October 2010 Archives

October 26, 2010

An Incomplete, Unsigned Manuscript

She watched as I studied the lovely, shiny little painted boxes my teacher brought back from Russia. And she waited before asking,
"Now Susie, do you know what they are made of?"
"They're paper mache aren't they?"

"Yes they are. Why do you suppose they were made of paper mache rather than wood?"

"Well" I reasoned, "If they are from the steppes of Russia, wood might be scarce. Paper was probably cheaper in terms of raw materials, but it would be more expensive in terms of labor cost."

"That's good thinking, but those are secondary reasons. Lacquered paper mache is actually preferable to wood because it's stronger, it doesn't warp, and the artists consider it a better painting surface than wood. Now how old do you think these boxes might be?"

I knew from the playful tone of voice and the lifted eyebrow that this was a tricky question. I looked over a dozen or so boxes. There was an assortment of ornate fairy tale illustrations, some snowy landscape scenes, serfs in rural settings, a portrait of Czar Nicholas II, and a rendering of Hans Christian Anderson's Hans Brinker skating down the canal. The styles varied from Byzantine to Art Nouveau to folk art. Could I trust style or dress to provide a clue?

"I'm not sure about most of them, but it seems unlikely that anyone would decorate with a portrait of Nicholas after the Revolution which was, I think 1917. Since he's painted as an adult, I would assume that one was probably painted somewhere around the turn of the 20th century. I don't really know about the rest, but my guess is that they are probably earlier because, while they are beautiful, they seem sort of frivolous and not in keeping with the Socialist and Communist ideology that came after the Revolution."
"That's logical, but do you know what? They were all new but they are all authentic and signed by the painters. You can spot older ones, because they are only marked by the by the factory. You see, during the austere post war years, the small industry for lacquer boxes was enlarged and the boxes were sold to tourists to supplement a weak economy. The Imperial family is still a draw and so supply and demand brought him out of retirement to go onto box tops for tourists like me."

It was a teachable moment and my teacher took advantage of it. Her questioning technique assessed my prior knowledge, required me to compare and contrast, to analyze, to draw on related information, and to defend my position. She then enriched the lesson with additional concepts.

That's what good teaching looks like. In sixth grade she took us on a virtual Grand Tour. She taught me to go beyond seeing the world. She wanted me to observe, examine and incorporate what I saw into my own world. Never mind that on the day of this particular lesson, the student was 60 and the teacher was 99. Mrs. Burnett was still opening windows. John Steinbeck wrote of his high school teacher

In her classroom our speculations ranged the world.
She aroused us to book waving discussions.
Every morning we came to her carrying new truths, new facts, new ideas
Cupped and sheltered in our hands like captured fireflies.
When she went away a sadness came over us,
But the light did not go out.
She left her signature upon us
The literature of the teacher who writes on children's minds.
I've had many teachers who taught us soon forgotten things,
But only a few like her who created in me a new thing a new attitude, a new hunger.
I suppose that to a large extent I am the unsigned manuscript of that teacher.
What deathless power lies in the hands of such a person.

Mrs. Burnett will be 100 on Thursday. How many living sparks of learning have been captured like fireflies because of her? How many of us did she inspire to become teachers? And how many new sparks have those teachers kindled in children? Some days I fret that will never finish writing a real book with my name on the cover. Somehow, when I read Steinbeck's words and think of the Unsigned Collected Works of Mrs. Burnett, i realize that the opportuntity to write volumes in the minds of children is mine to claim.

Happy Birthday Mrs. Burnett!

Image: Photobucket: 99alongway CandlesLitColour

Posted by Susan Graham at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

October 20, 2010

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

The front page of the Oct. 19 Washington Post featured a story on a new DC Schools initiative.

D.C. public schools have started serving an early dinner to an estimated 10,000 students, many of whom are now receiving three meals a day from the system as it expands efforts to curb childhood hunger and poor nutrition.

The article went on to explain that children in early care at 8 a.m. to the end of after-care at 6:30 could spend over 10 hours a day at school and that there are multiple indicators that many of these children live in homes where sufficient food is not available. So now, in addition to breakfast and lunch, dinner is served.

There is good reason to feed these children:

Kids who are hungry don't learn a lot.

Kids who eat nutritionally deficient meals are more likely to be developmentally delayed.

Kids who don't eat well are likely to miss more school and therefore fall behind.

Kids who are hungry are likely to be cranky and aggressive or whiny and distraught.

Today there was a Post reader poll that asked: Should DC schools be serving dinner? Response choices were:

YES. Considering the high poverty rates among DC children it's the least the schools can do.

NO. Serving dinner falls outside the jurisdiction of public schools.
OTHER (Please leave comment.)

When I last looked, the votes were running Yes-53%, No-45%, Other -2%

Arguments, rather discussions, push news, especially on the internet. But the response choices are a beautiful example of leading. Of course children should be fed. They are children. But "...it's the least the schools can do..."? Who determined that the schools ought be responsible for food insufficiency in DC? Or children's health care? Or early care and after school care? And couldn't "...outside the school's jurisdiction" be more accurately expressed as "..beyond the schools' responsibilities."

Isn't it a little disingenuous to see hunger, food instability and childhood obesity as education issues when the headline just above the "dinner at school" article was Income plummets for part-time workers in DC area ?

How many of these children's families are struggling; unable to find full-time work because hiring people to work part-time for 30 hours a week allows businesses to avoid providing benefits to their employees?

Parents are often unemployed or underemployed through no fault of their own. Yet the reader's comments roll out suggesting that the best way to stop the cycle of poverty is to let the kids go hungry and reap the consequences of their parents' inability or unwillingness to provide for them. It doesn't sound like a viable solution to me, but that's not an educator's area of expertise. Maybe all those economists who have been busy helping us take care of schools could work on solving the problem of a living wage. We educators can probably bumble along on our own for a while.

It's a pretty good bet that children who are sick, alone, or hungry are going to not achieve academically. But should responsibility be put on the schoolhouse table? And once hunger and good nutrition comes to school, should it be served up on the plate of the single most important factor in student success--the classroom teacher?

David Strong, culinary director for the catering service that prepares meals at seven public schools admits that getting kids to change their eating patterns is not easy, but apparently he's identified a large part of the problem.

Strong said that

getting teachers to buy into the idea of healthy foods also has been a challenge. "These kids are getting wonderful from-scratch cooking, and then they go back to their homeroom and it smells like a quarter-pounder with cheese, where teachers are walking up and down the hall with their big Wendy's cups," Strong said. "Now we're a little bit past that."

And there you have it. I knew someone would be able to track down the the reason the kids didn't like the three-bean salad and put sugar on their lasagna. It's those teachers!

Good teachers, of course, should be willing to submit voluntarily to a random cheeseburger breathalyzer test and eat carrots and tofu every day. Sure, some would be tempted to cheat-- sneaking TicTacs and keeping Diet Coke in a brown paper bag hidden in the bottom desk drawer. And it will take courage to stand up to those entrenched caffeine users in the teacher's lounge. But I'm sure there are reformers out there willing to take up the challenge! Because if we could just fire all the bad teachers, we could wipe out childhood obesity.

Seriously? It's enough to make a me break out the emergency chocolate!

Posted by Susan Graham at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

October 11, 2010

Don't Make Me Get Out My Cape

Okay, I was Waiting for Superman, but I was disappointed. And a lot of other people who see this movie are going to be disappointed also, because it should have been entitled Waiting for Batman. I guess Guggenhiem is just too young to have met the Superman and Batman from my formative years. Personally I think he should stay home and watch more TV because, from my perspective, he's got his superheroes mixed up.

When I was a little kid, I came home from school and watched the old black and white 1950's Superman series reruns. The Superman I came to admire didn't go around kicking butt, taking names, and self promoting. He watched, he waited, and when all other resources had been exhausted Clark Kent dashed into a phone booth and strip down to his tights. Superman believed in the people around him. He seemed to think of them as decent honest citizens who were capable of making their own choices. So when Superman did step in, he didn't impose his own solutions until human options had run out and innocent people were going to be hurt. Then he simply removed the barriers, got things back on track, and made it possible for everyday folk to continue to pursue truth, justice and the American Way. Once ordinary humans could get a grip on the situation, Superman slipped out of the picture, put on his Clark Kent double breasted suit and horn rimmed glasses and went back to his day job at the Daily Planet. He had no agenda of his own to impose. He didn't try to fix Earthlings so that they become wannabe Kryptonians. Superman had the power to reshape our world, but what he seemed to want to do is to blend in and help out.

I was a teenager when Batman stepped out of the comic books and onto the TV screen. Bruce Wayne, "millionaire, playboy, industrialist, and philanthropist" saw his parents murdered and he vowed to revenge their death by imposing law, order and righteousness on the criminal element in Gotham City. Wayne put on his Batman cape, fought the bad guys, and then retreated to the Bat Cave. I never really cared much for Bruce Wayne. I thought he was arrogant and aloof and I never bought into his elitist perspective of the world around him. He had the money, the power, and the resources to work with those around him to make a better world, but he chose to impose his personal agenda of truth and justice. He used his position of entitlement to put on a mask and work outside the system. Batman was willing to rescue the little people from evil, but he never seemed care to mix with them after hours. As both Bruce and Batman, it was always sort of all about him.

The one thing Superman and Batman had in common was a secret identity. Bruce Wayne lived a reclusive life and had the Bat Mask going for him, so it's plausible that he managed anonymity. But back when I was watching those old Superman episodes, it really bothered me that the entire staff of the Daily Planet could be so oblivious. How could they not notice that Superman and "mild mannered reporter Clark Kent" were one in the same? Lois Lane, an investigative reporter, who pined for Superman and snubbed Kent, never questioned the coincidental but consistent disappearances of Kent when Superman shows up. Jimmy Olsen, cub photographer, archived images of Superman without ever noticing the Man of Steel was the spitting image of Clark Kent without glasses. Editor Perry White had a reporter with x-ray vision, but never recognized or utilized the potential power behind Kent's dependable but unobtrusive work habits. What a waste!

And that brings me back to Waiting for Superman. I would argue that education stakeholders, like the staff of the Daily Planet, aren't paying much attention. There is an army of Supermen and Superwomen among us disguised in alphabet sweaters, apple jewelry and UNICEF/Save the Children ties.Teachers are intervening in the lives of children every day and some of them have been doing it for 35 and 40 years under conditions that would crush the spirit of a mere mortal. They're not out there trying to "fix" children so that they look more like little Bruce Wayne Juniors. Most teachers are doing all they can to empower children to define and pursue their own understanding of truth, justice and the American Way.

All we ask is that we be allowed to do our job without being weakened by the Kryptonite of manipulation by power brokers, exploitation by politicians, and denigration by the media. We'd prefer to stay in our classrooms with the kids, but there are over 4 million of us out there and before this is over, some of us just may have to take off our glasses and put on our tights.

Posted by Susan Graham at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend