Motivation 401.
Some teachers seem to have ways of getting children to take charge of their own learning. Of course, some parents do, too, and some children seem naturally self-motivated. Whether we give most of the credit to teachers, parents, children, or nature, it's pretty impressive to watch a child who has transcended the need for motivational strategies. It feels good, and it makes one wonder whether all children could be that way, and if not, why not.
It could be argued that no one is really self-motivated. People are motivated by their experiences and perceptions, which do involve people and things outside themselves. But that may be nit-picking; there are people who connect easily with motivational forces, and we call them "self-motivated."
Still, the job of a teacher is certainly easier if children have their own reasons for wanting to learn what the teacher wants them to learn. Of course, all children can be said to be self-motivated, but not all are motivated to do what the teacher has in mind.
So in one sense, no one is self-motivated, and in another sense, everyone is. And I think both points are useful in planning lessons. One time, I was trying to explain to third-graders what "taxation without representation" was all about, and why colonists were so angry about it. It was almost recess time, and I got an idea. I decided to take a vote. We could go out to recess early if a majority of voters wanted to. But you had to be over ten years old to vote. My teaching assistant and I were the only ones in the room over ten years old, and we voted not to have an early recess. Suddenly, the children understood why the colonists had been so angry (incidentally, we did go out to recess early).
A teacher may be very motivated to teach something that children are not at all motivated to learn. It's too bad when that happens, but teachers are supposed to anticipate that problem, and either figure out how to motivate children, or forego the lesson. Teachers can get so excited about what they want to teach that they forget about children's motivation or lack thereof, and they bomb. I write this from personal experience.
Good grades can motivate children. So can other artificial bribes. Children work so that they can get stickers, stars, privileges, and more. When these rewards are used, they are supposed to be phased out; children are supposed to find that the learning or behavior that gets them those external rewards is actually pretty rewarding in its own right. If not, an awful lot of time and/or money is wasted on bribes.
Bad grades and other threats can also provide motivation, but only if children perceive a feasible way to avoid failing. If not, children come to think of the bad stuff as what school is all about, and look forward to getting it over with.
When teachers get bogged down in these attempts to artificially motivate children, they can easily forget that the best lessons are the ones that are their own rewards - that learning itself is actually fun.
The Power of Appreciation 402.
I just read a friend's response to one of my articles. He liked it. He thought it was insightful and well said. He's going to show it to some people he knows. There are many ways growing up has changed me, but my reaction to appreciation hasn't changed so much. I may not blush as easily as I used to, and I've learned sophisticated ways to articulate my appreciation of appreciation I get. But it still makes me want to do more of whatever was appreciated.
So now, inspired by my friend's words, I'm writing another article. And maybe someone will tell me that this one is good, too. Of course, I won't be able to show my appreciation for that appreciation the way I am now - by writing another article about appreciation. That could start to get kind of redundant.
When we don't feel appreciated, we're apt to do less. But when people tell us and/or show us that they like what we do, we do more. Oh, we can tell ourselves and others that we have our own reasons for what we do - that we don't rely on appreciation. And there can be some truth to that. But still, doesn't it feel good when someone tells you that you've done something well?
Children usually know what they're trying to do, and know approximately to what degree they're succeeding. If they're deeply involved in what they're doing, they can seem oblivious to comments about the quality of what they're doing. They can even be annoyed by comments; they'd rather focus on the project at hand than listen to someone else who's telling them what a good job they're doing.
But more often, I think, children do want to hear that they're doing well. And they want to be able to believe it; it usually doesn't take long for them to figure out whether you really mean it. My friend's comment about my article means more to me because he sometimes challenges my thinking; he doesn't give me rave reviews every time. And when he doesn't - when he takes issue with what I write - it's easier to think about his challenges because I know challenges aren't all he gives me.
Of course, I'm an adult, and not all of my thoughts and behaviors necessarily match those of children. But I think my reaction to hearing that someone likes what I've done is substantially similar to the reactions we can expect from children - I like it, I want it to happen again, and I'll do what I can to get it to happen again. So when we see or hear children doing things that we hope they'll do more, let's be sure to let them know about it.

The Power of Put-downs 403.
I remember what it was like to get lots of put-downs. Some people may have been kidding; I often responded to put-downs with humor, and maybe some people thought that meant I wasn't bothered. In fact, sometimes I wasn't bothered; if people made fun of aspects of myself I didn't consider important anyway, that was okay. And I have a good friend who knows how to gently make fun of some aspects of me that I consider more important. If people offer us criticism, whether humorous or not, in ways that communicate caring, the criticism can help us grow.
But those aren't put-downs. Put-downs, whether intentional or not, make us feel worse about ourselves. In my last article, I wrote about the power of sincere appreciation. If we were affected by that without also being affected by put-downs, we'd be much better off. And some people do manage to drink in what praise they get without letting the other stuff bother them too much.
I have known adults who have said that put-downs are good for children - that children need to learn to "take it." I've also known adults who have bitter memories of their parents' and teachers' attempts to train them to "take it." And I've known many children who have suffered because people have said things to them that hurt. Self-esteem - especially young self-esteem - can be very fragile. Handle with care.
It really does depend on the person. There are people who very quickly learn to love and respect themselves - almost invariably with the support of the people close to them. Some of those lucky people also quickly learn
how to tease and be teased without hurting or being hurt. But even those people have to consider the objects of their teasing, or they'll risk hurting people they don't mean to hurt. And some people who seem to be doing fine are secretly hurting.
I've also worked with children who don't even seem to take it so well. Some adults call these children "hypersensitive," but I try not to. I don't find that label very useful. If a child is easily insulted by words that other children take in stride, my approach is to try harder not to insult him/her. I've written about seeing the child in the adult, but here's a case where I try to see the adult in the child. I've known too many adults who have wished their childhood traumas had been taken more seriously - not brushed off as "hypersensitivity."
We do want children to grow up able to take the good with the bad. Not everyone they encounter is necessarily going to think carefully about what are appropriate, sensitive things to say. But there's no short cut to building self-esteem, and attempts to train children to "take it" usually make things worse.

Debunking Debunking 404.
It wasn't too long ago that we all learned what great people Lincoln, Washington, Columbus, and all those guys were. Teachers taught that these people were heroes, and hinted that we should try to be like them. And since we didn't have to go to school on the days dedicated to these people, we had our own reason for considering them heroic, whether or not we accepted the reasons our teachers gave us.
Later, we heard that Lincoln was more concerned with preserving the union than freeing the slaves. And George Washington had slaves. Christopher Columbus, we heard, was a mass murderer. Just as we had swallowed the myths that had turned these human beings into heroes, it didn't take long to swallow alternative myths. So now Lincoln and Washington were not so great, and Columbus was much worse.
Until a recent conversation I had with Phil Hoose, who is doing research about Columbus, I had swallowed the alternative Columbus myth - that Columbus was a bad man who crossed the ocean blue, got gold, killed lots of natives, and took some back with him as slaves. He was despicable, and the only appropriate way to "celebrate" Columbus Day was to mourn the death of all the natives killed by Columbus.
Phil is studying Columbus' journal, and discovering that Columbus was a human being. He thought about what was important, questioned his decisions, and was, among other things, a product of his times. We're all products of our times. People of the future may look back on us as people who paid taxes to finance the wholesale murder of other people (war). They may see us as people who regularly killed mammals, birds, and fish, chopped them up, and ate them. We don't know how people of the future will think of us. Sure, we get involved in charities, earth-saving projects, and all that, but they may not focus on that.
I hear many children who have learned how terrible Columbus was. Considering the extent to which Columbus-debunking has gone, it's surprising that children still get a day off on the second Monday in October. In a way, it's a good sign that we've taken another look at the myth we once created. But we've replaced it with another myth - that of Columbus the Terrible.
Like many of you, I'm easily impressed by a few facts. I like simplicity, and I'd rather think of Columbus or any other historical figure as either a hero or a villain. But it isn't that simple. My own ancestors probably mostly lived on the eastern hemisphere. There was probably a time when they were taken as slaves. Some of them were persecuted. But maybe they were enslaved by people who also created one of the first universities, and persecuted by people who also created a lot we humans can be proud of. I'll bet some of your ancestors had troubles, too. Like the present, the past was complicated, and we need to follow up our efforts to debunk it by debunking some of the debunking efforts, or at least putting them into perspective.

Rudeness 405.
People have a sometimes annoying tendency to consider their own needs and wants higher priorities than the needs and wants of others. The reason that can be so annoying is that we other people have our own needs and priorities, or, in our finest moments, we think about the interests of still other people, or other creatures.
When we're not annoyed by the tendency, we call it "assertiveness." Many of us work hard to get ourselves to learn to assert our interests effectively. And if we do learn to do so, we stand a better chance of having our lives work well. Incidentally, people whose lives are working well often tend to be likeable, generous people. We may recognize their assertiveness, but we tend not to say bad things about it.
But sometimes we do get annoyed. If an adult is assertive in a way that is annoying, we may call that assertiveness "brash," "cantankerous," or any of a host of unflattering adjectives. Of course, it's a matter of personal taste; what bothers one person may charm another. But there are some people whose focus on their own priorities charms few; they aren't popular, but popularity may or may not be one of their priorities.
If adults want to be self-centered more than they want to be liked, they're free to follow their bliss. What they say, how they say it, and what they do reflect their dedication to self, and if you don't like it, you can take your business elsewhere.
But children, who don't have as much power as adults, have to be more careful. If a child comes across as "inappropriately" assertive, the child is apt to be called "rude," and scolded and/or punished. We don't tell adults to go to their rooms until they can learn to speak more politely (although we may be tempted), but children often face that and other attempts to alter their styles.
As a parent and teacher, I've sometimes been criticized for what I let children "get away with" saying or doing. But I really think it's a matter of personal style. I like to hear children asserting themselves; I usually don't consider such self-assertion "rude." Once, I was supervising a field trip to the tide pools in Nahant. It was a very hot day, and the tide pool creatures had mostly opted to stay in the ocean. I heard a child complain to a teacher, "It's too hot! I want to go back to school!" The teacher responded, "That was inappropriate!" Funny, but I had been thinking the same "inappropriate" thought.
I do want to help children learn effective ways to communicate their own priorities, and I do want to help them learn to think about other people's. But I'm less likely than some adults to think of a child as "rude." Children are trying to figure out how to get along and get by. If some of their efforts bother us, I think we owe it to them to express our annoyance. But not rudely.

Teachers Who'd Rather Not Be Teachers 406.
There are teachers who absolutely love teaching. There are some who don't exactly love it, but think it's okay. And there are some people who wish they could find jobs as teachers, but so far, haven't been able to. There are many aspects of teaching many teachers consider delightful, and while it does depend somewhat on the children, the school, the other teachers, the day, and many other factors, a lot of us basically like our work.
But some don't. They consider the job to be just a job - something they've got to do. They haven't found ways to make ends meet that bring them joy, so they come to work in school each day, and do what they need to do to earn their paychecks. Then they go home, maybe do a little preparation for the next day, and then, if they're lucky, maybe do something they do enjoy. They look forward to weekends and vacations more eagerly than some of their colleagues.
Children who end up in these teachers' classes tend not to be very happy about it. Some rightly see the problem as mainly the teacher's problem, and do their best to get through the year. Maybe next year will be better. Others blame themselves, thinking that the teacher would enjoy teaching if only the children were better. And there are some children determined to please the teacher even if that seems like an impossible dream. Some of them join the teacher in blaming other children for the problem.
I heard, during my teaching career, that such teachers built character in children. I've heard that some parents specifically ask to have their children in such teachers' classes. I guess the parents don't remember liking their teachers, and think that that's the way it's supposed to be. Maybe they think that if a teacher seems to be having fun, that's a sign of lack of commitment to the "real" job. In fact, of the few teachers I know who have been asked to resign, there's not one who had been accused of being boring or oppressive. So I guess there must be some job security connected with not liking teaching.
I think that I unconsciously believed that the teachers I knew who didn't like teaching were doing a better job than I was. Test scores didn't back up that belief; children in my classes did just as well on standardized tests as children in unhappy teachers' classes. But the Puritan ethic must have had some effect on my self-image - I may have been a "fun" teacher, but I wasn't one of the really "good" ones.
As a volunteer, I've sometimes worked with teachers who haven't seemed to enjoy their work. They've assigned lots of "seatwork," enforced lots of rules, and gotten some parents to think they were great. But staying with the same children as they move through the grades, I know the children. And I know these children enjoy school more and learn more when their teachers enjoy teaching.


Fond Memories 407.
I have lots of fond memories of my childhood. It was a pretty happy childhood. I loved the place where I grew up, a big house in the woods. I loved the neighborhood baseball games, the singing in the car, the trip to Yellowstone Park...I could go on and on. I learned, at a pretty early age, that there were families that weren't having as much fun as we were, and I felt sorry for them, but what I remember most is enjoying being who I was and having the family I had.
Of course, we remember best what we want to remember, and though I can easily conjure up memories of fights, punishments, boredom, and other features of my childhood that sound less like "good old days," I'm a pretty happy fellow, and I think my childhood had a lot to do with that. Psychotherapists tend not to want to hear a lot about the good times we've had, just as podiatrists tend not to want to hear much about how good our ears feel, but I'm not in therapy right now. At least for the sake of this article, let's say I had a happy childhood.
If you have fond memories of your childhood, you may want to make sure your children grow up to also have fond memories. The problem is, times have changed. The old swimming hole you used to like to jump into may have been filled in. Or it may be that your children would much rather go to some pool or beach, and really don't want to have to deal with your nostalgia. Besides, the standing water you liked to splash around in may have had stuff growing in it that wasn't too healthy for you.
From what I know of my parents' childhoods, they did not struggle to make sure we had the same kind. My parents didn't go to Disneyland as children; there was no Disneyland back then, and I suspect that their parents couldn't have taken them to California, anyway. But television (another new thing) had gotten my sister and me to want to go to Disneyland, and my parents took us there. They were trying to give us a chance to have fun, and maybe build fond memories.
My wife and I took our children to Disney World. We all enjoyed it. Of course, we each had our individual favorite parts. I liked "If You Had Wings" and "It's a Small World." Lara, my younger daughter, wanted to go on Space Mountain, and had to be accompanied by an adult. Neither my wife nor I wanted to go on that, so we flipped a coin. Space Mountain may be one of Lara's fond memories, but it's not one of mine.
I've sort of danced around my main point in this article. My main point is that we may not be able to neatly package all of our fond memories and hand them down to our children. For all we know, they may grow up to get nostalgic about video games and Chuck E. Cheese. But I'm not worried. They'll also remember feeling loved and cared for. Neither Chuck E. Cheese nor Mickey Mouse can hold a candle to that.

Borrowing Across a Zero, Part One 408.
I've always enjoyed teaching children to do what I've called "borrowing across a zero." It's what you do when you solve a problem like 302 - 158. I've always told children a story, using the digits involved as characters. I know this approach bothers some mathematicians, who like to keep mathematics pure, and I know the term "borrowing" isn't used as much as it used to be, but my story has helped some children, and I'd like to tell it to you. When I tell it, I use different voices for the different digits, but you do what you want.
Once upon a time, there were two ones. They were very happy in the ones place, and thought that's where they'd always be. The ones place was small, but ones are small anyway, and don't need much space.
But one day, one of the ones, whose name was Adeen, said to the other, named Uno, "I think there's eight ones downstairs. And I think we're supposed to subtract them." Adeen and Uno were used to subtracting, but so far, they'd only subtracted zero, one, and sometimes two (they didn't like subtracting two, because when they did, they had nothing left).
'We can't subtract eight!" cried Uno. "We're only two! And don't tell me we're going to go to the tens place to borrow ten. That place always makes me nervous."
"There isn't any other way to do it," answered Adeen. "The tens have always been nice about letting us have one ten. And the job has to be done. We can't have those eight ones living downstairs. The place is too small for all ten of us. Let's go. I'll do the talking."
Uno knew that Adeen was right, and agreed to go along, but did not agree to like it. So they went to the tens place and Adeen knocked on the door. There was a long silence. Adeen knocked again. More silence. "There's nobody home," said Adeen.
That delighted Uno. "Let's come back tomorrow. They've probably gone fishing or something."
"No," said Adeen. "I know what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to go to the hundreds place." And Adeen pointed to the huge building next door.
"We don't need a hundred," said Uno. "We just need ten."
"Right," replied Adeen, "but every hundred has ten tens."
"Yes, but they're not going to break up a set just for us." Uno was already nervous, and the thought of having to go to the hundreds place was not helping. Still, on they went.
At the hundreds place, Adeen knocked on the door. The sound of the knocked echoed, and both Uno and Adeen trembled. Soon, they could hear footsteps. Loud, heavy footsteps.
To find out what happened next, read my next article, "Borrowing Across a Zero, Part Two."

Borrowing Across a Zero, Part Two 409.
If you haven't read my last article, I recommend that you do, because if you don't, this one could be quite confusing. I'll set the stage a little, but really, you should read Part One.
Adeen and Uno, the two ones from the ones place, have checked the tens place to try to borrow a ten, but no one was home, so they have gone to the hundreds place, where Adeen, the bolder of the two, has knocked on the door. As we resume our story, they are nervously waiting for one of the three resident hundreds to open the door.
And one of the hundreds, whose name was Centum, did open the door. Centum was huge. Huger than any number they'd ever seen. It looked around, but never having seen ones before, at first it didn't think to look down. When it finally did look down, it did a mild double-take, then asked, "Whaddya want?"
Uno hid behind Adeen while Adeen said, "We were wondering if we could borrow ten."
Centum smiled a little (the ones were cute), but the smile did not get the ones to relax at all. When something that big smiles, you're not sure why. "You want the tens place," said Centum. "That's next door." Centum expected the ones to scurry off immediately to the tens place. But they didn't.
"We tried the tens place," said Adeen. There's nobody there.
"They've probably gone fishing," suggested Centum.
"See? I TOLD you!" mumbled Uno into Adeen's ear, not loud enough for Centum to hear.
But Adeen was not shaken by the suggestion, nor by Uno's murmuring. "We need to do the subtraction now," explained Adeen. "Doesn't every hundred have ten tens?"
Centum scratched it's head. "Well, yeah. But you said you only needed one ten. What are you gonna do with the other nine?"
The average one might have been baffled by that question - might have given up, gone home, and maybe had some hot chocolate or something. But not Adeen. "We'll drop them off at the tens place," Adeen retorted, smartly.
Centum couldn't argue. I knew enough about math to know a good idea when it heard one. It didn't volunteer to go, though. Hecta, a hundred who was upstairs reading, ended up volunteering to be the one to go. And now, instead of containing three hundreds, the hundreds place only had two. That's all right, though, because there would be more math problems later.
Adeen and Uno dragged Hecta to the tens place, where they unloaded nine of Hecta's tens, and then returned to the ones place, where, with the one ten Hecta had left, they turned from two to twelve. As twelve, they had no trouble subtracting the eight ones who were in the basement. It was a piece of cake. As a matter of fact, when they were done, the four
remaining ones (after all, twelve minus eight IS four) each had a piece of cake. And then they finished the math problem and went on to the next one.
Children Teaching Children 410.
It will never cease to amaze me how well children can sometimes teach children things that we adults have to figure out how to teach. I'm pretty sure I understand why - it's easier to help someone follow a path if you've just followed it yourself. You know which shortcuts work and which ones lead you into trouble. Children can sometimes explain things in the language of someone who doesn't get it, because they only recently got it; they still remember what was so hard about it, and what made it easier.
But it doesn't work all the time. If it did, adults wouldn't be as important in children's education as they are. I've witnessed children attempting to teach, not noticing some misunderstandings, and getting quite frustrated with their pupils. Some obstacles to understanding are too formidable or subtle for children to consistently see. I've heard children answer "Why?" with "It just is!" Such an answer does not represent the best in pedagogy. Sometimes it takes a while to understand something well enough to teach it, and a child who has just learned it isn't always the best one to teach it.
Still, it's great when it does happen, and good teaching (by adults) sometimes involves knowing when to set up situations where it will happen. Ideally, a patient child who has recently figured something out helps a child who sincerely wants to figure it out. I've seen that happen many times, and when I've been able to see and hear that kind of teaching, I've been able to learn from it. Not that I return to childhood, but that I recapture some of the perspective I lost by growing up.
For example, I once heard a teacher explain that a solar eclipse occurs when earth's moon moves into a position wherein it prevents sunlight from reaching a certain part of earth. (Forgive me. Most teachers I know don't talk to children that way, but that example will help me make my point.) The teacher asked a child to repeat the explanation, and the child said, "We can't see sunlight because the moon gets in the way." Children may not have much experience wherein they can't see object A because object B moves into a position wherein it prevents light from object A from reaching them, but they know all about not being able to see something because something or someone is "in the way." The concept is the same, but the explanation makes more sense to children.
There's another good reason to let children teach children (besides the possibility that they may do it more effectively than we would). Sometimes a child just needs to know that a certain concept is possible to understand, and it's easier to believe that if a peer has recently figured it out. Preferably not a child who has a reputation for being the class "brain." Sometimes the "brain" is seen as an undercover adult, and it doesn't help at all to know that THAT child understands. Well of course SHE/HE understands!
But a well-chosen peer is sometimes the ideal teacher, and sometimes the best we adults can do is let/make that happen.
"Still a Kid at Heart" 411.
I've often heard adults say that they're still kids at heart. They say and do things to prove that they really haven't grown up. And there's an old song about the importance of being "young at heart." I, personally, do not like to think of myself as a "kid at heart," and don't think I'm "young at heart." I spent a lot of time and energy trying to grow, and I'm still trying. If, after all that work, I'm still a kid, it means the work was all in vain.
I'd prefer to think that I'm middle-aged at heart, and that in a few more decades, I'll begin to be old at heart. As much as I love spending time with children, and enjoy listening to them and hearing their thoughts, I don't think it "keeps me young." It keeps me optimistic and generally positive, but not young. Time keeps right on marching, and I'll get a year older each year. So will everyone else.
I think I understand why people who are not children work so hard to believe they are. Part of the reason is that we live in a culture that doesn't value age the way some cultures do. Too bad. Life teaches us a lot, and the older we are, the more chances life has had to do that teaching. And another part of the reason is that the last thing we do is die, and with each passing year, we're closer to that. People don't want to die, and they don't want their appearance and/or behavior to remind them and others of the inevitability of that event. And so people have face-lifts, wear make-up that covers wrinkles, lie about their age, color their hair, and so on. And they tell themselves, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, that they're still children.
I'm going to die. If I'm lucky and skillful, that won't happen for a long time. I eat well, and try to get exercise. But I do it to stay healthy, not to stay young. I admit that I miss parts of my youth; I'm not above that. And I've even had moments when I've wanted to color my graying hair blond. But the impulse hasn't lasted long enough for me to actually do it. I have shaved off my beard a few times, and it has made me look younger, but as soon as I got tired of hearing that I looked younger (which didn't take long), I stopped shaving. So far, I've been fairly consistently able to remind myself of my conviction that aging is real and good.
I'm not saying all aspects of the aging process are positive. We lose some skills. We forget things. We're constantly reminded that we ain't what we used to be, and it depresses and scares many people. I've had my moments of being depressed and/or scared. Those moments tend not to occur when there are children around. And not just because children are so positive. Often, when children get annoyed by things, I'm reminded of a reason I'm glad I'm not a child. I'm free from a lot of the annoying stuff they have to deal with.
So let's grow old. Let's not try to believe that we're "kids at heart." Let's reintroduce the idea that wisdom comes with age. We "Aged of Aquarius" have plenty of time left; let's not waste it pretending we have even more than we do. Caring Parents and Defensive Teachers 412.
I recently had a talk with a mother who cares deeply about her daughter. She doesn't want her daughter to have to deal with some of what she used to have to deal with in school. This woman has bitter memories of teachers who worked to prevent her from being who she was, and she is not about to let that happen to her daughter. She also does have good memories of her childhood, and wants her daughter to grow up with good memories, too. That's pretty natural; it has to do with caring. The girl is lucky to have someone like that in her corner.
If a teacher is a source of trauma for a child, good communication can often help resolve the problem. Parents, who usually know their children much better than teachers do, can let teachers know how to deal with children in ways that don't create trauma. I've sometimes heard, from parents of children I've taught, that my way of doing things was making life difficult for their children. That's valuable feedback, and I've usually appreciated it. While some parents were annoyed that I was so ready to alter my approach (Doesn't this guy know what's RIGHT for children?), most of them appreciated my flexibility.
But sometimes there is a wall that separates a teacher from a concerned parent. Some teachers don't want to consider the possibility that they might not be doing what's best for a child. For some, that's a scary possibility; maybe it means the teacher has to grow. Maybe that involves thinking differently, and making adjustments. If a teacher had difficulty learning to teach and developing confidence in the first place, being thus challenged can bring back the feelings that went with those difficulties. The teacher gets defensive, and there isn't much effective communication. The problem is treated as only the child's problem. Or the parent is treated as a major source of the difficulty.
It's too bad about that wall. I understand it; I've faced parents who seemed to be suggesting that I was the reason things weren't going right for a child. And I got defensive. It didn't happen too often; usually, I was able to listen to concerns, and learn from them. So I didn't develop a large arsenal of defensive moves. But it happened enough for me to understand what's going on when a teacher feels attacked.
Teachers, I know it's hard to listen to parents who aren't happy with your teaching. I know it's tempting to dismiss complaints - to think that a parent's real problem is having too much spare time, and that she/he is complaining just to have something to do. But educating children really works best when the adults who have the most influence on children - parents and teachers - work together. And that means listening to each other. Even when it's difficult.



Success 413.
I like to think that my articles give people new perspectives. Whether or not every article I write really does that, it makes me feel good if I think I've written something original, perceptive, and/or inspirational. If I write something that doesn't seem to qualify, I delete it, or maybe file it, to be revised later. I want my articles to be good, and to get people to tell me how good they are, learn from what I write, and show the articles to other people.
With this in mind, I'm taking a risk when I write about the importance of success. Most people know all about the way success breeds success - about the way we tend to put extra effort into what we do, summon up extra skills, and generally care more about the outcome if we have smelled the sweet smell of success. So this article may not live up to my standards. I imagine my readers saying, "Duh!" or "Tell me something I don't know."
But we forget. When we teach, we can sometimes focus so hard on our standards of excellence that we forget to let our pupils succeed. It's a delicate balancing act. We don't want children to think there are no standards - that absolutely anything they do is perfect, and can't be improved. But we want them to feel good about what they do, even if we know they can do better.
A lesson that is planned perfectly allows each child to succeed while somehow maintaining appropriate standards. If there's a wide range of abilities in a class (and there usually is), one child's success may look very different from another's. But the discrepancy is not stressed - maybe not even noticed. Each child puts forth effort, and is rewarded by feeling successful.
Yesterday, I listened to a child who had just started learning to play the flute. She worked to produce the few notes she knew, and she produced them pretty clearly. I sat, looked, and listened. I was smiling. I wore an expression on my face that told her that I was impressed and pleased. I kept reminding myself to wear that expression. It wasn't fake; as I thought about the work required to make those sounds come out of the flute, I really was impressed that she could do it. And it sounded pretty good - no squeaks or sour notes.
This child told me, afterwards, that she really liked practicing flute for me. She said she liked to see me enjoying the sounds she made. She knew about standards, and had practiced in front of adults who stressed standards, but she preferred feeling as if her music was resulting in pleasure. The standards could come later.
Well, I've looked this article over a few times, and though it doesn't necessarily provide insight that will change the world, it does remind you to think about children's need to succeed. And maybe some of you sometimes forget that. So I guess I'll call this article a success, and I guess I'll write another one tomorrow.

The Regular Way 414.
People who feel secure often like to try new things. That's because even though security is great, it's not all there is, and people do get bored doing what they've always done in the way they've always done it. Even if they do it very well, and even if they get lots of appreciation. We like to feel that we're learning - growing - moving. So we explore new worlds, try things we've never tried. And we're often glad we did.
But that's only if we feel secure. If not, we like to rely on what we know. What we know may be mediocre, ineffective, or boring. It may not win us any prizes, or pave the way for great things. But at least we know it. And if we're not secure, we crave the familiar. Other people can explore new worlds if they want; we're happy that at least we have our old world to rely on.
Children have a reputation for being open to new things, and to a certain degree, it's a deserved reputation. They haven't had as many opportunities to try things as adults have, and they want such opportunities. Given chances to try things, they often seem bolder than adults - less worried about what could go wrong. They try, succeed or fail, and often try again, undaunted by failure, or not content with a little success. They revise their approaches based on their evaluations of their failures and successes. It can be inspiring.
But like us, children can also be very cautious and conservative. It depends partly on their nature and partly on how they've been nurtured. Once, working at a day care center, I helped supervise a field trip to a little swamp. We were supposed to be letting children experience the swamp as an exciting ecosystem. Some of the teachers had checked out the swamp in advance to make sure it was safe, and they assured the children (and me) that it was. No alligators, leaches, or anything else to worry about. Just friendly creatures who happened to prefer swamp life.
Three of the teachers took off their shoes and waded into the swamp. One didn't. Almost all of the children did, and they really looked as if they were having fun, partly getting to know the little creatures who inhabited the swamp, and partly just being creatures who temporarily inhabited it. Two children stayed on dry land with me. They did not want to go into the swamp. I knew that I wasn't setting a good example; I wasn't rising above my fear of swamps. But I was letting children know that being afraid did not make you a baby; I was obviously not a baby.
Caution can often be a good thing. There are things we're better off not trying because they are quite likely to end up resulting in negative experiences, and whatever possible positive experiences they might bring on aren't worth the risk. I know that varies from person to person. But having been and still being somewhat timid, I understand children and adults who would rather do things "the regular way," and it's all right with me.


Talking About Children 415.
Sometimes a child says something cute, profound, or otherwise noteworthy, and I really want to tell an adult about it. Recently, a child asked me for help with a math problem, and as I was helping her, I realized that she didn't need help at all. I said to her, "I get the feeling that you don't need help; you just want company."
She smiled, and said, "You discovered my secret." I was charmed by her self-awareness, her candor, and her sense of humor about herself. There were some students from a local college visiting the school, and almost right away, I got their attention and told them about the incident. They looked toward the child and smiled. I wanted to tell more people. In fact, I just told you, didn't I?
I didn't mean any harm when I told the college students about the incident. I assumed that the child would enjoy being a subject of conversation. Or I didn't think about it. But she didn't enjoy it at all. I looked at her face, and saw that she was annoyed. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that she didn't like me telling strangers about her. I apologized, and explained that I hadn't meant any harm.
Many children don't like to be discussed that way. They want all discussions about them to include them. I had temporarily forgotten that. But I've known adults who make a habit of discussing children while the children are right there, and speaking as if the children were elsewhere. Such discussions can make children feel like objects. And they don't like that.
One possible improvement would be to time the discussions so that they happen when the children are not around. But that's still not ideal; it's still not respecting the child's privacy. I've told you about the incident, but I showed this article to the child before I showed it to you or anyone else. If she'd wanted me to, I would have fictionalized it a little out of respect for her privacy.
Maybe you think I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe you talk about children all the time, and it doesn't matter to you whether the children hear what you say. But it does matter to some children. Children are people, and want to be respected. Some don't mind if you tell other people about them. Some even like it when you do. But many don't.
I've learned from this episode. From now on, if I want to tell an adult about something a child has said or done, I'll ask the child first. Or at least I'll be more discreet about it. When I was an employed teacher, talking about children was part of my job. There were parent conferences, staff meetings, and other situations where children were topics of conversation. Now, as a volunteer, I focus more on being a friend to children. And I'm going to do my best to revise my policy about talking about children. I hope parents and teachers will, too.

Choosing a Strategy 416.
Teachers develop vast repertoires of strategies for helping children learn. They get those strategies from courses they've taken, books and articles they've read, teachers they've observed, their own thoughts, and countless other sources. Some of those strategies make their way into plan books, but you can't plan everything; sometimes you just have to teach by ear, and hope you're doing it well.
Yesterday, Jane Mellor, one of the teachers I work with, listened to a child who had a problem. The child was supposed to speculate about how the author of a historical novel they had read had gotten information to write the book. In a serious, concerned voice, this child said she honestly had no idea how the author could have found information. The main character in the book was not famous. No books had been written about this character. The poor child was at a loss.
My inclination would have been to help the child speculate - to ask leading questions and steer the child toward an approach that would work. Whether you're a parent, a teacher, or both, I'll bet many of you would have had similar inclinations. Here was a child who needed help, and was quite articulate in asking for it. It really looked as if the obvious thing to do would be to give her the help she was asking for.
But Jane used a different approach. She asked whether there was anyone else who could help figure out how the author had found information. Children raised their hands, and one at a time, started suggesting possibilities. The child who had the problem listened to her peers' suggestions, and seemed to feel better.
I don't mean to imply that Jane's approach was earth-shaking or ground-breaking. It's an approach I've seen often, and I've used it plenty of times myself. But seeing her use that approach at that moment, I was reminded of the degree of skill teachers have to have all the time. They have to carry around their repertoires of teaching strategies, and in each situation, they have to decide which strategy is most appropriate.
Perhaps in another situation, Jane would have asked a leading question. It was a judgment call, and from where I sat, it looked as if she'd made a good call. I'm a good teacher, but if I'd been in charge at that moment, I would have chosen a less effective strategy from my repertoire. I would have rushed to the rescue, and the good interaction between the peers would not have happened.
Like most interactions between people, teaching is complicated. Every moment of a teacher's school day is full of decisions to be made: Which child should get my attention now? Should I help this child or not? Should I let this child make a mistake? There's so much going on when twenty or so children, all of whom have different abilities and learning styles, are in one room, trying to learn together.
When I write about teaching, I usually focus on one aspect of it at a time. That's a luxury I have as a writer. But teachers don't have that luxury.
Children as Friends 417.
When I first started teaching and parenting, I kept hearing the message that teachers and parents should not try to be "pals" to children. I didn't like that message. I didn't like the way people said the word "pals," and I didn't understand why they didn't use the word "friend," nor what was wrong with being children's friend. "Friend" seemed, and still seems, like the most important thing a teacher or parent can be to a child, or to anyone else.
But I realize, now, that some people who delivered that message did not mean it the way I heard it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with friendship. It's one of my favorite things about life as a human being here on earth. I don't think most people were disagreeing with me about that, nor trying to totally exclude children. I think we agree that everybody needs friends.
There was something else being implied by substituting the word "pal" for "friend." When I was twenty-one and starting to work with children, I had not yet fully accepted the reality that I was not a child. So I was not ready to accept the degree to which the world of children is a separate world. I wanted to be part of that world in every way, and in some ways, I sort of made a fool of myself trying. Some children seemed to like it, but some seemed to feel as if I was a double agent.
But I believed then, and I believe now, that friendship, broadly conceived, belongs to both children and adults. And I think there can and should be plenty of cross-over. Adults often know more and think more skillfully, but not always. And superior knowledge or thought doesn't have to be a barrier to friendship. I have plenty of adult friends who know things I don't know and are able to think in ways I'm still learning to think. And vice versa. That phenomenon, properly recognized and used, enriches the friendships.
Maybe substituting the word "pal" for "friend" implies that the adult is trying to avoid adulthood - that the possible gains made by growing up don't really exist, or aren't factors in adult/child friendships. I've sometimes made the mistake of inappropriately treating a young friend as an authority figure, and I've seen other adults do that. I still do it once in a while, but I'm learning not to. It's dishonest; both the adult and the child need to be aware of who's who.
Knowing who's who helps to define friendships, but does not have to make them any less substantial. And children who are my friends are going to grow up. Some of them already have. I learn from them when they're children, and I hope to keep learning from them as they become adults. They're my friends. Maybe not my "pals;" I'm willing to let go of that word; I never liked it much anyway. But friends.

Having Bad Days 418.
Many of us adults allow ourselves to have days when we're not at our best. Some of us find people or circumstances to blame, and to varying degrees, and in various ways, sometimes those people and circumstances actually do deserve some of the blame. As hard as we try to be in control of what happens to us, we're not always completely in control. And it sometimes helps us cope if we can point a finger elsewhere, whether or not the reasons for bad days really are external and/or controllable. Whether or not there even are reasons.
Many (but not all) of us also allow children to have bad days. We relax our standards for behavior and productivity, knowing that children, like us, can have ups and downs, and often do better during the ups. So there are days when some children are allowed to hand in work that doesn't represent the best they can do. And there are days parents let children get away with what's usually forbidden.
If we adults were perfect, every time we allowed a bad day, it would be the result of careful thought. But sometimes our bad days and theirs coincide, and we don't feel up to holding up our standards anyway. In fact, sometimes our bad days create bad days for children who were otherwise going to do fine; either they quickly perceive the lowering of standards and immediately take advantage of it, or our bad moods trickle down in other ways that affect them.
I know that there are parents, teachers, and children who know when their bad days are happening. If that's not too often, and there's a back-up plan already in place, a bad day can be a little better. The parent, teacher, or child can take the day off. An adult can have a substitute teacher, parenting partner, or babysitter take over while the storm is being weathered. A child may also be allowed to take a day off without being officially "sick."
It's healthy for us to know when it's happening, and to forgive ourselves and others. On our own good days, it's easier to forgive people whose days aren't turning out to be so good. And it's easier to forgive people whose bad days aren't too frequent. It's also nice to know what works. Some of my bad days are days when I should stay away from children, for their sake and mine. And some of them are days when I should make sure children are around.
If you haven't already, I recommend that you read Judith Viorst's book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Alexander is a child who is having one of those days, and keeps talking about running away to Australia. The last sentence in the book is one I've often quoted - sometimes for children, and sometimes for adults: "Some days are like that - even in Australia." The News 419.
I remember that as a child, I hated it when my parents or older brothers turned on the news, or any other program that featured adults talking to adults. I couldn't imagine how anyone could like it, or why. if people didn't like it, they paid attention to it anyway. I often noticed that the news did not tend to make viewers feel good; they got angry, depressed, or otherwise negative.
And unlike other things that bothered them, there didn't seem to be anything they could do about the news. It was on television, on radio, or in newspapers - none of which responded in any way to the ranting and raving I heard. I knew that voting was one thing they could do about it, but the people in the news who upset my parents were often the ones my parents had voted for, and would vote for again next time. I wished those nasty politicians would be nicer to my family.
Later, I was taught that paying attention to the news would somehow make me a better person; we lived in a democracy, and according to my social studies teacher, Mr. Layton, "Democracy depends on a well-informed electorate." Mr. Layton spoke these words with conviction in his voice, and being impressed with that tone, I decided that I was going to pay attention to the news. I liked Mr. Layton. Much more than I liked paying attention to the news
There was a war going on at the time. All I knew about war was that I had relatives who'd fought in one, and that I'd seen movies that made war seem glorious, exciting, and noble. As far as I knew, each war was supposed to have "good guys" and "bad guys." And the "good guys" always won. The first book I read about politics was Why Not Victory?, by Barry Goldwater, and it fit my understanding of what war was about.
But the war I saw on news programs didn't look glorious, exciting, or noble. It just seemed to be ending a lot of people's lives before they'd really gotten started. And there were demonstrations against war and injustice which also occasionally ended some lives. I gradually began to think that the more I understood what was happening, the less I would like it. I was going to have to either stop becoming aware of the news or become an activist. I did a little of each.
Children still have a tendency not to like news programs. They don't understand why adults seem to get so obsessed with the news. Now, I listen to NPR news every day. I do it because I want to. But as a parent and teacher, I rarely tried to get children to pay attention to current events. Part of the reason was the ephemeral nature of the news; any lesson plan I wrote about current events would become somewhat obsolete before or shortly after I used it. And another part of the reason was my own early childhood memories of watching news programs. I didn't like them. I'm not sure what my point is, or why I wrote this article. But children's perception of the news is worth thinking about.
Challenging Classes 420.
Some years, I had classes that were quite difficult for me to teach. I remember one year that was particularly difficult. There were children with all kinds of learning and behavior problems. There wasn't even a honeymoon period - those days, weeks, or months in the fall when children put their best feet forward; the first day of school wiped me out.
The teacher next door to me was doing fine. We were both teaching second grade, and for the first time, I thought that if my own child were in second grade, I would not want my child to have Mr. Blue. The guy had no idea how to manage a class. One minute in his classroom made that clear. And night after sleepless night, I tried to figure out new ways to make the class manageable.
Other teachers were very supportive. They told me I had an impossible class, and I was doing the best I could. While I appreciated their support, I did not want to believe either point. I kept trying to plan lessons, devise strategies, and invent policies that would work. Of course, consistency is important, but what sense would it make to consistently do something that didn't work?
Plenty of well-meaning people gave me advice about how to cope with this class. But as you may know, it's easier to accept help if you don't need it as much. When people suggested approaches that might help, I nodded my head and tried to look appreciative. Sometimes I tried their ideas. But I was also developing a conviction that nothing was going to work. In that frame of mind, no good idea stood much of a chance.
Some parents seemed to appreciate what I was doing, and know what a difficult group I had. Others didn't. But a teacher has a responsibility to make the best of whatever situation is handed her/him. And I'll never know whether I did make the best of that situation.
There was other difficult stuff going on in my life the year I had that class - a divorce, the challenge of living alone for the first time in my life, having to leave a school where I'd come to feel at home (a school my younger daughter attended). I have no doubt that some portion of the difficulty I was having had nothing to do with the combination of children in my class.
The following year, I had one of the best classes I'd ever had. I'd developed a reputation for having a chaotic style, so the parents of children who "needed structure" made sure their children were not in my class. All I had were children who didn't "need structure," and so anyone who looked at my class got the impression that I was a teacher who provided structure. And that year, the teacher next door had a difficult class, and got the reputation for having a chaotic style.
When teachers and administrators set up classes, they try to do so fairly. Usually, it works. But sometimes, when it doesn't work, what results is a class that can be quite challenging.
Changing Children 421.
When we decide to parent or teach children, we decide to get involved in their lives and have some impact. That means we hope that the children will somehow be different because of what we do. So one way to look at parenting and teaching is as an attempt to change children.
I don't know about you, but I have quite a few unpleasant memories of people's attempts to change me, and I don't want children to have memories like that. I like to be accepted, appreciated, and even celebrated for who I already am, and I'm quite sure children like that kind of treatment, too.
But I've been changed by people. I know that ultimately, I've been in charge of the changes in me, but plenty of people have had major effects on me. My parents and teachers knew what they wanted from me, and when they did their work effectively, they often got what they wanted. I changed from someone who didn't know how to read to someone who did. Part of my reason was that I wanted to know what those strange marks on paper were all about, but another part had to do with the people who wanted me to know how to read.
There's a delicate balancing act we have to play. As a parent and teacher, I always tried (and try) to communicate my acceptance of who children already were (and are). My most notable successes as a parent and teacher happened when I was able to effectively communicate that acceptance. And my most dismal failures happened when I either couldn't communicate it, or worse, didn't feel it. When children think they're not good enough for someone, they usually resist being affected by that someone.
On the other hand, if we're really totally happy with the way someone already is, why teach? Complicated, isn't it? I've known people who were not at all good at communicating their acceptance of me. Those people may have had important things to teach me, but there was no way I was going to let them. And I know people who really seem to think I'm pretty good. I like them, and they change me, often without even seeming to try. Some of my best friendships have a lot to do with my friends and me changing each other. I get changed by friendly suggestions, well-timed humor, and serious discussions.
Many of us children-changers don't like to think of ourselves as that. But in a way, that's what we are. We plan lessons to help children grow, and growth is change. Even when we work on children's self-esteem, we're trying to change children into people who like and respect themselves more. We're trying to deliver an important and potentially confusing message: "I thoroughly appreciate the person you are, and I have some ideas about ways you could become even better."

Seeing Our Children Grow 422.
You'd think after all the effort we'd put into helping our children grow, and after all the work we'd seen them put into that upward struggle,
that we'd be thoroughly happy when they'd finally made it through all that. We ought to be sitting back proudly and rejoicing in having done good work. And there can indeed be a lot of that sitting back and rejoicing.
There's also a feeling of relief; some of what we and they had to do was difficult when we were younger, and would be much more difficult now. I speak from my own point of view as a fairly recently disabled person, but I think I also speak for many other members of my generation, many of whom are relatively able-bodied. Most of us would not quite say we're glad to have it all "over with," but we're enjoying our new freedom in a way that's reminiscent of the enjoyment we got out of moving away from our parents; we're free again to concentrate more on our own priorities. We don't have to think about babysitters.
But there's also sadness, and when I first started adjusting to having my children grow up, there was anger. I'll tell you about the anger first; you're probably already somewhat familiar with the sadness. As I began to realize that my children were turning into adults, there were times when I was angry with them. It was an anger I didn't understand. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the adults they were turning into, although some of my baffled utterances may have made it seem as if I disapproved of them.
I grew to realize, after much struggling with that anger, that I had been angry with them for destroying the wonderful children I'd loved through those years. They had destroyed the children by growing up. The little children who used to call me "Daddy" were now grown women. They still called me "Daddy," but where were those children? Hidden somewhere inside these women who called me "Daddy?" I didn't like that. Ally-ally-in-free!
As soon as I realized what was going on, my anger started subsiding, gradually giving way to occasional sadness. My daughters were not going to come to me crying when they fell down; they knew where the band-aids were. If I played my cards right, maybe they'd still come to me in times of trouble. Maybe they'd even manufacture some problems, just to indulge me. But they wouldn't need me the way they used to need me.
If you have children who haven't already grown up, they're probably going to. Maybe - probably - there are times when you wish they would hurry up and do it. And there are plenty of times I'm glad my daughters have done it. But I hope you're ready for the sadness, and maybe even the anger.

Vacations 423.
"Vacation" comes from a Latin word that means "empty." As a child, as an employed teacher, and as a parent of young children, I usually looked forward to vacations. That's pretty common. The kind of emptying that goes on during vacations is often quite pleasant, and the parts of people's lives that are temporarily emptied often get temporarily filled up with great stuff - trips to fun places, chances to pay more attention to items that are usually neglected, or sometimes, for some people, even time to exult in having nothing to do.
Now, as a volunteer who lives alone, vacations don't mean what they used to mean. It does mean that I get to spend time with my friends; they can visit me, because they don't have to go to work. But I'm also occasionally reminded of another aspect of vacations - one that used to bother me sometimes when I was a child. School and work are things to do. They provide reliable structure in the day and week. Even if the time we spend at work and in school isn't reliably pleasant, at least we know where we'll spend it, what kinds of things we'll do there, and who else will be there.
As parents and former children, many of you probably know how eagerly children look forward to vacations. They don't necessarily focus on what they'll do during vacations; some focus on what they won't do - go to school. They assume that fun will fill in the void created by lack of school, as people look forward to retirement as a time when they won't have to go to work. I used to fantasize about retirement, and yet now, retired, it's ironic how much my activities resemble what I was doing when I was employed. The work I do now for enjoyment is quite similar to the work I used to do to make ends meet.
I enjoy the actual work, but I also need the structure the school day and week provide. Like many of you, I have to carefully plan my vacation time so that I don't end up doing too much or too little. And also like many of you, I look forward to the end of vacation time; it may be liberating in some ways to empty out our usual schedules, but it can also be a relief to go back to the schedules.
So I guess it's appropriate that "vacation" comes from a word that means "empty." There are times when life gets too full - too full for parents, teachers, and/or children. Or full of the wrong things. So it makes some sense to look forward to emptying times. But it can also be useful to remember that we do rely on having something to do; adults and children can be surprised by some of the feelings of emptiness that accompany vacations.

Work 424.
Everyone has different ideas about what qualifies as work, play, or rest. If some people are involved in a basketball game, and they seem to be having fun, their activity could be called "play." If it doesn't seem as difficult as other things they do, it could be called "rest." And if they get paid, some people think of that as "work." The boundaries between work, play, and rest aren't as well-defined as some people think.
With that ambiguity in mind, let's take a look at "laziness." I think most people do what they think they need to do to get their lives going. Some think they need lots of money, and they often do work they'd really rather not do so that they'll get money. To some of them, people who enjoy their work but don't earn as much can seem lazy. Some people earn a lot by sitting at desks and talking to people, while others earn very little by lifting heavy things all day, or doing other work many of them would rather not do. Some people want to find jobs, and can't. Some are accused of not even wanting to find jobs - just living off the work of others. I don't buy that point of view, but I know people who swear by it.
To me, there's no point or truth in calling any of these people "lazy." I think they're all doing what they think they need to do. Human beings have a long history of trying to avoid hard work. They've invented all kinds of gadgets that make work easier, or unnecessary. We haven't called people "lazy" because they've moved to California using covered wagons or trucks, rather than carrying their belongings on their backs. But really, the horses and trucks did a lot of their work. And over the years, I've heard many people who've said and believed that they've built their own homes. Most of them relied heavily on many other workers.
Now, let's look at the child who is not doing the work the teacher has assigned. Maybe the child is not interested in the work - does not think the work has anything to do with him/her. Maybe it's lack of confidence - why struggle to do what's impossible? Perhaps he/she does not like being told what to do, and is rebelling. It could be that the child is not even aware that there's work to do; not everything a teacher says or writes is necessarily heard or read. Calling a child or adult "lazy" may help whoever is using that label; we all need to make sense of our experiences. But I don't think it's accurate or useful.
I've spent much of my life thinking I've been lazy. After all, there's been plenty of work I haven't done, even though I could have. I could have exercised more. I could have taken more courses. I could have chosen a career that made me richer. And now, I could do things to earn more money. I consciously think I lack energy, and the medical world backs me up on that. But there are still unconscious murmurings inside me telling me I'm lazy.
I'm not lazy. Neither are you. Neither is the adult who hasn't found a job or the child who isn't doing the worksheet.


Old-fashioned Teachers 425.
In some circles, it's really hip to say you're old-fashioned. You talk about the way things used to be, and tell people that you're immune or at least resistant to the changes that invade life as time marches on. And you can be seen as a quixotic hero. Behind that view of you is a belief that many of the changes time brings make things worse.
Of course, some changes do make things worse. Change for change's sake isn't necessarily good, although if the status quo is bad enough, just about any change starts to look good. But talking about the need for change can be pretty empty talk. When I think about any issue, I'd much rather talk about the substance of the issue than discuss the need for change. If change is a good idea, substantial discussion will make that clear.
I'm old-fashioned in some ways, as are most people I know. We're also pioneers and rebels in other ways. I think it's far more useful to think about what works and what feels right than about what's old-fashioned and what's new-fangled.
I've worked with a teacher who is of "the old school" on several issues. She holds up high standards, and does not believe that any child should get good grades unless that child has earned them. She gives children lots of work to do, and expects them to do it. If they don't, they've got to pay the price, which can mean bad grades, missed recesses, and/or scowls from the teacher.
Some parents like this teacher's style. It reminds them of what school was like for them, and after all, they turned out all right, didn't they? They didn't have cooperative education, humanistic education, or any of those other new things that teachers use nowadays.
As a volunteer, I try to approach each classroom with an open mind. Partly, that's because I consider it a privilege to be allowed to work with children, and I don't want to risk losing that privilege. But partly, I want to learn about different approaches. I want to see what works. Even if what works isn't what I was doing during the twenty-five years I was employed as a teacher. I've already learned that some of my approaches and techniques could have been better. I was learning that during those twenty-five years, I'm learning it now, and I expect to continue learning it.
There are some approaches and techniques that are time-honored, and are used by many teachers. Holding up high standards and assigning lots of work is a time-honored approach. But I've seen it done in a way that just doesn't work. I know the children in the class of this "old-fashioned" teacher, and they are not learning as much as children who have less "old-fashioned" teachers. And call me "old-fashioned," but I think teachers are responsible for causing children to learn. Even if it means trying out new ways. The New Kid 426.
Life can be fun and exciting for a child who is entering a new classroom and/or school mid-year. The chances are that no one knows who this stranger is, and that gives the newcomer a chance to redefine herself/himself, highlighting aspects of his/her personality that weren't highlighted in the old place, and maybe concealing some aspects that were. Old problems can even go away in the new place, and new strengths can emerge. To a lesser degree, this can also be true for a child who has been elsewhere for a significant amount of time, due to illness or family business.
But usually, there's more trauma than fun involved in such transitions. Everyone else seems to know each other, and to know the routines in the classroom and school. The teacher has had plenty of time to do things to make each child feel special. There can be name tags, photographs, and charts that include every child, and throughout the classroom, there are drawings and other evidence that each child is an important member of the class.
The teacher is already involved in planning the rest of the year, and has already developed strategies for coping with various ideosyncracies; all attempts to include the new child have to be quite deliberate. And children, who have spent the beginning of the school year establishing their places in the complicated social and academic world of the classroom and school, also have to figure out how to relate with this new person.
Occasionally, a newcomer who really has her/his act together can improve the class by his/her added presence. This new kid on the block can be the friend Child A has really needed. Child B, who had a strength or weakness that set her/him apart, may now be able to feel a little less strange, because the new child also has that strength or weakness. I usually enjoyed adding a child to my class; it was exciting to witness the different ways children responded, and to help guide them towards positive responses. I remember being a seven year old new kid, and I remember the myriad of feelings that came with that role. It was exciting and scary; I saw potential for both connection and alienation. Now, when I help a child adjust, I partly feel as if I am helping that little boy I used to be.
It doesn't have to take long. Children are often great at including newcomers, and teachers usually have strategies for making new children feel at home. They use records sent by previous teachers, insights offered by parents, input from other adults, and their own experience and skill. And soon, the new kid can become a full-fledged member of the class, ready to help the next new kid adjust.

Children Who Avoid Attention 427.
Most children usually want to be noticed. Ideally, they want positive attention from adults and from other children who also want positive attention, and they quickly learn how to get it. The resulting behavior can be positively positive. And as most of you know, some children, for a variety of reasons, get attention in less ideal ways, often causing trouble and getting more than their fair ration of attention.
But there are also children who don't want to be noticed. Being the seasoned, veteran attention-getter I am, I don't understand these children as well as I understand the ones who are more like me. But I've taught enough of them, racked my brain enough, read enough, and consulted enough relative experts to have collected a few pointers.
Some children don't want attention because when they have gotten attention, it's been the wrong kind. They've been abused, and they've learned that the way to avoid or decrease that abuse is to make sure they're not noticed. That's the first thing I try to check out when I meet a child who doesn't seem to want attention. Abuse is a complicated issue, and it is the responsibility of every adult who has contact with children to find ways to stop it from happening.
Another possibility is that the child has experienced difficulty doing the things that are expected of him/her. If a child has trouble learning to do what other children do, that child may try to hide the difficulty. If the rest of the class is challenging enough for a teacher, that teacher may even welcome inconspicuous behavior - may wish it were contagious. But sooner or later - preferably sooner - inconspicuous problems still have to be recognized as problems. Ignored, they can grow.
I still have to leave room for the possibility that some healthy, happy, competent children don't want a lot of attention. Not being shy myself, I don't fully understand that phenomenon, but I know and respect adults who used to wish teachers would leave them alone. They didn't like the kind of publicity they often got in school.
I recently invented an expedient technique to help one child who doesn't like attention. Like everyone else in the class, there are times when he's supposed to write. He doesn't like that. When I'm there for writing time, I sit with him for a minute. I tell him that after he's written a sentence, I'll go away if he wants me to. So far, he wants me to, so he gets right to work and writes a sentence. I tell him I'll come back in a few minutes, and if he's written another sentence, I'll go away again if he wants me to.
That technique works for now; he does the writing he's supposed to do. Maybe getting the work done will get him to feel more competent, and to feel more like fitting in with the rest of the class. But maybe not. It could well be that this game is only a game, and that his resistance to attention is a symptom of problems that require more than my little game. We'll see.

Buttons Children Push 428.
There are things we adults know we shouldn't say or do, because saying or doing them won't do any good, and will probably do some harm. If we were saints, or even consistently reasonable but unsaintly people, we wouldn't ever do those things. But every adult I know well sometimes does some of them, and I strongly suspect that the rest of the adults - the ones I don't know so well - do, too. Of course, some do so more than others, but we all do it. We try not to, but we can't help it.
Same with children. Even usually well-intentioned children occasionally forget their good intentions and say or do things that they know are bound to make things worse. And some children make a habit of it. If something can be said to spoil a good time or aggravate a bad one, you can rely on some children to do so.
We often don't know why this happens - what forces come together to make some children and adults say or do just the wrong things at just the wrong times. There's a strong tendency to think they do so because they're evil, or because they're at least temporarily possessed by the forces of evil. I strongly believe that all people are basically well-intentioned, but I've often seen children and adults say things I'm sure they know will only hurt. I've done so myself, too. And I'm a nice guy. Really, I am. Ask any of my friends.
Sometimes, we can remove ourselves a little and clearly see what's going on. Some children need to know that their words and actions can affect people, and they haven't figured out how to have good effects. They find it easier to upset people. As adults, sometimes we can see what's going on, and skillfully redirect a child's shenanigans. We can teach some children to be more aware of how they affect other people, and how they consequently end up affecting the way they're seen by other people. And some children are open to thinking about their behavior, and changing it.
But not all the time. If we've seen the needs of the children being tormented more clearly than we've seen the needs of the tormentors, we react instead of responding. If the tormentors remind us too strongly of other tormentors we've known, we can quickly make connections in our minds, and react inappropriately. Sometimes children can push our buttons; we may be adults who should know better, but we've been known to occasionally fall prey to children's words and deeds.
The most common reaction we adults give is to rely on our superior power. We sometimes tend to make children stay in from recess or something for reminding us too strongly of nemeses we've known. But if we can rise above that tendency, we can see that children who push people's buttons have needs, too. And we can work on helping to meet those needs.

Tempus Fugit? 429.
One of the ideas adults like to think of as wisdom is the idea of the brevity of life, together with the importance of taking things slowly: "Time flies." "This, too, shall pass." "Look before you leap." "All good things take time." That's easy for us to say. But I'm not sure it counts as wisdom. It's just our perspective, and maybe it can't be translated into the language of those who are much younger than we are. For some of them, it seems as if hardly any good things take time; taking time, in and of itself, isn't good.
I remember how long a minute used to be. It had sixty long seconds. Sixty of them! A lot of childhood is spent rushing around, but a lot of it is also spent waiting, wishing things would hurry up and happen. That can be true of adulthood, too, but for me, at least, it feels very different. A decade no longer seems like a very long time. I've already had about five of them, and I hope to have about five more, but the only ones that seemed long were the first two. They took forever. And I don't think there was much wisdom in the advice I got about being patient and slowing down. I wasn't patient at all, and slowing down? That would have prolonged my agony!
Now I've slowed down, and I'm more patient, but I still remember. I did some things that I now think were foolish, but I didn't think so when I did them, and though some people were telling me I was being foolish, and would live to regret my decisions and actions, I couldn't really hear them. And the children and young adults I know who are now making important decisions about their lives may or may not be able to hear the advice of their elders. And even if they do hear, that advice may or may not sound relevant to them. There are plenty of adults around, and they often contradict each other as they give advice.
I now enjoy my patience. It's nice, when what I want doesn't happen right away, to feel okay about waiting. I know time will pass, and I can do other stuff while I'm waiting. But I don't think that that patience can be handed over to younger people as wisdom. I may write or say words about what's going on for me now, but I try not to tell other people that what's going on for me ought to be going on for them. That approach didn't work on me, and I don't think it'll work on many young people.
So here's my advice for adults who want children, teenagers, and young adults to hurry up and become more patient: be patient. They may not be very good at waiting now. They may be leaping now, perhaps planning to look when they get around to it. But they'll come around. All good things take time.

Learning from a Child's History 430.
I'm in a fairly unique position in a school system, and I'm developing a conviction that it's too bad it's so unique. I stay with the children as they move from grade to grade, and so I really get to know them. If a child has a noteworthy experience or does something significant in first grade, I remember it. I know what has worked for individual children, and what hasn't worked. If I think a teacher ought to know about something from a child's history, I bring it up.
Don't get me wrong; teachers do talk to each other about children. But teachers are busy people, so Bartholomew's sixth grade teacher may catch the boy's fifth grade teacher in the hall and ask whether Bartholomew had certain difficulties in fifth grade. Many teachers want to benefit from each other's experiences. But there's rarely a long talk, and Bartholomew's first grade teacher is rarely consulted. There just isn't time.
My idea is not a panacea, and does present problems. There can be advantages to moving a child from a second grade teacher who knows the child's problems to a third grade teacher who doesn't. It gives the child a better chance to turn over a new leaf. That can be harder to do when the teacher knows the child's history. I'm selective about the bits of children's history I offer teachers; I want to give new leaves a chance to grow. And teachers are free to use or not use my input.
Maybe some day I'll regret having told a teacher something about a child. I may make a mistake in judgment, and tell a teacher something that is better left unsaid. I don't want everybody to know about every mistake I've made in my life, every negative pattern I've had; it could give people what I consider the wrong idea about me. And children deserve the chance to close chapters of their lives, too, and be free from the ghosts of their mistakes. But sometimes teachers ought to know things about children, and shouldn't have to spend half the year learning them.
Like so many good ideas in education, the idea of cross-grade consultations is usually pre-empted by "practical" considerations. Teachers don't get much preparation time, and much of the time they get is spent dealing with curriculum. There are conferences with parents, who know their children well, and parents often do shed light that is quite helpful. But imagine a meeting some time in October or November when Bartholomew's first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teachers (if all those teachers are still around) get together to discuss the boy's history.
I'll close with one of my poems:
If I had the talent to paint,
I'd paint things that should be, but ain't.
A lot of what I've seen so far
Are things that shouldn't be, but are.

Isabel 431.
I recently had lunch at a restaurant with my friend Russell and his daughter Isabel, who is two and a half years old. Isabel had a lot to say, and said it. Yet she allowed us to have our conversations, too. I found that surprising, but maybe that's because it's been so long since I've spent much time with toddlers. Nowadays, I tend to think of toddlers as people who have very short attention spans, and get bored very quickly when adults have adult conversations. And I think of bored toddlers as forces to be reckoned with.
But Isabel made our time together enjoyable. I don't know how much of our adult conversation she understood, but she seemed to be either listening to us or thinking about her own things. She smiled a lot, and spoke both when we spoke to her and when she had her own things to say. And she did have a lot to say.
I was charmed by her way of speaking. Toddlers struggle to form words and phrases, and their difficulties and mistakes can charm and amuse adults. At first, I allowed myself to be simply charmed and amused, but after a while, I reminded myself to listen to what this person was saying. There was a reason for her earnest efforts to speak the language we spoke; she wanted to communicate. Maybe she wanted to charm and amuse, too, or at least didn't mind doing that, but communication was her main goal.
What she had to say may not have seemed as important to me as what Russell had to say; after all, Russell has been my friend for about fifteen years, and our conversations get personal, philosophical, political, and all. Isabel is not at a point in her life where she thinks about whether to vote her conscience or opt for the lesser of two evils. She thinks about the fact that a man she sees is wearing a hat. But the fact that a man is wearing a hat is as important to her as our thoughts are to us. We all try to make sense out of the world we live in.
When people learn new languages, sometimes people who already know the languages find mispronunciations and inappropriate phrases charming. My friend Olga had a Byelorussian accent, and really wanted to get rid of it; she wanted to learn to communicate more effectively, not charm. I think that's also true, to some degree, of people who are learning their first language.
When I think about Isabel, I'm going to think about who she is. And when I talk with her (which I hope I'll do from time to time), I'm going to make sure she knows I respect the thinking she's doing. What goes on in children's minds is important. Together, we human beings can get a lot done. And we'd do better to listen well to each other; Isabel's charm, Olga's charm, and the charms of many other people are appealing, but we've got to make sure we don't let the charms cover up the content.
Artists and Teachers 432.
When I was in seventh grade, Mr. Wetlauffer, my art teacher, once looked at a drawing I'd done and recommended that I stick to music. I think he was commenting on my art more than on my music. I'm pretty sure he meant it as a little joke. But I was devastated by his comment, and by other negative comments he made after looking at my art. I didn't take long to decide that there were people who were good at art, and there were other people like me, who weren't.
Just as the gym teacher had a habit of drawing our attention to a handful of strong and fit kids to use as examples, Mr. Wetlauffer kept showing us how talented some members of the class were. He also lost no opportunity to show us how talented HE was. I, for one, did not get inspired by that talent; I sometimes got awed by it, but mostly, it discouraged me. Probably, there were kids who felt that way about my musical talent; I think I was used as an example in music class. That did wonders for my self-esteem, but I wonder how many people it discouraged.
Since I started working with children, children have been impressed with my artistic talent. I've enjoyed the kudos I've gotten from children, but I've taken a long time to internalize them. I've thought children would stop being impressed by my art as soon as they reached an age at which they could easily outshine me - perhaps age ten. And besides, one of my roles as teacher is to get children to realize how talented THEY are, not gather kudos for myself.
Adults are former children, and there are often conflicts going on inside adults; they've worked to develop their own talents and skills, and having done so, they don't always feel like working on children's self-esteem; they've got self-esteem issues of their own. In fact, there are people who teach instead of what they really want to do; they've been unable to find work as artists, musicians, athletes, or whatever else they have striven for, so they've taken jobs as teachers. Some have risen to the challenge and become great teachers, but some have remained bitter and, to some degree, have taken it out on children.
The appreciation I've gotten from children and good art teachers with whom I've worked has gradually won me over; I've begun to think of myself as a pretty good artist. But that was after years of believing Mr. Wetlauffer. And I know people who've taken years to discover that they could sing; they've had to overcome reactions they've gotten from music teachers.
It's too bad. I wish people could do the work that is most important to them. There shouldn't be so many frustrated artists, musicians, athletes, scientists, etc. teaching children. They should be following their blisses, and letting children be taught by people who want to be teachers.

Taking Notes 433.
A few teachers tried to teach us how to take notes. And some of us learned how to do it. Gloriana, who later became our valedictorian, was great at it. Her notes were always arranged in outline form, and written in what looked to me like calligraphy. Sometimes, I'd watch her take notes, hoping to learn how she did it.
But most of the time, I paid more attention to the teacher. After all, wasn't the teacher saying things I was supposed to be hearing and learning? I wasn't very good at doing two things at once; if I was going to pay attention to the teacher, I was going to have to look at and listen to him/her. If I kept looking down at my notebook and writing, I would miss some of what the teacher was saying. I kept hoping taking notes wasn't as important as teachers were saying it was.
When I was about to go to college, I panicked. Somehow, I'd made it through high school without knowing how to take notes, but now teachers were going to find out what I was really made of. In elementary school, we'd been told how much harder junior high would be, and in junior high, we were warned about the rigors of high school. I'd taken those warnings seriously, and there had been some truth to them, but somehow, I'd managed to make it through, and even get grades that were sometimes pretty good.
But now I was going to go to COLLEGE, where I'd be found out. Teachers (instructors? professors?) would assume that I'd had a good preparation for college, and they'd expect, among other things, that I'd be writing as they were talking. By then, I was sure I wouldn't be able to do that. I convinced my parents to buy me a portable tape recorder, and I used it for the first week of classes.
But when I got to my dorm and listened to my taped lectures, they sounded just like the lectures I'd attended. I could have transcribed the lectures, but I had the feeling that there were better ways to study, and besides, there were people ordering out for pizza, or folk dancing on the lawn. Those seemed like much better ways to spend time than trying to fill up a notebook.
I made it through college. I passed some courses that required me to take notes, and failed two. But mostly, I took courses that didn't require notes. And I did pretty well in those courses. I was great at class participation. And I wrote pretty well. Graduate school was even better for me, because by then, I had figured out how to read course offerings, and I only took courses that were right for me.
But I never got good at taking notes. If a teacher was saying something I considered noteworthy, I wanted to listen, not write in a notebook. Afterwards, I remembered what was memorable, and forgot the rest. I've done all right anyway, but I sometimes wonder whether taking good notes would have made a significant difference in my life. Skipping Childhood 434.
Over the years, I've known several people who have said that they or their children skipped childhood. Their feelings about that perceived phenomenon range from pride to bitterness. Sometimes people have told me that their children are reincarnated adults, but I think very few (if any) of those people really believe in reincarnation; they don't mean it literally. I, personally, believe that everyone has a childhood. That doesn't mean there are no precocious children, or that traumatic events and/or negative patterns can't rob children of some of the blessings other children have.
But I've known many children, and they've all fit my definition of "children;" they've been young, and have had to learn some things about life that adults tended to already know. And they all started out quite a bit shorter than the average adult. I don't think anyone skips childhood, and I think we can do harm by treating children as if they aren't children. And this isn't just a matter of semantics; I'm not playing a word game with you.
Piaget, Vygotsky, Gagne, and many other people who have studied children have written about stages of development children go through. The writing of these psychologists, though, is usually descriptive, not prescriptive; they've written about what they've observed, and they haven't said or implied that all children go through the stages they've described on any precise schedule. People are complicated right from the start, but I believe that they're all children before they're adults.
We owe it to children to recognize that they're children. Children deserve to be accepted for who they are, and to grow at rates that are right for them. That may mean that a child who squares two-digit numbers in his/her head or reads Shakespeare may still sleep with a security blanket or teddy bear. Any of the above can be done by people who qualify as children.
And we also owe it to children to make sure their childhoods contain some security, some joy, some love - all those gifts that make life something to be glad about. When children have to do or experience things that ought to be done or experienced by adults, or things that shouldn't have to be done or experienced by anyone, those children are not being robbed of childhood; they're being robbed of their rights as humans. Children, adults, and everyone in between deserve to get some of the best things life has to offer, and to be protected from the worst.
Whether it's meant positively or negatively, I don't think it's accurate or useful to say that someone has skipped childhood.

Separate Identities 435.
A friend recently asked me what to do about or how to think about her son, who is beginning to define himself. The definitions children come up with are often very different from what we had in mind when we started parenting, and very different from what we saw during the first few years. And they're often very different from anything we hoped our children would grow to be.
I find it useful, when a child is going through something I don't understand, to think about my own childhood. When I started defining myself, what was I thinking and feeling?
First of all, I had to establish myself as a separate person, with an identity of my own. This meant a lot to me. I felt as if my parents' identities were strong, and establishing my own self was going to be a big job. During what I consider the beginning of my separation, I got involved in politics. I joined Young Americans for Freedom, and at our high school, the Young Conservative Club. At the local shopping mall, I handed out leaflets in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. And I had lots of political debates with my parents.
I didn't think I was rebelling. I thought I'd discovered a point of view that my parents would soon discover if I did my job right. I knew my parents were liberals, but I thought that was only because they hadn't thought much about politics. Now that I was thinking about it, they'd come around. Then we'd all rally behind the Arizona senator, and maybe attend his inauguration. My parents and their friends said I was just rebelling, and that bothered me; I wanted them to think about the substance of what I was saying, not write it off as rebellion. And it really bothered me when Goldwater himself said young people were rebelling against their liberal parents.
I didn't stay conservative for long. The more I learned about myself, the less conservative politics fit me. But I went to college far away from my parents, and went on to live a life that didn't include them very much. It took me a long time to establish my identity, and it hurt my parents that they weren't allowed to be part of that. (Actually, in a way, they were a big part of it, but I stayed away during most of my search.)
Now, my parents are my friends. As I make decisions about my life, I sometimes ask for their opinions, and sometimes use their input. They value my thinking, too.
Now to apply all this to my friend, whose son is much younger than I was during my Goldwater days, but is already beginning to define himself in a way that separates him from his parents. I know that children today rebel earlier than they used to. I know that it's something that happens. I'd love to prescribe an antidote, but if there is one, I don't know about it. The best I can do is suggest that you have a clear idea of what's important to you, and remember that your child, who may look and sound different from the child you dreamed he would be, is nevertheless probably way up there on your list.
Allies 436.
Children, like the rest of us, complain sometimes. Some more than others. And also like the rest of us, their complaints are sometimes justified, sometimes not. Often, when we listen to people's complaints, we think about whether there's any substance to them - whether they refer to real problems that ought to be addressed. And if we decide in favor of the plaintiff, we often try to help solve the problems. That's a nice tendency we humans have.
Parents often start out trying to solve all of their children's problems (e.g., wet diapers, hunger). That's appropriate, because children start out relatively helpless. But they don't stay that helpless for long; they learn habits and strategies that enable them to solve their own problems. It can make both parents and children proud.
Still, children have a way of turning to their parents when problems seem too big, and they hope their parents will provide solutions. And parents - even some parents who once looked forward to their children's independence - sometimes welcome the opportunity to offer solutions. It reminds us of old times. Our children need us again.
But it's sometimes more complicated when the children are older. We don't try to convince infants that they're not really hungry; they know what they need, and our job is to meet their needs. But older children, like adults, sometimes complain about problems they ought to be solving on their own. Sometimes it even seems as if they complain about problems they've created.
I think that when that happens, the role of parent is sometimes substantially different from any other role. Children want to think of their parents as their allies. They want their parents to side with them. When you, as a parent, really do side with your child, that's great. When the whole world seems to be making trouble for a child, it's nice to have Mommy and/or Daddy on her/his side.
But what if your child's complaint doesn't ring true? What if you identify more with the one your child is complaining about? That's one of the many times when parenting becomes a real challenge. You want to get your child to see what you think of as the errors of his/her ways, and you feel as if you're the one who ought to point out those errors.
Sometimes, that works. It depends on the situation and the child. But I think sometimes it makes more sense to keep your convictions to yourself, and just listen, perhaps asking questions to clarify the problem, but playing the role of ally as effectively as you can. It's not exactly a dishonest role; ultimately, you are your child's ally. But you may not always agree with your child's complaints. I'm not suggesting that you should lie about it - just that you can sometimes help more by listening than by correcting. When the whole world seems to be against your child, you've got to try hard to be an exception.


Spontaneity 437.
Teachers do lots of planning, and paradoxically, that planning sometimes allows teachers to be spontaneous. I recently saw a good example. Pam Szczesny, one of the teachers with whom I volunteer, came to class either having just seen tracks in the snow near her home or at least telling the children she had seen some. If she'd made the whole thing up, she'd done so expertly. It wasn't until I got home that I even thought about whether the tracks had really been there.
The children had already been studying animals, and here was a great opportunity to apply what they'd learned. As the children stood around a table, Pam drew the tracks on a piece of paper. She spoke as she drew, and her words and tone of voice told everyone that she really wanted to know what kind of animal had made those tracks.
By expressing sincere enthusiasm and curiosity, Pam brought out the children's enthusiasm and curiosity. They wanted to know what kind of animal had made the tracks. Like me, they didn't seem to give a thought to whether those tracks had really been there; they were now detectives. Even one child who tends not to get enthusiastic about lessons - prefers to be "cool" - was quickly drawn into the mystery.
I listened to the children, and listened to Pam. The ground was covered with snow, and they talked about the possible effects of the snow on the shape of the tracks. Tracks in snow may sometimes be a little clearer than tracks in dirt, sand, or mud, but snow melts. It was freezing out, but sunny. Could the sun have melted the snow enough to change the shape of the tracks?
What followed was about half an hour of research. The children loved the role in which they'd been cast. Pam hadn't started the lesson by saying, "Now, children, we are going to study animal tracks." She had come into class the way children often come in - eager to let people know what was on her mind. She didn't seem to be following some dry curriculum guidelines or relying on some detailed planbook.
The lesson was a smashing success. I suspect, but don't know, that Pam had put a lot of thought into the lesson. Maybe she is experienced enough or has enough spontaneous creativity and charisma not to need to put a lot of thought into such a lesson; maybe she knew it was time to be spontaneous, and knew it would work.
I've seen Pam respond to children's enthusiasm and curiosity; she's not the only one she allows to be spontaneous. I've already written about her flexibility. It's not that she ignores the prescribed curriculum; she teaches children what they need to know to be ready for their futures in and out of school, and she avoids delving too deeply into curriculum that's already been claimed by later grades. But sometimes she does seem to teach spontaneously. Only Pam knows how spontaneous her teaching really is, but no matter. It works.

Hard Caring 438.
Some children make it easy for you to care about them. They do and say things that just melt your heart. They make your day, even sometimes when you come to school determined to have a lousy day. They sometimes seem like teachers' aides, setting examples for other children, helping those who need help, and generally making the teacher feel good. And some manage to be like that without being the stereotypical apple-polishing teacher's pet types.
Other children aren't like that. They've got problems, and they bring those problems to school. Some of those problems just make it hard for children to learn. Children who have difficulty learning but don't misbehave can be quite teachable. But there are children who make it hard for some teachers to teach. I recently talked with Roger Wallace, a sixth grade teacher who cares deeply about his work. Roger is a teacher through and through. I don't know whether he considers teaching a sacred mission; I don't know whether he's a religious kind of guy. But it didn't take long for me to decide that he's not just teaching to earn a living. And he's not just doing it for fun.
Roger has a big class, and he has quite a few children who are challenges. Throughout my teaching career, I've usually had three or four really challenging children per year. That was okay. The one year I had many more, I often thought about what I'd like to do instead of teach. I never got to the point of looking for any other kind of work, but I thought about it.
But Roger doesn't seem to spend his time thinking about looking elsewhere. He cares deeply about children most other teachers just hope they don't end up with. And he lets children know that he cares about them. Sometimes he lets them know by getting on their case.
Most teachers I know (including myself) are gentler than Roger in their approaches. When faced with children who don't respond to gentleness, we're gentle anyway, hoping they'll learn by our examples. If and when they don't, we keep trying, but still in our gentle ways.
I've also known teachers who were less gentle, but didn't seem to care about the children in their classes. They've had a "sink or swim" attitude, and there were children in these teachers' classes who sank.
But Roger's attitude is neither uniformly gentle nor "sink or swim." It's "swim." He isn't going to let a child in his class give up. He believes in every child in his class, and he cares with all his might and all his skill. I've seen him dealing with children who weren't meeting his standards of behavior or effort. He gets angry. But it's not the kind of anger I've seen and heard in other teachers; the message behind the anger is not "You're making me look bad," or "You're making my life harder." Roger's message is "I refuse to give up on you."
I've never been the kind of teacher Roger is. I don't think I ever will be. It's not my style. But I think children are lucky to be in his class. He's not going to let them fail.
The Enormity of the Task 439.
Most teachers try hard to notice the individuals in their classes - to pay attention to individual needs and make sure each child feels important. That can be hard to do, especially if some children's needs cry out for more attention than others, or if the teacher has needs that get in the way. And of course, there's curriculum teachers often feel they have to "cover." It can be overwhelming. But we do try to pay attention to individuals.
I have observed teachers who have been great at it. I've seen people directing choirs or instrumental groups in ways that make every member feel valued and heard. Sometimes, while conducting a reading, math, or other kind of lesson, I've mentally compared myself to such musical conductors, trying to make sure every pleasant sound is appreciated, every producer of sour notes or faulty rhythm is helped. And sometimes, when a lesson has gone particularly well, I've felt as if I've conducted a beautiful symphony.
As a parent, it can be hard to believe that any teacher realizes just how special your child is. After all, your child's teacher is also the teacher of several other children. You may be the parent of more than one child, but you probably don't have twenty of them, and the children you have are rarely the same age as each other. If you time things well, there are many times you spend with just one of your children. That's important time. How can a teacher give your child that kind of time?
At times, I've been overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. I've felt that every child in my class deserved every bit of attention I could give, and more. I was trying to do what was impossible, and I was angry at myself for not being able to do it. Impossibility, though real, sometimes felt like an alibi. I think every teacher feels that way sometimes. So do parents.
On the one hand, I think we ought to learn from teachers who seem to have found ways to juggle lots of tasks without dropping any. Some even seem to be able to do it without knocking themselves out. Children who have such teachers are very lucky. If teachers have found ways that work for them, we owe it to ourselves and to children to do our best to learn those ways.
On the other hand, we also owe it to ourselves to be gentle with ourselves; nobody actually meets all children's needs, and that's all right. And the teacher you admire, emulate, and maybe even envy may be admiring, emulating, and envying you. We often tend to notice what we're not doing, or doing wrong, and miss what we're doing well.

Vocabulary 440.
The English language, more than most languages, is full of words. Perhaps that's partly because of the various people who have invaded England and partly because of the various people England has invaded. There are words that come from all over the place. English is supposed to be a basically Germanic language, but knowledge of Latin and Greek can help you figure out many English words.
Teachers frequently introduce children to words. I've seen this done most effectively when teachers have provided contexts for unfamiliar words. Children often like learning new words, and using them as soon as possible. They often like impressing adults, each other, and themselves with their vocabulary. This tendency often stays with a person throughout life. I've got it myself, and while I hope and believe that the average reader of my articles can read them without too much use of dictionaries, I enjoy being able to surprise myself and my readers with a well-chosen word.
But I've been somewhat bothered by Readers' Digest's "It Pays to Increase Your Word Power," and some of the lessons some teachers give that attempt to teach vocabulary out of context. Sometimes I use a thesaurus, but only to find the word that means what I'm trying to mean - not to use an unfamiliar word just for the sake of using an unfamiliar word. Language is supposed to communicate, and it communicates less effectively if it's used as an elitist secret code. I used the word "elitist" in the previous sentence, but only because "elitist" is precisely what I mean; I didn't use it to impress anyone with my vocabulary (at least, I don't think so).
Some teachers routinely speak to children in ways that inspire them to learn new words. Some include new words in their lessons in ways that make the new words feel like precious gifts. And children often like that; they can be proud and happy as they acquire new tools for communication. Such learning makes children want more; words can be very useful tools, and notwithstanding my objection to the Readers' Digest approach, it does pay to increase your word power.
But I don't like it when teachers give vocabulary lessons that lack context. I, myself, as a verbophile (I made that one up, I think), remember words I've learned in such lessons, but many children are bored to death by having to memorize lists of words. And my fifth grade teacher taught us the word "confiscate" in a way that was very effective, but not very nice. I spent a few weeks wondering whether things she'd confiscated from me had been destroyed, transformed, or what. Finally, I looked it up in the dictionary, and then immediately looked up "steal," to try to understand the difference.
Yes, it does pay to increase your word power. But I think it's got to be done in ways that really do empower. Grumpiness 441.
I've always known that some people get grumpy when they get old. When we get old, there's often more to complain about. Little inconveniences we used to put up with or not even notice begin to really bug us. Children, who are reliably young, have things to complain about, too, but it's not the same. Nowadays, I'm finally beginning to understand something about the grumpiness that often comes with age. I don't mean to reinforce a stereotype - only to try to explain a pattern I think I see in myself and other people who aren't as patient as they used to be.
Take interruptions, for example. First of all, way back in the early 1970's, I was telling children that they shouldn't interrupt - that interrupting was mostly impolite and counterproductive. True, those children are now adults, and the ones who are interrupting now are different children. But sometimes it doesn't feel that way. Sometimes it feels as if I've already paid my dues - worked hard to get children to learn some basic rules about relating to people. And now they should know those rules.
Of course, such thinking is irrational; the children who interrupt today hadn't been born yet in the early 1970's, so they couldn't have learned what I was teaching back then. No matter how much energy I once put into teaching children, children today still have to start from scratch, and so do the adults who teach them. We adults may have more experience, wisdom, and skill when it comes to teaching, but we can also have the feeling that we've already taught, and shouldn't have to do it again.
I don't want to get really grumpy, and so far, I haven't. But as I approach age fifty, I can already feel the beginnings of grumpiness - at least enough to be able to examine it a little. For years, I've heard from other people that I'm unusually patient with children, but nowadays, when children do things that I consider inconsiderate, I'm a little less patient than I used to be. Part of that is a function of being disabled; if a child leaves something on the floor of my condominium, I'm trapped. But I also think part of my occasional grumpiness has to do with my age, and may become more pronounced as I get older.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying all grumpiness is irrational. And I'm not saying there aren't patient, cheerful old people, or grumpy young people. We all have the right to expect people to be considerate, and when they aren't, it makes sense to be annoyed. I'm just saying we need to consider our moods and perspectives. Children and other living things have to deal with us, and we, the people they have to deal with, are just as responsible for our words and behaviors as we want them to be for theirs.

Who Cares? (Part One) 442.
Zhizn was a village in old Russia. The Russian word "zhizn" means "life," and to the people who lived in Zhizn, the village really did seem to be all of life. From time to time, they heard of other villages. They even heard of a big city called "Moscow." But none of that seemed real; what seemed real were the huts and shops of Zhizn - the little joys they had that sometimes felt so big, and the little problems, which also had a way of sometimes feeling big. If the village blacksmith made some fancy new tool on his forge, that was big news in Zhizn. And if that fancy new tool broke, that was big news, too.
Fyodor was a thirteen year old boy who lived in Zhizn. There were no children in Zhizn who were Fyodor's age, so the boy had to spend his time either with people who weren't really children, with children who were much younger than he was, or alone. He chose to spend his time with children. But he wanted everyone to know that he was older than these children; he wanted people to think of him as what you may call "cool." And so he often spoke the words "Vsyaw rahvno," which is like saying "Who cares?"
As you probably know, children often get excited about things. If Anna found a rock that sparkled, she liked to show people that rock. She would even say it was a diamond, and some children would believe her. She wasn't saying that to be dishonest, exactly - just trying to make her discovery a little more interesting. But she would be careful not to show the rock to Fyodor, because she didn't want to hear him say, "Who cares?"
I only told you these things so that you would be better able to understand what I really want to tell you about. There lived, in Zhizn, a young boy named Misha who had a doll named Nadyezhda. His grandfather had carved the doll out of some wood, and it was very special to Misha. "Nadyezhda" is the Russian word for "hope," and somehow, Nadyezhda gave Misha a feeling of hope. When things weren't going well, Misha liked to sit with Nadyezhda. He knew that Nadyezhda was only a doll, but that didn't matter; sitting with the doll sometimes made him feel a little better.
One day, as Misha was sitting on a log with Nadyezhda, several children came to play a game. Misha carefully sat Nadyezhda against the log, and went to join the game. Fyodor was there, and so were many other children. They had lots of fun. I can't tell you what the game was called; they were making it up as they played it. Once in a while, someone would make up a rule, and if most people agreed with the rule, for a while everyone would follow it. But the game kept changing, so I can't really say what kind of game it was. But I can tell you that it involved lots of running. And it didn't take long for the children to end up pretty far from the place where Nadyezhda was sitting against the log.

Who Cares? (Part Two) 443.
When it began to get dark, Misha started to look for Nadyezhda. But by then, they were pretty far from that log, and besides, they all had to be home by dark. Misha was pretty upset. He told the other children, and though some got concerned looks on their faces, most were silent as Fyodor said, "Who cares?" Those words may sound cruel to you, but Fyodor didn't mean them to be cruel - just "cool." The children searched for a little while (even Fyodor), but soon they realized that they had to get home. And that's what they did. Maybe they'd find Nadyezhda tomorrow.
Though tomorrow actually did come the very next day, it seemed like forever to Misha. Ordinarily, when Misha was upset, he'd hold Nadyezhda, and feel a little better. Obviously, he couldn't do that now. His parents showed concern; they knew how much Misha loved Nadyezhda. But they had work they had to do; they couldn't help Misha search.
When the children gathered to play, some remembered that Nadyezhda was lost, and were ready to help Misha search. Others had forgotten, but were ready to help as soon as they were reminded. But then Fyodor showed up, and when reminded that Nadyezhda was lost, he said, "Who cares?"
An old woman passing by heard what was going on, heard Fyodor's comment, and she stopped. She looked at Fyodor, and Fyodor expected her to scold him for his words. That's what grown-ups in the village usually did when they heard him speak those words.
But this woman did not scold Fyodor. Instead, she said to him, "That is an excellent question!" Then she turned to the other children, and said to them, "Who cares?" The children had never heard those words from anyone but Fyodor, and had certainly never thought of them as an excellent question. But when they heard the words spoken as a question, they slowly began to give their answers. At first, only a few children answered, "I do," but soon almost all of the children were answering, "I do."
Fyodor was annoyed. He hadn't meant his words to be an "excellent question;" he had only meant them to sound "cool." He walked away from the old woman and the children. He needed time to think. While the other children were searching for Nadyezhda, Fyodor thought. Why weren't there any children his age in Zhizn? Everyone in Zhizn was either too old or too young to understand him. And he really needed to be understood.
As Fyodor was thinking these thoughts, he saw Nadyezhda. The doll was sitting against a log. He picked it up, and looked at it. Misha's grandfather had done a great job making that doll; it was beautiful. Fyodor had seen the doll before, but he hadn't really looked at it. He thought about the way the old woman's voice had sounded when she'd asked the children, "Who cares?" And as he held Nadyezhda, he knew his own answer to that question. He wasn't sure whether he would proudly hand Nadyezhda to Misha, or secretly leave the doll where Misha would be sure to find it. But he knew who cared. What Can't Be Taught 444.
I understand that there is such a thing as talent - that some people learn some things so quickly and become so proficient that they seem to be in a separate league. I've sometimes heard admirers of these people say, "That kind of expertise can't be taught; they're born with it." Of course, anyone who has known a newborn baby knows that babies are born without the impressive skills that are later sometimes called "innate." Though the potential for greatness may be there at birth, it does take at least some time to develop that potential.
I've occasionally argued with people who have said that some people are "tone deaf." Many of us teachers like to operate on the assumption that just about anyone can be taught just about anything. Facts can sometimes seem to contradict that assumption; a child who cannot hear any sounds is not likely to learn to distinguish a G from a G flat. And many teachers who have tried hard and failed to get children to learn certain concepts or skills find a certain amount of solace in believing that it just couldn't be done.
Still, many of us don't like to hear that something "can't be taught." We don't like to be powerless, as doctors don't like to yield to what some people call "God's will." We know disabilities and limitations exist, but it's hard to face failure; if plan A and B don't work, we look for plan C. Partly, it's that we care about the children whose lives will be easier and/or more pleasant if they can learn what we're teaching. Partly, it's that we need to prove that we're good at what we do. And there's also the carrot at the end of the stick - the great feeling everyone will have if the teaching and learning succeed.
And so many teachers are reticent to say or think that there's anything that can't be taught to any child. That reticence can be just what's needed; some of what doesn't work can work if approached as if it can work. Positive thinking does have some power. But maybe there are some things that can't be taught to some children; maybe the amount of effort required of both the child and the teacher is not worth the degree of success that's possible.
It's difficult to hear that a certain child is not going to learn what we're trying to teach. Belief in people's power to learn is pretty basic to teachers; many of us become teachers because of that belief. I've never been able to fully accept learning limitations; I've considered them temporary. As soon as a "limited" child got through the hard part, learning would happen. Or all I had to do was find the right approach.
Maybe it's good for some children to have teachers who refuse to accept limitations. I've heard of and seen successes that were supposed to be impossible. But I've also heard of and seen children who seemed to be victims of some teachers' refusal to give up; instead of teaching such children what they could learn, these teachers kept pushing children to learn what they couldn't learn. So it depends.

Tools 445.
We adults try to figure out which tools children will need as they face their futures. That's because we care about them, and want to make sure they're ready - that they aren't hit by unpleasant surprises. After all, we know what it's like to be hit that way; we've been there. And maybe we think we know what we should have learned - how much better off we'd be now if only we'd known certain things. So we try to teach children those things.
I've heard that life used to be simpler, and that parents and teachers were once much better at preparing children for their futures, because their futures were pretty similar to the past. They'd grow up, learn a trade, marry, have children, and so on. They didn't have to think so much about career changes, divorce, childlessness, and all those "modern" phenomena. I don't know exactly how true that is; I wasn't there. It sounds true enough, though.
But nowadays, we ought to think hard about the tools we give children to face their futures. When I was in college, I was warned about an upcoming computer age. I was told that I'd better learn Fortran, a computer language, and learn to use base two, because that's what computers used. I did learn how to use base two; that took me about five minutes. But I didn't even learn what Fortran was. And now I use computers a lot. In English, not Fortran.
As I think about these articles I've been writing, I realize how arrogant and presumptuous they may sound to some of you. Especially if you disagree with me. I've taken on the role of village elder. And at the time of this writing, I'm not even fifty yet. There was a time when a fifty-year-old could have been a village elder, but now, in this culture, most people around my age are far too active and busy to sit around being village elders.
And nowadays, we "elders" have to watch what we try to pass off as wisdom. Perhaps we've gathered and created tools that have helped us live our lives. Maybe not so much. But whether or not those tools work for us, they may have little relevance to people who are going to come of age in the twenty-first century.
The answer many of us got in education courses was that we ought to be teaching children how to learn. That makes some sense; they're going to need to know how to learn. But even that kind of teaching has to be tentative; it's good that we've abandoned some ineffective techniques and some irrelevant curriculum, but we still have to be ready to change - to put away some tools that worked for us but won't work later on.

Writing Fiction 446.
I've sometimes tried to write fiction. I've liked some of what I've written, and even sent some of it to a few publishers (with no success). And yet I only recently learned, in a third grade class, that there are some conventions to follow in writing fiction. I learned that even though you may have mental pictures of what your characters look like and where your story takes place, you've got to give those pictures to your readers.
My stories have tended to let the reader know what the characters were thinking, what words were said, and what actions and events took place, but my words have rarely painted pictures.
I thought that writers like Thomas Hardy only described their settings in such detail as a matter of personal style. My high school English teacher told us that Hardy's description of the heath in The Return of the Native made the heath almost seem like a main character in the novel, and I could see what he meant. But I didn't think I had to apply any bit of Hardy's style to my own writing. The first chapter of The Return of the Native was not fun to read; in fact, it made some of us want to go get the Cliff Notes, rather than actually read the whole book. Almost nothing happened in the first chapter. It was torture.
While that chapter of Hardy's still seems extreme to me, the third grade lesson I observed (and, ironically, helped teach) got me thinking about fiction. When children first start writing fiction, they often start the way I have - they tell the reader what's fun to tell. For many children, action is what's fun to tell about. If the reader has no idea who the characters are, or where the action is happening, too bad. It's no fun telling about that stuff.
The children I taught often wanted to write fiction, but I usually told them that I wanted their stories to be true. My reason was that much of the fiction children wrote in my class was not as good as their autobiographical writing. They gave more details when they wrote about what had actually happened to them, and what they had done. Attending to detail is hard work, and it's a little easier for some children to find details in their memories than in their imaginations. Their fiction tended to list actions, and connect the actions with the word "then." At first, I tried to steer them away from that tendency, and later, after I'd learned a little more about teaching, I tried to get them to steer each other away from it. It didn't occur to me until that third grade lesson I observed that I've been trying to teach children how to do something I don't do as well as I could.
I'll try to write better fiction now, and I'll try to help children do so, too. It's too bad no one succeeded in teaching me about the importance of describing the settings of stories, or the characters. But that kind of focus makes for better writing and better teaching.

Elijah 447.
Yesterday, I worked with a boy named Elijah. He was supposed to be doing a worksheet dealing with the values of various sets of coins, but it quickly became clear that he had very little understanding of what coins were worth. I asked his teacher whether I could work with him on that understanding, rather than try to pull him through the worksheet. She nodded knowingly. If teachers were perfect, they'd only give children appropriate challenges. And we do keep trying to zero in on perfection, but we're not there yet.
I asked Elijah whether he knew what a quarter was worth. He started guessing. So instead, I told him that a quarter was worth twenty-five cents, and then I asked him what it was worth. He replied, "Twenty-five cents." I asked him what two quarters were worth, and he replied, "Twenty-five cents." I told him that if one was worth that much, two would have to be worth more. So he said, "Twenty-six cents." Then, as I started to explain the error in his thinking, he said, "Twenty-seven cents...twenty-eight cents."
At that point, I could have put more energy into backing up with him and dealing with the concept he needed to deal with. But he was tired of concentrating on this. He was quite distractible, and he'd already been concentrating on it for what seemed, to him, to be a long time (what seemed, to me, to be the better part of a minute). He liked to work quickly, and I did not have the energy to try to get him to slow down at that moment. Instead, I told him that two quarters equal fifty cents, then asked him what two quarters equal. He replied, "Fifty cents."
Elijah doesn't like to spend much time working on things he doesn't understand. Neither do I. I'll bet many of you don't, either. I decided to try getting him to remember that one quarter is worth twenty-five cents, and two of them are worth fifty. He likes memorizing, and has had some success with it. Most of the other children in the class were working on learning math, but this did not feel like a good time to work with Elijah on math. So instead, I spent the time helping him memorize the value of one quarter, and the value of two quarters.
Memorizing is not math. A child can memorize the times tables and have no idea what multiplication is. In fact, Elijah has been memorizing the times tables, and in order to get him to agree to practice telling me the values of one quarter and two quarters, I had to intersperse four times five, three times four, and so on. He's a little more willing to practice what he doesn't know if he's also allowed to practice what he knows.
Elijah presents a challenge to me, and to the other teachers who work with him. I'm going to try to rise to the challenge - see whether I can find the right balance between allowing him to feel successful and helping him move closer to understanding what he'll eventually need to understand. He wants to succeed, and for him, success has a lot to do with speed. When a child learns slowly, it's tricky to incorporate speed into his educational plan. I'll let you know how this works.
When Teachers Succeed 448.
Teachers, like many other kinds of people, sometimes accomplish what they try to accomplish. They succeed. And also like many other kinds of people, they are often reticent to admit to themselves or anyone else that they have succeeded. Some think it would be arrogant to claim success. Some think it would be bad luck. Some aren't at all aware of their own success, and some are too busy thinking about what they want to accomplish next.
But success does happen. Sometimes a child who has had trouble understanding something finally gets it. Or two children who have been driving each other crazy figure out how to peacefully coexist, or even become friends. Those moments or processes may be causes for celebration, or at least good feelings, but teachers are often slow to believe that these miracles have happened, and teachers are even slower to take credit for the roles they've played.
In a way, it's wise to temper optimism with caution. What looks, at first glance, like a major breakthrough may turn out to be painfully temporary. Or it could be illusion, born of hope; we want progress so much that we see it before it's there. I, myself, have always been quite prone to such illusions, and I'm slowly learning to temper my own optimism.
But many teachers (and other people) take caution to an extreme. After spending years taking courses, reading, doing research, writing papers, and teaching, teachers do develop expertise. But I suspect that some people in some other lines of work have more of a tendency to grow to believe that they are good at what they do. Sometimes, their expertise is even officially recognized.
That kind of confidence and that kind of recognition are less common among teachers. When a teacher does a good group lesson, or helps one child master something difficult, there's a tendency to give most or all of the credit to other people. And other people do deserve credit; it's impossible to teach without the involvement of at least one other person (the learner).
But I hope teachers can learn to take more credit for the good work they do. True, success is more likely when learners work to learn. Support from the people at home is nice, too. Colleagues and former teachers deserve some credit. But teachers who succeed deserve to take their share of credit, go home feeling good about their successes, and maybe even have some kind of treat to celebrate.

Early Childhood Memories 449.
A third grader recently spoke to me about something she remembered about first grade. She remembered that I spent one recess drawing a portrait of one of her friends. I remember it, too. I'm not sure, but I think she may have wished I'd drawn a portrait of her. But that's not my main point. It surprised me that she remembered the incident at all. And it reminded me that early childhood memories, though often uncovered during adulthood through psychotherapy, are based on things that happen during early childhood - during the moments children live each day.
Some of us like to think we live every moment to the fullest, but I guess the truth is that we live some moments more fully than others. And what may be relatively insignificant moments to us may be pivotal moments to people we affect. Off-the-cuff comments we make may be just what others may need or not need to hear. Once, when I was teaching high school, I happened to notice what one boy had written in his notebook: "'People are capable of great failure.' - Mr. Blue" I had a dim memory of having said that, but it was in the context of a discussion of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades," and it's not something I'd want to make its way into Quotations from Chairman Bob. I have no idea how much my off-the-cuff comments have affected the children I've taught, but I hope most of the comments that have had major effects have been good ones.
Children have not had as many things happen to them as we have. And they haven't heard or seen as much as we have. So what they do experience, hear, or see is more likely to affect them. If we have negative experiences as adults, we can file them in whatever negative experience files we keep in our minds. Most of us know that such things happen, and we don't always have to make a big deal of it.
But children's mental files aren't as voluminous, and so children are more apt to keep information that we've assumed - sometimes hoped - would be ignored or thrown away. They remember what we say and do, even when we're not necessarily thinking clearly about how our words and actions will affect them; some of our casual utterances and deeds become their early childhood memories, perhaps to be dug up later in psychotherapy.
I've already recommended, in a previous article, that you avoid thinking everything you say and do will become part of who your children and pupils are. Thinking like that can make you decide to just stay away from children altogether. I'll stand by my recommendation, but I also recommend that you think, from time to time, about how your words and deeds are absorbed by children.

Misbehavin' 450.
There are children who do things they aren't supposed to do, and smile as they do. Some adults, seeing this happen, conclude that such children want to get caught, want to get punished, and/or don't care. Such conclusions make it easier to make sense out of what's going on: the children are bad, and should be severely punished. Maybe they'll "learn their lesson," and maybe not, think such adults, but trying to "understand" these children is a waste of time; they're just bad kids.
I am not immune to that kind of thinking, but I know that I relate with children more effectively if I manage to avoid it or get beyond it. Children who consistently misbehave are often used to having adults reprimand, punish, and do whatever else they can to stop the misbehavior, and they have ways to stop those adult reactions/responses from having the effects they're supposed to have.
Right now, I'm thinking of one particular child who consistently does what teachers tell him not to do, and doesn't do what he's supposed to. Some of the teachers who work with him are quite convinced that he knows what he's doing wrong, and I think that in a way, he does know. He knows that he's supposed to focus on assignments, that he's supposed to sit up the way the rest of the class does, and basically, that he's supposed to do the things one needs to do to get along in school.
But knowing how he's supposed to behave is not enough. Whatever factors combine to motivate other children to stay in line don't work for him. And so adults often conclude that he has chosen to misbehave, get scolded, get punished, and so on. And his cheerful smile just makes it worse.
Maybe it would help to look inside the mind of a child who tends not to misbehave. I was such a child. There were times when I fooled around in class, but I usually had a sense of which teachers appreciated which antics, and I rarely bothered teachers. I even charmed some of them. When I made mistakes, I recognized them as mistakes pretty quickly, and I made the necessary adjustments. I knew which side my bread was buttered on.
Children who misbehave either haven't figured out the system the way I did, or don't have the same priorities I had. For one reason or another, they're getting the system to work in ways that end up making their school days troublesome for themselves and/or the people who work with them. I don't have any magical cures, but I'm convinced that such children and the people who work with them do better when teachers act on the assumption and conviction that all children want to succeed.

Needing Attention 451.
I got some immediate feedback about my article entitled "Misbehavin'." My friends reminded me about another way of thinking about misbehavior: children misbehave to get attention. I have no doubt that many - maybe most - do, but I've often been frustrated by that explanation. If they misbehave to get attention, then the obvious thing to do is ignore misbehavior, or address it in a way that doesn't involve attention, and conspicuously give good attention to those who don't misbehave. That can be hard to do.
One of my friends said her approach was to simply tell a young culprit that he didn't need to misbehave to get attention. She gave him the attention he wanted, and it worked. Another said he's mastered the art of ignoring those who misbehave. That works for him. At the Fort River School, most teachers respond to misbehavior by thanking children who aren't misbehaving. I suspect that there was once some workshop or speech about this approach, because it's become a Fort River trademark. And it's pretty effective.
I'm trying to get to a bottom line about this issue, but I'm afraid that there may not be one. What works with one child, teacher, and/or situation may not work with another. The least effective approaches I've seen have ignored or given very weak attention to children who weren't misbehaving, and given disruptive children the kind of attention they seemed to be asking for. No one wins when that happens; even the children who get what they seem to be asking for either weren't really asking for it, or don't want it once they get it. And other children learn that misbehaving is the only way to be noticed.
I used to fantasize, now and then, that I had the power to stop time, freeze my class, and deal with one child at a time. I would speak to the whole group, freeze the class and stop time, then check with each child to see if what I said was heard and understood. Then I'd defrost everyone, start time again, and resume the lesson. Any time a child started misbehaving, I'd stop time, freeze everyone, and deal with the misbehavior.
So much for fantasy. In reality, teachers have to deal with misbehavior in ways that work for them and for the children they teach. It's helpful to remember that children who misbehave are often asking for attention, but it's also helpful to remember that some aren't, and are surprised and disoriented when they get it. As a volunteer who's free to work one-to-one almost all the time, I can focus effectively on some children who misbehave. I can also choose not to deal with others if I don't want to. But a teacher who is responsible for a whole class (and who can't stop time and freeze his/her class) has to find out what works for her/him, the children, and the situations.
Daydreamers 452.
I'm a daydreamer, and always have been. Sometimes, I pay attention better than other times, but there have always been times when I've drifted off into my own Walter Mitty world and missed important things that were said by people who weren't in that world. For example, when I told my mother I had no homework, I usually meant it, whether I actually had homework or not. Maybe my unconscious mind had blocked out any memory of having been assigned some homework, but I didn't know. Really. And when I got to school the next day, if there had been homework, I was sincerely surprised.
Some teachers held my attention more successfully than others. What they said was more of a factor than how they said it; a dramatic style may have gotten my attention at first, but if a lesson was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, I tuned out pretty quickly. And conversely, some teachers who spoke in relatively monotonous voices nevertheless said things that fascinated me.
I'll take you on one of the many journeys my mind took while I was supposed to be paying attention. It'll be a sort of guided tour, for those of you who have never daydreamed. Of course, each daydreamer follows a different route, and ends up in a different place, but what we have in common is that we don't travel the route the teacher mapped out, and we don't necessarily end up in the place the teacher had in mind.
As we start our journey, the teacher asks for attention. Like everyone else, I dutifully sit up, face the teacher, and wait, intending to receive whatever information the teacher passes. Then the teacher says, "One thing I really want you to understand and remember is...Wally, put that away." And off I go.
Wally has been playing with a toy; the teacher is trying to get him to focus on the lesson. Her comment to Wally is not what she wants us to understand and remember. But I like playing with words (that's not a new hobby I have). So I think about how I am going to understand and remember "Wally, put that away." In my mind, I play around with a few mnemonic devices. And because I'm playing around like that, I end up having no idea what the teacher really hopes I'll understand and remember.
If you're a teacher, I hope you don't have too many children who play the kind of game I sometimes played. I sometimes had that kind of child in my class, and though I sometimes enjoyed such a child, sometimes I didn't. I learned to watch what I said - to be as precise as possible. Just in case there was my kind of daydreamer in my class.
Not everything every teacher says is fascinating. And luckily, not every child has to be fascinated in order to pay attention; some do it because they know paying attention often has its own rewards. But when there's a child who is easily distracted, either by external events or by what goes on in the child's mind, teachers often have some extra work to do.
Reading to Children 453.
As a child, I always enjoyed being read to, and as a teacher, I always enjoyed reading to children. In one of the classes in which I volunteer, Jerry Friedman, the father of one of the children, comes in every Friday to read a chapter or two of The Hobbit to the class. He reads dramatically. When he reads dialogue, he really hams it up. And the children and I are spellbound. For twenty minutes or so, we are all in Middle Earth.
Not all of the children appear equally spellbound all the time. Some look at each other from time to time, and don't look as if they're listening to Jerry. But when he gets to an exciting episode, they know, and they turn toward him, so they must be listening a little. So far, I haven't seen Jerry turn toward the few who don't seem to be totally spellbound and say to them, in effect, "Be spellbound!" He enjoys what he's reading, and knows that most of the children (and I) enjoy it, too. If some children don't stay focussed, that's okay.
That isn't the way the rest of the day goes, but neither is it recess; Jerry's reading of The Hobbit is part of the planned curriculum. There won't be a test when he's done, to see whether children understand the plot, remember the details, appreciate the character development, and so on. But children see a book coming alive in the classroom, and all the children - even the ones who don't appear spellbound - will remember the journey of Bilbo and the dwarves.
Some children may have seen the Rankin/Bass cartoon based on the book. Some may see it later. And television, the relatively cool medium that provides visual images for children instead of letting children imagine their own, can undo some of the good that's done by Jerry's reading. The voice Jerry uses for Smaug, the dragon, is not the voice of Richard Boone, who does Smaug's voice in the movie. Children tend to accept television as a kind of reality, so some may hear Jerry's voices as impersonations of the "real" Smaug, Bilbo, Gandalf, etc.
I know that teachers usually do have to find ways to capture and hold children's attention; they can't read children The Hobbit all day, and even if they could, children wouldn't stay captured by it all day, every day. And there are lots of less interesting things children have to do in school. Parts of the curriculum may be fascinating, but there are children who are hard to fascinate.
I've heard that reading aloud to people is always age-appropriate - that people don't outgrow the enjoyment of being read to. I know I haven't. But for many parents, it's difficult to set up a read-aloud time at home. There's too much other stuff going on, and anyway, television is a fierce competitor. Too bad. But I'm glad there are Jerry Friedmans around to compensate a little.


When to Complain 454.
My article about grumpiness begins to tell a tale that will probably come out in bits and pieces. Nowadays, when I feel like complaining about something, I try to spend time and energy thinking about whether complaining would be an appropriate thing to do, and if so, how to do it. I don't rule out complaining; in fact, I do it more now than I used to, because I believe, more confidently, that I deserve to be treated well.
But I do think about the roles complaining can play, and if I don't think I am ready to complain appropriately and effectively, I try not to do it. It's my responsibility, not my defendant's, to figure out exactly what I'm complaining about, and what I want to happen. If I've been treated in a way I'd rather not be treated, I've still got to figure out how much is my share of responsibility, and take it.
This approach has led to some interesting processes. I have a good friend who thinks pretty clearly about interpersonal issues, and I've been able to have entire arguments with this friend, only telling her after the argument is resolved. It saves lots of time and trouble, and so far, my friend says I represent her point of view fairly accurately. So the good thing about arguing - the way it enhances communication and builds the relationship - is intact.
When adults relate with children, that kind of shortcut is not as useful. Children are not as likely to know how their words or deeds have affected other people, so they often have to be told. If they've heard it before, that can confirm the legitimacy of the complaint, make it harder to hear, or both. It depends on the child, the complaint, and the plaintiff. But we can't assume that children know what there is for us to complain about.
Still, there are times when our complaints ought to be weighed and categorized before they're delivered to children. That doesn't mean we have to bend over backwards, but adults are often too quick to complain to children. After all, children are small and vulnerable, so they make convenient scapegoats. If adults explain things wrong, or set things up wrong, children are quite apt to respond in ways adults didn't have in mind, and whose fault is that?
We've all got to find ways to get along in this world, whether by relating to each other or, when necessary, avoiding each other. To a certain degree, children have to figure out what makes adults tick - what lights their hearts, and what lights their fuses. But adults also have some responsibility - to get to know themselves well enough to know when to complain and when to just take care of inner business inside.

When You See a Teacher in Town 455.
In our culture, it's customary to acknowledge people when you happen to get eye contact with them. If you don't know them, you say "Hi," and maybe talk about the weather a little. S. I. Hayakawa (whom I admired as a student of language, though I didn't like his politics) called this "the language of social cohesion." It's meant to keep us in touch with each other, but not to communicate anything significant. The weather is rarely a hot topic.
When you see someone you know, you're expected to talk about more than the weather. If you know each other, you have more in common than how meteorological conditions are affecting your day. So you can talk about politics, how your mother is doing in the hospital, whether your job is any better than the last one you had - the possibilities for non-meteorological discussion are endless.
Your child's teacher is someone who has at least one thing in common with you. You know each other in at least one way, and unless you happen to have connected with this person in other ways, it's natural, when you see him/her in town, to ask, "How's Methuselah (or whatever you've named your child) doing?" You may already have a pretty good idea of how Methuselah is doing. In fact, you may even have had a conference with this teacher quite recently. But you've already made eye contact, and you've got to talk about something.
The teacher could just say, "Fine," and treat the question as a social synonym for "How are you?" But that's risky. Teachers aren't really supposed to be thinking about the children in their classes every minute of the day, but parents like to know that their children are important enough to be substantial topics of conversation. And so there's usually a little parent/teacher conference as the two conferees pick out groceries or wait in line at the bank.
It may be that both of you are thinking, I don't want to talk about this now. But neither of you has what it takes to say that. You each want to make sure the other knows that you spend plenty of time thinking about the child - that neither parenting nor teaching is just a chore you have to get over with so that you can get on with the parts of life you're REALLY interested in.
But I'm sure the two of you do have other things in common. And if you talk about those other things, you won't be betraying the child you have in common. The bank, the supermarket, or wherever you are isn't the best place for a parent/teacher conference; neither of you is really there for a conference, and you're in public, for Pete's sake. Why not probe a little, get to know each other a little? Or you could even talk about what a nice day it is.
"You Don't Have to Talk 456.
When I was in junior high school, a friend whose thinking I trusted heard me during one of the many marathon talking sessions I had back then (I've cut back somewhat since then), and said to me, "Bob, you don't have to talk." I was taken aback by his comment. While the statement was literally true, and while the talking I was doing at the time he made the comment was not full of important substance, it was the wrong thing to say to me at the time. From my point of view, I did have to talk (as I now have to write); there was an emptiness inside me, and talking seemed as if it might have filled some of it. My feelings were hurt.
To some teachers, "talk" is a bad word. Many of these teachers actually tend to talk a lot, but they don't want children in their classes to follow their example. I used to find it hard to be a pupil in the classes of teachers like these - especially if the teachers spoke in ways that were hard to listen to. And now, as a volunteer, it's hard for me to see children suffering under the same kind of imposed gag rule that I used to have to put up with. And it's hard for me to see them have to spend so much time listening. If these teachers think talking is so bad, why do they do it so much?
I do work with some teachers who encourage children to talk. In these teachers' classes, "talking" is not as synonymous with "interrupting" as it is in other classes, and in general, it isn't such a bad word. I like those teachers. They help prepare children to live in the world they're more likely to actually live in; talking is a pretty useful skill in many occupations, in courtship, and in many other real-life situations and activities. School is supposed to prepare people for the lives they'll lead outside school, and after they leave school, they're probably going to spend some time talking.
I'm not saying silence is never golden. There are good reasons not to talk all the time. It's a good idea to make sure you either have something worth saying or are in a situation where that doesn't matter. And maybe other people have things to say. It's only fair to let them have their chances to be heard. It's usually harder to listen and think if you're talking. And children often have to learn how and when to be silent.
But so do adults. None of us is perfect at keeping quiet at the right times. We all interrupt, put our feet in our mouths, say things we haven't thought through, and some of us even talk just to hear our own voices. And you're hearing this from someone who does all of the above. I love to talk. Many of us adults do. But let's give children more chances.

Professors 457.
One word I sometimes enjoy playing with is "professor." I haven't bothered to find out how the word came to mean what it usually means, but I enjoy thinking of a professor as one who professes. That is, it's someone who professes to know and teach, but may or may not actually know and teach. That definition fits some of the people who have been in positions to teach me.
When I first thought about moving from my position as high school English teacher to one as elementary school teacher, I was worried about whether the cut in salary would make it hard for me to support my family. I was sure that teaching second grade would be much more fun than teaching high school (which it was, for me), and I assumed that I would therefore be paid much less. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I would be on the same salary schedule as high school teachers.
In some ways, I didn't have to know as much, nor profess to know as much. I didn't have to think about the fine points of grammar any more, nor worry about whether the people I taught would have vocabularies richer than mine. True, I'd have to know math, science, and other things high school English teachers didn't even have to profess to know. But I wouldn't have to know them too far beyond a second grade level.
But it wasn't too long before I discovered that I did have to know more about how people learn than I'd had to know as a high school teacher. High school teachers can get away with not knowing diddly about how people learn; they can put their pupils totally in charge of being or becoming students. I knew high school teachers who held themselves accountable for their pupils' learning, but I also knew quite a few who didn't - who professed to teach, but were quite content to let some pupils fail.
Some of the least effective teachers I've known taught in college, and some were called "professors." They had various college degrees which were supposed to indicate that they were knowlegeable, and somewhere along the line, authorities had surmised that these degree-holders' supposed knowledge would make them good teachers. And so they were entrusted with the education of some more potential degree-holders. And so on, and so forth.
It's too bad. As long as teaching is useful, it's a skill, an art, and a science. We do encourage children, as much as possible, to take charge of their own learning. But if teachers put their pupils totally in charge of their own learning, then they aren't teaching, shouldn't be paid, and shouldn't have any power over their pupils' futures. If they don't teach, they aren't teachers.
This sounds pretty harsh, doesn't it? I do know professors I admire - people who do more than profess to know and teach. But I think there's a hole in the system, and it lets in people who may write books, and may have done well in courses, but who have no idea how to teach.

Book Reports 458.
Imagine doing something you have just learned to do, and are already beginning to enjoy. But then imagine that as soon as you finish doing it, you're going to have to do something you are still trying to learn to do - something you can't yet even imagine enjoying. And that's what it means to some children to have to do a book report. Many children learn to read much more easily than they learn to write, and many quickly begin to love reading. But for some of them, having to write a book report is a punishment for having read a book, and though they really do like reading, it just isn't worth such a punishment.
There are reasons teachers assign book reports. The first one I can think of is also the reason I assigned book reports some years - a reason I can tell you in one word - tradition. As far as I'm concerned, it's not enough of a reason, but schools are institutions, and like many other institutions, they do have traditions - some so firmly rooted that they don't easily succumb to clear thinking. And there were years I didn't have the energy to explain why I didn't want to assign book reports, or the gumption to simply fly in the face of tradition.
Like many other traditions, book reports have accumulated rationales, and have their devotees. I'll try to describe some of these rationales, but it's too late to fool you; you already know where I stand. One rationale is that book reports are written evidence that reading has happened. If we don't have children write book reports, think believers in this rationale, they may say they've read books, but there won't be any proof.
Another line of thinking is that reading, handled effectively, can become a fad, and book reports can serve as a form of advertisement. One child will hear or read a book report done by another child and rush to the library to get the reported book and read it. I think this does indeed happen, but I also think the success rate of this kind of advertising does not indicate that it's cost effective. For every child who is captivated by hearing or reading book reports, there are many who are repelled by having to create them.
I majored in comparative literature in college, so I've probably written more about books than the average person. For me, it was sometimes even pleasant to write about books. But I think I'm an exception; I don't think most of you have written book reports since the times you had to. And unless you have a job reviewing books, you probably won't ever have to write them again. Come on, now, doesn't that sound good?
Let's let children read when they're ready. Let's let them write, too, when they're ready. Both activities ought to be or become enjoyable. But let's put an end to the tradition of making them write book reports.

Staff Meetings 459.
One of the great things about being a retired volunteer is that I don't have to go to staff meetings unless I want to. Now in my third year as a retired volunteer (as of this writing), I still haven't wanted to. I like spending time with the teachers; we have great discussions in the
teachers' room, and they really make me feel like part of the staff. But no one has even tried to get me to attend staff meetings, and I don't feel the least bit left out.
Staff meetings are not supposed to be fun, but they are supposed to be useful. And for the most part, the teachers who object to them (almost all of the teachers who attend them, in my experience) don't object so much to the fact that the meetings aren't fun. They wish they could spend the time doing other things that may not be fun, either, but are more
useful - preparing to teach.
The staff meeting agenda is usually prepared by a person or people who believe that there are certain items teachers all need to hear, see, and/or discuss. Ideally, these are items which couldn't be handled better through a newsletter. Newsletters, unfortunately, aren't reliably effective media. There are teachers (including the one writing this article) who mean to read newsletters, but don't get around to it until it's too late for some of the items. There are even some teachers (including the one
writing this article) who forget about newsletters and/or lose them. It's reminiscent of what some pupils do. I'm not going to argue that newsletters should replace staff meetings.
But maybe there's a way to plan staff meetings so that they'll be as meaningful and useful as possible. First of all, in planning staff meetings, planners ought to think carefully about which items are intended for
everyone who will be at the meeting. Teachers have all kinds of work to do, and they'd rather not spend lots of time hearing other people discussing matters that don't concern them.
Sometimes there's someone who has something to say, and wants everyone to hear it. In a well-planned, well-run meeting, that someone won't be allowed to take up much time unless what he/she has to say has
already been deemed worthy of everyone's attention, or unless a quick-thinking and clear-thinking leader decides that it's worth everyone's time.
Good planning and good leadership are no guarantees that the people who attend staff meetings will consider them worthwhile. There are teachers who are so used to these meetings that they tune out the moment they enter the room. And it may be impossible to make sure every item on the agenda is meaningful to everyone who attends the meeting. All I'm saying is that there's room for improvement.

Deadlines 460.
There are many times when we're expected - maybe even required - to have something finished well, proof-read, collated, and mailed or handed in by a certain time. Not having done what's expected when it's expected may have unpleasant consequences. Your project, though perhaps better than someone else's, won't get the credit you think it should get, because it's late. Some people need deadlines, and do their best work when they know there are time limits; they need that structure. Others do better when they are allowed to work at their own rates; they don't like deadlines.
I, personally, need deadlines. Nowadays, I mostly set my own. I want to have written five hundred articles by April 30, 1997. That means I have to write an article almost every day from now till then. Of course, I'm the only authority I have to answer to. I'm writing a column for a newspaper, but the article I'm writing right now will appear in that newspaper around October of 2003 - six and a half years from now - so there's no rush. But I have a lot to say, and I'm afraid that if I don't keep writing...I won't keep writing.
I know children who like to know what's required, and when it's due. Some of these children want to know so that they can budget their time wisely. Others want to know so that they'll know how long they can procrastinate; why start something on Monday, they think, if it's not due until Friday? It helps some children when they're given a time structure to follow.
I also know children who don't like requirements or deadlines. That doesn't necessarily mean they don't like to work; it just means they like to be free to be in charge of their own timing. A common adult answer to children like this is, "Too bad. This work has to be done, and you've got to do it by the time it's due. That's life."
But that isn't life. It's just one way to approach one part of life. Lots of great work is done by people who aren't told that they have to do it, or at least aren't given a specific time by which it has to be done. I'm wary of attempts to get everyone to follow the same pattern; they may make things easier for the ones in charge, but they don't respect the uniqueness of each person.
I know all of this is easy for me to say. The deadlines I have are only the ones I choose to have. I used to think I worked better when people gave me deadlines, but now I think I work better when I am working according to my own schedule. I think some children are like that, too, and I think we'd do a better job preparing them for the future if we helped them discover the roles deadlines will or won't play in their lives.

More About Book Reports 461.
Some of my recent articles have elicited some feedback that deserves some attention. I like that. I'm quite sure that not every idea that makes its way into one of my articles is profound, and when people respond, I feel more sure that they're listening. I'm not doing what some radio talk show hosts seem to do - I'm not saying debatable things just for the sake of making debate happen. But debate is happening, and I'm not getting away with writing half-truths.
Every child is different, and every teacher is different. What I've written so far about book reports is based on my own experience as a child and as a teacher, and on the experiences of many of my friends. But now I've heard from other friends, who liked doing book reports, and liked encouraging children to do them. Some remember being eager to read so that they would later be able to write about what they'd read. Some remember various exciting formats for book reports. They remember dressing up as the main character in a book, and being interviewed by someone who played talk show host. Or writing a short sequel to a book, telling what happened after "The End."
I've heard from teachers who have argued, convincingly, that book reports help children focus and read with purpose. Some children need that. They need extra motivation, and for some, it helps to know that when they're done reading, there's something they're supposed to do about what they've read.
As a teacher, I tried hard to listen to people with whom I disagreed, and to learn from them. I'm still trying to do that. Part of my reason is that I'm not sure I'm totally right about everything I say. And the other part is that I think people will be more likely to listen to what I say if I listen to what they say.
So let me officially revise what I've written about book reports. I still have bad memories of having to do them and having to assign them, but there are people who have good memories of both. Making them optional is one way to approach the issue, but that's not the whole answer. Calling something optional doesn't make it optional. If some children do book reports and some don't, both peers and parents may consciously or unconsciously apply pressure on those who don't. Children can put pressure on themselves, too, not believing that teachers really mean "optional" (or not knowing what "optional" means).
And some children appreciate being told what they have to do; they wouldn't choose to write book reports, but once told they have to, they enjoy writing them. Some kinds of freedom baffle and/or immobilize them. I don't identify with that much, nor understand it much, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
Some of my articles are intended to try to convince you that my way of perceiving things is the way you ought to be perceiving them. But there are plenty of ways to look at book reports, as there are plenty of ways to look at many issues. And I hope there's room for that kind of diversity.
Who's in Charge? 462.
In my recent article about professors, I wrote that there are teachers who put their pupils totally in charge of their own learning. I wrote that that is not teaching, and I'll stand by that statement. If pupils are totally in charge of their own learning, then what are teachers in charge of? Taking attendance? Teachers are in charge of getting learning to happen. There are all kinds of ways to make it happen - some more effective than others - but teachers are in charge of finding out what works, and then doing it.
That being said, let me also say that teachers work hard to put their pupils more and more in charge of their own learning. They do that not to decrease their work load; as soon as they've gotten children to take charge of one concept or skill, there are plenty more ready for them. Teachers are not going to head down to the Bahamas, or stay at home and eat Bon Bons once the children have taken charge.
During my first year as an elementary school teacher, I didn't fully understand the degree to which I was in charge of children's behavior and learning. I thought that children's misbehavior was all about them, and as for learning, I thought that they would learn if they would just try to learn. I didn't know which aspects of children's behavior and learning I could effectively be in charge of, nor which I thought I ought to be in charge of. I didn't keep that job.
There are children who behave precisely as teachers want them to behave, and learn whatever teachers want them to learn. There are other children who reliably don't. And most children are somewhere between. I've heard some teachers say that certain compliant children have "taken charge of their own learning," and I've heard these same teachers talk about children who "have minds of their own," as if there is something wrong with that.
Getting learning to happen is quite a job. Teachers who get learning to happen sometimes look as if they aren't working very hard; they're very possibly enjoying what they're doing, and they probably aren't talking much. But they do lots of looking, listening, and thinking. They are in charge of getting their pupils to be in charge of learning.
Elementary school teachers, secondary school teachers, and (yes) professors who take responsibility for getting learning to happen have a lot of work to do. So do their pupils. That work can be joyful - can look and feel like play. And when good teaching and learning is going on, it's not so easy or so meaningful to speculate about who's "in charge."

Happy Endings 463.
I love happy endings. I always have. I like comedies. I don't mean funny shows; some of them are good and some aren't. I mean shows and books that move from disorder to order. That definition is what makes "comedy" the opposite of "tragedy;" tragedies move from order to disorder. Art is supposed to imitate life. Of course, theatre and literature can't do perfect imitations, partly because ideally, both end before the lives of the audience end. But comedies do remind me of various parts of my life that I like.
Children tend to love happy endings, too. Some are learning earlier and earlier not to - to love what I consider grotesque and cynical art. But I know they start out wanting everything to end up okay; they want the orphan to be adopted by some loving couple, or the child who couldn't see, hear, or walk to have a miraculous recovery. People who write and produce art for children are often less subtle than those who write for adults; subtlety doesn't reach children as much as it reaches adults. But children can get it, too.
I have a friend who is quite familiar with Russian culture, and she tells me that my story "Who Cares?" is charming, but not at all like the Russian literature I was trying to imitate when I wrote it; it's too positive. I've read a lot of Russian literature, and I disagree with her. In fact, my story was inspired by a story written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, reputed to be the king of gloom. Dostoevsky's "Dream of a Ridiculous Man" is about a man who starts out believing that nothing matters, and grows, through a dream, to care about people. And "ridiculous" doesn't refer to that caring.
Children's negative and gloomy thoughts and moods have to be respected; if children are only allowed to show their sunny sides, they aren't being allowed to be all they are. And I've seen adults scold children for not being totally cheerful, or ignore children's problems. Those children have to go elsewhere to be heard, or worse, not be heard at all. And that's not a happy ending.
When I'm in a good mood (which, so far, is most of the time), I think about the pleasant things that have happened, are happening, and will happen. I have two daughters I love, and they love me. I have many good friends, too. I've been doing my favorite work all my adult life - teaching. And I've also been doing my second favorite work for most of my life - making music. In fact, both can be done at once. I expect to stay involved in teaching and music for a long time, and I'm excited about that. My life has also had divorce, disease, and a few other problems. They're just as real, and I have good friends who help me through the difficult stuff. Let's try to be such friends for children.
When Company Comes 464.
I remember how excited I used to get as a child when company was going to come. Some people who didn't live in our house and follow the various patterns we followed were going to be in our house, and there was no telling what might happen. My parents would usually get food that they would put in bowls on end tables - food that, from our point of view, was better than our usual fare - and we children would have some, as long as we didn't overdo it. And the adults tended to get involved in conversations that didn't mean much to us or require much of us, so we could quietly overdo it as the adults discussed finances, politics, gardening, landscaping, each other's health, each other's changing lives, and whatever else they discussed.
But it wasn't just the food. Some of the people who came were funny, and were really into children. My cousin Hank, who was already an adult, always had jokes to tell. My mother's cousin Hesh played the guitar. That was cool. And some of the people who came had children - either younger children I could enjoy being older than, or children my age I could play with. Our house was different - had different smells, different sounds, and a different feel to it. Outside, there were different cars parked in the driveway.
Once in a while, we were asked to show guests what great children we were. We'd read poetry, show drawings, play music, or talk about our lives a little. I don't know how much of that was because the guests were sincerely interested in us, and how much was for our benefit. We certainly did like showing off, and I suspect that sometimes it was important to have some official time to let us do it. If not, we might end up doing it on our own schedules and in our own ways - maybe in the middle of some good discussions that didn't involve us. Asking us to show off may have had to do with our parents being proud of us, but it was also a wise strategic move.
When a child first learns a new word, the word may take on a very specific meaning, to be expanded later, when the child hears it used in new contexts. For example, some children think that "vacation" means "trip." To them, if you're not going anywhere, you're not on vacation. "Company" started out as a very specific word for me. "Company" was people other than my siblings and parents who came into our house, sat in the living room, and made our day a little different for a while.
I know that some children complain when people come to visit. I'm sure there were times when I complained. Sometimes I had my own things to do. And when adolescence sets in, there can be a tendency to separate; it can be difficult to get some adolescents to want to spend time with children and/or adults when they could be spending time with other adolescents. But now, well beyond adolescence, I have good memories of having company. And it's still fun.


Innocence 465.
The word "innocent" comes from the Latin word "nocere" - "to harm."
It does not come from words having anything to do with either knowledge or intention. So if we decided to go strictly by the word's root, we would call a person "innocent" if the person did not do any harm, regardless of whether harm was intended. And "innocent" would bear no relation to "ignorant." But epistemology is not meaning, just as history is not destiny; if "innocent" has come to sometimes mean "intending no harm" and sometimes "unaware," so be it.
Some people believe that children are especially innocent - that they want nothing but the best for everyone. They believe that people start out that way, and gradually (or not so gradually) get sneaky, cynical, cruel, and all those other nasty adjectives. They blame "society," although "society," viewed concretely, is really just a bunch of people, all of whom started out as children.
I don't believe in the innocence of children or anyone else. I think people's needs, desires, and problems bump into each other pretty regularly, and people harm each other. And I think some of that harm is premeditated, some not. Children who don't yet know language sometimes grab things from other children and/or hit. It's pretty natural; we all start out with wants and needs, and we do what we think will get those wants and needs met.
We start out fairly practical about our priorities. If grabbing and hitting don't work, we rely on other strategies that seem to work better - cooing, smiling - anything that works. I once spent some time with a father and his one year old son. The boy kept throwing things on the floor. The father kept saying "No!" in an angry voice. It looked to me as if the boy was having fun. He was getting very conspicuous feedback that told him his behavior was having an effect, and he liked that.
I decided to get involved. I asked the boy to give me one of the objects he had thrown on the floor. He did, and I thanked him, somewhat dramatically. The boy liked that feedback (probably even more than he liked "No!"), and brought me something else he had thrown down. He kept doing this until the floor was clean (and my lap was full of what he'd thrown down). And I don't think guilt or innocence had anything to do with this process. I don't think it's very meaningful or useful to call children "innocent." That doesn't mean I think there's anything wrong with them. And it doesn't mean I don't think children have qualities adults would do well to emulate. They do, just as adults have qualities children would do well to emulate. But I don't think our innocence and guilt have anything to do with how old we are.

The Rights of Children 466.
Children, like adults, have certain inalienable rights. Some are legal rights, and some are just plain right. We call rights "inalienable," but I don't think the word fools anybody; history and the present are full of examples of ways rights have been and are ignored or denied. But we keep trying hard to get our rights to become more inalienable, and though progress is slow, things really are better than they were a thousand years ago.
Adults, having so much more size, skill, knowledge, and power than children, can easily ignore or forget about children's rights. It's also easy to deny that children have any rights. Sure, they'll get bigger, more skillful, more knowledgeable, and more powerful, but some short-sighted adults don't think much about that; as long as they have power over children, they use that power however they want. If that will cause problems later, well, that's later.
Adults do things to children that many of them would never do to adults. I've seen angry adults take out their anger on children. Frustrated by a world that won't do what they tell it to do, they treat their children as they wish they could treat the whole frustrating world; they yell, hit, and punish. And their behavior is not as likely to get them in trouble as would behaviors that more directly express their frustration about everything.
Or they lie to children. Of course, lying happens all over the place, but children tend to be easier to lie to than the general public. Some catch on more quickly than others, but even if they do catch on, there may be little they can do about it, just as there's often little we adults can do when we become aware that people more powerful than we are have lied. We can become activists, but we may be too busy or too scared.
Adults tend to get away with stepping on children's rights. I suspect that if you're reading this article, you're an adult who doesn't do that as much, but I don't know; there are people who think hard about the rights of everyone except children, and maybe some of them are reading what I write. I hope so, and I hope my words have some effect.
Adults, of course, have rights, too, and there are many times when children's rights face adults' rights head-on. That's when adults are most apt to use their superior size, skill, intelligence, and power. It's also when adults are most likely to argue that the rights of children are not so important - that children can have rights when they're older - when they've "earned" some rights.
I don't think children should have to earn the right to be treated with respect. I don't think anyone should have to. I hope some of the rights we like to call "inalienable" can actually become a little more inalienable, and be granted to everyone, regardless of origin, gender, life style, or age.
Getting Lost 467.
My friends gave me a new computer yesterday. The one I'd had had a little black and white screen, and after several years of having all kinds of trouble with it, I'd gotten to know it. I'd used it to type and to send e-mail. That's just about all I'd done with it. Before I'd gotten my old one, the idea of even having a computer had scared me. Today, I'm trying to see the old one as a dinosaur. I think I understand how some people must have felt when the horseless buggy started replacing the horseful one. It was noisy, and looked as if it was going to be a lot of trouble (an impression which turned out to have quite a bit of truth to it). Change - even
improvement - can be scary.
I remember what it felt like to be lost as a child. Sometimes panic took over, and I just wanted someone to come rescue me. I either screamed or stayed totally silent. I guess that depended on whether I thought the attention screaming might attract would make things better or worse - would summon heroes or villains. Sometimes I didn't want anyone to know I was lost; as scared as I was, I'd rather be lost than be conspicuous. At other times, I didn't care who knew; I just wanted to
get home to Mommy and Daddy.
I went to college to find myself, but when I got there, I quickly found ways to lose myself. I didn't lose myself the way some people did - through drugs or alchohol - but I got lost in my own way. I had lived a
very predictable life, but in this new place, I had no bedtime, no imposed diet, and no people who were reliably there for me. It was exciting, but it was scary, too. The college was supposed to act in loco parentis, but the college, to me, was a place, not anything like parents. At least not in the good ways.
When people are born, right away, they're lost. They go from a dark, warm home to a place that's blindingly bright, different in temperature, full of strange sounds, sights, smells, and feelings. No wonder so many of them cry. It doesn't look, at first, as if life outside the womb is going to better than life inside was. Later, maybe it would turn out to be an improvement. And life inside the womb was going to get harder; children grow, and the womb is a fairly small place. And really, there's not much to do in there.
This morning, my cursor wouldn't move. At first, I panicked. I wanted my old computer back! Or I wanted to have a live-in computer expert to stay with me all the time until I had gotten to be friends with my new computer. But no expert was there. So I took out my owner's manual and looked for the solution to my problem. The manual was going to have to be my road map. I pressed whatever buttons the manual told me to press, and the computer restarted, with the cursor moving fine. And I happily found my way home, and wrote this article.

Withholding Information 468.
Since childhood, I've known that heat rises. They taught me about that in elementary school, and then they did some "experiment" to show us that they weren't kidding - that it really does rise. I got the impression that science was a method used to prove that what you already knew was true, was true. I got the same impression of geometry; it was a bunch of proofs that were basically unnecessary.
It wasn't until yesterday that it occurred to me that there's a reason hot air rises - that molecules move around faster, bump into each other, and bounce off each other, leaving extra space between them so that hot air is lighter than cold air, which doesn't rise. There's still plenty of mythology and faith involved in that explanation, but at least "hot air rises" now has some company in mind; it's not a totally isolated myth.
When I call these ideas myths, I don't mean they're not true; I'm commenting on the way they're often taught and learned.Teachers "cover" the concepts, and children have to show that they "know" them. After the dust has settled, the concepts may have been "covered," and children may "know" them to varying degrees, but many children end up thinking the way I thought for forty years: hot air just plain rises. Why? Because it does.
Yesterday, I observed a good science lesson. Children saw a teacher hold a plastic bag about twelve inches above a flame. As she held it there, she asdked the children what they thought would happen if she let go. Those children who had answers seemed to agree that the bag would rise to the ceiling. When the teacher let go, the bag did rise, and then it fell back down.
The children wanted her to do it again, and she did. Then she asked them why the bag had risen. They talked about hot air balloons, explaining that the heat made the bag act like a hot air balloon. That answer was good enough for some of the children but others wanted to know why a hot air balloon works. The discussion made me think of the children as hot little molecules, all bouncing off each other. It was pretty exciting.
The teacher may have had a deeper understanding of what was going on than the children had. And perhaps what I was finally realizing, after forty years of not thinking about it, was worth voicing. But I kept quiet, and the teacher did not offer an explanation, either. There are plenty of times in school when explanations from adults are very appropriate. But there are also times when children ought to be free to speculate - to search for their own explanations. Allowing that freedom can be difficult for adults who think they "know" the "right" answers; are children really learning if they're playing with "wrong" explanations? Yes, they are.

A Temper Tantrum 469.
Yesterday I dealt effectively with a childs temper tantrum. It mostly involved knowing what NOT to do or say, how to think about the tantrum, and how to express what I was thinking and feeling. I wish Id been able to
deal so effectively with tantrums when my own children were growing up. But maybe yours are growing up now, so maybe my thoughts will help you.
We had just watched a movie, and the child wanted to watch another one. I said no. The child yelled, cried, argued, and said things I knew she didn't mean. But I calmly stuck with my answer. I listened to her words,
and told her how difficult it was for me to see her so upset, but I also told her that I wasn't going to change my mind.
One thing I used to do was argue with the child throwing the tantrum. That never worked. Maybe I could win such an argument, but there was absolutely no prize for the winner. The process of arguing, when its effective, is rational, and temper tantrums aren't. Reasoning with a child who is throwing a temper tantrum is like throwing a parachute to someone who is drowning; you may mean well, but it doesnt help.
Another approach I used to try was humor. Humor works for me in many situations wherein nothing else works. Sometimes I could even get an angry child to laugh. But if humor doesn't work, it really backfires.
It says to the child, What you're upset about has no importance whatsoever. YOU have no importance whatsoever. And that's not a good message to give
anyone. Humor, if it's tried at all, has to be tried quite carefully.
Giving in doesn't work. It can stop a temper tantrum, but it usually makes the next one worse. A child throwing a temper tantrum may actually have a good cause - may have important points to make. My response, now, is to try to listen to what the child is saying, to try not to do anything about what I hear until the tantrum is over, and then to let the child know that the temper tantrum had made it hard for me to listen - that perhaps some of what had been said could have influenced my thinking if it had been said calmly.
It helped that the child throwing the tantrum was not my child. And it helped that there wasn't something I had to hurry up and get done; I had the time and the inclination to weather this storm. The temper tantrum
was much more difficult for the child than it was for me. I didn't take the whole thing personally. I didn't have a headache, and wasn't on the verge of getting one.
I am not pretending that I have the answer to temper tantrums. I'm retired, and my daughters are adults. Very few people who have to deal with temper tantrums have their lives set up so neatly. But I thought
you'd like to hear that I, one person who has tried dealing with tantrums by arguing, joking, or giving in, have found something that works: listening, conveying caring, and being firm about limits.

Religion and Mythology 470.
I was raised to be a devout atheist. My father taught me that belief in God was responsible for a great deal of trouble in the world. Without religion, he taught me, there wouldn't be so much war, poverty, oppression,
and so on. My mother didn't say much on the subject. I am now an agnostic. Sometimes I go to synagogue, and sometimes to the local Unitarian Society. If there were a Society of Friends easy for me to get to, I might
go to that, too. I still lean towards atheism, but I'm not so devout now.
Teachers can't avoid mentioning religion. Religion has been part of history, and is still going strong. Teachers are not supposed to present any one religion as being better than any other, but I don't think there's
any way to avoid doing that. The religions that are prevalent today in our country may be presented respectfully. And some teachers talk about less
prevalent but still modern religions with respect. But religions that don't have so many devotees here and now are sometimes presented as if they are illegitimate.
Take Greek mythology, for example. Prometheus stole fire from the gods, and gave it to people. That was a pretty gutsy thing to do, and he got punished for it. And we got fire, which has proven to be quite useful. But now the whole story is treated as a myth - something that people used to believe, but don't any more. According to us, the people who believed that story were wrong.
But children are told to respect the stories told by modern religions. To me, some of those stories sound just as fantastic as the story of Prometheus. They've been around for a few thousand years, and they're considered sacred, just as the story of Prometheus was once considered sacred. In fact, though I'm thinking of specific stories as I write this article, I'm not going to tell you which ones I'm thinking of. I don't want to offend you by implying that the story you believe in is at all
equivalent to the story of Prometheus.
I capitalize the names of all deities, but there are only certain deities Who get capital letters even when I use pronouns to refer to Them. When I refer to Zeus, I refer to him as him, not Him. When religion
becomes mythology, it loses a lot of its power.
I was thinking about all this as I heard a teacher talking with her class about mythology. Children love thinking about myths. I don't think Hercules is far from Batman in their minds; they're both incredibly great
people, neither one is or was real, and religion is something else, entirely. As an agnostic, I don't have a conclusion. But it's interesting to think about it.

The Working Environment 471.
After school, as a child and as an adolescent, I always came home to a place where I had my own room. That's where I did or didn't do my homework. I had a big desk that had a large map of the world on top, covered by a large sheet of glass. Sometimes I'd sit up in my room and read books, sometimes study the map and daydream about the world,
and sometimes even do my homework.
Now that I'm thinking about it, I realize that I was quite privileged. That was quite a room. It was the only room in the house with an air conditioner (that was because of my severe allergies, but I'll bet that on really hot days, my siblings wished they had allergies), and the view
out my windows was beautiful - woods, our pond, our corral. It was my place, and I decorated it the way I wanted to. I had all the privacy I wanted. My parents had four children, and each of us had a separate room. We were always told that we werent rich - that we only lived as if we were rich - but I know, now, that poor people couldn't have had what we had. Very few parents admit to themselves or their children that they're rich, and besides, everything's relative.
Some children who have their own rooms nevertheless do their homework at the kitchen table, or in the living room, in front of the television. Some do so because their rooms are too messy to work in, and some because they like to do their homework with people around, and/or with the TV on. Some like the context that gives them, and some like the distractions that can later serve as alibis for not doing the work. Privacy is not as important to some people as it was and is to me.
My parents considered education very important. Neither had a college degree, but they wanted their children to go to college. There was a huge dictionary near the kitchen table, and there were many times, during discussions over dinner, when we consulted that dictionary. I thought, at the time, that I learned because I wanted to - because I was a learning kind of guy - but I know, now, that the environment my parents
carefully provided sure helped.
Children don't have to have what I had. Some don't want to. Some seem to do their homework better while wearing radios on their heads, watching television, or hanging out with other people. I don't identify with that; I'm easily distracted by sights and sounds other than what I'm trying
to concentrate on, and I always have been. But I'm pretty sure that there are people who get distracted by silence and privacy. Different strokes for different folks.

Being Resilient 472.
Some people emphasize children's ability to survive disappointment, abuse, neglect, and disaster, and to bounce back. Some say children end up stronger because of the hard times they go through - that they're more ready for the raw deals life will offer them later on. I think there's some truth to that, but I was a relatively lucky child - one who had food,
shelter, clothing, and love - and I think enjoying my childhood prepared me for hard times. When things go wrong for me, I consider those things exceptions to the pattern of my life. I get through hard times knowing that things will get better. And from my point of view, they usually do.
Of course most children are resilient. Almost everyone is. Life is full of choices, and many of those choices involve deciding whether to give up or keep trying. And it's not always easy to tell the two apart. Even if you do give up on one of your projects, you're probably not going to just sit there for the rest of your life. That can get horribly boring. Probably,
eventually you'll get around to trying something else. And that can make you look and be resilient.
Enjoying childhood is not a sin for which people later pay. We don't owe it to our children to make sure they suffer, so that they'll get strong enough to endure any suffering that will happen later on. It's very natural to try new things, and its natural to fail at some of those things, and to suffer disappointment. That suffering does build character, but so does success, and the good feelings that come with it. And I don't think there's much danger that children will succeed so much that they won't be ready for failure when it happens.
What I'm saying is that children's resilience should not be used as a justification for actions and decisions that make their lives harder. Most of us don't try to build our own character by intentionally making our own lives more difficult. Quite the opposite; we do what we can to make our lives easier. True, we may eat foods we don't prefer because they're healthful. And we may exercise when we'd rather be doing something we consider more fun. But we don't do that in order to suffer. And those of us who don't like dieting or exercising would love it if we could stay healthy by doing things we'd rather do.
Children will sometimes fail. Sometimes, what they want most wont happen, and sometimes, what they want least will. Most of the time, they'll bounce back from those experiences. After all, we've made it to adulthood, with varying amounts of difficulty. But I, for one, think success, joy, and the other good things of life did more to build my character than adversity did. I'm not proud of my scars. I'm not ashamed of them, either, but if life had been even kinder to me, I wouldn't have complained. And I think we ought to be working to make children's lives more pleasant.

Routine 473.
Teachers have a lot of things to think about as they plan and carry out their plans. They think about the needs and preferences of the children, the curriculum, the issues that come up, the various senses of mission they feel, and their own needs and preferences. Some teachers
may approach teaching as just a job, with working hours and a salary, but for most teachers, it's much more than a job.
One thing that makes teaching a little easier to manage is routine. Routine can become a tyrant, but it can also be a friend; when all those things teachers have to think about become overwhelming, it's nice to know that certain things will happen the same way each day - that the children will enter the room whatever way theyre supposed to, sit where
they're supposed to, and so on. Whenever I was successful at establishing routines, I imagined the voices of Kozol, Holt, Silberman, and myself criticizing me. I heard us accusing me of trying to impose conformity on people who would rather be free to be themselves. Some children - maybe many - liked being told what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and so on, but some clearly didnt.
What about the child who wants to transcend routine? In a rigid teacher's class, transcending routine is considered misbehaving. Even little transgressions, like not tucking in your shirt or not taking off your hat, are liable to have unpleasant consequences. And bigger transgressions
are treated as sins. These vary from teacher to teacher, but I've seen teachers get very upset when they've seen children sitting on the radiator, using white lined paper for first drafts, or doing work they weren't supposed to do yet. And I'll bet I had my share of irrational taboos. I hope I didn't crush anyone's individuality, but I may have.
One of pupils' first tasks of the school year is to figure out the teacher a little - to get to know which behaviors are likely to have which effects on the teacher. Part of that task is getting to know routines. As a pupil, I had some teachers I could manipulate pretty well, and as a teacher, I had some pupils who did the same to me. I think that's fairly universal. Teachers try not to have favorites, and try not to have nemeses,
either, but most teachers do have to try; it doesn't come naturally. And the ones who become favorites are sometimes the ones who quickly figure out which routines are sacred and which ones are just routine.
I know ritual can help preserve sanity. It doesn't have to be a tyrant. It's possible to maintain useful patterns without stifling individuality. I've seen it done, and I've sometimes done it myself. Thoughtful exceptions to not-so-thoughtful policies can really work; if you give 'em an inch, they wont necessarily take a mile. Maybe they'll only take about an inch.

Writer's Block 474.
Sometimes people don't have anything they feel like writing about. That's my problem right now. I've been having computer trouble for almost a week, and during that week, I assumed that articles were growing in my mind, and that I would have all kinds of things to write about as soon as my computer was back where it should be. I thought I'd get back on schedule in no time, and still be able to meet my self-imposed deadline - finish article #500 by April 30.
This morning, I woke up, had breakfast, and sat down to write. I started to write an article about what good friends teachers can be. Then I decided that that article wouldn't work right now. Not that I don't think teachers can be good friends. Just that it wouldn't turn into a good article right now. I started one about music, art, movement, and poetry - about the difficulties involved in getting the community to realize the importance of subjects and activities that probably aren't going to have significant effects on children's SAT scores.
Subject after subject entered my mind, and some of them got me to start writing, but I write best when I feel some passion about something, and I gradually began to realize that I was experiencing writer's block. And feeling it quite passionately. What if no good idea came to me? What if article #473 turned out to be my final article? I really like writing, and I like having little dialogues (on-line, mostly) about what I write. Writing is one of my main activities, and writer's block is no fun.
I thought about what I do with children when they can't think of anything to write about. I'm usually pretty good at eliciting ideas from them. And what about the magazine I produce? I call adults and convince them to write articles. Even some who say they're not writers. And much of what they end up writing is pretty good. I really believe that there's an endless supply of writing material in every person. So why can't this physician heal himself?
As you may have noticed, this is a stream-of-consciousness article. Most of my articles start out with a point to make. But I have to write, and I can't sit around waiting all day for a point to come to me. So I'm writing about writers' block. It's a fairly common malady. This time, I've dealt with it by treating it as a subject. I won't be able to do that tomorrow; now I've already written about writer's block. But at least I've written something, and now I remember what it feels like to put my thoughts down where other people can see them. It's a good feeling. Who knows what I'll write about tomorrow? But at least I'm writing again.

Special Help 475.
Sometimes a child has difficulty doing what's supposed to be done in school. Ideally, the child, the child's parent(s), and school personnel work together to figure out what the difficulty is and what can be done about it. Then the child is given timely and effective help, and what was difficult gets easier. This scenario is not uncommon; special instruction often does what it's intended to do, and learning problems do get solved, or at least effective compensatory strategies get developed. That doesn't always mean the problem is solved, but there is often real improvement.
This usually requires the participation of key adults. When there are key adults, whether parents, teachers, or administrators, who resist the process of getting needed help for a child, it gets more complicated. There are teachers who are skilled at providing specific kinds of help, and there is usually a procedure to be followed to decide which teacher is most appropriate. At the end of the process, there is often a decision to increase a teacher's caseload, and sometimes, to spend more money. That's one possible complication; some teachers feel and/or are overworked already. Some classroom teachers are reticent to admit that they can't solve all problems on their own. And the school budget usually has some skilled guardians.
Parents can also provide obstacles. Special help can be just what's needed, but there are parents who resist that help, believing that such help implies that the child in question is deficient. "My child is not stupid!" say these parents. "If the teacher would teach right, there would be no problem." Or the child is blamed, and told to work harder. If a child has learning difficulties, it's usually a great oversimplification, and sometimes just plain wrong, to say that the child just needs to work harder. Some parents blame themselves, believing that their genes or their parenting created problems.
Maybe some learning problems are created or aggravated by parents or teachers. Maybe a child's attitude is the source of much of the trouble. But blaming is not very constructive; it doesn't make things better. What's effective is teamwork; all the people involved need to work together to help a child feel okay about having difficulty, and to figure out what can be done about the difficulty. That's not as simple as blaming, but it works much better.
Once a team has worked together to decide what kind of help is needed, there are still issues to deal with. The inclusion issue, for example, is one I've explored in two other articles. But the first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it is a problem. And the second step is for all the people facing the problem to work together to explore possible solutions.

The Terrible Toos and Theres 476.
The English language is full of homonyms. Teachers and children spend a lot of time wrestling with those homonyms. Some have fun wrestling; some homonyms are used in puns, riddles, and jokes. Eventually, children develop the ablility to tell words apart. "You," "ewe," and "yew," though a triple homonym, don't really present great problems; "you" is the common one, and the other two don't need to be used much. The same with "use," "yews," and "ewes;" "use" is usually the one to use.
But then along come "The Terrible Toos and Theres." There are six ways to spell these words, and at least ten meanings. "To" can refer to direction, and "there," to location, but both can also have meanings that are hard to define or explain. I usually presented the seven meanings that were easy to present, and told children to use "there" or "to" when they wanted to use either word for any but those seven meanings I'd taught them. Unlike what I do with many of the concepts I teach, I was trying to get children to just do it right; they didn't have to understand it. There may not be any way to explain to children what "there" and "to" mean in the sentence you're reading right now. In fact, the first "to" is part of an infinitive verb, and the second is a preposition with an object - "children." Try explaining THAT to a young child.
"Too" can mean "also," or can refer to excessive amount or degree, as in "too hot." That can still confuse children, but at least there are only two possible meanings, and both are relatively easy to explain. And the other three spellings, "their," "they're," and "two," are nice and specific. Each has only one meaning, and that one meaning is relatively easily defined and taught.
People who are learning English as a first language and those who are learning it as a second language have trouble with these words, but so do lots of people who have been using English for a long time. You probably won't see "there," "their," "they're," "to," "too", or "two" spelled wrong in any of my articles, but that's because I read my articles over and over, and am constantly looking for, finding, and correcting mistakes. If you do find a mistake or two, it's probably the publisher's error, not mine. At least, I hope so.
We adults are apt to forget how difficult it was to learn some things. Or if it wasn't difficult for us, we can have trouble imagining how it could be difficult for anyone. I didn't have much trouble learning The Terrible Toos and Theres, but I had lots of trouble teaching children which to use when. In fact, maybe if I'd had more trouble learning the words, I'd have less trouble teaching them. I never thought those words were so challenging. I guess there more of a challenge than I used too think.

Human Beings and Human Doings 477.
"I expected more of you," says the disappointed adult. And the child learns that what she/he has done is less than what the adult had expected and hoped for. The child may think, I'm not as good as this adult thought I was. This adult has misjudged me. Or maybe the child thinks, I've disappointed myself, too. Next time I'll do better. Children don't like to disappoint adults who are important to them. Even a child with a well-developed sense of self and a healthy supply of self-esteem still likes acceptance and approval from the people who count.
I remember the conscious reaction I tended to have when I was told that I wasn't living up to someone's image of me: someone had an inaccurate image of me, and it was being corrected by reality. But I'm sure there was usually more going on than that; if someone told me that he/she had expected more of me than I'd delivered, I'm sure I usually picked up some of that disappointment and carried it around with me. If someone thought I was better than I thought I was, maybe that someone had a point, and maybe I should try harder.
Peter Alsop, in some of his workshops, compares the phrases "human being" and "human doing." He says we're human beings, not human doings, and we owe it to ourselves to get rid of a lot of the "shoulds" we carry around with us - accept, appreciate, and celebrate who we already are, and stop blaming ourselves for not being who other people want us to be - who we've been taught to want ourselves to be. I've internalized a big chunk of his message, but I've also internalized expectations I've absorbed from other people. It's not enough for me to just "be;" I feel great pressure, from other people and from myself, to "do."
We get our self-images from many sources. Sometimes we have mentors and models we emulate, and we rate ourselves according to how closely we resemble our mentors and models. Sometimes we feel as if we are doing the best we can do, and being the best we can be. We expect ourselves to keep being and doing what we know we can be and do. I have good friends who assure me that they love me for who I am, but I can't help thinking that some of that love has to do with what I do. And that thought makes me want to do more, and do it better. There are times when I can just sit around and "be," but sooner or later, I feel pressure to "do."
Having internalized both kinds of messages - the one Mr. Rogers, Peter Alsop, and Billy Joel have given me (they like me just the way I am) and the one I've gotten from other sources (I can do better) - I don't quite know what to think. So I'll walk the line, and when I work with children, I'll try to help them walk the line - to fully accept and love who they already are, and yet to try to be the best they can be and do the best they can do. I hope that doesn't confuse them too much. And I hope I figure it out myself. The Absent Parent 478.
There are many parents today who don't live with their children. Of course, children do grow up and move away; eventually, the average parent has to adjust to life without her/his children, and vice versa. Children stop being children. But this article isn't about the empty nest syndrome or the trials and tribulations of growing up. It's about what goes on when the nest is still full, but one of the parents doesn't live there any more.
That situation usually causes lots of sadness. Children are used to having two parents. And even though children have a tendency to get embarrassed or otherwise annoyed when their parents show affection for each other - even though young children sometimes interfere with the hugging process by squeezing in between the hugging parties - the love two parents feel for each other provides security. And when that love is gone, or at least isn't so present any more, it's sad.
The day I lost custody of my children was the worst day of my life. Divorce was sad, too, but it felt more like something I could get through. But I moved into a little two-bedroom apartment - the best one I could find in the emotional state I was in. It was not a great place to live in, and it was even a worse place to visit. When my daughters came to stay with me on weekends, we tried to think of places we could go, lest we have to spend time in that apartment.
I wasn't the father they'd known. Living alone for the first time since college, I was trying to figure out who I was going to be. Marriage and parenthood had defined me all of my adult life; I was a husband and father. But now, I was some strange guy who lived in another town, away from the life my children were used to. Away from my children's friends. Away from their turf. I don't think that was how my children saw me, but it's how I saw myself. I was lost. I'd grown up in a family, spent the first twelve years of my adult life in a family, and now I was supposed to figure out how to be a good absent father. From my point of view, I was terrible at it.
I'm still an absent father, but now my daughters are more absent than I am. I think they forgive me, or don't even blame me, for the way I handled their adolescent years, living the life of a confused, lost single guy when they needed a father. They say we all have 20/20 hindsight - that we all know exactly what we would have done in the past if we'd only known then what we know now. And I've gotten all kinds of good ideas about how to be better at things I used to have trouble with. But as far as
being an absent parent - trying to squeeze the parenting I once did every day into a weekend in a strange new place - I don't know how possible it is. And if you're trying to do it, I wish you success.

Jimmy 479.
Once in a while, I try to imagine what's going on in a particular child's mind. Today I thought about a child whom we'll call Jimmy. Jimmy is slow. He's a third grader who doesn't really know all of the letters of the
alphabet yet, and there are many other things most third graders know and Jimmy doesn't. To me, it looks as if the one thing Jimmy would most like to know is how to make friends. He's nice, but being nice isn't enough. The other third graders know they're not allowed to make fun of Jimmy or exclude him, but you can't legislate friendship. Jimmy has not yet become close friends with any third graders. The main way to do that, it seems, is to play basketball.
It's hard to be someone who seems to think, learn, and behave like a five-year-old when you're nine years old, and so is everyone around you. In class, the teacher tries to help you develop knowledge and skills, and to
protect you from insensitive comments. The teacher may work hard to make sure you're included whenever you want to be. Some of the children may try hard, too; most children know the pain of being left out, and they
don't want to cause that kind of pain.
What is Jimmy thinking? How do this teacher and these children look to him? He may not have developed the social skills he needs if he wants to be invited to parties, neighborhood games, and the like, but when he's not invited, I think he knows what he's missing, and I think it hurts him. I think he knows that adults are trying hard to help him fit in. He knows some children are trying, too. And I think he wonders what's wrong with him - why everyone has to try so hard.
Out at recess, a lot of kids play basketball. Jimmy doesn't really understand basketball. He knows you're supposed to try to get the ball into the basket, but how are you supposed to do that when everybody is bouncing the ball and running around? If they would stay still, give him the ball, and let him try a few times, he might be able to get it in. But as you probably know, that's not the way the game is played. Jimmy gives up after a few minutes and goes off by himself.
What are the other children thinking? Maybe some wish Jimmy were somewhere else; basketball is challenging enough without having to drag along someone who doesn't even know how to play. Other children may wish they could figure out how to include Jimmy without sacrificing the quality of the game. Along comes an adult. There's a silent (or not so silent) groan among the children. Here it comes, they think. We're going to be told to make sure Jimmy is included. We don't want to be mean, but if we have to make sure Jimmy plays, we're not going to have as much fun. And this is recess! We're supposed to be having fun!
That's right. They are supposed to be having fun. But wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to make sure Jimmy could have fun, too?

Naomi 480.
After reading what I wrote about Jimmy, the child who can't do what the other children can, a friend suggested that I write about Naomi - the child who is quite skilled at basketball, and would like to play "real" basketball with other children who are also skilled. She could play with children who are only beginning to learn the game, but to her, doing so would be like pretending she doesn't have the skills she has. Or she and her skilled friends could keep getting the ball, passing it back and forth, and getting baskets, while other children are made to feel more and more inadequate. Left to their own devices, children who have impressive athletic skill tend to form teams that are unfair. They like to all be on the same team and score lots of points. They keep their numbers low, pretending or mistakenly believing that that makes up for their superior skill.
It was much easier for me to write sympathetically about Jimmy than it is for me to try to see things from Naomi's point of view. That's because when it comes to sports, I identify more closely with Jimmy. Unlike Jimmy, I stayed away from sports I didn't understand and/or couldn't play, not wanting to flaunt my inferiority. But like him, I felt that sports (other than baseball, which I could play a little) were usually parties to which I wasn't invited. Unlike Jimmy, I found people who weren't into sports so much, either, and liked doing more of what I could do - music, drama, and just plain talking - and I found ways to have friends without sinking baskets or scoring touchdowns.
But Naomi is good at sinking baskets, and good at getting and controlling the ball so that she has plenty of opportunities to score. And she's also good at knowing how and when to get the ball to someone on her team who is in a better position to score. I may be quite unable to play the way she plays, but I've watched enough basketball to know that Naomi is doing it right, and Jimmy really isn't. Jimmy plays the way I would have played if I'd played.
What should Naomi do with her superior skill? Help other children develop skill? She does that a little, and children appreciate it. Or should she pretend she doesn't play the game as well as she does? At this point, I don't think she'd fool anyone, and besides, she likes being as athletic as she can be. She wants to play as well as she can, and since she's so good, playing that well will leave many children behind. Especially Jimmy.
After school, Naomi gets together with children who play at her level. She tries not to talk about that too much at school, but I'm probably not the only one who's occasionally heard her do so.
It's fair, kind, and right to include everyone in having fun. It's unfair, cruel, and wrong to tell some people they can't join in the fun because they aren't skilled enough. But what about Naomi? Mentors 481.
I've referred to a few people as my mentors. Caleb Gattegno, I know, is one of them. Pete Seeger is another. The more I master humility (a virtue that doesn't come easily to me), the more mentors I have. Some of the teachers I work with are becoming my mentors. I e-mail my articles to some of my mentors. It turns out that many people have much to teach me if I'm only ready to learn. And in some ways, I'm more ready than I used to be. It turns out that the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know. Trite, but true.
Soon, I may be interviewed by someone who writes for a newspaper, and by someone else who has a radio program. A bunch of friends are doing a concert of songs I've written, and judging from the press release they've put together, I think I'm supposed to come across as a wise person. That's all right. I think I'll enjoy doing that. Besides, maybe by now I've sometimes made it through "witty" and "clever" to "wise." Maybe it's not just a role for me to play. I don't know. Being wise is a heavy responsibility, but I'm not so busy now.
The first mentor I had that I can think of was Jimmy Dodd, on "The Mickey Mouse Club." Near the end of the show, he sometimes gave a little sermon about a proverb, and I often took it to heart. He was telling the young TV audience how to live life in a way that would make us better Mouseketeers. I wasn't as fanatic a devotee of Jimmy and the mouse as some of the younger kids; I didn't even send away for a pair of ears. But I did take Jimmy's words seriously.
Recently, I watched a rerun of "The Mickey Mouse Club" on cable television. At the end, Jimmy Dodd gave his sermon, and I wasn't at all moved by it. I know his words weren't meant to impress an adult in 1997, but I couldn't imagine how I could ever have been impressed by them. I guess I've come a long way. But I'll bet children are still learning from media mentors who are saying mediocre things in wise tones of voice. And that's okay, I guess. Sometimes, a stitch in time really does save nine, and people who live in glass houses really shouldn't throw stones. Neither should anyone else. What is trite to one person may be new and insightful to another.
So far, my mentors are mostly about my age or older, but as I get older, I'm finding more and more mentors who are younger than I am. I don't think I'll ever consider any children to be mentors; they've got a lot to learn, and I've got a lot I want to teach them. I'll learn from them, but I probably won't learn lots of life-changing things from any one child. Children do grow up, though, so maybe some of them will be my mentors later. We'll see.

When the Teacher Doesn't Feel Good 482.
Some professionals who don't feel good just stay home. I've already written about the difficulties involved in deciding to stay home if you're a teacher. Because of those difficulties, and/or because of the joy of teaching, teachers frequently go to work when they don't feel good. They may take medications that control symptoms. They may cough and sneeze. But they show up, set up their classrooms and materials, and teach.
Children aren't supposed to have to be the main nurturing ones; adults are. Children are supposed to be able to bring whatever problems they have to adults, and get TLC from the adults. Adults can be nurturing to each other, but children taking care of adults, though nice when it happens, is supposed to be an exception to the usual pattern.
Nevertheless, it happens a lot when a teacher obviously doesn't feel good. Children tend to receive enough care to know how to care, and many care very well. For example, many children quiet down when they know the teacher has a headache. Not all of them, and not necessarily for long, but enough of them quiet down long enough to make it clear that they want their teacher to feel better. And it's funny how children tend to whisper if a teacher has laryngitis. Actually, that does help, because a teacher doesn't have to speak as loudly if children whisper. But I don't think that's why children do it; they hear the teacher speaking quietly, and think speaking quietly is somehow going to help in a more direct way.
As a retired volunteer, it is relatively simple for me to decide whether to stay home when I have a cold. I don't have any ultimate responsibility to be in school; if I'm there, I do feel some responsibility for the children, and I also take joy in being with them. But if I think I'm developing a cold, I stay home. I take lots of vitamin C, drink lots of tea and soup, and get lots of rest. If and when I start to feel better, I stay home anyway. I want my recovery to be a sure thing.
That wasn't true when I was an employed teacher, and I don't think it's true of most employed teachers I know. It's very common for a teacher to go to work with the beginning or end of a cold, and to hope that prevention or recovery will happen anyway. Also to hope that no children catch the cold.
It's easy for me to sit back, during my easy life (easy, as far as career issues), and say that teachers who are having health problems should stay home and deal with those problems. But I know it ain't that simple. There ought to be ways for the system to run smoothly while a teacher deals sensibly with his/her health issues. But so far, there's lots of room for improvement.

Enjoying School 483.
It's traditional and usual for children and teachers to look forward eagerly to weekends, holidays, vacations, and daily dismissal. Even those who seem to thoroughly enjoy school usually get excited about times when they no longer have to be there. There's something intrinsically oppressive about having to stay in one building for most of a day, no matter how hard people try to make that building a joyful place. No matter how much they succeed. And so there's something intrinsically liberating about not having to be in that building.
And yet there are many children and teachers who look forward eagerly to being in school. Teachers and children often like each other, and enjoy spending time together. Children often like each other, and so do teachers. It can be difficult for children to find time to be together outside school; that's time for the family, lessons, team sports (which don't necessarily include children's best friends from school), and other activities that interfere with play time. What friends you have in school are more reliably there; you don't have to figure out when and how to get together.
Teachers also have a tendency to like each other, and to enjoy getting together. Staff meetings, grade level meetings, and workshops aren't necessarily fun, and short breaks in the teachers' room are not great times to do a lot of catching up. Staff parties can provide some time to catch up, but they only happen about twice a year, and they tend to be crowded, and to include spouses and other significant others, who feel left out if teachers spend all their time at these parties catching up with each other. Even teachers who are good friends at work have lives to live away from work, and don't usually have time to hang out with each other. But many of them wish they could. And in school, at least they can a little. Even though it's often not cool to admit that you like school, there are class reunions all over the place. Something must have happened during the years spent together in that building to make people decide to get together, reminisce, catch up with each other, and feel good together again. People talk about dreading their class reunions, but if they really don't like reunions, why do they go? Something about the time spent together in school must bring out some kind of feeling people want to have again.
Many people look forward to the school day, week, and year. Many of them don't realize that they look forward to it; they think they're just putting up with it. Many others know they like it, but don't admit it; it's not cool to like school. And there are also people who are totally in touch with their feelings about school, and totally open about them. Some of those people like school, some don't, and some have mixed feelings that they articulate well.
I'm writing this article during a weekend. I do enjoy weekends, but I have to admit that I enjoy school days more.
John 484.
This morning, I discovered that due to illness, a child who was going to visit me could not make it. But I was in a very sociable mood, and since the weather was okay, I decided to get on my scooter and take the bus into town. There would probably be some people there. I hummed "Downtown" as I travelled. When I got to the bus stop, a half hour early, a boy named John was waiting for the bus. I told him the bus wouldn't be there for thirty minutes, and he was surprised. He was on a mission to get some groceries at a convenience store, and he thought buses came every ten minutes. They do, on school days, but not on Saturdays. And this was Saturday.
I'm a little tentative about starting conversations with children I don't know when their parents aren't around. I worry about other adults who may start up conversations with children and have sinister motives. I know my own motives aren't sinister, but how did John know that? And would his pleasant and helpful conversation with me make him trust strange adults more than he should?
But since he was already trusting a strange adult, I'm glad it was me.
We talked about the bus schedule. I showed him my schedule, and he said his mother had one at home, but couldn't find it. It's so much easier to stay organized when you live alone, as I do. The bus schedule was not a topic full of potential, and we moved on to a discussion of school. I guessed that he was in fifth grade (I always try to guess a little high; children like to be thought of as older than they are), and he told me he was in fourth grade. I said he was almost in fifth grade, so I wasn't far off. He seemed to like that.
John told me he went to the Pearson School, but it was a racist school, so next year he might go to the Jackson School. I asked him whether all the teachers were racist, and he said no, it was just the principal. For the purpose of that conversation, I refrained from probing; I strongly suspected that he was reflecting his parents' opinions, and I didn't think it was my place to explore the issue too much. John was black,
and he told me the principal, who was Puerto Rican, was prejudiced against blacks and whites. To me, that seemed highly unlikely in Amherst, but it did not seem like something I should challenge in that situation.
We talked a lot on the bus, and later, we were the only ones at the bus stop for the return trip. He was fascinated by my scooter, and we talked about that for a while. I brought up the subject of basketball. Amherst is a basketball town; I didn't come up with the subject because of any racial stereotype. John got very animated, and loved talking about basketball. As we were talking, I took bubble water out of my bag, and he blew bubbles. I told him I wanted to buy a basketball to bring to school, and he recommended that I avoid getting a professional-sized basketball. He told me children would have trouble controlling it.
John and I enjoyed our brief time together. I'll probably see him around again, and we'll enjoy some more time. I thought you'd enjoy this little slice of my life.
A Word to Retirees 485.
I don't own many videos, but I recently bought "Mr. Holland's Opus." I have trouble crying, even when I feel tears inside me, and that's one movie that gets the tears out. Like Mr. Holland, many of us teachers touch many people's lives in important ways, and yet we can't help wondering whether we've done as much as we think we have. Retirement ceremonies (celebrations? parties?) can't do the job that needs to be done; if each retiring teacher were given the kind of farewell I wish I'd gotten, a position would have to be created to plan several tributes per year. And since every retiring teacher would get one of these gala events, it might not seem as special anyway.
But many teachers put a lot of themselves into their work. They think about the children they teach when they could be tending to other parts of their lives; instead of stopping to smell the roses, or paying attention to other parts of their lives that merit and/or require attention, they think about the work they do. They want to help the children they teach get ready for what those children hope to do. I see and hear it every day - teachers putting important personal concerns on hold because they are committed to the work that they do.
I don't mean to provide an alibi for teachers who don't pay enough attention to their own sons, daughters, spouses, or other concerns. The decision to spend a certain amount of time and energy on one part of your life is a real decision, and if another part of your life suffers because of that decision, the sacrifice is real, whether consciously made or not. Intentions don't count for much; if you pay attention to your job at times when other parts of your life require attention, you're the one doing what you're doing.
There was a time when teachers weren't allowed to get married. If they did, they lost their jobs. I think the reason for that policy had more to do with the Puritan ethic than with awareness of the degree of commitment required of good teachers, but a lot is required. I know there are teachers who have figured out how to do their jobs well while living the rest of their lives well, too. I never figured out how to be all I wanted to be to all the people who were important to me. Neither have many people I know.
Whether you're one of those teachers who have figured out how to put all the pieces of your life together, or one (like me) who gave less attention than you wanted to give to some parts of your life so that you could pay more attention to teaching, I hope you (and I) know what important effects you've had on the lives of the children you've taught. You're probably not going to find that out at some gala event, but I hope you (we) know it.

All Together, Now! 486.
Several of my friends are experts at getting groups of people to sing together, either in harmony or in spirited unison. I respect the kind of talent needed to lead groups that way. I've always enjoyed singing in choruses and sing-alongs, and I think group singing is a powerful way to build community. I'm telling you this to provide a little context for what I'm about to say:
I don't think everyone should be required to sing along, or to participate in group recitations. I've enjoyed much of what's gone on in some of the religious services I've attended, but I particularly dislike times when everyone is expected to say the same words at the same time. People have the right to their individuality, and I feel very uncomfortable when I'm part of a large group that is reciting a bunch of words. It just doesn't feel right.
The recitations to which I refer tend to be chanted in a dismal monotone. Some of them may be well-written, but I don't feel like uttering someone else's words just because everyone around me is uttering them. I suspect that many of the people around me feel uncomfortable about it, too. They don't smile as they recite, even if they're saying words that would ordinarily be said with a smile. No matter how joyful the actual content of the recited passage may be, it doesn't sound joyful to me. It sounds spooky. I imagine a group of zombies headed toward some shrine. And I don't join in.
I've never led my class in the pledge of allegiance. I don't think I ever would have, even if I had been required to. Luckily, it never became an issue. I don't think it's a very good pledge, and I don't think children understand it, anyway. But neither of those observations is my main reason for refusing to lead it. I feel as if it's dehumanizing to get everyone to say words written by someone else. Even if I wrote my own pledge, I wouldn't feel right about requiring other people to chant it. I believe that when people intend to communicate important thoughts, they ought to use their own words.
When I used to say good morning to the children I taught, I didn't say, "GOOD MORNING, CLASS!" Nor did I expect the class to chant, in unison, "GOOD MORNING, MR. BLUE!" I spoke to individual children as they entered the classroom. A class of twenty has twenty unique children in it, and whatever words each one chooses to utter ought to express what that child wants to express.
Many of the songs I like have choruses that contain important messages. And I like the way Pete Seeger and many other musicians I admire build community by encouraging people to sing together. But if some people don't want to sing along, that's okay with me.

Review 487.
One of Caleb Gattegno's favorite statements was, "Memory is weak." Another was, "The only thing educable in human beings is awareness." Teachers try hard to get pupils to understand things. We try to increase children's awareness. But we also want them to memorize several things, and we have all sorts of ways to try to get them to do so. Children memorize times tables, dates in history, notable literary passages, lines in plays, and lots more.
Some, like me, remember a lot of what they've memorized. Teaching children, I've had no opportunity to forget the times tables. But I also remember entire literary passages I haven't used for years, except to impress people with my memory. And until thirty-two years ago, my phone number was 516-MY2-7027. I haven't called that number since 1965, nor given the number to anyone else. But I remember it. And there are many other totally useless pieces of information that have stayed with me for a long time.
You can think of review as a way of revisiting and reevaluating what you have learned. Some review really is like that; it really does increase awareness. Concepts you encountered when you were at a certain stage look different when you're at a different stage. Your perspective may be different because of other learning you've done, and what used to look old now looks totally new. That's what I consider worthwhile and sometimes priceless review.
But there's another kind. Review can be an awful battle. A teacher who has tried and failed to teach something faces a learner who has tried and failed to learn it, and what was once only a failure gradually becomes a disaster. Memory steps forward as a key player in the battle, and being weak, it turns out not to be a very good player. Maybe the teacher accuses the learner of not trying. Maybe the teacher gets down on herself/himself; if I were REALLY a good teacher, he/she thinks, I would be able to win this battle.
I've often thought of teaching and parenting as a review course in living. It can be good review; we couldn't have gotten the whole thing straight the first try, and it makes lots of sense to take another look. As we're doing so, we sometimes use our memories to help young people who seem to be facing struggles we've already faced successfully. That doesn't always help; they're different people, and the struggles may also be more different than we think. Besides, memory is weak. But it can help. Teaching and parenting can also involve increasing our awareness; as we work on children's awareness, we and/or they come up with new ways of seeing what we once thought we saw clearly, and we learn. That's one of my favorite aspects of teaching. It can be the best kind of review.

Expecting 488.
When I started teaching, one of the rules of thumb I was supposed to learn was that pupils do what their teachers expect them to do. That was hard to believe, at first. The high school seniors I taught frequently did things I never would have guessed they were going to do. I expected with all my might, and it seemed to have little effect. I quickly moved down to second grade, but the seven-year-olds I taught surprised me just as much as the seventeen-year-olds had.
The message people were trying to give me was true enough, and could have helped me if I'd understood it, but my own experience was teaching me that though a few pupils might sometimes do what I expected them to do, most wouldn't. And since that's what I was learning, I was beginning to expect kids to surprise me. And sure enough, they did!
That very true rule of thumb given to new teachers is only helpful if it's understood. Now, as I observe teachers, I see what it means. It's so much easier to see a phenomenon clearly if you're not part of the phenomenon. But new teachers tend to wonder whether they're cut out for the kind of work they're trying to do. As they wonder, they expect problems, some of which are created by that expectation.
I've heard teachers tell children what not to do. For example, "Don't write on your desk. If you do, you'll spend recess cleaning it." For some children, words like that imply that the teacher expects children to write on their desks. They hear the expectation more clearly than they hear the taboo or threat. And they write on their desks. They're doing what they think they are expected to do - what the teacher may unconsciously expect them to do.
I've also heard teachers offer bribes to children: "If you pay attention well, I'll give you a token. If you earn ten tokens, I'll give you a choice of prizes." The message some children hear is that the teacher does not expect children to pay attention well. If good attention were expected, there would be neither bribes nor threats. When the teacher really expects
certain behaviors from children, those behaviors tend to happen without artificial motivators.
I've seen behaviorism work on some children with severe problems. I've even heard that it works with entire classes. It's not my way, but I've come to believe that it's a legitimate and potentially effective approach. And I understand that it's a gross oversimplification - a distortion - to treat behaviorism as a system of bribes and threats. But as I observe teachers in action, I'm impressed by some teachers' ability to convey positive expectations, and by the effectiveness of honestly expecting good things to happen.

Fitting In 489.
One of the major messages parents and teachers give children is that fitting in is not important - that what's important is being true to yourself. I think that's a good and important message, and I'm one of the parents and teachers who deliver it. Sometimes my earnest sermons on personal integrity impress children just the way I want them to; children decide to let their consciences be their guides, and I end up proud of them for resisting temptations to follow the crowd.
But sometimes what I say about this kind of issue doesn't sound as important to children as other things they hear and think. They decide that they'll do what "everyone else" is doing - that I just don't understand. If I understood, I wouldn't try to get them to say and do things that would make them social outcasts. If I weren't so stuck in my high-fallutin' ways, I'd realize that there are certain things you "have to" do if you don't want to be a total nerd.
I think there were things I used to do to fit in, and I'm sure there still are, but what I remember best are the ways I stood out, both because of my convictions and because I didn't know how to fit in. I've never changed my hairstyle - not once in my life (unless you count the time I shaved off all my hair to see if I'd look like Yul Brynner) - because I've thought that would be a superficial thing to do. That policy doesn't rank up there with Thoreau's civil disobedience, or Joan of Arc's martyrdom, but from my point of view, it showed that I had character, and still do.
But I also remember little ways I did try to fit in. Once, I bought a white sweater because "everyone else" seemed to be doing it. I wore it to school for a long time before I learned that it was a "letter sweater" - that I wasn't supposed to wear it until I'd earned a letter. And the only way to do that was to participate in sports after school - something I never did. For one reason or another, I never felt that I fit in.
And so I never really understood children's and adolescents' obsession with fitting in. I saw it as a character flaw, and tried to reform them - give them the courage to be nerds. So far, I've written a lot about what I think I've done well during my teaching and parenting career, but this is an area where I think I could have done better, and now I intend to.
Not that I'm going to change my hairstyle; I have always parted it on the right, and had it cut the same way, and I think I always will. Because of habit, not moral or political conviction. But I'm going to stop trying to convince children to constantly flaunt their individuality. If they want to make changes in their personal styles so that they'll be more like "everybody else," I'll try to be a little more understanding. Personal integrity doesn't have to be reflected in one's choice of clothing or hairstyle.

The Forest and the Trees 490.
Sometimes the work of teaching makes it so you can't see the forest; there are too many trees to think about. As I sat in Pam Szczesny's third grade classroom this morning, I took a moment to look at the forest. Children were working on writing their own individual creation myths, and they were deeply involved in the project. Children in Pam's class are usually deeply involved in one thing or another. It's almost always something Pam has planned, but there aren't many times when children look as if they're doing what someone else told them to do; it only seems to take a moment for the children to own whatever project Pam plans, and there's plenty of room within her plans for the children's plans.
Some children were stretched out on the rug, some standing at tables, and some seated at their desks. All were busily creating their worlds or universes, populating them, and inventing adventures. Some were running their ideas by each other, some consulting the four adults in the room, and some busily writing. I kept zooming in on individual children with my ears and eyes, and each time I did, I witnessed total involvement in the assigned project.
I don't know how Pam had brought about the degree of involvement I saw, but as I said, her class is usually involved like that. So am I when I'm in her class; most of the time, I'm so busy helping individual children, who are in the midst of projects, that there's no time to sit back and see the big picture. But this time, I forced myself to take a few minutes and see her class as a class, rather than focus on what individual children were doing. That's something teachers ought to do once in a while, but they're often so busy making great things happen that they can't stop to see the things happen. I asked Pam to take a moment to appreciate the rich environment that was her classroom. She did, and she smiled.
But she also told me that she doesn't get to do that very much. It's great that there are usually several adults in her classroom, but there's so much going on all the time in her room that every adult who is there has plenty to do. At one point, for example, a child motioned for me to come over. He was trying to think of a name for one of his immortal characters. I suggested Zenkar. He liked that name, and used it. Another child asked if I would read what she'd written so far. I did. I was impressed, and told her so.
Pam is a phenomenal teacher. She pays attention to the children in her class, and really knows them. Somehow, she makes sure each tree gets sufficient light, and all its other necessities. And those trees are growing, all right. But I hope Pam and other teachers get occasional chances to notice what beautiful forests they're cultivating.

A Calculated Risk 491.
Ten year old Merlin was having a bad day. There are many things Merlin doesn't know yet that most other third-graders know. That's true every day, but usually, Merlin's teacher, his parents, and many other people in his life work hard to keep him thinking about what he does know, and what he can and will learn. That's partly because they care about his feelings, and partly because they know people learn better when they feel good about themselves.
Today, it wasn't working, though. The children were doing a writing sample - something they do occasionally so that the school system can keep track of progress. And though teachers, other adults, and children are usually involved in the writing process in ways that help Merlin and most other children feel good about writing, the sample was supposed to be done without the usual help. Merlin had to face his difficulty head-on. And so he couldn't focus on his strengths, and he didn't feel good about himself.
His teacher, Pam Szczesny, and two other adults in the room tried to get him to do his best, but as far as writing, Merlin seemed to be certain that his "best" was to get done before everyone else, and get on to something other than writing. And as adults kept trying to get Merlin to look over what he had written, he got more and more frustrated. By the time everyone was supposed to stop, Merlin was in a bad mood.
Luckily, the next scheduled activity was practice in multiplication tables. That's something Merlin does well. Not that he completely understands what multiplication is, but it's possible to memorize the times tables and be able to fire them back quickly without understanding them. Merlin is really motivated to do what he believes he can do, and he was quite excited about this practice time - a time when he could do something better than most other children.
After the practice session, Merlin left the room to work with a teacher. While he was gone, Pam spoke with the children about him. She told them that he was having a bad day - that he could use their support. It's risky to talk with a group of children about one child's problem; they could use the information as ammunition. But Pam knew these children, and trusted them to be supportive. And I think her expression of faith in their ability to be supportive inspired them to live up to her faith. Funny how that works.
So Pam's decision to speak with the class about Merlin's problem was a decision to take a calculated risk. I think it was a good move. I don't think any child is going to use the discussion against Merlin. The combination of Pam's own concern for Merlin, her respect for all the children, their respect for her, and the good feeling they got from being trusted this way is going to help Merlin and everyone else involved.

"Strict" 492.
Once, I was with a class that was gathered on the rug, listening and responding to the teacher. It was a usual scene - some children were lying on the rug, some sitting up straight, and one standing. All were focussed on the words people were saying, and each was comfortable in his/her own way. Back when I had my own class, I usually insisted that children sit up in a neat circle when we met. That worked better for me. I was easily distracted by children who were lying down or standing up. But this teacher's style was clearly working.
In walked the vice principal, a man who is not known for his tendency to smile a lot around children. He noticed the child who was standing up, and gruffly said, "Sit down!" The child started to explain that her teacher allowed them to stand, but he repeated, "Sit down!" He was a little louder and gruffer the second time. He didn't sound as if he was open to debate. In fact, I may have unconsciously checked to make sure I was sitting down, even though I'm always sitting down when I'm in school (multiple sclerosis makes standing up difficult for me). I didn't feel like doing anything that would annoy this man.
I used to think there was a very discernible dividing line between "strict" and "not strict." In the scene described above, according to my former way of thinking, the vice principal was strict and the teacher was not strict. And also, strict was bad and not strict was good. Not that I believed in allowing children to run the whole show; grown-ups have rights, too. But I believed in the importance of setting reasonable limits - making room for the rights of grown-ups - while trying not to earn the label "strict."
Now, I think it's a word game. I've worked with teachers who are generally considered strict, and with teachers who aren't. If you watch these teachers' faces, or listen to their tones of voice, it's easy to tell the "strict" ones from the "not strict" ones; the strict ones don't smile as much, and more often sound angry. But children in "strict" teachers' classes don't necessarily follow rules better, and don't necessarily learn more. In fact, I've worked with one "strict" teacher who seemed to spend more time and energy on discipline and organization than on what I call teaching. And not because she had a more difficult class. But she frowned, yelled, and punished a lot.
I don't like to refer to a teacher or parent as "strict," because it doesn't mean much. It's important for adults and children to know what their limits are. It's also important to examine those limits now and then - make sure they are reasonable, given changing situations, people, and states of mind. But I don't think it's accurate or useful to call someone "strict."
Camp 493.
I remember Boy Scout camp. I was only there for two weeks when I was eleven, but it was far away from where the rest of my family was, and that was more important than how long it lasted. Some of my friends were there, but they were too busy defining themselves to think about defining me. Regardless of what else could be said of Camp Baiting Hollow, in my mind, the absence of my family was its key feature. At last, I was on my own. For two weeks, I could try finding out what that was going to be like.
I don't have any particularly fond memories of Baiting Hollow. I remember "bug juice," which we had every day for breakfast. I think it was a combination of fruit juices, called "bug juice" to make it more interesting, and maybe to teach us that you ought to try things even if they sound gross; you might like them. I remember some of the songs we sang. And I remember what fun the other kids had telling me about you-know-what. It was fun for them, because I was the designated "he doesn't know" kid - the one you could make fun of for not "knowing." I remember what they told me; they didn't "know" either. But I was the only one to admit that I didn't.
I don't think the counselors were experts in child development. They weren't naturalists, folk singers, or any other kinds of specialists. They were just regular guys. I think I was supposed to feel lucky that I had a chance to spend two weeks with only males, but it happened a few years too late for that. I had already stopped believing in "cooties," and the idea of spending two weeks without any girls around wasn't such a good idea, in my opinion.
I have friends who went to camps that sound much more interesting when they were children. Some went to camps where they learned how to think radical political thoughts. I had to learn that later. Some spent glorious evenings singing folk songs around a campfire. And some went to camps where not everyone had the same gender. I think I would have enjoyed going to a camp that had more music and more genders. I wasn't quite ready for radical politics, but maybe camp could have helped me get ready.
But camp taught me something very important. I learned that I could spend two weeks away from my family and still be okay. Maybe it helped prepare my parents, too; children grow up, and sooner or later, their parents have to cope with that reality. That's an important lesson. It's good preparation for college, and for later life.

Examining a Situation 494.
Today, on the bus, I heard a woman behind me yelling angrily at the children who were with her. As far as I could tell, the children weren't doing anything for which they deserved to be yelled at; they were just being children. But angry yelling seemed to be this woman's way of speaking to children. The other adults on the bus and I tried to ignore the commotion, but it was loud and annoying; ignoring it was not going to be an easy task.
I wondered whether this woman yelled like that at home, too, or worse. I don't know how many of the children, if any, were hers, but at least publicly, she didn't look at all like a gentle, patient parent, babysitter, or whatever. If I had been sure it would have had the effect I wanted, I would have said something to the woman about her behavior. But I wasn't at all sure of that. I thought this might be a situation that could qualify as "none of my business."
Instead, I turned around and spoke to the children (there were four of them). Not about their behavior, which looked fine to me. I told them I was an expert at guessing names and ages, and I would try to guess theirs. They looked interested. So did the woman, who looked very young. I pointed to the oldest boy and guessed both a name and an age I was pretty sure were wrong: "Your name is Bartholomew, and you're forty-three years old." The children laughed. I kept on guessing until I'd used up the entertainment value of this game, and then I changed the subject, but kept up the conversation.
The woman was silent, and she was smiling. If she had looked annoyed, I might have stopped what I was doing. No, I think I might have kept it up just to keep her from yelling. I realized that unlike times I'd faced this kind of situation in the past, I wouldn't be seen as a smart-alecky kid. Instead, to her, I may have looked like an eccentric old man. And I was in a wheelchair. For a while, I could use my age and disability as a sort of shield. The children were having fun, the woman with them was quiet, I was having fun, and I think noticed some smiles on other passengers' faces.
At the Amherst Common, the five of them got off the bus. I don't know what happened after that, but an hour later, when I passed that way again, the children were playing with a frisbee, and the woman was on a bench. I wonder, now, what were the details of that situation. Was that woman the mother of any of those children? If so, did she have any support in raising whichever of them were hers, and was the parenthood planned or accidental? Of course, in a way, none of this was really any of my business, but in another way, children are everybody's business; they're our future. So what do you think, and what would you have done?

Restaurants 495.
I once read a book that had very practical advice for parents. I don't remember the name of the book, or the author, but I particularly remember one bit of advice it gave: "If you deserve a break today, hire a babysitter and go to a slow food restaurant." My children were the age the book was talking about. Advertisements for fast food restaurants are often aimed at children, and often emphasize how much fun it can be to eat out - what a riotous party it can be. And thanks to those advertisements, and corporate efforts to live up to the promises made by the advertisements, eating out with children can be a real riot.
Food is supposed to help you get and/or stay healthy, and it's nice to have food that also tastes good, but is mealtime really a good time for children to be entertained? Is it a good time for them to be playing video games, sliding down slides, and all that? I don't think so.
But many adults do like to eat in restaurants. The food can be better, or at least different, from the food you usually eat at home. And you don't have to buy ingredients, cook, or clean up afterwards. It really can be a nice break. You get to select the food you like best, and if someone else you're eating with likes something different, that's okay. I like restaurants myself. A mealtime in a restaurant can be a peaceful time to eat, think, and talk.
There are children who like that, too. Some children like trying unusual foods, having quiet conversations, and being with their favorite adults in places that help adults feel relaxed. I remember that during a trip to Mexico, one evening my parents took my sister and me to Antoine's, in New Orleans. It was so elegant! And either the food I had there was among the best I'd ever had, or the elegance made it seem so. Probably a little of each.
But in my experience, that's the exception. Taking children out to eat is more often a good way to get a headache. Most children I know and have known don't like food that tastes unusual. They don't even like to try it. I'm not saying this to criticize them; I was like that, too, as a child. My experience at Antoine's was an exception; usually, I liked to eat at Steer Inn, a precursor of McDonald's. And most children I know and have known prefer fast food restaurants.
When you go to a restaurant, you spend more money than you'd spend to eat at home. You're paying for labor, atmosphere, and convenience. Before you decide to go, I think it might be a good idea to think and talk about what kind of experience each person hopes for. Whether you end up going to McDonald's, Antoine's, or something in between, why spend that extra money to give someone an experience that isn't what he/she had in mind?

Needing Children 496.
If you were to take a casual look at the way I live my life, you would think I needed children. I spend lots of time with children. The songs, stories, poems, and articles I write are mostly for and/or about children or adults who spend a lot of time with children. Both my former vocation and my main present avocations have to do with children. If you took a closer look at me - if you probed the depths of my soul - then you'd KNOW I need children.
I'm writing this article during a school vacation. And the children who sometimes stay with me after school, on weekends, and during vacations, have gone away for the week. I still remember the occasional thrill I used to get when I had some time without children, but that thrill is mostly gone; the "important" things I could do when there were no children around no longer seem so important.
We usually think in terms of children's need for us. And they do have lots of needs. One is the need to be seen and heard. I have lots of time to look and listen, now that I don't have to lay waste my powers getting and spending (cf. William Wordsworth). Children also need to understand their world, and I have time to help them understand it. The time I spend with children meets their needs, and since they're such needy people, it could look, to the casual observer, as if I do what I do because I'm a nice guy. And to be honest, I am nice.
But that's not the main reason I do it. Spending time with children meets several of my important needs. I need to feel useful, to feel competent, to have fun, and to be loved. Some of those needs are met by adults, too, but adults are often busy getting and spending. And sometimes they're not as quick to express their needs and their love. Their way of being busy and some of the psychological baggage they've accumulated over the years can get in the way.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those adults who claim that they can only relate with children. I do like adults. Some of my best friends are adults. They can understand me in important ways children can't. I know they were all once children, and I don't blame them at all for leaving their childhood years behind. I've done that myself. The children I love now are going to do it, too, and that won't make me stop loving them.
Now that I've admitted my need for children, how about you? If you teach, do you think you do so only because it's your mission, or your modus vivendi ? If you're a parent do you think you had children only because it's your sacred duty or something? Well, maybe. But if that's what you think, it may also be that you're in for a surprise - that children are meeting some of your most important needs.

The Research Gap 497.
We're a culture that puts a lot of faith in research. I have some faith in it myself. But sometimes I wonder what kind of thinking would motivate anyone to volunteer for a control group. Other times, I wonder about the experimental group. If I were supposed to die of some terrible disease in six months (the traditional length of the medical death row), and a cure were discovered, I'd want to be in the experimental group. On the other hand, if a possible treatment for MS were discovered (we're not supposed to talk about "cures" in MS lingo), I'd rather be in the control group; I don't want to develop awful symptoms while attempting to ameliorate a condition that isn't quite so awful.
Sometimes research lags behind common sense. Smokers were dying from lung cancer and other diseases long before cigarettes were "proven" to be harmful to your health. And as for second-hand smoke, I don't think I was a lone genius when I decided that whatever harm smokers were doing to themselves could not be avoided by having smokers filter out the toxins through their lungs and add a little carbon dioxide. Much later, research told us that those of us who had been avoiding second-hand smoke weren't so crazy after all.
I'm sure there are plenty of people in the medical world who were and are frustrated by the slowness of research, and by the way media have of announcing "startling new discoveries" that have been around for years. Well, we educators know the feeling. Working with children, we try some approaches. If they don't work, we try other approaches. If something works, we try it again. And if it keeps working, we gradually decide that it's something that works. Later on, if some study done at some major university shows that it works, we're not surprised. Sometimes we're a little annoyed. Why is so much money, time, and energy spent proving what we already know? Why didn't they just ask us?
This line of thinking was inspired by some research that's being reported now. It turns out that music may possibly help children learn. There are various studies uncovering that possibility. One tells us about some children who listened to a piece by Mozart, and did better on some tests than children who didn't. Howard Gardner's scholarly work on human intelligence is also proving that music can help children learn.
If you'll pardon the expression, duh! Those of us who have been working with children and using music from time to time are not surprised. Some, like me, did it for fun at first, and gradually learned that it really did help. Others knew, right from the start, that it helped.
I am not opposed to research. Sometimes it tells us things we never suspected, or things we could have taken years to find out. Sometimes it contradicts what we assumed. But I think we ought to listen more closely to the unofficial research that's happening all the time - to teachers, doctors, and other people who are following up hunches, and learning. Parental Guidance Advised 498.
It's scary that some people seem to think of children mostly in terms of what they'll buy, or what they'll convince their parents to buy. Commercials and children's entertainment often seem to be designed based on what advertisers think they'll be able to sell, not on what they think will have good effects on children's minds. I guess from their point of view, they're just doing their job. And if they sell a lot, they're doing their job well.
Given that mindset, and given the enormous power of money, any improvement in children's entertainment is going to have to come from the efforts of parents. And parents are generally busy people who don't have a lot of time to check on what the media are doing to their children. I know there are conscientious parents who pay close attention to the content of the media, and make sure their children only see programs and movies they consider appropriate for their children. I know some. But such parents are rare. It's more typical to trust the existing rating system - to think of "PG" as "G," and to think of "G" as ideal.
If I were rating movies, I wouldn't be so quick to hand out a "G" or "PG." So far, those ratings seem to say more about what ISN'T in a movie than about what IS. If a movie doesn't have a lot of sex and/or violence, it gets a rating that means it's okay for children. I recently made myself see "Liar, Liar," a PG movie that I knew lots of children were seeing. As I watched the movie, I thought about what it was telling children. It was telling them, for example, that a successful lawyer has to lie, and get clients to lie, too. I know dishonesty does happen in the legal profession, as it does in most professions, but I don't think that movie is an appropriate way to introduce children to law. I listened to the reactions of the children in the audience. They enjoyed the slapstick comedy. They liked hearing an adult say whatever insulting things came to his mind. I'm pretty sure they didn't understand it all, but they heard adults laughing, so they laughed, too. And a few days later, I heard some third graders talking about the movie. They thought it was great. But they thought "younger children" shouldn't see it, because of the way some of the women in the movie were dressed, and because of the main character's comments about that. Other than that, they thought it was great. I don't.
As I think about how I would rate movies, I realize that not many movies would make it past my stringent standards and get a "G" rating. But my standards are only my standards. Parents who disagree with me are free to disagree. We can debate, we can agree to disagree, or we can just disagree. But either way, at least we're thinking. The rating system is used by many parents as a way to not have to think about the appropriateness of movies. Please do think about it. Besides Words 499.
I used to get intimidated by people who seemed to have what they called "silent understandings" with people. I thought that my own use of words was kind of obsessive, and that some day, if and when I really got my act together, I'd be able to have silent understandings with people, too. So far, that hasn't happened as much as I'd hoped, and I don't think it's going to. But now I think that's okay. I like the understandings words can build, and though I still try to respect the non-verbal communication some people rely on more heavily than I do, and still work on getting more able to use it myself, I'm no longer intimidated by it.
People do say important things with their faces, hands, and bodies. They also say words that aren't quite what they mean, and sometimes people seem to be reading each other's minds. It's useful to be able to see and hear messages that words aren't explicitly delivering; some people don't use words as well as they communicate non-verbally, and they may still have important things to say. If the ability to communicate belonged only to people who were good with words, there wouldn't be as much communication as there is.
So it does make sense to look and listen for the words not spoken. Since this is a book about ways of relating with children, I'll try to focus on that, but non-verbal communication is an issue throughout life (e.g., "If you really cared about me, I wouldn't have to ask.")
We parents and teachers have to be on the lookout all the time for signals from children, who haven't figured out how to say all they're thinking and feeling. True, some of their feelings and thoughts do come out in words - even some that don't come out as freely when children get older. But children who don't know how to say what's on their minds, don't know when to say it, or don't quite know what's on their minds still have important things to say, and it sometimes helps to be able to read non-verbal signals.
Let's say a child says, "Oh, I get it!" That may mean just what it says - that the child has reached a new level of understanding. But if we listen to the child's tone of voice, and/or watch the child's face and body language, we may discover that the new understanding may not be as firm as the child is telling us it is - may not even be there at all. That's when we have to read the signs and think quickly. We try not to directly contradict the child ("No, you DON'T get it!"), but we probe a little; we try to find out what's going on. And sometimes words don't work as well as other ways of self-expression.
A lot of teaching is intensely verbal. We want children to use words more, and rely less on the rest of their repertoire. When you're angry and you know it, it's often not so effective to stamp your feet. Try telling us what you're angry about. We'll still look and listen for stamping feet, but words often work better.