Rise Against's It Gets Better Video

This is beautiful-- and a good illustration of the hidden world of the child. We all need to remember what it is like to be a kid, skating out there all by yourself, in the land of Lord of the Flies, where adults can't help and kids attack what is vulnerable and even slightly different. The plight of homeless LGBT kids breaks my heart-- and Tyler Clementi's story is not forgotten, as it is illustrated here, by many. Beautiful.

Wisconsin Education Protest Videos

My dream and goal for America is to see the kind of democracy in action everywhere that is being displayed in Wisconsin. It is unfathomable to me that American parents are permitting a campaign of wide-spread child abuse by governments. Larger class sizes, cutting the arts and libraries, fewer well-trained, highly paid teachers, more standardized testing-- WHERE IS THE WIDE-SPREAD OUTRAGE? Why aren't parents marching in the streets, organizing, striking, FIGHTING?

Wisconsin "Budget Repair Bill" Protest Pt 2 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

WI "Budget Repair Bill" Protest (Feb 20-24?) Pt. 3 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

Wisconsin Protests Pt. 4 from Matt Wisniewski on Vimeo.

Library News from Bald Eagle, PA...and Suzanne Fisher Staples

In sad, enraging and all-too common news, the march of stories about the death of support for librarians and school library goes on. In Bald Eagle, PA, the librarian teaches 6 library classes in 4 buildings from 8:20-11:30. Then she is required to go to the high school and teach Family Consumer Science to 3 more 50 minute classes until 3:10. Her lunch is eaten in the car as she travels from the elementary schools to the high school. Her libraries are not organized by Dewey or Library of Congress- they are slammed on the shelves in AR order by the kids-- so good luck finding anything by topic or author or keyword or any other way... sometimes the school secretary helps reshelve.

Suzanne Fisher Staples of Shabanu fame is a trained journalist who spent years in Asia, especially Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. One of her goals is to bring little-known cultures to Americans. She is speaking today about cultural misunderstandings. Thank god for political people-- Jeri Hurd, you would love this discussion-- the first thing Suzanne brings up is the war with Afghanistan and its misguidedness, based on misunderstandings of the Afghani people. Here are some amazing highlights of her wonderful discussion with us at PSLA today:

* The WHO had to remake their standards of poverty for Pakistani people-- since trade largely takes the place of money, per capita income doesn't apply-- so the WHO replaced per capita income with number of calories taken in each day. Grown men consume 1200 calories while doing hard physical labor all day.

* Suzanne speaks Urdu, the language of Pakistan. When in Pakistan, she wore the clothing they wore to fit in-- she says they are half her size with fine features and dark skin. She wore a chador- say "cha-der"--a 56 inch square piece of fabric over their heads. Suzanne does not find the chador to be a sign of male oppression. It is a tool for carrying kindling, makes a great sling or hammock for babies, protecting them from snakes and scorpions, a bed sheet, a bandage, a towel. Suzanne says the chador is a symbol for her of remaining open minded and open hearted about cultures we are unfamiliar with.

* The myth of the hookah smoking male oppressor keeping women sheilded from Western ideas was met with incredulousness by Pakistani men Suzanne spoke with. They were very happy, according to Suzanne, to have their women learn to read and write, and gain in any way from anybody. They exist in abject poverty and look for help, she says. She says the men didn't know what to make of her--she was big, she was blond-- she says they didn't know if she WAS a woman. Sitting with the women was entirely different-- they touched her face, her hair. Once a glove she was wearing came off in a woman's hand, who was appalled and then hilariously amused--the woman thought Suzanne's skin had come off. She said she and the women would discuss food, birthdays, children, etc. Suzanne was able to carry news of droughts to the governor of Punjab province, endearing her to the men who began to see her presence as helpful.

* American schools were built out of huge square blocks of heavy materials to ensure their safety from earthquakes. Pakistanis would not go into them not because they eschewed education but because they knew should an earthquake occur, being inside the building would mean being crushed. These schools were built without electricty, and the only time people had to attend class was at night after working all day. 120 degree days and freezing nights kept teachers and doctors away.

* 1200 calories does not mean that is the amount a man ate everyday. During the dry season people ate much less. Suzanne gave teddy goats and banty-sized chickens, both of which ate little and produced much milk and eggs, to people who attended her literacy programs in Pakistan. This gave people the ability to live and learn.

* Shabanu, Haveli and House of Djinn are going to be made into MOVIES!!

* People ask her, "Isn't it hard to be the only woman in these countries?" Suzanne says that being a woman in the Islamic world was for her, an advantage. She says if anybody seeks hospitality from a Muslim, they will protect their guest literally with their life. Any time she visited a refugee camp she was offered a cup of tea, a meal, whatever they had-- even in the face of crushing poverty.

* Suzanne is mystified by some popular novels about Western women in Saudi. Her experience is with countries based on Persian culture-- she finds Pakistani culture to be very different from depictions of cultures in Iran and Saudi Arabia. She makes a distinction between Arab and Persian cultures. During the Bush years, Suzanne was shopping in a souk. While there, she met a spice merchant who said, "I am Iranian. Your President and mine have troubles, but you and I will be friends." As he shook her hand, he palmed a beautiful container of mahogany saffron into her hand as a gift.

* In response to a question about the French law forbidding Muslim head coverings, Suzanne says, "There are more Muslims who are victimized by fundamentalists than Westerners." She strongly states that laws like this only make the Muslim and Arab world less able to believe in the goodness of Western countries.

Suzanne Fisher Staples is a calm, attractive older woman with gray hair, glasses and no make up. She is soft-spoken and totally believable. She would make a wonderful speaker for middle school kids who need to learn about Muslim culture. I feel very lucky to have heard her today.

Karen's Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools--ways to use social networking sites, etc. for education

Between sessions I've been talking to librarians from across the state and hearing one heart-breaking and enraging tale after the next. One librarian's district has just make ALL of their librarians part-time-- involuntarily. A Philadelphia librarian spoke about a statistic she had to read nationally (because it wasn't found locally) that Philadelphia is the nation's leader in pregnant 10 and 11-year olds..and they are set to cut school nurses, instrumental music, school librarians, health classes and art. Every time two librarians are together you will hear blood-curling stories of essential services to children being heartlessly cut. One woman's small town has no library-- and all school librarians' jobs are on the chopping blog. WHERE WILL THOSE KIDS FIND BOOKS TO READ??

Some highlights from today's second session:

Karen's Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools-- check this out: http://pslaconf.wikispaces.com/

Helpful tools for educators:

* Facebook as an advertisement for the library program-- use it to connect to parents and students about the program, curricular connections, core content links, pictures and video that relate to things you are teaching. Create a FB page for your library. Be careful to be absolutely clean in what you post! Be aware of restrictions district-wide on the use of FB.

* Book Trailers-- look on the Teacher Librarian Ning for great examples of student-made book trailers. Be careful with copyright violations-- go to http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com/ as a resource for copyright friendly images to use. Upload to Vimeo. See the PSLA wiki for more info on resources for images, kid-made book trailers or other uploading sites.

* goodreads sometimes has book discussion groups with authors, you can intro it to your kids and have them introduce you to their favorite authors, books, etc.

* online surveys-- surveymonkey.com and there are others to use too, googledocs lets you embed your surveys into other sites--- find out what kids are reading, what books they liked best, what they'd like to see offered at the library, (book purchase request), feedback on projects, pre-and post-assessments for content lessons, etc. You can teach kids about how to evaluate data with surveys, too-- what makes a good or bad question, is this a good reflection of the attitudes of a population, etc.

* glogster.edu as a pathfinder for all kinds of content areas-- vocab glogs, career research, literary glogs, etc. Link 10 glogs together to make one project so you have plenty of room on it and don't put too much stuff on each page. The .edu site limits the use...you might have to pay for extended numbers of students' accounts.

* twitter feed can be embedded in your page-- and you can send out info all the time to students and parents-- watch hashtags such as #tlchat, #edchat, #edtech, #psla11-- Joyce Valenza says twitter and Diigo make her appear super smart-- she gets to gain from other people's wisdom

* screencastomatic can help you make a screencast so you can have videos of you teaching stuff to kids, parents and staff: check out: Saddleback Library, McNeil Library, Tulsa Community College for examples of good screencasts. See Bekci Kelly's Screencast Page on the PALibrarians wiki. Zamzar will convert Youtube videos to videos you can download and upload to other sites. Khan Academy is an important and up-and-coming source.

PSLA Conference 2011-- This post contains offensive language-- fair warning!

There's a gorgeous woman I know who is every inch a former ballerina. Long boned, slender and elegant, this lady looks all together, all the time. Beautifully dressed, well coiffed and manicured, she exudes class. She is a children's librarian and as such, she is more than she seems. Let's call her Audrey. Audrey loves gangsta rap. She once texted some lyrics from one of her favorite songs to me, which, if you are easily shocked, you may want to avoid reading, below:

Niggas! Bitches! Bitch-ass Niggas!
Bright ass hoes and bitch-ass hoes!
Fags, hags and scallawags!
It's about to go down like a muthafuckin plane crash!
It's about to burn like a bad-ass perm!

Now the use of the "n" word here is not in any way to be considered an endorsement of using the term. I agree with Maya Angelou that a word is a thing-- and as such, can be absorbed physically and cause harm. I hate the "n" word. But this blog post is not about that terrible word and the politics of using it. This blog article is about the incongruities of librarians-- which I find to be endlessly amusing, surprising and affirming-- as I am a bundle of contradictions myself.

Audrey sent me this text on a day when I was angry and feeling powerless to make changes I thought were terribly important. They gave me a way to laugh and have that impotent rage feel understood-- which I imagine they may do for the people who wrote them. Audrey once corrected my pronounciation of Mozart-- "It's Moat-tzart, Sheila," she said. Audrey recently gave me a CD of songs she likes, including Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta and Pimp Juice.

The PSLA, or Pennsylvania School Library Association, has an annual conference in Hershey, PA every spring. Today is the opening day-- and already I have been struck by the broad spectrum of people drawn to my profession. I sat next to a young woman from North Philadelphia this morning at the opening breakfast. She had a large segment of Dante's Inferno tattooed in Italian down her left arm. You go, Rocker Librarian Gangsta Chick! Sitting now in my first session, I see a nun in full habit (really! In this day and age!) You go, Religious Lady! I bet underneath that habit lies the heart of Joan Jett. That's the thing, I find-- no matter how they look on the outside, librarians often have rich veins of revolution, outsider and dork, roughly mixed with Vera Bradley, Talbot's, sensible shoes, tattoo ink, dreds, patchouli, knitting needles, piercings and obscure Japanese thrash metal.

The first session's presenters are a farily good illustration of this. The session offers a collection of well-thought out lesson plans aligned with standards, all of which will be sent to my email box by the end of the conference. This is a good opportunity to see what others are doing with new picture books and to see what younger librarians and librarians-in-training are up to.

First up is an obese undergraduate in a lavendar shirt, white tie and crew cut. He is pink cheeked and looks mighty young. However, his lesson plan involves a media-rich web quest on Lafayette which he created in response to a gorgeous book by Russell Friedman. Next is an anorexic girl with long hair and hollow eyes in a sequined blouse. She designed lessons on art movements throughout history to bring Art & Max, David Wiesner's new book to life for students. An intense, very thin girl dicusses the digital storytelling apps (one of which is PhotoPeach, which I've never heard of) she uses with Interrupting Chicken. She clearly gets an "A" in every class. Last is a very good-looking jock-looking fellow who will definitely set high-school hearts a-flutter when he gets his first job as a librarian. He speaks in a very soft voice, gesturing balletically with long, elegant hands about The Heart of a Samurai, a novel based on a true story of a marrooned Japanese boy.

Maybe what surprises me is to find the intelligence and innovative thiniking behind the faces of these young people-- and that surprise reflects badly on me. It's good to have your biases and limitations challenged. I'm glad I'm here so I can learn about these new books, innovative teaching that is becoming ubiquitous (better keep up, May-Stein!!) and what an asshole I really am.

Catherine Ferguson Academy Video and America's Egypt

Catherine Ferguson Academy on the Rachel Maddow Show

Watch the video, above. This segment of the Rachel Maddow Show is devoted to the story of the Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit, Michigan. As you will have seen from the video, this school is for girls who are pregnant and/or have children already. They run a farm using some of the abandoned areas of Detroit as part of their schooling, and bring their babies to the daycare on site. The school is named after an altruistic and heroic former slave who spent her free years caring for lost children. One of the requirements of Catherine Ferguson Academy is that you must apply to college, and 90% of the girls do. The Principal, Mrs. Andrews, is a guiding light and an inspiration to her students. And due to the current hostile take over by corporations of our democracy in American-- the school is slated to be shut down.

All of the people who are fired up about Waiting for Superman and other commercials for corporate take-overs of public schools need to be aware that until they have exhausted themselves in the effort to support poor and special-needs kids, they are part of the problem. Don't blame teachers for the failings and disinterest of a country fascinated by the Royal Wedding and Charlie Sheen to the exclusion of the needs of children. If people can't ensure that in their own country public libraries are well funded, neighborhoods are safe, arts in schools are thriving and teachers are respected and well paid, they don't deserve a vote in how schools are run. Sorry-- true.

Having just read the ground-breaking and beautifully written article Of the 1%, By the 1% and For the 1% by Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, I have to say to the top 1% controlling 40% of American wealth, watch your back. In total agreement with Stiglitz, I believe that you can only push people so far before Egyptian-style freedom movements occur. Shuttering schools like Catherine Ferguson Academy in the battle-worn city of Detroit is a board in the coffin being built for this system. And I think America's Egypt will begin in Detroit. Too much pain and suffering is concentrated there.

Sign the Petition to Save the School!

Article about a city-wide baby shower for the students

info on the school

Oprah segment on the gardening work of the school

Metro News article on the school

Matched by Ally Condie

Matched by Ally Condie starts as chilling a book as you let it
be. Its the kind of book that requires some careful reading to fully
appreciate the horror of the world it creates. That's because the narrartor is part of and accepts that world completely. When you start to read against her placid observations (she's fine, initially, with The Society killing her grandfather because he's 80 years old!) you start to understand: this is the world of The Giver-- and nobody cares. That's when the book gets interesting. What if Jonas from The Giver didn't care when he saw his father killing babies?

A great companion to The Giver, Matched takes the innocent premise of that book-- that just knowing their society is evil will bring some people to revolt-- and moves it into a more modern realm: what if you know your system of living is wrong and don't care-- since you live a comfortable life? See what I mean? OY!

But then-- Cassia, the main character in Matched-- does begin to care. How?
Through poetry. I remember the precise moment when poetry slowed down
the whole world and called me. I was in sixth grade and encountered Harlem II by Langston Hughes in a literature text book. We didn't even read it for class. That poem, with its icy first line-- What happens to a dream deferred? grabbed me, spoke to me, made me realize that the written word pertains to me like nobody and
nothing else did or ever can. I believe from personal experience that there is a reason the Chinese burned libraries in Tibet before they destroyed anything else. Poetry can light your hair on fire and change you forever. It can make you act. Call me a crazy English major, but it can happen. Let's go with that.

Cassia's grandfather gives her an artifact-- a legal reminder of the old
days-- her grandmother's golden make-up compact. Hidden inside, her
secretly subversive grandfather has hidden Dylan Thomas's poem Do Not Go
Gentle. In Cassia's world, there are 100 approved poems, paintings and
pieces of music that everybody has access to. Cassia's father, a Society
Official, burns superfluous libraries for a living, as all that old
stuff isn't necessary any more. Do Not Go Gentle is not one of the 100.

Cassia's secretly subversive Grandmother was a Sorter in the old days,
helping to eliminate all but the 100 approved poems. She took one--
Thomas's-- and kept it. To Cassia, heart-sore and sad about her
grandfather's gentle death-- it is a beautiful curiosity. It itches
something out of her head and her heart. It makes her puzzle and think.
It drives her to distraction-- and eventually, to a great ending of the
book, which I won't give away. However, I will say that Matched does a
GREAT job of NOT committing the uber-sin of many YA writers. She doesn't
place her finger on a certain page number and decide, "Okay, time to
clean up, solve the character's problems in a kind and decent way and
end happily." Not that Matched doesn't end happily. It just doesn't end
in a manner you would expect. And I LOVE that.

Matched does sag a little in the beginning of the middle. I think an editor might have tightened up the book a bit. However, there is so much to explore and love about this book that I recommend it highly. NOT a Hunger Games read-a-like. But a great story that makes you think.

Tyler Clementi, Facebook and Learning Communities

Rutgers Suicide Video
Tyler Clementi and the five other gay teen suicides this past week have the nation reeling. Debates are taking place about whether our national discriminatory policies and laws contributed to the deaths. Vigils are being held. And scarily, the death toll keeps rising: last week, five kids had died because of bullying online. This morning it is six.

As an information specialist and the mother of a gay kid, I am heartbroken. I am so fortunate to have been a member of a liberal Jewish congregation in a liberal part of a relatively liberal town. So is my kid. She grew up going to gay rights marches, spending Thanksgiving and Pesach with a two-mom family and hearing messages all around her of inclusion and acceptance. She still didn't come out to us until she was fifteen years old. Some of the suicides killed themselves right after coming out to their accepting parents. It would seem that parental acceptance was not key in these kids' sense of their place in the world. Unsurprisingly, it was more likely the attitudes of peers, teachers, the larger world and its attending information conundrum that drove them to kill themselves.

I can't solve our country's discrimination against its LGBT citizens here. But I can offer some thoughts about information and its uses and maybe, some better ways to keep our children safe.

Print information in our time is ubiquitous. The Library of Congress is now cataloging tweets. Our kids don't talk on the phone for hours as we used to anymore, and they don't even email that much: they text and Facebook each other. They communicate in print. They are busy content developers and that is a good thing.

Let's be clear: online bullying is NOT the fault of technology or Facebook. Facebook, like money, can be used for good or evil. It's only a tool. Educators around the world are using it increasingly in the classroom as an effective tool for teaching history, literature and more. It connects people whose purposes are good: for mutual learning, for keeping up with loved ones, and its uses are still developing.

However, as we know, our yetzer ha-ra and our yetzer ha-tov are not always in balance. Combine that with adolescence and poor impulse control and you have a potential train wreck. Add in parent and teacher inertia and you have a dangerous situation indeed. That's what I mean when I say information conundrum. As educators and parents, we are often unsure of ourselves. How much control of our kids is appropriate? Can we even keep up with our digitally native kids, when computers for us in 1980's high school meant a green screen with yellow letters and a blinking cursor?

We would never put our middle school-age children on a train and send them into an international city like Paris by themselves. It wouldn't be safe. I am asking, no, IMPLORING parents to REQUIRE that their children "friend" them or accept their "friend" requests in order to have a Facebook page. In the education world, we know children need support in order to succeed in educational tasks. We use the Jewish educator Lev Vygotsky's term scaffolding to express this. Scaffolds support workers and buildings as they are built. It is our job to provide support to our children as they build their online lives and their digital footprints. Some HR departments are searching people on Facebook before they hire them. Many Google people before interviews. DEMAND your child "friend" you. This way you can become aware of what is happening for them online. Adolescents need adult guidance in their lives. When what they say and do is in print, as much of their lives are now, they can and do make mistakes. These mistakes, as we have seen, can impact others enormously. Can we control all the information our kids are exposed to? No. Should we try to be aware of what our kids are doing in cyberspace? Yes.

I have made a firm policy NOT to allow children who are my current students to "friend" me, as I felt that too much shared information about my life was just TMI for them and for me. However, I am rethinking that position. Facebook is a vehicle I use primarily to learn and to share information. I don't use it to share minutia about my life or to, god forbid, offer secrets to the world. If I were to accept "friend" requests from my current students, I would be in a position to gently guide them online in a way I can't currently. This makes sense to me. It offers a safety net to them. The responsibility lies with me, then, to tell them that if they "friend" me, I will offer them quiet, one-on-one advice via email should they post something inappropriate. I will also tell their parents if I think it is truly over the line. This course of action feels proactive and positive for my students. However, I can't keep kids safe by myself. Parental involvement is necessary. Help me. "Friend" your kid. Let's create a safe learning community together that helps our children better balance themselves in a digital world.

Links:
NYT article on Gay Bullying and Teen Suicide

Pre-Crime Comes to the HR Department

Using Facebook in the Classroom

Education, Social Media, and Ethics: Howard Gardner, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Teacherphobia and the Failure of Citizen Responsibility

Oprah Winfrey and her current series on education in America has many teachers seeing red. They believe that Oprah and her guests on this topic are blaming teachers for the problems that exist in American schools. Oprah believes she should weigh in on these topics, and that doing so helps children. I'd like to respond to her with a few thoughts, as a person who taught in a high-crime, under-served community here in Pittsburgh.

On Oprah's show, Michelle Rhee, D.C. Chancellor of Education, lays out a scenario in which a principal tells a parent that the teacher is on an improvement plan and hopefully will get better. Rhee's hypothetical parent refuses to leave her child that day in that class. The scenario Rhee lays out immediately shows her ignorance about teaching, teachers and the whole idea of education. Watching that part of Oprah's show ALONE tells me most of what I need to know about Oprah's mission around education and any reason to listen to Rhee.

Every Principal in America could have and should have made that speech to every parent there is. Those of us who are teachers know the truth of the situation: teaching is organic and changes every minute with EVERY child. Finding the right ways to teach each individual child is an on-going process requiring peer and administrative support, not to mention the support of public officials and parents. EVERY teacher is constantly getting better, and, if we are lucky enough to have an administration which serves as an educational leadership team, you could say we are ALL on an improvement plan.

I'd like to lock unsupportive public officials and parents in a room with 26 children who represent the real world I have faced as a teacher. They break down like this: 5 kids who are homeless and/or suffering from PTSD, 15 who are chronically hungry and malnourished, 1 with mental illness, 6 who are suffering from abuse at home, 4 who saw their custodial parent dealing drugs the day before, 18 who will get in a fight that day, 12 who suffer from chronic respiratory ailments, 4 with serious health issues, 20 who have never seen a dentist or an optometrist, 22 who can't decode words but who are under crushing pressure from the school board to achieve on a high-stakes test that decides whether the school will lose teachers, art and music programs and school libraries and librarians. Can't read the test questions? Sorry, state rules disallow teachers from helping. For kids with barriers to education, these standardized tests are exercises in humiliation and stress. They add strength to the growing seed of self-fulfilling prophecy being sown in these kids: that school and education are too hard, a source of crushing failure and ultimately, personally irrelevant.

Let's not only focus on poor children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Let's talk for a moment about those children who have every material thing in the world but for whom their parents and grandparents are hazy presences rarely seen. Children who have it all but can't share, are ill-mannered, overly anxious about achievement and ignorant of the intellectual gifts their peers offer. Children who think intelligence is one thing, that achievement is one thing, and who struggle with the impoverished belief that attaining wealth is life's ultimate goal.

Perhaps facing this situation would help unsupportives become aware of what they don't know: that teaching is an art AND a science, that humility in the face of what teachers face daily is REQUIRED, that teachers deserve praise, great pay, good benefits, all the tools they need to do their jobs, and support from the community and the country.

If I could send a message to parents, Oprah, education tzars like Rhee and the country at large, it would be:

Send me children who have learned how to share. Send me children who are well rested, emotionally and physically healthy and well nourished. Send me children who can walk to their neighborhood park, playground and/or library without the fear of being shot. Send me children who can expect to have a family dinner every night at which a caregiver talks to them about their day, and I don't mean the nanny. Send me children who are encouraged to meet others who are not like them, and for whom diversity is a source of strength, not fear. Send me children who have been taught to respect adults. Send me children who are loved well and who are enjoying childhood. I will teach that child beautifully and that child will perform. And if that child doesn't? Send me the resources I need to help that child: speech therapists, social workers, whatever it takes. Don't leave me alone in the trenches.

Oprah and the country at large are placing blame on teachers for things teachers must face alone everyday. That's like blaming the army sergeant for not being able to take an enemy stronghold without any bullets. Oprah's stance is not meant to help children, but to call attention to herself and her production company. If she wanted to, Oprah and others could build health clinics, provide playgrounds, support community centers, build libraries, and send an army of health and service professionals into schools. So could regular Americans. Do your job, Oprah, Rhee, and America, so I can do mine.

Dear Ms. Winfrey