Parents vs. Schools Regarding Required Summer Reading: Both Miss the Point

My eighth grade daughter has "recommended" summer reading activities. 

She is expected to come up with three goals, write out a plan as to how she is going to accomplish them, and fill out a chart of her "summer learning activities" (this requires an "Authorized Signature", which I assume means me??, and a spot on the grid to write how it made her Grow).

There is also a suggested reading list with books selected from the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)’s 2017 Summer Reading List for Grades 6-8. I haven't heard of any of them, and I'm pretty sure my daughter hasn't either. None of them exactly pique my interest, and I'm a voracious reader (I should note that this particular daughter is not, although you can see from the pic below that she once enjoyed books)



There is also a link to a lesson plan that teachers were apparently supposed to go over with students at the end of the school year. According to my daughter, this did not happen, and the message she got from her teacher was not to waste her time because nobody cares anyway. Part of me wants to applaud her teacher for her honesty with her students regarding this.

The whole thing is asinine, in my opinion as both a parent and a certified English teacher.

And, as you can imagine, some people in my city are going wild on the issue. Largely on Facebook, of course, but this is probably where you'll get the most honest feedback.

Some samples (All SIC):
* "I don't agree with [mandatory reading over the summer] at all. Both my boys are working full time and involved with family activities. They work hard in school all year and this is the time for them to just be kids. I'm not going to spend my summer forcing my boys to read. It's time to relax and recoup. It is not a time for more school-related pressures."

* "Most kids were burned out of reading after the reading challenge in elementary school making them read makes them despise it."

* "Between football starting next week--ugh--working, visiting family, and dare I say it, just being a kid, there leaves little time to get all this done. It's too much."

* "I think summer vacation means vacation away from school. If you had a vacation off from work and they asked you to do something over that time period you'd think twice about it. J/S."

There are many, many more, but that probably makes the point. And, to be completely fair, there are lots of intelligent, invested parents rebutting these kinds of statements.

Like me, they seem to focus on the idea that kids should be reading *something* in the summer, not just a book from an arbitrary list. Like me, many are appalled that some see reading as such little value. Like me, the idea that having to find time for reading is troubling bothers them.

Children should NOT stop learning because it is summer vacation. My daughter has learned, to give a small sampling, how to put up a pool and monitor chemicals, how to cook a meal, how to hike, how to teach her little sisters to swim, how to beat Super Mario Brothers, how to zipline, how to do different types of French braids, how to survive her first sleepaway camp, how to play the ukelele, how to master gymnastics skills she's been practicing ...

She has also been reading, albeit reluctantly.

She reads a graphic novel series that her father buys one of each month for her. She's reading Thirteen Reasons Why because she was interested in the difference between the book and the Netflix series and whether the story was helpful or harmful to teens (we are both English teachers, so she's heard lots of conversation on that topic) and wanted to be educated enough to weigh in.

She is currently at sleepaway camp (I miss her so much ...), but when she gets back, we are going to require structured reading time. We are going to know what she is reading and discuss it with her. We are going to recommend books to her and read them along with her. She will not love this, of course, because she is not a natural reader, but she will go along because she understands that reading, that learning, is important.

I am not going to require her to fill out those forms but instead keep a log of what she's read and a sentence or two of reflection.

I am going to encourage her to continue swimming, hiking, hanging out with friends, playing with her little sisters, going to Canobie Lake, and whatever else allows her to be a normal thirteen-year-old in 2017.

We made a decision a few weeks ago to cut off her iPad and wireless access on her phone at 10:00 pm. She's certainly gotten more sleep, which has also made a difference.

We are also going to make an effort to go to more museums, historical sites, and that sort of thing.

That is what learning is about ... and learning should happen in the summer. Reading must happen in the summer if we want to keep our children's reading fluency and knowledge base where it needs to be.

Should the school set out a canned summer  learning recommendation list for all students without taking into account what happens at home? No. Families that value summer learning have, with all due respect, long since put things into place that are far more meaningful than what's been offered.

Families that do not value summer learning need more than a bunch of printouts (and poor printouts, at that). They need to be educated on how to turn experiences into learning, which is far more valuable than how to break down a goal into parts. They need support and explanations and suggestions for how to make learning an integral part of every day.

Am I way off base with my frustration here?  

Second Grade Science Fair and Being the Child of a Teacher

There's no question that children of teachers face specific challenges.  In fact, it can lead to some off results ...

But seriously, here's the big one, at least as far as I'm concerned: I refuse to do my children's schoolwork for them, a fringe benefit that I understand most teens get from their parents.

In the name of full disclosure, I wrote a paper for Addie once.  It was for an elective class, a straight "read and regurgitate" research paper that I knew Addie was perfectly capable of writing herself in about twenty minutes.  She was having a meltdown over finishing her A.P. English work, and ... well ...

But it truly was a one-shot deal ... and I would never have done it if I hadn't 100% known she could have done it herself.  We did have some long conversations about time management after that, though ...

No, I'm having a very different problem at the moment, one that ironically mirrors the moment of hypocrisy I just confessed.

Belle is having a science fair tomorrow.

She has been working on her project for weeks.

She is dreading--DREADING--the science fair tomorrow.

Okay, here's what happened.

Belle came home from school with an assignment to create an invention that would solve a problem she encounters regularly.  Her first thought was to buy a wooden robot to put stuff in.  That was not okay with Mommy (although, in retrospect, I bet Belle wishes I'd gone for it).

Nope, Henry and I went through this whole process with her (Henry is, of course, also a teacher).  What things are hard for you? We went through everything from remembering to brush her teeth without being told to laying out her clothes for the week.

That wasn't successful, so Henry asked her, "What's something that really annoys you?"

Belle's immediate response?  "Mollie and her balls!"

My golden retriever has an obsession with balls.  She hides them under furniture and then scratches at the floor until you lift it up and let her get the ball.  It's a nightmare.

So Belle invented something she calls "The Ballie", which is basically a cardboard block for the ball.  If Mollie drops her ball on a piece of furniture in a way that it will bounce to the floor and roll under the furniture in question, "The Ballie" stops it.

In other words, Belle's SELF-CREATED idea that she came up with ON HER OWN after discussing different options actually WORKS ... and she's embarrassed by it.

Why?

Because I forced her to make "The Ballie" herself.  To be fair to her, she did.  She used her little crocodile scissors and painstakingly cut up cracker boxes, duct taping them together in a way that created a barrier that kept Mollie from wreaking havoc with her balls.

"The Ballie" doesn't look like much, but it works ... and as a teacher, I am incredibly proud of the inquiry that went into it.

Belle?  She's upset because the other projects all "look better".  Sally's dad built a tree to hang clothes on.  Joshua's mom bought a bunch of craft supplies to decorate the bird feeder that his grandpa made.  We live in a very affluent community, so you can probably see where this is going.

I refused to help Belle make a good-looking "Ballie".  I certainly could have tried to spiff up what she had, and Henry could really have done some amazing things with wood or something, but I did not want this to by my project.

This was Belle's project, and she did an outstanding job.

I'm sitting here now feeling guilty as heck, though.

I mean, as a teacher, it drives me crazy when I can tell that parents made a project (or, God forbid, wrote an essay).  After all, it's supposed to be about what a child knows, the whole process of learning.  It matters not what it looks like if learning went on ...

But it does, at least to Belle ... which makes me think that maybe I should have spent more time making some glizty, glamoury thing for her to show off tomorrow instead of the knowledge that she gained.

The teacher part of me knows that what I did (namely, allowing Belle to go through the entire scientific process and create her own project) was correct.  The parent part of me wants to cry because her jaggedly-cut, duct tape-sporting Cheez-It boxes are going to be set up next to projects that were created in Sara's dad's basement woodshop.

Why do I feel so damn guilty right now?  

I Am Hated (And Strangely Excited About It)

I don't think most people go through life intentionally pissing others off (there are, of course, exceptions, but in general I have a pretty Pollyanna-esque view of my fellow human beings). However, I think we all do it to some degree, often by accident or by thoughtless actions that blow into drama-filled chaos or even just by a misconstrued statement.

I never thought I'd be in the position of ticking off another person so badly that she felt compelled to write an entire blog post blasting me.

I also can't believe that I'm laughing about it. I'm ridiculously sensitive (to a fault, to be completely honest), and a lot of times the tiniest bit of criticism has me virtually in tears.

I've toughened up a lot in the past year, in large part because of the divorce situation but also through working at Zelda Lily. There is a great core group of readers over there that leave thought-provoking comments taking what my colleagues and I write to a whole new level--but I have been ripped a new one on more than one occasion.

To wit:

The author here is pretending her values are absolutes that everyone should abide by, and seems outraged that there are other people don’t share her values, to the point of degrading and mocking them. Why aren’t these women allowed to like their lifetyles, exactly? Is Katie Loud going to go on a Middle East tour and tear off burkas too?

I cried when I read that comment. Bawled like a baby. And then I realized that the commenter had a point. I might feel that he misconstrued my point (the piece was an admittedly hard slam of an extremely religious website that operates under the "Husband is Master ... and Wife's Job is to Cook, Clean, and Raise Perfect Children" philosophy), but if the message I was sending was that I felt like everybody should agree with me all the time, then shame on me. You know?

So instead of flying off the handle and doing something stupidly impulsive (See? I'm getting better ;-)), I thought really hard about what was said, wrote a piece here on my personal blog explaining my frustration with the challenges of balancing feminism with religion, and resolved to be more aware of all sides of a story in the future.

In retrospect, I'm glad that that comment was made, as painful as it was for me at the time. It was a tremendous learning experience for me both as a writer and as a human being.

It has also made me able to laugh--and laugh hard--at the recent incident that's really at the heart of this post.

So back in late May/early June, when I was still a newbie at Zelda Lily, I wrote a piece about an ad featuring a bra by plus-size store Lane Bryant being refused by a couple of news networks that went on to feature ads by Victoria's Secret.

Well, evidently I really pissed somebody off ... She wrote a vitriol-filled rant against me personally and the company I work for. My words and intentions are taken completely out of context for the purpose of her piece, and for the first time I feel like I am actively hated by someone that doesn't know me from Adam.

You can read her piece here, if you're interested.

I was really angry at first, actually. Then I reread my piece almost obsessively, and I of course knew what I was trying to say so her interpretation seemed even crazier to me.

And then it occurred to me how sad it is that someone has that much hate stored up from a piece posted on June 1 to let me have it with both barrels.

Then, of course, I just laughed.

The thing is, it's fine to disagree with people. I learn a hell of a lot from people that disagree with me (or play devil's advocate) since it makes me think on so many dimensions.

What's not cool is the meanness. The comment about "Katie Loud tearing off burkas on a Middle East tour" bordered on mean, but I could see where the guy was coming from when I put it into a greater context. Ultimately, it helped me a hundred times more than a compliment would have.

I'm not being mean here. I even linked to her post so she can get page hits.

I'm not used to being hated ... and I'm kind of proud of myself for 1) not going to pieces over this, and 2) realizing that I am not the one with a problem here.

On a different note, I had one of the most traumatic events of my life happen to me today, and I'll be blogging about it tomorrow. I'm not proud of my actions (mostly because there were no actions on my part ... I was, like, the anti-feminist, ashamed as I am to admit that), and I'm still too shaken up to write about it yet.

But it's quite a story!

Teacher Questionnaire (Yes, I Took it Seriously ... Mostly)

My school has a new principal starting this fall, and he recently mailed out a questionnaire for all teachers to fill out so he could get to know the teachers and staff. I thought this was a really neat idea, actually, so I did it right away (because I'm just that on top of things ;))

It occurred to me that, while I write a lot about thinking and family and writing and that sort of thing here, I tend to keep my life as a teacher a bit more distant. Here is a glimpse at the "teacher-me".

And just to be clear, I've changed the name of my school and the other districts I've worked at. After all, a workplace deserves a pseudonym, too.

Ahem ...

Why I am here:
I became a teacher because I love showing students how to look at the world in a big-picture kind of way. If kids are able to make connections between their own lives and, say, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, I feel like I have been successful. It’s often a great challenge for students to see how virtually everything connects, that the greater the body of knowledge and thinking strategies you can amass the better off you are, but it is incredibly rewarding.

How did I get here?
Growing up, I was the one who wrote plays and organized productions featuring all of the neighborhood kids. Starting when I was in second grade, I was asked to go read to the special education class twice a week, an event I looked forward to greatly and continued doing throughout elementary school. I started babysitting at a young age and continued doing it even after I got slightly more lucrative jobs such as lifeguarding at Water Country and running birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese’s. This is my ninth year teaching; I spent two years in the JONES (lol) School District at the middle school level and four years in the SMITH (haha) School District. However, my two years at DOE HIGH SCHOOL have unquestionably been the most fulfilling of my career.

My education and certifications are:
B.A. in English (cum laude)from the University of New Hampshire and M.Ed. (Secondary English Education with a Reading Concentration) also from UNH. My teaching certification is Secondary English (Grades 5-12, and yes, I passed the Praxis II) although my coursework and trainings also evidently qualify me for alternative certifications ranging from Reading Specialist, Special Educator, ESOL, and some sort of computer teacher certification.

What I like most about DOE HIGH SCHOOL:
DOE HIGH SCHOOL is full of decent people, both students and adults. I can’t think of a better word than “decent”, although that seems to fall short. I liken it to my M&M theory … if I was carrying a giant bag of M&Ms down the hall at DOE and dropped it, scattering little pieces of candy everywhere, probably 95% of the school would be running to help pick them all up. This is not true of any other school I’ve worked at or volunteered in nor of any other workplace outside of education I’ve ever experienced (especially Chuck E. Cheese’s ;)).

What I would like to see improved most at DOE HIGH SCHOOL to improve student learning:
There is an unsettling sense of apathy among a large percentage of our students. Many of them do not see the value of education and will quietly and respectfully fail a class or settle for a D-. One of the greatest things I’ve seen happen is students responding to connections made with staff that have allowed faculty to personalize instruction, to put the individual needs of each child into their teaching, and to strive to intentionally create authentic learning experiences that will allow the highest level of student buy-in. I would really like to see all teachers (myself included) work more on knowing who students are, how students learn, and what we can do to ensure that every student will succeed.

Who am I outside of school:
Most importantly, I am the mother of two amazing daughters. Addie, a musician and a scholar, will be a junior at YET ANOTHER HIGH SCHOOL, and Belle, the only kid in America counting down the days until school starts, will be starting first grade. I have a part-time job as a writer for a women’s issues website, which has been a great opportunity to hone my journalism skills as well as to get my name out there (since my ultimate goal is to be a novelist … I’ve written one book and three-quarters of another, although they are sadly unpublished). I like to read and hang out at the beach in the summer (although my surfing days are unfortunately over) and ski in the winter.

Biology, Brick Walls, and the Piano

Last night, Addie had a little meltdown. I was taking Belle to the doctor where we got the H1N1 diagnosis (yes, I'm evidently cursed by this stupid virus) while this was going down, so my mom handled it. By the time I got home, Addie had just gotten out of the shower and, other than the "I've been crying" stigmata on her face, was fine.

She explained to me that she couldn't figure out how to do her lab report for Biology and it "made me want to kick babies." (At this point, my mother nodded wisely and added, "She did yell something about wanting to kick babies.") Addie is typically extremely even-keeled and mellow, so this was very out of character for her (and she would never kick babies).

She said she was going to bed, but I heard her upstairs playing the piano for quite a long time (I had to keep Belle up until ten to get her next dose of medicine). Addie plays the piano when she is really stressed out, and even though part of me loves listening to her play (she's pretty much a prodigy and composes her own stuff), it always makes me a little sad because it almost always means that she's upset about something. Talk about bittersweet!

Addie started Honors Biology last week with the change in terms, and the class is challenging her. She got the only 100 on the first quiz (it's hanging on the refrigerator ... I don't think she's allowed her schoolwork to be posted on the refrigerator for years) so, as usual, she's just being really hard on herself. The thing is, she happily gets Bs in Honors Geometry without issue--she's not ridiculous about grades in general. She just has this major hangup about doing really well in Honors Biology since she wants to be a doctor (a pediatric oncologist, of all things).

As a teacher, I cannot stand it when parents say to me, "My child is extremely bright and is not being challenged." As a parent, however, I'm very frustrated by the fact that my child (my very bright child, not to be obnoxious about it) was never taught skills and strategies for what to do when the work is difficult. Since she's never put more than 40% effort into school (and that only math classes, which have always been difficult for her), she does not know what to do.

I talked to her at length about some of the stuff she can do. She's making vocabulary notecards, reading each chapter and taking notes ahead of time so the teacher's lecture makes sense to her, and so on. These are skills and strategies taught to our lower- and mid-level students from elementary school all the way into high school, but students like Addie were given enrichment work instead of focusing on these things because an assumption was made that they were "smart enough" to figure it out for themselves.

I wish someone had given Addie a copy of Grey's Anatomy or War and Peace or something when she was eight or nine and showed her how to slow down, take her time, and work with material that is very difficult for her.

Education in America does not prepare our brightest children for the inevitable brick wall they will come to at some point. Whether they succeed or throw up their hands and give up isn't something anyone can predict. Addie will be fine--she has her piano, not to mention a family that loves her unconditionally and will work with her to teach her these necessary skills and strategies, not to mention coping mechanisms (and we're fortunate that the content is accessible to both my nurse practitioner mother and my Ph.D. Microbiologist sister, both of whom adore Addie and would do anything for her).

The disconcerting thing is, I realize that I am, as a public school teacher, part of the problem. What do you think--does public education in America shortchange our top students?

The Cycle of ... Circles

The Roman philosopher Seneca said, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." This concept has been on my mind often today as my seventh year of teaching came to a close.

I am finally old enough, I think, to do some serious reflecting. I'm kind of ashamed to say it, but the idea of reflection is fairly new to me. The main reason for this is that I rarely get a chance to just stop and take a deep breath, but I still feel kind of schmaltzy saying, "It never really occurred to me before the last few months to take a long, close look at myself and try to learn and grow from the things that have happened to me."

This is the first year that I've felt truly pleased with the experience my students had in my class. Although as usual I can think of a hundred things I could have done differently, I am nevertheless confident that my kiddos learned a great deal about reading, writing, and respect from me. It's not like I think that the students forced to deal with me in the six years before this got nothing out of my class, but I always felt like there were major gaps, that I hadn't reached enough of them, that their growth and opportunities had been somehow adversely impacted because of my limitations (organization, for example).

This year, I just feel proud. That's not to say that I won't change things up when I start over with a fresh batch of ninth graders in the fall ... it would be short-sighted and frankly arrogant to say, "I'll just do what I did this year. Good enough." I have always had glowing observation write-ups and such, so maybe I'm just way harder on myself than other people are, I don't know.

I used to just trudge through days just to get to the next one. I didn't take the time to look back on what I did on a given day (or a given week) and how much I could learn from just thinking about all angles of what transpired. I've gotten to be very zen, for lack of a better way of putting it. Everything is connected, and the lessons you learn in your career or through your friends or from your marriage or whatever are almost always applicable in other parts of your life if you're willing to open your mind, pay attention, and think.

I've learned that the idea of cycles, of circles has definite legitimacy. Whether we're talking about the so-called circle of life or the water cycle, everything matters. Everything has its place. Everything plays a role.

Now why did it take me thirty-two years to figure this out?