Deep Thinking

I have a dilemma. I am thinking it through with my readers participation on this blog so feel free to chime in. My district encourages every kindergartner to read a book that I personally find racially degrading. It’s on our Essential Literature List and many schools in our district chose to purchase tubs of 25 copies so every child could participate in reading this book.

I want to be supportive. I don’t want to be a censor. Yet as the mother of two biracial children I want my students to be more sophisticated and aware of other cultures in a positive, non-stereotypical manner. The message of this book is flawed in regards to Chinese names. As a mother I chose not to read this book to my own children. I’m not going to censor anyone else’s child at school so I need to find a new way to cope.

This year the music teacher is preparing to do an entire program revolving around this book. I need ways to counter the negative effects of this book and to make sure that students do not develop a false sense of superiority when it comes to non-Chinese names yet I don’t want to make a big issue within the school. I can easily develop a better bibliography of Asian titles.

I know that many people enjoy the rhythm of this book but I could easily provide counters. I read the forums on ebay and other sites where people talked about their childhood favorites. Many of the titles, poems, and songs are considered racist by today’s standards. For example, Little Black Sambo, Ten Little Indians, The Five Chinese Brothers, the original Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, and on and on.

Links to other people who may or may not feel the same concern I do but some of who have developed better lists:
15 Misconceptions about Multicultural Education with my very favorite quote:

“The book does have a delightful repetitive pattern that many children enjoy. The text and illustrations, however, are inaccurate depictions of any Chinese. In the text, the first and most honored son had the grand long name of “Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.” The message about Chinese names is less than flattering. People in the Southern United States would be appalled if parents in the People’s Republic of China were reading stories to their children about Southerners who used to name their children long names such as Bubba Bubba Jimbo Kenny Ray Billy Bob. “

Amazon review
YellowWorld Forums
Teaching Children Social Studies through Literature
Maybe a college class to take
Nikki Nikki Tembo
Child Lit archived discussion
A blog post on The EESL Children’s Literature Blogby Minjie Chen

Since I have fulfilled my Sunday morning commitments, now I have time to laze around and think. I love these quiet moments. Today I am pondering how I can make my school library better and more responsive to the needs of my users.

We finished our SACS (Southern Association of College and Schools) review right before Spring Break. One of the responses for our school as a whole was that we needed to provide more opportunities for parents and stakeholders to communicate. They suggested we put in a “Suggestion Box” in the front office so people could put in anonymous comments. We discussed the fact that any parent who emails us from the website is not anonymous so may feel stifled. So, what do you do?

I’d like to ramp up this area of communication and have been searching for the right tools to extend beyond those patrons who come into the school. As I was thinking I remembered how much fun I have participating in quizzes, surveys, and polls online from MySpace and other accounts particularly when I am with others (like my hubby-dear or my sons). Couldn’t I easily use Web 2.0 tools that are already developed by someone else to gather the information I like? It’s been over 5 years since I paper-surveyed my students with their smiling faces, frowning faces, and blank faces choices. I want to improve and gather feedback.

One of the websites GoToQuiz looked really promising until I carefully read the Terms. It doesn’t allow users under the age of 15. With the recent federal judge ruling against COPA I wonder if these terms will begin to change around the web.

Most of the sites I found charge you a monthly fee and have limits on the number of responses. You may think 1000 responses a month is sufficient, but let’s look at my situation. I have 540 students approximately (with a 41% mobility rate this changes daily). 2-4 parents and significant adults plus the student. Right there we are looking at closer to 2000 responses that could be gathered regarding one survey. I might be surveying about the library. A classroom teacher might be surveying parents on their communication preferences. The school could be surveying about dress codes. A grade level could be surveying about field trip preferences. I know that we will only get a small portion of responses, but I cannot waste my learning time on a product that will very quickly be limiting.

We need more flexibility that doesn’t cost anything. Yes, I mean free. I don’t have funds to finances surveys. I want to use the existing free tools of web 2.0. I also want to avoid Bad Survey Design. I took several quizzes, polls and surveys this morning while playing and I believe 90% of what I found was garbage. Both garbage in and garbage out. Fortunately there are good guides to survey design like the one posted by Creative Research Systems.

Help! Does anyone have a reliable tool to use?

Thanks to Alice Yuct, I have learned about the Johari Window. From their website:

The Johari Window was invented by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in the 1950s as a model for mapping personality awareness. By describing yourself from a fixed list of adjectives, then asking your friends and colleagues to describe you from the same list, a grid of overlap and difference can be built up.

I decided to try this out and clicked on five words that I decided I wanted to be me today (okay, I’m nothing if not honest!). You can try this out by clicking words that you think describe me. I can’t believe they left out practical!

Unfortunately there is a darker side if you can take it called the Nohari window. Go back and unclick brave on my name above in the Johari window, because I am NOT brave enough to open myself to that kind of criticism. I’d prefer concentrating on the positive and what I’d like to be than trying to read between the lines to try to determine why someone focused on one particular failing of mine over another. I think I counted at least 10 negative traits or failings before I quit, so I have made the choice to be positive.

Several years ago at my school we opened the year with every staff member having to fill out three positive comments about 3 different random people. The assistant principal then compiled all of these, typed them on beautiful stationery and put them in a frame to present to us. We loved reading about ourselves, but I can remember thinking about traits that I valued in myself that others didn’t appear to. For instance, I valued my own intelligence (yes boastful would be one of my failings), but the teachers and staffed valued my helpfulness. This activity changed how I viewed my dealings at school. No longer did I worry about always projecting the smartest answers with the most details, but I concentrated on customer service and making sure that my patrons perceived my staff (of the best library assistant in the universe (AKA Dorothy Reed), my volunteers, and me) as helpful.

I will be sending my principal this link to see if we’d like to try something new. My principal will be retiring this year. I am hoping we get an excellent new one who is open to creative and thoughtful instruction. Perhaps we’ll have the faculty try this next year as an inservice activity.

I truly believe we are the customer service center for instruction in our schools. The secretary and the front office staff are the customer service center for general information for parents, but we provide the detailed information about academics for teachers, parents, students, and administration.

Joel Polsky posted on Customer Service with Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service.
1. Fix everything two ways
2. Suggest blowing out the dust (my personal favorite)
3. Make customers into fans
4. Take the blame
5. Memorize awkward phrases
6. Practice puppetry
7. Greed will get you nowhere
8. (Bonus!) Give customer service people a career path

Having worked in retail I have a few extra comments on Customer Service. I was essentially THE first person customers dealt with when they had a problem. I learned very quickly not to take it personally by memorizing phrases while actually meaning what I was saying. So here is my list:
1. Be part of the team. (company, project, school, student support team)
2. Be part of the solution. Make finding a way for everyone to be happy foremost and communicate your intent during the process. Creativity is a plus. Dogmatism is a minus.
3. Be honest. I admit that it is very easy to make mistakes. I appreciate parents taking the time to let me know when one may have occurred so together we can fix it. If I am honest about my mistakes, others feel free to be honest when they make a mistake. I do have phrases I memorized to use in retail, but I make sure that I wasn’t being superficial.
4. Respect the other person. I respect the parent who contacts me and takes their precious time to follow up. I respect the teacher who wants to improve situations even if I don’t agree with them. I respect the administrator who wants a better-run school and I will share my expertise with them.
5. State it positively. See Joel’s hint #2 above. I may have more expertise in some technology troubleshooting, but making someone else feel badly about their role will not help in the long run.

I am very proud to be part of the new SLJ web site. Joining the fabulous Amy Bowllan are SLJ editor Brian Kinney, Christopher Harris, and me. In addition to blogging here, I will be adding blog content to Practically Paradise. The SLJ blog is a paid gig, but this one continues to be my rabble-rousing arena. Please go check out all the blogs at SLJ and note the new content. I think we owe it to our profession to be versatile, visible, and vocal. Gotta go back to viewing “V is for Vendetta”.

Today I read an article from SFGATE entitled “Critics Target Pizza Hut Reading Program.” In the article Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, calls on all parents to end participation in the Book-It program. I helped teachers participate in this program in Iowa, Illinois and Kentucky years ago, but when I came to Nashville the teachers didn’t want to participate. While the concept of rewarding students who meet reading goals with a free personal pan pizza is exciting to that child, most of my students’ families cannot afford to go with them to purchase their own food while the winner reaps his/her reward. For every program we promote, I have teachers who choose whether they will participate or not based upon whether this will put extra pressure on the families or not.

Think of how many times we give out food coupons, movie coupons, bowling coupons, etc. Read the fine print to see if the families are expected to make additional purchases. While my own children attended school in a different district during their elementary careers they came home with as many as 10 coupons after a 9 weeks’s award program. It was actually difficult for me to use up all the coupons and frequently became difficult to balance providing equivalent amounts of food & fun for all 4 boys. Not all teachers awarded equally or fairly.

I was actually relieved when the boys outgrew their excitement over extrinsic rewards. Because they saw no correlation between their actions and their rewards, the random awarding of prizes meant nothing. The Book-It program does allow students to set goals to reach. If students could get their pizzas to go, perhaps families would find it easier to participate.

Awarding prizes for doing things we should intrinsically enjoy is flawed. This year my P.T.A. is running an A.R. store every 6 weeks. I cannot passionately support this, but I do contribute prizes to help - books, shampoo, necessities. I will help announce our local minor league baseball team the Nashville Sounds'’ reading program. In years past the highlight was a ticket to the game for the child (parents had to purchase their own). Last year they changed the program so the homerun highlight was a free book at Barnes & Noble while the ticket was a base prize. How do you personally feel about prizes and corporate promotions?

Librarians teach about award winning books in elementary schools - particularly the Caldecott Winners. While we talk about artistic elements that help make a book the most distinguised, we impart to students the message that art tells stories and stories are art.

Despite the fact that no work in this medium has yet won the Caldecott, let’s focus on stained glass as an art form and as a way to tell a story collaboratively. In the middle ages religious leaders used art in the form of stained glass to tell stories and guide the general population. Stained glass is an art form using colored glass to helps control light (see article in Wikipedia). I love Robert Sabuda’s book Arthur and the Sword (available from Amazon.com) I shared this story with first graders in their classrooms this year while we talked about classics and legends. Additional information can be found on Robert Sabuda’s page .

Volunteer Michael Tyler shared background information on stained glass and we enabled the first graders to create a grade level stained glass window project. The illustration shows one small portion of our inverted U windows. The overall effect is dramatic and sets the mood for the environment. Because it was a joint effort, students took great pride in their work. Older classes continue to ask me when they get to create part of our library.

Through our collaboration with the art teacher, Tischann Morse, students viewed a large variety of stained glass window projects and Tiffany glass then used a computer program called Kid Pix to create computerized and paper versions.

We found additional lessons and resources here :
My favorite lesson and thinking about the teaching of stained glass comes from Linda Papanicolaou, Palo Alto Unified School District, Palo Alto, California.
KinderArt’s lesson on Stained Glass Paper Screen,
Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit on Tiffany,
Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit on the Cloisters, and
Pics4Learning’s examples of colored glass.

Because no paper or computerized project can suffice for the experience, I continue to seek ways to make stained glass inspirational to my students as an art form and a way to enjoy light. Fortunately in the town I live we have a local studio of custom stained glass, Natchez Studio. I spoke with the owner and instructor Rodger Dugan last Saturday about my students projects and to gather further background information. Rodger was a fantastic source of history and technique. In the store he provides all materials and tools plus teaches courses in
Beginning Copper Foil
Beginning Lead
Intermediate Lead
Advanced Lead
Lampshade
Stepping Stone
Stained Glass Repair seminar

Rodger also welcomes inquiries from others because he wants to share his love of glass and stained glass as a way to express creativity. Natchez Studio is located at Midway Center, 11966 Lebanon Road, Mt. Juliet, TN 37122 TEL: 615 754-2136 Web address: www.natchezstudio.com Since a major portion of my mission in the school library is to inspire life-long learners, I am so pleased to be able to share this information with others. Never stop learning. Never stop seeking new ways to express yourself. Be open to new experiences. Consider taking a class on something outside your primary area of instruction.