Like Shakespeare

Sorry, got caught up in the holidays. So here's a story/thought that's been stewing in my brain for a while. A boy I work closely with, most closely in reading, absolutely floored me on Monday morning of the week before winter break. He came to school in kind of a foul humor, so I tried to jolly him up by starting with a game that we play in the hall: we toss a ball back and forth and call a word or phrase to each other that has to do with the book he's reading. It can be anything; doesn't have to be vocabulary. This helps me see whether and what he remembers of what he's read.

He's been reading the "Ready Freddy" series, and on that day students were supposed to decide how they would present their independent reading project to the class. I didn't really know how to approach this task with this kid, but it needed to be very concrete. Imagine my surprise, then, when on the first toss he says, "Freddy is always nervous at the beginning of the book." Next toss: "Then he gets help from his friends, and he's excited about his plan." And finally, "He is always happy at the end of the book." Wow. Considering that getting this kid to answer questions about what he's read is about as easy as pulling teeth, this sounded to me like he had all of a sudden started spouting Shakespeare.

I found out later that this was basically a summary of a reading conference he'd had with Ms. Lee and another student (also reading "Ready Freddy") on Friday, which made it less out-of-the-blue, but still impressive that he internalized and could produce all of that at an appropriate moment. So, great. I had him write it all down as part of his final project (a booklet; he loves making his own books) before it disappeared from his mind. I also praised him to the skies, of course. I think he felt good about his work, as well he should have. A good first period on a Monday. I told his mom about it at dismissal. Yaay.

The next day, Ms. Lee was going to give an assessment that corresponded to the Common Core standards for reading. I attended the meeting in which this assessment was agreed on; students were asked to write about a character that they had read about in the current school year and imagine being friends with them; kind of a fun assignment.

This boy turned in a blank sheet of paper for this assessment. Let's just leave aside the reasons for that; suffice it to say that this is not an uncommon occurrence for this boy when it comes to assessments. There was another boy in the class who also turned in a blank paper; this boy's particular challenge is writing, so again, not so surprising as an outcome. But my question is this: isn't this as much a writing assessment as it is a reading assessment? How can you assess one without the other, "formally," as it were? Is there a way to do it?

Assessing these two particular students this way indicates a problem, but it doesn't assess their reading ability. This assessment doesn't tell you that one of these boys reads independently for 30 minutes a day, and the other cannot do that at all. It doesn't tell you that they both read (decode) at or above grade level. It doesn't tell you that one of them just made, with some guidance, a major breakthrough in expressing himself concerning his reading comprehension.

Perhaps this assessment served its intended purpose for all but these two students, although this is far from clear. My question is this: how useful is this reading assessment if it is as much about how well a student writes as about how the student reads, or how sophisticated their thinking is about what they are reading? If we rely on writing to inform us about their reading, and thinking, then what happens when writing is a problem? Do we assume they're not reading? That doesn't seem fair.

Happy New Year everyone. More in 2013!

Water and conversation

I have been thinking a great deal lately about language and its work as the main medium of teaching. The Japanese have a saying: “Water and conversation are free.” This was an obstacle in my previous career in consulting, as there is a predisposition in Japanese business culture not to pay for “conversation,” which is often what our services boiled down to. My job was to make the conversation interesting and valuable enough to pay for.

In teaching, it’s even harder than that. Language seems so ephemeral- do students hear the words we say to them? Do they understand? Out of 25 kids, how many are hearing me at any given moment? Did that fire truck mean I should start over? We don’t have the luxury of meandering conversations: if nothing else, we’re limited by the attention span of the least attentive child. We have to write koans and haiku. Every word has to be packed with meaning, we have to know how to say the most in the least amount of words and time, and the lesson has to be more than the sum of its parts: its substance has to stay in their minds somehow. Right now, I waste words, and time, casting around for just the right lever to pull, to tip their minds in the direction I want them to go. I feel like I don’t know where we’re all going—mainly because I’ve never been there before. I am not reliably leading them, yet, where I want them to go. If they do wind up there, it feels like a happy accident, and I need to also find a way to know if it happened at all. It’s all still water and conversation.

。。。水とお喋り

Parenting in Public, or My Toughest Parenting Experience to Date

7:45 am on a Manhattan-bound Q train. It's crowded, and M and I are standing. Four or five young men board the train, about 15 or 16 years old. They are talking amongst themselves about something no doubt completely innocuous, but loudly, and it is f__ this and sh__ that and, especially, a more or less constant stream of the n-word.

I stand there trying to tune it out and hoping M is, too. But they get louder and louder, and finally, I turn to the one talking into my ear and say, in what I hope is a reasoned tone, "Listen. She's four. Does she really have to listen to this?"

They were genuinely apologetic: "Sorry miss," and I was prepared to let it go. After all, they really were just chatting to each other, in the way that teenagers do. It is their vernacular. I accept this- just not right in the ear of my four-year-old.

Then M looks up at me and herself utters the n-word, with a question mark at the end.

I said to her, probably much too firmly, "You must never say that word, do you understand? It's a very bad word. Never say it." She looked down and, perceiving that she had done something wrong but having no idea what, began to cry. Hard.

I picked her up in my arms to comfort her. I said to the young men, "I hope you're pleased with yourselves." All of this took less than 30 seconds.

My immediate thoughts were as follows: I should have been more compassionate with M. I should have been more articulate with those boys. Maybe, I should never have opened my mouth. But even had I not, clearly that word entered her brain.

Certainly I don't blame those boys for her distress, but I'm sure they misinterpreted what I said. I blame them for something more important than that. And maybe I shouldn't blame them- I don't know if it's appropriate to expect them to reflect on how what they are saying sounds to someone who does not speak their vernacular. Somehow I can't picture them talking to their mothers that way, but at the end of the day, I am still blinded by my cultural lens. I can't imagine what their words do or don't mean to them.

But I can only think that if ever there was empirical proof that language has an impact, this is exhibit A.  To put it in the starkest possible terms, I don't think those boys want to be the ones who taught a little white girl the n-word, regardless of what else I might teach her about the n-word. If I asked them, I bet that's what they'd say to me: I don't want to be that guy- I can imagine that.

The train was full of all kinds of people, of every hue. I have no idea what anyone thought of the exchange, if they thought anything at all. But what a relief that children are children: I was able to cheer M up on the rest of our trip to school, and by the time we got there, she was running down the hill, pretending to be a dog, and anxious to be inside and join her friends, per usual. I went to her classroom in hopes of catching her teachers so that, if she should decide to try the word out again at school, they would know the background.

Her teachers were not surprised, but I was, when I burst into tears while telling the story. And, truly, of the many moments that I wish I could have called my mom in the last six years, never more so than today. Why? I couldn't tell you, not exactly. It was just a harrowing experience.

I know that this will come up again. I only hope that next time, I can be more prepared and less reactive. I hope I can make M understand without making her cry. And most of all... I could really live without the audience. This subject is hard enough as it is.

QUIET!

This will be brief. Sometimes it's hard to remember that kids that are noisy are learning and engaged. Depending on the activity, it's not possible to be silent.

Yes, I had another sub at PSOhYes today, for several periods while Ms. Lee was doing some professional development. The sub was nice enough. But.

I had the kids doing a math game that Ms. Lee had left me to review their math facts. It involved groups of four and a ball, and with that structure, they were going to get boisterous, it's a given.

Once the sub had had enough of the noise, she sat on the teacher's chair and yelled, "It's too loud in here! You can play but you have to be quiet."

All the kids looked at me. Of course, I couldn't say anything, but I was thinking, really? You think they can play if they have to be quiet? I don't!