Too many people look at technical education as a place for those too stupid or unsocial to make it in “regular” school or go to college.  Yet, I rely on the skills I learned in woodshop and other tech classes all of the time.  I have this bias, yet recognize it as such.  My students require more technical education, but I know they will not get it because of time, the push for standards, and liability.  Tech ed is not valued.  This editorial is to address this.

Essential Skills: Tech Ed

Put a student at the controls of a table saw, ask them to hammer a nail, or have them bake a loaf of bread.  Watch them.  For most, you will see apprehension.  Forgetting competence, students today lack confidence in a world that is combining academics with hands-on and can-do.

A lot has been written in these pages on increasing the opportunities students have in attending college.  Area schools, in addition to raising the number of students who attend higher education, have now been tasked with helping students gain acceptance into a higher caliber college or university.  The recent arguments for more Advanced Placement (AP) courses has not been centered around improving  skills or challenging minds—our teachers do well on that score—but on brightening resumes.  If we really want to prepare our children for twenty-first century jobs and provide them with a unique educational experience, perhaps we need to take a moment to recognize our local technical centers and programs.

While more and more high school seniors head off to college with little plan and even less money, more and more businesses are reassessing their needs.  College was once a gateway that either fostered social networking or taught specific skills, such as engineering.  Things have changed.  The workplace today requires a background in problem solving and abstract thinking.  Many companies are looking at skills and experiences on resumes, not college pedigrees.

If we are going to accept that college is not the only path to success, then we need to recognize that the diversity our modern, local technical centers currently offer is a fit just as valid as the college track.  While a generation ago technical education amounted to the mechanics of auto mechanics and pre-apprentice building trade learning, today’s cars, homes and appliances requires extensive technical know-how that is beyond the engineers of that generation ago.  More important, as materials and platforms rapidly change with every new discovery and paradigm, tech students today adapt, retool and continue to learn.  They need to if they are going to survive.

Today’s technical centers are much more than mechanical and construction.  Hannafords Career Center, which takes students from Vergennes, Mt. Abe and Middlebury Union High Schools, has programs in culinary, pre-engineering, video tech, health services and theater.  Those students are producing food at our best restaurants, telling stories in new mediums, and will be taking care of us as we age and need health assistance.  Some students leave high school with a viable skill and join the workforce, while other go to college for more education.

Much of the bias towards college and away from technical education has to do with past perceptions held by our parents, and now us.  Our generation was taught that success was through college, and we continue to pass that prejudice on as we advise our children, students and even our school board.  While our tech ed centers have quietly transformed into twenty-first century training grounds, many advocates for education still see them not as an equal, but the option for those not of college caliber.

If you have children, ask yourself if you would push your child to fit woodshop into their schedule as hard as an AP course.

But taking an A.P. course in a subject of mild interest before getting tens of thousands of dollars in debt for a liberal arts or overly specialized science degree and no plan makes less sense than spending time in Hannaford’s forest program before going to college and having an idea of which direction to go while writing those tuition checks.  Many of us know this, but many others need to rethink their values.  Vermont is home to a great many culinary wizards and master craftsmen who hob knob with professors and wealthy financiers.  Tech students go to college.  The old stereotypes of the technical school graduate are dated and stale.

In earlier generations people could change their own oil, fix the toaster, and regularly made their own clothes.  Children grew up seeing competence.  No more.  Now, programs like “Rosie’s Girls” instills confidence in middle school girls by teaching them to use tools.  Shows on the Food Channel and DIY programs are very popular.  Yet, we do not celebrate our existing programs and those students who access them.  Few non-tech students have the confidence to just try and bake a loaf of bread, and retry until they succeed.  Even fewer have the confidence to sign up for such classes.

If area schools were really interested in what is best for all students, they will mirror the push for higher academic standards with technical ones.  Taking such a course is not a cute hobby, but an essential skill.  Much is made of how the new generation is tech savvy, but their actual abilities to manipulate programs and use computer tools is quite low and their ability to adapt to different programs and solve glitches is absent.  A high school student who cannot drive a nail, bake a loaf of bread or tend a house plant with confidence is not ready to put themselves into debt for a liberal arts degree or take our society far into this new century.

In looking at my own school’s inservice offerings and speaking with others, I found a consensus that they are a waste of time. I also discovered that they do not need to be, as most faculty have needs they do not feel are being met, even when the topic is meant to address that need. Most teachers want meaningful professional development, even if what that is cannot be agreed upon. The following is a letter to one of those people responsible for the inservices in our school. She works hard, and I mean it with respect. I hope it provides insight to other educators, administrators and presenters.

Why Inservice Fails: Professional Development Misdirected
Tom Darling

The way that most professional development (PD) at in-service is created sets it up for failure. This is true in nearly every school, as I have discovered in speaking with a wide range of teachers and educators. As directives and the yearly focus often comes from the state and supervisory union a year in advance (on, in the case of colleges, deans and administrators), speakers and facilitators need to be lined up months in advance. As the in-service calendar is penciled in over the summer it is near impossible to offer a talk that is relevant to the majority of the audience. It has nothing to do with the quality of the presentation, the subject matter, or the amount of hard work that goes into it.

If the current focus of PD offerings is a pendulum that swings with the times and perceived needs of the organization’s mission, it is hitting only a small number of the teachers whose abilities are spread out on its entire arch. In turn, each educator is as a different place in their development, working within their own swinging pendulum. To expect both to line up, and for all of the people in a room on a given half day to all line up is, statistically, quite unlikely.

Think of the audience. They break into two groups:

1. Those teachers who are self aware have already tackled the topic. Those early adopters, and their success, are often what starts the discussion that becomes the mandate. Some teachers have already explored RtI and Responsive Classroom. These folks have websites, blogs, post assignments and their lectures and require online discussions. They were unsatisfied with some aspect of their teaching and did something about it. Reading literature, attending conferences, taking classes and speaking with others is the norm for those teachers. In doing so, they saw solutions and applied them.

By the time an in-service comes around, they are old hands. So, you are teaching to the choir or they have decided it is not appropriate for their situation. Either way, they will get little out of it. At best they will have their time wasted; at worst they will resent the waste.

2. The rest of the teachers do not think they need the PD. It may be that they are focused on other issues, and taking on something new is hard to focus on in any useful way. The PD often seems interesting, but abstract. More likely, they just don’t see a problem in their teaching and so a solution for that non-existent problem is a waste of time. If you take that swinging pendulum image, experienced teachers have watched at least one full swing. They have changed with the first or second passes, and now feel they have a handle on most things. In their mind it is the same old thing with a new name (too often they are correct).

Therefore, if you ask this second group what PD they need you will get a few lame answers. The first is “time”, which really means they don’t want any. The second are suggestions that have either nothing to do with the topic, or would not make a major impact on instruction. These are often pet interests. When asked about literacy or classroom management or technology, they will want something that cannot be provided or something very, very specific. Often, they will shift the blame from what they can control to students, parents, administrators and their peers.

With this in mind, PD needs to fall into two categories.

First, mandatory tasks for everyone. Second, differentiated tasks determined by data.

Mandatory tasks are those that someone above has decided are necessary. For example, everyone needs to have a website. Everyone corrects writing portfolios. Everyone teaches literacy. The message is that our organization is doing this, so people might moan about it but it needs to happen and they will be held accountable. If the presentation is that straightforward, people will at least leave in-service knowing the expectation of what they are responsible for.
Now that the expectations are clear, the uneven application can be addressed.

Differentiated tasks address those who cannot or will not do the mandated task. For example, if the technology people did an inventory of teacher websites it would be clear who could and could not create a website that supports the original directive. Then, using a survey, a differentiated in-service could be developed that helped people with what they needed: Basic technical support, more advanced technical support; a pep-talk about uses and relevance; time to update it…. Those with everything squared away could help those who cannot. By the end of in-service teachers would have the tools they need to succeed. The IT person could then do a follow-up inventory and see who complied. Those who did not (a small group because the directive and outcome was so clear and not open for debate) would fall to the administration.

The fact is that we spend too much time debating things that are mandatory. Fact: NCLB is happening, scores go in the paper and the community wants answers. Fact: People pay a lot of money for their education and expect results.

We know who is falling short. Go to any faculty event and start a conversation about any given topic—student interactions, technology, pedagogy, and the like—and people will dish on those more notorious offenders. No one wants to call them on it, in part because, until recently, data was hard to come by and easy to debate. A high failure rate could show high standards, while a problem with classroom management can be pinned on uneven placement of unruly students or undermining peers. But, we are now collecting more objective data, and the mandate to do better is no longer debatable. NECAP scores must go up; the discussion is no longer why they are low, but what individuals are going to do to fix the holes. The state curriculum goals drive courses, not the whims of the instructor.

As the article “The Big U-Turn” in Education Next states, transparency and data are key to improving results. I find rereading it instructive when thinking about this topic.

It may be worthwhile debating these issues. As a community, we could define a number of things. For example, our common rubric for paragraphs got everyone invested. Once the decision was reached, though, it became a standard that everyone is expected to use and enforce.

I will give you one last reason why this is important to teachers beyond the issue of student achievement: Teachers need to know clearly what they are being held accountable for before it all hits the fan. When I began teaching middle school my content and delivery was more mature than my students could handle. Our administrator at the time made vague comments but tried to respect what I was doing, and a lot of good came from my methods. Still, as a new teacher I was learning. Because I am self aware, I discovered good middle school practice and became a better teacher. Still, for a variety of reasons no one had a clear talk with me about the boundaries of the community. Even a simple black-and-white discussion would have raised my awareness.

So, when a parent raised concerns the administration came down hard. The vice principal who should have spoken to me before said she had concerns for years. Thanks. Now it was too late. Our new principal had no sympathy, as she thought the boundaries clear to any responsible teacher. In many ways it was unfair, and it caused a lot of stress and confusion among the whole middle school. My career nearly ended.

Administrators owe it to teachers to make expectations clear, and give them the tools to meet them. To expect people to be self-aware of the changing sands of education is ridiculous. The administration is tasked with the big picture, sifting through the fads to focus on the movement, identifying goals and helping the school meet them.

We have NECAP data and can track the path of successful and struggling students. We have behavior information. Using technology should be a given. And, we have each other. From this we can discern weaknesses in instruction and classroom management, and help students. But, we are fast approaching the time when we will all be held accountable. NECAP scores and other data is behind held up by parents as a reason to cut budgets and fire teachers. Success is no longer a choice.

Given all of this, we need to use this limited and valuable time in a way that is truly valuable for students and teachers. I know that each in-service is designed with care and intention, but because of the reasons stated above it is not paying off as it should.

In planning a new unit that will be a four week “boot camp” for under-performing middle school students, I was revisiting business philosophies that had influenced my thinking in the past, namely the “Toyota Way” and its various principles. Curious about other educators and their application of business principles, I stumbled upon this blog post from DePaul University. A rational, reasonable post on the problems with applying business models to education, at its core it contained what I thought was a flaw in the argument. I posted a comment on the blog, and then thought I might post it here, too, for those interested.

I apologize in advance for the various grammar and/or spelling mistakes, as I was entertaining my two sons at the same time. No excuse, but it’s my excuse. I wanted to post it as I posted it there. In addition, something I realized in retrospect is context: I have been looking into very responsive business models, like Total Quality Production, Just in Time Production and The Toyota Way. Clearly, a host of business models will not meet the goal of No Child Left Behind, but the idea of who is the service provider (schools) and who is the client (community), with the student as product, I feel is valid.

Applying the Business Model to Schools
Tom Darling

Too often when people look at business models and education they assume the student is the client. Not so. The community is the client.

Let’s look at public K-12. The entire community buys the product through taxes and has an expectation of the product. The product is the student graduating with a pre-determined set of skills: reading, writing, arithmetic, but also more elusive skills such as citizenship and responsibility. Think of students like a car that we expect to run, stop and do a pre-determined set of things like defrost the rear window.

When public school began that set of expectations was clear–the three Rs–and because schools were local and paid with local property taxes these service providers were pretty responsive to the needs of its clients (the community). Our world is more complex and global, and communities expect our schools to prepare students for every possibility. Public schools also need to be responsive to, and show respect for, the diversity our modern world demands. So, religions, race, gender and other roles, previously simple, are now making complex demands as well. Thus, the demands of the client/community is in flux and a bit muddled. No service provider can meet such vague and changing demands.

Enter NCLB. In defining outcome with clear standards the public schools are expected to teach towards that target. Each year schools are tested, and those results are released to the community at large. As payment has shifted from local taxes to state and federal, those larger entities now assume more of a client/community role and thus demand satisfaction, or withhold payment.

What does this mean for schools? In short, service providers (aka schools) are required to meet the needs of the client/community. The students are merely product. This means that the needs and wants of the students are immaterial other than what makes them meet the expectations of the community. Learning does not need to be fun, and teachers do not need to be liked other than how that succeeds in creating a better product (students will skills).

One problem with looking at students as cars, though, is that some people automatically turn to being “old school” and harsh. But that does not work for all. Let’s remember that NCLB stands for No Child Left Behind. Graduation rates in the past were horrible compared to today, but our economy allowed for students to drop out and still become productive members of the community. Students also graduated with skills far below the standards because they showed up. Now, our client/community expects all students to not only graduate, but to have the skills expected at each grade level. How to get there?

This is where free and reduced lunch, counseling, sports teams and fun come in. What motivates students? What provides the support and motivation required for students to learn? As each student/product is different, schools need to be flexible, but they also need to get the job done for each student. If they do not–if some children are being left behind–then they need to reexamine what they do and change accordingly.

The community as client is not new, but in examining what motivates students and supports them schools have mistaken students as clients, and not products. Our society used to look at students as the children they are, and do what was best for them as a matter of course. At some point schools began to ask them what they thought, and then catered to them. There is an always-moving but clear line between getting feedback and responding versus thinking they (and their parents) know best. Schools are, at best, partners in providing what the client/community deems worth paying for.

Much of the current frustration in education comes from these confused roles. Not all students respond to the traditional curriculum, yet students are clearly not self reflective nor honest enough to determine their own needs. Schools no longer teach, but facilitate, and the debate of what to do with those not meeting standard is complex and frustrating because what works for that shrinking under served product is hard to determine. Their failure also calls into question to experience of the service providers and the client/community that succeeded with past methods. And, unlike a car, we cannot reject it and sell it for scrap. We also cannot reject delivery of students for being defective, but have to work with what comes in the door; at best we can work with our suppliers through early education and nutrition.

Differentiation and Response to Intervention are two basic strategies that service providers are now using. They are a start. Along with programs like Head Start and free and reduced lunch schools are providing services clients demand. But, notice that every solution to schools has nothing to do with the student at that moment, but instead with what skills they walk in the door with (including attitude, tenacity and other elusive skills) and what teachers do with where they are. In looking at students as the product (the car) business models such as The Toyota Way, Lean Manufacturing and organization skills like Getting Things Done suddenly speak to the educational crisis in our country.

I suggest these models are our next step.

This article seems to be focused on the college level. In that case, the client is even more elusive, but I would argue it is the future student. What goals do they have? In ten years, what do they expect from their investment. A job that pays a certain amount? A career? Or simply to be well rounded? Assume the client is future-student, and present student becomes the product while the school remains the service provider. To this end, a survey of alumni might provide guidance.

I am in the front yard, working at the corner of the house. My son is playing by the front walk, when suddenly he runs for the road. As he is ten feet from the road, and I am at least thirty feet from him, I am quite sure that he will run in front of the pick up truck before I can physically stop him. So, I yell. STOP!

Yelling is what we do when we have run out of options.

It is really that simple. Most of our relationship is spent talking, teaching, showing, hugging and being civil to each other. With him, I find a lot of patience. When I have the time, we use that time to learn lessons that will last a lifetime. Except, when there is no way I can stop him from running into the road I use the one thing I have left: I yell. And he stops.

For many teachers, this is the moment they yell. In their minds they have made the rules clear, allowed this student to get a drink of water or that one to go to their locker. A third of the class is not reaching their potential, and a spate of dry ink cartridges has prevented seven essays from making it in by the due date. Then, someone complains that class is boring. They want to go outside. The worst part of it all is that they are only expressing these thoughts out loud because they trust you enough–you have built a relationship and responded to their fair minded criticism–but today someone would not understand that their language offends you, and you are a part of the class and community, too. So, you blow it. You are out of options.

IF YOUR WATCH ALARM GOES OFF ONE MORE TIME! you scream at the child who is running towards the busy street of life and is too distant for you to reach. Or, perhaps, you meant it for him or her, but instead screamed at the unlucky child who put that last straw on your back eight straws after that kid you felt really deserved the warning. In the end, your tricks all played, yelling was your only option.

Now, with my son, I could have been preventive. At all times I could have been closer to him than he was to the road. When our older son was two, we laid down a low stone wall. In part, it was decoration, but it was also meant to slow him down a step so that we could catch him before he got to the street. We do have a nice backyard for him to play in. Life, though, is fraught with danger. Even had we done it all, another life threatening situation would probably have reared its head.

Prevention is important, which leads to the second reason we yell: to make a point that sticks.

YOU NEVER GO NEAR THE ROAD!

This was not a patient response that treated my son as a partner, but a directive I did not want my child to forget. This was a non-negotiable rule, and the next time he even thought of doing it I wanted him to wonder if the wrath of my entire six feet-four was worth it. Perhaps it is the bullying of a child, but if it keeps him from running into the road I weight the ends over the means.

Thus begins the slippery slope. Even as I try and undo the scare with hugs and a rational discourse about the dangers of traffic and dashing towards it, I know that my child is afraid of me. While the ends are justified, I wonder if there is another way.

YOU SIT IN THIS CLASS LIKE YOU DON’T CARE, BUT YOU AND I KNOW THAT IF YOU KEEP GOING DOWN THIS PATH YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET JACK FROM THIS LIFE! ARE YOU READY FOR THE WORST JOB IN THE WORLD?! This is a toned down version of what I have said. I can go longer, into much more personal detail, asking rhetorical questions that make the point: Stop screwing up. Nearly every child I have said these things too has agreed that it was justified, even as they did not like to hear it. Still, I know that they were afraid of me. They have said as much. And they already knew it. They knew, before I uttered a word, that what they were doing was wrong.

In the end, the bottom of the slope is filled with laziness. My younger son is kicking my older son, and while the latter uses his words and is the good big brother it does not stop. STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER! I yell from the other room. It is easier than getting up. When my older son was four, I realized that much of my discipline was yelling from across the room because stopping the behavior and talking it through was too much work. As he threw blocks, jumped on the couch, or sang at the top of his lungs a yell stopped the behavior.

At first. Then, it became noise. Unlike the road, which worked because of pure novelty and shock of the situation, the ten yelling corrections a day wore off. Instead, he started pushing buttons. And yelling. Now, he yells down the stairs and from other rooms. We realized, quickly, that we need to get up and correct behavior, and it worked, but the yelling is still with us three years later.

My classrom has not become one of the classrooms that are famous for yelling. In our high school, one teacher used to stop teaching when the teacher in the neighboring classrooms began his rants. Knowing that no one was listening to him, he would stop mid-sentence, sit at his desk, and read the New York Times until it calmed down. Then, the lesson woudl resume. Having been in that class next door, on the receiving end of the yell, it amazes me that he could have a job. In fact, he was head of the department, a coach of football and track, and well respected in our community. Ah, the old days.

Each year I have learned to hold it together a little bit more. Planning has been very important. When I have systems in place, and am able to stop my proclivity towards co-dependence (my thought that, this time, they’ll listen), I maintain order because I have options. Three years ago I took a Responsive Design course, which gave me many more strategies for the good of students and my sanity. I have, in many ways, the low stone wall in place. And, at the end of the day, running into the street (in an academic sense) can be a tough love learning experience, as long as you are ready to scrape them off the tar and start fresh the next day.

Know where your yell comes from. If it is laziness, get some systems, get off your behind, or get a new job. On the other hand, if you feel you are out of options you need to take a breath. Then, before you correct or even plan your next lesson, imagine every senerio and what you will do in response. Be happy with that response. The next day, play it out calmly. If you do it right, you are in charge. The child will not make it out of the yard on your watch.

This article was written for my sister site, “Middle School Poetry 180″. While poetry is its own reward, it often takes the spark of a “Dead Poets Society” or other non-poetic media to get it taken seriously. The following is a review of two such books for middle school readers.

Love That Dog is a very short book. Inspired by the Walter Dean Myers poem “Love That Boy” it follows a boy who reluctantly reads, writes and eventually connects with poetry over the course of a school year. All of it is told in verse, although like many books written like this I hesitate to call it poetry; more or a proam, or cute formatting. But, as in the case of both of the books mentioned here, it serve the story well.

As a successful book, Love That Dog works on two levels. First, it is funny. As someone who teaches “The Red Wheelbarrow”, Frost and Blake it is a small hoot to hear an authentic child’s voice reacting to these poems. That only goes so far, but it is a short book and so it goes far enough until the reader is almost done. Second, the actual story of the boy and his dog is genuine and heartfelt. The story, as told, is enough of a puzzle to keep the reader interested.

And then it’s done. If this book takes you more than twenty minutes to read you are giving it too much credit. Your students–both struggling readers and high flyers–will love it. An excellent springboard into classic poetry, students writing their own poetry, having literary heroes (in this case, Walter Dean Myers comes to the school) and even satirical writing of one’s teachers, their classes, and their attempts to teach poetry (you cannot but help see your classroom in her depiction of teaching techniques and attempts to encourage writing). I was surprised to learn it was nominated for the Booker Prize and won the Newbery; it’s good, but a bit slight and not really one for the ages.

A much better, meatier work is Shakespeare Bats Cleanup by Ron Koertge. The story of a baseball obsessed fourteen year old stuck at home with mono, it starts with protagonist Kevin Boland flipping through his dad’s poetry book as he tries his hand at it. Over time he starts exploring different techniques, his family relationships and the recent death of his mom.

Describing Shakespeare Bats Cleanup as meatier than Love That Dog rests on two points. First, the life of Kevin Boland is much richer. While dead parents may be a bit cliche (as is a baseball obsessed boy coming to like poetry), there are surprises in the details. The story grows in depth and complexity as one reads it.

Second, Koertge deftly uses the poetic style Kevin is reading about to tell his own story. While using poetry to tell a story of poetry is not brilliance, nor original, Koertge’s ability to make it seamless is. After establishing the conceit of reflecting the poetry read in the telling, reading Shakespeare Bats Cleanup the reader will soon forget Koertge is doing so, even as the protagonist tells you he is doing it. To give Koertge even more credit, the poetic styles he uses compliment the story. While a lesser author might have chosen a more random assortment, here the author matches the style with the story to be told.

That said, Shakespeare Bats Cleanup is not a life altering story, but more of an enjoyable read.

When picking out such books teachers often seem to be looking for silver bullets: that one title that will turn on a poetry switch. That book is a Brigadoon, in that it might exist for any one individual every two hundred years (and then trap you in antiquity!). Shakespeare Bats Cleanup is also touted as a reluctant reader and a “boy” book, too categories that are often used interchangeably. Do not expect that much. I get much more mileage out of “Dead Poets Society” than any single book (of course, a unit of study with great depth is best), but that is more eighth grade than fifth.

Both of these titles will make excellent introductions to poetry and writing styles. They are quick reads, funny and have a bit of depth to them. Like any short story (which is what they are, in truth) they are more of a memorable inoculation than the open heart surgery that marks great novels.

When our local paper” The Addison Independent” reported that eleven schools had been tagged for failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress on the exams Vermont uses to satisfy No Child Left Behind, I was surprised that my son’s principal seemed to brush off the results.  The response of many educators to the results saddens me, so I wrote the following editorial.  Although it uses a number of statistics from our local elementary school, the overall message applies to anyone that dismisses data that shows a large number of any student body cannot demonstrate mastery of some basic skills.  If the assessment measures something of value, what is wrong with teaching to the test?

Reading about eleven Addison County schools falling short on No Child Left Behind (NCLB) assessments, it was disappointing to read a local administrator’s comparison of the act’s expectations to a “Lake Wobegon Goal”, expecting that “all the children are above average.”  If area schools had three-quarters of the students able to read, write and do math, and were struggling to close in on those last few stubborn kids, I could sympathize with these administrators, but this is not the case.   In those subjects that are the foundation of learning, too many kids fall far short.

NCLB measures reading, math, writing and science because those skills necessary to succeed in any academic subject.  In my own town of Bristol, only 56% of Bristol Elementary students were found to be proficient in reading.  Compare that to 71% of the state.  Only 55% of BES students were proficient or above in math, compared to 66% statewide.  In writing, taken by fourth graders only and a struggle statewide (only 54% statewide were proficient or above), only 33% of Bristol students were.  In each case Bristol students were at fare behind the state.  Unfortunately, Bristol’s numbers are similar to the towns that surround us.

While NCLB is often derided as “No Child Left Untested”, educators complain of “teaching to the test”, and everyone talks of those things not assessed, the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP, the assessment used by Vermont) is a fair, reasonable measure.  It is also one of the few windows that the public has on how good a job the school is doing, and as such should not be dismissed.

The article mentions that while Bristol made gains in the reading scores of those students receiving free-or-reduced lunch (FRL), it still fell short of their Adaquate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals in both reading and math.  It goes on to say that the school’s population as a whole made their AYP, implying that it is a small segment of the student body.  In fact, FRL students comprise 88 out of 196 students, or 45% of the population.  This is a significant portion of the school, but not the only one that should raise concern.  With achievement so low overall even the term “improvement” needs to be questioned.  Looking at the NECAP writing scores, only 12% of boys were deemed proficient, which comes to 3 out of 24.  Still, those three are three more than last year; in 2007 not a single boy proved proficient in writing at BES.

In returning to the “Lake Wobegon Goal,” there remain two flaws with this sentiment.  First, the humor in Garrison Keillor’s remark is that, statistically and by definition, all children cannot be above average.  Keillor knows that all parents see their children as such, but the truth is much more sobering.  Okay, but such a statement seems to imply that some students—and some schools—will be on the bottom.  Is the implication that Bristol’s destiny is to be on the bottom, and FRL kids and boys on that bottom of the bottom?  Such glib comments seem fatalistic, even if the intent was not.  Is it not unreasonable to expect that our kids—at least more of our kids—should be above average?

Second, NCLB and NECAP are not designed to create an average.  The very concept of average assumes a bell curve, with a few elite balancing a few low achievers and a mass of common place students in the center.  If this was the case the administrator’s assessment of Bristol’s position might be understandable.  Instead, the NECAP tests measure proficiency; can the student read, write and do math?  It is like a race that does not measure time and rate fast and slow runners, but instead a race simply asking if all runners can complete the distance.  In theory, every student could meet proficiency.  While the concept of having everyone meet proficiency is a worthy goal, it is at best daunting and most probably unrealistic.  That said, 75% of students meeting these core skills is not an unreasonable goal, if not at least being above the state average.  Meeting proficiency has nothing to do with being above average.

My family is very happy with BES, and our son loves every single day he’s there.  Everyone associated with the school has been knowledgeable and professional.  There is a great vibe, and it is one of the happiest and safest schools I have ever been in.  Dismissing basic and fair assessments—and that is what Vermont’s NECAP tests are—is the wrong approach.  As an educator myself, I hear it far too often, and often by those at the top.  The public gets those scores because they are the canary in the coal mine.  Instead of explaining them away, or being glib, administrators need to explain what they are doing now and how it will show up in next year’s scores.  These skills will determine our children’s future.

The Night Librarian
Chapter Four

Before he went to sleep the night of the library adventure, Joseph’s mother and father came into his bedroom. They spoke, and he listened. He was grounded. After school, he was to come home and go straight to his bedroom.

“Great,” he said to himself. “After a bad day at school I can be bored at home.” It was his last thought before falling asleep.

The next morning Joseph got dressed and raised his shade. Looking out of his bedroom window, he saw the library and sighed.

Then he noticed the book.

The Super Sleuth Academy Guide to Becoming a Detective.

Sitting on his nightstand, Joseph knew it had not been there when he fell asleep. It was a library book.  Had his parents put it there? he wondered. It seemed unlikely. They were really mad about last night.  Joseph flipped through the book, and then put it in his backpack to read later. Barely touching his buttered toast, he put on his coat, strapped on his backpack and walked the two blocks to his school.

* * * * *

“Morning meeting in five minutes,” his teacher chimed. “Make sure you check in on the board.”

In the middle of the room Joseph’s teacher always wrote out what they needed to do before morning meeting. Today it read:

1. Unpack bags.
2. Wash hands.
3. Choose your lunch.
4. Answer the daily question.
5. Choose a book and read.

After doing the first three, Joseph looked at the question.

What mystery do you want to solve?

Was he reading it right? He had a mystery. Who was the woman with the wings at the library, he thought.

“Get out of the way!” a voice barked at him. Joseph felt himself being shoved to the side. A rather large boy picked up the marker and wrote, Who stunk up the bathroom? Then the boy, whose name was Frank, laughed at his own joke.
That’s not a mystery, Joseph thought to himself. Everyone knew Frank himself did it.

After Frank left, Joseph picked up the marker and wrote, Who is the woman with wings at the library? He then found a book and waited for circle.

The teacher will know, he thought. But he was wrong.

This is a review I wrote for an adolescent development class. As such, it is a bit stiff, but as people are always looking for books on sensitive topics I thought I might share this, as is.  Be sure and check out my piece on age appropriate literature in another post.

Am I Blue? Appropriate for the Classroom?

Am I Blue? Coming Out From the Silence: Edited by Marion Dane Bauer. An anthology including children’s and YA authors Lois Lowry, M. E. Kerr, Nancy Garden, William Sleator, Jane Yolen, C. S. Adler and Bruce Coville. Publisher: HarperTrophy; Paperback (1995); 288 pages

While novels tend to change lives, short stories make you think. That is not a knock on medium, but as I think of all of the short stories I’ve read, none have had the impact of those novels I hold near and dear. Due to their length, short stories tend to be more of a sold punch in the head than the fifteen round bout that is the novel. That said, there few books that have held my imagination as the best short stories have.  Classics such as “To Build a Fire” and the “Most Dangerous Game” should be required of all seventh graders as they fire the brain with possibilities, while works by Vonnegut and Stephen King haunt me years after I have last read them. I can still feel the last page of Hemingway’s “The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” because of the true sense of sadness brought on as those stories ended. The great short stories make you think, and Am I Blue?, a collection of stories about coming out gay and the assorted issues of coming of age, has enough catalysts to consider a few for the classroom.

Although both School Library Journal (Grade 7 and up) and Publisher’s Weekly (Ages 12 and up) feel it is for all adolescents, some of the stories either need an adult to provide context (they reinforce stereotypes), have more adult situations (In “Winnie and Teddy” graduates take off for San Francisco), or are very sexual (“Three Mondays in July” is quite steamy, while a few stories have depictions of lesbians getting ready for sex). Others are quite appropriate for any student grappling with coming of age, the nature of friendship, or relating to parents. It is a mixed bag. By high school any teen should be able to choose this entire book and read it independently, and by tenth grade any story would be appropriate if assigned in class and appropriate support was provided.

Not every story is for every reader. This is not a gay-only book, but for anyone who likes to read about teens coming of age (or just likes a good story). Some are great for an introduction to homosexuality, others about child-parent relations. The theme of friends growing apart is universal, as “Slipping Away” and “Holding” is kind of about homosexuality, but more about a loss of innocence that comes with adolescence. If you do not like fantasy, you will not appreciate “Blood Sister”. “Am I Blue?” is funny, and a good introduction to bias and homophobia, but it is not really deep nor great literature. “Three Mondays in July” is haunting literature, but mature. With kids, I suggest using individual stories that match your purpose and the maturity of the class.

Whatever themes teens face, they are in here. Beyond being gay, realizing one is gay, living with being gay, the shame of being gay, having the secret of being gay, stereotypes about gays, and accepting of gays and being gay, there is a lot in this anthology. As this is a teen book, the universal issue of teen-parent relations and acceptance is looked at, as is friendship and the tenuous nature of being oneself as its truest test. Sexuality in general, and the pressure teen’s face in looking at their future, also plays a large role. Finally, the awkwardness and hardships that mark growing up is in the book.

Of course, coming out and facing stereotypes is a huge theme, but if you wanted to break it down you could do this:

Parent Issues: We Might As Well be Strangers; Parents’ Night; Michael’s Litter Sister
Friendship: Winnie and Tommy; Slipping Away; Supper; Holding
Fitting In: Running; Three Mondays in July; Hands; 50% Chance of Lightning
Nature of Gay: Am I Blue; Blood Sister; In the Tunnels; Fitting In

That said, many stories could fall in several themes, while a few did not fit in any when it came down to it. “In the Tunnels” for example, is about stereotypes, kind of, but…. Being a gay teen is often about simply being a teen, and the themes are never simple. The benefit of an anthology is that it covers many of them.

As for using it in the classroom, there are some things to consider. First, just discussing homosexuality is not okay with some, so this book’s existence is not appropriate to them. As discussed above with recommending an age group, not all stories are appropriate for younger students. The sexual content is a big reason, but as homosexuality is only partly about physical sex, the stories have different levels of appropriateness and maturity. How a story is used could bring concerns; it would depend upon the context. For example, a teacher might use the story “Am I Blue?” to discuss stereotypes and discrimination, with homosexuality being the context in this particular case. That is okay (although not to someone who is just plain against it). One might get in trouble, though, in presenting the stereotype of a homosexual (a complaint of several people), or the stereotype of a gay-basher being depicted as a closet homosexual, as either being insensitive or having an agenda. I could see use of the entire book in class as crossing the line of advocating a moral position. At the same time, not using specific stories because of pressure is equally offensive. As being a gay teen is a mixed bag, so is an anthology; the entire package can be a bit too much for anyone to take. In short, use your common sense.

Additional Books:

My Father’s Scar by Michael Cart
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
Good Moon Rising by Nancy Garden
The House You Pass Along the Way by Jacqueline Woodson

There seems to be a lot more young adult lesbian books than gay teen male books out there (although this is changing), but a lot of adult gay male titles, some of which recollect adolescence but through the eyes of an experienced adult. The best source is amazon.com; plug in one of these books (or Am I Blue?), go to the “Other Books” section and surf a bit. When you get on a book you like, the thread gets interesting and more personal to one’s own taste.

The Night Librarian
Chapter Three

With a cup of tea in one hand, she walked around library foraging for the food that other people left behind. She did not know that Joseph had hidden in the bathroom. Eating an apple, the night librarian fluttered around cleaning up where the day librarian ended. Straightening books, she finished her tea and washed the cup before getting to her real work.

Joseph was woken by his mother.

He woke with a startle.

“Did you see her?” he asked. The question shot out of his mouth.

“Who?” his mother asked.

“The lady…” he started. As the words came from his mouth, he knew they would not believe him. A brief look at their faces, he could tell.

Peering behind him, the police officer was relieved the boy was found safe, but ready to return to his duties.

The day librarian seemed irritated at being dragged out of her warm home to unlock the building. Her face went from a tired look to a frowning annoyance and back again. While glad one of her patrons was safe, she was aggravated that his ridiculous questions from earlier had led to this.

In the faces of his parents, worry was quickly turning to anger.

Joseph felt ridiculous.

“Who?” his mother asked again, this time with a edge in her voice.

“The woman with wings,” Joseph whispered.

“What?” his father asked. “Speak up.”

But the boy did not want to say any more.

“Well, he’s safe,” the officer said at last. With this cue, everyone started moving for the door. Joseph got up and, head down, slowly made his way to the front door. He did not look around, and it was not until he was standing on the front steps that he noticed the dark sky.

“Do you have something to say to these folks,” a voice from behind asked. It was his father’s.

Joseph did not. Slumped over in shame and defeat, he went home and straight to bed. With his parents mad at him and no information about the woman with enormous wings, he started to focus on how much he did not want to go to school in the morning.

This was originally a letter to Dr. Phil suggesting a show topic.  I took out the letter bits, and left the meat.  It is not inspired writing, but communicates some truths that many need to hear.  I add it because many of the issues came up again recently.  Feel free to copy and circulate.

Raising Successful Students: Seven Tips For Parents

As a middle school teacher I am amazed at how many parents are frustrated by their child’s performance, yet seem unaware (and unwilling) of some of the basic steps that help children succeed.  Most parents do not see themselves as the primary engine in their child’s academic career.  Parents have a lot to learn, most of it pretty basic stuff.

At some point the natural, and obvious, things that the parents of successful children do have not been passed on.  They say that teachers teach as they were taught, and I find that parents do the same.  The problem is that the school we grew up in has changed.  The stakes are higher.  Parents need to know that.  But more important parents need to know that the basics of a good education have not changed; they only need to move beyond the old maxims we remember.

In my experience I have found seven basic steps parents can use to set their child up for success.  These seven steps are for the parents to do, not the children.  The seven steps are:

1.  Stop Negative Behavior
2.  Start Positive Behavior
3.  Feed Your Child
4.  Make Your Child Read
5.  Allow Your Child to be Bored
6.  Check Their Work
7.  Talk to Your Child

Below is a brief explanation of what I mean by each:

Negative Behavior: Parents reinforce detrimental ideas towards three areas: the child, the parent, and the school.

For the child, it comes from comments about not doing well enough or simply being called “stupid”.  One father told her child over and over again that she had “book smarts but not a lot of common sense.”  Another told her child that he was “lazy” over and over again.  I have heard parents “joke” about their kid being “stupid”.  Children hear these phrases and internalize them, even if they get that it’s meant to be a joke.

Parents often put themselves down, too, giving a license for their child to not do well.  For example, one mother told me every time we had a conference that she had never been good at math.  Later, when I spoke with the daughter, the daughter repeated the same sentiment.  When I pushed her to explain, she told me that her mother was not good at math and so it followed that she would not do well.  Beyond the message she had been getting, the mother also felt that she could not ask the daughter for more than she had done.  She allowed poor performance because she did not feel she had the moral authority to demand more.

Negative comments about school and teachers are common.  Expressions like “those who can’t, teach” set a tone.  One father told his son, “I hated To Kill a Mockingbird when they made me read that.”  The son did not read the book because he felt his father had given him permission not to.  Comments about teachers and the school add up over twelve years of schooling, and give kids who have problems in school an excuse not to overcome them.

This is not to say that parents cannot be critical—of their child’s performance, of their own academic achievements, or of teachers and the school—but they need to look at actions and process with the child.  There is a place for constructive criticism, and that involves context and solutions.  It takes time, but parents must make sure they do not set down negative attitudes that soon become embedded.  Society does a good job being positive, but that most important person in a student’s life can undercut all of that.  If parents do one thing, they need to cut out the negative behaviors.

Positive Behavior: More important than words (although that is important) is modeling.   As the most important person in a child’s life, actions by the parent set the tone every day.   Do you read where your kids see you, or even have books in the house?  Why not balance your checkbook at the same table and at the same time your child is doing their math homework?  Do you show up for every soccer game, yet never for teacher conferences?  Children pick up on what is important not by what parents say, but what they do.  If you say that reading is important, but watch television all of the time, the message is clear.  Parents need to model.

This, of course, is difficult to do, which requires parents to reassess what they mean when they say things like, “the classics are important.”  What is a classic?  Is it important?  But a parent can read quality, popular fiction (such as the Oprah book club selections) and model enjoyment.  A trip to the library once a week, or lunch and stroll around a college campus, opens children up to places where they might feel an outsider.  They can go to a museum that is assessable; a children’s or science museum, or look for a special exhibit that will interest the parent and/or child.  In short, to demonstrate real enjoyment in those activities we say we value.  That is modeling.

Feed Your Child: The brain needs fuel.  Your child needs food—healthy food—in order to function throughout the day.  A child who is focused on their growling, empty stomach is not focusing on school.  A child filled with sugar and caffeine cannot sit still, much less focus.  But the brain, in order to develop, needs healthy food.  It needs it early in the day, and throughout the day.

While this seems obvious, most of my students come to school having not eaten breakfast.  Some of my parents feel it is the child’s responsibility to make their own breakfast (mine did), but a child cannot see how their decision at seven in the morning affect the rest of their day.  Also, given the option of sleeping in an extra fifteen minutes or making a bowl of cereal the sleep wins every time.  You are the parent, but I see that parents are also skipping breakfast.  Those students who do eat something do not eat anything healthy; cereal bars, a bagel, or coffee!  We spend so much money on our children, and let them down on such a simple thing.  This does not even go into those students who do not eat lunch, or eat poorly.  School lunch programs offer some great things, but they also allow students the choice not to eat everything offered—fruit, vegetables, and whole milk are passed up or thrown out.  This needs to stop.

Read: Reading is they key skill that all students need.  It affects all other subjects.  It also stimulates higher brain functions, from memory to creativity.  While many parents will tell you that their child can “read,” they are really talking about decoding.  A simple definition of reading is understanding and remembering.  A student who is still working on decoding is spending all of their mental energy on that, and not on picturing what is happening, wondering what will happen next, or distinguishing between the important facts and those that are less important.  Moving beyond decoding, to real fluency, for most students, simply requires practice.  Read.  Read below grade level or the same book over and over again, but read.  Through practice the brain starts to decode faster, much like an athlete grows faster with training.  Once those mental pathways have been worked out, other types of reading become easier.  Suddenly, access to other subjects and their ideas become accessible.

To that end, children should read a minimum of half-an-hour every day.  That should only count fun reading, not textbooks or identifying symbolism in T.S. Eliot.  Make the time.  At first parents might need to sit with them to make sure they do it, but keep at it.  For older children it can lead to a fight, but persistence pays off.  Allow them to choose their books (I suggest narrative pieces), to drop a book and start another, and work with the local librarian or teacher.  Of course, model; pick up a book yourself.

Allow Your Child to be Bored: Notice that when kids play games on the computer they lean forward, yet while watching television they lean back.  The former is an engaged child, while the latter is passive and bored.  Start by noting how often your child is in which position.

Too often we give in to cries of “I’m bored.”  Dealing with it can take a lot of time and energy, which is especially difficult as parents have more and more demands on their time.  But too often the fallback is television, the computer, or video games.  These are time and mental drains, as they over-stimulate some parts of the brain while they encourage intellectual and physical passivity.  That twenty-five percent of children under the age of two have televisions in their rooms is an example of how pervasive the problem is.

Children need to learn what to do to entertain themselves, because this is where true interests and creativity comes from.  That big tree in the backyard yearning for a tree house interested us in building, while parks, dolls, or even sticks promoted pretend-play.  School is not entertainment, and the demand on teachers to become “interesting” is a red herring—the subject is interesting, but only when engaged.  Most teachers meet students more than halfway by designing interactive and creative lessons, but asking students to bring a pencil to class or move chairs in a circle is too often met with groans that too much is expected of them.  The issue of teachers being “boring” is now being parroted by parents, with parents using it as an excuse for their children’s poor performance.  At best some parents will say, “Not everything as an adult is exciting.”  If you find yourself bored three times in a day you need to look at yourself.

Part of the problem is that parents jam-pack their child’s schedules with activities.  A homework rule of thumb is ten minutes of homework for each grade level.  Most students have in-class time, study halls, and the like to complete part or all of their work.  Sports, activities, and chores or jobs take up much of the day.  There are studies that show that high school students who are rewarded with a car for good grades see their grades drop as they work more hours to pay for gas, insurance, and upkeep.  While a child might like soccer, it is important that they not play in three leagues, have daily chores, and take advanced placement courses.

Let them be bored for part of the day.  They will thank you for it.

Check Their Work: This is different than going over it in detail.

A lot can be gleaned from just eyeballing a child’s work.  From a glance you can tell if a bed is made correctly or their room is picked-up.  The same goes for homework.  Is their paper written in smudged pencil on a piece of crumbled paper ripped from a spiral notebook, or typed?  If the assignment is math problems 1 – 20, or to write a 250 word essay, has your child done all 20 problems or written 250 words?  If it asks to show work, did they?  The first step towards success in school is fulfilling the basics of an assignment.  You can forget about the details if your child has not completed those details.  From this starting point you can have a larger discussion about problems they are encountering.

Several of my parents go through the same cycle over and over.  The question to a child watching television “Is you homework done?” is too often met with “Yes” or “I’ll do it after this program.”  Time and time again that child shows themselves to be untrustworthy, and time and time again the parent hopes the behavior will change.  It will not.  I challenge any parent to ask to see their child’s work, their assignment book, even the condition of their textbooks and notebooks.  Listening to their gut, those parents should see the next step that needs to be taken.

True, most parents assume that “checking” work means making sure every “i” is dotted and every “t” crossed.  No, checking work means making sure that some work is done.  I have noticed that the children who really need help—who are failing—do not even bother to fake it, or do such a poor job that it is obvious at a glance.  Those children who struggle are often glad to show their work because they want to take the next step: getting help.  Some children and parents see checking as intrusive, as we all want to trust our kids, but trust is built from a foundation of evidence.  A child who can be trusted is one who demonstrates trust.  Once children start on a constructive path they will be happy to show you everything they do regardless of individual struggles.

Talk to Your Child: As the most important person in a child’s life parents need to communicate.  Every two weeks I send a progress report home with the kids detailing the grade of every assignment, yet when the report cards come home parents seem shocked.  No, they did not get the progress report, or their child explained what was happening (it is my fault, or don’t worry because its done).  We have a homework line, and I put my assignments on the internet.  When I was a child the only communication my parents go was the report card.  What happened?  I told my parents when I had trouble before it snowballed.  I did it at the dinner table, or during a car ride.  The parents of my children, with all of the supports we have, still want more.  Yet, few sit down with their children—it is between the parent and the school.  When we do conference, the child is often not there, as the parent gave them the option and the kid declined to come.  Help seems to be everything short of actually talking to their child and getting answers.

This is a difficult process to start, especially when the lines of communication have been down for a long time.  There are ways to open them, but they all start with patience.  Tell your child that you want to communicate, and ask them on what terms that can happen.  Respect their wishes of areas you are to stay out of: they do not mind you helping with a field trip, but do not talk to them or bring any attention to them (especially kisses, nicknames, or childhood stories).  Car rides are great, even if you just babble while they roll their eyes—they will hear you (this is the boredom principle at work for you).  Let them talk about what they want to talk about and important subjects will come about eventually.  Study after study has shown that something as easy as eating dinner with the family is a huge factor in children getting better grades, staying out of trouble, and making healthy choices.  Although you will be rebuffed over and over again, they do appreciate the effort.  When they need help they will know where to turn.

These seven steps are only a beginning, but they might give you some guidance on where to start.

The Business of Educating Children

At a recent meeting, one mother, to bolster her argument, turned to the teachers in the room and exclaimed that the parents were the school’s customers and that the customer was always right.

Never mind that this cliché is rarely honored by American businesses, it is a statement that demonstrates how distant we are the days when communities came together in the name of the whole child.

It is not that business jargon has trickled its way into education—the two have a long entangled history—but that its players are adopting roles traditionally reserved for business. Parents as customers is an obvious one, but a lot of principals and superintendents describe themselves as managers, teachers discuss their role as workers, and students are simply seen as product. In the worse extremes, schools are described as “learning factories” or “warehouses”. The trend indicates a frustration communities feel with their roles in our current education system.

Still, there is much educators can learn from business.

While many a teacher, administrator, school board member or parent might reach for the latest book on pedagogy in addressing issues with their schools, they might find more inspiration in the business section of their local bookstore, instead. The following four books are a great place to start.

The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker

While U.S. politicians loudly shout how schools need to be run more like a business, American businesses are not doing too well. How can the local elementary school expect to get in shape, for example, when the once mighty big three automakers scratch their heads while in free fall? Easy: look towards Toyota.

While the labored concept of Total Quality Management has been grafted onto nearly any endeavor, most often as a gimmicky fad, Toyota has taken the basic concept and made it their own.  That alone—their willingness to experiment and commit to the concept over the long haul—is what makes Toyota a model for educators.

The Toyota Production System (TPS) was created after the company’s founder Sakichi Toyoda, his son and an engineer visited the Ford Motor Company. Unimpressed with the waste and inefficiency they saw throughout Ford’s plants, they found inspiration at a local Piggly Wiggly supermarket. There, inventory was restocked and reordered only when items sold. Drawing heavily on the works of Henry Ford and economist W. Edwards Deming, concepts such as Lean Manufacturing and Just In Time inventory systems were born.

TPS has several components, many of which are very subtle, but it boils down to a few basic concepts.

First, waste is bad. The elimination of waste, from supplies to time, is the foundation of TPS. Look, for example, at your students’ schedule. When the minutes are added up, students often spend more time passing from class to class than they spend in art class each week.

Second, question each part of the process. Does the daily battle over a student without a pencil distract and waste time or stress the importance of responsibility? That answer depends on the overall focus of that school.

Third, turn every employee into a quality control inspector. Change the word employee to student, parent, teacher and community member. The trick is to empower them, something too often given only lip service to. When all members are empowered, the loud complainers tend to get pushed aside by good, helpful ideas.

Most important, TPS stresses the long term outlook. What will students be learning in five, ten, fifteen years? Since students pass through a single district over thirteen years, this makes sense. Unfortunately, administrators, school boards and (in some schools) teachers do not seem to last that long. The constant assault of new, sexy teaching philosophies can make this element near impossible.

Liker and David Meier wrote a companion book The Toyota Way Fieldbook, designed to help people implement the philosophical concepts discussed in The Toyota Way. At its best, The Toyota Way confirms that the annoyances and weaknesses of your school is not a natural state, but systemic. That means it can be changed, which, in itself, is heartening to know.

The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

Having turned every student, parent and teacher into a quality control inspector, how does a manager get the hard work of student learning done?

In short, the one minute manager of the title sets clear, measurable and inspired goals.

He or she then, after some initial planning, makes it the responsibility of the person below them to accomplish the goal. As a mentoring teacher once told me when I was stressing about prepping for a project, make the student do the work. The “one minute” part refers to quick praising and reprimands to keep things on course.

Told as a parable, The One Minute Manager book can be read in a single sitting.

There is nothing radical here, save for the simple idea that education only works in the hands of the students. Active learning, as opposed to passive receiving, is not only effective for the students, but takes a lot of the burden off of over-extended teachers. For those who feel they spend more time writing comments on papers than the student did writing it, this book is a necessity.

Do not let the word “manager” distract you. This book is perfect for anyone from parents to administrators. Even students working in groups would benefit from a refocus of their role in the project’s learning goals.

This is not to be confused with The One Minute Teacher, also by Johnson. Johnson more recently had great success with his Who Moved My Cheese title and its spin-offs. There are dozens of “One Minute” offshoot books, including The One Minute Golfer, which dovetail off of the original’s basic premise. Copies of copies tend to be blurry; go to the original.

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

If you have not heard of this book, chances are you have heard of Wikipedia.

The basic concept is that collective knowledge is smarter than the all knowing individual.

How does it apply to education? How doe sit not!

A teacher stands at the board and lectures to a class of intelligent-yet-unappreciated students. Instead, use student knowledge and interest to guide the class. No longer just quality control inspectors, they are now solving the problems raised by the community.

Surowiecki focuses on four elements of the wise crowd: diversity of opinion, independence of members from one another, decentralization, and a good method for aggregating opinions. Each of these essentials becomes harder to come by in the classroom than the one before it, but with a little work students—too often overlooked as a resource—can be the engine for great classroom learning.

Or teachers! Schools spend millions to have these educational professionals in their employment, and thousands more to continue their education, only to lock them in an isolated classroom while the administration and school board hash out policy decisions. When systems are created that tap this knowledge base, schools win not only in the ideas generated, but the investment of its faculty.

Guerrilla Marking by Jay Conrad Levinson

Marketing and education seem not just incongruous, but distasteful together. The term brings the revulsion that the parent referring to themselves as customers did. But if education is as much about inspiration as knowledge—and most educational theories agree that it is—understanding authentic marketing may be the key to motivating organizations towards student learning.

More than any of the other business books mentioned, Levinson focuses on the nuts and bolts of business. This is not a theoretical tract, but a focused guide on getting your company product into the hands of customers via marketing. For this reasons alone Guerrilla Marketing makes this list.

Levinson focuses on small business and low budgets. Instead of money, an organization’s resources are time, energy and imagination. He writes that an acute focus on excellence, not diversified offerings, leads to success. Also, organizations should use a combination of methods for any campaign.

If you substitute a small school with a strapped budget, a pedagogy based in educational psychology, a resourceful community, high standards on the basics and differentiated learning Levinson could be speaking to educators. Unlike books about those topics, though, is his ability to shatter the box that holds traditional thinking. If anything, Guerrilla Marketing is so energetic that it forces you to defend everything you do. Unlike many books, he does not push a particular plan, but the ideas that any plan must have to succeed.

If you are open minded enough to use business books for an educational organization, Levinson will stimulate some important questions in how you proceed.

Schools as Models

Of course, there is no end of business titles that can be applies to learning. From Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point to Scott Adam’s Dilbert cartoons there is a business book to explain any phenomenon, or give advice for any situation.

What these four books have in common is that they expand the circle. Unlike schools, which can limp along, business must succeed or they die. It is why politicians and parents like to employ them as metaphors. If applied to schools, these books focus on educators being facilitators for learning. Students become active engines of learning, not products to be inventoried, while the community of parents, administrators, teachers and citizens serve as a collective resource guiding the outcome.

To be honest, for all of the bad publicity that schools receive there is a lot going well.

Now, if only businesses looked to its schools as a model we all might be buying American again.

A shorter piece on “Why Johnny Can’t Read” is posted elsewhere.  Throughout the Bush years I could only think about these books, and when I reread them I not only wondered if anyone in the administration had read them, but if any of the press or policy wonks had, either.  A day does not go by where I do not read some adviser or other put forth part of the puzzle that these three had pushed years before.  Bradbury is more of a prophecy than a road map, and so I end with it.

Everything Old is New Again

Three Books from the 1950s That Solve Our Nation’s Present Problems

If you browse the shelves of a sad used bookstore you will find all of the bestsellers from your parents bookshelves. Among the faded copies of The Thorn Birds and Kon-Tiki, long ago vetted from more upscale used bookstore shelves, will be political tracts, whose authors made the rounds of news programs and talk shows, and whose ideas were held up to the light—and then forgotten. You know their names, but probably have never read them: Why Johnny Can’t Read, The Ugly American, and Fahrenheit 451. Three books written in the 1950s demand at least a reread, and at best offer solutions to the three biggest issues facing America today: education, foreign policy, and control of our nation’s culture.

Why Johnny Can’t Recede

One measure of the impact of a cultural event or artifact is its catchphrase being perversely appropriated by any and all completely unrelated causes. From the suffix -gate to the got milk? campaign the sign of success in America is shameless exploitation. Unlike where’s the beef? the title of Rudolf Flesch’s classic Why Johnny Can’t Read is a chestnut that will not die. Still, while the phrase why Johnny can’t…. lives on fifty years after its publication, most educators are completely unfamiliar with the book.

Johnny promotes phonics. Actually, to say that Johnny promotes phonics is to say that Ahab did not like Moby Dick. It does not simply make a case for phonics, but lays down a persuasive argument that obliterates all but the strongest critics. It is a mind shattering read that will shake its reader’s belief about current reading strategies, or make them very, very angry.

It is shocking that those who push phonics have let Johnny gather dust. True, the research is now quite dated—it may not have been convincing at the time—but the force of the argument is crushing. Attempts to refer to it in modern texts miss the full impact of Flesch’s ardent, seething build. The Perennial paperback edition describes it as an “angry, practical book”; two words few people would ever put together. While its useful side consists of simple phonics exercises, it is the rage that sold the book.

Why revisit it? A fifty year old book whose persuasive argument is based on even older research, much of which he attacks, still resonates. Can it? It is the passion that demands the return.

Dear Mary

These two words begin the book. Flesch begins his tract with a letter to Johnny’s mother, who had hired him to teach her son. An emotional touch that allows him to introduce himself to the reader hat in hand (You know that I was born and raised in Austria, he writes on the second page—if she knows, why repeat it?), Flesch quickly abandons any pretense of it being an actual letter because Mary is us. By confiding in us as he would any sympathetic parent he now rallies against the other that is the educational establishment. And it works!

Quickly, Flesch lays out a wide reaching history of language that concludes that the faddish reading system of the fifties is like turning back the clock 3,000 years to the Age of Hammurabi, or learning Chinese—all argued in three pages.

It is on the fifth page that the passionate craze begins. Even as his frustration builds towards fury his punctuation remains a dull period. Wiley as a evangelical preacher, he baits his arguments with questions that he knows the answer to. Every paragraph starts to have a questioning sentence:

You don’t believe me?

You know what that means?

So what does he get instead?

Not until the fifth page, though, does Flesch really unleash the stylistic tricks. He uses his first exclamation point! His language up to this point assumed one, but he has craftily waited until now to use it. Every word in the language! is his indignant summation of the previous paragraph. The tone, already disdainful, turns to mocking. He uses contemptuous quotation marks, as in, used with the exactly “right” amount of repetition—you can practically see his fingers making the gesture as he speaks to the typewriter.

All the while he is weaving the text with learned historical references and titles of the classics. Finally, he unleashes his wrathful vocabulary in answer to the question of what Johnny gets as an alternative to Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott or Bulfinch.

So what does he get instead? He gets those series of horrible, stupid, emasculated, pointless, tasteless little readers, the stuff and guff about Dick and Jane or Alice and Jerry visiting farms and having birthday parties and seeing animals in the zoo and going through dozens and dozens of totally unexciting middle-class, middle-income, middle-I.Q. children’s activities that offer opportunities for reading “Look, look” or “yes, yes” or “Come, come” or “See the funny, funny animal.”

He had us at Dear Mary, but this seals the deal. From there he takes punches at the usual targets of greedy publishing houses and ivory towered academics—sometimes at the same time. He writes to his rhetorical question, Who writes these books? The reply, Naturally, the stupendous and frighteningly idiotic work on concocting this stuff can only be done by tireless teamwork of many educational drudges. Who can argue that writing what he calls a “textbook” is not drudgery?

This kick in the teeth is why Johnny is still relevant to anyone who cares about how reading is taught. One problem is that we no longer believe that our public schools can do the job. Parents demanding change from the school board, the major thrust for change, are being replaced by parents demanding vouchers. As the repercussions of NCLB kick in, those parents who traditionally would have pounded their fists insisting on changes are now being bought off. It is not the best students who will be skimmed from the public schools, but the most active parents. The naysayers have no vision, but simply want to flee.

As Johnny ages past fifty it seems odd that no one has picked up Flesch’s torch—not of phonics, but of passionate belief in the power of education. Flesch believed in education. For all of his protest, bluster and rant Flesch supported public education. As an immigrant he knew that in a country founded on equality and opportunity our public school system has been the bedrock foundation for which these values have long rested. More important, Flesch laid out not only criticism of reading programs from his era, but also a solution. It was not only well thought out, but quite detailed. Indeed, the last sixty pages offer exercises for parents to supplement what Flesch felt should be taught in schools.

Why can’t all of the critical Johnnies do that today?

The Uglier American

First published in 1958, The Ugly American became a catchphrase that also took a life of its own. Like Johnny, the catchphrase came to mean something different than the original work, leaving everyone into thinking they had read the book, or got the gist of it, from the phrase itself.

They were wrong.

Co-written by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, the book is a collection of stories woven together around the fictional Southeast Asian country of Sarkhan. Each story offers a specific illustration of how people use their skills and resources for a positive change, or how self-centered, short sighted ignorance undermines native people’s natural goodwill for America. And while each story has a certain “duh” quality in the strategy’s obviousness, they are oddly inspirational in their subtle complexity. By the end of the book you want to slap every White House, DOD or state department talking head with a copy of it.

There are several minor stories, ranging from adventure seeking secretaries to wise-but-overruled military men, but the tale of Homer Atkins, the “ugly American” himself, is typical. Described as “ugly” because his nails are dirty from working with his hands, those same hands have built him a multi-million dollar business back in Philadelphia. In Vietnam as a consultant to large engineering projects, he disappoints handsome-but-incompetent government officials by suggesting decidedly low tech ones instead. Asked by the progressive ambassador to Sarkahan, Gilbert MacWhite, the one thread holding the book together, Atkins solves a water transportation problem using local resources.

But it is his method that piques our interest.

Atkins wants to turn a profit. Kind hearted by no Peace Corp volunteer, Atkins wants to help the locals but also recognizes that only a profit motive will sustain any permanent change. His native protégé, Jeepo (a.k.a. the “Ugly Sarkhanese), says, “…on the ones (pumps) we make, we deserve the profit. That is the way of working men.” Later, Jeepo, quotes Atkins to his sales force saying, “one of the best things that can happen to engineers like yourself is to be allowed to sell what they make.” And he is not an isolated case. The book starts with the story of John Colvin, a Wisconsin OSS operative-cum diary farmer who introduces dried milk as a profitable protein source. By the end of the book both are prospering, as is Sarkhan. In the end, it is a bootstrap Republican aid package.

It all sounds like the stories of microloans told during the lead-up to Mohammad Yumas and the Grameen Bank being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. These loans have gone mostly to women, and the life-changing capability of funding bamboo furniture production or a cell phone to link a rural village to the world for a profit has been well documented. If it works in Bangledesh and countries without our help, why can it not work in nations we really, really want to pacify?

Unlike Why Johnny Can’t Read, where practice and success of reading strategies is still being debated, the lessons from The Ugly American have played out again and again, most notably in our failures in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. And while cultural empathy and understanding are liberal boilerplates, Lederer and Burdick have made a sound case for those traits that make the world look to America despite our hapless blunders.

The Book About Burning Books

Out of these three, Fahrenheit 451 is probably the one book you have read, albeit in junior high school. When you read it, you focused on the irony of firemen burning things, mostly books, and the theme that great ideas are dangerous to social order. This is what you wrote a paper on, at least, or wrote on the quiz.

And that is all you can remember.

Now that books seem quaint, and buying them is more of a activity surrounding gift giving than actual cultural relevance, “Fahrenheit 451″ is a phrase used to impose images of fascism. Orwell corners the general market on references of totalitarian rule, with 1984 offering phases like “big brother” and “newspeak”, and having child story suggesting Animal Farm lend quotes to drop like, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Yet Fahrenheit 451 and author Ray Bradbury is evoked when the arts are involved. The first line, “It ws a pleasure to burn” sums up the desire of those in power to destroy the word of truth.

And if that is all you can remember, all the more the pity.

Bradbury might have seen books as a physical savior of society, but his portrait of television, violence and youth was fifty years ahead of its time. These ideas are the ones that are forgotten, even by those who read the book.

The radical of the book is a teen age girl Clarisse McClellan. Barely a character, she is a foil for everyone else. While everyone is focused on things, she is enlivened by nature. Her family does not own a television, while the protagonist, a fireman named Guy Montag, is married to Mildred, a woman who feels deprived because her television does not have a fourth wall. While Clarisse talks of ideas, Montag’s wife cannot remember the plots of her shows and is incapable of having a conversation. We are introduced to Mildred after she has overdosed on pills, which too handymen with a machine clean her out of for fifty bucks, while Clarisse is killed by a car (although a definitive end is never said).

And that car.

Society breaking into a bored violence is the point that many people miss when reading Bradbury. It seems that, without arts and literature and only the drivel of television, life becomes cheap. Teens amuse themselves when they go to the Fun Park to, “bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with a big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing ‘chicken’ and ‘knock hubcaps’. She says, “I’m afraid of child my own age. They kill each other… Six friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of the died in wrecks.” And then she disappears, but not before acting as a wake up call to Guy Montag.

There is an overriding boredom in Bradbury’s world.

While dystopian overabundant societies are many in movies and literature, Bradbury’s conceits are simple acts of blandness. There is no running man as a modern bread and circus, designed to distract the population from the state. Mildred is excited because she has been chosen to perform in one of the teleplays. The script has been sent to her, and the characters speak their lines and pause for hers. But, unlike Winston Smith’s television in 1984, they cannot see her and the tape is unaware when she fumbles her lines and the play moves on without her. Still, to Mildred, it is the one moment she feels alive; that she belongs.

If everything sounds, well, done before it is Bradbury’s understated presentation of the world that makes this dystopian novel more current than Orwell and Aldous Huxley’s hedonistic Brave New World. It is not about what can happen, but the now. This is why we think of Fahrenheit 451 as being about burning books; our voting for America’s next singing idol or survivor distracts us from seeing more.

Two of the titles—Why Johnny Can’t Read and The Ugly American—have gone in and out of print, while Fahrenheit 451 continues to be a middle and high school staple. The subject you want to be upset most about is the way to chose which book to start with, but be ready to push the discussion beyond catchphrase at your next social gathering.

This is the original article on education and its use of acronyms, pseudonyms and how they create a divide between schools, parents and the community. If anything, it demonstrates my ability to go onto tangents, as demonstrated by the footnotes. With a lot of editing for length and brevity, it was published in “Edutopia”; that version is also a post on this site.

QT on the AAP
(Or, “Quiet on the Acronyms and Pseudonyms”)

INTRODUCTION

An exasperated parent, twenty minutes into a meeting concerning her failing son, cried, “Why doesn’t he have any study halls?” For a year-and-a-half she had looked at her son’s schedule and wondered why he had no time in-school to work and ask his teachers questions about his assignments. In fact he had four study halls each week, but they were called QUIPS.

QUIPS stands for Quiet Uninterrupted Independent Productive Study.1   This true form is a mouthful. While breaking it down into its components and examining each provides a depth of pedagogical reasoning, none of that subtext was transferred to the parent. In this case the parent had assumed that QUIPS was a subject that had been added since she had been a student. It did not help that the boy’s schedule, as written, also included L.A., P.E., Soc Stud, CMP, and another LA.2

In his appendix to 1984 George Orwell explains the purpose of the language, newspeak, used in the story by the party Ingsoc. Meant as a dark critique of government’s love of creating new words, Orwell writes, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.” (246) Schools and teachers that wish to create new paradigms often create an education version of newspeak. All do so in good faith, but the purpose is the same: new words for new ideas as we shed the methodology and pedagogy of the past.

Unfortunately acronyms, abbreviations, pseudonyms, and clever names too often keep parents in the dark and give schools a reputation for gimmicks over quality education. Words have meaning. To call something what it is can be an important tool in setting a tone and directing students towards the true desired outcome. Yet, even if there is a parent outreach, and we spend quality time explaining the truth behind our acronyms so that parents and students “get” it, is it worth the battle?

This obfuscication occurs in two main ways: acronyms and pseudonyms.

ACRONYMS3

Acronyms are a huge obstacle to direct communication.4  Many students would be hard-pressed to truly understand the profundity of QUIPS as an acronym. Only a few curious souls ask, and many more like to mock the silent part when a peer is too noisy. Jason, the Q is for quiet! Because it is a mouthful most mechanically call it QUIPS. A few even call it “study hall”, even though our school does not use the term.

The evolution of the term study hall and the tenacity with which it sticks is an interesting case study. A study hall is rarely held in a hall, and most often there is too little studying. Few public schools even have “halls”, other than a hallway. Indeed, few students could even define what a hall is in this context5 (and, again, too often they have trouble defining what studying is).6  In the name of accuracy, then, it is not unfair to quibble with the second half the term. Yet, the term remains from its private school origins because it stresses study and symbolizes the academic excellence that those schools are perceived to represent.

Study time, period, or room might be more accurate while still providing clear communication to parents. It is not endowed with the directives present in a Quiet Uninterrupted Independent Productive Study, but it beats DYMH (Do Your Math Homework). Yet, the symbolic nature of words should not be dismissed even as individual terms may be misleading. Study hall is a very loaded term, but in favor of the traditional good old fashion work load that stands mythically in our parents’ minds. They respect the image of noses to the grindstone over the unknown that is modern education. In our attempt to reconnect with parents we have readopted the term.

Acronyms not only fail to communicate well, but they are distractions. Class stops whenever I use what I think is a common acronym, as someone asks what FYI means and three students proudly announce “For Your Information.” While many students ignore comments on rough drafts, calls for rewrites ASAP yield a host of odd, misunderstood results. Students are, in fact, much better at deriving meaning from acronyms and abbreviations than adults. They even invent their own. Every student who hears Sustained Silent Reading’s SSR reworded as “Sit down, Shut-up and Read” acts as if they were the first to share such a thing.

In one case, Special Education (SpEd), the acronym became an insult. Calling peers “sped” was the modern form of “retard.” Things finally came to a head when a student wrote “SPED” in two-inch high letters on his forehead in indelible marker. After that it returned to Special Ed. in both speech and written communication. It took years to stamp out any use of the term, by both students and teachers.

For a taste of how annoying they are for parents, ask your students to write using IM7 lingo. Using a mish-mash of acronyms, numbers, symbols, and abbreviations the conversations, to the untrained, are like decoding a string of license plates. As it is ever-changing I suggest you speak to your students for a demo. After a time of head scratching you will be glad when they g2g (got to go).

Over time acronyms and short forms can lose their meaning. The Scholastic Aptitude Test long ago had its legal name changed to the SAT. Indeed, my seventh graders used to take an exam called the SAT 9, now in full acronym pronunciation “sat-nine”. What happened to the scholastic, much less the aptitude? Only the test remains.

PSYODEONYMS

While acronyms are one of the more common forms of miscommunication, clever pseudonyms are another.8

For example, a local school has “guided studies” instead of a study hall. The theory behind the name is that students are placed with someone from the department that they needed the most help in. So, a student with weak math skills would have a guided study run by a math teacher. In theory, that teacher would be actively helping students with math homework.

Instead, teachers at the school correct papers or read the newspaper. When asked students have no idea why it is called a guided study, and seem surprised when explained the rationale. Students seem to end up in guided studies that fit into their schedule, not scheduled into ones that compliment their needs. Unlike QUIPS, the word “study” at least remains.

Pseudonyms abound in education. Unlike acronyms, which create misunderstandings from an outsider being unable to decode its elongated form, pseudonyms misdirect through misuse. Too often new terms are created by educators to distinguish the new, subtle change from the familiar and worn. At some point someone thought the original machination behind the guided study deserved a new name, but the origins have been betrayed as the class returned to the traditional study hall. So now the name, itself a relic, unintentionally lies.

Examples abound, but perhaps the greatest is that of the middle school. In the 1950s middle schools were created as unique entities separate from the junior high. Middle school teachers, administrators, and academics have spent decades studying, developing and promoting a unique middle school philosophy that specifically addressed the academic needs of adolescents. Yet, if you go to most middle schools you will enter the traditional junior high, the complete antithesis of the middle school model.

Teacher Advisory is a dual misdirection—both an acronym and a pseudonym. Most teachers and students call it TA, and many do not know what the abbreviation means. While some schools do an excellent job promoting the idea of the teacher advisory, many are an old fashion homeroom complete with the teacher’s coffee being interrupted by roll call and the Pledge of Allegiance. Ironically, the term homeroom would, at least, promote the idea of it being a home, of sorts, where students could ground themselves before hitting their classes, as is there is little active advising going on.

Physical Education is stuck in abbreviated and pseudonym hell. While everyone knows what Phys. Ed. or P.E. means, people cannot stop calling it “gym.” As our P.E. instructor said, a gym is a place where Phys. Ed. is often taught. Even though the gymnasium has a glorious word origin reaching back to the hallmarks of intellectual inquiry it is still a place.9  To give this discipline its academic due only Physical Education passes the muster.

THE TOLL IT TAKES

Most parents can be divided into two groups: uninvolved and involved. For someone uninvolved and whose only contact is a quarterly report card Language Arts is a head-scratcher and SAFE-T is a mystery. Sure, their child might have gotten an A in the class, but what is it? Asking the child too often brings shrugs, or misinformation because they do not have the background to simply say “Oh, it’s what you called English.” Typically these are the parents who were unsuccessful themselves, and such clever terminology only serves to distance them further from the school. These parents know English, but they will never ask a teacher or administrator why it is absent from their child’s schedule. Many are critical of the “new” ways of teaching, and such monikers to traditional fare only fuels their suspicions that the three Rs are being subverted in some way.

Involved parents just laugh. A few who like to be a force for change embrace the terms as an improvement over their own, perfectly acceptable education, but most laugh. They see the subtleties introduced in changing English to Language Arts, but they also know that adding a unit on media studies and another on public speaking does not change much. Grammar is grammar. With a polite smile they correct themselves when “English” mistakenly comes out of their mouth.

Worse, many teachers, programs and schools change their terminology on a regular basis. After a long process involving teachers, parents, citizens and local businesses a local district crafted something they called “Performance Targets. In short, they were a short list of ten goals the district had that matched the state standards. An entire program was put into place that made students in the high school demonstrate their having met the targets in addition to collecting credits. It was a program that was eased in over a many year period, and thousands of hours were spent on developing and implementing it. Just as the first class of students was approaching graduation the district scrapped it. Now they have “Power Standards.” What are they? In short, they are short list of eight goals the district had that matched the state standards

This new initiative has negated the work of all of the people who spent time creating the original Performance Targets. Having invested so much time and effort in the original Performance Targets, why would the community allow itself to reinvest in Power Standards? While their may be subtle pedagogical reasons behind the new name and reworking of language, it is doubtful that the trust lost and effort needed to retool will make up the difference.

There are plenty of reasons to create acronyms and pseudonyms. It is the bread and butter that Special Education marches to, and they could not survive the sheer volume of terminology was it not for acronyms. There are, in fact, several states with websites dedicated to Special Ed. acronyms. In their case acronyms actually make the mouthful of information understandable and usable to parents.

Teachers and schools have the high road, as they have been successfully plying their trade for centuries and hold a unique spot in our societies psyche. Why, then, do we insist on repackaging programs that retain their core essence? Language Arts has changed in many ways, but at its core students are still reading and writing. Acronyms and pseudonyms are not madness, but teachers and administrators need to be aware of their detrimental effects and natural abuse before they start the renaming process. Let our parents have their study halls even if the definition is a bit off.

FOOTNOTES

1. I was taught that all abbreviations use periods (i.e., U.S.A.), but the bible of current grammar practices (i.e. The Chicago Manual of Style) deem them unnecessary.

2. Living Arts (formerly Home Ec., or Home Economics); Physical Education (formerly Phys. Ed., or “gym”); Social Studies (formerly History); Connected Math Program 3 (formerly 8^th grade Math), and Language Arts (formerly English).

3. From the Greek: acro (head) and nym (word), according to The American Heritage Dictionary (AHD).

4. An acronym is a term that can be pronounced in its short form. For example, SCUBA (Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) is an acronym. USA (United States of America) is simply an abbreviation. Oddly, the website Acronym Server Simplified states that this differentiation is “a curious myth perpetuated by American dictionaries.”

5. a. a building belonging to a school, college, or university that provides classroom, dormitory, or dining facilities. b. A large room in such a building. c. The group of students occupying such a building.”

6. The AHD defines studying as, “to apply understanding of (a subject)… to inquire into; investigate… to examine closely; scrutinize… to give careful thought to; contemplate… to apply oneself to learning… to ponder; reflect.” It also includes, “to memorize.”

7. Instant Messaging: a popular form of communication between teens on computers that relies on abbreviations so that typed conversations move at a rapid, stream-of-consciousness speed.

8. From the Greek: pseudes (false) and onoma (name). A pseudonym is defined as “a fictitious name assumed by an author; a pen name” by the AHD. While my use of the word is incorrect, I am aiming at misnomers that rename ideas with the intention of breathing new life and paradigms into them, yet ultimately do not represent those ideas.

9. It is defined by the AHD as “an academic high school in various European countries, esp. Germany, that prepares students for studies at a university.” That is quite a pedigree compared to the view that P.E. is more about dodgeball. In Latin it means school, although in Greek gumnasion is “to exercise naked.”

This is my article as printed in “Edutopia”, a great education magazine put out by the visionary George Lucas and his education foundation.  Another, longer, original version is also on this site.  I like this version’s brevity, but the other seems to delve a bit deeper into the subject.  At this point it is hard, as the writer, to tell which is superior.  Each serves its own purpose, I suppose.

QT on the AAP (Or, “Quiet on the Acronyms and Pseudonyms”)

An exasperated parent, twenty minutes into a meeting about her failing son, cried, “Why doesn’t he have any study halls?” For a year-and-a-half she had looked at her son’s schedule and wondered why he had no time in school to work on and ask his teachers questions about his assignments. In fact, he had four study halls each week, but they were called QUIPS. QUIPS is an acronym for Quiet Uninterrupted Independent Productive Study. This true form is a mouthful, and will not fit on the schedule, so the acronym is used. While breaking it down into its components and examining each provides a depth of pedagogical reasoning, none of that subtext was transferred to the parent. In this case the parent had assumed that QUIPS was a subject that had been added since she had been a student. It did not help that the boy’s schedule, as written, also included L.A., P.E., Fr., S.S., Sc, CMP, and another LA.

In 1984 George Orwell introduced the fictional language Newspeak, which was “to make all other modes of thought impossible.” Schools and teachers that wish to create new paradigms often create an education version of Newspeak. All do so in good faith and in good cause, but the purpose is the same: new words for new ideas as we shed the methodology and pedagogy of the past.

Unfortunately education’s acronyms, pseudonyms, and clever names too often keep parents in the dark and give schools a reputation for gimmicks over quality education. Words have meaning. To call something what it is can be an important tool in setting a tone and directing students towards the true desired outcome. Yet, even if there is a parent outreach, and we spend quality time explaining the truth behind our acronyms so that parents and students “get” it, is it worth the battle?

This obfuscication occurs in two main ways: acronyms and pseudonyms.

Acronyms are a huge obstacle to direct communication. Many students would be hard-pressed to truly understand the profundity of QUIPS as an acronym. Only a few curious souls ask, and many more like to mock the silent part when a peer is too noisy. Jason, the Q is for quiet!

The evolution of the term study hall and the tenacity with which it sticks is an interesting case study. A study hall is rarely held in a hall, and most often there is too little studying. Few public schools even have “halls”, other than a hallway. Yet, the term remains from its private school origins because it stresses study and symbolizes the academic excellence that those schools are perceived to represent.

Study time, period, or room might be more accurate while still providing clear communication to parents. It is not endowed with the directives present in a Quiet Uninterrupted Independent Productive Study, but it beats DYMH (Do Your Math Homework). Yet, the symbolic nature of words should not be dismissed even as individual terms may be misleading. Study hall is a very loaded term, but in favor of the traditional good old fashion workload that stands mythically in parents’ minds. It respects the image of noses to the grindstone, and reconnects with parents.

For a taste of how annoying they are for parents, ask your students to write using IM lingo. Using a mish-mash of acronyms, numbers, symbols, and abbreviations the conversations, to the untrained, are like decoding a string of license plates. As it is ever-changing I suggest you speak to your students for a demo. After a time of head scratching you will be glad when they g2g (got to go).

While acronyms are one of the more common forms of miscommunication, clever pseudonyms are another.

For example, a local school has “guided studies” instead of a study hall. The theory behind the name is that students are placed with someone from the department that they needed the most help in. So, a student with weak math skills would have a guided study run by a math teacher. In theory, that teacher would be actively helping students with math homework. If it happened it would be an important distinction.

Instead, teachers correct papers or read the newspaper. When asked students have no idea why it is called a guided study, and seem surprised when explained the rationale. Students end up in guided studies that fit into their schedule, not scheduled into ones that compliment their needs. Unlike QUIPS, the word “study” at least remains.

Pseudonyms abound in education. Unlike acronyms, which create misunderstandings from an outsider being unable to decode its elongated form, pseudonyms misdirect through misuse. Too often new terms are created by educators to distinguish the new, subtle change from the familiar and worn. At some point someone thought the original machination behind the guided study deserved a new name, but the origins have been betrayed as the class returned to the traditional study hall. So now the name, itself a relic, unintentionally lies.

This misuse of the language hurts the parent-school connection, one of the most important tools in helping students. Most parents can be divided into two groups: uninvolved and involved. For someone uninvolved and whose only contact is a quarterly report card Language Arts is a head-scratcher and Living Arts is a mystery. Sure, their child might have gotten an A in the class, but what is it? Asking the child too often brings shrugs, or misinformation because they do not have the background to simply say “Oh, it’s what you called English.” Typically these are the parents who were unsuccessful themselves, and such clever terminology only serves to distance them further from the school. These parents will never ask why English is absent from their child’s schedule. Many are critical of the “new” ways of teaching, and such monikers to traditional fare only fuels their suspicions that the three Rs are being subverted in some way.

Involved parents just laugh. A few who like to be a force for change embrace the terms as an improvement over their own education, but most laugh. They see the subtleties introduced in changing English to Language Arts, but they also know that adding a unit on media studies and another on public speaking might not warrant the new name. Grammar is grammar. With a polite smile they correct themselves when “English” mistakenly comes out of their mouth.

Teachers and schools have the high road, as they have been successfully plying their trade for centuries and hold a unique spot in our societies psyche. Why, then, do we insist on repackaging programs that retain their core essence? Language Arts has changed in many ways, but at its core students are still reading and writing. Acronyms and pseudonyms are not madness, but teachers and administrators need to be aware of their detrimental effects and natural abuse before they start the renaming process. Let our parents have their study halls even if the definition is a bit off.

Since I wrote this years ago I have used “Lagaan” repeatedly in my social science class during our India unit. For my students, I edit it down to two-and-a-half hours. After some rudimentary lessons on cricket rules, they sit enraptured by the movie and stand up an cheer at the end. Not a single person believes it will be watchable, much less great, but each is won over. Yes, every still shot looks cheesy-the movie IS cheesy–but it conforms to every sports cliche and delivers like no other.

A Sports Movie That Will Have You Singing

A rag-tag bunch of ballplayers with everything at stake band together and beat the bad guys and the odds. The Longest Yard? Major League 2? The Fish That Saved Pittsburg? No, it’s Lagaan, a nominee for the 2002 Academy Awards. There are several reasons that you have not heard of it, but the major ones stand out. In short, its:

• 4 hours long
• In Hindu, mostly (with English subtitles)
• About cricket
• Has musical numbers

Yes, musical numbers. That is not to mention it’s a late 19th century period piece set in India (thus everyone speaks Hindu) and the Oscar nomination was best foreign film (it did not win). The plot is about an impoverished village accepting a challenge to play British soldiers at a game of cricket. If the villagers win, they’ll avoid taxation for three years; if they lose, they’ll pay three times their usual steep tax. Lagaan means “land tax.”

Why is it so great? Although the first two hours combine musical numbers, romance, stock characters, and the stock training sequence raised to the next level (where the village rejects learn the game, including an untouchable!), sticking with it builds a bond with the viewer. As Capt. Russell, the arrogant commander, Paul Blackthorne is the embodiment of British imperialism. Indian heartthrob, Aamir Khan, the leader of the local “team” is the ideal hero, who molds a crazy mystic, crippled untouchable, and an unlikely assemblage into a believable and formidable team. By the match, you want blood.

It is the second two hours, all cricket, that equal any sports movie. It is all tension. We follow both sides over three days as they battle down to the last ball, and the match winds down with more twists and turns than a googly. Unlike American sports movies that string out a series of games over the season, this is a single cricket match played over three days. The mix of tragedy and triumph, backed by an amazing Indian drum soundtrack, make it difficult to sit. And this tension is sustained for over two hours!

I have never seen a cricket match, but the movie makes it easy to follow. Always surprised by the amount of personal story in favorites like Hoosiers, Chariots of Fire, and The Natural I was forgiving. With the DVD you can easily skip around in the first two hours, if you must, but do not miss a minute of the match itself. If someone has been pushing you to rent a foreign film, and you think you have the stamina, rent Lagaan. You will find yourself being the object of disbelief as you push it on others.

How NCLB Demands Middle School Best Practice

Quick, think of three nasty things to say about NCLB.

Chances are at least one of them was told to you by someone else, even repeated in a faculty meeting, perhaps even by an administrator, as fear of NCLB long preceded the actual test and our current experiences. The joke “No Child Left Untested” has long made the rounds, and while the NEA and other education and some student advocacy groups have moved from straight opposition to embracing its goals while criticizing its shortcomings, No Child Left Behind remains something to be opposed to.

That is a shame.

In Vermont our NCLB testing is fulfilled through the NECAP, or New England Common Assessment Program. As an assessment, the NECAP provides a basic, fair and thorough look at what students at a certain age should be able to do. After four years of results, I have seen little that did not confirm what I saw in my classroom. The jury is out on what the information means, and what schools will and should do with the information. This debate, and not the test, is where good middle school programs can benefit because the data should support what we practice and believe in.

For example, a few years ago NECAP results showed only twenty eight percent of my eighth grade students meeting the standard for writing. It was a shock, in part because I knew that in the classroom nearly all of my students could demonstrate grade level writing skills. When asked what the reason might be, the consensus among my students was that they “did not like the questions.” As a result, they did not put much into the answers. A few “finished” the long essay in less than ten minutes; one even drew volcanoes throughout.

Some would see this as a healthy answer rooted in teens acting on their personal feelings regarding an artificial task, or even teen rebellion striking a blow for a more human system. Not me. This failure—and it was a failure—was part of a larger problem that had presented itself the previous year. Faced with a difficult task, my students avoided. They had excuses why our soccer team lost, explained how the choice of musicals explained their mediocre production, and failed to meet honor roll quarter after quarter because “grades don’t really matter until high school.” Every planning referral involved someone else’s actions, either a peer or the teacher. My students believed that the test was “bogus” and that, given a real challenge, they could turn it on at will. They could not.

Using the data and the five months of school left before the next NECAP, I focused on my seventh graders and their attitude about learning. The NECAP became the Superbowl, a giant culmination of a curriculum that developed their thinking, creative and writing skills. Our lessons were practices, the assessments games and in October we faced our opponent in the big event. It was not overt, and we rarely spoke of the exam, but assessment and results took a seriousness that I had not given them before; that our school rarely demanded of them. As a result, all assessments became more accurate, not just the NECAP, and I adjusted my teaching according to their remaining needs. When the NECAP results came back nearly every student met the standard in writing.

To many reading this is a horror story. Alongside the joke mentioned at the start, the phrase “teaching to the test” was probably in your top three. If the test is a good measure, and measures something of value, is it not worth teaching to?

Let us assume that the NECAP paints an accurate picture of our students’ ability to read, write, do math and practice science. If, as advocates argue, a good middle school program based in teacher advisories, flexible schedules and integrated team teaching is good for student performance then NCLB is not something to fear. Instead, it is our proof to the community that our program works.

Why Best Practice Supports Learning

A useful framework for understanding the link between middle level practice and NCLB performance is Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Starting from his base of physiological needs, students must achieve a number of levels before being able to address their academic learning. So, in order for students to learn academics schools must ensure that students have those early stages—survival, security and belonging—met. When the community at large falls short, schools must assume an even more central role if they are to fulfill their mission of teaching students academic skills.

For example, our education system has long assumed the physiological needs of our students in providing free or reduced lunch to students in need. Teachers cannot compete with a rumbling tummy. Not only has the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act provided federal subsidies to local schools since 1946, but many schools have expanded its reach in addition to making overall meals more attractive to all students at a cost above that charged to students. Amenities from nurses to water fountains are the norm because good health leads to greater learning. Some schools are even going beyond yearly eye exams to bring in dentists and doctors. Evidence of the role physiological needs play and its recognized importance to learning, students enrolled in the National School Lunch Program make up an important category in NCLB testing.

Security is another area that employs a large share of the school’s resources. From teacher identification cards to fire drills security is recognized as essential, but it goes beyond the concrete. Anti-harassment laws, cyber bullying campaigns, the employment of guidance counselors and health teachers all demonstrate our understanding that safety is an essential element that needs to be secured before a student is to learn. Good middle school programs ensure that.

When our middle school talked about having advisory our faculty was split about it. Instead of focusing on advisory itself, we asked ourselves, Does every student have an advocate? We defined an advocate as someone who was close enough to a student that a faculty member would readily notice any problem or success, as someone a student felt they could approach someone if they needed help, and if anyone would act on either of these scenarios. After taking an inventory of each student, we discovered that our two person teams were small enough and our activities intimate and involved so that advisory felt slightly redundant. With the addition of daily team meeting, a guided recess and other supports we have strengthened our faculty-student bonds. In the end, advisory was not adopted.

While we chose not to practice advisory, it remains an important pillar of middle school philosophy because safety is essential to learning. Our school embraced the idea as essential. We recognized that if a student does not feel safe, they will not focus on academics. By having an advocate—someone who is aware of each student’s emotional readiness to learn—middle schools are in a unique position to affect high performance.

That early adolescence is a time when students are most vulnerable, and most distracted by non-academic issues, is an even stronger reason for a good middle school program. Indeed, NECAP should force high schools to become the middle school’s greatest advocates. With the math, reading, writing and science exams making eighth grade a culminating year for the success middle school programs, it is also a clear indication for high schools of their incoming students. With the next NECAP measure being eleventh grade, high schools that do not support their feeding middle school programs will be forced to radically alter their ninth and tenth grade curriculum and overall organization if they are to make up for lagging skills. The less their middle schools have a consistent program the more high schools will have to change with each incoming class. Middle schools are in a unique position; an importance that has gone unrecognized.

This is the time for advocates. In having a close relationship because of time allotted and activities that encourage interaction a safety net is created. This structure supports Maslow’s next step of, belonging.
Teams and integrated curriculums give students a place to belong. While my students happily chirp out their second grade teacher, they identify themselves now as members of the Dream Team. We have cheers, traditions and even popular t-shirts. With an integrated curriculum, teachers are not identified by their subject but as facilitators and supporters. Because they belong to a team they are part of a support network of peers and adults setting them up for success. This network is important as students transition from their elementary schools, get ready to enter high school, or both. In the larger school students are often lost, yet have not created a solid, positive identity that will allow them to make it alone. Teaming gives students that direction.

In fact, as students rise up Maslow’s hierarchy the typical community begins a hands-off approach. While lock down drills for safety are the norm, parent contact and involvement often becomes uneven as students approach adolescence. Parent nights are on the schedule and every administrator and teacher does lip service to the importance of parent involvement, but it is the middle school community that has made it a bedrock principle. Instead of sparsely attended conferences and quarterly report cards, practitioners of middle level philosophy offer newsletters, progress reports, webpages, emails and a constant stream of news to parents. While allowing students to act independently in many ways, we also offer supports unheard of in many high schools. Teams schedule occasions that include parents, and culminating events that revel in learning. It is a philosophy that promotes celebrations instead of just the dreaded phone call home. And it comes at a time where children stop speaking with their parents, providing an important bridge in a relationship that, due to the age, is often in suspension.

In the end, so what? While those first three steps are important, it seems like a lot of work to just get students to their seats.

How to Use the Scores
Returning to my pitiful twenty eight percent group, the problem was not their intelligence or their skills, but attitude. NECAP had underscored not a failure in teaching basic skills, but the fostering of a cancerous attitude that these students took with them to high school. Instead of being confident in their abilities and getting a strong heaping of tenacity, they were a class of avoiders. Not only did they fail to tackle hard work, but they developed a strong culture of excuses. When they graduated from our school, their graduation speaker held this flaw up as a virtue.

How sad.

For over a year we had described these kids as “underachievers” but had been confident in their basic skills and intelligence. Teacher after teacher, year after year, had patiently waited for them to come into their own; for the flower to blossom. They had the academic skills, but not those skills needed to excel in their adult lives.

In running through my list of students over the years and their respective NECAP scores, I can tell the story behind the score. I can do this because my middle school program allows me time to know the student as a person. A few tanked the exam on purpose because that is what they do, while others did not have the skills for a variety of reasons. Many more made tremendous progress as a result of a year of hard work and the support of our program. Each is a story, none of which will make the paper or be discussed at town meeting when taxpayers ask for answers.

That public display is the power of NECAP. We can use other measures, and we do, but none are consistent throughout the state. And none are so visible.

Until now much of the support for good middle school programming has been anecdotal. Yes, there is plenty of data and a heap of studies supporting it, but not in Vermont. Instead, discussions have centered around those first three stages of Maslow and how communities want their children to be supported. Some of the discussion comes down to parents of first graders not wanting those big eighth graders around their children, and parents of seventh graders not wanting theirs around high school seniors. A separate program solves those fears. Often, configuration is about available space, student-teacher ratios and whatever fad solid middle school philosophy has to compete against. Lurking in the background is the fear that all of this focus on belonging—the team building and projects and TAs—will not get the students ready for high school and college. Solid NECAP scores can assure the community that our programs, with all the parts that do not look like the reading, math, writing and science of our youth, offer students what it needed to succeed.

A school cannot avoid NECAP. The discussions about cost and methods come down to scores and solutions. Schools can no longer afford to allow kids to go hungry, or miss days of school. For some, they are being forced to deal with elephants that have festered in the room unspoken of for years. If a program works the numbers will show it. Wedged between varying elementary programs and high schools grasping to deal with the new public position NECAP placed them in, middle school programs are in the position to call the shots, if only they embrace it.

The most important thing a middle school teacher can do at this point is analyze the data. By breaking down the data for those students they have been responsible for in the year prior to the test, in the subjects they were responsible for teaching, teachers will get a sense of how their program is working. Next, by comparing their scores to those of the grade level overall teachers should get a sense of their relative success. Are you raising the school average, or dragging it down? Remember, every score is a story. What is yours? Looking at this data narrative, a good teacher should be able to offer solutions not only for the rest of the data year, but also pass a story of the next teacher and change the program for those coming in.

That group of twenty-eight percent never did find their tenacity. For five months I worked with them on this issue. I tried every trick I knew, and pulled in colleagues for advice. There was not enough time to undue years of complacency. When they left they understood and owned the issue, but were not ready to act on it. More recently, I watched as three students miss meeting the standard in writing because they missed the questions on breaking up run-on sentences and combining fragments. It is a problem easier to fix.

If we really believe that good middle school programs are good for students, then we must believe the scores will show that. They also give us a roadmap to offer students more of what they need.

If no child is left untested we will see that those in a good middle school program demonstrate success. It is time to stop the jokes and embrace the notion of no child being left behind.

Possession is about loss. That book becomes that lost book. As I left New York City and the world of publishing for an unknown future I lost a single box of books while moving. I could have lost Maugham, but was lucky in that it was in another of the seventeen boxes that moved with me that last day in May. Still, I lost an unknown quantity of other copies with real connections.

Out of college, working at the Triangle Bookshop in Ithaca, New York, I was taught how to properly pack a box of books by an exacting and tedious warehouse manager. Selling primarily textbooks and stationary supplies, we spent the months leading up to each semester receiving and unpacking books, and the months after the semester began packing up the unsold copies and shipping them back to their publishers. I have broken down boxes for storage and recycling, and taped them back together so that they survive tumultuous shipping back to their home. We surrounded ourselves with pallets of boxes waiting to be returned. Over the two years I worked for Triangle I had packed tens of thousands of titles, and loaded scores of UPS, RPS, Yellow and other miscellaneous trucks with boxes of books. I am a veteran of the box cutter, tape gun, pricing gun, and the special scraping spatula and gum cleaning goop used to take the prices off and clean up the books for return. It is a Sisyphus-like task that exemplifies the cliché practice makes purpose.

There is a right way to pack a box of books. An average cardboard box can hold between twenty hardcover books and sixty mass-market paperback books. In a well-packed box, the hardcover books are stacked flat, alternating the direction that the spine lays so that the pile crushes evenly when on the bottom of an entire pallet of books. Otherwise, the spines grind against each other until the cases are broken. Thus, the hardcover edition of Robert M. Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance lays flat on top of a hardcover copy of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. The edge of the cover connected to the spine of one lays atop the edge over the endpapers of the other. Hardcovers are prevented from shifting within the box, and cushioned from outside dings in transit, by misused mass-market paperbacks of Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro and a tattered copy of Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room. On top, a scrap piece of cardboard is put to protect them all from the receiver’s box cutter. Properly packed, they are safe so long as the box arrives at its destination. On average, the loss of such a box creates forty unanswered questions.

Somewhere between my 12th Street hovel in New York City and my parent’s garage a box of books disappeared. In late May, leaving the city and my first venture into publishing, I had packed a rental Ford Probe with all of my belongings. Those seventeen boxes would go from my old New York apartment, directly to the car, to my summer-sublet apartment, from the apartment to my new used and beaten Toyota Tercel wagon in August, and into the attic of my parent’s garage for storage. At no time did I open these boxes, or notice any missing. They simply moved from point A to point B and ended up at point C. Yet, somewhere that box disappeared.

My wife is driven mad, as I have attributed nearly every absent book I have thought of since to that missing box. I walk around our house sure that there is a specific title, only to come up empty handed.

“I know I have a copy of The Iceman Cometh,” I would say, trying to dissuade her from buying a new copy.
“We don’t have it,” came her reply, needing it for her graduate class.

It must be in that box, I think. Then I wonder what else must be in there.

There is no manifest. To list those missing books is guesswork. For the year after the move I am able to picture myself packing the boxes in New York City, remembering which books went into what box. Looking back, my sanity would have been dulled had I written these remembrances down. One book missing confirmed another’s loss. At one point I was mentally able to reconstruct the manifest. Not now.

Obviously, a box had been misplaced. Now, years later, the list has grown beyond the original, conceivable box. I can trace them all back to the move—I remember their being in New York City, but not after—yet it is impossible for all of those books to have been abducted by the same accidental misplacement. That original box is the one I wish I could find—to reconstruct the original loss.

My copy of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, one bought on the street from a dumpster-diving homeless man, and had warmed the toilet tank in my tiny New York City water closet for over a year, was in that box. It had been the same paperback edition as the one I had read in ninth grade, with a lonesome man looking reflectively at the ground in the foreground and a tree in the background. Reading Knowles again, slowly, over six months while I sat in a water closet in my tumbledown studio, I was able to appreciate it in a way impossible when, at age fourteen, a chapter was due each night. Now, that book was gone, lost to the box. That lost box.

Those seventeen boxes of books, moved to Ithaca and then to my parent’s garage in Massachusetts, all had a single tie. They were all that copy. Each had a history. Where did my original Rinehart edition of Steppenwolf wind up, the one plucked from the Clark University Bookstore bargain bin while visiting a college girlfriend? Herman Hesse fired up my imagination when I still believed that I would gladly adapt to any part of the world. Since then I have bought four other editions, including the same Rinehart edition, but it is not the same. In whose hands did my class copy of Three by Eugene O’Neil, the one from graduate school, find itself? That copy. One day I hope to know.

What is my secret desire? It is the box. The missing box created an insatiable desire to refill it. I could not tell you today what books were in it, although I know in my heart that there were a lot; perhaps thousands! Today I find myself looking at the shelves of a few friends who had us over for brunch. I am glancing over books donated to the local library book sale. Had I written down the titles, would my quest be as simple as ordering them again? My wife used to write her name in every book, although I am not one to do that. Just as I like the idea of reading about World War I more than actually doing it, my possession of books is not exact in its true manifestation. I have not looked for The Complete Lyrics of Lou Reed. It is unlikely that any copy I find will be that copy. Still, I look on shelves and in boxes and at the bottom shelves of sale tables because if I recover just one of those books then I can recapture the immediacy of the memories that it represents.

Physical layout of a used bookstore is largely determined by necessity. Steep stairs, narrow aisles, dark corners, too high shelving units, mismatched materials, old carpets, metal displays, damp floors, cold drafts, crammed sections, low ceilings, back alleys, broken ceramic tiles, musty smell, and the occasional bit of natural light. There is no blueprint for a used bookstore. They can be found in strip malls, tenements, street corners, carts, remodeled used car dealerships, trailers, barns, alleys, pedestrian shopping streets, malls, basements, and converted brick, farm, or ranch houses. The enjoyment of used bookstores comes from the creative inevitability of having to use the space given them.

Each founder brings a lot of baggage to the store. Supermarket meat deep freezers used as bargain bins, unattached toilets as seating, and some of the most creative shelving units imaginable. And some uncreative, like random stacks littered about the place, as, often, reading a newly received book is more important than getting the rest of the books off the floor.

When I lived in New York, there was a storefront hovel on East 4th Street, off the Bowery, that was a cross between a bookstore and a dumpster. No more than seventy-five square feet, the books were stored in layers. Along the walls, you could see that there were shelves, but long since books had been stacked in front of them. And then stacks in front of them. And then stacks in front of them. The stacks then grew, until they reached near the top of the shelves. The ceiling was less than seven feet high, and it took two steps down from the sidewalk to get in. Cut through the room was a small, narrow aisle that was no wider than two feet. It lead to a back room, where it was obvious the owner lived; a flimsy sheet separating the two areas. There was no name for this business. Never did I see this store open during the day, but only at night; late at night, when we were leaving the bar on the corner and heading home.

I am unable to pass by such a store without looking in to see what design they have used, and taking mental notes for my own creation. On West 4th Street, two people made the space crowded, and the insensible owner hovered the entire time. It was difficult to browse, as other perusers, leaving shows and bars, would see the light and be drawn in by the covers of the books that lay on top of the stacks. In the thin aisle would be a dance of sorts, until someone would be frustrated enough at the lack of privacy to leave. For all of its flaws, it drew me in because of the mystery of what lay beneath the stacks and stacks of bland stock. The original nature of the independent bookstore is unique because each founder is unique, something that will not die regardless of the megastore infiltration.

In her introduction to Antiquarian Bookselling in the United States: A History from the Origins to the 1940s, Madeleine B. Stern writes of the bookstores themselves, “Their place of business might be a dark and tiny hole in the wall, or it might be an elegant literary emporium with frescoed ceilings and multiple floors.” I have admired both. The former is good for the hunt, while the latter is much more calming.

Bookstores are created in one of two ways: either built-to-suit or a bastardized improvisation of what is available. Larger chain megastores are designed for maximum efficiency, with thousands of decisions made for every hypothetical contingency before the plans ever leave the drafting table. The cafes are often exposed to natural light to create an inexpensive ambiance. A simple visit to the bathroom requires a visit to at least three sections of product between the front door and stall. Clocks are forbidden so patrons will be get lost in the atmosphere and lulled into spending precious shopping time browsing books instead of at the hardware store, toy store, or other errand destination (much the same as at a casino). Flow is a major consideration. Focus groups and architectural psychologists have created the ideal Skinner Box. Senses of awe, and a warm familiarity, are as important as easy accessibility and stocking. On paper and in practice, they are temples designed to separate book lovers from their money while minimizing buyer’s remorsebrowse the new Walking magazine, buy the new Jan Karon novel, sit down and drink your latte.

There are many opinions about what makes a great bookstore, but when you really listen to people closely about what makes a worthy space they are talking about the books they found there. When you take away the exposed brick, narrow corners, dark woods, dangerous stairs, and aromatic smell of coffee what is left is the find. That book. It always comes down to the book. A great bookstore is defined by the book found there.

When the two-story Barnes & Noble megastore opened in South Burlington, it was only the third set of escalators in the entire state of Vermont. The first set of escalators was at the Burlington Square Mall in the city’s downtown. The second were at the airport. There had been a third in a department store on the corner of Church and Pearl Streets, but that was before my time. Since then a few escalators have popped up, most noticeable being the new Sears at the University Mall.

Until Barnes & Noble dropped from the sky, though, a big store could still all fit on one floor. It was not that it had sufficient square footage to require two floors, but that the philosophy of retail had started to take on levels. Four months after buying A Separate Peace, my moving to Vermont with my then-girlfriend Cathy coincided with the opening of this new Barnes & Noble megastore. It was the perfect job for me, one who is anxious about filling small talk with strangers, as it surrounded me a hundred other bibliophiles in a town where I knew no one. Our day was filled with the work of unloading trucks filled with books and setting up a brand new store, while our initiating small talk was about books, unloading trucks, and the brand new store. Burlington was also one of the sites experimenting with used books, and I was able to get the job managing the department. I worked there for over a year, cutting my teeth in their used book department before opening my own store.

These escalators represented the direction of economic change coming. This was not just a chain store, as Vermont was finding itself with plenty of those after losing its long war against Wal-Mart, but a colossal monument towards the brave new economy. While the expansive entryway and the huge amounts of stock were impressive, these foreign escalators signified the degree in which the retail environment had just leapt in the state. This store was big and comfortable. The escalators fascinated everyone who came to the new store.

Provincial Vermonters were unaccustomed to the device, but they faced another construct that caused quite a bit of mental discord: Freedom of choice. It is wonderful in theory, but a frightening concept when staring it in the face. For most, books were taken out of libraries, recommended by friends, culled from the limited selection of the local bookstore, or given at Christmas. Books are read one at a time. They are linked to community. Walking in the front door to Barnes & Noble, the entire two floors of books are exposed. Bookshelves fan out into one’s peripheral vision, framed perfectly by the escalators. Now every section had its own bestseller list. More covers were displayed than other bookstores had titles. By each door were green plastic baskets that supermarkets have. After two hours, the basket full, it became difficult to put down one without putting them all away. There were too many books. Customers often left the store exhausted. During those first few months some people just turned around at the door, having seen the sheer size and selection, and left.

Both the unfamiliarity with escalators and the staggering size of the new store combined for a unique problem in customer flow. Stunned by the selection, customers would ride to the top of the escalator while spellbound by the sheer volume of volumes. The natural reaction is to stop and take it all in. This they did as they ascended. Unaccustomed to the procedures and necessities of escalator travel, though, they would continue to not move at the exact spot the escalator dropped them off. The patrons behind them, also mesmerized by the stock and oblivious to the impediment of the stopped person suddenly at their nose, would suddenly be deposited into the back of the person stopped in front of them. In the jarred awakening of finding themselves rudely slamming into a stranger, both customers would freeze. Of course, as two people now stood at the top of the up escalator and both were frozen into inaction, the line of other customers continued steadily up. The next customer, too, would be both unaware of the problem and unable to stop progressing forward had they known. For the first few months parents were constantly falling over their children, teenagers over the elderly people clinging white-knuckled to the arm rail—which, to their despair, moved at a slightly different rate of speed—and strangers fell over strangers. One second a person would spy the awe inspiring cooking section, which sat at the top of the escalator, and the next they would find themselves on top of the previous rider who was suddenly sprawled out on the floor.

Because the escalators were narrow, inexperienced escalator riding parents could not ride next to their even more inexperienced children. Instead, these parents stood behind their child. This moment, where the child will stand watching the steps come out of the floor, attempting to time their feet to these moving stairs, is cute when business is slow, but tense during the rush of Saturday morning. The children would finally make the leap, not holding onto the moving arm rail, and fall back into the parent. Multi-children families were a greater problem. Parents with more than one child watched the first make it to the top alone while the hesitant other one stood at the bottom, unwilling to make the crucial leap. This would result in panic on the part of the parent, as their one toddler ran around the upstairs out of control. Bellowing across the entire store, Suzy, get over here right now!, that parent stood in fear of pushing the second child lest they create a lifelong fear of escalators. Sometimes the bolder child would get on the down escalator just as the mother and timid child began to go up. To the despair of management, the escalators quickly became a toy.

“This is not a playground,” a mother said of the escalator after a bookseller had scolded her son for walking up the down escalator.

“But there’s nothing to do,” the child had replied.

“Go to the children’s section. There’s book there.”

“Books are boring. I want to ride the escalators.”

“Well, don’t get caught then.”

I worked in Burlington’s Barnes & Noble megastore for over a year. We operated one of five used book departments in the nation—an experimental section they were hoping to replicate in college towns throughout the country.

After a time, though, the store lost its magic. The escalators, still one of the few in the state, no longer baffled customers. Selection, once overpowering, soon seemed quite limited. The laminate fake wood flooring started to peel, and a few Starbucks popped up to offer strong coffee elsewhere and compete with the local cafes. Most important, though, was that Barnes & Noble’s stock started to seem routine. Every bookstore had the new big thing, but those two hundred copies of that single title soon pushed out the more esoteric titles. That book could be had anywhere, and this bookstore lost its enchantment.

That book is W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge.

I stole it when I was seventeen. Although I now have many editions, that edition was stolen from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The actual writing was not very interesting to me at the time, but because I thought of myself as an intellectual I talked it up to my friends. W. Somerset Maugham sounded scholarly as a high school senior. The topic, eastern mysticism and the quest for enlightenment after the horror of World War I, I thought, gave the impression of being profound. Only a few pages in, I stopped reading, but never told anyone. A month before I stole the book Bill Murray’s movie adaptation had come out, which I had seen it with a quiet girl I had been interested in for years. I wanted to believe that I was special, and was perhaps a step or two away from the Buddhist enlightenment I had just learned about in World Civilization and our unit on China. While I talked about Larry Darrell, substituting the events from the movie for those of the book, that copy sat in my room unread.

Inside the front cover is a bookplate from the library. Sigil. Phillp. Acad. Finis Origine Pendet. Per ampliora ad altiora. I used to look at it, although none of it made sense to me as I have never taken Latin. NON SIBI. Still, with that book I would imagine that I went to the school and would know, magically, upon matriculating, Latin. Or was someone that had read the Razor’s Edge and the other one hundred books that made someone well read. Imagining was less work that actual self improvement, and, in addition to my academic laziness, I suppose theft was proof of my inferior overall character. Every book in the prep school canon of literature has mention of an honor code, which often serves as an important plot point. That I went to public schools through my master’s degree is either a celebration of America’s bootstrap philosophy or a fitting testament to my low morals.

On the first blank card page of are written notes about the book in a soft, faded pencil that is difficult to read. On the last page of text—246—are notes in another hand, written in a violent ballpoint pen and decipherable only by the author. They continue onto the facing blank page. Not only is the penmanship illegible, but much of its contents are page numbers without apparent context. Although I could not even read the book, I pictured myself breaking it down and writing a paper with insights never before revealed in its forty years.

This imagined work ethic had also drawn me to John Osborne’s The Paper Chase a few years before. In ninth grade, after most of my studious friends had been skimmed from the public school for Philips Academy, I had stumbled over Osborne’s narrative of life as a first year Harvard Law student. As with Maugham, I was more familiar with the movie than the book. Sadly, I was even more familiar with the television adaptation of the movie. In the age just prior of the video recorder, I had caught part of the movie, but the cancelled television show was being rebroadcast on public television. Located between Boston and New Hampshire, I was able to see each episode multiple viewings as the two region’s public television stations aired them at different times. Up in my room, as an adolescent recluse, I would fiddle with the antennae of the small black-and-white television to pull in channels 2, 44 and 11, depending on the time of night. Later, I would imagine being the brilliant student who lived to study, and not only living up to, but thriving, the overbearing discipline of a professor such as Kingfield. Although I had read this book, Timothy Bottoms and John Houseman populated my fantasy scenarios. Never did I push myself to excel academically, beyond what my natural intelligence did for me.

From The Paper Chase to The Razor’s Edge the delusion of misunderstood brilliance substituting for academic laziness was repeated often. My sense of injustice was fed by Holden Caufield’s rage against Pency Prep and the world at large, which does not make me unique among readers. Although I had an obsession with Phillips Academy, the prep school canon, though large, did not feed my true torment. The Headmaster’s Papers, Lord of the Flies, and A Separate Peace were either skimmed or failed to make a lasting impression. It was the image of me as an unrecognized genius that fueled my imagination and lead, ultimately, to The Razor’s Edge becoming that book. Images of Bill Murray in the Himalayas, combined with a copy of the book stolen from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, fed my fantasy. In my mind I had read the book, and even felt that I could have lived it.

Not until college did I read the book.

Whereas the movie focuses on Bill Murray’s character, Larry, the book’s narrator is an unidentified, but clear, Maugham himself. When the book began with a narrator not in the movie droning about a character, Elliot Templeton, who was a minor character in the film, I paused. Maugham then spends the first dozen pages or so at boring parties, offering the particulars of Elliott Templeton. Subtly introducing the contemplative Larry as a foil to those around him, he came across in my mind as uninspiring. When I skipped ahead, Larry went from the ambulance driver of the movie to a pilot in the book. Murray’s brother, Brian Doyle, was a much more effective, and blunt, foil to Larry’s character. I put down the book.

Today it is not always that copy of The Razor’s Edge that I read. Some of the time I read a new paperback version, now about ten years in age. The paperback is published by Penguin, has an orange spine, and conveys the story well enough. It looks like most of the Penguin backlist; even the art work is of a similar vein. When something reminds me of the story I pull this copy out. This copy satisfies my interest in the story, which I enjoy and appreciate with each reading.

That copy—the one taken from the library—is the one with the strongest connections. Measuring five inches by seven it is smaller than most hardcover books today. Published in 1945 by the Blakiston Company of Philadelphia that book was not library bound until August of 1949, a job done by Wells Bindery of Waltham, Massachusetts. It now sits on a shelf, unprotected from my three year old son, Owen. His attempts at turning pages can be clumsy, and he holds a steadfast belief that there are more pages than there are, causing him to peel back endplates, remove dust covers and tear out pages. It was never a flawless copy. There are pages, even in that book, that have been folded by me in lue of a bookmark. I do nothing to stop my son other than keeping a lazy eye on him in general.

A blue grey cover, above the white leaf printing of PHILLIPS ACADEMY on the spine, the code c.4 is written in a white pen with a handwriting that all posthumous librarians seem to have possessed. This implies that it is the fourth copy of the library’s, although when it was stolen that was the only one on the shelf. Ninety-eight people checked that copy of The Razor’s Edge before I took it and never returned it. That was how many return dates are stamped in the back. Between October 5, 1949 and August 11, 1982 book 63091 was taken out ninety-eight times.

I never checked it out because I could not. I did not go to Phillips Academy, or simply “Andover” as it was called by those in higher social circles. Growing up in the town of Andover, I spent a lot of time on the campus but did not attend classes or graduate with what could have been my class. Yet, in my junior year at the town’s public high school—my alma matta—I was exposed to eastern philosophy, which in turn lead to seeing actor and comedian Bill Murray’s adaptation of Maugham, which came out the following fall. As a critical and financial effort The Razor’s Edge flopped. Although quickly forgotten by nearly everyone, the film did two things. First, it allowed me to ask a girl I had liked for four years on a date under the auspices of our mutual interest in eastern philosophy. Second, it inspired me to pick up the book.

A short time later I possessed that book. That copy. The Razor’s Edge, pilfered from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library. I imagined that I had taken the book out, and that I even belonged in the library. Technically, I was trespassing when I went on campus. That I used their athletic facilities was bad enough, but I stole from student lockers so that I could wear Philips Academy t-shirts and sweatpants. In the evenings I would often eat in the dinning commons, sitting in the wood paneled rooms at large, heavy wooden tables. This would be an honor code violation, except that is reserved for students. What I was doing was simply criminal. Surrounded by tradition, I was none of it. The book was a substitute.

The flaps from the jacket that describe the book are taped into the front pages, apparently cut from the dust jacket when the library binding was put on. Inside the library card pocket is a card with the names of twenty-two people who went to the school and, presumably, read it. Two people checked it out twice, while Doug Mansfield read it three times over the course of a year. Now I have read it several times, but it gets me no closer to having gone to the school. Yet the fact that it is stolen from a school I wished I had gone to, the details of its manufacture, and the shifting meaning I glean from the text are mere details to a simple fact—it is THAT book.

“So tell me.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

Alex looked at Jenne and stood awkwardly with his arms straight, hands by his side. As he did, it was clear that the sleeves of his winter coat were too short for his long, thirty-four year old arms. Unbuttoned, the entire wool winter coat hung loose on his tall, thin body, as did Alex’s face, although the latter had a bit of tension visible behind it.

“How does it work?” he finally asked.

“I need to touch you.”

As they stood in near the front door of the local bookstore, Alex extended his hand as if to shake Jenne’s after an unsuccessful first date. As they lightly gripped the others’ hand, Jenne knew the book: Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. Her knowledge and vision were instantaneous and simultaneous; an image of the book on the shelf was before her, but she also knew it. Knew it. Reading the title on the vertical spine, its words also floated around this vision. The plot, characters and every word passed through her all at once. Judy Blume. And the location; she knew where the book was in the room: third shelf up, second bookshelf from the dark northeast corner. Dropping Alex’s hand, she walked to the young adult section, crouched down to the shelf and pulled it out.

“Here,” she said, extending it towards him.

“This book?” he asked. “Are you sure this is the book?”

* * *

She was sure.

The first time, though, years before, she had not been. Standing near the entrance to the school library, she had been coaxing Stephen into browsing. Jenne was a successful reading teacher at local high school in an aging red brick building. Her “gift” was in finding just the right book for people, which made teaching reading much easier. On this day—the day her talent first presented itself— Stephen was making her job difficult.

“Just take a look around,” she had prodded.

“Why?” Stephen had replied. “Look, every year the teacher drags me in and tells me to look around. I don’t find anything. Then they give me something that I don’t read.” He had his head cocked to the side, with a dull look in his eyes. His tone was dull, and he had clearly made this speech many times before. After a month of stalling and being generally uncooperative, Stephen was pushing against Jenne’s efforts in earnest.  Today—a Thursday—he was going to make things difficult. “I go through this every year,” he finished.

Jenne should not have taken the bait, but she did. It was unprofessional. She said, “And now you’re in high school and still reading at a fourth grade level. How’s that working for you?”

Fourth grade level.

How’s the working for you?

His eyes snapped into focus, and Stephen rushed to leave the library.

Anger.

The truth hurt. Teachers before had backed off, speaking sweetly to prop up his self esteem, or barked orders in a last ditch effort for compliance. He wanted to leave; to flee. Standing between him and the exit was Jenne. In haste and fury, he knocked her over.

“Watership Down,” Jenne had yelped as she landed.

“What?” Stephen replied. He had expected coarser language.

“Watership Down,” Jeanne replied. “Richard Adams.” Shocked by her reply, she studdered, “book,” and knew it was the one Stephen needed to read.

A few minutes later, both of them looked doubtfully at the cover. An old paperback Avon edition with a dated yellow design dominated by a brown bunny, neither imagined a nearly five hundred page story of anthropomorphic rabbits would be that book.

“This book?” he asked.

“We have twenty minutes left until the bell,” Jenne said. “Sit. Give it a shot.”

Perhaps it was guilt from knocking her down, or the irritated edge in her voice, but he sat and started reading the first page. For the next two weeks, it was all he did because it was that book. Had his skills been better, and his days not full of school and chores, he might have finished it in a day. After a week, Stephen’s mother called to complain about “that stupid rabbit book”, making this reading breakthrough out to be a burden rather than a long overdue achievement. “He stays up too late,” she groused, “and reads at the table.”

Over the next semester Jenne learned the rules of her power. That she had to touch people was learned over time. A few weeks after Stephen had seen Hazel go to meet with El-ahrairah, Jenne was in the library with a freshman girl, Sue. In trying to encourage her as they stood by the circulation desk of the school library, Jenne rubbed her head. Flash: The Three Musketeers. Over the course of the rest of the year the entire Dumas canon followed. A hand on another shoulder a week later found The Mouse and the Motorcycle. More children followed with success.

Because teachers are not supposed to ever touch students, Jenne had to figure out all sorts of ways to get in contact with them. Between offering handshakes and high-fives, Jenne developed rituals to become a miracle worker with those who had previously refused to read.

* * *

“Get the chai tea,” a voice said from behind.

“What?”

“The chai tea. You’ll like it.”

Turning around, she looked at a man in his late twenties with disheveled hair. He had tortoise shell glasses and wore sneakers with an oxford cloth shirt and tie. Standing, he was two inches shorter than Jenne.
Jenne bought a double latte decaf, and it was horrible. She went back, after the man had left, and got the chai tea. It was devine. Sensing this was someone worth knowing more about, she searched about in the bookstore that held the café. Finding him in the cookbook section, she tapped his shoulder.

“Beard on Bread,” she said.

It was not what she had intended, but in touching him the image just flashed before her.

“Excuse me,” he muttered as he turned around. Looking up (slightly), he recognized her.

“The chai tea was good. I hate tea, but it was wonderful. Thanks.”

“Today,” he said. “Today it was good. You might not feel that way tomorrow.”

“Beard on Bread,” she said again. “I think you’ll really like Beard on Bread. By James Beard.”

“Thanks.” He looked at her. “How do you know?”

“How do you know about chai tea?”

* * *

As long as Scott could remember he could taste things that he focused on. It drove his mother crazy.

“I don’t think this will be good,” he’d say, looking down at his plate after she made something for dinner.

“Shut up and eat it.”

Placing a plate of stir fry in front of him, he looked at her sadly. She tried, but Scott’s mother was a bad cook. Too much, he thought. A great artist, he learned later, knows when to stop.

“I think you went wrong when you added the nutmeg.”

Scott would watch his mother cook, and he could taste it as each ingredient was added. Then, she would add something like nutmeg and his hunger turned.

“Just eat it,” she would say. Neither enjoyed the meal. Over time, he learned to stop commenting, but she could read his face.

As his mother and he drove places growing up, Scott would look out the window at the various restaurants and he could taste their fare. Instinctually, he knew if this or that one was what he hungered for. When he would touch his mother’s shoulder of the back of her seat, he could tell what she desired, too. “Thai,” he would say. When she took his advice, the afternoons always went better. In time, the mother learned that her son was taking care of her. In the kitchen, she began taking his advice. By the time he went to college, her cooking skills were quite good even as she no longer had anyone to cook for.

“You drive me crazy,” one of his girlfriends told him years later. They were standing on a city street. He had just cautioned against a restaurant that had gotten rave reviews. It was not the first time they had had this fight, nor was she the first girlfriend to find his talent for choosing eateries irritating. “Can’t we just eat there.”

“You wont’ enjoy it,” he cautioned.

“So, you said.”

“But I’m right.”

“Perhaps you just ruin the meal with your bad attitude.” She was practically shouting at him.

“You pick the place. I won’t say anything.”

“You’ll make your stupid face,” she replied. She called it his stupid face. Then, her face tightened, eyes narrowing and her mouth turned down. It was somewhere between a monkey and an astronaut on a centrifuge. “No, let’s just go where you want.”

Of course, the meal was sublime. They broke up shortly after returning home.

* * *

“Ah, there you are,” Alex said, looking up at them. He was sitting at a table in the café of another bookstore. Jenne and Scott were standing; she with a cup of ice water and Dune and he with a double shot of espresso the current edition of Starlog magazine. “Right on time.”

“Do we know you?” Jenne asked.

“No, but I was expecting someone.” Alex looked at the empty table next to him. “Have a seat.”

They did.

* * *

Everything is timing.

That was what they said in business school. Luck. Alex always seemed to be at the right place at the right time, and he knew it. Applying at the right time for admission, seeking out professors at fortuitous moments, and going to just the right seminars he graduated at the top of his class. Now, he worked in a consulting company where he had a knack for brining people together at just the right time.

“I think we might be the lamest collection of superheroes ever,” Scott said after they swapped origin stories.

“Are we superheroes?” Jenne asked.

“Above average, perhaps.”

“Above average heroes.”

“I don’t we’re heroes.”

“It’s like those villains that everyone forgets about, like the Toad and the Grizzly. We’re kind of lame; we don’t fly or turn invisible or are super fast.”

“Do you think,” Scott posed, “that there are others like us?”

“You mean someone who can bake really great cakes?” Alex joked.

“Perhaps someone with some fashion sense,” Scott added. “You know, You would look great with that blue scarf.”

“Well,” Jenne thought. “We all need to touch someone.”

“Did you touch us?” Scott asked Alex.

“I ran into Jenne last week, at the dry cleaners. Literally.”

“You knocked the blouse out of my hand,” she remembered.

“And wrote this place and time into my datebook even before you had walked away.”

“So, are we alone with our powers?”

“I doubt it.”

“What do we do?” Jenne asked.

“You mean, other than having a really satisfying discussion about literature over a really nice meal?” Alex asked.

“At just the right time!” Scott added.

“Yes,” Jenne continued. “What do we do?”

“I don’t think we could fight crimes,” Alex said, taking a sip of his seltzer. “If that’s what you mean.”
It was. Jenne said nothing.

* * *

Besides founding a perfect book group, they continued to think of ways they could make the world a better place. It was Alex who got them together one night, near midnight, at a small bar on the other side of the city. As they sat in a dark booth covered in red vinyl they saw in the corner a man who seemed at his wit’s end. Over a tumbler of scotch, the man said nothing and drank nothing.

“Him,” Scott said. “He’s the one we’re here for.”

“How do you know?” Alex asked.

Scott looked at the scotch. “Because nothing is going to satisfy him. Nothing in here, anyway.”
Jenne managed to strike up a conversation as she bought a round for the others.

“I would try anything,” he said to her.

“Anything?” she asked. Then she explained who they were, and what they could do.

The man at the bar was named Michael Jump, but he was known throughout most of the day as Principal Jump. His school was called a magnet school, but it was quite the opposite. Instead, as two similar poles of a magnet repel each other, his school was full of rejects from the true magnet schools all over the city. The dumping ground was his burden. While every other principal and even the superintendent were sympathetic, he was still the designated fall guy. That not a single child wanted to be at school. How to change that was his challenge.

So low was Principal Jump that he accepted their help.

“Have an Irish crème,” Scott told Jump. And he did.

* * *

At an assembly the next week, the entire student body held hands. Principal Jump had come up with the ruse after Jenne had laid out their plan. To be honest, she had to convince him at first that their first meeting had not been a dream.

“That Irish crème was right on, wasn’t it?” Jenne had asked. It had been. He listened to their plan and agreed.

The students—all three hundred and fifty-seven—held hands under the guise of community. In the human chain, Jenne, Scott and Alex had blended in. Flashes of information came to them, along with lists of student names and their similar connections. After a few community building songs designed as cover their true intent, the three barricaded themselves in a conference room.

The wall was covered in attendance lists.

Everything was so clear. Over six hours the three wrote down every impression. Jenne wrote down at least one book title for each student, handing them to the librarian in sheets to have them pulled. To each, a sticky note was attached with the child’s name. Originally, Alex was to figure out a good time for students to participate in sustained silent reading, but he got much more. Instead, he figured out a schedule for the entire school—when to have math, science, and even open the doors. When Principal Jump got them a list of faculty, Alex scheduled them, too. Jenne found each a book to read. Scott wrote up a menu for the month, with options, and a list of who would enjoy what option.

It worked. They needed to raid the libraries and book closets of other schools, but with the option of failure, the school closing and those bad eggs returning, help was forthcoming. When December rolled around, they repeated the hand holding assembly. Again, it worked. By April, with momentum going, it seemed unnecessary. Test scores rose. Students felt positive. The school—and Principal Jump—was hailed by the community.

* * *

“Well, that’s great,” Scott said, looking at the article hailing Principal Jump. “We, of course, get no credit.”

“Heroes never get credit,” Alex replied.

“Why is that?”

“So they aren’t exploited,” Jenne said.

“Oh, I’m sure the super villains lined up against reading, eating and meeting would be on us, pronto.”  Alex laughed.

“Maybe a bookstore chain that would exploit us.  Or coffee house.”

“I was looking forward to spandex.”

“And secret identities.”

“A cape.”

“You can still wear a cape.”

“Except that we have to do these things covertly.”

“Or get arrested for touching people.”

Then, no one said anything. The silence lasted.

“What do we do now?” Scott asked.

They sat and drank their coffee. It was the one time that they all wanted the same thing. After doing something—perhaps a small thing—after saving a school full of young minds from ignorance, their coffee tasted good.

They sat and took it all in, and were happy.