Let's Get Ugly and True

Another day, another dismal library to fix. The Manchester Miracle is almost over. The Library was redone by Sam's Club. Truly. I know-- its strange: Sam Walton, the Wal-Mart goon who oppressed millions with his Carnegie-esque gospel of wealth philosophy fixing up a public school library. But let's face it: Sam is dead. The good Sam's Club did here was because of a community organizer named Kezia Ellison, who started a foundation called Educating Teens About HIV, Inc. and a solid group of working-class Sam's Club managers.

Kezia lives a few streets over from Manchester and became aware of the library situation there because of the media push Jessie Ramey and I engineered. She showed up the Monday after the front page article in the Post-Gazette and asked me what I wanted for the space. This is what I told her:

* new paint
* new carpet
* a gorgeous, fancy author's chair
* new blinds
* clean everything: windows, wooden shelves, etc.
* more bookshelves
* a story circle carpet
* a bank of computers for kids to search the catalog on
* a new circulation desk
* more books
* giant, good quality bean bag chairs
* a SMART Board
* a wall-sized political map of the world

Kezia took notes, the map I drew of where everything should go, and left. I didn't think anything of it until she came back, telling me she had spoken with the entire North Eastern region of Sam's Club and had gotten them to provide everything on my list for the library. In a matter of five weeks, the Manchester Miracle Library went from prison block hell to professional designer-designed (Perlora Furniture donated professional interior designers and a pale green wool author's chair) heaven. The pale warm yellow walls reflect the sunshine. A 6'6" ficus tree spreads out behind the author's chair, which sits on the enormous story circle carpet. A political map shows computer surfers the world while they work the three new laptops. An enormous and brand-new YA section faces the bean bag chairs. We have had the first meeting of our first middle school book club.

Our miracle, begun via social media and made true and real by the good hearts of people all over the world, broadened, expanded and grew into a glowing jewel, a gift: a gorgeous community center for teachers and underprivilged kids inside a poor school. A sanctuary in the middle of a struggling neighborhood that is beautiful, rich and full of resources.

You know what it doesn't have? A librarian. Seriously. Theoretically, one day a week kids can get in their gorgeous sanctuary, when the librarian comes. But in reality she doesn't come once a week: she's on a 6-day schedule and comes when her schedule allows. So, the most beautiful room many of us will ever see sits empty and echoing while kids go book-less, library-less, sanctuary-less. Welcome to my freakin' world.

Other posts by me and by better writers like Jessie Ramey of Yinzercation explain in detail why this is. In short, our state has an incredibly corrupt governor and state system that instead of protecting public education as a public good, gives it away to the highest bidder. In the name of supporting his largest campaign contributor, Tom "Corporate" Corbett cut $1 BILLION from our schools this year and is relaxing PSSA and other standards for charter schools. This is killing the public schools. The Philadelphia system is dead, and now he's coming for Pittsburgh. Dr. Linda Lane, our Superintendent, was left trying to run a school system with less money and teachers than ever. She set up a system where schools have library service once a week-- the best she or anybody could do under the circumstances.

The problem is that many libraries in the public schools hadn't had librarians for years prior to this mess. So-- now that each library must serve children once a week, somebody was needed to "redd up" the libraries and get them in shape to see kids. That's where I come in. I'm paid as a sub three days a week to rehab unloved libraries.

And my newest library is Pgh Carmalt K-8. The poor thing. It's filthy, sad and bereft of books. Broken book shelves, empty bookshelves, bookshelves with torn, dirty and worn out books, stained carpet, a storeroom more than a classroom, with TV-VCR carts crowding aisles between bookshelves and old curricular materials where the biographies should be. For 100 bucks a day I'm paid to clean out the back rooms, clean out the library, and try to bring some light and organization to the collection. So I'm schlepping boxes of books, tossing old crap, dusting, cleaning. With a Master's Degree and five years' experience, this is what I'm doing. Not that there isn't some professional expertise needed: there is. What you throw out and what you put on the shelves draws on training and experience and can't really be done by anybody but a professional librarian. It's the dimming light down the tunnel that kills me: the lack of resources with which to enliven these libraries. Miracles don't happen all the time. And the fact that I probably won't have a job at all next year in any capacity within my chosen field.

Mismanagement and poor allocation of resources makes me crazy. Put a really talented and motivated teacher like me in front of kids full time. Provide each library with a full time librarian and a part time aide so that each library becomes what Manchester is: a gift, a gentle light for good, a sanctuary, a place of growing. Give each librarian an iron-clad book budget so she can build her collection free of the fear of that money being grabbed to pay for other needed supplies in school. Quit being so damn stupid, world. Do the right thing. Demand library service for kids. NOW.

 

Dreams Fulfilled and the Manchester Miracle

Last Tuesday night I dragged home, completely exhausted and despairing. I had spent the day sweating in a cement block room painted a peeling institutional and hideous mint green. Dirty windows, spider webs, piles of trash and discarded supplies, and a less-than-enthusiastic music teacher shared the space with a piano, untouched African drums and all the music teacher's lists of rules all over the walls. The long-gone Librarian's office was stacked to the ceiling with old boxes of uncataloged books, that when opened, offered little to be excited about: culled from closed schools a decade ago, they were dirty, outdated and had broken bindings. But that wasn't what I was despairing about. When I looked at the fiction section, sandwiched in between music text books and health text books-- both classes are taught in the until-my-arrival defunct library, there were only 40-60 usable books. For a Kindergarten-8th grade school. With many special needs classrooms, kids with differing and important needs, in a struggling and sometimes violent and dismal neighborhood. Walking to the public library is sometimes too dangerous. And, with No Child Left Behind, kids with low reading scores generally don't make AYP, which puts them in danger of losing more resources. Inequity, thy name is politics meddling in education. Anywho--

I had recently been placed in the Pgh Public Schools as a Librarian sub. I would have 1 day to serve a school of 300 and 1 day to serve a school with 2 campuses and over 500 kids, and the other three days a week, I'd serve as a rehab specialist of sorts for those libraries that hadn't had a Librarian for a long time.Our current Superintendent, Linda Lane, is making an effort toward equity in our city. She passed an educational delivery model that demands a librarian in every Pittsburgh Public School. Great, right? Yes, except that there wasn't money to hire a librarian for every school- with the end result being that each Pgh Public Schools K-5 and K-8 librarian still standing now has 5 schools a week to serve, with only a few exceptions. This is a terrible situation for everybody. But of course it is part and parcel of the current political movement toward making publics so untenable for parents and children that they are forced to consider either private schools (funded by vouchers) or for-profit charter schools. These for-profits are making CEOs rich. So are the test-making, checking and implementing companies stuffing themselves like pigs with the cash No Child Left Behind's obsession with testing spews toward them. Who is losing? Children. Poor children especially. And people who were truly born to be educators. Nobody wants to damage children, least of all people like me who have gone into excessive debt to gain the education and training necessary to devote myself body and soul to a low-paying career nurturing them.

So-- back to being despairing. I posted a picture of the empty library shelves on Facebook with a status about my state of mind and why. Then I made a Wish List on Amazon. (Amazon Wish List for Manchester K-8) And the magic started. Jessie Ramey, one of the most important voices on public education and equity writing today, is the author of the Yinzercation blog and my friend on Facebook. She wrote a wonderful blog article about what I experienced at Manchester (library-books-and-equity) and people started commenting, sharing, and buying books off of the Wish List. I spent some time tweeting to friends, people I admire, people I thought might care, and Pgh community organizations, referencing the list and Jessie's article.

 The thing went viral. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette came out to do an interview and on Saturday, they published an article about what was increasingly becoming a miraculous regional and national miracle. (http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/pittsburghers-rally-to-replenish-one-poor-schools-library-shelves-654470/) The Amazon list was going CRAZY. Every time I checked it, another 20-30 books had been purchased from it. Besides my full time job, keeping books on the list was literally my full-time occupation. I was staying up late and getting up at 4AM to wrack my brain for books that would well serve the Manchester population, poring over on-line "Best Of" lists and begging Librarian friends to log on to Amazon as me to help me keep the list full.

Jessie Ramey worked her magic behind the scenes. Emailing, following up with emails sent to me and to her, tracking down radio shows to talk to, writing additional blog articles, (http://yinzercation.wordpress.com/news/) reaching out to people she knows and knows of, Jessie was and is the driving force behind the Manchester Miracle, as I've called it. To date, we've been offered grants, offers of help from far and wide, and almost 800 books have been purchased from the list. Plus there are thousands-- I mean it, thousands-- of books in boxes on my front porch and turning my living room into a book warehouse.

The world is good, people are good, and people Black, White and every color care about equity and kids. That's good to know, because getting our schools and our libraries to the place they need to be is going to require the back breaking work of all of us. I'm proud to be part of it.

iTunes U

iTunes U is such an amazing resource that every person and every educator needs to know about it. I'm sure it's well known to many, if not most, but the resources there continue to amaze me. For the last three days I've been listening to Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Oratory. I wouldn't have known about this wonderful series of podcasts if I hadn't been perusing the iTunes U selections. Here is the link for this great resource, and it comes with written transcripts of great speeches. Awesome!

Minnesota Public Radio: Say It Plain: A Century of Great African-American Oratory

Roaring Back From the Dead

 
Recently, amid much chaotic, heart rending anguish, tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth from ex-pats, alumni and current students alike, the school mascot at my childrens' school, the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts, was changed from a unicorn to a phoenix. Kids still give the index-finger-to-the-forehead salute to each other in solidarity with their past unicorn-y days. I suspected the unicorn was too "gay" a symbol, and that some folk wanted to de-rainbow CAPA's image a bit by picking a more "macho" mascot. I mean, phoenixes burst into flame. Anything associated with fire has a bit more manly panache than a mythical creature only accessible to virgins. (Sorry-- but that's the story. Don't believe me? Check it out: Unicorns and Virgins) For that reason, I was disappointed in the change...but lately, I've been feeling much more inclined toward the phoenix.

Why? Because the Pittsburgh Public Schools are going to have to rise from the ashes of our Governor's policies to continue to excel. Something needs to finally scorch some damn sense into the general public to turn them into a Wisconsin-style mob on the front lines, soldiers protecting their children's right to a great education. Because like a shrieking bird of prey ON FIRE, outrage needs to flow throughout the state's plumbers, housewives, EMT workers, garbage collectors, teacher's aides and all other ordinary citizens, turning them into marching, voting, screaming, occupying, sit-in-ing, representative-calling, activated advocates for education against the insanity of the Corporate Corbett regime..ESPECIALLY in the Republican-voting "T" middle section of our state not-so-affectionately referred to by Pittsburghers and Philadelphians as "Pennsyltucky."

Today the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's article outlining Corbett's proposed BILLION dollar give-away to oil and fracking interests in the wake of his BILLION dollar cuts to education in Pennsylvania is the best thing that could have happened. (Check it out: Post-Gazette 6/5/2012 Billion Tax Break for Shell )Who could possibly miss this Governor's true interests now? Oh-- let me tell you-- plenty of people. LOTS of misguided folk, with little to no interest in the public welfare, and even less in public education-- that is, those who will profit by the continued effort to privatize public education, break the teachers' unions and make money from the burgeoning prison profiteering movement, among many other things. And those who blindly vote Republican. And those who blame immigrants, poor people, etc. for the worlds' ills. Those who want to stick it to the fat-cat teachers and their paid vacations, union salaries and lazy ways.

Do I sound bitter? I am. Let's make the political personal. I am not the only one who feels about ready to explode in flames about the war on education in America. I became a Librarian with all my heart. I was molded to the Gospel of School Libraries and the good work to be done there, although certainly I couldn't do this work if I wasn't born for it. I have given my literal soul to doing my job well, and in the process, I have helped kids who hated to read find books they love, turned as many lessons into celebrations of childrens' beautiful artistic, intellectual, spiritual and creative selves as I possibly could, braved angry colleagues as I challenged things I felt could be done differently and better, emailed and called a million parents about their kids' behavior, good, bad and especially indifferent, sweated and hurt myself as I schlepped thousands of boxes of people's old books to Used Book Sales to earn money for new books for my library, gotten into grave trouble with supervisors advocating for kids and services to those kids, neglected my personal children because of the outpouring of love, attention and physical energy necessary at work, tried to make magic-- literal magic-- for my students, sometimes 800 strong in single year. This is a tenth of what my job requires-- and this, my friends, is what teachers do every. damn. day.

 So, yes, I am bitter that this profession- one for which a person is born, not made, that demands one sacrifice the richer salary, benefits and personal glory available to other professions--so one can teach first-graders how to tie their shoes, say thank you, say "please," teach parents that their adolescent IS different at school than at home, impose limits, demand excellence-- is under attack by the oligarchy that our country has become. I am angry that my friend Kari, a brilliant math teacher, for whom middle school students use their last few cents to buy presents at the Used Book Sale, who coaches sports and cheerleading and does administrative duty on command-- is furloughed now and will have to look out of state for employment. Oh, wait-- there are no teaching jobs. Anywhere. But there continue to be plenty of children who need people who love them-- who can teach them math-- and who invest in them everyday.

FLAMES. They should burn in our hearts. We have to fight against this war on our kids. NOW. And send Corporate Corbett and his buddies in search of the long-extinct, mythical unicorn in the Land of You're-Over. The good news is that, like Katniss in Mockinjay, by Suzanne Collins says, "Fire is catching!" And parents are starting to organize. I daily read the wonderful blog of Jessie B. Ramey, Ph.D, mother of two Pittsburgh Public School students.This blog, I've decided, is required reading for education advocates. Yinzercation is gaining followers and notoriety, and has been noted and quoted by national and international press. Read it. March. Teach your kids about the cuts happening now. Watch the Upper Darby videos I've linked to, below. All of the beauty of students engaged in gym, music, library, art, marching band-- the beauty of talent and hard work and community and effort and lessons such as: sacrifice pays off, others can be learned from/especially if they are different from you, turning frustration, fear, anger, boredom, aggression, ambition into art-- all of this will be LOST if the Upper Darby system has to follow through because of Corbett's cuts and eliminate ALL of the specials it offers. This is coming to a school district near you. And if you aren't frightened by the specter of poorer kids than yours missing their library, art, gym and music at school, you will be. Because the streets you, your kids and your elderly parents walk on will be filled with those same kids when they haven't learned the lessons arts teach. What happens to a dream deferred? It explodes.

Save Upper Darby Arts

Upper Darby Drum Line

Public Education Under Attack

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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