Back in the Saddle...

I finally invite you to read, and then I disappear from the radar for a month....So my apologies to you, my neglected readers, if you have checked in only to be disappointed by the absence of any new entries. On the bright side, there is a glut of future entry topics stored up in my mind, and they should be appearing soon.

This past month has been a whirlwind...and not the kind that allows for any blogging time. We closed on our new house and completed phases 1 and 2 of the move the next day -- phase 1: getting my stuff out of storage and phase 2: moving my boxes, our wedding presents, and the first load of Paul's stuff from his house. Some things will have to stay behind for "staging" when we get through the renovations we want to do before putting it on the market. So there is more painting and scraping in my immediate future. In the meantime, it's nice to finally be able to use all of those nice gifts we got for our wedding a year ago!

The bulk of my energy this past three weeks has gone to coordinating the Maryland Writing Project's Invitational Summer Institute. We had a wildly talented group of teachers who met all of our expectations and then some. Our class time began at 8:30 and ended at 3:30, but stretched into the early and late hours of the day with homework and preparation time added. In the end, everyone left with 20+ fabulous lessons for enriching writing instruction in their classrooms and an anthology of the personal and professional writing of the institute's participants. The results of all of our hard work confirmed for me again that this is the best professional development opportunity out there for teachers -- of any grade or discipline (shameless plug)! It is a truly transformative experience. I look forward to staying in touch with all of this year's fellows throughout the year as a mentor and as a fellow writer.

But for now, I return to the domestic front where, not surprisingly, there is still much unpacking to be done. There are boxes of books calling to be put on shelves, clothing to be shelved or given away, and pictures to be hung. And there is still furniture to be bought before we'll be able to give a proper home to everything. Which is why I will keep it short for today....

That Reminds Me...

It is sometimes said that boys marry women like their mothers and girls marry men like their fathers. As an English major, I’ve read the Oedipus story a few too many times to think that any good could come of that. As much as I love my dad, I certainly did not go looking for a clone of him to marry, but it turns out that my husband of one year shares more with my father than just his name.

For starters, both are tall, handsome men with full heads of hair (no inherited male pattern baldness here) who maintain their slim builds despite a shared penchant for ice cream. But the similarities go beyond the physical.

Both are practicing Catholics who attend church regularly, which may be due in part to several years of Catholic schooling. Dad attended a Jesuit high school and college, while my husband was taught by nuns from kindergarten through eighth grade. Both occasionally merit the moniker of St. Paul for their extreme patience, which may mean they are headed for either sainthood or martyrdom (depending on whom you ask).

While their Catholic upbringings may account for similarities in their values, it is wholly unrelated to some of the other similarities I’ve noticed over the past few years. For example, neither one is an avid swimmer. Dad grew up in Brooklyn, my husband in a small town in western Iowa; thus, neither had easy access to the kind of pool at which I spent the better part of my summer days. Dad prefers spending his time around water sailing a Sunfish (a source of many fond memories), and my Paul gets by with the help of a kickboard or flippers. Just don't ask them to put their heads under water for very long.

And while we’re on the topic of sports, neither Paul is a big sports fan. Sure, Dad is a diehard Ohio State Buckeyes fan and enjoys his breakfasts at Wimbledon, but you won’t find him glued to football games every weekend with his feet up and a beer in hand. Thankfully, I won’t ever find my husband doing that either; memories of his own father talking to (or shouting at) the tv to encourage the players on his favorite teams pretty much ensures that.

Where money is concerned, my father and my husband take a similar approach. They are good savers and shrewd investors. They also share a belief about the stock market – namely, that they have an adverse affect on the stocks that they purchase. If they buy shares of a particular stock, look out – it’s likely to take a dive, they’ll tell you.

And finally, there’s music. While both Paul’s have some musical talent, they are largely tone deaf when it comes to singing. Dad is a self-taught piano player – he learned to “fake” the chords of the left hand by learning some basic chord progressions and plays the melody as written with his right. His playing of the Christmas carols each year was always more reliable than his singing (sorry, dad!). My husband played the clarinet in his school’s marching and concert bands and has been known to sing along with the radio in the car. Although he can carry a tune on his own, he has a knack for singing exactly a half-step off whenever I join in. Strangely, he can sing any church song on pitch (see paragraph 3 above).

So did I marry my father after all? Nope, in the end, the differences far outweigh the similarities. Safe to say that I do not suffer from an Oedipal complex. But there is one last thing my husband and father have in common, one that I am most grateful for: a kind and loving heart. I am lucky to be loved by both!

Excuses, Excuses

As you may have noticed, I haven't written an entry for a while. It's not that I haven't been writing -- there are pages in my notebook that will attest to that -- I just haven't put anything here for a while. I have a whole lot of reasons why not...whether you choose to believe them is up to you.

1) I am saving my fingers for the painting I'm doing around the house.
2) The cat sat on the keyboard of my laptop and refused to move.
3) I was on the phone all day trying to solve the problem of the painted firebox at the new house -- before closing date arrives.
4) I didn't want the computer's fan to contribute to the ongoing heat wave.
5) I spent an entire afternoon trying to figure out how to burn pictures to a CD so I could get reprints and get the wedding album together before our first anniversary.
6) I was fighting off giant spider crickets so I could mop under the stairwell in the basement.
7) I was standing on my head trying to increase the time I can spend in that pose.
8) I was trying to beat my Pac-Man record.
9) The computer ate it.
10) I got distracted....

In Print!

My letter to the editor was published in today's Baltimore Sun! To read it online, click on the link (the underlined words). It's my first step in getting teachers' voices heard by a broader audience....

Coming Soon...in Black and White!

There was an article in The Baltimore Sun's commentary section last week titled "Teaching to the test: Good teachers do it" which, as you might have guessed, caught my eye. My husband braced himself for my reaction as I read through the piece, and was surprised when I didn't blow up or start spouting expletives. I handed him the front page section so he could read it for himself and went on to the comics.

Turned out he was the one who was not fully satisfied with Walt Gardner's defense of teaching to the test. The discussion that followed reminded me that although Gardner (a former teacher himself) had made some valid points, he had also made some statements that got my teacher hackles up. I made a mental note to dedicate some of my morning's writing time to drafting a letter to the editor.

The draft incubated over the long holiday weekend, and I looked at it with fresh eyes this morning. At 337 words, it was a bit longer than the usual letter to the editor, but after a few revision passes, it was holding steady at 301 words and there was nothing more I could cut without compromising my message.

I copied it into an email and sent it on its way. No more than five minutes later, the phone rang and the voice on the machine was saying he would like to use my letter. I grabbed the phone and verified that it was indeed my letter and that I had sent it in, and the person on the other end told me it would appear later this week! How's that for instant results?! Would that every acceptance (or even rejection) came so quickly....

I hung up the phone and did some celebratory jumping around the kitchen before calling my husband to tell him the news. "They're going to publish my letter to the editor in the Sun!" While there are some who would say it's just an editorial, I have long been a believer in taking baby steps to make your dreams come true.

It may not be the novel, but it's a step in the right direction!

To read Gardner's piece, click on the link (underlined words). And of course, there will be a link to the printed version of my letter as soon as it appears in print! (I'll figure out how to do it by then.)

The Truth about Real Life

"Real life is not college. Real life is not high school. Here is a secret no one has told you: Real life is junior high."
-Tom Brokaw, in a graduation address at Emory University

I came across this gem as I was reading the latest issue (June 2008) of the Funny Times, a paper dedicated to "humor, politics, and fun." And it's so true. Think about it.

You don't have to go far before encountering a real life example of Brokaw's maxim. Case in point, AOL's sports news yesterday(and it's not the first time they've broached the subject) featured a photo gallery of "The Hottest Olympians" -- with over 80 photographs. Good thing we're paying attention to what really matters in sports, eh? Okay, I admit that I had a teenage crush on Greg Louganis (the diver) and Mitch Gaylord (parallel bars) when they appeared on the Olympic scene, but since when have athletes' looks trumped their skills and abilities when it comes to newsworthy media coverage?

Real life is junior high (or middle school for the younger generation). Take the ever-increasing popularity of social websites like MySpace and Facebook. I haven't actually taken the step of joining such a site yet, so my understanding may be somewhat limited. But I've heard stories about people who become obsessed with how many "friends" they have on their list and how many people have "friend-ed" them lately. (Yes, I believe it's officially become a verb now.) It's a bit too close to the popularity contests that beset my junior high days. I found it easier to revel in being a brainy orchestra nerd...

Real life is junior high, and if you don't believe it, check out a website like Rate My Teacher.com or juicy campus (the college campus gossip site recently featured on a Dateline report). At the former, students gripe about (or rarely praise) their teachers publicly; at the latter, students make the private lives of their peers public (including a girl's rape and the outing of homosexuals). It's middle school behavior, and I know that, most recently, from several years of teaching eighth grade. I had long ago erased the viciousness of middle schoolers from my mind, so I was shocked by the degree of nastiness with which my students treated their fellow classmates.

Real life is junior high, and if you're still not convinced, just look at the coverage of the current presidential election. In yesterday morning's headlines, Obama took on members of the Tennessee Republican party, who went after Obama's wife for a comment that, taken out of context, they consider "unpatriotic." Celebrity endorsements take on the weight of gospel truths, as people wait with baited breath to find out who their favorite star will support. (Are there really people out there who will vote for Obama just because Oprah's on his side or for McCain because Bush is on his?). Candidates make SNL appearances chock full of self-deprecating humor, which as we all know, makes him or her seem more human, more relatable (who really uses this word in real life?), and thus -- sadly -- more electable. (How else do you think W. got to the oval office?) It's all a bit too similar, in my opinion, to the student government elections in junior high and high school where the most popular kids --rather than the most qualified -- were the ones elected, nine times out of ten.

The irony of Brokaw's comment is, of course, that most people surveyed wouldn't want to relive their junior high or middle school years if you paid them. The adolescent insecurities, the changing allegiances of friends, the awkwardness of puberty, the struggle for popularity...who would willingly go there again? And yet, somehow, that seems to be the kind of life we've created for ourselves in the "real world."

Thoughts on Closing the Gap...

Disclaimer: what follows is an as yet unpolished rant

"'No one, on a large scale, has figured out how to solve the achievement gap,' Pensis said. 'Everybody's looking for that answer.'"

-Foch "Tut" Pensis, Superintendent
Coachella Valley Unified School District
from "School Districts to Face NCLB Sanctions"
Teacher Magazine, The Associated Press

Perhaps the reason we haven't found the answer to the problem, and perhaps it makes me a bleeding heart liberal or even a socialist to even suggest this, is that we are relying too heavily on our public school system to make up for inequalities that are rooted deep within our society.

Sure, education is supposed to be the great leveller in a democracy where, in theory, you can move up the socioeconomic ladder if you just work hard....and having taught in the classroom for 12 years, I am a big believer in the power of a good education.

However, any teacher who has worked with students who live in poverty will tell you that the solution to the achievement gap lies beyond the scope of a school's powers. Remember that saying, "It takes a village..."? (Note: it doesn't say "It takes a school...") So where is the rest of the village???

The villagers who can afford it have fled for the hills, put their children in private schools that cost (at least in the DC area) upwards of $15,000 a year (and that was ten years ago when I was teaching at a private school in Potomac, MD). The leaders of the village, led by the articulate George W. himself, are pointing fingers, blaming inadequate teachers for setting standards that are too low and thus failing our children, particularly those of the African-American or Latino variety. Their solution was to make a law (NCLB) saying that every student would be able to read by grade level by the year 2014 just because they said so; and if it doesn't happen, heads will roll (but not theirs, of course).

There is much research to suggest that the achievement gap begins even before children reach the hallowed halls of our public institutions of learning. Children who grow up in literate-rich environments start with an advantage over their peers from literate-poor environments. The gap exists before teachers even get into the picture. And yet, somehow, teachers are held responsible for making miracles happen -- like closing that gap by teaching literate-poor children to read proficiently in classes of thirty or more -- in the 6 hours a day (or fewer in middle and high school) that they work with them.

So what to do? If we are serious about closing the achievement gap, we may first have to tackle some of the social inequalities that have been woven into the American fabric over the last several centuries. Or we can just keep pointing fingers at our hard-working teachers, who struggle to contribute enough to make up for the rest of the village.