitudes about mathematics - perhaps his own (after all, he went to school, and probably didn't always have perfect math teachers), but certainly the attitudes the children brought with them. These attitudes had come from parents, siblings, teachers, media.
I have some good news and some bad news. First, the bad news. Paul's struggle was not easy, and even though I, as an observer, could see the growth that was going on in Paul's class, I don't know how easy it was for him to see it. I had worked with many of these children when they were in first grade. Now I was able to sit comfortably away from the struggle, away from conferences with parents who perhaps expected more miracles than Paul delivered, outside the system which may have had lots of pieces of paper indicating what children were supposed to know, and when they were supposed to know it. So I had an easy time of it. But I doubt whether Paul did.
Now for the good news. What Paul did with these children helped them become mathematicians. Some of these children had come to him believing that they weren't good at math, and never could be. Others had believed that math was theirs; it was what separated them from the mediocrity of the masses. They could solve math problems, and that's what proved that they were worthwhile people. There had been children in between, but they had probably wondered whether they were geniuses or total failures.
But by the end of second grade, all of these children were mathematicians. That doesn't mean they'd all go to MIT and spend their lives thinking mathematical thoughts, but neither would they see math as something that belonged to an elite. When Paul gave them a problem to solve, they thought more about the problem, and less about their own competence or lack thereof. If the problem was hard, they thought harder. If it started to seem too hard, they asked for help, but not with the kind of desperation that can sometimes be heard when children have trouble with math. In Paul's class, they'd tasted success. It had tasted good, and they wanted more. There's a lot to be said about the educational value of wanting to be able to do something and believing it can be done.

Denial 313.
Denial may not always be as bad as it's often made out to be. I was talking with a friend who is suffering/recovering from the effects of throat cancer and related medical procedures. He referred to himself and me as "experts at denial." I plead guilty as charged, but I'd like to reclassify at least some of my "denial" as "optimism." For some reason, optimists are more often accused of denial than pessimists. But from my point of view, people who only see evidence of ugliness and impending disaster are just as guilty of denial.
Let's not let psychology have a monopoly on the word. I know we're supposed to learn to face harsh realities. I know denial is a stage of mourning, and it doesn't undo the sad realities that are denied. So I'm all for learning to accept unpleasantness that must be accepted. Personally, I think I'm making progress toward that goal.
But that's not all there is to it. I've found it interesting how people have gradually come to respond differently to my usually positive attitude. When I used to walk or run around, play piano, and have a larger income, my optimism seemed, to some people, shallow and naive. As soon as I'd done some substantial living, they seemed to think, I'd learn to think more darkly.
Now, more people seem to react to that same positive spirit as if I'm heroic and wise: if I can smile and feel hope while antibodies are nibbling at my myelin, I must really know something they don't know. But I really think it has to do with perspective, not awareness; half of the glass really is full, and the other half really is empty.
I don't think denial is as common among children as among adults, but adults who have children often have to deal with some harsh realities, and
sometimes they go to great lengths not to. They view learning problems and behavior problems as teaching or administrative problems. Of course, schools and teachers are factors, and can cause or aggravate problems, but so can parents, and so can plain old reality.
And it's not that simple; sometimes a very appropriate and effective way to handle a problem is to treat it as if it's not a problem. That can be true because some problems are mainly problems of attitude. Sometimes a child just needs to be treated as if he/she is capable, and whatever problems seemed to exist just fade away.
All this means is that sometimes you've got to see things one way, and sometimes you've got to see them another way. It would be nice if we could come up with one reliable perspective, but sometimes we can't. Some attempts to simplify issues are born of denial.

As the School Year Ends 314.
As June gets into people's systems, things can start to change in a school. There are social dynamics going on, as well as individuals' reactions to the approaching end of the school year. When people are caught up in it all, they can forget about some parts of it, and get obsessed with others. I'll try to describe some of what goes on, and you can pick out whatever applies to the particular Junes you seem to experience.
First of all, there's the excitement many people feel about the vacation that's going to happen soon. For some teachers, summer can mean sleeping late, having hour-long lunch hours, not going to meetings, not writing lesson plans, not having conferences - being free from all the stressful things teachers must do from September to June. And maybe some teachers are going to do exciting things during the summer. So may some children and parents. If that were all that people were thinking about, June would just be a joyful month.
But there's much more. The school year provides structure, and though that structure can be oppressive, there's usually some anxiety about what life will be like without it. School is something to do, both for children and teachers, and it makes parenting a little less of a full-time job. And so people may wonder, even as they consciously look forward to the break, what now? For some people, summer has to be carefully scheduled; weekdays are full of camp, lessons, and all kinds of other activities, and weekends still end up being weekends.
During the school year, there have been connections between children and teachers. In June, children are often beginning to realize that the connections won't be much of a force any more. The more conspicuous behavior that results from this realization is some difficulty with control: why listen to a lame duck teacher? But there's also some sadness about the impending loss; the teacher has been someone to rely on - for some children the only one to rely on - and what will happen when that teacher isn't there any more? Even some of the misbehavior teachers deal with in June can be due, in part, to that sadness.
Teachers get attached to children, children to teachers, and children to each other. June is often a time to say good-bye. There are often tears - usually among children, but we teachers have been known to cry once in a while when we've ended a school year.
The physical environment of the classroom starts to change: teachers are more apt to take down old displays without replacing them. Materials are collected more, distributed less. Most teachers are too tired to open up new units, and they don't want to end up with more stuff to put away, so the curriculum starts to look more like review and busywork.
All of this varies from teacher to teacher and child to child. Sadness, anger, relief, and joy fill the school. And then a bell rings, and the next part of life begins.
Class Placement 315.
Teachers and administrators usually have a balancing act to do as the school year comes to an end - to place children in the classes they'll be in come September. There are many factors that go into the process. Parents' and children's happiness is one of the factors, but there are usually people who are not happy with the way things turn out. There are children who want to be together, children who don't, and children who want to be with children who don't want to be with them. There are children who seem to be good for each other and children who don't. Many combinations of children have their pros, cons, ups, and downs. Even if the wants and needs of children were the only considerations, class placement would be complicated.
But parents' wants and needs are important, too. Parents can have strong opinions about whether certain children should be together, and which teachers are the best ones. And of course, parents tend to want the best for their children. And so some parents lobby to make sure their children end up with friends, or with teachers who teach well. There are parents who stay out of it, and leave the decisions up to the school. They have faith that school personnel will make wise decisions.
School personnel, too, have opinions about which child/child, teacher/child, and teacher/parent combinations will work well. But they must also focus on other factors: how many children with academic, behavioral, social, and/or emotional strengths and weaknesses are in each class. Ideally, classes are somewhat balanced. Too much consideration to what parents and children want can result in unbalanced classes that are quite difficult to teach.
I began this paragraph by trying to tell you that class placement decisions don't amount to a hill of beans - that life goes on, and we cope with changes and disappointments. But I deleted that line of thinking. I was going to ask you whether any class placement ever had much of an effect on you as you were growing up. It was going to be a rhetorical question that implied that the whole issue isn't so important. But then I started thinking about the teachers and classmates who were part of my childhood. I thought about ways my life would have been different if I hadn't had Mrs. Remavich for fifth grade, or if Pam Pedersen hadn't been in my class in sixth grade.
Class placement makes a difference. It's important to make sure classes are balanced, and the people who teach your children are usually in better positions to figure out how to find that balance, but I think the wants and needs of children and parents ought to be respected.

Portrait of a Family 316.
Once in a while, I get really impressed by a family. I know, on some level, that every family has its ups and downs, but sometimes all I can see are the ups. I recently went to a child's birthday party at the home of a family that impressed me. Having been to many children's birthday parties, and having seen things that have bothered me, I was ready to have to politely ignore some of what I saw, and do my best to focus on the positive.
But I didn't see anything I had to ignore. It was immediately clear to me that both the mother and father were involved with the children, and loved them. Both had thought about the party, and had planned it in a way that it was fun for the birthday boy, his little sister, his friends, her friends, and the adults who came. There were activities that included all the children, and there was lots of cooperation, and as far as I could see, little competition.
This was a family who lived in a home that reflected their commitment to their children. Both parents had parts of their lives that didn't involve their children, but it seemed as if they'd thought about how to live those parts of their lives without neglecting the children at all. Both children clearly felt loved - felt as if they were important to their parents.
The house itself gave me the impression that this family was not struggling to make ends meet, but unlike other families who are doing okay financially, their home was not full of things the children shouldn't touch. Both the physical layout and the way these parents related with their children made me wish this family could somehow be displayed as a model for others.
I know there must be details I haven't noticed. Perhaps each member of this family has a habit or two that really bugs another member. And I don't know what the family had to go through to get to the seemingly sublime point I saw. Besides, I know I'm sometimes quick to let people turn into heroes.
But please allow me this model family. If I've partly fictionalized them, let's let it be. But at least part of what I saw was really there. There was no television. The birthday boy was made to feel special without his non-birthday sister being made to feel superfluous. The children who came to help celebrate the birthday had fun, and did not seem to notice that video games were absent and junk food was at a minimum.
So those of you who feel, as I once did, that the pressure to be like everyone else and give in to popular culture is too great, please know that there is another way. It takes real commitment, but it can be done. I saw it.

Reflections 317.
There's an issue you've probably had to deal with, or you probably will.
What if your child makes you look bad? What if people in your community, some of whom have come to like and respect you, see your child looking, sounding, or behaving in ways that don't represent your view of how people should look, sound, and behave? Some of them may know that your child is not you, and doesn't necessarily reflect your views consistently, but some may not seem to fully understand that. They may judge you.
Or what if your parents embarrass you? They could treat you as if you're ten when you're actually twelve, and if the timing is bad, all your twelve year old friends could be right there, watching. Soon, you'll find out who your real friends are - which ones will rub it in and which will be sympathetic. Most of them have parents, too, so they really should know all about what you're going through, but that doesn't guarantee that they'll be nice about it.
We all have the right to have our own identities - to behave in ways that are in keeping with who we are and how we think. And we have the right to choose to go along with the crowd sometimes, just to fit in. But I think we also have the responsibility to consider what effect our behavior has on people we care about. Sometimes, our children's or parents' embarrassment about us is their own problem. If they can't deal with who we are, too bad. At other times, it would be nice to be a little considerate. We could tuck our identities in once in a while.
It can hurt to find that someone who loves you at home doesn't want to be seen with you in public. But it's a pretty common problem, and maybe it will hurt a little less if you understand the social dynamics of what's going on. In our culture, two generations can sometimes be two subcultures, with two very different sets of norms. Perhaps in one, you wouldn't be caught dead doing what you absolutely must do in the other. And sometimes there's no way to win - neither by being yourself nor by pretending not to be.
It's possible to be embarrassed by people who are neither your parents nor your children. You can be embarrassed by your spouse, or your friends. It can even be embarrassing to see strangers behave in ways that don't seem right. But at least you're less likely to see strangers as reflections of yourselves.
I don't remember whether my parents ever embarrassed me, or whether I ever embarrassed them. Probably. I know I sometimes embarrassed my children, and vice versa. It can be sublime to have moments when you can be proud of each other in public. But that's not the way it is all the time.

Dropping Out 318.
I think it's significant that I wrote 317 articles without even mentioning the possibility that some people may decide not to go to school any longer than they have to. As far as I know, all of my friends finished high school, and most of them went on to college. If I found out that one of my friends never finished high school, it wouldn't change the friendship; it would confirm my conviction that dropping out of high school does not turn you into another kind of creature.
I never even considered dropping out of high school. High school was where all my friends were, and besides, the propaganda given out by all the adults I knew worked on me. If I dropped out, I thought, I would become an untouchable. I did drop out of Boy Scouts, though. I decided, as I turned thirteen, that I'd gotten to a point where being a Boy Scout just wasn't meaningful to me, and wasn't helping me prepare for what I wanted to do in life. Some of what happened in school wasn't, either, but I had to put up with that if I wanted to go to college. And I did.
I think that in a way, the propaganda I got gave an inaccurate message. True, in our society, it makes practical sense for most people to graduate from high school. A high school diploma opens up some options that may turn out to be useful. But that's not the message I received when I was in high school. What I heard was that only immoral and inferior people dropped out - that I had to stay in school if I wanted to be a worthwhile person. It took me years to get to the point where I even thought of reconsidering that message.
As parents and teachers, we try to guide children and adolescents toward paths that will make their lives pleasant and productive. The way our society works, finishing school is often a very practical thing to do, and so we try to get them to do so. It's possible to get a high school diploma later on, but later on, it's harder, partly because there's more often rent to pay, etc., and partly because some of the aspects of the high school curriculum that seemed irrelevant and dumb when you were an adolescent turned out to have actually been irrelevant and dumb.
I think it makes a lot of sense to graduate from high school. Maybe it would make sense to make some changes in high school so that graduation could mean different things to different people. A lot of what I learned in high school has done nothing for me, as I thought it wouldn't when I learned it. I've never had occasion to refer to halogens or secants in my work or play. But I had to learn about halogens and secants in order to get my diploma. And having a better-than-average long term memory, I still remember what they are. But so what?
I would still encourage people to stay in school at least long enough to graduate from high school. I hope the eighty children I know who just finished second grade stay in school at least another ten years. To me, ten years isn't so long. But I hope their decision to stay in school is made for practical reasons, and not just to avoid being seen as drop-outs.

Slumps, Rolls, and the Good Life 319.
I wrote 315 articles in about 500 days, rarely pausing for more than two days. But I've just finished about two weeks during which I didn't write any articles, and then 24 hours during which I wrote four. If I were taking my roles as columnist and author more seriously, the two week gap would have worried me more than it did. But I'm in a very comfortable position: my retirement income pays my bills, and my budget is working. If I choose to write or teach, I'm doing it because I want to. And if school's out and nothing inspires me to write, I can go for a roll in the woods.
Most of you don't have that luxury. And so you do what you can to get through the day. Maybe your days are mostly inspiring, maybe not. If your vocation or avocation requires creativity, you rely on well-timed inspirations, you find ways to make inspiration happen, or you try to fake it. And if you're a teacher who's feeling uninspired, you're probably passing on some of that feeling to the children you teach.
After my two-week "vacation," I was ready to write again, and if I write at my present pace (which probably won't happen), I'll quickly make up for lost time. I'm convinced that my two-week "slump" and my 24-hour "roll" were both due to the lack of pressure. Nobody is telling me to hurry up and write. And even if they did, I wouldn't pay much attention.
As a magazine editor, I try to get other people to meet a deadline. My approach is to apply as little pressure as possible. Part of my reason is that all of the writers are volunteers; they write because they have things they want to express. The deadlines are real (I tried calling them "lifelines," but it didn't fool anybody); a paid person turns our material into a magazine, and has a schedule she must follow. But another part of my reason is my belief that the best results come from the absence of external pressure.
I don't know exactly how this belief can be applied to school. Teachers have to be "on" whether or not they really feel inspired. And children are supposed to write when the teacher says, "Write," draw when the teacher says, "Draw," and so on. The six hours most children spend in school, like the eight hours most adults spend at work, are the hours during which they're supposed to do what they do. And do it well.
Still, I hope that it's possible to fit in some time to let your muses do their things. You shouldn't have to wait until you retire to do the important work you were meant to do. And as much as possible, children should be freed to create, not forced to create. I know that's easy for me to say. But I've done a lot of getting and spending, so I do have something to compare this good life to. And I recommend that you try to be a little easier on yourself.

What to Say to Drugs 320.
When I was in college, most people I knew smoked marijuana, and many tried lots of other drugs that altered their moods and perceptions. I didn't. Not because I thought it was evil, although I'd heard propaganda to that effect. I stayed away from drugs because I didn't want my moods or perceptions altered by chemicals. Life was doing a fine job altering my mind, and I liked the way life seemed to be going. I had some psychological trouble adjusting to college, but I never got suicidal or otherwise dangerous.
As a teacher, I sometimes encountered children who were taking drugs that altered their moods and behavior. Ritalin was the most common one, but there were others. It always bothered me when medication seemed to be the first thing tried. Bypassing diet and other less invasive approaches, doctors seemed to prescribe drugs at the drop of a hat. Parents often brought their children to doctors hoping that some drug would solve whatever problems they had in mind.
Sometimes it worked. Children who had seemed to have no self-control were able to function well in school while under the influence of ritalin. And during occasional two-week periods when they were taken off the drug (by their doctors), there were very conspicuous changes in their behavior. I did not like those two weeks. Parents tended to time it so that their children were in school at those times - maybe so they wouldn't have to deal with it so much, but maybe so that vacation time could be pleasant family time.
Sometimes ritalin didn't work, and doctors, rather than looking at other possible approaches, prescribed other drugs, or increased the dosage of ritalin. Just as some teachers try to solve reading problems by switching basal readers, some doctors really rely on their repertoire of drugs. It's what they know, and after years of medical school and years of practice, they don't like to deal with the possibility that their expertise isn't providing solutions.
When I read The Eden Express, by Mark Vonnegut, I was impressed that the author's moods and behavior, which seemed to be part of his identity throughout most of the book, turned out to be symptoms of schizophrenia, and were significantly altered through medication. He went from being depressed - suicidal - to settling down, going to medical school, and living a life that, so far, seems to be working for him.
I am quite skeptical about the drugs that are being discovered as possible cures or treatments for multiple sclerosis. I try to use diet, exercise, acupuncture, reading, and talking to people who have found ways to manage MS. I'm not totally committed to saying "no" to drugs, but

People Who Don't Like Children 321.
I know there are people who don't like children. In a previous article, I wrote that my best friends have children or want them. At the time I wrote that, I was thinking of only five of my friends, and applying the phrase "best friends" to them. But there isn't really such a simple hierarchy. I hope my other friends don't read that article and take it too personally.
I recently spoke with a good friend who has never had children, doesn't think she'll ever want any, and doesn't like to spend much time with children. I realized, as we talked, that though we don't share love for children, I respect her, and am glad she knows herself well enough not to want and have children at this point in her life. A lot of people don't know themselves that well. As for her prediction about her future wants, it doesn't matter if she changes her mind later. To everything, there is a season.
I know of many people who have children or work with children for what I consider wrong reasons. Some think it's morally good to like children, and so they try to like the "little monsters." They fail, but some of them keep going as if they like children. They put on acts, and relate to children in toxic ways. Perhaps they do so because that's how adults related to them as they were growing up, and they think that's how it's supposed to be.
Some people seem to see children as slaves whose only reason for being on earth is to somehow improve adults' lives. Whatever such children do had better make life better. If not, there are unpleasant consequences all ready to happen. I don't know too many adults like that, but that's because I've consciously avoided spending time with them. I know they exist.
And then there are the ones who thought they'd like children and found out, after the fact, that they don't. Some of them take responsibility for that mistake. They know what's good for children, or they work to learn it, and though unhappy, they do their best to give their children good lives. They do lots of sacrificing, while trying not to send their children on guilt trips.
I don't have an intimate understanding of this phenomenon; I love children. It was hard for my friend to tell me she didn't like children. She wondered whether that would hurt our friendship. It didn't. I had already suspected that she greatly preferred adults, and I congratulated her on getting to know that about herself in time. I firmly believe that people who, for whatever reasons, don't like the way life starts should try to spend their time with people who are well past the beginning, and leave the novices to the rest of us.

Difficulty 322.
A friend of mine once took issue with the statement, "Nobody said life would be easy." She distinctly remembers getting the impression that it would. Maybe adults don't come right out and tell children that life is going to be easy, but they aren't always completely honest about how hard it can be, and some people have rude awakenings later on, when they find out.
Life can be quite difficult. I learned that only recently. I had thought that if I did everything the way I was supposed to, everything would fall neatly into place, and I'd gracefully coast through life. It wasn't happening, but I thought that was because I wasn't doing it right. If I had made the "right" decisions, I thought, I wouldn't be dealing with the difficulties I was dealing with.
I really do like life, but it's not anywhere near as easy as I thought it was going to be. I grew up in houses owned by my parents. Some of the houses were big (by my standards), and sat on what I considered lots of land. I thought my life would be more moderate - that I would own a little house, and hardly any land. And I thought that would be relatively easy to get. I gradually learned that even my modest plans were going to take a lot more work than I'd thought.
I could spend the rest of this article complaining about how hard my life has been - even the parts I thought were easy as I was living them. But you've probably heard enough about how hard people's lives are. It's somewhat healthy to be aware of difficulties as you experience them; it makes it so you don't blame yourself too much when you fail to do what's difficult for you, and you take more pride when you succeed. But obsessing on your troubles can get obnoxious. And it can become competitive (you think YOU'VE got troubles?...).
We do sometimes give our children the impression that life is going to be easy. Most people do have some easy times, and it's all relative, anyway. Children see their adult role models buying things that cost several weeks' worth of allowance, and seeming nonchalant about it. They see that adults who want to get somewhere have enviable resources for travelling - cars, buses, sometimes even airplanes. It can be hard to be a child, and adult life can seem relatively easy.
As hard as we try to help our children prepare for what may happen, there's only so much we can prepare them for. Maybe we ought to make sure we're careful as we give children our messages about how easy and difficult life is going to be: some parts of life will be easier than you think, some will be harder than you think, and some will be just as hard or easy as you think. Que sera, sera.

Fun 323.
"Fun" is a little word. It's nowhere near as big as "responsibility" or "accountability." But I think it's much more important than some people seem to think. I guess I have a broader definition of the word that allows me to make the statement, "Learning is fun," without much reservation. In my mind, ignorance is not bliss, and the less ignorant we are, the better off we are.
It has always bothered me a little when people have praised teachers for "making learning fun." To me, that's like praising someone for making water wet. Learning already is fun. Not every little bit of it is fun, but if the whole thing were a drag, people wouldn't do it so much. Some masochists might stay with it. Maybe some martyrs would heroically keep up the good fight. And some pragmatists would learn so that they could accomplish their goals. The average person, though, would go do something else.
But everybody's doing it. Even the strictest of hedonists learn. The process of learning may be what's fun, or maybe it's the results. Or both. Maybe learning makes it so you can solve a problem, get a job, accomplish a goal. By my expanded definition, it's all right if some parts of learning aren't as enjoyable as other parts; the whole thing is still fun. I don't enjoy the work involved in preparing and eating artichokes, but I love artichokes.
I've known people who were really annoyed by my emphasis on fun. They've thought I've been robbing children of opportunities for successful lives. "Children," they've said, "can't expect everything to be fun. Life is tough, and they might as well learn it while they're young." I've always been bothered by that mindset. In my mind, I've told such people that life is to be enjoyed, and if children don't learn that when they're young, they could grow up to be as numb as the people who get bothered by fun. But I didn't say it out loud.
Now, I don't think we're as far apart as I used to think we were. I think of the adults who get bothered by fun as people who were once children, and learned some things the hard way. They care about their children, and worry that their children will suffer later for the fun they're having now. They want to make sure that doesn't happen.
I've recently started reading again. I don't quite understand why I went so long without reading, but I spontaneously started again. I've written so much that I've started to see authors as my peers, and I want to hear what's on their minds. They have some good things to say, and they aren't all going to come say these things to me in person. The main thing is, I read because I want to. It's fun.

"My Little Doggie" 324.
When I was eight years old, I wrote a poem:
Oh my goodness, oh my gosh.
My little doggie forgot to wash.
Oh my goodness, oh my grace.
My little doggie has a dirty face.
I had a good sense of rhyme and meter, and the poem did also say something. Looking at it now, I don't consider it one of the great works of literature. Perhaps there was a significant message in it about the importance of good hygiene. But I don't think so. When I wrote it, though, I was so proud of myself! My teacher, Mrs. Saffron, made a big deal about it, and the poem was displayed on the bulletin board.
A few years later, I wrote a poem about the Civil War. The only part of it I remember was that at the end a soldier "shot a fire, and died." What I'd meant was "fired a shot, and died." My parents had guests over, and they were all in the living room. A ready-made audience. I read the poem, and when I was done, there was uproarious laughter in the room. I hadn't meant the poem to be funny.
Whatever confidence I'd gotten from my teacher's reaction to "My Little Doggie" was severely damaged by the laughter. I'd seen my parents' friends give lots of accolades to my brother Richie when he'd read them a love poem he'd written:
When breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from confusion and care,
And hie me away to the dreamland scene,
Where wander the thoughts of thee, serene.
I put my brother's poem to music, and we got some good feedback about our song. That felt good, and all sibling rivalry aside, I was kind of proud of my brother, and glad I could contribute music to his creation. But it was clear to me that I should leave the lyrics to Richie. I was a musician, not a poet.
Now, I'm very careful to let children know I appreciate their work. When something a child writes strikes me as funny, I hold back laughter with all my might until I'm sure it was meant to be funny. If it wasn't, but I can't hold back the laughter, I'm quick to apologize, and give the child serious appreciation.
I've recovered from the laughing episode. I've written lots of poems and song lyrics, and people usually only laugh at the parts I mean to be funny. So I'm okay now. Children and other people are resilient creatures. And I don't think the laughter I got in that living room was meant to have the devastating effect it had on me. I don't think anyone there thought I'd remember it thirty-seven years later. But I do.

Whose Fault Is It? 325.
People waste an awful lot of energy thinking of ways to avoid taking responsibility for things that don't work out right. That energy could be used to seek out the real sources of problems - both the external ones and the little flaws we humans have. And the problems would end up getting solved sooner.
Ultimately, I don't think anybody's to blame for anything. In everyday life, I think I do my share of blaming, but in the back of my mind, I try to remember that people don't start out intending to be who they end up being, and do what they end up doing. Intention eventually gets to be quite a force - in some people more than in others - but no matter how strong it gets, it's not the only force.
People sometimes search frantically for someone or something to blame. They think that they've got to find an external reason for their failures or shortcomings. If they don't, they think, then they're to blame. They think there's something they could/should have done differently, and if it weren't for them, everything would be fine. And they don't want to think that.
Children's first attempts at blaming can seem funny (if they don't infuriate you). They blame people or things that couldn't possibly be guilty. Or they deny their own roles when there is incontrovertible evidence sitting right there. Like many adults, they don't want to believe that they could possibly contribute to problems; they want to see themselves as contributors to solutions.
As we grow, some of us start to take some responsibility. Some even take it too far, blaming themselves for things that really aren't their fault at all. Some spend hours in therapy learning how to redirect that guilt. They learn to blame their parents, or other significant people in their lives. Of course, if you fully accept my thesis, their parents, etc. aren't guilty, either. But I guess the first step is for us to learn not to blame ourselves.
Somewhere along the process, I think we're supposed to start believing that even though we're not to blame for what has happened so far, we're in charge of what happens from now on. If things go well, that's not so hard to do. There's a bit of a logical problem there: if we're responsible for what works, aren't we also to blame for what doesn't?
But we humans don't like to take responsibilty for things that don't turn out well. We'd much rather take credit for things that do, and blame the rest of the world for the problems. Perhaps you wonder how we got that way. Well, don't look at me; I had nothing to do with it.

The Will to Succeed 326.
There are many factors that combine to make it possible for people to learn, and when it doesn't happen, there are also many possible reasons. I don't mean alibis; I dealt with those in my last article. We can honestly and meticulously study people's success or failure, and get pretty good ideas about what are the possible causes. Ideally, whatever we find out is used to make success more likely.
But that's not always the way it is. Children (and, of course, adults) who want to succeed are often able to learn what they "theoretically" can't. That is, obstacles that have been identified by expert obstacle-identifiers may not prove to be as formidable as the experts think. That's because some experts can get so caught up in their diagnostic procedures that they forget to think about the power of determination. Determination can be pretty formidable, too.
I've worked with children who have been able to meet challenges they weren't supposed to be able to meet, because they really wanted to. I don't mean to imply that children who don't succeed don't want to. But for some children, difficulties are seen as exciting challenges, not insurmountable obstacles. Child A may have as much difficulty learning to read as child B does, but child A may learn faster, because child A may have a more intense will to learn to read.
As teachers, we try to unleash the power of the will to learn. Some children clearly have strong wills, but they don't necessarily use these wills for purposes the teachers have in mind. Teachers have wills, too, and when wills clash, bad things sometimes happen to good people. If this keeps happening, willful children can be their own worst enemies (assuming, for now, that willful teachers really are doing all they can).
We try to find ways to motivate children to learn. If, as I've written before, learning is fun, then all we have to do is make sure that children see what fun it is. But if children have already had experiences that contradict that view of learning, it may not be so easy to change their minds. Those previous experiences may have been planned by teachers who were also trying to emphasize the joy of learning, but such attempts aren't always successful, and each failure makes subsequent success more difficult.
But when a child's will is on our side, great things - sometimes seemingly impossible things - can happen. So one of the many important jobs teachers have is to find ways to get children to see that there really is something in it for them - that whatever we are trying to teach them will be pleasant to learn and/or pleasant to know. It's not enough for teachers to be determined to teach; they have to get children to be determined to learn.

The Outdoor Classroom 327.
Most children like to go outside. Part of the reason is that like most adults, they like the planet we live on, and it can be experienced more fully when there are no walls, doors, and windows in the way. When we first built buildings, we did it to protect ourselves and our loved ones from inclement weather and predators.
But teachers often keep children inside even when the weather is perfect and there are no predators around. I think the main reason for that is that the world outside the school is too interesting - too hard to compete with. There are also some practical considerations: even slight breezes can turn pages, or carry away papers. But there are ways around those problems. The main problem is that children have a natural tendency to pay attention to whatever is most interesting, and what goes on outside the school is often more interesting than the activities teachers have planned.
A lot of that interesting stuff can be made part of the curriculum. When children study measurement, they can measure things that are outside. As they study insects, they can go outside and see for themselves how those little creatures live. The outside world is rich with opportunities for great lessons. Then why is almost the whole school day spent inside, even on the best days September and May have to offer? I can give you my own answer: I sometimes had difficulty planning lessons that were more interesting than what children wanted to do outside. Children knew that they usually went outside just for recess, and no matter how hard I worked to prepare them to go there for something else, the minute they got outside, some of them felt as if it was recess, and behaved accordingly. Without the walls of the indoor classroom, they felt free. And though there were plenty of children who did what I asked them to do, there were also plenty who didn't. And since I was accountable for all of the children, I felt that I had to bring the class back inside.
There were successful outdoor lessons, too. They usually included many more than the usual number of adults, and they were usually not near the playground. Parent volunteers and I worked with small groups of children, showing them and letting them show us fascinating phenomena in the world outside the school. We heard children's questions, sometimes answered them, and sometimes helped them find their own answers. There was lots of great teaching and learning going on. When it was time to go in, neither adults nor children wanted to.
If I had it to do over again, I don't think I would spend so much energy trying to convince children to control themselves. If the lesson were interesting, self-control wouldn't be such an issue. So I would spend more energy planning the lessons - exploring the environments I'd later explore with the children, and figuring out which activities were most likely to compete with recess. And I'd make sure there were always plenty of other adults helping me teach.
A Letter to Pat 328.
The Pat I'm writing to is a fictional character - a composite of all the people who, for one reason or another, didn't think I was doing a very good job teaching. Pat may have been a parent, a teacher, an administrator, or a child. There were more people who thought that way in 1969, when I started my teaching career, than in 1994, when I retired, but there were always some.

Dear Pat,
Before I say anything else, I want you to know that I tried with all my might to be a good teacher. I tried to pay attention to the needs of every child, and to do the right things. If a child had difficulty, or had a personality that bothered me, I tried to find ways to establish an effective teaching relationship with that child. If you thought I wasn't trying, you were wrong.
But effort isn't enough. We give children lots of credit for trying, as we should. But adults who are doing important work have to do more than try; they have to succeed. Professional athletes don't get much credit for trying to get touchdowns, hits, baskets, or goals. They get credit for making it more possible for their teams to win. If that happens, then they usually also get credit for the effort.
I got lots of credit from lots of people. They saw evidence that I was doing what they thought ought to be done. Either they actually saw me in action, or they saw the results of what I did - new skill or knowledge, or an improved attitude. From those people's points of view, I was a good teacher. And from my own point of view, I was pretty good.
And there are people who may have read my articles, but have never or rarely seen me teach. Most of the ones I've heard from seem to think I must have been a phenomenal teacher - one of the all-time greats. How else could I have written all these insightful articles?
But writing and teaching are two separate skills. Much of what I've written describes actual effective lessons I've planned and taught. So at least some of my teaching was undeniably good. But as a writer, I get to choose which things I want to tell you about. And there's no way I'm going to tell you about the times I kept trying something even though it was quite obvious that it wasn't going to work. I'm not going to advertise my shortcomings.
This letter isn't just an apology, but it is partly apologetic. I'm sorry that I was not as effective as you wished I would be. I wish you hadn't asked me to resign, complained about me, taken your child out of my class, or whatever you did to make me think you disapproved of my teaching. But just as I know I could have helped some children more than I did, please know that there were probably ways you and I could have found common ground.
Sincerely,
Bob Blue
Accountability 329.
We expect people to do the jobs they're hired to do, and do them well. If we elect someone to political office and she/he doesn't do the jobs involved the way we want them done, we try to get him/her to shape up, and if that doesn't work, we elect someone else. We can't all be satisfied, of course; we're not all in the various majorities that form as issues come up. But we try to make our voices heard in ways that focus on our real concerns.
Teachers are not exactly politicians, though any teacher can tell you that there are political aspects to teaching. You can't keep saying the wrong things (or the right things at the wrong times). And teachers are affected both directly and indirectly by the electorate: funding issues, education laws, and to some degree, even personnel issues are addressed in voting booths (we elect people who hire people).
So school personnel are accountable. They're hired to get people to learn. They've got to make sure that they're teaching what the public wants taught, and that their teaching causes conspicuous learning. If not, they have to deal with whatever consequences the public can manage to come up with.
As with politicians, the public isn't necessarily able to correct teachers' behavior as immediately as some people wish. Teachers - especially those with tenure - have some protection from the whims of the masses; they can't be fired just because an angry pack of people doesn't like what they're doing. Sometimes teachers go through Hell when their heart-felt convictions conflict with those of people who want them to "shape up or ship out." I have gone through that Hell, and I know many other teachers who have, too.
But people who send or bring their children to school have rights, too. And sometimes they object to things that are downright objectionable: favoritism, sloth, inappropriate modelling, and incompetence. At least some of their tax dollars are used to pay teachers and administrators, and they don't want to pay those dollars for work that doesn't end up getting done the way they want it done.
Like people in voting booths, concerned parents sometimes feel as if they're spitting in the wind. They grudgingly pay those tax dollars to get their children educated, and then some pay tuition to REALLY get their children educated. They're angry; that's not the way the system is supposed to work.
Teacher accountability is not at all a simple issue. Most teachers care about both children and parents, but they also care about the environment, the government, various social issues - the way the world goes. And some may not have the same priorities others may wish they had. But hang in there. Let's keep holding each other and ourselves accountable for what happens to children. We can work it out. Relaxing Standards 330.
I give children piano lessons. I won't accept money for it, because I don't want to have to think about whether I deserve to be paid. I'm retired, and I don't have to deal with that any more. And my approach to teaching piano is unorthodox enough that most parents could easily raise eyebrows about paying me. Their children probably aren't going to be doing any recitals while I'm teaching. The works of Chopin, Mozart, et al. will lie quietly on my shelves while children learn "Chopsticks," "Heart and Soul," and whatever else they want to learn. And some children will make up their own music, which may or may not sound anything like any music we're used to.
In a typical piano lesson in my apartment, a child makes sounds on the piano that the child and I choose to call music while I listen attentively. I may ask a question or two now and then, or make a suggestion. But my questions are not typically pedagogical: "Is that a tune you made up?" "Can I hear that again?" And my suggestions are really just suggestions: "I'd like to hear what that sounds like louder," or "Can you make up a tune about the weather clearing up and getting sunny?" If the child wants to ignore my suggestions, that's okay.
Children don't usually get undivided attention from adults, or if they do, there are usually strings attached. Adults know what they have in mind, and since they're bigger, what children have in mind gets subordinated. That's often a good thing; what children have in mind isn't always the best thing. Mozart and Chopin wrote some tunes that are much more fun to hear than "Heart and Soul." But that's not what these lessons are about.
I "teach" dance, too. That is, I sit and watch children dance. Anyone who has ever seen me dance may giggle at the thought of me teaching dance. And nowadays, anyone who sees me take a few steps may wonder how I can even think of teaching dance. But music, dance, and visual art (which I also "teach") are expressive arts, and there are too many situations where children are discouraged from expressing themselves, or told exactly how to do so.
So I have the luxury of teaching the way I want to. Since I don't charge money, I don't have to worry about complaints. You may have noticed that I put quotes around the word "teach" in some of my sentences. I did that in deference to the people who work harder, and get children to impress you with their skill. They have important roles to play, too; some children and parents want to deal with more than "Chopsticks." But I believe that the role I'm playing is also valuable. The lessons I give are chances for children to express their hearts and souls.

Being Slow 331.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who had a stroke a few years ago. She is paralyzed on one side of her body, and like me, has to do things more slowly than she used to. That can be quite frustrating. It takes her longer to do simple tasks most people take for granted. Same here. Buttoning buttons never used to be an athletic task for me, but it is now. And as for Chopin's "Minute Waltz," which I used to try to play in a minute, forget it.
That's the down side. But there is an up side. When we write, we have to take our time. We've both gone from being proficient typists to hunting and pecking with one hand. That makes it so that getting our thoughts on paper takes much longer. We can type no word before its time. And having plenty of time, we think. I'm not saying you quick people don't think, but it often helps to think slowly. As you rush through life, you miss a lot, and as you rush through communication, you may bypass le mot juste. We slow people have time to get the subtleties.
We often hear that wisdom comes with age, and there's some truth to that, but for Pete's sake, I'm only forty-seven! Well, almost forty-eight. And yet I've been called "wise" by so many people that its starting to go to my head. I'll take some of the credit they're giving me, but I also give a lot of credit to my slowness. Not being able to type sixty words per minute, and not being able to be part of the rat race most of you have to run, I have plenty of time to think.
And sometimes I have to stop. Right now, for example. When I finish typing this paragraph, I'm going to stop typing and go have breakfast. I'm tired of typing. As I eat, I'll bet I'm going to think of more things I want to write. Maybe they'll be profound, or at least clever. For now, I'll let the beginning of this article age a little.
I'm back. It was a good breakfast. I listened to the news on the radio, and didn't think much about this article. That's all right. My writing style, which is often stream-of-consciousness, does not require that I always know what I'm going to say before I say it. In conversations, it's often a good idea to prepare your messages mentally before you let them out. That's not the case when you write, because no one has to see your words until you want them to. Back in my pencil and pen days, I had to plan a little more, because I didn't want to have to start all over on a new piece of paper. But now I can mess up without worrying. Thank Heaven for the delete key.
My stream of consciousness carried me to a lagoon where I didn't quite stick to the subject. That's okay. I don't know about you, but I don't have any urgent business I have to attend to. I'm writing this article on the Fourth of July, and I declare independence of the clock and the calendar. I think someone ought to design a bumper sticker that says "Slow Power." And I think drivers who sport that bumper sticker should stay proudly in the right lane.
When Wishes Come True 332.
They say that we should be very careful what we wish for. Some of our wishes, they say, could end up coming true. I never used to catch the drift of that warning. On one level, I understood what it meant - that a poorly conceived wish, if granted, could bring on unforeseen disaster. We could end up learning, too late, that we didn't want what we thought we wanted, and there could very well be calamities that would make us eat our words. But as far as I was concerned, the calamities thus warned against seemed quite unlikely; I wanted my wishes to come true, and if their realization had consequences I didn't like, I'd deal with them later.
We want our children to live lives that reflect our fondest dreams and deepest convictions. Good parents are flexible about that; their children know that they'll be loved even if they don't faithfully reflect all the dreams and convictions their parents want them to. Still, it's nice, once in a while, to be able to smile, sit back, and proudly say, "That's my kid!" It makes all the work of parenting seem worthwhile. Our children may seem a little embarrassed by that pride, but for the most part, I think they like it.
But sometimes, when our children end up strikingly similar to our dreams, that turns out not to be what we really wanted at all. The child of a military person volunteers to serve in a war overseas, and Major Mom or Dad realizes that that child, though doing his/her parents proud, could end up getting killed. And that wasn't part of the dream; the dream had to do with Purple Hearts and other medals. We teach our children values, and if we teach them well, we see some of our values lived out. Sometimes that gives us second thoughts.
Our children can keep us honest with ourselves, or if we weren't honest in the first place, they can make us honest. We hear ourselves saying to our children, in effect, "How dare you think, say, and do exactly what we taught you to think, say, and do? We were speaking theoretically! We didn't think you would actually take our words to heart! And we certainly didn't expect you to act on those ideals we taught you!" What follows may be accusations of hypocrisy. And I guess we're somewhat guilty as charged; we know what we WANT to believe in, but there are more things going on in our minds than just our high-fallutin' convictions.
The people our children become are, to some degree, reflections of who we are. They can be the best and worst of who we are. (They can also rebel, and seem to be the exact opposites of us, but that's not what this article is about.) So here's fair warning for those of you who don't already know: the things you say to or model for your children may end up being significant parts of who your children are. So be careful what you wish for.

Classics 333.
Once in a while, somebody creates something that's really good - so good that people like it even when that somebody isn't around any more. Then it's called a classic. Some classics start to seem sacred; you aren't supposed to change a word, note, or stroke of it. You've got to keep it exactly the way its creator meant it to be. The folk process can change folk tales, folk songs, etc., but classics aren't supposed to be put through any folk processor.
I understand that way of thinking. I have my own favorite classics. I wouldn't want a word of Walt Whitman's poetry or a note of Beethoven's music to be changed. That's partly because those words and notes are so good the way they are, and partly because they're part of my past. Not that I remember Walt or Ludwig personally, but I remember reading Whitman's poetry and hearing Beethoven's music in high school. And I want to hold on to those memories.
I've developed my own strategy for dealing with people's tendency to mess with the classics. I look at their altered versions as separate works. When I first heard "A Fifth of Beethoven" during the disco era, I tried not to think of it as the bastardization of a classic. To me, it was just a disco tune. As far as I was concerned, Beethoven's fifth symphony was intact; if it had inspired someone to create some new music, that was okay with me.
My friend Phil Hoose recently reminded me that works of art don't become classics just by being good - that they have to be heard, seen, or read by people with influence. Phil refers to DWEM's (dead, white, European males) as the ones whose creations get called classics in our culture. He thinks Ray Charles deserves a shot at it, too. I agree. And I suspect that there are also great artists whose work is given less credit than Ray Charles. I recently heard that Sitting Bull was an accomplished songwriter. Not to mention the female half of the human race, some of whom had to call themselves "George" or something to get any recognition.
I'm sure that when Shakespeare first came out with his plays, some critics accused him of mangling the classics. He took a time-honored myth, "Pyramus and Thisbe," and turned it into a popular play called "Romeo and Juliet." He changed the names, the setting, the plot - people who liked "Pyramus and Thisbe" must have thought some nasty things about Shakespeare. Why couldn't the vulgar bard leave well enough alone? And then, a few hundred years later, Sondheim and Bernstein came up with "West Side Story," which was even further from "Pyramus and Thisbe." When will it end?
I choose not to let it bother me. Disney Productions can come up with versions of classics and folk tales, and as far as I'm concerned, they're separate projects, to be judged on their own merits. Some may become classics, and some may not. People of the future will decide.

Independence 334.
I'm writing this article the day after Independence Day. I realized, as I woke, that the word "independence" contains a prefix. We have a holiday to celebrate something we aren't. In fact, on July 4, 1776, all we did was publish a document that said we weren't dependent. It's kind of like Groundhog's Day; we celebrate something that we once hoped would eventually be true. But really, I think King George may have had a point when he wrote, "Nothing of significance happened today." All that happened was the signing of a document. Later on, that turned out to be significant, but not until a whole bunch of other things happened.
Even though Barbra Streisand later sang to us that people who need people are better off, independence is still a big concept in our culture. I was excited about the prospect of going to the big celebration yesterday, seeing lots of people I knew and liked, and ending the evening with a bang, but the wheelchair-accessible buses weren't running, and there was too great a chance of heavy rain. In situations like that, celebrating my own independence is not a good idea. I could end up getting soaked
Independence is relative. It could be a good thing, but acting independent prematurely could turn out to be a real downer. It depends. Children like to be independent. They often don't want us to help them. They want to do it themselves. They see adults doing things without help, and if adults can do it, then why not children? They don't want to have to wait until their eighteenth or twenty-first birthdays. And we adults like to be independent, too. One of the major reasons I'm glad I grew up is that I don't have to be as dependent as I used to be. So it's a little embarrassing and a little disappointing to find, at age forty-seven, that I have some special needs that I didn't have before. But at least I've grown up enough not to need someone else to tell me that I have special needs.
We often want our parents to be there for us long after we've grown up. And parents often are there, helping out with a down payment, or staying with the grandchildren in a pinch. On the other hand, our parents can get to a point where they depend on us more than we depend on them. But I've heard, from people whose parents have died, that even if those parents ended their lives extremely dependent, the grown children who mourn their passing can still feel like orphans. People only want to be as independent as they want to be. And people who need people are really only lucky if there are also people around willing to be needed, and willing to back off when they're not needed. If not, people who don't need people are the luckiest people in the world.

Useless Arguments 335.
Sometimes a child comes up to me and tells me, with conviction, something that simply isn't true. As a teacher, I used to make a big thing of it. After all, truth is pretty important to us teachers. Colleges print "Veritas" on their flags and stationery - even etch it on to their stone buildings. So what good are we as educators if we allow untruths to go unchallenged?
Besides, there's the matter of personal integrity. When we know what's true, it just doesn't feel right to allow inaccurate statements to lie there, unchallenged. Some people aren't bothered by that at all, but a lot of us are.
I once heard from a child that there was an active volcano in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There isn't. But he was born in San Juan, and it was important to him to be right about this. I went to the library with him. We found several books about Puerto Rico. Some of the books even had photographs of San Juan. There were no volcanoes in the photographs. But on the other hand, these books, which were full of all kinds of information, did not once say, "There are no active volcanoes in San Juan."
It gradually dawned on me that this was not about volcanoes. I was dealing with a child who wasn't getting many chances to be an expert, and he wanted to at least be an expert on San Juan. So I changed my approach. I told him it bothered me that the people who made those books didn't even know about the active volcano. You'd think they'd check it out. It was a good thing that we had an expert - someone who was born in San Juan.
If you're the kind of stickler for accuracy I used to be, my approach to this issue probably bothers you. But as much as I'm devoted to truth, I'm also devoted to children. And children sometimes have priorities that are temporarily more important than truth. So I told him that I didn't know who was right about this - the authors of these books, or this child who came from San Juan. I told him I'd never been to San Juan (which was true) and he had - that I was almost ready to take his word for it, but that I had to leave room for the possibility that even he could make mistakes.
He liked the authority role I had given him. He liked the fact that I was taking him seriously, not casually dismissing his words. He told me it wasn't the authors' fault that they didn't know about the volcano; very few people know about it.
Now, he's older, and probably more ready to believe books - less apt to stick with early childhood memories or fantasies. And he's more able to rely on other areas of expertise. I don't bring up the volcano issue. Probably, he's forgotten the whole thing. And I think the truth has survived that episode.

Why I Don't Seem So Angry 336.
A friend of mine recently read some of my articles and told me that though he enjoyed reading them, he wondered why I didn't sound angrier. He and I belong to the People's Music Network, a group of people who are hoping and working, through music, to have major effects on what happens in this country and this world. There's a lot of anger in our network - anger about war, injustice, bigotry, the destruction of our environment, and more.
I am angry about a lot of things, including things that concern children, parents, and teachers. It infuriates me that people harm children. I've referred to our society's messed up priorities; parents and teachers should be given much more support than they're given. I'm not just saying these things to prove that I can be angry; I really am angry.
Some people can be both angry and articulate at the same time. Not me, so much. In my experience, when I feel intense anger, it's better not to go public with it right away. I think about my anger, and try to come up with strategies that will let people know what's on my mind in ways that they can hear. If I yell, swear, or insult people's sacred cows, fewer people are going to get my message. So I write when I'm feeling pensive and/or inspired. My anger is still there, but I try to express it in ways that work. And that doesn't sound as angry, I guess.
Hope is another factor. When I think about the future, I think about the children I've known. They'll be the ones in charge. They may not have much power right now, but as I watch them grow (and help them grow), I get good feelings about the future. I've been teaching and parenting long enough to see some of the children I've known become adults. One of them wrote a letter to the Boston Globe that made me proud of her. It focussed on an injustice that concerned her. Another is a union organizer. Another challenges me on issues I thought I'd figured out, and sometimes changes my mind. One of my former students is a lawyer who focuses on the rights of disabled people. She herself has cerebral palsy.
Some of those people are probably going to be angrier than I seem. Some may be angrier than I am. And of course, some will be complacent, or work against causes I support. I'm part of a generation I sometimes jokingly call "The Aged of Aquarius," and even though it seemed as if we were united against war and injustice, there must be plenty in our ranks who don't see things the way I do; we're the postwar baby boom, and we've elected candidates I would never vote for. I know I did my teaching and parenting in places where it was easier to feel hope than it might have been in other places. But I like hope. I taught high school for two years, and switched to elementary school because it gave me more hope. I try hard not to be complacent; I want to make a difference. But if I let myself get too angry, I know I won't be as effective. Bedtime 337.
Most of us adults don't have bedtimes imposed on us by other people. We go to sleep when we decide to. That's even more true of us retired adults; we're less likely to have to get up at a fixed time, so why go to bed when we don't feel like it? True, there are some tyrants who seem to be giving adults bedtimes: our bodies, which have a way of getting tired; our neighbors (if we don't have separate homes or apartments with thick walls), who may not be on the same schedules we're on; or our children, who may have needs that dictate our sleeping schedules (e.g., late night and/or early morning feedings).
But if we want to have some kind of night life, we're free to ignore some of those tyrants. We can get more tired than our bodies want us to get. If we're sleepy and our neighbors aren't, we can put plugs in our ears, and sleep through whatever noises our neighbors are making. Some of you may even have figured out ways to get your children to sleep when you want them to sleep. The main thing is, we don't have to go to bed if we don't want to.
Are you wondering, yet, what my point is? Do you think I'm going to stand up for the rights of children, as I have in some of my other articles? Don't worry. This time I'm going to stand up for you. Adults have rights, too. We need sleep, solitude, couple time, and more. Not everything we need or want to do can or should be done while the children are awake. And so we have to establish some mandatory bedtimes.
I remember envying my parents as I lay in bed for what seemed like hours (but may not have been quite so long). Sometimes I heard laughter downstairs, and I really wanted to sneak down and find out what was so funny. I know, now, that sometimes it was Milton Berle, or Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. But sometimes the television wasn't even on. What could have been so funny?
Children do need sleep, but they may not always need it according to the schedules we have in mind. Bedtime provides structure in a child's day - makes it so that the child is able to be awake and alert at appropriate times. I've worked with children who didn't get enough sleep, and their lack of sleep was a problem in school. But even parents who are strict about bedtime don't always have children who sleep as long as they need to; it's possible to stay awake in bed.
Children's sleep or lack thereof is not the focus of this article. My main point is that adults need adult time. Children whose parents haven't had enough adult time often have a price to pay. Even adults who always mean well are able to be kinder and gentler when they've had some of their own time.
A friend of mine once told me that she always used to wonder why she didn't have a little sister. As an adult, she asked her parents why. The answer she got surprised her. She'd had a role. Babies 338.
I know people who are crazy about babies, and I also know people who aren't. I'm one of the ones who aren't. I'm glad there are babies; if it weren't for babies, there wouldn't be children. So to me, babies are definitely people to be welcomed, supported, respected, etc., and when I'm with babies, I do my best. But I prefer people who say what's on their minds, come up with interesting points of view, and can think of people other than themselves. Personally, I have trouble seeing babies that way. And I also like people who sleep through the night (or read or write if they don't feel like it), can tell you what they're crying about, and know what a bathroom is for.
It's not that I think there's anything wrong with babies. I have it on the best authority that I was once one myself. I don't remember being a baby; the first thing I remember was some guy asking me how old I was. I didn't say anything, but I struggled to put up three fingers, and my mother beamed proudly. Sometimes people still called me a baby, but I think most of them did it to bother me. When you've just made it past that stage, it can be downright insulting to be told you haven't. And it wasn't true; if I was a baby, how come I could put up three fingers like that? That required intelligence and dexterity no baby could have mustered!
I worry about some people who like babies a little too much. Some of them don't like older children as much, so they keep having more and more babies. But the babies don't last very long; they have a way of turning into children, and then adolescents. Some parents try to stop that from happening; they baby their children in the vain hope that they'll stay babies forever. After a while, it becomes quite clear that that isn't going to happen, and there can be trouble. People tend to want a kind of respect that isn't always given to babies.
So I hope people who prefer babies too much find other ways to be with them. The babies don't have to be their own. There are plenty of babies around whose parents need or want to spend time away from them, and these parents would love to connect with some baby-lovers who could provide support. I love children, and spend a lot of time giving that kind of support to children and parents. I don't have to adopt them to do that. In fact, as much as I love them, I wouldn't want to adopt them. I'm too tired now.
Like the friend I recently wrote about who doesn't like to spend much time with children, I'm a little embarrassed that I don't adore babies as much as some people do. You'd think I would, adoring children as much as I do. But I'm glad I know that about myself. And I hope that by going public with the information, I'm helping some of you come to similar realizations. You don't have to like what other people like to be a good person.

The United Front 339.
Adults sometimes disagree with each other about how to raise children. If they don't have the same children, their disagreements don't have to cause problems. Or if they're good at communicating, they can usually work it out. It's a good idea for two adults to come to some understanding before starting to raise children together, but you can't think of everything. And so, sometimes, you argue with each other. That's okay. Really, it is.
Some adults feel as if they have to present a united front to their children. They don't let the kids see that they disagree about how children should be treated. When my own children were growing up, my wife and I usually discussed policy privately. It's not that we necessarily thought our disagreements would traumatize the children; we just thought they'd try to participate in the process, making it more complicated. After all, they were certainly going to be affected by the outcome, so why not lobby for their interests? But we often wanted them to keep their two cents in their piggy banks. So we often had our discussions/arguments while the children were asleep or away. That's one way to approach it - the united front. But there's another way: adults actually do have disagreements about policy, and if children don't see those disagreements, they may grow up to enter relationships with unrealistic expectations. Maybe they'll think they're not supposed to have arguments. But they are. Even in the best of relationships, there are healthy arguments. So maybe the complications that surface when children enter into the policy discussions serve a purpose.
And maybe there's another purpose for letting children see and hear the disagreements: they can learn not only that disagreements exist, but also what to do about them. If they witness effective handling of controversy, they can learn from it, and maybe apply it to their own relationships right away. This assumes, of course, that the adults are handling it effectively. If not, adults often don't want children to be involved, and I guess that's a good idea.
Often when I write about an issue, I have already made up my mind about where I stand. But I haven't made up my mind on this one. Probably, the right answer, if there is one, depends on the nature and substance of the disagreements the adults are having; children should witness some arguments and not others. Maybe there are some they shouldn't have to just witness; they should get involved.
I could have waited to write this article until I was all done arguing with myself about what I thought. But the controversy is real, and I thought it would be dishonest to pretend I had the whole thing figured out. So what do you think?

The Politics of Permission 340.
As adults, some of us develop a pretty good idea of the politics of permission. Once, for example, a fellow teacher asked for my advice about whether to ask a supervisor for permission to take a day off. I said no. I said calling in sick would be both more expedient and more polite. It would be a little dishonest - all right, thoroughly dishonest. But this teacher had no personal days left, and asking for permission to take the day off would be asking someone else to bear the burden of that dishonesty, or to petition the hierarchy for a waiver. And since the day off was necessary anyway, it could eventually end up in either dishonesty or docked pay. So I recommended that this teacher bypass the bureaucracy and lie.
Children don't take long to start learning about the politics of permission. At first, they may make some mistakes, asking Mom when they'd be better off asking Dad, or asking the teacher when they're more likely to get a good response from the student teacher. And sometimes, if they ask the wrong one, they try again, incurring some wrath, maybe causing adults to argue. Adults who communicate well are harder to trick; they've already come to some basic agreements about policy. But there are no fail safe systems, and so children do sometimes get what they want by knowing which adult is a better bet.
And sometimes asking anyone at all isn't a good idea. Sometimes figures of authority are going to say no, either because they have to or because they want to, and it's better not to ask. Some people in charge want to know everything that happens, and have the final say about everything. Others would rather only know what they have to know. We want our elected leaders to be responsible for all decisions made during their administrations, but sometimes that means knowing how to hire people who will make good decisions. The leaders are still ultimately responsible; the buck stops on the elected leader's desk. But the buck has been elsewhere.
I remember being criticized for what I "let" children do. From my point of view, I wasn't letting them do all that they did, but from children's point of view, if they could find ways to do things that were worth whatever consequences I'd arranged, I was giving implicit permission. I was in charge of making sure that anything that happened was at least acceptable to me. If not, I was "allowing" it.
I'm not recommending that we set up police states for either children or adults. Some things that we may not officially sanction are going to happen, and some of them should happen. Not all of our rules are necessarily well-conceived. But it's good to know which of our limits are flexible and which are absolute. And knowing that, it's good to make sure that adults who share power with us and children over whom we have power also know.
Frustration 341.
It's nice when you can do what you're trying to do. Sometimes it's so easy that you don't even think about it, but sometimes it takes a lot of effort, and when you succeed, you get a really good feeling inside. Maybe other people notice your success, and congratulate you, maybe not. For some people, that doesn't matter so much; you can congratulate yourself. The whole experience leaves you with a good feeling, and the next time you're faced with difficulty, maybe you'll remember the sweet taste of hard-earned success.
But that's not what this article is about. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it doesn't work. Maybe you've seen other people do what you're trying to do, and they've made it look easy. Maybe the only people you've seen have trouble with it are people you haven't yet learned to admire. And so you're frustrated, and you become one of those people you haven't yet learned to admire.
Frustration itself can be a learning disability. Why try to learn something if you've already tried and it's apparent to you that it doesn't work? When you stop trying, at least you can sort of stop failing. Nothing ventured, nothing lost.
Watching children, it's easy to see how hard they're trying, but it's also easy not to see it. You had to learn what they're trying to learn, but you learned it so long ago that you may have forgotten how hard it was. You probably think of tying your shoes as one thing to do, but if you haven't
learned how to do it, it's many things to do.
Physical disability is reteaching me about the frustration involved in learning how to do "simple" tasks. Lately, I've been applying one of my teaching strategies to myself: if a task seems too difficult, I break it up into its component tasks, start small, and mentally celebrate the
accomplishment of each subtask. This takes longer, but I'm not goin' anywhere; as I've told you in other articles, I've got time (I hope I haven't rubbed that in too much; I know most of you don't have as much time as you'd like. Sorry.).
Many children need to hear that they, too, have time. And they need to believe it, and be patient with themselves. If other people aren't modelling that patience for them, it can be extra hard to learn. When children are surrounded by people who are all rushing to get to step two, having
difficulty with step one can be much more frustrating than it has to be. Children can be rushed into despair.
So be patient. Some of you may be thinking, that's easy for you to say. You aren't goin' anywhere. We ARE, and if kids don't hurry up, we'll be late. I know about that; I haven't forgotten. So I'm not suggesting that you try to learn patience all at once; that can be frustrating. But try a little now and then.

Dancing 342.
Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine how someone could not want to sing. To me, singing is so much a part of being alive that not being able to sing or at least hear other people sing would be truly sad. So when I hear that someone doesn't like singing, I feel as if it's my mission to make that person see the light. I've learned not to be too obnoxious about it, but even if I don't say, "Yes, you CAN sing," I still think it. And I hope they'll eventually come around.
I have to remind myself to think that way about dancing. I like dancing, but my lack of confidence in my talent for dancing has always been similar to other people's lack of confidence in their singing. I've heard the proverb: If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing. I've even added my own truism to the proverb: If you can think, you can write.
But if those words don't reach down into people's pools of potential, they don't mean much. Okay, so there was a dancer inside me, I thought. But from my point of view, inside me was a good place for that dancer to stay; people's toes were safer if that dancer stayed inside me. And I allowed myself to rename my lack of confidence and self-perceived (self-inflicted?) lack of talent. I called it lack of interest. I told myself and others that I didn't like dancing.
But in 1981, I let the dancer in me out. I went contra dancing, square dancing, English country dancing, and sometimes free form dancing, where you moved however the music told you to move. And I liked it. None of the above required skill far beyond walking; I didn't try tap dance or ballet. Partly, I tried dancing so I could be among people, but I stayed with it even when there were plenty of people in my life, some of whom didn't feel like dancing.
Once, at the New England Folk Festival, I attended a discussion about dancing. People were trying to figure out why there's relatively little dance in modern USA. I looked around the room and thought like a sociologist/anthropologist for a minute. Then I volunteered a perspective: "We are obviously not much of a dancing culture," I said. "We're more of a verbal culture. Look at us! Here we are, having a DISCUSSION about DANCE! Would people in another culture have a dance about talking?" I didn't punctuate my observation by getting up and dancing, but don't think I wasn't tempted.
I got some gratifying nods after my comment, but as I look back at it, I don't think it was quite accurate. There is plenty of dance in our culture. We are many cultures and subcultures mixed together, so there isn't one style called "United States-style dancing" as there are certain styles we think of as Israeli or Greek dancing. And a friend points out to me that
Israelis and Greeks may dance in ways that don't fit our stereotypes.
Children sing, draw, make up stories, and dance until they learn not to.
And they learn not to by experiencing other people's reactions to their songs, drawings, stories, or dances. And it's too bad. But it's not too late.
Failure, Crisis, and Death 343.
There was a list of required and suggested books for introductory education courses at Beloit College when I started taking such courses. Heading the list were such titles as How Children Fail (by John Holt), Crisis in the Classroom (by Charles Silverman), and Death at an Early Age (by Jonathan Kozol). These titles alone were enough to make one wonder whether there was any hope for schools. And a little further down the list was De-schooling Society (by Ivan Ilyich).
So we weren't being given the impression that things were hunky-dory in schools. Veteran teachers - people who had been in charge of the "failure," "crisis," and "death" for years, must have felt a little threatened by the new wave of teachers invading from the colleges. And some of us invaders felt that at least some of the old-timers must have been doing it all wrong, and that we were going to repair the damage they'd done. We weren't going to learn from the veterans, because then we'd be "copping out" - becoming part of the problem when we wanted to be part of the solution. So to some degree, experienced teachers were right to feel threatened.
But we weren't going to stay newcomers forever, so if there was a new way that was better, we'd better put up or shut up. We were eventually going to become the Establishment. We were going to be superintendents, principals, and veteran teachers. There would be younger teachers joining us soon, and maybe they would see us as the status quo to be overcome.
Some rebels stayed out of the public schools. Some tried the public schools and then left, either voluntarily or otherwise. Of the ones of us who stayed, some seemed to surrender to the system, some to compromise, and some to keep up the fight.
I like to think that if Holt, Silverman, Kozol, or Ilyich saw me at work, I'd get good reviews. Maybe. But maybe one of them would show up at the wrong time, when I was helping a child do a worksheet that was mindless and irrelevant. On the other hand, they all became writers, not public school teachers, so who are they to criticize?
Well, now I'm a writer, too. Some of what I see teachers doing bothers me, and it inspires me to write some articles (not mentioning names or giving telling details). Some of it gives me hope; teachers do or say things that make it seem as if they're going to be part of the solution. I feel as if I'm a little less of a rebel, but I think that may be because we rebels have some power now, and we can affect what happens. In many schools there are no more basal readers, and writing is taught with more emphasis on content. So maybe we've triumphed a little. But let's watch ourselves. We can get used to parts of the system we intended to change - parts that deserve to be changed. If the system is paying our bills, we can gradually become part of the problem. "Careless" Errors 344.
I'm sometimes bothered by the careless way people use the word "careless." People sometimes make mistakes because they don't care about what they're doing, but those mistakes are not the only ones labelled "careless." I remember caring very much about avoiding the errors my teachers labelled "careless," and having a lot of trouble avoiding them. Meanwhile, it seemed as if some other children, who didn't seem to care as much, rarely made what teachers called "careless errors."
How could my teachers have had any idea how much I cared? Were they mind-readers? If so, they were not reading my mind very accurately, and I suspect that they were also misreading some other minds. We cared. Some of us cared with all our might. Caring wasn't enough; we needed some strategies for translating our caring into schoolwork that was neat and accurate enough to impress teachers. But let it not be said that we didn't care.
I'd rather call those mistakes "human errors." I admit that I did make human errors. And I was reliably human; teachers didn't have to guess about that. Human errors have stayed with me throughout my life. I care very much about these articles I write. I read each article over and over. As I read them, I discover that I haven't punctuated, spelled, typed, or worded things exactly as I've meant to. When I get an article to a certain point, I e-mail it to twenty friends. Then I print it out and read it. I usually enjoy sitting and reading what I've written, but I'm not doing it just for fun. More often than not, I end up going right back to the computer to start correcting errors and rephrasing sections of my prose. Then I print it out, read it, and maybe return to the computer to correct some more.
I wouldn't go through all that trouble if I didn't care. I want each word I write to be spelled correctly. I'm beyond invented spelling; I encourage it in children, but I've gotten to a point where I appreciate it when someone points out an occasional misspelled word. And I want all my variations on the conventions of grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary to be intentional ones. But sometimes, as I correct my mistakes or revise my phrasing, I imagine one of my teachers shaking his/her head and thinking and/or saying, "Careless...careless."
Maybe there are some children who don't care about their schoolwork as much as teachers wish they cared. If so, maybe there's some value in pointing out their carelessness. I don't think so, but maybe I'm wrong. But since we can't read minds, we can't tell for sure whether someone cares. And if we're not careful, we can actually convince a caring child that she/he doesn't care. And that can have effects we don't mean to have. So how about calling those mistakes "human errors?"

Justice 345.
Today I heard that the crime rate in a newly liberated country has risen since people have gotten more rights. It has raised an issue that we're used to in the United States: aren't those laws that protect everyone's rights protecting the guilty as well as the innocent? (The mirror image of that question would be: When we oppress everyone, aren't we oppressing the innocent as well as the guilty?) Unfortunately, we're not perfect at figuring out who's innocent and who's guilty, nor how guilty the guilty are.
This is an issue for people who work with children. We have rules we expect children to follow. We try to keep down the number of rules, both so that children can follow them more easily and so that we can keep track of who's following them and who isn't. We try to be fair about enforcing our rules, protecting the innocent and holding the guilty responsible. But we're no better than those who try to establish justice among adults, and so children do occasionally end up getting punished for some wrongs they didn't commit, and not getting punished for some they did. People tend not to consider using capital punishment on children ("I'm gonna get killed for this," spoken by a child, is seldom to be taken literally), but punishment is a real possibility.
If we lived in Utopia, there wouldn't be any misdeeds. There wouldn't even be any need for rules, because everyone - children and adults - would behave in ways that would make rules unnecessary. They would all treat each other with respect, considering what effects their actions and words could have on each other, and making sure nobody got hurt or bothered. "Utopia" appropriately comes from the Greek for "nowhere," but it does some good to keep in mind what we would like to happen.
Our system of justice is not utopian; it focuses on what goes wrong. It doesn't take the approach some effective teachers take. Law enforcement officials don't spend much time congratulating people for obeying laws. People don't usually get pulled over and praised and/or rewarded for staying within the speed limit (although I recently heard that some communities are trying that approach). It's assumed that most people will do what they're supposed to do, and that the way to achieve justice is to catch and punish those who don't.
Parents, teachers, and other adults try to prepare children to become good citizens. Children also prepare each other. They learn about freedom, individual rights, justice, and injustice, through planned lessons, unplanned lessons, and their own thoughts and experiences. Crimes, misdemeanors, and other annoying behavior happen, and we try to make them happen less. We really want them to stop happening altogether. But swift and sure punishment, which some people call the greatest deterrent to misbehavior, can be unrealistic, misguided, and ineffective, both for adults and for children. Prisons, capital punishment, detentions, and expulsions have been around for a long time, and haven't solved the problem.
Doing Your Best 346.
As a child, I never liked feeling as if I had to be the best at whatever I was doing. So as a parent and a teacher, I always did my best to decrease pressure on children by telling them that they didn't have to win or get an A; I just expected them to do their best. That was supposed to be
reassuring. Victory and high grades may have seemed like they might be fun, but I didn't think it was fun for children to think they had to excel in order to be worthwhile people. I told children I just wanted them to do as well as they could.
Lately, I've been reconsidering that message. Not that I now tell children I expect them all to win or get perfect grades. But I wonder how children hear us when we tell them to just do their "best." I can think of several thought processes that could go on in a child's mind when that child is told to do his/her best, and it may be that not all of these
processes result in feelings of reassurance.
I remember how the quest for my "best" affected me. Sometimes, I almost would have preferred being told to win or get an A. At least I could tell whether I'd done that. If not, at least I'd know I hadn't. But how was I or anyone else supposed to figure out whether I'd done my best? Sometimes I could get an A+ without doing my best. At other times, I
could do what I thought was my best and get a much lower grade. There really wasn't any way of knowing what my best was. And sometimes it was hard for me to deal with not knowing; I blamed myself for not figuring out a way I could be better.
Other children may interpret the message as a sign of incompetence. If I were really good, thinks the child, people wouldn't be telling me it's all right to fail or lose. So I must not be so good. We want children to feel competent, confident, and calm, but sometimes well-intended words can backfire.
What we say to children who face challenges may actually be what we're saying to ourselves: WE don't want to be disappointed if children don't accomplish their goals. Children may feel fine about it already, and our words, perhaps meant to be reassuring, may be planting the seeds of disappointment. It's important to recognize children for who they are, not
mistake them for who we are.
I've found that the best way to find out what's going on for children is to listen to them. Listen not just to what they say, but also to how they say it, and to what they don't say. Sometimes children want to hear that it's all right to be just okay. Other times, they don't want to hear that; they want to hear that adults believe in their greater potential. Some
children seem to want to hear one thing and maybe need to hear another. Like us, they can be complicated people.

Just Try a Little 347.
When I was a child, one of the memorable trips we took was to Nova Scotia. On the way there, my parents took me to a restaurant called The Gloucester House in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They wanted to have seafood, and they wanted their children to experience it, too. They thought of this experience as something special - a splurge. I think I may have approached the restaurant with a slightly open mind. Maybe not. I don't remember.
But then I saw the menu. It was full of items I had never tried, and I
didn't like food I'd never tried. I'd had fishsticks, but they didn't have fishsticks. And then I looked at the bottom of the second page, and I saw what I wanted. This restaurant was great! They had my favorite food! I told my parents I knew what I wanted. No doubt about it. I'm sure my parents were hoping and maybe even expecting that I would order something that had been caught that day by those who go down to the sea in ships. But no. I ordered spaghetti.
I wasn't sure to what degrees my parents were angry, dismayed, and/or amused. I don't know how surprised they were. Was I predictable? I didn't care. I just knew that the spaghetti tasted good - almost as good as the spaghetti we had at home. And it tasted familiar. Even though we were hundreds of miles away from the life I was used to - even though we were in a strange land where "Gloucester" was pronounced as if it were "Gloster," there was still spaghetti, and it still tasted good.
Children like things that are different, and they like things that aren't - just like adults. But as adults, sometimes we forget. It can be annoying to "know" how good something is and hear that our children are unwilling to try it. So maybe we make a deal: you can have your boring old food as your main course as long as you have a little bit of this delicious, new, and unusual food. Such a deal makes us feel as if we are educators; we feel as if we are preparing children for the marvelous diversity life has to offer them. That's our perspective.
That probably isn't their perspective. They probably see eating that little bit of yucky lobster Newburgh as the price they have to pay if they want to eat the yummy hamburger. And so they eat it. We don't think they're trying it with open minds, but they probably think they are. But to them, the lobster looks and tastes so gross, and the hamburger so good, that the open mind is just a formality. If the adults like the lobster so much, think the children, why are they making US eat it? Why don't they eat it all themselves?
I don't think I started liking any foods as a result of being forced to try a little. Nowadays, I like foods that I didn't like as a child, and hot dogs, which used to be among my favorite foods, totally gross me out. I don't think I'd even be willing to try a little bit of hot dog so I could have lots of my favorite foods.


But Dad/Mom Lets Me! 348.
Divorce is complicated, even when there are no children involved. It usually brings up issues that didn't have to be addressed before. But when there are children involved, there are added complications. One of them is some children's tendency to use parents' disagreements. Even when Mom and Dad are effectively married (to me, the term "happily married" is an oversimplification), children can sometimes tune in to arguments, overt or covert, and find ways to get their own needs and wants met by participating in the arguments.
Divorce aggravates this tendency. I'm not sure how much of children's motivation is purely practical and how much has to do with their own pain, but children can learn pretty quickly that Mom and Dad disagree on certain issues, and learn how those disagreements can become tools. Sometimes children underscore the drama of divorce by bringing out the disagreements at key moments. They have no power to stop divorce from happening, but at least this approach gives them some power.
Children, being human, want to accomplish their own goals and get their own needs met. If playing Mom and Dad against each other is an effective way to do this, why not? Come to think of it, children try to blame themselves for divorce, and maybe it's easier for them to blame themselves if they do things that feed the flames. If this is one of their motivations, they probably don't know it; people don't necessarily know why they do what they do, but they do it.
Divorced or divorcing adults can make this worse. I remember that in the early stages of my own divorce, I tried to enlist my children as allies. I didn't do it on purpose exactly, but I managed to sneak in some little shots at my children's mother. I wanted to be the "good" parent, and let her be the "bad" one. It's common and natural both to blame yourself for divorce and to seek ways to redirect that blame.
If adults model this kind of blaming, children can easily pick it up, telling Mom how much fairer things are at Dad's place, and vice versa. And if Mom and Dad aren't communicating well (a problem not uncommon among divorced or divorcing couples), they can easily believe whatever their children say. So the child hears, "Well, your Dad/Mom may let you stay up until 1:00 in the morning, but I'm not going to." It may be that neither parent really allows that, but heck, it's worth a try, right?
So whenever possible, communication is a good idea. I know it can be difficult - especially at first. If it were easy, I guess there wouldn't be as many divorces. But children, who may seem as if they like the power divorce gives them, also don't. They don't like the power because if they have power, they think, then they could have prevented divorce. It's all their fault. Let's do all we can to make sure they know it's really not their fault. To do that, parents have to try to communicate with each other.

Being Brave 349.
Years ago, I heard my three year old upstairs neighbor crying. He had gotten hurt outside. My wife and I heard his father say to him, "Be brave, Jimmy." It seemed like such a strange thing to say in such a situation. The kid had gotten hurt. To us, bravery had nothing to do with it. I wanted to go upstairs and say to the father, "Be brave, Jim (Jim, Senior). A REAL man can listen to tears and be supportive when his son gets hurt." But I wasn't brave enough. Or it wasn't my business. I'm not sure which.
When I was growing up, I got a message about bravery similar to the one being given to Jimmy. I don't remember being told, "Be brave," when I cried, but I grew up in this culture, and so to me, bravery had to do with facing pain and/or death without flinching. John Wayne was the personification of bravery. (Actually, it turns out that he was an actor, not a cowboy or World War II hero. But I'll bet that like the rest of us, he had his moments of real bravery. And they didn't necessarily have to do with facing death.)
I'm going to the dentist today. I don't like going to the dentist. I don't like pain, and so far, despite all the things dentists do to try to minimize pain, there's always some pain involved in my dental visits. Some dentists have cute little signs in their offices. They say, "We cater to cowards." But seriously, folks, there's nothing cowardly about not liking pain. Pain is supposed to deliver a message, and that message won't be received correctly if the pain is enjoyed. Pain is supposed to hurt.
I've been told that the pain of childbirth is the worst pain imaginable, and, of course, I have no way of knowing whether that's true. Watching childbirth certainly didn't make me envy mothers. It sure looked as if it was painful enough to win the prize. I think I'll take it on faith that it's more painful than anything I've experienced. But I don't think anyone really knows how much pain anyone else is feeling. I've known women who gave birth to several children but were unwilling to go to the dentist.
I've been called brave because I enjoy life even though it's harder than it used to be. When I first heard "brave" being used to describe me, it didn't sound right; I wasn't like John Wayne. I wasn't one of five brave souls who, without regard for their own personal safety and comfort, had volunteered, for some noble cause, to become disabled. I have deep regard for my own safety and comfort. I could relate to "nice," "talented," "smart" - even "hard-working," which wasn't part of the self-image I grew up with. But "brave?" No. It didn't sound right.
Liking compliments as I do, it didn't take long for me to rework my definition of bravery to include my own approach to life. When a child asked John F. Kennedy how he became a war hero, he replied, "It was involuntary. They sank my boat." But Kennedy had already been brave. So was three year old Jimmy. So am I, and I'll bet you are, too. We don't have to have our boats sunk to prove it.

Predictable Books 350.
No matter how many times you read Good Night, Moon to your child, there aren't going to be any surprises. The same characters and inanimate objects are going to be there, and with the exception of the cow jumping over the moon, they aren't going to do much. All they do is stay in the book and wait for you to say good night to them. If you have more interesting things to do, you may wish you could skip some of the items so you could hurry up and get to your interesting things.
But the book says something important to children who like it. It's very predictable, very soothing, and it lets them know that at least part of life will be that way. Lots of books can do that for some children. They become children's friends. Children who can't read nevertheless know when you've skipped a page. And they want you to go back and read that page. Maybe you skipped it on purpose, hoping to get the job done more quickly. But sometimes you can't get away with that.
Later on, when children can read, many of them still like that kind of predictability. Some read the same book over and over, and some read books that belong to series. Carolyn Keene (who, I think, was the same person as Franklin W. Dixon) described Nancy and George (or Joe and Frank) at the beginning of each book. It's soothing for the young reader to find out that these are characters they've met before. And though there may be challenging words like "queried," there aren't too many. By the time they've read a few of the books, children know these words. It gives them a feeling similar to what they used to get from Good Night, Moon.
I used to think these books had little redeeming value. They didn't move children toward greater understanding of important ideas. I thought they were addictive, stopping children from growing in new ways by letting them lean back on old ways. I let children know I disapproved of these books, and tried to steer them towards books that I considered better.
But reading the "better" books required more thought than reading the series, and for some children, that wasn't pleasant. Reading about Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Sweet Valley Twins, or any other characters in the popular children's series was more like watching television. But at least it WASN'T watching television. I decided, at some point, that THAT was the redeeming value of these books. So I ended my crusade, and even read Nancy Drew books aloud to my daughters.
Some parents don't want to settle for the least of all the evils available to their children; they want their children to experience the "best" literature, hear the "best" music, and so on. I've seen that approach work on some children, but I know there are children who would much rather read books that don't necessarily qualify as great literature. Maybe it's just a stage they go through, or maybe not. But I don't feel like fighting it any more. At least they're reading.


Eating Your Vegetables 351.
A typical strategem for adults who want children to do certain things they'd rather not do is to remind children of something better that awaits them if they just finish doing the less pleasant thing: "There's a great dessert waiting for you, and you can have it as soon as you finish eating your vegetables." That's a time-honored method; I've had it used on me, I've used it on children, and I'll bet you're no stranger to it. But let's examine it a little.
First of all, there's an implicit message in that approach about the relative desirability of vegetables and dessert - that vegetables don't really taste too great, or at least nowhere near as great as dessert. Of course, if children have already gotten adults to use dessert as a bribe, they've probably already developed that implied preference, but using vegetables as the price to pay and dessert as the goods only reinforces that dichotomy - maybe sanctions it. I recently told a child (jokingly) that I used to have to finish all of my dessert if I wanted to have my vegetables, and she recognized the absurdity right away, laughed, and corrected me.
And what becomes of all those children who are made to eat their vegetables before they have dessert? When they move away from their parents, do they continue to have their vegetables first, or do they
celebrate their freedom by eating nothing but dessert for weeks? Months? Years? The rest of their lives? Do they raise children who are allowed to have dessert whenever they want? Or do they carry on the tradition? From what I've seen and experienced, my generation of eaters and servers has pretty much carried it on.
Once, and only once, I successfully outmaneuvered my mother on this issue. I talked about the absurdity of wasting hard-earned money on eating food I didn't like when there was food I did like right in the refrigerator. If there were children in the world who would have loved to have asparagus (as my mother assured me there were), what sense did it make to force me to eat it? It wouldn't help those poor children, and if she was concerned about vitamins and minerals, I could have some Wonder Bread, which, advertisers assured me, helped build strong bodies twelve ways. Asparagus, I argued, probably only helped in five or six ways.
I thought I had a point to make when I started writing this article. I wasn't sure whether it was about the importance of vegetables, the rights of children, both, or neither. Now that I'm done writing it, I still don't know, but I'm glad I've had my say. Let's leave this as the literary equivalent of abstract expressionist art: I may have a point to make, but I'm not going to come right out and tell you what it is. That would be too simple. What does this article say to you?

Maps 352.
We all know and/or are adults who have lots of trouble reading maps. Of course, there are many maps that are incorrect, but there are also correct maps that are unfairly blamed for people getting lost or ending up taking longer to get where they're going.
I am fascinated by maps. I ask for window seats on airplanes when I travel far, partly because I love the view, and partly because I like to see that the shapes of actual bodies of land and water are the same as the shapes I've seen on maps. I enjoy spotting Lake Michigan (perhaps telling the person next to me) and then hearing the pilot announce, "We are approaching Lake Michigan." In a world that is often so confusing and misleading, it's comforting to see Lake Michigan looking the way maps say it's supposed to look.
Maps were made long before people got to see what the world looks like from above, and that must have been quite a challenge, involving lots of abstract thinking. The maps made back then were mostly less accurate than modern maps, many of which are made using aerial photographs. People crossing oceans back then were often eager to see any land at all; it's understandable that they sometimes made mistakes identifying the land they saw.
Children, who are known for having difficulty thinking abstractly (although many of us know children who are great at it), are often bewildered by maps. They long for something a little more concrete. Since they do know about photographs, I have usually started map study units by displaying aerial photographs of the areas around the schools. These photographs are usually available at the local Department of Public Works, but NASA has aerial photographs of your area available if your own town doesn't have them. I've explained to children that some people took a picture from an airplane, and since they were up so high, the picture shows more area than pictures we take here on the ground.
Children love finding their own homes on aerial photographs, and finding other familiar landmarks. So do adults. As far as I know, human beings are the only creatures able to do this, although monarch butterflies
and swallows do have the uncanny ability to find destinations that are far away. Unlike humans, when they travel without maps, they consistently do fine.
Once children have had ample time to explore aerial photographs, I've shown them maps, explaining that some of the details that appear on the photographs actually make it harder to find what you're looking for. Details can get in the way. Sure, the photo shows a car parked next to a certain building. But that car may only be there temporarily; it could belong to someone's grandparents, who live in Ohio, or to a stranger who has stopped to ask for directions or consult a map. And so maps, which are a little more abstract than aerial photographs, can eventually be easier to use.
The Child in the Adult 353.
From about 1971 to about1981, most of my friends were children. I was bothered by many adults I knew, and I delighted in being able to spend most of my time with children. Having recently become an adult myself, I saw the world of adults as one in which you had to be fake, pretending to fit in. Many adults seemed to sense this attitude in me, and so they stayed away. There were plenty of adults who were my friends during those years, but I considered them all exceptions.
Lately, I've found it easier and easier to like adults, including adults I would have had more trouble liking earlier in my life. Partly, I suppose the reason is that more and more adults are younger than I am, and it's easier for me to see the children they once were. And since my own childhood seems so recent, even as I approach age fifty, I strongly suspect that no one is far from being a child - not even adults who are several decades older than I am. Since I like children, enjoying their charms and easily forgiving what I consider their faults, I don't have to make a great leap to like adults.
We tend to have higher standards for the adults in our lives. We expect them to have figured out ways to become less self-centered, less needy, less impulsive, and so on. When we think they haven't made such progress, we call them immature - "childish." I've been labelled that way, and I'll bet you have, too. I've even occasionally heard children called "childish." You'd think that there ought to be at least part of life when you're not supposed to be mature. When I see an adult behaving the way I've seen children behave, it seems natural to me. If the behavior I see bothers me, I respond in ways that let the adult know I'm bothered. If I like a behavior, I usually say so. Since people (adults and children) like to be liked, I'm pretty popular.
When an adult behaves in a way that bothers me, I start out by probing a little - trying to find out whether the annoying behavior is just a fluke. If it turns out to be typical of the adult, I try to find out whether the adult is open to criticism and willing to change. If not, I think about whether the behavior is a serious obstacle to friendship - whether the problem is mine, or not really such a problem. If, and only if I've completed this probe and still haven't found a way to like the grown child, I dislike him/her. Very few people make it that far. I realize that that approach sounds terribly analytical. I don't start each encounter with a conscious strategy, though; I'm analyzing my approach now, after the fact. The bottom line is that I like a lot more adults now that I can see the children in them.

Reschooling Society 354.
Ivan Illich wrote a book called "Deschooling Society," and while society doesn't seem likely to be deschooled in the way Illich meant, we do seem to be gradually cutting funding for schools. Proposition Thirteen in California, Proposition Two-and-a-Half in Massachusetts, and similar moves around the country are gradually doing away with important aspects of school curriculum. No matter how high prices rise in the rest of society, schools have to continue to make do with less and less. Maybe that's partly because taxpayers feel as if they have more control over school budgets than over other budgets.
Of course, children will probably still continue to attend schools; after all, parents are more able to go on about their days if their children are in school. But economics, the dismal science, paints a dismal picture of schools of the future. And schools of the present are at risk.
I have been and am one of the people criticizing schools. A lot of what I believe is best for children tends not to happen in most schools, and sometimes, when I tried to make it happen in my classroom, I felt like a maverick - a rebel. And a lot of what I did have to do did not feel at all like education. In retrospect, I think many teachers, and many people in other lines of work, were and are also rebels. But as I was rebelling, I felt isolated - sometimes a little paranoid. And I think I got into at least my share of trouble.
But I never thought that schools got too much money. I looked forward to some day owning property so that I could pay property taxes and not complain about how much of my hard-earned money I had to pay to fund the schools. Spending my career among many families that had expensive houses, drove expensive cars, and took expensive vacations, my reactions to complaints about the cost of schooling ranged from annoyance to fury. The same parents who kept their Volvos in their garages while they spent winter vacation in the Bahamas complained about the "skyrocketing" cost of education.
So there's a line some of us rebels have to walk: we want to continue making our points about the destructive and wasteful things that happen in schools, while emphasizing the need to provide appropriate funding for schools. I don't think many of the decreases in school funding were made in response to the criticisms made by Illich, Kozol, and the like; I think they were made because voters have not chosen to place children high enough on their priority lists. When I taught in Wellesley, I was impressed that Wellesley Public Schools did a better job prioritizing than many systems I've seen and heard about, but King Money was still in charge; if taxpayers had to spend money, whether to keep a good program going, improve a building, or keep a teaching position, they often seemed to react based on their relative personal "needs" for luxuries. And schools got the leftovers. About a Contest 355.
As a teacher, parent, and lover of children, I sometimes feel as if there is a secret contest going on. Teachers, parents, and other people who love children want to be unique, as I do - want to believe that they and only they REALLY understand and care about children, and that everyone else is insincere and/or misguided. We've thought a lot about the interactions we've seen and had with children, and we can't believe that the special ideas and approaches we've come up with could possibly have occurred to anyone else. At first, that's why I wrote these articles; who else could possibly write them?
But there are many of us. I'm glad there are, because if there were only one, I or whichever other person were the only one who can truly relate with children would have an awful lot of work to do. As I write these articles, sharing my experiences and insights and getting feedback from other adults who think about children, I often hear or read words that change my mind, or enhance my thinking. I'm gradually learning that even though my perspectives on children, teachers, and parents are unique, so are many other people's perspectives. While that reality robs me of some glory, it also takes a lot of pressure off. I can take it easy a little, because many other people are doing some of the important work I thought I was doing alone.
I don't think that it's pure egotism that gets us thinking that we're lone crusaders. Part of the reason, I think, is that working with children can be so isolating. Parenting, teaching, and other genres of child care are often done by one adult who is unable, not unwilling, to have much contact with other adults. When lonely parents and teachers observe situations in which they believe children are treated ineffectively, inappropriately, or otherwise wrong, they can start to think that's how the rest of the world does it. It takes a certain kind of humility to be able to believe that other people may be doing fundamentally right things you haven't thought of. And I think it's hard to develop that humility in a vaccuum. I tried, and it didn't work.
Now that I can comfortably say and think that I am not The World's Greatest Teacher or The World's Greatest Dad, I occasionally come across people who seem to believe that they are. Usually, they're younger than I am - haven't had enough time to make as many mistakes as I've made. I try not to sound the way some of my would-be mentors used to sound. I don't think it's ever true or useful to say, in effect, "I have been in the same situation you're in now, have thought the thoughts you're now thinking, and you're wrong."
I propose a truce. I propose that together, we who care about children
can do a much better job than any one of us can do alone. And we can share the gold medal.
The Cuteness of Children 356.
No matter how deeply we adults respect children - no matter how seriously we take their words and thoughts - many of us can't help thinking of them as cute. Some of their cuteness stays with them into adulthood, but some of it is a function of their newness. Their failed attempts to pronounce certain words may delight us; most parents eventually have the experience of hearing certain pronunciations that make them smile. Their first attempts to do or understand things that may later become easy for them can be adorable.
Some children sometimes like that phenomenon - are flattered to be called cute. Some will work to figure out exactly what they do or say that is cute, and once they figure it out, try to do it more, or embellish it. We adults do that, too; we figure out which aspects of ourselves appeal to other people, and we work to develop and highlight those aspects. Since children don't have as much experience, their attempts are likely to be less subtle and less effective. What is cute the first time can be obnoxious the twentieth time.
I once heard that in Navajo culture, people are not supposed to treat children as if they are cute. They're supposed to treat all children's attempts to become adults as serious business. I try to emulate that approach, but sometimes, when a child's attempt reminds me of how difficult something used to be for me, I can't help it. I smile. It's not that I don't respect children's attempts to learn and grow, but sometimes there's a kind of delight in seeing their little blunders.
Philosophically, I don't like slapstick comedy. It's based on laughing at other people's misfortunes and failures. I remember hearing, once, that people laugh at slapstick comedy because they're relieved that they aren't the ones slipping on banana peels or ending up with cream pie all over their faces. I don't want to laugh at that. Throughout my life, I've been somewhat clumsy, and while I learned to laugh with people as they laughed at my clumsiness, I didn't really like it. But slapstick comedy can make me laugh, notwithstanding my philosophical objection to it.
I think children's cuteness may appeal to adults for a reason similar to the suggested reason people like slapstick comedy; we're glad to have learned what used to be so difficult, and we laugh with relief when we see a child still having difficulty with it. It may not be sadism; it can be viewed as catharsis. I don't mean to be a wet blanket. I like laughing, and some of the things children say and do make me laugh. As long as children understand what's so funny, and are able to join in the laughter while maintaining their self-respect, I'm all for it. It's healthy to sometimes be able to laugh at yourself, whether you're a child or an adult. All I'm saying is that we've got to be careful about the timing of our laughter, and balance our amusement and our respect. Shining Moments 357.
I have a friend named Ann who is eight years old. She comes to my apartment each day during the summer, and though I am neither her parent nor her teacher, I get a chance to be a little of each when she's here. Her parents are also becoming my friends. They don't really need much time away from their daughter; Chou, Ann's mother, works at home, and enjoys being with Ann. They consider me someone their daughter likes to spend time with. Ann's father, Ha, sometimes does my dishes for me, and Chou sometimes cooks me a delicious Vietnamese dinner. I think they are grateful that I'm Ann's friend. I hope they realize that I'm grateful, too; I'm not sure the "thank you" I utter at the end of our afternoon together can possibly convey the depth of my gratitude.
When Ann is here, sometimes we work on a book she's writing. It's about the adventures of two Easter bunnies. She types on my computer, making up the story as she goes. If she's unsure how to spell a word, and it can't be sounded out (e.g., "sure"), I help her with it. I remind her about capitalizing names and first words in sentences. As we go, she lets me know how much she wants me to be involved; usually, she wants me to just read as she writes.
Sometimes she draws, plays piano, sings, or dances. She's artistic, musical, and graceful. Once in a while, we play a game, toss a frisbee, or just talk. I never have to plan the day, the way I would if I were going to spend time with several children, or with a child who is more of a challenge. The decisions about what Ann and I will do next are pretty spontaneous.
I'm forty years older than Ann, and once in a while, my age or health is a factor; she feels like standing on my recliner, and I don't let her, or it's too hot for me to go outside, even though it's not too hot for her. But she usually has a pretty good idea of what my limits are, and she seems comfortable with them.
We've agreed to be friends for the rest of our lives. Sometimes two children make such vows, and being children, neither one of them has a well-developed sense of the future, although such vows can still be kept. But at the time I'm writing this, I'm forty-eight years old. I intend to be Ann's friend for the rest of my life, although I may not be available when she's ninety.
The way our society is set up, the friendship Ann and I have is an exception; children's friends - at least the kind they spend lots of unstructured time with - are usually children. That's too bad; I think there's a lot to be gained through this kind of cross-generational friendship.

Sacred Ground 358.
Many parents teach their children to believe some fundamental things. I can't quite write that all parents do so; some parents don't give much thought to what their children believe, and others try hard to avoid telling their children what to believe. But conscious instruction is not the only way to influence children's thinking, so many parents who don't try to teach their children what to believe end up doing so anyway.
In school, teachers give children information and help them develop skills with which they can find their own information. Teachers also work to help children understand concepts. And as instructors and as children's models, they influence children's beliefs. I never preached vegetarianism; I sometimes eat poultry or seafood myself. But after I read Charlotte's Web to my class, one of my second-graders became a vegetarian. That was in 1983, and last I heard (1990) he was still a vegetarian. Teachers can be powerful influences on children.
Sometimes, some parents have strong convictions about what they want their children to believe, and there is a conflict between home and school. The Scopes trial was a classic example of such a conflict. Did teachers have the right and/or responsibility to teach children about evolution, even if some parents opposed such teaching? Or was that teaching a violation of parents' right to raise their children according to the principles of their religions?
The issue is not simple, and it manifests itself in many ways. I once objected to having a public school teacher teach my daughter's class a Christian prayer, and then have the class recite the prayer each morning. There are parents who have religious objections to the celebration of Halloween, which is often celebrated for fun in public schools. Some parents object to any kind of celebration, and some object, with equal vehemence, to the lack thereof. And almost all of them pay taxes, directly or through landlords, to support public schools, whether or not schools teach children what parents want their children taught.
You can probably think of many other aspects of this issue. Some of you deal with it by keeping your children out of public school. Some of you work to counteract whatever influences you don't like. And some parents don't think about it much.
My own approach has always been to try to teach in a way that balances respect for people's convictions and respect for my own. My eight year old friend Ann told me that she asks Buddha to make me able to walk. I'm touched that she thinks of me in her prayers, and I told her so. When she told me that, I did not immediately mention that I am not a Buddhist, although I think she knows that. I think there's room in this world for Buddhists, Creationists, vegetarians, and many other people. I think we have a responsibility to try hard not to tread on each other's sacred ground. But I don't think it's simple. Exceptions 359.
There were certain things I tried as a teacher, and they worked so well that I tried them every year, and they worked almost every year. On the one hand, I didn't want to be like Mr. Goldman, my eighth grade Latin teacher, and become so predictable that people would tell jokes about me. I didn't want the class clown to do nasty impressions of me when I wasn't around. But come to think of it, I have fond memories of Mr. Goldman now, and even though it wasn't cool to like that harmonica-toting weirdo, he was memorable. I secretly liked him, and I still remember what he taught. Maybe, like Mr. Goldman, I was the subject of some jokes some children told behind my back. But it's all right. And I hope Mr. Goldman didn't mind that we told jokes about him.
When I first started teaching second grade, I wrote a song for my class for Halloween. The class loved the song, and I've taught it to every class since then. In fact, it's been used in other classes around the country. It's even the title song on someone else's children's audiotape. But one year, there was a boy in my class who was scared by the song (ironically, the song was called "I'm Not Scared"). He did not want to be in the room when we sang it. And as an inclusive teacher, I didn't want the poor kid to have to be away from the class; that would make it seem as if he was being punished for expressing his feelings.
Another year, I learned, in a workshop, that classical adagios and largos are supposed to be played at a tempo that is the same as the tempo of the human heart at rest, and could be used to create a good mood in the classroom. From then on, I often played tapes of classical adagios and largos when children were supposed to have peaceful time to read or write. But one year there was one child who told me that she could not concentrate while that music was on. On the one hand, she was not that great at concentrating anyway, and I didn't want to believe that she was a reason not to do what usually worked so well. But on the other hand, I wanted her to know about my commitment to making the classroom a good place for all children to learn. And so I sadly put the tapes away when she was there.
It's hard, as teachers and as parents, to put away some of our favorite ideas. Some of those ideas came after lots of hard work and/or inspiration. What has worked well in many situations ought to continue to work well, and ought to be applicable all the time. But paying attention to children works well, and sometimes what we learn when we pay attention to them teaches us to change what we do. Even if what we do usually works. Even if we're fond of it.

Are You Like This in School? 360.
You nervously enter your child's classroom for the first time. You love your child, and you know that beneath the obnoxious, stubborn, self-centered style your child presents, there is a tender, sweet, generous person. You're not sure how much you'll console the teacher for having to deal with your child and how much you'll come to your child's defense. It depends on how the teacher is coping. You don't want your child to be abused, but you don't want this poor teacher to be abused, either. After all, there are many other children this teacher must deal with, and you have enough trouble dealing with this hellion at home, where the ratio is better.
And then the teacher starts to talk. The child this teacher describes is not the one you have come prepared to defend, nor the one you were going to apologize for. The person this teacher describes is a joy to have in the classroom. The teacher asks, only half-jokingly, whether you'd be willing to offer a workshop on parenting. Other parents, says the teacher, need to know how you manage to raise a child who is so easygoing, so flexible, so eager to please.
At first, you think the teacher is softening you for the blow. You listen to the teacher's words, but only so that you'll hear the word "but" when it is spoken. Then you'll participate in the honest part of the conference. Of course, you think, teachers can't be totally negative about any child. Perhaps this teacher thinks that brutal honesty would be counterproductive.
After several minutes of this, there is silence. The teacher hasn't delivered the bad news yet, and is already waiting for a response from you. Of course, you haven't prepared any kind of response for what you've heard so far. You worry. Maybe this teacher does not have what it takes to tell the truth about your child. Maybe several minutes have been wasted, because your child is Lucy, and the teacher thought you were Maggie's parent. You begin talking, hoping that something you say will start to build a communication bridge. But you really feel as if you've fallen down a rabbit hole.
Gradually, you come to realize that there's no failure to communicate here - that the young person you know at home is the same one the teacher is describing, and that you've done a better job parenting than you had thought. There are many sides to a person, and the sides of your child you've dealt with at home are not the same sides the teacher sees in school. The teacher sees the child you've tried to raise - a child you haven't gotten to see much.
You're not sure whether to feel relieved or envious. You feel both. It's nice that the teacher doesn't have to have the arguments you have at home; teachers have enough to deal with. But if you're such a good parent, why don't you get more chances to see the results of your good parenting? It's just no fair. In my next article, I'll try to explain what's going on.
Young Jekylls and Hydes 361.
Some parents have a quick explanation of the phenomenon I described in my last article: children feel comfortable and safe at home - comfortable and safe enough to let out the demons they keep locked up while they're in school. Since they're more uncomfortable and insecure in school, their teachers happily do not get to see the temper tantrums and other difficult behaviors that parents see more than they'd like to.
I think this explanation has some validity to it, and I don't mean to take anything away from parents who have been using it to make themselves feel better about some of what takes place at home. But I think it may be too simple. And it assumes some things that may not be true. First of all, do all children have demons inside them that need a place to get out? I'm not sure about that. Secondly, are all those arguments and other disturbing scenes at home solely due to comfort and safety? I don't think so. And finally, is school necessarily such an uncomfortable and unsafe place? I hope not.
I'll very tentatively suggest another way to look at the issue. At home, a child is with the people who were there from the beginning - parents. Being born broke a connection, but the child still had parents to cling to - usually one more than the other. Birth and weaning end connections, and are inevitable forms of betrayal. Not to mention siblings, jobs, chores, connubial bliss, and just the parental need to be alone now and then. Every child starts out life with a false sense of security, and growing up is learning how false it is. Some children have to learn more quickly than others, but they all have to learn it. Some have a hard time of it, and can wreak havoc upon the household.
And then along comes school. Children don't expect so much of school; there may have been some false advertising, but there usually isn't much. No one has given children the impression that school will meet all their needs - be a place where life is perfect. And so if there's a teacher or peer there who is at all friendly, or an activity that's fun, it's a surprise blessing. School may not be perfect, but it was never supposed to be. Not like parents.
If you totally accept the first explanation - the one that says children need a safe place to let out their demons, you may sometimes wish home weren't such a safe place. Those demons can really get on your nerves. But please consider the second explanation - the possibility that school is just a place that's not as bad as it was supposed to be, while parents, who were supposed to be perfect, aren't. No matter which explanation you accept, there isn't much you can do about the problem. Making home an unsafe place isn't a good idea, and becoming perfect isn't an option. I think having your children grow up helps, but that takes time. And besides, do you forgive your parents yet?

Sibling 362.
I'd like to add a verb to the English language: "sible." There already is "sibling," which can easily be used as the present participial form of the verb and still be used as a noun when necessary. "Parent," after all, became a verb during my lifetime, so there's a precedent. And I'm not seriously worried that adding just one more word will open a floodgate - that we'll end up "aunting," "uncling," and "cousinning" each other. But people have been sibling each other since Cain sibled Abel, and I really think the concept deserves a verb of its own.
If you think about what siblings are and will be to each other, you realize that we've overlooked a lot. How often do you think of your five year old son as a potential uncle to your two year old daughter's potential children? Or your seven year old daughter as your four year old son's potential wife's sister-in-law? But siblings really do have profound effects on each other, and usually stay friends or at least acquaintances.
The words "brother" and "sister" are ubiquitous; they show up in religion and in law, usually referring to people who aren't related to each other. Colleges have fraternities and sororities (from the Latin "frater" and "soror" - "brother" and "sister"). And of course (to rephrase an unnecessarily gender-specific statement), all people are siblings.
There are some important differences between sibling and parenting. First of all, parenting happens after decisions have been made by those who parent. Ideally, it's been a well-conceived (no pun intended), totally conscious decision. But sibling is done after someone else has made a decision; the person doing the sibling did not have any ultimate power over the decision to start doing it. That doesn't mean it has to be bad; I know brothers and sisters who love each other dearly. But the decision to sible was not theirs.
Another difference is that even though "parent" is a relatively new verb, it's a well-established concept. Books have been written about it. "Mother" and "father," as verbs, never meant what "parent" means; to "mother" someone is to nurture - often more than necessarily. And to "father" someone is just to make it possible for the person to be conceived. All fathers father; only the good ones parent.
It's not unusual to hear, during an argument between siblings, "You're not my mother," or "You're not my father." The implication is that mothers and fathers are supposed to be obeyed. While motherhood and fatherhood are no guarantees of that, siblinghood (perhaps another new word) can be a license to ignore. If there's a significant age, size, or assertiveness difference between siblings, ignoring can be difficult, but it's still more of an option than it is with parents.
As you and your children sible, you may still wonder exactly what the rules of the game are. I don't claim to have suddenly become an authority on sibling. In fact, I don't even know whether I sible well; I've only recently started sending birthday cards to my siblings. But I hope I've at least helped you begin to know what you're doing. You're sibling.
Form and Function 363.
Some children want to know why neatness and correct spelling have to be such a big deal. After all, they know what they mean by what they write, and so do plenty of other people. When they're first starting to write, I agree with them. Of course it's more important to communicate than to spell everything right and have it look pretty. But when they're a little older, and more fluent, it's time to start writing in a way that lets as many people as possible read what they've written. Diaries and notes to friends can still go by the old rules, or lack thereof, but if the purpose of writing is to communicate, it's good to know and use some of the tools of the trade.
As I write this, I feel a little bit as if some English teacher I had in high school has temporarily taken over my brain. I can't believe I'm writing this. I'm usually what I'd call a utilitarian snob. That is, I generally ask whether things work, rather than how they look, and so far, I have a tendency to look down on people who consider appearance important. Yesterday, I bought a floor lamp at K-Mart, because the one I bought twenty-seven years ago at Sears doesn't work too well any more. I use the old one when I sit at the computer now; I still can't throw it out or give it away. Neither lamp will inspire anyone to comment on what a lovely, elegant floor lamp it is. But they both work. When it gets dark outside, my apartment can still be light.
And yet I've recently learned that even when I buy a floor lamp for my apartment, where I live alone, it does some good to think about how it will look to other people. They're more likely to come visit me if my apartment feels welcoming. Since I do need to have some company once in a while, it's very practical to think about appearance. Whether I like it or not, at least some of my friends will be more likely to visit me if my apartment looks good.
And when people write, their words are more likely to be read if they are neat and accurately spelled. Misspelled words distract people like me, and make it so that the message of the writer is harder to get. Same thing with messy handwriting. Of course, computers make handwriting less of an issue, but the issue hasn't disappeared yet.
I can't dwell on this subject too long. What I'm doing is reluctantly conceding that some people I've argued with in the past do have a point. I'm ready to compromise. I'll admit that I've sometimes underemphasized the importance of appearance if they'll admit that they've sometimes overemphasized it. If they'll stop bemoaning the "atrocious" written work being produced by today's youth, I'll help some children who are ready to focus on spelling and handwriting. Deal?

The Children's Music Network 364.
I've referred to the Children's Music Network a few times in my articles. It's a major part of my life, and I realized, today, that if you don't already know about it, this is an appropriate medium through which to tell you about it. So here goes:
The Children's Music Network is a network of children, parents, teachers, songwriters, performers, and others who are committed to empowering children through music - thinking about what music says to children, and what children can say through music. We began coming
together in the mid-1980's, and have grown steadily, so that now we have members throughout the United States and Canada.
We now have eight regional chapters - Northern California, Southern California, Midwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, New York Metro, New England, and Canada, which have regional gatherings throughout the
year, and in the fall we have an international gathering of members from throughout the U.S. and Canada. These gatherings are times to share songs, ideas, and a sense that we are all together in our work to help children grow to be caring and competent adults. We work to expand our membership to other parts of the world, and to increase the cultural diversity of our membership.
Three times per year - in the fall, winter, and spring, we publish Pass It On!, a journal which contains: articles written by members; an interview, by Phil Hoose, of a person who has made significant contributions to children's music (Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Fred Rogers, and Raffi have been interviewed, as well as Nate LaLiberte, a twelve year old boy who organized a concert for relief of Bosnian children, and other people who have done important work without becoming famous); "The Rose and the Apple Tree," a column by Lisa Garrison which chronicles the history of children's music; "Curriculi! Curricula!," a column by me which highlights educators who integrate music into the elementary school curriculum; "Radio Waves," a column by PJ Swift about children's radio; songs collected and prepared by Joanne (Olshansky) Hammil; "New Sounds," Sandy Byer's collection of announcements of new recordings created by members; and reports of regional activities. We plan to continue finding ways to make this magazine a powerful advocate for the use of music as a tool for empowerment of children, parents, and teachers, and community-building.
To join the Children's Music Network, write to Caroline Presnell, CMN, Box 1341, Evanston, IL, 60204-1341. Membership gets you a year's subscription to Pass It On!, a children's radio directory, a membership directory, and reduced admission to regional and international gatherings.
I'm on the board of directors, and I'm the editor of Pass It On. I hope that reading this article has inspired some of you to join us. A Conversation Piece 365.
Living alone has its drawbacks, but for me, one of its blessings is that I can be who I want to be. Being disabled makes that even more feasible. Alone, I don't seriously embarrass people by being noticed in public. And disabled, I don't elicit disapproving looks from strangers who think I should act my age. Actually, I do act my age, which, at the time of this writing, is forty-eight. But I may not act like the forty-eight-year-
old some people have in mind.
A few weeks ago, I was taking a bus to the center of Amherst. There was a toddler throwing a little temper tantrum in the front of the bus, and since toddlers, unlike their parents, don't worry so much about their public images, the toddler had power. But luckily for the mother, there was a guy in the back of the bus who didn't have to worry much about his public image, or didn't think singing loud on a bus would hurt it. I was on my electric scooter (itself a potential conversation piece), and I started singing a song about what was going on.
The song was not one of my best - certainly won't climb the charts. The lyrics went something like this: "There's a guy in the back of the bus, sitting on a funny-looking thing. I don't understand why, but he's starting to sing. I don't think I have a chance to understand why. But everyone's looking at him, so I'm not gonna cry." The tune was even less memorable than the lyrics, but I encouraged those who were willing to sing along with me, and a few passengers did. The child was intrigued, and the temper tantrum stopped. The mother gave me a relieved and grateful look. And as far as I know, nobody was embarrassed.
Some of the inhibitions we learn as we go through life are quite practical. Some are considerate. Some of the people who know me have occasionally been in situations wherein they've tried to pretend they didn't; it took me years to learn that it's inconsiderate to be conspicuous when you're in the company of people who would rather not be so conspicuous.
Having succeeded at getting passengers to sing along, and having been thanked by the mother of the toddler several days later, I'm enjoying my new role. I carry some props with me now, so that if I'm having coffee in a cafe when a child near me starts to act up, I can quietly take out my toy frog or puppet and be something for the child to think about. Children don't misbehave at playgrounds as much as they do in more adult-oriented settings, because there's other stuff for them to do. In fact, I've sometimes seen adults who haven't seemed to know how to behave in a playground. In my role as a conversation piece, or at least as a distraction, I make cafes a little more child-friendly.
Most of you don't have the freedom to be conspicuous whenever you feel like it, and many of you rarely feel like it anyway. But I thought you'd enjoy hearing about this niche I've found in the little paradise called Amherst.
Giving Children a Turn 366.
When we were children, we didn't always get to do what we wanted to do and have what we wanted to have, even if it was available and affordable. If something we wanted appealed to someone bigger than we were, we sometimes had to wait our turn, scrounge for leftovers, or give up altogether. When I was five, if my whole family was washing the car, I got to wash the wheels, because I was shorter. Who wants to wash the wheels? They don't shine as much; they're not the REAL car. Or when we got to an elevator somewhere, if I wanted to push the buttons, my older brothers or parents usually beat me to it. Children are second-class citizens.
Sometimes we children didn't even know what we wanted to do or have until we saw someone else doing or having it, and suddenly, often too late, we knew. Of course, the bigger people thought we only wanted it because we saw someone else enjoying it, and they may have had a point, but so what? We were beginners, and we didn't always know all the possibilities. It was simply no fair that we had to wait until we were older to do and have what we wanted. We had already been younger, so in a way, we were already older. Were we supposed to wait until we were older than our siblings or parents? They seemed to get older about as fast as we did. There didn't seem to be any chance to catch up.
And then it happened. We grew up, and we were finally older. We could push the elevator buttons if we wanted. If children wanted to, maybe we'd let them, and maybe not. We'd paid our dues, and now we were going to get what was due us. But now that we were adults, some of the thrill was gone. We found out that pushing elevator buttons and washing the shiny part of the car isn't really that exciting.
Many of us adults forget how important little things used to be, and get annoyed when children obsess on what seem like trivia to us. Partly, we're annoyed because catering to children's obsessions slows things down, but I think sometimes we're annoyed because we think it's our turn; we've grown up, and we don't have to wait any more. And so we finally have our moments in the sun, and children just have to put up with it. They'll get their chance, right?
This cycle can keep going, through generations. Of course, some of the things children want are impractical - unsafe or too difficult. And everybody's supposed to learn that they can't always have things their way. But I've watched myself and other adults, and I think at least some of what we get to do or have has to do with getting even with the bigger people who used to pre-empt us. Let's try to be more fair than they were. Let's give children a turn.

Greener Grass 367.
Did you ever find yourself wishing your children or parents were more like some other children or parents you've seen? We're not supposed to think that way. We're supposed to appreciate the people we've already got, and if we compare at all, our family is supposed to compare favorably. We're supposed to feel lucky that we have the parents or children we have, and maybe even feel sorry for other people, whose parents or children aren't as great.
As a child, I had to deal with the image of Leonard Solomon's son, who got perfect grades in school. My grades weren't perfect. Leonard Solomon was my father's business partner. I never met his son; for all I knew, he didn't even have a son - the kid could have been a standard my father made up to motivate me. It didn't work. In fact, I might even have tried a little harder if it hadn't been for the specter of Leonard Solomon's son; as good as I could have been, I was pretty sure I couldn't be perfect. Not like you-know-who.
It turns out that my father wasn't valedictorian of his class, either. In fact, as much as he loved to read and think, he never got a bachelor's degree. He took some college courses about business, and then he went into business. He did well. Well enough to be able to provide a comfortable home in the suburbs for his family and send us to college. He was the son of immigrants, and he worked to make it possible for his children to become successful members of society. That was not easy. My last name is Blue, not Blustein. For a long time, I thought there was something wrong with that - that it was cowardly to hide our heritage that way. But now, I think my parents' decision to change their last name had a lot to do with protecting their children from bigotry. They didn't want our lives to be any harder than necessary.
In college, I met people who sounded as if their parents accepted them for who they were. I envied them. I think I came home during vacations and described those parents to my parents. I didn't think about it at the time, but I think I was creating my own version of Leonard Solomon's son. I was telling my parents they didn't measure up - that they really needed to work harder if they wanted to be as good as the parents I'd heard about. Revenge. Not as sweet as some people say it is.
It took me a long time, but I finally got so I was glad to be who I was, with no reservations. I was not the valedictorian of my high school or college class, but the valedictorians weren't me, either. Neither was the Solomon kid. I hope they all coped all right with not being me. I, personally, would have had a lot of trouble with it, and I'm really glad I didn't have to deal with it.

Rhyme 368.
Have you ever wondered why none of my articles rhyme? I know how to rhyme; if I wanted to rhyme them I could. But rhyming plays games with the mind; I'm afraid if I did, you'd think I was fooling around, and that wouldn't be good. I want you to read what I write and then give it some thought. I think that I'm bringing up pretty significant stuff. I think, then I write, then I hope that I'll have some effect. I hope that these articles don't strike my readers as fluff.
By now, you may notice that this time, I'm making it rhyme. I'm checking the meter, and doing what I need to do to make sure the pattern continues. It's taking more work. I hope that my rhyming does not hide my meaning from you. I write lots of songs, and there's plenty of rhyme in my songs. Sometimes I write poems, and my poetry tends to rhyme, too. In college, the poems that my friends wrote were mostly blank verse. But how could I do that when I had a last name like Blue?
I found it a challenge to motivate kids to write poems. I'm really impressed when good poetry comes from a kid. Most children I knew thought that poetry all had to rhyme. Of course, I could tell them, "It doesn't," and that's what I did. But I never really believed in that message myself. The poems that I most liked to read had predictable rhyme. And so, as a teacher, I didn't teach kids to write verse. And kids in my class stayed away from it most of the time.
In retrospect, I still don't think I'd do poetry much. I did some haiku with my classes. I read them some verse. The brief bits of poetry done in my class were all right. I've seen other teachers do more, but I could have done worse. I've been writing poetry ever since I was child. You'd think, having done it so much, I could teach it. Not so. Some teachers, like me, cannot teach everything they can do. Too bad, but we cannot impart all the knowledge we know.
When children begin to write poetry, some start with rhyme. Some don't seem to think that a poem can express something real, like how their perceptions are well worth expressing in words. Or what special thoughts they are thinking, or what things they feel. The search for a rhyme can distract a young poet from that; the mind of a child may be filled with ideas most profound, but sometimes, instead of attempting to write down those thoughts, a young poet seems to keep wondering, how does it sound?
Most teachers I know and have known don't do poetry much. There's plenty of other creative things teachers can do. Some art, and some music, some drama, some movement, some talk. But still, I think somehow there ought to be poetry, too. And though I've spent more than an hour just making this rhyme, I hope you're aware that this article isn't a poem. In fact, just to emphasize that point, I'm not going to keep the meter going in this last line, although I can't resist squeezing in the rhyming word "metronome." Nelson and Cornelius 369.
Nelson was a boy who didn't think much of himself. To underscore his poor self-image, he did things that bothered other people, and got them to back him up on his view of himself. Teachers in the teachers' room referred to Nelson as "needy," and he was needy, but "needy" is sometimes used as a euphemism in the teachers' room; teachers are reticent to admit that they, themselves, have needs, and sometimes have trouble dealing with some children's needs.
When Nelson was in my class, he found Cornelius, another "needy" child, and started to make a friend. The two of them did annoying things together, and in some ways, that made things worse, but that was all right. For the time being, at least, for these two children, friendship was more important than good behavior. Once they believed that they were likable, we could work on refining and expanding that likability.
But one day, as Cornelius was about to sit down, Nelson pulled away the chair, and Cornelius fell. It was supposed to be a joke. Cornelius was supposed to get up, smiling a slightly embarrassed smile, and later get Nelson back for the trick. I don't like that kind of manifestation of friendship, but I recognize that it still counts as friendship. Some friends have fun insulting each other and playing practical jokes on each other.
Cornelius was really hurt, though. I don't mean emotionally hurt, although there was probably some of that, too. I mean he was taken to the nurse's office, and then home. If someone falls wrong, it can cause real problems, and if the fall is not at all predictable, it's harder to fall right. So the incident didn't turn out the way Nelson had intended it to.
I approached Nelson the way most teachers would have, intending to severely reprimand him for what he'd done to Cornelius. If Cornelius hadn't actually gotten hurt, or if Nelson hadn't seemed to mind that he'd hurt Cornelius, I probably would have yelled, punished, and maybe even said some things I'd later regret. But one look at Nelson's face told me that he needed something else. Of course, he was worried about what I'd do or say, but more than that, he was already doing the hard work of reprimanding himself - telling himself that he had blown his one chance to have a friend, and had done it because he was actually just as bad a person as he'd always thought he was.
As angry as I was that Nelson's "practical joke" had hurt Cornelius, and as worried as I was that Cornelius was going to have serious medical problems, it was clear to me that my immediate task was to give Nelson's self-image some first aid. I told Nelson that I knew he hadn't meant to hurt Cornelius - that he'd only meant to play a joke. I told him that I knew he was afraid - afraid that Cornelius had been seriously hurt, and maybe afraid that the incident was no accident - that he'd meant to hurt Cornelius. I did my best to reassure him that he'd had no intention of hurting Cornelius. Yelling and punishing might have taken care of my needs a little faster, but I'm convinced that such behavior would have been counterproductive.
The Birthday Blues 370.
I recently attended a party to celebrate Abigail's sixth birthday, and I stayed longer than her five and six year old friends. Long enough to see her curl up on her mother's lap with what looked like a sad expression on her face. My first reaction to that look was to think there had been something about the party that had bothered her. For a few seconds, I tried to imagine how the party could have been better. Let's see - she'd wanted a pirate theme, and there had been buried treasure, eye patches, a gift of a pirate ship, and more. Yes, there had definitely been a Long John Silver feel to the party. And I wasn't aware of any friends she'd invited who hadn't shown up.
The party had clearly been the kind she'd wanted. But now it was over. For this child, for most children, and for many adults I know, a birthday is a time to feel special. Of course, everyone else is special, too. Children all get to hunt for buried treasure. They all leave with eye patches. If there's a sibling or two, sometimes they get presents, too. But everyone also knows whose birthday it is. They give presents to the birthday girl or boy, and sing "Happy Birthday" to him/her. Most people need some time to feel special that way.
But sooner or later, the party's over. It's time to call it a day. Abigail's mother knew what was bothering Abigail, and pretty soon, I knew, too. Her birthday party was over, and she wasn't going to have another one for about a year. And for a six year old child, a year is forever. She's only had six years in her whole life! Of course, she'll still be special, and there are plenty of ways to make sure she knows that. But it's not the same.
I'll bet you've felt something similar to what Abigail was feeling. It's a pretty normal thing to feel. When my daughter Lara was six years old, and the two of us had just seen the end of a beautiful sunset, I put a sad expression on my face. It was only partly in jest. Lara said to me, "Nothing lasts forever." And though she said it with a glint of humor in her voice, she was sort of right. Good times often end.
Abigail's mother and grandmother were trying to think of ways to cheer up the poor girl. After all, you don't get to fly to Neverland and see Captain Hook by thinking dismal thoughts. But I added my two cents. I said it was important to have some time to feel sad. Abigail corrected me, though. She said she wasn't sad; she was mad. And as much as I like to be perceptive and right on target, I believed Abigail. Where did her birthday get the right to end?
Later, at home, I started wondering whether the phrase "happy birthday" ought to be so omnipresent. I'm all for happiness. It's been a major theme in my life. But there's more to birthdays than happiness. There's also the realization that your birthday comes but once a year, and when it's over, you turn back into a regular person. And there are billions of us. It's fun to blow out the candles, but after you do, there's no more flame on them. Just a little smoke.
Housework 371.
I grew up thinking that the work my mother did didn't really count - that my clothes were actually basically self-cleaning, that meals sort of cooked themselves, and that if I dropped something on the floor, it independently found its way to where it was supposed to be. If my mother complained, I thought that was just something mothers do. I thought the time she spent in the kitchen or laundry room, or behind a vaccuum cleaner, was like the time I spent on my favorite log in the woods. Everybody had their favorite things to do, and my mother's happened to be housework.
When I got married, I quickly learned the errors of my thinking, and worked to correct the errors of my ways. I did lots of laundry, learned to cook the food my children would eat, and so on. I learned that all the work my mother had done as I had grown up was indeed work, and did, in fact, have to be done. I hadn't grown up in a self-cleaning home after all. And my meals hadn't cooked themselves.
Now, disabled, I often hear myself nagging. Children come to stay with me, and they put things down, expecting me to pick them up later, or thinking, as I used to, that the things would just magically get picked up. Or they tell me they'll clean up later, really intending to. And later, they do clean. But they don't find everything they've left around - not the nuts under the couch cushion or the jumprope behind the chair. When they leave, I clean up after them. It takes a lot of work, but not as much work as it would have taken to supervise their cleaning.
I'm going to get tough about their dropping things. I'm not going to let them tell me they'll pick it up later, even though I believe they mean it. But as I've told you before, I have time. When children come to stay with me, they have my undivided attention. Most people who take care of children have to divide their attention. So things get left around, and cleaning up is a major job. Getting children to clean up after themselves can be an even bigger job. There are children who do it willingly, but they tend not to be great messers anyway. So they end up cleaning up the way we do, and eventually they burn out, as we do.
When I first lived alone, I created messes, knowing I'd have energy to clean them up later. No one was there to nag me to be neat. And so I learned firsthand about the joy of putting things down instead of putting them away. But it didn't take long for me to learn that it's harder to find things if they haven't been put away, and that it's easier to put away five things ten times a day than to put away fifty things once a day.
Housework is work, and while it wouldn't make sense to require babies to rinse and wash their own diapers, children should learn early that housework does have to be done - that it doesn't do itself. And Mom, I'm sorry.

Moving Up With Children 372.
The year before last, I worked with the first graders at the Fort River School. Last year, I worked with the second graders. This year, I'm working with the third graders. I know these children well. I know some things about them that teachers ought to know, and I tell the teachers. Teachers appreciate that. And children know I'll be there, so they can worry a little less about what their new teachers will be like.
It used to be that most towns had one teacher, who had all the children, and stayed with them until they were done with school. I always fantasized about that, and now, in a way, I get to live it. As an employed teacher, I sometimes taught two grades in a row, and kept some children in my class for two years. I got chances to know these few children a little better, but that experience was qualitatively different from what I'm doing now.
And as a parent, of course, I got to know my two children as they grew up. That experience has been a little closer to what's happening now, but these children have parents, some of whom are my daughters' ages, so I allow myself to pretend I'm a grandfather. I even got a letter from one of these children that said, "You are like my Grandpa I never knew." That letter is posted in my apartment, and I look forward to more feedback like that.
There will always be some teachers who want to form their own impressions of children, and don't want to hear what I have to say until later, if at all. I think I understand that. I am, after all, a human being, and my perceptions may sometimes say more about who I am than about who the children are. Besides, some new teachers want to learn how to get to know children, and don't want the shortcuts I offer to stop them from learning. And some experienced teachers justifiably take pride in their ability to get to know children. However well I know these children, I hope I retain the ability to recognize new insights teachers have. And they do have them.
Notwithstanding my conviction that I'm playing an important role, I'm not suggesting that teachers should stay with children. If children had me for a teacher every year, they'd learn a lot about writing, relating to each other, and some other important things. But there would also be significant gaps. Of course, I'd try to learn calculus, research skills, and more of what I don't know too well. But children really ought to work with other teachers, most of whom have expertise I don't have.
Still, there's something to be said for the stability I'm providing. If, like me, you're free to volunteer in the schools, they need you. Many children don't have as much to rely on as children used to have, and we volunteers can have important roles to play as the twenty-first century gets going.

Lunch 373.
Children tend not to eat lunch in school. Some do get hungry, and if there is a good dessert or some kind of delicious junky snack, they'll eat that. But the sandwich or other main course doesn't get eaten. It ends up either getting thrown out or taken home. And the lunch box you bought around Labor Day often gets lost. There are many rewarding aspects of the parenting role, but lunch in school tends not to be one of them.
A friend (and mother of two children I taught) once told me about lunch in a British primary school. It was handled the way meals are handled in some homes. Five or six children sat at a table with one adult, and they ate a peaceful meal. They talked, but one at a time. When they finished eating (which they did), they talked some more. It was all very civilized.
Contrast that with lunch in a typical elementary school in this country. Children are herded into a large room, and they line up to buy their potato buds, white bread, iceberg lettuce, American cheese, and ketchup. Or they open their lunchboxes, which contain either the healthful lunches prepared by their parents or their parents' compromises with or surrenders to Frito-Lay and the like. Some of the food (or "food") gets eaten, but a lot of it doesn't. There is an adult in the room whose job is to make sure there aren't any major problems, and to let children go outside, which is really what they want to do, and really what the adult wants them to do.
Meanwhile, the teachers are in the teachers' room, relatively calm. Unlike the children, they are eating food they've chosen relatively wisely. If a child pokes his/her head into the teachers' room, it becomes immediately clear that that isn't supposed to happen. Actually, it could be interesting to have a few children per day eat with the teachers - be in the minority for a change. But then teachers would have to choose their topics and words more carefully. So never mind.
If the books I've read are right, the typical diet in this country is upside down. We're supposed to have a big breakfast, a medium-sized lunch, and a small supper. More typically, we have very little for breakfast, lunch on the run, and a huge dinner that gives us the energy we need to sleep. We may have very active dreams, but I really don't think that counts.
So maybe lunch, which has become a time for teachers and children to get a break from each other, needs to be rethought. For some children, it's the first meal of the day. For more, it's the first significant meal. If curriculum is everything that happens in a school, lunch is a pretty important subject, and deserves more thought.


The Olden Days 374.
My friend Molly, who is five years old, occasionally refers to "the olden days." She heard about them recently, and I think she's referring to a more specific time period than "olden" denotes. I think she means a time when there were railroads, steam engines, and telegraph wires, but no televisions, cars, or electric lights. I wonder when the "olden days" will be the days when there were computers, but no modems. Shopping malls, but no video games.
Yesterday, I had a chance to see several sixth graders portraying a class from somewhere around the turn of the century (the beginning of the twentieth century), or perhaps some time in the nineteenth century. It was part of Amherst Living History Day. They took turns being the teacher, and they took the whole project quite seriously, smiling, but only in character. They were dressed in clothes that were reminiscent of that time period, and they spoke the way they and I imagined that children and teachers would have spoken back then.
One of the things that impressed me about this presentation was the stillness and silence. One person spoke at a time, and children moved very little. I'm glad that's not the way school is nowadays, but it was charming. After each child had a chance to be teacher, there was a short time for children to "socialize." Most of the children whispered (or pretended to whisper), but one at a time spoke loud enough for the audience to hear. This "socializing" time probably wouldn't have happened as often in the classroom they were portraying, but it allowed a natural transition during which the next "teacher" could take charge.
People who went to school back then still ended up being real people. Sam Clemens did. So did Laura Ingalls Wilder. But as I said, I'm glad school isn't like that any more. Children have more things to say than can be said in such a quiet classroom, and they need to move more than they were allowed to move back then. But I can't help it. I was charmed.
There are parents and teachers who long for the "good old days," and my experience yesterday brought me a little closer to understanding them. Sometimes I visit the Hancock Shaker Village, and the peaceful atmosphere charms me. But I'm glad I wasn't a Shaker. And I'm glad I went to school in the 1950's rather than the 1890's. In fact, I wish I'd gone to school in the 1990's. As we learn more and more about children and learning, we do get better at teaching and parenting.
So let's try to think of these as good old days, when most people had to hand-type their messages before they e-mailed them, and when most people had telephones with no video component, so you had to imagine the face of the person you were talking to. And back in the early part of the twenty-first century, children had pencils, and had to form letters and words by actually writing them. Isn't that quaint?
Discussions 375.
As a teacher, I came to school almost every day with a discussion topic in mind. The topics were similar to the topics of many of these articles, and as with these articles, it took me very little time to decide what to discuss.
Not many topics were lead balloons; children had something to say about almost everything I could think of. Every moment of life is intrinsically interesting; even boredom itself is full of potential. Life, handled wrong, can teach us to be bored, but children haven't had much time to learn that, and even if they do get bored, it doesn't take long for them to get interested again. In school, when the topic is planned without the children's input, or at home, where children's priorities also sometimes take a back seat, boredom can still happen. But it's not the natural order of things.
And so we talked. And we wrote. Back and forth. Each morning, on the way to school, I decided what we'd talk about. Sometimes it would be inspired by something that had happened the day before. Sometimes it would be based on something I remembered, something I saw on the way to school, or something I was thinking. When children got to school, I gave them their conversation journals, in which I'd written the night before. Some children wrote very little in their journals. "I can't think of anything to write" was permissible.
If I read that kind of entry, that night I'd write, "Is that because everybody was so nice to you yesterday, so there's nothing to complain about?" or "Should we write about why caterpillars spend so much time eating?" Sometimes that worked, sometimes not. But the same children who couldn't think of what to write seldom had trouble thinking of what to say in our discussions. Once in a while, I'd comment, "I wish you'd write about that." But I tried not to push too hard; it would cramp their discussion style.
As I've come to realize that Amherst is full of students and other people who have things to say, I've taken on another new role. Every time I get on the bus, I start a discussion. I sit in the back, where there is room for my scooter, and I face everyone who's sitting behind me. Today I introduced myself and the subject of beginnings. I asked whether there was anyone who didn't understand or speak English, and whether there was anyone who would rather not have a discussion. There weren't any of either. Then I talked a little about beginnings - just a few words - and asked people to comment, first introducing themselves. Buses, at least where I've lived, are usually quiet places. As one of my conversants later remarked, so are elevators. I'm not in crowded elevators very often, though, and there are usually enough people on the bus for a good talk.
My point is that there's a lot to say, and a lot to write about. A lot of opportunities for great discussions are missed because people are shy about starting conversations, or otherwise inhibited. But we can change. By the way, how do you think the inventor of alphabet soup got the idea? Reading the Teachers' Mind 376.
Teachers sometimes ask children questions that have right answers. Certain subjects are full of right answers. Words are usually only supposed to be spelled one way. Fifty-one minus thirty-seven is
fourteen. It's not a matter of opinion.
But sometimes, there is another kind of "right" answer. That is, the teacher knows what answer he/she wants to hear, and though he/she may nod absent-mindedly while some children give perfectly
valid but unexpected answers, children can tell right away when someone hits the nail on the head. For example, after Ferdinand was brought home
from the "bull fight," why was he so glad to be next to the cork tree again? "Because he didn't like fighting the matador?" "Well, yes." "Because he
was used to it?" "Yeah." "Because then he could sit and smell the flowers?" "Yes! Yes! Very good!"
Who really knows exactly why Ferdinand was so glad? Munro Leaf may have had some thoughts about the issue. After all, he wrote the book. But
even Mr. Leaf could be wrong. Only Ferdinand knows, and even he may have mixed feelings. But for the average child in school - especially the average young child - that may not be the point. That child is not dealing with Munro
Leaf or Ferdinand. The kid is dealing with the teacher, and would much rather earn a "Yes! Yes! Very good!" than a "Well, yes," or a "Yeah."
And so it doesn't matter what the author or bull is thinking. What matters is what the teacher is thinking.
We teachers don't always realize that we're asking children to read our minds. If we've spent a lot of time thinking about something, and have
come up with conclusions we take to heart, we can forget that other people may have different, equally valid points of view. We know, on some
level, that they do, but it feels so good when someone validates our thinking by thinking the same thing. And it also feels good to be the child who has done the validating. I remember beaming with pride after I'd successfully read a teacher's mind.
But that's not education. On the one hand, if a question really does have one right answer, teachers ought to help children get there. The
square root of eighty-one is nine, and if a child thinks it's eight, sooner or later the teaching process ought to get the child to realize the mistake. But if a question is open-ended, teachers owe it to children to give all serious answers respect. Children know when the teacher wants
her/his mind read, and many of them will oblige the teacher. So there's yet another thing to think about on the road to becoming a good teacher. And you know what good teaching is, don't you? Anybody?
Anybody?

Squeaky Wheels 377.
Usually when I roll into one of the classrooms in which I volunteer, it becomes immediately apparent what needs to be done. A child is wearing a pained expression, another child is playing around when there's work to be done, or some other problem is staring me in the face, waiting for me to try my hand at contributing to the solution. Until today, my activities in the Fort River School have been somewhat predictable.
But today I tried something different. When I came in, children were busy reading, and writing about what they were reading. Some had the pained expressions I've come to expect (it's a good school; pained expressions aren't necessarily symptoms of bad teaching), and others were goofing off, but most were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. I decided to try something I've rarely tried.
I rolled over to Marieta, a child who was quietly reading, and I sat there. I hadn't brought a book with me, but if I had, I would have started reading it. From now on, I'll always have a book with me. I sat and watched Marieta read. I knew she was a child who liked attention, and often worked to get some. But this time, she was getting plenty of attention by doing something that isn't normally much of an attention-getting device: she was reading silently.
As I sat there, I felt as if I was doing something important. And it was something I had hardly ever done as a paid teacher; it wouldn't have been efficient use of teaching time. Teachers, responsible for all that happens in their classrooms, can't spend much time watching one child who is doing what he/she is supposed to be doing. Something usually does have to be done about the ones who, for one reason or another, aren't on task.
But imagine, for a moment, what may have been going on in the mind of the child who was reading silently. Silent reading is a potentially lonely activity. You can certainly get involved with the characters you're reading about, and you can forget about your loneliness, but it can still be there. My presence may have been playing an important role.
I didn't interrupt Marieta's reading to talk with her. Nor did I speak to her later about her reading. But I feel right about the role I played. Perhaps other children saw me watching Marieta read. If so, I wonder how they thought about it. Did they think it was strange? Did they wish I'd come watch them read? I don't know. But I'm going to make it part of my repertoire. I'll let you know as I see what effect it has.
Squeaky wheels tend to be the ones to get the grease. Though that tendency makes good sense if you're talking about actual wheels and actual grease, it's good to pay attention to children who aren't demanding attention. It doesn't take long to figure out whether they appreciate that attention. Most of them do. And they deserve it.
Children Having Children 378.
Ideally, people don't become parents until they're ready to. I became a parent when I was twenty-one, and it could be argued that I wasn't ready yet, but I did all right. Some people have children long before I'd consider them ready (if ever), and some are what I'd consider ready long before they have children (if ever). But we're complicated, and it's not easy to tell, with certainty, whether someone is "ready" to have children.
In some cultures, people are expected to start having children earlier than they are in our culture. When it's expected and accepted, it seems to work. Children grow up learning how to parent, and by the time their biological clocks start ticking, they're ready to go. My eight year old friend from Vietnam has a grandmother who's younger than I am. Yet if I became a grandfather now, in this culture, I'd be considered an unusually young one. Our culture tells people to wait longer.
So a teenager in our culture who has children, either accidentally or on purpose, usually has trouble. We tend to call teenagers "children" if they become parents, although we do let them vote, drive, and do other things adults normally do. And when we're at war, teenagers, who aren't supposed to create life, are sent to destroy it, and risk having their own lives destroyed. Something's wrong somewhere.
I'm not saying that teenagers in our culture should have children. There's a lot of other stuff teenagers could be doing. The message teenagers in this country usually receive is that having children early is "throwing your life away." "There's so much you can do in life, and if you have children when you're too young, you won't be able to do it." They're often told this by their parents or other adults who are beginning careers after raising children, and they may wonder why it makes more sense to begin a career at age forty-five than at age thirty-five.
And what if raising children is exactly what they want to do with their lives? Personally, I think it's a pretty good way to spend a life. And most people in this country who have children are also doing other things. We try to simplify issues, but I don't think this one can be simplified. As difficult as it may be, I think we have to consider teenage parenthood case by case. I was married to a teenaged parent (although she turned twenty when our daughter was three months old), and having had three younger siblings, she was a pretty good teenaged parent.
I am not quite taking sides. I hope this article isn't used as a weapon by a teenager who is trying to convince her/his parents that teenage parenthood is okay. If parenthood seems, to the teenager, like playing with real, live dolls, no way. I wouldn't have written hundreds of articles about playing with dolls. But I think anyone who is thinking about having children should be heard. Not just talked to.

A Young Academic 379.
Something happened today that I can't help writing about. Perhaps by the time I've written a few paragraphs, I'll have thought of a point I'm trying to make. But for now, I just have to tell you what happened.
All the children in one reading group had just read a story, and they were supposed to write the goal the main character had in mind. One boy named Adam told me, quite seriously, that he thought the main character didn't have one particular goal - that he had several goals. He hadn't written anything on his worksheet, because he didn't think there was a right way to answer the question.
I like it when a child gets academic like that, and a dialogue starts to sound more sophisticated than the average. I respect children's thinking, and I think they know that, and like it. And so we talked about the various goals the main character had, and the boy impressed me with his thinking about the story. But after ten minutes, there was still nothing on his paper. And time was going by. He really did have to do the worksheet, after all.
His teacher suggested that he talk with Helen, who had already finished the worksheet. I didn't intervene, although I wondered how eight year old Helen was going to help this boy when I, with a master's degree in elementary education, couldn't guide him through the intellectual quagmire in which he was stuck.
But after about one minute, the boy was writing. And after about five minutes, he was done. I've always known that children are often better at explaining things to each other than adults are at explaining things to them. But I'd thought this particular job was for an adult - that it was a little too abstract for another child.
I asked Helen how she had managed to help Adam. Her reply cracked me up. She hadn't spent her minute with Adam solving the intellectual issue that was plaguing him. Her advice to him was far more down-to-earth than anything I would have thought of. She had told Adam that if he really thought that the main character had had several goals, he should do one worksheet for each goal.
Helen had addressed the child in Adam. I had been addressing the academic. Amherst is a college town, and I guess the academic environment had temporarily gotten me to forget that children are still children.
I don't think there's anything wrong with what I had been doing with Adam. Children ought to know that their thoughts are worthwhile. But I'm both amused and impressed by Helen's approach to Adam. And as far as getting the worksheet done, I have to admit that her words were more practical than mine.

What We Can and Can't Do 380.
I have a good friend who respects my thinking about children and parents. He asked me what to do about a situation that's bothering him. His daughter, Rochelle, is being bothered by a girl named Juliana, who seems to need to be "best" at everything, and to make sure everyone knows it. While I'm flattered to be cast in the "Dear Abby" role, my first reaction was to think I couldn't help. But like Juliana, I have a reputation to uphold. So I thought for a while, and gave it my best shot.
Abby and all those other givers of advice provide a service, but they also don't quite know what they're talking about. Neither do I. I don't know Juliana. She's probably having at least as much trouble as Rochelle, but I don't know that. Besides, I naturally care about my friend and his daughter more than I care about Juliana. But I'll try to imagine what kind of advice one of Juliana's parents might ask for:
Dear Abby,
My daughter seems to need to prove herself all the time.
She's very unhappy, and while other children are impressed
with her "confidence," I'm afraid her popularity is going to be
short-lived. One girl, Rochelle, is already apparently
disenchanted, and while that's causing problems for Rochelle
right now, I think Rochelle's reaction is only the tip of the
iceberg.
I want Juliana to feel good about herself, but not at the
expense of other children. And if she continues to build her
self-esteem the way she's building it now, it's going to
have a shaky foundation. How can I help my daughter?
My advice to Juliana's parent is similar to the advice I gave Rochelle's father. There are two parts to it. First of all, the social world of children is their world, not ours. We care about our children, and just as I care about my friend and his daughter more than I care about Juliana and her parents, my friend takes Rochelle's side. And he should. Juliana's parent or parents are in charge of caring about Juliana. But bottom line number one is that there may not be a whole lot adults can do.
My second bit of advice is to listen to Rochelle and Juliana. Rochelle's father probably already listens to Rochelle quite well, but caring can make us forget to listen. We get caught up in the problems of those we care about, and we go overboard trying to solve them. Sometimes that makes us forget to listen.
Sometimes, I've been able to successfully intervene in a relationship between two children. I once resuscitated two children's friendship just by sending them on an errand together. But actually, I was only marginally instrumental. More often, I've found that there wasn't a blessed thing I could do. Children have to work things out on their own, and there's not much we can do but care and listen. Sorry.
Functional Families 381.
Everything's relative. But having heard gruesome stories about what has been happening in some families, I think, in retrospect, that my family has been relatively functional. I think many families have been. It's traditional, in my crowd, to blame one's parents for one's problems, but I've heard stories that make me grateful to my parents for only yelling at me or spanking me now and then. Not that I approve of yelling and spanking, but I've heard stories of much worse. And I never spanked my children, and I tried not to yell at them, so if there was a negative pattern, I tried to break it, and was somewhat successful.
It bothers me when politicians talk about families as if they consider families a top priority, and their opponents don't. I'd rather take it on faith that most of us consider families a top priority. We disagree about what that means. Should it be illegal to hit children? When does life begin? Should parents of school-aged children be required to seek employment? Any of these topics and more could spark lively and maybe heated debate, but I don't think they separate those who care about families from those who don't.
A functional family does not have to look like Ozzie and Harriet. (By the way, if I remember correctly, they had school-aged children and did not seek employment. They were always home, weren't they?) I think a family can be functional even if it has serious problems. It depends on what the problems are, whether they're recognized, and whether solutions are being sought. I liked Ron Howard's movie "Parenthood," which depicted a family full of real problems, but gave me a feeling that solutions were going to emerge. Ozzie probably would have been totally bewildered by that family.
By my standard, there are some families that have been unfairly labelled "dysfunctional." But there are still plenty that deserve the label. I don't ultimately blame parents who abuse their children; they aren't in control of what they do. Their lives have turned them into people who abuse children. But I blame them enough to believe that their children should be protected from them. I don't know what form that protection should take, but it should be there.
Coming from a family I consider functional, I am not intimately acquainted with the subject of dysfunctional families. And so far, as a teacher, I don't think I've encountered many abused children. If I'm right, there are many more functional families than talk shows would make you think. Maybe TV ratings wouldn't be as high if people got on TV to tell us about their children's soccer games or school plays. Too bad. But soccer games and school plays do happen.

Rosa Parks Revisited 382.
Two girls came into class today quite animated. They had come to school by bus, and according to their story, the bus driver had made the girls sit in the back of the bus and the boys sit in front. With smiles on their faces, they told me they were angry. I believed them. There can be all kinds of reasons for smiles. I sometimes smile when I'm saying something important. I'm not sure why. It could be embarrassment or nervousness. Or maybe I enjoy being taken seriously.
But I'm not going to dwell on my problem. These two girls were talking about something important, and regardless of what their smiles meant, I chose to take them seriously. I told them that their story reminded me of Rosa Parks. Both of them knew who Rosa Parks was, and they walked away speaking of plans to right the situation. In a way, I hope I didn't cause trouble. I don't want authorities to tell me I have to stop volunteering in the school. But I don't think they will. In another way, I hope I inspired two children to think more about an injustice they'd identified, and find a way to act on it.
I tried to think about what could have inspired the bus driver to segregate the genders that way. It wasn't hard to imagine. The back of the bus is furthest from the driver, and it wouldn't surprise me to find out that certain members of a certain gender were doing certain things back there that the bus driver didn't want done. I don't know specifically what was going on back there, but I remember riding on school buses, and being a good boy, I didn't sit back there.
Having the boys sit in front and the girls in back may have solved the immediate problem the bus driver had identified. And as far as I know, bus drivers are not required to take courses in child development or learn about the implications of public policies. As far as I know, they're just supposed to know about driving the bus. And driving a school bus is not like driving other buses. It can cause a lot more headaches.
I don't think the bus driver should have done what he did (if, in act, he did it). I don't think it's wise to do something that can be construed as a punishment and include people you don't intend to punish. If my guess about the driver's motivation is correct, the two girls I spoke to hadn't done anything wrong, and had not been sent to the back of the bus as a punishment for being female. And there were probably others, both male and female, who were innocent, and who nevertheless felt as if they were being punished.
I don't think there is going to be an incident similar to Rosa Parks' heroic refusal. I don't think there will be an Amherst Bus Boycott. I'll show this article to the principal, and I suspect that if he doesn't already know about this situation, and hasn't already dealt with it, he will.
Not Teaching 383.
I spent this evening not teaching. There I was, with Molly, a five year old girl who didn't know some things I did know, and who "knew" some things I knew weren't true, and I let it be. Being the chronic compulsive teacher I am, I really felt like teaching, but it just wasn't the right thing to do at the time. She had just started kindergarten, and like most people starting kindergarten, she was quite tentative about the whole idea of school. She didn't need to spend a Saturday evening being taught. She needed some down time.
And so when Molly explained to me that banks keep your money and don't do anything with it, I replied, "Oh. I thought they did something with it." That's all. I gave her lots of freedom to be an expert; school was already giving her the impression that she didn't know much, and I was not about to reinforce that impression. She can learn about banks later.
Of course, when I say I didn't "teach," it's a matter of semantics. I had a puzzle conspicuously lying on my coffee table when Molly came. It had a "magic mirror" that was supposed to create interesting images when you put it on the dotted lines on the picture. Molly spontaneously started putting the puzzle together the moment she saw it. I watched her put it together, and when she was done, I asked her why they thought putting the mirror on the dotted line would do anything special. So she had fun trying it. Is having a puzzle on the coffee table a form of teaching?
When Molly asked me if I'd like to see her make the alphabet with her body, I said, "Yes." She subsequently lay down on the living room rug, and made an A by putting her arms and legs in position. Then she went on to B. By C, she had to sing the alphabet to figure out which letter came next. Not every letter she made was recognizable to me, but I could usually tell what she was trying to do. The main thing I felt that I needed to do was avoid "teaching" her.
We talked. Molly is very verbal, and so am I. There was hardly a quiet moment while she was at my apartment. Neither of us felt like being quiet, although she did talk enough to get me quieter than I usually am. My television doesn't tune in to more than one channel, and even that one doesn't work too well. I know from past experiences with Molly that she doesn't say much when the television is on. So maybe not having cable television was a form of "teaching."
If you're a kindergarten teacher, maybe the quotation marks I put around the word "teaching" bother you. Maybe what I was doing with Molly was teaching, not "teaching." Maybe Molly had given herself homework - to work on her visual perception by playing with a puzzle, and to practice the alphabet. Never having taught kindergarten, I don't know to what degree I was teaching. Once, I substituted for a kindergarten teacher for about two hours. It exhausted me. Kindergarten teaching has always seemed beyond me. But I've known kindergarten teachers who have assured me that they feel the same way about teaching older children. Different strokes for different folks.
Lessons 384.
There's a kind of anti-intellectualism among some artists (and parents of artists) that places the untutored genius high above the one who had a teacher, studied, and finally created some good stuff. I've had that mindset to some degree for a long time, and still do, somewhat. I've been proud of the fact that I knew how to play piano before I
took lessons, and I've clung to the belief that lessons, when I finally took them, didn't do me a bit of good.
All right. I admit that the piano lessons I had taught me how to read music. And though they didn't teach me to write music, I couldn't have
figured it out if I didn't know how to read it. Of course, as soon as I took lessons, my untutored genius status was ruined; when people heard me
playing and said, "Isn't he amazing? And he never took a single lesson!", I had to correct them.
Lessons are okay. I think they're best when they've been requested by the person taking them, for reasons that have something to do with what
the lessons actually are. They're even better if they're tailored to the learning style and interests of the person being tutored.
But that's not quite true of the music lessons I remember having. And listening to many children, I've heard many of their complaints about lessons. Too often, they're told what they're going to learn, told to practice, and scolded if they haven't practiced, or seem not to have. And they either quit lessons or wish they could.
I don't think children should have to take lessons. If children are talented, lessons too often end up being their punishment for having talent. They envy those lucky "untalented" children who get to go do what they want to do. This is not as true in the nineties as it was in the fifties and sixties, and not as true in the communities in which I've taught, because almost all of the children are taking lessons. Maybe the spontaneous baseball game on the empty lot is a thing of the past.
Lessons also play a role that wasn't as necessary thirty years ago: they make it possible for adults to live their busy lives. Of course, if the
timing is bad, lessons just make the busy lives even busier; driving a child somewhere for a forty-five minute lesson and driving back to pick him/her up doesn't add much time to an adult's day.
I'm an idealist. I think lessons ought to be, for children, what they are for adults who take them. We identify something we want to learn, and we look around for a teacher who shows promise. If we decide that the teacher is good, we stick with her/him. If not, or if, for some other reason, we don't want lessons after all, we stop. That's the way my parents handled it, and it's the way my wife and I handled it with our
children. And it worked.


The Teacher as a Person 385.
Communicating by e-mail with one of my former pupils, I was recently reminded of the wall that often exists between teacher and pupil (one of the many things Caleb Gattegno taught me was that we should try to use the word "student" only when that's exactly what we mean). There's already something called a "generation gap," and I've come to terms with that. I'm probably not going to get so I want my hair to be green or purple, and I'm probably not going to develop a preference for popular music that was created after my twenty-third year of life. Of course, writing music myself, and having good friends who write music, I'll never be totally lost in the past, but I don't think our music is in danger of creating any gold records (gold CD's?).
But I hope that I never used my seniority to build the wall some teachers build. Some teachers are careful not to show their human frailties and ideosyncracies. And they don't smile until December. In every encounter they have with children, they present themselves as THE TEACHER, not as the person who happens to be the teacher. Children quickly learn that there is something fundamentally different about talking to a teacher - that there are some things you just don't say to a teacher, but they're okay to say to just about anyone else.
Just a few days ago, one of my eight-year-old friends said, as he entered my apartment for a visit, "I just want you to know that I like you as a friend, but I respect you as a teacher." I'm pretty sure he was told by his parents to say that. I immediately told him that I like and respect him as a friend, a learner, and a teacher. He liked that. He had been told to assure me that there was a boundary between us, and I was telling him that I didn't want that boundary to be a significant factor in our friendship.
When I'm in the teachers' room, I can't tell which teachers use THE WALL and which don't. They all act like real people. But it becomes obvious the moment I enter a classroom. I don't mean that teachers who use THE WALL are necessarily worse teachers; there are all kinds of ways to be good or bad at teaching, and professional distance is only one factor. I've had excellent teachers I've never even tried to really get to know. They've made it clear that that was not an option.
Some teachers go overboard the other way, spilling their lives out to the children they teach. That happens more in high school and college than in elementary school, but I've heard of elementary school teachers who do it, too. I think teachers who do that need help, and should find more appropriate sources. Children come to school to get help, and have a right to expect that they'll do most of the getting.
So let's not treat people as adults until they actually are adults; treating an eight-year-old as an adult is not respecting who that person really is. But I don't think there needs to be a wall between teachers and children.
Protecting Children 386.
There are all kinds of dangers in this world, and we don't want our children to end up in the emergency room of the hospital, pictured on a
milk carton, or dead. We want them to live long, healthy, happy lives. And so we do what we can to make sure that's what happens. Of course, everybody has a different idea of what is safe and healthy, and some parents don't seem to care as much as others, but I think most of us do our best.
Sometimes, a parent seems overprotective. Exactly what that means varies quite a lot. Some parents encourage their children to take risks other parents wouldn't allow. Diet, immunization shots, seatbelts, home selection, and various policies all reflect parents' concern about their children's safety and health. Sometimes children object to their parents' protection policies, but parents are often more aware of children's vulnerability and mortality than children are.
But at some point, children start owning their own lives enough to make their own decisions about what is safe and healthy. And they make mistakes. I did. Didn't you? I've never broken a bone, but I've partied too late and had to pay the price the next day. Sometimes my inner parent sets limits for me, caring about my well-being, but sometimes my inner child takes over and has that sinful dessert anyway.
There are comical aspects to this issue, but they also vary from person to person. What one parent absolutely forbids may seem trivial - even silly - to another parent. One is thinking, I am not going to let my child go on that monstrous roller coaster, while another is thinking, roller coasters are fun for children; if we try to protect them from everything, they'll never get to experience life.
I don't think there's a simple rule of thumb that tells us how and how much to protect our children. I'm all for living life and enjoying it. But even as an adult in charge of my own life, it's hard for me to decide what to allow myself to do. There are things I really want to do that I know I shouldn't and won't. But there are also activities about which I agonize: should I? I really want to. But if I do...and so on.
The parent who seems, to you, to be overprotective may be someone who got badly hurt or saw someone else get badly hurt doing what you let your children do. I don't know whether that parent is being overprotective or you're being reckless. I don't know whether the reason I've never broken a bone is that my parents and I were too cautious or just that we were appropriately cautious.
I don't like labels, and so rather than call someone an "overprotective parent," I prefer to examine policies one at a time. It means more thinking, but I'm into that anyway nowadays.

Roles 387.
Parents, teachers, children, and other people often get cast in roles they're expected to play. They do, say, or write something that impresses other people, either because they do it so well or just because at least they DO it. It may or may not astound people, but at least it impresses them enough to make them create a role for the perpetrator. And from then on, everyone knows who is supposed to plan the treasure hunt for the birthday party, make the toast at the retirement party, or whatever. Someone else could do it, but not with that special flair.
Roles like that can be very flattering, but they can also be limiting and oppressive. If you're the one who traditionally plans the office party, maybe you enjoy doing it for two or three years. But then you tell everybody you're tired of doing it. "But you're so GOOD at it," they all say. "No one could ever plan it as well as you do." And so maybe you plan it one more time. But your heart isn't really in it. Maybe you secretly hope people will become disenchanted with your "expertise," and someone else will take over next year. But no one comes forward. You've got a role.
As an occasional organizer of adults, I try to make sure no one stays in any role any longer than she/he feels right about it. Pass It On!, the magazine I edit, has a great staff of talented volunteers, and the magazine keeps improving. But once in a while, someone decides that he/she has burnt out. Enough is enough. When that happens, I do my best to balance expressing appreciation for what the volunteer has done and acceptance of the decision to stop doing it. I don't want to ever be thought of as indispensible, and I don't think she/he does, either. The myth of indispensibility can be an awful tyrant.
Sometimes, the role problem has a different twist. People sometimes cling with all their might to the roles they have. They attach their self-esteem to those roles, and feel threatened if anyone suggests that it's time to give someone else a chance: "Wasn't I doing it well enough? Tell me what I was doing wrong, and I'll try to do it better." Change can be unsettling for everyone involved.
But I think systems work better when there's role flexibility. Tasks are accomplished well by those who are experienced, but they're also accomplished well by those who have fresh ideas. It can be good for the veterans to be available as consultants, but that assumes that those veterans have let go of their roles enough to allow room for the novices' ideas.
Some of my articles get right to the point, but this one may leave you wondering, what is he referring to? Does he think I should let someone else balance the checkbook? Just because I made that one mistake? Don't worry. I didn't mean you. I know you like to be in charge of the checkbook, and you do it very well. I wouldn't dream of suggesting that you should be replaced.

Pen Pals/Keypals 388.
Many children I've known have tried to have pen pals, and some have succeeded. In the past, it's taken a kind of dedication that, for some children, may no longer be necessary. If you relate to someone only through the mail, conversations can be difficult - especially if, after several weeks or months, you receive a letter that begins, "I know what you mean." Your pen pal may know what you mean, but after all that time, you may not have any idea what you've said. And so conversations among pen pals tend not to last.
E-mail is revolutionizing the concept of a pen pal. I have a friend in Italy whom I've never met. In fact, the chances are that we never will meet. But we've had some significant conversations through e-mail. In fact, come to think of it, I haven't heard from Maurizio in a long time. But I send him every article I write, so Maurizio, how are you? How are Mariangela and Giulia? I still have your pictures up on my wall, and if I end up able to buy the condiminium I'm trying to buy, I'll put them up there, too.
When teachers try to get children to have pen pals, there's a variety of possible reasons. First of all, a pen pal can be a reason to want to write - especially if the pen pal writes back promptly. And having a pen pal can be a way of learning about another culture, and for some children, practicing another language. There was one year I tried to establish pen pal relationships among children all over the world. Children in my class wrote to addresses in Germany, Japan, Mexico, Australia, and more. I hoped to build a pen pal society on which the sun never set. But children like instant gratification, and when they didn't get immediate responses from their pen pals, they lost interest.
As computers become more and more common in schools, pen pals (or "keypals," as cybernetic pen pals are called) may become a bigger part of school curriculum. I'm excited about the potential. Gandhi said "If we want to build world peace, we shall have to begin with the children." Maybe e-mail will be one road to international understanding. Of course, this dream does depend on children around the world having access to computers, and that will take a while. But just imagine a world full of people who communicate with each other! As for the different languages, the computers will take care of that. They'll translate messages.
Are you thinking I've gone off the deep end? Well, maybe I have, a little. But it doesn't do any harm to dream, and lots of good, practical ideas started out as dreams. A friend of mine recently sat on an airplane and e-mailed a message to people around the country. When I received the message, I looked up to the sky. I'm keypals with a teacher in Wisconsin (Hi, Leona!), some of my former students (Hi, Rachel! Hi, Nathan!), and many more. And this year I had a cybernetic birthday party. I introduced all my keypals to each other. And there was no mess to clean up afterwards.

A Thought 389.
When I was busy in my teaching career, I told myself and others that I would be more attentive, sensitive, and all that if I just had more time. I'd pay more attention to the little things that mean so much. Sometimes I got skeptical looks; people thought my career was just an alibi. So I tried to balance my career with the rest of my life. And like most people I know, I didn't do either as well as I wanted to.
My alibi isn't there any more. Of course, my energy is less, and if I wanted to, I could use my decreased energy as an alibi. In fact, I am committed to staying as healthy as possible, and that does involve careful budgeting of my energy. But as much as I miss my career, the fact is that lack of time was a bigger obstacle to living fully than lack of energy. I now pay attention to people who talk to me, think about the people who are important to me, stay in touch with old friends, write when I feel like writing, teach each weekday morning, and volunteer for things that are important to me.
Part of my trick is that I have learned how to say "no," and part of the reason I can do that is that people don't expect as much of me; I'm disabled. But I think a bigger part is that I have time. My afternoons include naps and times when I get to think. That thinking may inspire me to write to a friend, take a roll in the woods, write an article, or do something I've volunteered to do.
I'm telling you this not to toot my own horn, although it does have that effect, too. My main reason for telling you is that you may still be caught in the rat race. And so you don't have time to really look at the picture your child drew, or listen to something important your friend is telling you. And I'll bet there are people telling you that if you really cared, you would MAKE time. I remember taking occasional workshops on stress management. But only short ones. With so much to do, how could I attend a week-long workshop on stress management? And how could I ever catch up on all my work afterwards?
From my point of view, those stress management workshops, though certainly potentially helpful, missed the main point. The main point is that there really isn't enough time to earn a living and also do all the other important things there are to do. Retired, I don't have to earn a living any more. And since my daughters are adults, parenting is far from the full-time job it once was.
So take heart. If you are having trouble holding all the parts of your life together, it could well be that your life actually is too full - that it's not your fault. I used to think my difficulty meeting all my responsibilities was a sign of my own inadequacy. Now that I am meeting them all, I think there used to be too many.

More About Babies 390.
I have a new friend who is about to become a father. When I last wrote about babies, I wrote that babies were not my favorite people - that they had potential, but that I'd rather relate to them after they'd reached more of it. As I wrote that, I was thinking of time I'd spent with other people's babies, and proud parents who had shown me photograph after photograph of their babies. I was thinking about my attempts to babysit with babies, and how incompetent I'd felt. And men are not naturally equipped to meet one of babies' most pressing needs. That really bothered me; didn't my daughter know that I would help if I could?
But when my friend told me (by e-mail) that he and his wife would soon be parents, I started thinking about my daughters. They're both over a quarter century away from babyhood, but I remember the times I gave my wife a little extra sleep by sitting up with Katy or Lara and dancing and singing my daughter back to sleep. At first, I didn't know many lullabies, and it didn't take me long to get tired of "Rock-a-Bye Baby," but I soon realized that any song could be a lullaby if you sang it slowly enough. The Beatles' "All My Loving" became my favorite lullaby.
Some people work hard to become articulate. I had. But tone of voice means everything to a baby. At first, I tried to say profound things to my baby daughters, but after a while, I recited lines from plays I'd been in. They didn't know the difference. As long as I said the lines in a gentle, high-pitched voice, they were happy. They smiled at words written by Arthur Miller, Jean Anouilh, or William Shakespeare just as surely as they smiled at my declarations of love. How fickle of them!
During those years after your childhood and before you become a parent (if there are such years), you get to plan a lot of your day. Of course, you do have to earn a living, and that can take up a lot of your time, but what's left is yours. If you're part of a couple, some of that time, for better or worse, is couple time, but the two of you can pay attention to each other's priorities, and negotiate great compromises. The word "need" is tossed around, but ultimately, it only means what you want it to mean; you can survive without each other.
When a baby enters the scene, "need" takes on its other meaning. As long as he/she needs you, you know where you must be. And it can be hard
to relate to someone who doesn't seem to be thinking about what YOU need. I know that I "need" children, and it doesn't really take long for babies to become children, but there were times when I wished they'd hurry up.
I wish the new soon-to-be parents happiness and peace. I wish them strength to get through the sleepless nights. And I thank them for inadvertently reminding me that though my daughters' babyhood was challenging for me and my wife, there was a lot of joy involved, too.

Parenting Correctly 391.
I know parents who believe that they have found the "correct" way to parent. Some lecture other people on the "correct" way, and disapprove of people who parent "incorrectly." Some of these people do have lovable, competent children, and should take some credit for parenting effectively, but I'm wary of attempts to turn one person's road to success into a "correct" way.
The world is filled with lovable, capable adults, most of whom were parented in different ways. Some parents teach their children religion, and religion can help. The first commandment in my religion is "Honor thy father and thy mother." I wish it were "Honor thy father, thy mother, and thy children." But I think my parents honor me pretty well, and I honor my children as well as I can. And honoring children is not listed as a sin, so I think we're still in the ball park.
Behaviorists, humanists, and other believers in schools of psychology raise children to be proud of. I've heard it said that the children of psychologists are among the most messed up children, but I don't believe it. I think it's that people expect more of these children, and are more likely to notice problems when they occur. If psychologists' children have problems, it takes some pressure off us non-psychologists. We don't have to worry so much about parenting "correctly," because even the ones who define "correctly" are having trouble.
I think there are roughly four billion kinds of people in the world, and each one has been and should have been parented differently. I think that if we listen to our children and listen to each other, we stand a better chance of gathering all the insight we need. It doesn't hurt to read books and articles about parenting, and it doesn't hurt to attend lectures and workshops and listen to people who present themselves as experts. Such people can still have useful insights.
I've written an awful lot about my approach to parenting, and I know I've sometimes referred to "good parents." But I hope I haven't painted myself into a corner. I've mentioned a few things I don't think parents should ever do to their children (e.g., hit them), but I've tried not to present my thoughts as THE WAY to parent. There are many ways, and I keep hearing about great new ones.
Many of us try to give our children the sense that they are doing okay.
Some parents have stricter standards than others, so that "doing okay" ends up meaning different things to different people. But most of us have got some things in common. We would rather have our children grow up grateful that their parents did such a good job than have them spend lots of time and money working to undo all the damage their toxic parents have done to them. So some of us long for a "correct" way to parent. But I don't think there is one.

Jeremy 392.
A boy named Jeremy, like most people, likes to do what he does well. What he does well is converse and move around. And he does both really well. You should see him on the soccer field. Or have a conversation with him. As long as Jeremy is doing what he does well, he's happy and looks great.
I'll bet you're like that, too. So am I. Not that we're necessarily great at moving and talking, but whatever it is that we're good at, we like to do it and, of course, do it well. So I like to write, and maybe you like to ski, or read. There are plenty of things at which to be good, so most of us have chances to excel at something.
Yesterday, I observed Jeremy when he was supposed to be reading and writing. That's not what he does well, so far. I saw a different person from the Jeremy who scored goals in soccer games. At first, he did his best to move and talk, knowing that there was a possibility that he could keep doing that for a while.
I tried to redirect Jeremy, but since I'm a volunteer, and since I choose not to volunteer to be much of an authority figure, I did not succeed. His teacher was there, but she was working with some other children. So for a while, Jeremy was free to move and converse rather than read or write. Of course, his work did have to get done, but he was not about to do it unless there was no way out. Maybe he'd miss recess, but that was a risk he was willing to take. Missing recess is a bummer, but it's hard for a teacher to supervise a child who is missing recess; that time is usually either the teacher's break or a time for the teacher to meet other responsibilities.
For Jeremy, school is rapidly becoming a place to fail. He's in third grade now. I've known him since he was in first grade, and back then it looked as if he was going to be a leader. In first grade, there isn't as much work to be done with a pencil and paper. Jeremy liked that. But now that there is lots of reading and writing to do, he's having trouble. He's intelligent, and if he begins to get the idea of written and printed language, he's going to eat it up.
But nobody likes to fail. I write a lot, but I have never played much soccer. And Jeremy is going to continue to do what he knows he does well. Unless we can get him to think of reading and writing as what he does well, he's going to start giving up. During my teaching career, my approach to children like Jeremy was to try to get some help for them, try to help them myself, and if all else failed, try to get through the day and through the year. Sometimes, I worked a miracle with such a child, but sometimes, like Jeremy, I failed.
I hope Jeremy makes it. I'll be there for him until he's a senior in high school, if he stays in Amherst. But I'm worried about him. It's hard when it looks as if some of the most important things that have to be done are things you don't do so well.
Authority 393.
I wrote, in my last article, that I do not volunteer to be an authority figure. I know what I meant when I wrote that, but it's not quite that simple; I feel the need to clarify the statement a little. I don't mean that the children now have a new forty-eight year old playmate, and that the teachers have a large child they have to discipline, although both of those statements have little grains of truth to them. The freedom retirement gives me does occasionally get me to forget some of the rules, talking to a child when I'm supposed to be listening to the teacher's directions. But not very often.
Any adult who works in a school is bound to be somewhat of an authority figure for children. Children often look up to adults for help, direction, limit-setting, modelling, and more. I haven't really shed the authority figure role; I haven't become a child again, and I don't want to. When a child is having trouble, and doesn't think another child will be able to help, it's good to have an adult nearby.
So yes, I actually am an authority figure, and I'll continue to be one throughout my life. I'm even an authority figure to some teachers; like children, new teachers do occasionally seek the help of people who have already been there. Having come of age in the sixties, I missed some of the positive connotations of the phrase "authority figure;" I was too busy rebelling.
What I meant to say was that in school, I'm not in a position to tell children what they have to do. Some children look to me for permission, and I tell them to ask a teacher. "But you ARE a teacher," they say. While they do have a point, I'm not THE teacher, and I don't want to give children permission that THE teacher doesn't want given. I don't have that kind of authority.
And when a child misbehaves, I don't have my whole repertoire of responses available. I can tell the child how that misbehavior makes me feel, and I can try a few other approaches, but I can't make a child stay in from recess. I can't call the child's parents in for a conference or write anything on a report card. That's for THE teacher to do. That part of the authority role has always been the most difficult for me; it took a kind of energy I never had enough of, and I have less of it now.
I'm thankful not to be playing that part of the role any more, but at least let me admit to you and myself that I am an authority figure. I played the role throughout my teaching career, but as I did, I never quite believed myself, so children never quite believed me, although most believed me more than I believed myself. That sometimes made teaching harder, though I did become friends with a lot of people who would only have been my pupils if I'd more fully integrated the role into my personality. But I'm going to stop trying to convince myself or anyone else that I'm not an authority figure.

Directions 394.
We ask children to read the directions at the top of a worksheet before doing the worksheet. We stress how important it is to read those directions. I remember teachers telling us again and again about a worksheet that didn't even have to be done if you followed directions closely; the beginning said, "Read this entire worksheet before you begin," and the last sentence said, "Only do problem #1." Teachers who told us about that seemed to think it was clever, but I thought it was just plain mean.
Teachers and other people who write directions often forget that communicating directions is a two-way street - that the person who writes directions also has a responsibility. If directions are written in a way that takes readers into account, they're much more likely to yield the desired effect. That's why instructions for putting items together are often written in several languages; the people who sell the items want satisfied customers. It's good for business.
As a teacher, I often wrote directions too quickly. I had other things to do, and I didn't have time to think about how different children would interpret my directions. Most of them spoke English, so I thought they could figure out what I meant if they took the time. I gradually learned that it wasn't enough to be able to speak English - that even English-speaking people who read my directions sometimes had difficulty understanding them.
Some teachers and some producers of educational materials explain directions well, but many, like me, don't do so consistently. And there's a strong tendency for us to think we do; after all, we know what we mean, so why shouldn't everyone else? And so we often prematurely decide that the people we teach just have to do a better job reading and following our directions. We're not at fault, we think; they're just lazy and careless. In effect, we pass the buck.
I once bought a computer desk from a company that routinely offered to send someone to put the desk together for an extra charge. I wondered why. I knew how to read. I supposed that they made the offer to help people who couldn't read, or didn't want to. But when I got the unassembled desk home, I read the directions, and they made no sense to me. I gave the task my best effort, then, in frustration, called the company and agreed to pay someone to assemble the desk for me.
Maybe I'm not as good at reading and following directions as I think I am; maybe I ought to take responsibility for my problem. But it's also possible that the people who wrote the directions could have written them more clearly. And so can we producers of educational materials. Good communication requires skill at both ends.

Hard Times 395.
As our children go through school, they're bound to meet up with situations, teachers and/or children who, to put it mildly, aren't quite right for them. Adults, too, sometimes have to spend a lot of time working with people they'd rather avoid altogether, and/or doing things they'd rather not do. We have more power over how we spend our free time (that's why it's called "free time"), but sometimes we don't get much of that, and we don't get to choose when we get it, either.
As adults, we try to cope with it all. If income or other factors depend on our putting up with hard times, we keep those factors in mind while we get through our days. Maybe we look forward to job changes, staffing changes, weekends, vacations, retirement. Maybe we have other adults who listen to our complaints; sometimes it helps just to have someone to talk to. One way or another, we hang in there.
To some degree, children have to do that, too. Try as we may, we can't protect them from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But we do try. We try to make sure our children's teachers are aware of hard times children have. If the teachers themselves seem to be causing difficulties, we work to get the teachers to realize that. If certain other children are causing problems, we try to figure out how to stop that from happening. If the situation isn't right, we try to find ways to make it right. Meanwhile, we try to get our children to learn how to put up with those teachers, children, and situations.
I've heard teachers, in the relative privacy of the teachers' room, talk about parents who, in those teachers' opinions, seem to be trying to make sure their children's lives are perfect. Teachers get annoyed by that; they aren't perfect, won't give children perfect days, and they wish such parents would accept that. Teachers who deal with those parents are having hard times.
So are the parents. They're trying to give their children happy childhoods, and they know that isn't happening. Of course, there's no such thing as a perfectly happy childhood; everything's relative. But parents have a right to expect that people who affect their children will try to have mostly good effects. When that doesn't seem to be happening, parents, who care about their children, have hard times.
While all this is going on, children are learning what life has to offer. They learn that the way they're treated in school isn't necessarily the way they're treated at home. They may internalize a lot of what happens to them, or they may not.
As all these hard times happen, it really does help to listen. As a teacher, I tried to start out parent conferences by listening to parents. They often said important things. As both a parent and a teacher, I tried to listen to children. It's amazing how many difficulties stem from people not listening to each other, and how hard times can get a little easier if they do listen.
Organization and Predictability 396.
I feel funny writing an article about organization and predictability. I never felt as if they were my strong points as a teacher. There were times, as a teacher, when I tried to convince myself that they weren't so important. And there were days, weeks, even years when I rose above my natural tendency to "wing it" and got my act together, predictably giving math homework every Wednesday, a spelling test every Friday, putting my lesson plans for the week on the bulletin board every Monday morning, and even following them.
I thought I was giving in to "the system" just to keep conservative parents from getting upset with me. I wanted to be spontaneous, free to respond to every teachable moment that happened. I wanted to involve children in my planning, and though that can be done in ways that maintain the basic structure of teaching and learning time, I was not as skilled at doing that as some teachers I've observed. Wanting to believe that I was a good teacher (and I do believe it), I tried to convince myself that it wasn't really so important to have everybody know what was going to come next.
Now, as a volunteer, I work with all kinds of teachers. What those teachers do with their classes inspires lots of articles. I also work with children, and at long last, I get to see how teaching looks to children. For example, I used to think that I was giving my whole class a gift if, on Friday, I announced that there would be no spelling test after all. When I made such an announcement, I invariably heard a cheer. What I didn't hear as loudly was the quiet groan coming from the child who had studied the spelling words for an hour Thursday night, and felt ready to take the test. That child may have had trouble with spelling - may have only been able to remember those spellings until Friday night. Whether or not such a ritual really teaches spelling, it must do something to children's attitudes toward work.
When I work with a teacher who is disorganized, I realize what it was sometimes like to work with me, or to have me for a teacher. I remember volunteering in the class of one teacher who had trouble planning work children could do (trouble I often had). She liked to meet with the class on the rug and have talks (as I often did), and if she'd assigned work that some children couldn't do, she told such children that they'd meet with me, one at a time, while she met with the whole class on the rug. Or I'd stay in during recess with a child who hadn't gotten the work done. Ironically, my role was to compensate for this teacher's lack of organization. As for me, I'd rather have met with children on the rug, or gone out to recess with them. I don't believe in an afterlife during which we pay for our earthly sins, but it did feel that way, a little.
I have also worked with teachers who, in my view, have let organization become a tyrant. But there are many teachers who have found
ways to balance structure and spontaneity. So I know it can be done.

Drudgery, Anticipation, and Flexibility 397.
I believe, despite what could be considered some evidence to the contrary, that everything we really need to teach and learn can be presented and received effectively in a way that's enjoyable. I believe that there are ways to avoid the drudgery that's often involved in school, and that avoiding it doesn't have to involve lowering standards or spending twenty-five hours a day planning.
I know that to some people, that statement sounds similar to "All people are basically good." The evidence to the contrary is too overwhelming. My own teaching and learning has not consistently reflected my belief that drudgery is unnecessary. Nor has the teaching and learning of anyone I know - not even some great teachers and learners I know. There's always been what's called "seatwork" or "busywork," and it hasn't always been exciting, enjoyable, or even okay.
But I've been privileged to work with Pam Szczesny, a third grade teacher who has managed to plan her lessons and days so that children are always either doing something they like doing or joyfully anticipating something. Yesterday I observed her lesson about the building of a castle in the Middle Ages. What I observed was not a hands-on experience, although there had been some of that earlier, and would be later.
I don't mean to imply that what I observed was a good example of drudgery, but it did require that all children sit and face in one direction for about twenty minutes - even some children for whom that requirement alone qualifies an experience as drudgery. Having worked with these children for two years now, I know how hard it is for some of them to put aside their own plans and whims long enough to do what the teacher has planned.
But I looked at the faces of these children, and I did not see what I've sometimes seen in them. These children had just done science experiments involving magnets, and they had enjoyed doing them. They hadn't all stayed precisely on task; they were supposed to use magnets, pennies, coffee stirrers, and cups to invent an effective vehicle, and two children had gotten distracted, discovering that magnets could be used to make earrings. But the teacher had not scolded them, saying, "This lesson is about vehicles, not earrings!" Instead, she'd told them about earrings she'd seen that had used magnets.
Knowing that there's room in school for their own ideas, the children in that class seem more willing to go along with the teacher's plans than some of them were in first and second grade. They seem to appreciate their teacher's flexibility, and that makes them more willing to be flexible. They are willing to do some things they wouldn't have chosen on their own, because they're getting to know that there's probably something they're really going to like coming a little later.

Show and Tell 398.
When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite activities was show and tell. Things happened to me. I did things. I got stuff. But when I got to school, I had to let the teacher know whether I was going to buy lunch. Boring. Then I had to do a worksheet or something. Once in a while, though, at some point during the day, there was a chance to talk about what was really on my mind - the trip my family was going to take, the treehouse my father and I had built, or the new bike I'd gotten.
This only happened about once a week, but for me, it sometimes was the only thing that made the rest of the week worth the trouble. When I had an experience or got a new toy, telling about it and showing the teacher and the kids in my class was often foremost on my mind. I couldn't tell my family about it; they already knew. But usually, very few people in school knew about it, and I couldn't wait to tell them.
Later, as an adolescent and as an adult, I found out that most people didn't really care what particular little things were going on in my life. At first, I tried to make bigger things happen, hoping I'd recapture their interest. That worked, to some degree, but I also had to face the fact that things were going on in other people's lives, and they would often be too involved with those things to get excited about my news.
When friends of any ages talk to each other, there's a certain amount of show and tell that goes on. Friendships work best when there's a balance - when friend A really wants to hear and see friend B's show and tell, and vice versa. But people are often too busy thinking about their own items, and so they have to try extra hard to pay attention to their friends' items. If they succeed - if they're sincerely interested in hearing what their friends have to say, or if they manage to at least show some interest - that's good for the friendships.
When I started writing this article, I intended to write about what happens in school - about the things children show and tell, the way they use their voices, faces, and bodies, and the educational value of show and tell. Maybe some other time I'll write about that stuff. But for now, I'll use this column, as I have many times, to do my own show and tell:
Today I volunteered in Trish Farrington's third grade class. She had told the children that some rock is formed the way the hard layer on chocolate pudding is formed - by the more rapid cooling of the surface, because it's exposed to the air more. The children hadn't known what she'd meant, because the chocolate pudding they'd known about hadn't had any hard layer. So we made chocolate pudding. The old-fashioned way.
Oh, and my parents came to visit last weekend, and took me out to
dinner. But my father couldn't come, because he had a cold. So he stayed in the motel room while my mother and I had dinner.
So what's new in your life?

Gratitude 399.
This is an easy time in my life to write about gratitude. (December, 1996) I'm presently overflowing with gratitude. At least four hundred people have chipped in to make my life easier, and as a result, I was able to buy a condiminium and some other things that will help me manage MS. I'll be able to spend more of my time and energy writing and teaching, because I'll be spending less of it trying to wash my dishes, cook my meals, and so on.
One of my benefactors sent a letter with his gift, in which he asked me not to be too grateful. I think I know what he meant - that I shouldn't feel guilty, unworthy, or embarrassed. And with some difficulty, I did manage to keep those feelings at bay. But not feeling grateful was beyond me. I will feel gratitude for the rest of my life, which will probably be longer and more joyful because of the gifts I've received.
When we do things for people, ideally we don't do them to get people to be grateful. We're not supposed to think about that much. When a gift is given with too heavy an emphasis on the expectation of gratitude, it doesn't feel like a pure gift; the giver hasn't really let go of it. It's the gift that keeps on taking.
But we do teach children to say "thank you" when they receive gifts. It's very common, after a child receives a gift, to hear an adult say, "What do you say?" And the child is supposed to answer, "Thank you." I once heard a very young child answer, "Excuse me," confusing gratitude with a burp. But the child had the right idea - that there's some words you're supposed to say in order to be socially graceful, even if you're not quite sure what the words are all about.
When we want to teach children skills, or get them to know things, we can be pretty direct about it. We can rely pretty well on immediate feedback. It's hard for a child to pretend he/she can do something, or knows something. There are all kinds of strategies teachers have developed to help children learn, and afterwards, to make sure they really have learned. Such teaching is still work - sometimes quite challenging work - but at least it's somewhat direct.
But it's not as easy to teach children about gratitude. I think this is yet another place for modelling. Children want to know how to grow up, and while we can tell them some strategies, and train them, some aspects of growing up can only be taught effectively through modelling. We have to be sure children see us expressing gratitude when we feel it. When we ask children, "What do you say?", expecting them to answer, "Thank you," we're teaching a social grace that can help them in society. But I think we have to teach gratitude by modelling it.