Deep Thinking

If you could lock yourself in a cabin and read one author’s books all week, who would you choose? I want to hear your picks, not taint the waters with mine. I was talking to another teacher about this when some eager fourth graders chimed in. This led to them asking me to go back and purchase more paperback copies of some of their favorite series:

* Seventh Tower
* Gregor the Overlander
* Wilhemenia Rules
* Bailey School Kids
* A to Z Mysteries
* Young Cam Jansen
* the Santa Paws titles
* Amber Brown
* Black Lagoon
* Marvin Redpost
* Goosebumps
* Dragonslayers
* graphic biographies

Their favorite series are not necessarily the authors I most admire and that I think are the long-lasting type. I deeply appreciate Judy Freeman’s books including Books Kids Will Sit Still For 3. Her resources at www.judyreadsbooks.com help me work better with teachers to locate new authors and new read-alouds. I wish that every teacher could change grade levels just so they would be forced to talk to me about new trends. I love that moment when you place 5 or 6 titles in a teacher’s hands to sample. They choose one, read it to the kids, and suddenly there is a tremendous run on all titles by that author.

A title I found in galley the Mysterious Benedict Society has dwelt on my mind since I first read it last summer. It is a difficult read for my 3rd and 4th graders but I do intend to purchase multiple copies. The concepts of different intelligences and different ways to a solution run through this title. It does have all the classic elements. Sometimes I wish I taught middle school instead of elementary so I could spend more time with the depth of quality literature. Here is a review one of my favorite blogs Pixie Stix Kids Pix. Somebody let me know when the next title by this author is available.

Lately I have viewed several videos that I wanted to share with the teachers and administration at my school. Unfortunately the majority of these are only available from sites like YouTube. Even with my override password for our state filters, these simply don’t show properly. Another problem is that some videos are posted, are overwhelmingly popular, and then disappear. Perfect example of this is the skit “Introducing the Book” which was originally written in Norwegian. A version with English captions was posted on YouTube, received over 1 million viewings, and then disappeared. Read about the controversy here. I am sad because I wanted to share it with my technicians and teachers.

Today I found a video that was worth showing to my third graders who suffer from springitis each year and suddenly forget how to open books and that they have rich resources inside. (They seem to become magnetically attracted to the computers for all answers even when their friends race them. )Take a look at Library Stuff’s posting of a video sent in by Steven Reed and his students - Library Ninja!

Alan Chiupka is a teacher at MAP Academcy, an
alternative school in Lebanon, Tennessee, guest blogs
today with his deep thoughts about schools and their
perceptions in the media:

I recently read an article about another outstanding
teacher who had gone out of his way to see to the
success of an at risk student. It was a heart-warming
article full of extra steps that a concerned teacher
took to get to know the student and how the extra
attention was responded to and how it made a
difference in the students life. It began with the
teacher trying to obtain a higher degree and been
given an assignment to improve the writing skills of
five students. One of the students he chose was the
at-risk student and he then goes in-depth about the
needs of the student and how his assistance was vital
in the growth of this student. The article ends with
the moral to teach the students and not the subject.
Good advice and a good article showing a dedicated
teacher and his impact on a student.

Articles like these, I think, are responsible in part
for the low esteem the teaching profession has amongst
many of the public. You see this teacher was not a
stand-out in his profession because of the work he did
with the student. He was typical of most teachers and
the jobs they do in the classroom. To hold this
particular teacher out as an example and not admit
that he is more typical than outstanding is fodder to
those who would criticize public education as
ineffective. Most who would criticize public education
from without are self-styled experts on the subject by
virtue of their once having attended a public school.
They feel that this experience makes them an authority
on education and in large part, for whatever reason,
these people remember the negative aspects of their
own education more than the positive ones. Through the
fog of years the positive memories are pushed out by
the negative ones and in their minds school becomes
nothing but negative memories and a place in dire need
of reform. An in-depth look of most outside critics of
education I’m sure would reveal that they are
generally disagreeable people in all aspects of their
life with little good to say about anything. Articles
about teachers going the extra mile often reinforce
these peoples opinions.

One way to remedy this would be to stop publishing
articles about teachers successes. This would be
throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We all like
to hear about how others in our profession have done
well. Instead, when we write about effective teachers
doing their jobs well, let’s include acknowledgments
that most teachers are also doing their jobs well in
similar fashions. Make it clear that the teacher the
article is discussing is representative of the
profession as a whole and not a lonely traveller in
the desert. By doing this we may help to eliminate
some of the vitriol thrown out by people who have yet
to overcome their own deficiencies in life and find it
easier to blame the school systems for these
deficiencies than it is to look in the mirror.

Curse the day I bought a huge suitcase in a standard color. Is it navy blue or black? I forget every trip. How many times have I stood in the airport watching the luggage carousel and smacked my forehead because I meant to put a strip of bright colored tape on the case?! Here is an offer that I jumped all over. Go to this site. Upload your own photo. The company will allow you to edit it and then will mail you two free customized photo luggage tags. Of course the back is an advertisement for klm.com, but it also will print my email address and cell phone (thanks hubby for reminding me that I’d want to receive a cell phone call while I was still in the airport so I should use the cell phone, not the home phone). Thanks to the Liminal Librarian for the info.

I am loving the new WYSIWYG-like editing features of pbwiki. I believe this is what the majority of people who have been waiting for needed before dabbling. Now with the new tools available editing a wiki is as easy as word processing, so go forth and dabble. Play. Create something wonderful. Do like I did and start with a private list like your WTF list. Hey! Get your minds out of teenage gutters. WTF means “Waiting To Find” as in those book titles you are dying to read but don’t have your hands on yet. You’d think I was talking to my teenagers there! Anyway, back to the wiki’s. Start small. Play with the tool. Then invite one or two friends to join with you. Soon you will want to share this with your profession. Dabble, friends, dabble.

WRiting blogs is getting complicated when I have to post claim keys. There have to be easier ways to claim ownership. I haven’t had time to learn how to do complicated html. I need to be able to do fast and furious thinking & sharing, not complicated web design. Sorry for the vent, but these companies insist on silly hoops for us to jump through.

Perhaps I am just irritated. I want to show librarians at school how they can use bloglines and RSS feeds, but ENA filters me. I do have an override password that works some of the time, but not for everything (youtube). Not everyone that I will share this with has their override password because they have to ask their principal to please send an email to ENA enabling them to have override priviledges. I want to do quick and simple professional sharing with colleagues. What will I do? I’ll go to Panera Bread and use their free Wi-Fi with a few close friends to do professional sharing.

I guess it’s just a grumpy Monday hour. I refuse to be grumpy all day, so I’ll go find something positive to do quickly.

Diane: This weekend offers the usual fare including the obligatory long-weekend marathon. Today begins the “Law and Order” marathon on TNT. I do not greet these events with enthusiasm. I did not realize until my hubby dear identified the issue as “I hate all marathons.” I don’t like sitting passively, watching something others have arranged, on their schedule, with no time to contemplate what I just viewed. I don’t like scheduling my life and awarding whichever show is out there the higher priority of my time so that I willingly give up all other activities to “watch a marathon.” My hubby dear felt I don’t truly appreciate his viewpoint on how he watches marathons so I have invited him to share the flip-side.

Alan: Diane’s favorite television show is Charmed. I told her that her distaste of marathons would preclude her from watching a Charmed marathon. This was a pretty brave statement because I recently gave her the boxed set of the complete first season of Charmed and she watched it voraciously. Sort of her own little marathon and crossing Diane is something that few have had the temerity to do and even fewer have done so and lived to tell the tale afterward. Diane agreed with me that she would not like a Charmed marathon and it was different from her own marathon because she could pause her marathon whenever she got the urge to do something else. This is a difference between her and me. I can and do enjoy 24 hours of a show that I like tremendously because there is so little on television that I find to be worth my time. When I do find a show that I like, I have a letdown when it is over because there is often nothing else to take its place. With a marathon I can put that letdown off indefinitely. And she says that I have ADD. Diane then asked me when I find the time to reflect on one show since the next is immediately following. I told her that with a show like Law And Order I reflect upon it during the closing scene when the characters themselves are reflecting upon it. When Diane asked how could I do that I tell her that when the characters are having their conversations I make my own mental interjections as to what I would say if I were in their conversation. Another difference between her and me is that her television shows talk to her while I make my shows interactive whether they are set up that way or not. Diane gets her interactivity by becoming her own programmer, hence her marked preference to DVD’s over television, while I make everything interactive. I started this with my children when they were young and we would each pick out a character from the show we were watching and claim to be that character. This morphed into our telling each other what else we would have said or done if we really were that character. This was most fun when we were watching professional wrestling. “You know I would have body slammed you a couple more times and then given you a pile-driver before I pinned you.” “Yeah, well I would have reversed the body slam and put you in a figure four leg lock and made you submit, so I would have won that match.” Diane has never really understood what is going on when the boys and I watch television. Anyway, it is almost time for the Law And Order marathon and my only concern is this: I haven’t checked the schedule and if the Sci-Fi channel is having a Twilight Zone marathon I won’t know what to do.

Diane: Actually Charmed is only one of my favorite shows. I didn’t have time to see any of the episodes until they were in the 5th Season so watching the DVD’s are exciting to me because they are all new. As a little girl I truly wanted to have magical powers, so, Alan, you may be correct in not crossing me. Other TV shows that I like include Cold Case, The Daily Show, ER, and CSI. WOW! I forgot Crossing Jordan. Unfortunately for me watching television is confining so I see my favorite shows about 5 times a year. That’s sad! Unfortunately I don’t have control of the remote control and don’t even know which stations are on which channels due to lack of interest. When I was working 75 hours a week, there was a reason why I wasn’t watching television. I just don’t have that habit. I also prefer DVD’s because they have extras, they have captions, and I can actually watch the show at a faster rate. I am a speed reader and I enjoy ramping up the speed of the show to 4X while the captions are flashing across the bottom. Sometimes I want to hear the sound and music, other times I just want to get to the plot and the ending. I can’t do that while anyone else in my family is around because that takes concentration. You are correct. We are just different. Different mindsets. Different attitudes. Different choices. While the marathons are on, I’ll be out & about talking to real people, delivering orders for MK, and reading an updated Childhood of Famous Americans book I begged off a vendor to preview.

Just thought I’d share a photo taken by one of my three faithful volunteers, Michael Tyler. Michael volunteers in the library 3-5 days a week and is a gifted artist. We have such a creative atmosphere and are fortunate to have Michael capturing images this year of “happenings” in the library. For example, here is a photo he snapped of a first grader who was so excited about the book she had read that she had to come to the library before going to class just to take the A.R. test. Beyond the test, she wanted the opportunity to talk about her book.

Students want to share. Who is there to listen? Well, we are. The librarians. We want to talk about learning, new ideas, new technologies, favorite books. If we weren’t interested in someone else’s learning, we wouldn’t be in a school situation. Those moments of student excitement are what refuel and revive us.

So are you maximizing your opportunities for student choice and sharing? Are you creating an atmosphere to encourage this? Do you have an environment to inspire others to ask questions and think?

One of my volunteers, Charlene Smith, is called Nana by 99.9% of the school community. We have a deal where at least once a week we both address each other by our first names (just so we don’t forget what they are. ) Nana is also a talented artist who retired from running a company’s printing department so she can explain everything about different weights of paper. This has come in very handy for our mobile preparation. I believe that we have created an atmosphere where our volunteers have the say-so in our artistic environment and I have noticed a more cheerful attitude among the faculty and students this year. I will be posting photos of the library throughout the year so you can see how we continue to change and be unique. Thank you to Michael and Charlene for your hard work this year. I also want to thank Ms. T for volunteering Tues & Thurs. mornings. Ms. T is the site-director for our before and after school YMCA Fun Company program and graciously helps keep us focused and practical. Ms. T is the one who reminds me when we have run out of bookmarks and she patiently cuts hundreds apart weekly because she knows there are students standing on the other side of the desk waiting for their own bookmark. Thank you, Ms. T.

ALA/WO presented David Lankes in Second Life Thursday. I still stumble all over in 2nd life, but I’m working on it. At least my avatar has my freckles! Once Mark helped me sit down and not feel like I was standing on the bench dancing for the class, I enjoyed the presentation. Due to technical difficulties I had to log in 3 times and finally ended up giving up part way through. Fortunately I could go here to read the transcript. I encourage you to also do so. I did blog about David’s work from his presentation during ALA Midwinter and I believe we need to be part of the conversation. Second Life needs to continue to involve and become easier for first-time users to navigate. The learning curve is so steep that the desire to master Second Life has to increase greatly to overcome.