Social stories

http://www.flickr.com/people/jhaymesisvip/

Raise your hand, those of you who have summers "off" and spend a lot of your free time on social media.  I'm waving my hand high in the air, right along with you.

As is often the case, my morning walk spurred some thoughts, and this morning's walk in the rain got me thinking about my summertime Facebook hobby.  (Let's call it a hobby; addiction seems too strong a word for a seasonal pursuit!)  I read a lot on Facebook--my friends' updates from around the world, book reviews from my summer reading book groups, news reports, professional learning articles, funny memes.  Politics, literature, education, arts, and entertainment all contained within my daily newsfeed.

And all of these are stories.  Stories about trials, tribulations, and triumph.  Stories about the mundane routines of daily living, and the struggle to make sense of our rapidly expanding sense of global culture.  Stories about the wonders and exhaustion of parenting, the letting go of relationships and the burying of loved ones.  

These stories encapsulated in posts and comments are great seeds for writing!  Just last night, a friend who was posting in the wee hours of this morning (figure that one out, young student readers!) was lamenting over his insomnia and asking for lullabies.  The ensuing comments and links were heartfelt, hilarious, and historical, as commentators went from sleep suggestions to stories of their connections with the friend.  As I walked this morning, I thought about that thread, and what fun it would be to write a story about someone who couldn't sleep, asked for advice from his friends far and near, and then tried out their suggestions.  It would be a great interactive story for an e-reader, with links to recordings of lullabies and read-alouds, just as they were presented in the Facebook thread.

In special education, social stories are used to help students picture themselves in social situations so they can navigate them in an appropriate manner.  With story seeds from social media, we can give students yet another source of inspiration for their writing, one with which they literally connect.

Go ahead; check your Facebook feed.  Only now look at it with a writer's eye.  What stories are playing out on your screen today?  

Creativity, book choice, and makerspaces

If you are involved in educating children in any capacity--as a teacher, administrator, librarian, parent, grandparent, nanny--and you have 20 minutes, grab a cup of coffee and watch the following TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson.  I promise he'll make you laugh--and think.  I'll share my thoughts on it below.




I've been in the education biz long enough to see the pendulum of pedagogy swing from one end to the other and back again.  

Whole language to phonics, back to whole language, back to picking apart text.

Math facts to math problem solving, back to math facts.    

Whole child to standardized test score expectations, back to....well, maybe it's starting to swing back.  Pushback against standardized testing and rigid curriculum is making the news.  There's been a few articles in my Facebook feed lately about creativity and the importance of play. An article from 2011 popped up just this morning, citing information from studies at MIT and  UC-Berkeley that seem to show that direct teaching can inhibit student exploration and problem-solving, while allowing children to explore learning situations on their own terms can often lead to creative solutions.

I've just begun reading a book on the subject called Play:  How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul   by Stuart Brown and Christopher Vaughan. I'm only one chapter in, and the author has already cited evidence that engineers "who had played with their hands were adept at the kinds of problem solving that management sought.  Those who hadn't, generally were not." (p.11).  

Play was originally published in 2009. The TED Talk above?  2006.  And while I see evidence in my surrounding schools of creativity and exploration making their way back into the classroom, I am bombarded with news reports regarding bubble-in assessments and lock-step curriculum.  Why?

And what does this have to do with book choice?  Everything, because books can be a great catalyst for creative thinking.  Books allow children to experience other lives both real and fantastic.  They allow them to explore alternate ways to problem-solve through realistic fiction, and travel through time to make connections between past and present.  Books can provide the data they need to solve problems on their own terms.  Choosing the books that speak to them helps them hone their identity by revealing what feels true to them, and discarding what doesn't through informed decision-making.  

A colleague and I were just discussing the trend of makerspaces in the library. This is evidence that librarians, the very definition of book-pushers, are aware that we need to provide opportunities to respond to learning in creative ways, to take those ideas and information from the texts we hawk to communal creation and sharing.  

The best part of all of these studies and trends?  It's F-U-N.  We shouldn't have to feel guilty about having fun in our schools and libraries.  As the evidence is bearing out, play may be just the ticket for solving our biggest problems.

Those crazy, futuristic sci-fi writers

Summertime, and the thinking is easy...

Seriously, I'm pretty sure I think deeper thoughts in the summertime, unlike the school year when my mind is full of details like filling out book orders, engaging 40 classes a week, planning lessons, washing band shorts, and making lunches for the week.

Summertime also brings a renewed effort at improving my health.  Long walks in our peaceful, birds chirping-lawnmowers running-kids playing-dog walking neighborhood give me ample opportunity to think.

And there's been a lot to think about lately, with the latest news on the Middle East, SCOTUS rulings, daily updates on the state of education in the U.S., questions about our Bill of Rights, and all kinds of op-eds, blogs, and memes highlighting our differences and how we can't get along because of them.

Photo courtesy of swamp dragon on Flickr

Which is why, naturally, my thoughts turned to The Face of Boe (don't question the randomness, not sure where it came from) which in turn led me to think about those science fiction shows and writers featuring body-less aliens.  You know, the ones that have evolved to just brains, living and communicating and transporting themselves on brainpower alone.   Do you think the writers were dreaming of a world where we are able to function through reasoning, where messy details like gender, skin color, and basic needs like food and water didn't become platforms for politics and wars?

Science fiction is known for couching messages for social change within the fantastic, surreal stories of the present on altered worlds, or our future on this one.  My favorite TV example is the famous kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura of the original "Star Trek" series, aired in 1968 when interracial relationships were just barely accepted in the eyes of the law, much less in popular culture.  

I encountered yet another example of strong social and political messages when reading The Forgotten Door (Key, 1965) with my fifth graders this year (anti-war, anti-racism) and my re-reading of A Wrinkle in Time (L'Engle, 1962), which isn't technically sci-fi but does lean toward it.  L'Engle includes messages about valuing the lessons from several different religions as well as the uniqueness of individuals and the importance of choosing our own life paths.  Both books were right in line with the civil rights and social movements of their time.

The futures both books speak to must be post-2014...because fifty years later, we're not quite there yet.  Not that I want to be a floating brain, either...after all, how would one enjoy a salted caramel milkshake without a mouth?  

Why do we read?

Russell Lee [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

My Facebook feed includes a lot of professional pages, so I get to mix business with pleasure each morning with my coffee (there go those blurred lines).  This morning's feed included an article from The Horn Book, one of my favorite book-related websites.  The post was from a guest author on the use of extrinsic rewards to motivate students to read.

You can read Nicole Hewes' post here.  The summarizing paragraph, if you just want the gist of it, follows:

I am convinced that we must rescue our students from contests of these sorts. If we don’t, we may end up with students who refuse to read a book without the promise of getting something. Surely there must be better ways to engage community partners in joining us on our journey to create lifelong readers who are intrinsically motivated to explore the wonderful world of books without resorting to contests that leave students reflecting that they read but “got nothing.”--Nicole Hewes

Her post echoes a discussion I had with teachers this past school year regarding how we approach reading. One teacher in particular bemoaned the fact that we don't have AR in our school, because she really liked using it in her previous placement. I tried to explain that while AR in and of itself isn't necessarily "bad", and does get some students to read more in the short term, it does not necessarily get kids hooked on reading--and isn't that what we ultimately want?

Photo by Vestergaard Frandsen

We had a lower number of students participate in a local reading program offered by an amusement park this year. Didn't bother me a bit, because I was hearing stories from teachers about how including more book choices for their students in the classroom had everyone excited about reading again. Excited about reading and sharing books.

I've always been a firm believer in answering students' questions of "Why do we have to learn/do/practice this?" with a real-life answer (because if you can't offer one, then really, why ARE you teaching it?). My teaching years outside of the library were spent in special education resource rooms. The majority of my students struggled with reading, so if any kids had reason to hate books, they did. Here are the reasons I gave them for learning how to read, and to keep on reading:

• It helps you navigate the world around you.  We read street signs, job applications, driver's license tests to reinforce this.  Yes, I did this with third and fourth graders!
• Love notes.  How else are you going to understand that text message from that cute boy/girl?  (Elicited an "ewww" from some students....usually accompanied by a smile.)
• Learning.  There is a LOT of cool stuff out there to explore through books.  Help with performing the perfect ollie on a skateboard (or at least knowing how to read the search entry for it on Google).  How far rattlesnakes can jump (important here in Texas).  
• Escape and fun.  Where else can a boy talk with a ghost from a mine explosion?  Who knew popular children's figures' stories could be rewritten as adventures?  That a princess could choose her own path?  That illustrations can lend so much to a book about a kitten and the moon?

And the reason that seemed to make the most sense to them:

• Because Ms. Margocs loves to read, and will read with you, to you, and beside you to prove it.  

Once I started putting that "walk to my talk" (thank you, Donalyn Miller), I saw the spark light up in my students' faces.  I had never seen such a lasting spark result from a sticker, a tick mark, or the promise of a trip to an amusement park.  

Yes, I will support reading programs that my school, district, and learning community want me to promote.  They can be fun, and motivating, and be a gateway for some who might otherwise not want to enter the readers' den.  But I will also continue to promote reading as a lifelong pleasure and skill--not just a means to a short-term reward.  Feeling good about reading should last longer than a ride on a roller-coaster. 

By Halonen, Pekka (1865 - 1933) (Finnish) (Details of artist on Google Art Project) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Oops! I did it again...

Yes, this pile really does exist in my house.  Right now.

Right now, I'm picturing one of my alter egos, the one who is organized and tidy and does things the way they should be done.  She is standing in front of me, leaning ever so slightly forward, index finger waving back and forth in the air, saying, "Tsk, tsk, tsk."

Do you see this stack of books to the right?  Lots of good books there, cool titles, great reads.  Kid books and grown up books.  Fantasy, mystery, history, memoir, nonfiction, self-help.  All with one thing in common.

I've started them all, and haven't finished a single one of them...yet.  And I can't exactly tell you why.  The bookmarks on the top two books are less than sixty pages from the end.  I'm only a few pages or chapters into most of these.  I've gotten half-way through Outliers, but it's been awhile since I put it down, so I'll probably have to scan what I read before just to catch up.

I'm a notorious book-jumper.  I wrote about it briefly in my post "Confessions of a slow scanner".  If a book hasn't completely sucked me in (or if I don't have the time to slip into a book coma), I am prone to pick up another one that looks interesting.  I could probably add a lot more to this pile, since I tend to start reading books when I purchase them, despite what's already in-process at home.  I blame Amazon; they make it way too easy for that to happen.  I thought those deliveries would slow down once I became a bonafide librarian, but noooooo.  My living room, and several flat surfaces around the house, are starting to resemble those musty old bookstores, with piles of books stacked willy-nilly, gathering dust, waiting to be rescued and read.

Can't you just smell the intoxicating musty dustiness of old paper?
(This isn't really my living room...yet.)

Why am I posting this, you may ask?  Because this, too, is what reading can be.  Reading can be hard; it can be boring.  Sometimes, there IS other stuff that's more interesting to do than reading.  Really.  And it's okay to go ahead and do that stuff!  The great thing about books is that they will still be there waiting for you to get back to them.  (That's also why bookmarks are great, too!)  So I'm going to listen to my alter ego this week and finish a few of them...well, I have to finish The Book of Flying super fast, otherwise I'll have real-life librarian at the public library tsk-tsking at me.  It's due Wednesday.

And since I stole a line from Brittany to title this blog, here's a musical blast from the past.

One week into summer break

At the last school assembly of the year, I performed a short skit on what I do as a librarian during summer break.  Using props, I talked about sleeping, exercising, listening to music, cooking, swimming, and of course, reading.

So if any members of my learning community are reading this, here's what I've accomplished since the students left the building:

• Exercised for ten straight days, and participated in a 5K
• Turned up the tunes on the home stereo on several occasions, and practiced my singing with the car radio
• Soaked in the pool half a dozen times
• Slept at least six hours EVERY night!  Whoohoo!
• Planned meal menus through August, cooked and baked a few times
• Planned our family vacation and my daughter's September birthday event
• Attempted to clean my desk and house....it will be a summer-long project
• Reading!  I've read four Bluebonnet books, and I'm working on the fifth one.  I've also read two books from my grown-up reading list, working on the third, and I'm dabbling in some professional reading at the same time.  

I gave myself a week "off" without worrying too much about library-related tasks and major home projects, but as of today, I'm hitting the to-do list with a bit more focus and effort.  The picture is a small start--finally got around to framing a tea towel from the Bodleian Library to display at school.

Reports on books to follow soon...after I tackle the remaining piles on my desk, in my bedroom, on the coffee table....

A difference of Wordles

This was from February 2013, made from my blog posts:

And this is the current Wordle from my blog posts:

What a difference a year makes!