Dianne White

And I’m okay with a decent amount of math, too. But the bottom line is that the pendulum has swung TOO far and this op-ed article in Monday’s NYT sums up quite nicely the direction in which I *wish* education was headed.

What I wouldn’t give to teach in the (theoretical) third grade classroom described here.

All I can say is… I hope somebody with the power to make these kind of HUGE changes in the way curriculum is developed is listening.

photo credit: cleverclaire

Am I the only one (I know I’m not!) who feels like the “to do” list continues to grow longer and longer – new tasks added each and every day – while day after day very few tasks are ever really and truly finished?

What can I say? It’s frustrating. Really it is.

Is it possible that I have more on my plate than I did last year? I don’t think so… But it definitely feels that way. *Sigh.*

photo credit: Robbert van der Steeg

Breezing through Facebook tonight, I happened upon a link a friend posted to Upstart Crow Literary .  Agent Michael Stearns has written an excellent piece on Agenting Picture Books v. Agenting Novels. It’s one of the most insightful posts I’ve seen on the subject of picture books – both the art of writing them and the challenges inherent in representing a picture book author.

Somehow being reminded of how “tricky” they are, both to write and to sell makes me glad I’m a picture book writer.

Stearns writes, “A really great picture book is a difficult art to pull off… It is about grace and the right words in the right place—much more akin to poetry than mere storytelling.”

Reminds me of the quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge: “…poetry: the best words in the best order.”

Yes. Poetry and picture books. I love them both.

photo credit: Randy Son Of Rober

Last week, on Poetry Friday, Carol posted “A Thanksgiving Blessing.” I’m reposting here, as I  love the sentiments expressed, especially -  the “warmth of hope rising,” “May we … speak… of our healings and blessings,” and “May we be with each other… in the light of the present.”

A THANKSGIVING BLESSING

May we be aware not of the things we lack,

but of all that we have.

May we feel not the absence of those we love,

but the presence of those who love us.

May we see not just the harshness of our world,

but the gentleness of its mystery.

May we know not the cold of despair,

but the warmth of hope rising.

May we speak not of our hurts and losses,

but of our healings and blessings.

May we be with each other not in the shadows of the past,

but in the light of the present.

May we bring to our table not judgment, resentment, or anger,

but acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness.

May we remember to feed our spirit by living out of thankfulness.

Anonymous

My Poetry Friday offering is a three (poems) -in-one (book) affair:

One Book: The Tree that Time Built: a celebration of nature, science and imagination – a beautiful new collection of poems selected by Mary Ann Hoberman (U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate) and Linda Winston.

Three Poems:

**One Old Elm: I began a mini-unit this week on poet, Kristine O’Connell George.  Her poem, “Old Elm Speaks,” was not only *in* the book, The Tree that Time Built, but was one of the poems included on the audio track. Before her reading, Kris shared a bit about how, even as a 5 year-old, staring out the window of her kindergarten classroom, she was in love with trees.  Writing the poems for her book, Old Elm Speaks, gave her an excuse to visit tree nurseries and arboretums, where she spent hours under the leafy branches of her favorite trees. It was a great way for my students to hear a poet read and talk about her work.

**Old Bones: Another of the poems included in this collection (and on the audio!) is “Dinosaur Bone,” by Alice Schertle.  There’s something wonderful about hearing Alice read all those long “o” words – bones, old as stone, alone, alone…

**A Question: Yesterday, at the end of the day, I took my class outside.  We weren’t there long, but for a short short while, we sat under the trees, closed our eyes, and listened. The cool wind blew across our faces. The sun warmed our backs.  We listened.  We waited.  We were “wide-awake.” Attentive. In our own small way, we were trying to follow the advice Eve Merriam offers in her poem (another from Hoberman’s delightful anthology,) “Reply to the Question: “How Can you Become a Poet?”

Every so often I come back to reviewing my priorities and asking myself how I can put my waking hours to best use. Is there a way to wisely parse out time and energy to those areas I consider my first priorities? How can I balance teaching which, by it’s very nature, gets the lion’s share of time, with my before-and-after-day-job as a writer?

A recent post by Corey on Simple Mom, “How to Find More Time During the Day” got me thinking again. He asks the question:

photo credit: Michel Filion

” What if we replaced time focus with energy? Instead of looking at the day as a block of time, look at it as a finite amount of energy.

Then ask yourself, where do you spend your energy?

The answer to this question will tell you where your priorities lie.”

When I look at it this way, it’s clear that the bulk of both my time and energy goes into teaching.  And truth be told, most of *that* time and energy involves paperwork, district obligations, even things as mundane, but necessary, as cleaning up the mess I’ve left behind after a full day of teaching.

Very little time goes into actual lesson planning. A sad but true statement, which might be explained by the fact that I’ve been able to internalize so much of the “how-to’s” of teaching, that I’m now able to get by using the on-the-job-expertise I’ve acquired over the years.

I know I’m not alone in this.  Most of my colleagues are like me.  We all spend more time on the incidentals surrounding running a classroom than the actual hard-core lesson planning time that a new or pre-service teacher spends.

And yet… there’s always more that I *could* do (maybe *should* be doing??) that I choose not to do simply because of the amount of time required.

And while it’s true that I have an obligation to devote a huge and important chunk of each day to my students, it’s also true that a HUGE part of me wants to shift that energy to my writing.

Is there a way to do this?  Perhaps that’s the question so many of us who work full-time and try to write on the side will always struggle with.

The best I can come up with is to write first thing in the morning, early, before the sun has come up, before I must get ready for work.  And yet sometimes, like this past week when I’ve been working on report cards and putting in late hours, it seems those early hours are impossible to manage.

At these moments, I must be reminded, again, to extend myself a little grace.  Lower my expectations.  Remember that all weeks are not this week.  And once those report cards are truly finished and conferences are over, I’ll be back at the keyboard, working on the middle grade revision and that cat/mouse picture book I still need to puzzle out.

Today I had the pleasure of attending the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California’s Fall Gala. It’s an event my friends and I look forward to each year because we always come away with a deep-down-good feeling as well as renewed enthusiasm for books in general and children’s lit in particular.

The morning was not unlike so many of the Fall Gala’s that I’ve attended in previous years.  There were plenty of fun moments – such as when Jennifer Holm ( BabyMouse ) pulled out her cell phone and called her brother Matt from the podium – just so that he could talk to one of his favorite artists, Berkley Breathed (Pete & Pickles).

And other moments when we were moved to tears – as when one of the  presenters shared the impact, on her personally, of Hope Anita Smith’s award winning book, Keeping the Night Watch.

As wonderful as these moments were, however, the most poignant, for me, came when the Dorothy C. McKenzie Award winner was announced.  Not because the winner, Joanne Spring, is someone I know.  Nor because I was already familiar with the literacy project, Monrovia Reads, that she helped spearhead in one of our local cities.  But because it seemed to me to be exactly what I, as an educator, book-lover, and writer, hope to encourage both professionally and privately: Reading Changes Everything.

Joanne’s enthusiasm for her community’s literacy project and the strategies the city has employed to support and encourage reading are in direct contrast to a troubling letter a friend shared with me the other day regarding the way a local Southern California school district (Burbank Unified *) has chosen to encourage reading.

Can you guess?  AR – Accelerated Reader.  What’s most troubling is that the superintendent has shared a disturbing and poorly written letter with the school district’s K- 12 families encouraging them to support independent reading in their community by paying $10 to enroll in the AR program.

Can you imagine? And it gets worse!  There are prizes.  Not of the small, trinket variety.  Instead, the prizes are limo rides to special meals and/or tours in the community, board presentations of awards that will be aired on local t.v. and streamed on the internet.  And … a CAR!! Valued at over $14,500 (!).  It brings to mind a t.v. show from my childhood – “Let’s Make A Deal!”

Is this really how a school district wants to emphasize the importance of reading?  I think not.  All I can say is that I’m glad I don’t work for Burbank Unified, and while I am sure that plenty of school districts and teachers appropriately use programs such as Accelerated Reader to encourage reading, the misdirected focus of Burbank Unified is disturbing.

* follow the link and click on: “Current Events: How to Win a Car”

Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook,  has written about Accelerated Reader and offers up his thoughts here.  In a nutshell, it seems Trelease believes AR can be successfully used as one of the ways students are encouraged to read.  But implementation and understanding of the whys and hows of the program are key.

Sadly, when I read the letter from the office of Burbank Unified’s superintendent, I didn’t get the feeling the district was addressing the issue of improved independent reading levels because of a balanced understanding of the research.  I can only hope that I have entirely misunderstood the superintendant’s intent and that there are many teachers in Burbank’s district who will take it upon themselves to provide a balanced reading program in their own classrooms.

Admittedly, since we don’t have AR at my school, my experience is skewed.  I would love to hear what others think of AR.  Does it work?  How does *your* school keep the goal of encouraging independent reading in balance?

In a future post, I’ll share what *I* do to encourage independent reading in my own classroom.  But here’s a quick peek: I bought more BabyMouse books so that the students in my classroom don’t have to wait as long to read what has become one of our classroom’s favorite series.  And I go to events such as today’s CLC Fall Gala, so that I can share a few fun facts about the authors I’ve met. And if I’m able, I get a few pictures, as I did today, because my students will be thrilled to know I really *did* meet one of their favorite authors!

I’ve been holding off on this post because I still haven’t finished reading all the books I’m going to mention here.  But then the whole point of bringing up Babymouse, Geronimo Stilton, and Phonics Comics is that these are three series that have become hits with my students.

In the best case scenario, I keep up on all the books my students are reading.  But really?… it’s impossible!  So I do the best that I can and read as many books as I can manage.

I’m always searching for *the one book* that will hook students so seriously on reading, that the love of books will stay with them for the rest of their lives.  A tall order, to be sure…

And because I’m teaching a new grade level, I’m always on the lookout for books and series to add my collection – books that will meet the needs of the broader ability and age-range of the readers I now teach.

Not unlike most 3rd grade classrooms, I have students who are reading books anywhere between a year or two below grade level, and those who read several years above grade level.  These children are as diverse as any: some are second language learners, others are gifted, some have learning disabilities, others have average ability.

Just thinking about what I, and so many other public school teachers, do to meet the needs of such a wide range of abilities, makes me appreciate anew the enormity of the task before us.

While teaching first grade, I hadn’t needed to add much in the way of graphic-type novels to my classroom library.  It’s not that I didn’t have students who wouldn’t have enjoyed them, it’s just that I already had a huge collection of books, and didn’t really need to search for new ways to spend my hard-earned cash.

But then I changed grade levels and I wanted to build up my library to meet a new set of needs: older students, representing a wider range of ability and interest.

Here are 3 series that we’re enjoying:

Phonics Comics:  This series, published by innovativeKids, includes books at three levels: Early Readers, Developing Readers, and Confident Readers.  The books are 24 pages long, with a short list of sight and non-decodable words at the back.

I initially bought four of the Level 3 books for one of my reluctant readers,  currently working at the early 2nd grade level.  But these books have been requested by some of the higher (at and above grade level) readers, as well.

The titles hint at why these books are real winners: “Hiro Dragon Warrier,” “Meet the Sparkplugs,”  and “Spooky Sara.”

BabyMouse (by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm): Babymouse was not unfamiliar to me prior to moving up to 3rd grade.  It’s just that I’d never actually read any of the books, and didn’t have any copies in my classroom library.

But when one of the students picked up the series in the school library and the books began circulating, I, too, got hooked.  Who wouldn’t enjoy reading about an adorable mouse gallivanting across pages of pink, black, and white? I was smitten!  I’ve added 3 copies to the class library and feel like it won’t be complete until we put at least one copy of each of the books in the series on our library shelves.

Geronimo Stilton (by Geronimo Stilton, a pseudonym) is a series that’s neither graphic novel nor comic book.

Instead, it finds a happy medium smack dab in the middle of it all by combining a bit of the best of both formats within the framework of a traditional chapter book/novel.

This decidedly 3rd grade series plays with text size and font, as well as spot illustrations, maps, recipes, and more to divide up the text into manageable chunks.

I have yet to read past the first 3 pages of even one of these books, but students tell me they’re lots of fun, and judging by the large number of books in the series, these books have a large following.  Suffice it to say that I’ve already cleared another spot in our class library for *this* series.

What series/books are your students enjoying this year?

So reads the tagline on author/illustrator Meghan McCarthy’s website and I couldn’t agree more.

Though I’d skimmed through Strong Man: The Story of Charles Atlas (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007) in the book store soon after it was published, only recently did I pick up a copy to share with my third grade class.

Here’s what we loved:

* First off – the illustrations.  Aren’t they amazing?  The eyes on each of the characters, the placement and line of the mouths, the angular noses.  There’s something unique and genuinely fun about McCarthy’s bold – almost cartoon-like-but-only-in-the-best-way - art.  Her use of muted and bright colors, frames, speech bubbles, and more appealed to both me and my students.

* Secondly – one of the difficult tasks an author must face when writing a nonfiction picture book is the necessity to carefully choose which events to include in a story. Some need only a brief mention in order to provide the necessary context for what follows. Some events can be entirely omitted.

I thought this line from the very first page was genius: “Although Angelo didn’t know it yet, he would go on to do great things.” That line alone is but one indication of McCarthy’s skill.  From this point, the story smoothly transitions from Charles Atlas’s arrival to Ellis Island as a small boy to the events that led to his decision to “do something to stop the bullies.”

*Also – the book contains two end notes: “Try It Yourself” – four exercises for kids (One of my students immediately recognized the ‘Downward Dog’) and an “Author’s Note” in which McCarthy provides further information about her research findings, including the observation that Charles Atlas, “a man of many firsts” had become, over time, a “real-life Paul Bunyan” who “lived a very private life, so private that all that remains are the idealized stories.”

All in all, I am inspired to search out more of Megan McCarthy’s work.  And I know my students will be pleased that I did!

Okay, so I’m still in the Back-to-School cocoon.  But I’m enjoying my third graders and hope – soon – to get back to the *rest* of my life.  In the meantime, I expect in the next few days I’ll post about several terrific books I picked up at a recent SCBWI event.  And a post about the fun I’m having looking for books to match up with my 3rd graders.

Here’s a hint: