A Long December

I've had a quiet end to my year as the snow finally blanketed my little corner of New Hampshire. The cross country skiing has been beautiful, and as I'm still not allowed to gallop around on horses, careen down mountains, or slide around ponds on metal blades, I'm spending a lot of time on my skate skis...

...with my lovely husband, who took some time off to hang out in the woods with me.

I got to spend Christmas with my parents, which was perfect. Bittersweet, but perfect. My grandmother was in her final days with my aunts in Florida, as we did our best to celebrate the holiday with cheer for my children. She passed away at home, with family, knowing she was loved and cared for, and for that, I am exceedingly grateful.

I'm still at work on the book edits, but I'm also peevishly aware of the reality that I still have to to pace myself. If I push it, and continue to edit or read after the tight pressure band on my forehead sets in, headaches and visual migraines descend. I really miss reading and am looking forward to finishing all the books that have piled up on my side of the bed. Wonderful books by people I adore, such as Averil Dean, Melissa Atkins Wardy, Avital Norman Nathman, and Annette Haws. You should check them out by clicking on their names and buying their books because they are great writers, all.

I've rescheduled my January speaking dates to give myself that time to heal up from my concussion, but despite the irritating details of what I've come to think of as "the brain mishap," I've been able to tell some stories and do a couple of interviews with some fascinating people, and that was a great way to round out the year.

Here's a story I told about exploring the woods with Ben, my teenage son, for Vermont Public Radio.

And here's an interview I did about how teachers can make sure they are not overlooking introverted kids in their classrooms and giving them every opportunity to learn and succeed. Which was lovely, as I took quite a whuppin' for this piece I wrote on the importance of encouraging introverted kids to speak up in school earlier this year for the Atlantic.

Tomorrow, (Thursday, January 2nd), my new "Parent-Teacher Conference" piece will be up at the New York Times Motherlode blog, about how parents can help kids return to school after the holidays with renewed vigor and dedication. Or at least without whining.

Happy New Year, everyone.

The State of Education

Over at Motherlode today, K.J. Dell'Antonia doesn't buy what Hope Perlman is selling. And as biased and immersed as I am in the New England academic scene, I totally agree. 

Hope Perlman doesn't believe parents who say they are not stressed out about the college application process:

      "Furthermore, I have dear friends who seem to agree with Levine. I’ve been in conversation with them about their college hopes for their children and they’ve looked me in the eye and told me they really, really don’t care if the college their child attends is prestigious, as long as it’s the right fit. And I’ve looked right back at them, impressed, but ultimately unable to believe they really mean it."

I'm sorry, Hope, but I, like K.J., really mean it. I was raised in a wealthy, academically-oriented town with one of the best public high schools in the state. Today, I teach at an academically accelerated New England middle school, in a town just a stone's throw from Dartmouth College, and I still really mean it. When presented with the range of ivy to state, I chose state for myself, all the way from kindergarten to graduate school. I reveled in my education (Dover-Sherborn High School, B.A., University of Massachusetts at Amherst and J.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Because I was self-directed, ambitious, loved learning, and was allowed to negotiate on my own behalf from an early age, I got so very, very much out of my education.

Consequently, these skills of self-advocacy are some of the most important skills I teach today in my middle school. I want to make sure my students will get what they deserve everywhere from Harvard University to Bunker Hill Community College. I was raised to fight for my right to take any damn class I wanted, opt for every extracurricular activity I could make time to attend, and a giant, intimidating, populated state university gave me just about every opportunity I could have hoped for. 

K.J. Dell'Antonia is absolutely right. Dollar for dollar, public higher education kicks private education's ass. With some solid skills in self-advocacy and the confidence to stand up for what you deserve, most public colleges will give their students what they need to be truly successful. 

Thanks, K.J. for the reminder. As I move toward my oldest child's college application process, I appreciate the perspective, the calming sentiments, and the dose of sanity. 

The Art and Science of Asking Questions

The response to "Against Accelerating the Gifted Child" in the New York Times' Motherlode blog has been overwhelming and gratifying, and I feel the need to write about to some of the main points that have come up in the comments section. There are over 200 comments at this writing, and while many have been quite supportive, many have been angry and critical, as they should be. If there were easy answers to the question of how to best educate gifted students, there would have been about 12 lukewarm comments responding to my post. The emails and comments I have received may have been contradictory, but at least they highlight the issues we must address in order to advance the cause of education for gifted kids. However, as Motherlode is not my personal forum, I have had to retreat here, to my turf, in order to adequately respond.

1. I am not actually against accelerating the gifted child. I teach many gifted students who have been accelerated, and many of them are quite happy and fulfilled. However, some are not, so what I am against is accelerating a child because the parents are so wrapped up in the mystique of having a gifted child that they never take the eventual emotional and social fallout into account. I have received quite a few emails from people who have thanked me for bringing up this aforementioned emotional fallout, and I stand by my thesis. While academic acceleration may be a good - nay, ideal - solution for some gifted children, parents may want to think ahead to middle school and beyond when making the decision to skip a child ahead in first or second grade.

2. Of course I am aware of the Iowa Acceleration Scale. I have experience with it; my current school uses it as a resource. I have been in on meetings where we have used it in order to decide whether or not to accelerate students. I have also read just about everything published on the subject of academic acceleration since 1972. What kind of idiot woud publish in the New York Times without reading every scrap of research on a given topic? I specifically stated that the research does not indicate that academic acceleration causes negative social or emotional fallout, but I confirmed with a statistician my sense that the subjective, retrospective reporting used in most research studies on accelerated students is a blunt research tool. So is anecdotal evidence, but when it comes to my own observations gathered over a decade of teaching, that's what I've got to fall back on. After reading reams of studies, I could have stated that the existing data are the gold standard, the be-all, end-all of the discussion on the state of grade acceleration, but instead, I found intriguing but imperfect data that begs further discussion and further inquiry.

3. "The gift of time." Okay, it may be trite, but it's a real factor. "Time" is a metaphor, an umbrella concept that stands in for so much more than chronological time. It represents time for emotional development, social development, physical growth, and about a hundred other factors that are conducive to happiness. The ability to control one's emotions. The ability to organize one's materials for class. The ability to defer gratification. The ability to filter information. The ability to filter out ambient distraction. These skills get developed during middle and high school, and the difference between a sixth grader and an eighth grader is about as vast as the difference between a pink marshmallow Peep and a well-tempered piece of dark chocolate.

4. I actually enjoy teaching way more than seeing my name in print. It has always been thus, and will always be so.

I'd keep going, but I have papers to grade and algebra homework to complete. I appreciate each and every one of the nearly 200 comments on my post, as it ensures that I will be invited back in order to write about some other topic that at least fifty people will assert I am completely unqualified to write about.

On Critical Thinking, Algebra, and Math Anxiety

Today marks a first for me: I have two pieces running in two different sections of The New York Times on the same day!

Over at The Learning Network, the first of a week-long series of critical thinking questions is up for reader consideration. My editor at The Learning Network, Katherine Schulten, has asked readers to let her know whether or not they like my questions, and if enough people are excited about them, I get promoted to weekly feature status. So come on over, take the critical thinking quiz, and submit your feedback to Katherine.

At Motherlode, I weigh in on Andrew Hacker's opinion piece about the necessity of algebra in American education. My response is personal, rather than policy-based, and comes out of my recent return to Algebra I.

I am reposting the first of my posts about going back to math class below, and for my further adventures in Algebra I, read "Algebra I: Still Hazy After All These Years," "Exponents, Products, and [my mathematical] Powers" and "Exponent Negativity."

Quantifying the Unknown

I have a recurring dream: I am in college, or law school - sometimes high school - and I have not attended classes all semester. I don't know where my locker is, let alone the combination, and I'm not sure where the classrooms are. I certainly don't know what material we have covered. It's exam time, and I know I won't even be able to find the classroom so I can take the exam. I know that if I don't pass the exam, I will not be able to graduate, so I have to find the main office and I can ask them where my classes are. I wander around the school, often in that slow, stunted, underwater way, and get nowhere as the minutes of the exam period tick by.

One fun twist on last night's version of the dream is that while I was digging around in my materials, looking for any clue as to my class schedule, I found an application for an internship with Billy Collins. Despite that nice surprise, I still woke up nervous and flummoxed.

The class I fail in my dreams is usually math, which is absolutely predictable if you know me at all. I have never done well in math, and as a result, I have serious math anxiety. I can grade papers and calculate percentages, but anything more complex than that brings on the shakes. So when I woke up this morning at 4:32 A.M., drenched in sweat, I decided to return to the place of my defeat (again) and go back to school.

Fortunately, the math teacher at my school is amazing. She's the math teacher I wish I'd been lucky enough to have when I was in middle school. She's organized, demanding, witty, and kind, and every time I poke my head into her classroom, her students are enjoying themselves.

I know! That was a new concept for me, too.

I checked the middle school schedule and realized I have a prep period during her Algebra I classes on Wednesday and Friday, so starting next week, I'm back in school. I will have my own textbook, and I will even try to do some of the homework once I catch up to the kids (if that even happens).

It's time to put my money - well, my pride, I suppose - where my mouth is. I encourage my students to be brave, diligent, and never back down from an intellectual challenge. I try to model a love of education, a genuine thirst for knowledge that drives what I read, watch, and listen to. They know I am a frequent buyer at The Teaching Company, and that I listen to lectures on my iPod when I stack wood, fold laundry, and chop vegetables for dinner. Currently, I'm listening to a course on the evolution of the English language, and I love to share the tidbits I've gleaned with my students. They know I listen to courses on English, history, and science, but they also know about my math aversion. They joke about it. I joke about it. But it's not really that funny; it's actually quite sad.

I am hoping that my efforts to remedy my math anxiety will put weight behind my words. I hate math, yes. I hate the obsessive attention to plusses and minuses. I hate the inflexibility of numbers. But the excuse that "my brain just does not work that way" doesn't cut it when I simultaneously tell my students that they can do anything - anything - they want to do.

Well, dammit, so can I.

Creating a Coming of Age Ritual in the New York Times!

Come on over to the New York Times' Motherlode for Ben's experience milking at Robie Farms, complete with video!

"Creating a Coming of Age Ritual"