Great Responsibility Begins With Great Trust

Sincere thanks to the nearly one hundred teachers and parents who emailed or tweeted me with quotes for this piece. I hope it will challenge at least a few of you to turn over the keys to your child's life and education to - gasp - your child. I've been writing a lot about promoting autonomy and intrinsic motivation in kids (stay tuned, the book's almost done!) and if we could just return to a place of independence, autonomy, and faith in our kids, if we could just show them that we believe they will do the right thing, they just might live up to that challenge. You can read the article here. If you like it, share it!

Looks like it's getting read! Thanks, everyone!!!

Specific thanks for quotes go to Mindi Dench, Christiana Whittington, Elena Marshall, Lisa Heffernan, Gina Parnaby, Bryan MacDonald, and Dana Salvador.

The Role of Empathy in the Classroom: StartEmpathy.org

Teacher’s lives are cyclic; fall is for new beginnings, winter is for maintaining momentum, and spring is for closure. And summer. Ah, summer. This season is not, as many assume, for leisure. Rather, it’s one of the most important seasons of a teacher’s year – a time for planting the seeds of next year’s successes; for reconciliation, reorganization, and recreation - not as in camping and swimming and hiking, but re-creation; re-invention and refreshment - a time for intellectual and emotional renewal. Summer is for upending syllabi, questioning assumptions, and stepping back to view the previous academic year through a wider lens.

I look forward to this season of re-creation every year. I poke my classroom’s sacred cows to make way for new ideas and strategies. As I organize the contents of my file cabinets and desk drawers, I account for the things I should keep and the things that need to go. Out with stale lectures, and in with lessons that engage everyone and create real opportunities for learning. As I’m purging, I keep my eyes open for the big flashes of insight and perspective that promise to impose order out of educational chaos.

The insight that emerged from this year’s accounting is the vital, and yet often misunderstood, role of empathy in the classroom. Much of what I teach and write circles around the subject of empathy, whether I’m teaching To Kill a Mockingbird or writing about character education. Teachers and parents praise the value of empathy as a skill we need to instill in our students, and that’s true. However, I find that increasingly, many parents would benefit by walking around in someone else’s skin for a while.

As a parent, it’s natural to look out for the interests of one’s own child, but it’s become commonplace for parents to demand that teachers cater to the needs of their student above all others. Tommy doesn’t want to participate because it makes him uncomfortable, and Alice gets upset when she’s ignored. Kate would like lessons to be conveyed visually, while Marcus would prefer verbal instructions. Mary can’t sit near Tammy and Jacob must sit near Matthew, and while we’re at it, email me immediately with any and all instances of negative language, gestures and expressions directed at Bethany.

This isn’t a call for empathy for teachers. That would be lovely, and I won’t turn that gift away, but I’m asking parents to have more empathy and protective instinct for the entire classroom community. Classrooms should be egalitarian, in that no one student is more important than the others, and all are integral to the class’ academic and social success. As we pass through this season of re-creation, I hope parents will consider planting seeds of empathy in their own backyards, to teach their children how to cultivate that virtue by setting an example. No need to worry if it’s a second planting; we could all use some reserves going into the year ahead.

Inspiration in Unlikely Places

I did an interview last week with Scott Barry Kaufman, author of Ungifted, and he mentioned a really cool nonprofit called The Future Project. He described Dream Directors who go into schools and encourage kids to articulate their dreams, then mentor them as they see those dreams to fruition.

I had to find out more. This article is the result of my research on The Future Project, which led to Tim Shriver, which led to Google, which led to Daniel Pink, and back around again to The Future Project.

You can read it over at the Atlantic.

The Measure of Their IQ

Here's what just went live over at the Atlantic today. Click here to make the jump and read the piece!

Across the Atlantic

In my first weeks of summer, and therefore the beginning of my two-year adventure as a full-time writer (can you tell I like to type those words? Full-time writer. They have a certain loveliness and poetry.) I've been busy. Here's what's going on over at the Atlantic. You can read the rest of the article and check out the 200-odd (and I do mean odd) comments here.

Being on Time Means Being Early

I was watching Judd Apatow's This is 40 [again] last night with my husband in order to decompress from a troubling day, and was delighted to see my favorite scene come up about halfway through the film. The main character drops her kid off at school and the homeroom teacher greets her with:  

Teacher: "Hi - um, listen, Charlotte really needs to get here on time because she really just needs the extra time to settle in."

Mom: [mystified] "We are on time." 

Teacher: [deadpan] “Being on time means being early.”

Parents laugh at this line because they think it's a line meant to satirize the arbitrary and stupid rules teachers impose on parents. 

But as a teacher - the teacher in charge of sixth grade homeroom attendance, no less - I know the truth. I suspect that Judd Apatow just might have the soul of a teacher. 

This line is truly funny; and funny because it's true. 

When your car pulls in to the drop off area thirty seconds before homeroom and you push your kids out of the car at a rolling stop, that’s not on time.

When your child bursts through the school entrance as the minute hand hits the twelve, that’s not on time.

Let me fill you in a middle school student’s morning needs – and keep in mind, I have left out the superfluous stuff in favor of the essentials.

Let's say you drive into the school parking lot at 7:40, a full twenty minutes before homeroom. And let me just say here, well done, you. By the time your kids get out of the car with all of their belongings - backpack, coat, sweater, lunch, history project - it's 7:43.

7:43 First things first. Check zipper, hair, adjust potentially embarrassing adolescent bits, and do a final check for food caught in braces. Check in with friends. Have friends re-check food in braces situation and comment on outfit. Figure out who is absent and why, and recount everything that has happened over the hours since they last checked in with each other on Facebook and Google Chat (but not Twitter, because that's for adult dorks like Mrs. Lahey). This first chapter of the school day can easily take an hour, but as homeroom doors close in :17 minutes, there's only time for the vital information.

7:45 Enter middle school, go to locker, unload books, put lunch away, put math journal on the math teacher's desk, figure out what books are needed for the first couple of periods. In a perfect world, the student sees the loose papers and textbook being squashed under the weight of four other textbooks and organizes those items. Avoid middle school head's eyes as she proceeds to homeroom so she won't notice that students' skirt is too short or her locker is tragically and cataclysmically disorganized.

7:52 Close locker door, if physically possible. Check in with friends again on some of the non-vital issues not covered earlier.

7:57 Move toward homeroom. Return to locker, retrieve forgotten math book.

7:59 Rush out of homeroom for plan book squashed under textbook at the bottom of locker and look for that piece of paper with the French verbs for today's quiz written on it.

8:00 Slip in to homeroom as Mrs. Lahey gives a disapproving look, flips up the doorstop with her toe, and closes the door.

Keep in mind, this schedule is for the kids uninterested in playing foursquare or basketball before homeroom. Some kids really need this time to work out their heebie-jeebies and figure out the daily re-adjustments in the social pecking order that governs middle school. 

So when I mark your child tardy when they arrive as the minute hand hits the 12, I'm not [just] being a nitpicky hardass. First period is going to be a nightmare for the kids who rush in at 7:59. Their brains, bodies, and belongings will be disorganized, and it will take them the twenty minutes they should have had before homeroom to pull themselves together. 

Judd Apatow is right. Being on time does mean being early. 

Radio 101

Yesterday, I recorded my first installment for Vermont Public Radio's Commentaries series. I have wanted to be a part of this program for a long time, particularly as I get to write about the Upper Valley, and what makes this place so special. I wanted my first piece to be a departure from the education and parenting topics I usually cover, so I went with dairy farming and underwear. I figure that's about as 180 as I can go...although dairy farming requires some serious grit. 

My education in milking at Robie Farm happened a while ago, but it provided great fodder for my first 500-word piece. The producer of the Commentaries series, Betty Smith-Mastaler, liked the essay and invited me in to the VPR studio in Norwich (under the King Arthur Bakery!) to record it as an audition piece. I've done radio before, and as I read to my students often, I figured I had the chops to lay that baby down in one take.

But that pesky producer, she had her own opinion on my chops.

Consequently, I spent about a half an hour in Radio 101, taught by Professor Smith-Mastaler. I mentioned this to some of my writer friends, and they asked me to share the wisdom of Professor Smith. So here goes. Radio 101.

First, word count. I already understood the importance of word count, but when an editor or a periodical's submission guidelines page instructs me to aim for 800 words, I can submit 793 or 810 and no one will blink an eye. So when I submitted my piece to Professor Smith-Mastaler at 517 words, I figured I was all set. Not so, she said. In radio, every word is time, and Commentaries has a hard time wall of 3:14. I can cut the piece or she will cut the piece. My choice.

I cut the piece. Killed those darlings until they numbered 497. I thought about adding an "and" or a "however," but figured I was close enough if I was under by a word or two. Or three.

Formatting.

I've done speeches before, and figured I'd bump up the font size a bit for easier reading. While my instinct was right, that only got me part of the way to formatting perfection, radio-wise. Professor Smith-Mastaler sent me some additional tips that would help me read more clearly and fluently.

1. Always bring the text to the studio. This particular studio has issues with wireless internet, so don't assume you can read off of a screen or print out at the studio. 
2. Bring two copies, one for you, one for the producer, who will need to take notes on what needs to be re-recorded and if changes are made to the text during recording, she will need to mark up the copy. 
3. The eye's natural scan width is four inches, so drag the right-hand margin over to 4. The text will look weird, but it really is easier to scan when you are in front of a microphone and a little bit nervous. 
4. Use 16 point type, and if possible, choose the font used by the series. Commentaries uses Times New Roman. At least I knew that one. One point for me. 
5. Page numbers should got at the top of the page rather than the bottom. The producer will be referring to them and it's easiest to find them quickly at the top of the page, in the upper right-hand corner. 
6. Double space after every sentence. There's a reason for this that I will go to in the next section. 
7. Eliminate all sentence breaks at the bottom of the page. Either shift entire paragraphs down to the next page or raise them up, but make sure the page ends on a terminal punctuation mark. You will be moving the pages after a pause at the end of each page, so you want to make sure you are at a good spot for a long pause. 

Once you get to the studio, hand the producer her copy. She'll likely offer water, but just in case, bring your own. My students have given me a cold, so I had a cup of tea before I arrived.

At VPR, the text goes on a music stand at face height, one page at a time. I laid mine out two pages at a time, thinking I was helping, but I was asked to put it back the way it was, with only one page on the top. When you shift your gaze at all, it changes your distance to the microphone and changes the volume.

While the producer is setting things up, go ahead and warm up. read the first page and just get your tongue working. Before you really get rolling, make sure that you get over the idea that you will be able to nail it in the first take. Not gonna happen.

Professor Smith-Mastaler let me go through it once without stopping me, but I think that was just to allow me to warm up and build my confidence. I thought it sounded pretty good, but again, I was deluded.

She told me that everyone gets very serious when they step in front of a microphone. She mentioned how animated I had been when I arrived and asked me to return to my baseline. Find the personality and lose the dour.

She then filled me in on the reason for the double spacing and a trick I have filed away as the most important tip of the day. She read my first page to me twice while I was watching. The first time, she did not look at me through the glass (she was in the production room, I was in a recording room). The second time, she looked up at me at the end of my paragraphs. The difference was amazing. Her voice...well, it changed somehow, and I felt as if she was talking to me.

She reminded me that people listen to the radio in noisy places - the car, the office, etc. - and I have to reach out and tap them on the shoulder, let them know I am talking to them, telling them a story. Somehow, looking at the producer allows the voice to become personal. Who knows why, but it was an obvious difference.

She told me to imagine the story when I read it. Imagine what it felt and smelled like when I peeled off my poopy, smelly clothing in the mudroom, shat the scrape of the cat's tongue felt like in my palm. And again, she was right. The reading was more vivid. The images shone through much more brightly.

We went through the entire essay twice, and then looped back around to the bits that needed what she called "gloss," or a special something. What words to hit, what pacing to give the parallel construction. She gave me the freedom to re-write the text, but in the end we stuck with what I had on the page.

The entire session took about 45 minutes, but I left with what felt like a semester's worth of knowledge in my head and a list of ideas for my next commentary.

And next time I won't feel like such a rube.

Thank you, Professor Smith-Mastaler, for a great first class.

I Came to Live Out Loud

I caught a lot of heat a while back for an article I wrote for the Atlantic positing that introverted kids need to learn to speak up in school. As is often the case, I learned a lot from the criticism swirling around my article, particularly from the rebuttal article in the Atlantic by Susan Cain and another rebuttal in the Washington Post by Katherine Schultz, not the least of which is the distinction between "introverted" and "shy." As usual, the serious scholars/journalists on the topic of introverted and shy children - Ms. Cain and Ms. Schultz - were my most articulate critics and my most ardent defenders. As scholars and writers, they understood my points regarding the value of public debate, ongoing discussion, and continued scholarship on the subject of education as it applies to disparate personality types.

This time of year, I am aware that I push my students out of their comfort zone. It is graduation season, and every Crossroads Academy 8th grader must deliver a short speech at the graduation ceremony on something they have learned during their education. For some, it's what they have been looking forward to for years. For others, it's hell. The deepest, darkest, most horrific ninth circle of Dante's hell, the worst possible sentence, handed down by the mean ol' Mrs. Lahey.

But here's what all of those critics of my methods did not know when they wrote of my supposed anti-introvert power trip: I teach my students for three years in a row, three years in which they learn to trust me, to know I would never humiliate them, to know I would never allow them to make fools of themselves, never leave them to flap in the wind.

Today, after three weeks of writing and practice on graduations speeches, I took all of my 8th grade students down to the bridge over Hewes Brook, a lovely, loud spot on the edge of our campus, so they could practice their speeches over the roar of the water and the whine of the wind. A few of my students were so nervous, they trembled.

I drew a line in the dirt along the path toward the bridge. Their classmates had to stand behind the line in the dirt. Far enough away that the speaker would have to project above the sound of the water and the wind in order to be heard. I instructed their classmates, safe behind the line in the dirt, to raise their hands if they could not hear or understand the speaker.

Every year, some the kids freak out with worry. And every year, they get over it and their graduation speeches are better for it. They learn to project. To articulate. To enunciate.

In about a month, they will stand before their schoolmates, teachers, parents, and extended families to deliver their graduation speeches. I could allow them to cringe and worry and fret, but instead, I do what I can do help them work through that worry, battle that anxiety, and become the public speakers I know they can be.

I've watched Susan Cain - representative of introverts everywhere - speak to huge audiences, over the static of her introversion, and she kicks ass.

I know my students - introvert, extrovert, brave, shy - can do the same, and I do everything I can to help them reach that goal.

Doing the Hokey Pokey

I know I am supposed to be able to tell the difference, but I am not sure if I'm leaning in or leaning out. Leaning out from what, and into what? Leaning into my writing, leaning out of teaching? Leaning into my family, leaning out of the complex details of a home/work compromise? I don't know. I'm simply leaning in and out as I have done over the past fourteen years of my parenting life, as needed, doing the hokey pokey. Right hand in, right hand out. Left foot in, left foot out.

K.J. Dell'Antonia's new feature at Motherlode, "How I Do It" inspired me to really think about precisely how I do it - nay, how my entire family does it - and realistically evaluate my family and professional life as new pressures arrive on the horizon. I happen to have a very supportive husband, but even my supportive husband needs his early morning hours to work out and his evening hours to conduct meetings, so I tend to stick closer to home and deal with many of our kids' appointments. I work within three miles of my house and he works twenty miles away, so we make compromises based on geography and scheduling.

When I sold my book to HarperCollins earlier this year, I sincerely believed I could continue to function as both a teacher and a writer. I am a teacher. Ergo, I teach. I am a writer. Ergo, I write. How hard could it be to put those two lives into delineated boxes? I can teach 50% of the time and write 50% of the time. When I announced this brilliant plan to my employers and my family, I considered myself enlightened and brilliant. Easy, peasy.

But wait. What if my classes are spread all throughout the day, and I can't get away from school? My prep day is Wednesday, and in my experience, students ask me questions all day long, even if my door is closed. I can ask to consolidate my classes in certain hours of the day, but the school schedule is complicated...

Fine. I will leave campus, even for an hour or two, off to my local library. I love my local library. Coffee, fireplace, quiet...

But what about advisory? Even part time teachers have advisors - I already have four of them, three of whom will really need me next year, and I will be expected to take on two or three more.  I meet with them during my free periods, which will fall during my free periods, which are...well, I can figure that scheduling out later.

And what about faculty meetings and meetings for advisory? There goes Wednesday afternoon. Wednesdays are dedicated to two long meetings - talking about our advisees and meeting as a faculty to learn and discuss and debate. But that's only until 3:30 or 4, at which time I can return home and do the dump duty (our dump is only open two days a week) and clean up and make dinner, and once my younger kid is asleep, I can write. Except that my older kid needs me in the evening. That's when he talks to us about what upsets him and thrills him and motivates him. And then I get to sleep around ten.

Wait? Where did my writing time go? And how is my teenager going to get to and from his high school, about fifteen miles away from our house, without the benefit of public transportation? My husband works twelve-hour days, so where will dinner come from and who will make it? Who will deal with the laundry? Dog? Chickens? Rabbits? Gardens? Lunches? Dust bunnies? Toilets? How will it all get done?

I spent an entire week bound up in anxiety attacks at three A.M. and got out of bed for walks around my neighborhood at five A.M., but no matter how many times I re-arranged my priorities and rationalized my personal days, I was flummoxed. 50% + 50% = 100% Except when 50% really = 100% and 50% really =100% and I still have not figured my family and household and orthodontist and sports and transportation into the equation.

Finally, after a week of little sleep and a lot of nausea, I asked my amazing and supportive 21st century husband to weigh in. He'd been reluctant to tell me what to do, believing that I'd find my own balance (does he not KNOW me after twenty years?).

He told me what he'd do in my position, and when he was honest with me, my gut relaxed for the first time in weeks.

I was able to breathe because my gut knew what my brain did not - that I can NOT do everything, no matter how much I want to believe I can.

Two weeks ago, I announced my intention to take two years off from teaching. I cried. And cried. I can not imagine anyone else teaching my students and felt as if I had betrayed their trust. I teach my students for three years in a row, and they count on me to be there for them, to mentor them and prepare them for high school. However, I have only these two years to write and promote a book that I believe in. A book I hope will influence the education and well-being of parents and children around the world. I only get one grab at that brass ring, and I don't intend to squander that opportunity. After I have ushered that book from brain to paper to reader, I will return to the classroom, because I am a teacher, and that's what I do. In the meantime, I am at the top of the substitute teaching list at Crossroads, and I will be guest teaching at a couple of different schools next year.

Parents engage in the hokey pokey dance of parenting and career every day. We lean in when we have to and lean out when circumstances dictate. The leaning out is understood in the press as leaning out from professional life, but some lives are not so easily categorized. I lean in and out simultaneously, and in my leaning out and in, I keep my life in balance. At the moment, my feet are securely planted under this precariously balanced life, and that's the only way I can move forward.

Oh, Say Can You See?

Mark Bauerlein wrote a fantastic piece for Bloomberg.com yesterday called "What Do U.S. College Graduates Lack? Professionalism." In it, Professor Bauerlein laments the marked decline teachers are seeing in student work ethic and the impact that decline is having on the emerging workforce.

I gave an exam last week, and one student showed up 25 minutes late. When the hour ended and I collected the papers, he looked up from his seat, cast a pitiable glance and mumbled, “Please, I got here late -- may I have another 20 minutes?” 

I shook my head and said, “Can’t do that.” His request echoed in my head all the way back to my office. Where in the world did he get the idea that an exam doesn’t begin and end at a set time?

I am both relieved and worried to read that I am not the only teacher who has noticed a decline in student work ethic over the past decade. This decline has not been subtle, in my experience, and when I talk to other teachers, I hear the same complaint.

Bauerlein writes,

Even more than employers, fully 64 percent of professors observe an increase in a sense of entitlement in recent years, while only 5 percent say it has decreased. The students text-message during class, send e-mails to teachers with grammar and spelling errors, and act “unfocused.”

I posted Bauerlein's article to my Facebook page, with a question about where the decline in work ethic is coming from. My smart and observant friend, Carol Blymire, who teaches part-time, observed, "Because Mommy and Daddy will do everything for them...?" and the writer Tetman Callis agreed, in his usual poetic style, "The ills of the republic are nested in the homes of the citizens."

I don't know what's going on in the homes of other citizens, but this citizen's home will be ground zero for a cultural sea change this summer.

This will be the summer of my sons' independence, and I'm not talking the country idyll version of childhood independence; running around in the woods all day long in the summer and only coming home at the call of the dinner bell. That kind of independence is great, but we've already got that going on. My kids are decidedly free-range. I'm talking about the kind of independence that requires initiative and diligence, life skills that enable us to render abstract ideas, desires, and needs into reality.

I want to foster the sort of initiative and diligence apparent in the difference between a kid who asks his mother in a tone of accusation and annoyance where his blue t-shirt is, and a kid who knows precisely where his blue t-shirt is because he's the one who washed, dried, and folded it when it got dirty.

Yes, it's true that I am operating under the influence of the mountain of parenting and education books I'm using as research for my book, texts that outline the evolution of our increasingly anxious and overprotective style of parenting in excruciating detail. Children used to have a work ethic because they were - gasp - expected to work. It's only once we started treating them as precious commodities to be coddled and pampered that teachers started to see a decline in the life skills that comprise work ethic, or "grit."

Despite the fact that I should know better, I have allowed myself to fall victim to one of the the classic parenting cop-outs, "Nevermind, I'll do it myself." I've failed my boys because I give in to the rationale that things get done faster and better if I do them myself rather than teach my children how to do them on their own. While it is true that I'm faster and better at most household chores, every time I do them myself, I deprive my children of the opportunity to practice both skills and diligence, and that's worth a few minutes extra here and there.

Part of my responsibility as a parent is to raise children with a solid work ethic, kids without the sense of entitlement described by Professor Bauerlein. More than the livelihoods of our children are at stake; the American economy is in the hands of today's parents. American college graduates are generally acknowledged to be less educated, less intellectually flexible, and less creative than their international peers, and to add insult to that critical injury by depriving our children of a strong work ethic could prove to be the fatal blow to our country's educational and economic future. 

The Mark of an Educated Mind

One of my sons got in trouble at school today. It doesn't really matter what he did - as long as he did not hurt himself or anyone else - because I know his teacher will help him understand what he did wrong and why he made poor choices. That's the magic of a great teacher. I trust her, I trust their relationship, and I don't need to intervene because she's holding him accountable for his actions, and I support her in that.

She asked him to fill out a reflection on his behavior, a reflection I was required to sign this afternoon. The prompts for his reflection are:

Here's what I did;
Here is why this was a poor choice;
This is what I should do next time so it does not happen again;
The virtue I violated was.

I will not bother to go in to the details of what he did wrong, mainly because that's his business, not mine, but it's pretty much what a lot of boys encounter in school as their energy levels increase and attention span decreases.

The virtues my son believed he'd violated were (in no particular order, other than his own mental processes): loyalty, self-control, gratitude, generosity, responsibility, heroism, stewardship, wisdom, and perseverance. Don't get me wrong, I know he did some mischievous stuff today, but I have to admit to being proud of his understanding of what he'd done wrong. That's what character education is all about, and I put my money where my mouth (or keyboard) is.

One of the most challenging aspects of being a teacher is the response some parents have to the news that their child is being held accountable. I've received angry phone calls, irate emails, and more than once, parents have stormed in to my office before homeroom to demand that I reconsider my actions, that their child could not possibly have done what I say they did. Demanded that I not discipline their child for anything unless I discuss it with the parent first.

Please, parents. Let your kids fail. Let them take responsibility for their mistakes and learn from them. Allow them to learn from failure. This is one of the greatest gifts you can give your children.

Behold the Duck

When knowledge and experience collide in one perfect lesson, learning is transformed from such feeble ingredients as "education" and "instruction" into something more. Something higher than the sum of its parts. Something magical. Transformative. I can smell those lessons coming, because the air in my classroom has that special, pre-lightning storm charge to it. Those perfect lessons can be hard to spot, as they can appear in unexpected forms, of their own accord. I can't plan my schedule around them, because they have their own free will, but if I am vigilant, and keep my eyes open, sometimes I find them underfoot, hiding in plain sight, just waiting to be discovered.

Enter, stage left, "Mom Mallard," the newest resident of the Crossroads Academy campus.

Her nest, carefully constructed from downy fluff plucked from her own breast, appeared yesterday in a rather unfortunate spot.

The ramp on the right is the entry to Klee, the main building on our campus, and Mom Mallard's nest is less than two feet from the base of that ramp, hidden between the azalea bushes. Every child in our K-8 school walks by the nest at least six times a day, so between faculty, staff, and students, that's roughly 2,000 feet passing within 18 inches of Mom Mallard's nest. She's been working on her nest for a while - at least for the ten days it takes to lay ten eggs - and we had no idea it was there. When she leaves, she buries the eggs under her plucked feathers, and the deception is perfect. If you were not looking, you would never know a clutch of ten ivory eggs had been secreted there. It's not the spot I would have picked for my own nesting, but who knows what goes on in the a duck's decision-making process?

Today is day two in Duck Watch. On day one, our second grade teacher, Marge, erected a large sign, warning the children to keep their distance from the nest. We set out traffic cones in order to create a line in the sand (there is a literal line in the sand as well, if you look closely at the above photograph) and crossed our fingers.

Marge watched out her window and noticed that as long as the kids keep walking, Mom Mallard stays on the nest, but if they stop for even a quick look, she walks away. Marge has become our Duck Watch point person, and her Day Two sign reads:

Mallards, or anas platyrhynchos, are also known as "dabbling ducks," and this particular duck has apparently been dabbling in Aristotelian philosophy, because she's presented our students with a lesson on this month's virtue.

Crossroads Academy is a core virtues school, and we (even the ducks) take that part of our mission seriously. The core virtues - prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice - make it into nearly every lesson we teach and every part of our daily lives on campus. The younger children use slightly more simplistic language to talk about the virtues, but the discussion begins in kindergarten and continues through the more sophisticated language of eighth grade.

This month's lower school virtue is self-control; stopping to think about our actions before we enact them, giving the best of ourselves, and saying “no” to our weaknesses. The middle school students use the term "temperance," but tomāto, tomăto, it's all the same idea.

In my middle school Latin and English classes, we explore the concept of temperance through discussions of Achilles' impulsive rages in The Illiad, King Ozymandias' petulant demand that we "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," Macbeth's bloody, "vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other."

This is my favorite part of teaching at Crossroads, even though it took me a year or two to fully commit to the virtues bandwagon. A lot of my prep time is spent setting up opportunities for connection, when the literature and the language of virtues come together in real-world lessons my students can discover for themselves, if they just pay attention and look.  

This month, that lesson walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. 

In Stanford's famous experiment on self-control [this link is not to the original study, but it's funny], children were faced with the reality of one marshmallow versus the promise of two if they can just wait for fifteen minutes. The children who were able to wait fifteen minutes for that second marshmallow had better life outcomes in the form of lower obesity rates, higher SAT scores, and higher levels of education. Self-control itself does not make a kid smarter or fitter or more proficient at test-taking, but it's the essential skill hidden within all of those positive outcomes. 

Here on our campus, our students must weigh the reality of a quick peek at Mom Mallard versus the promise of ten ducklings waddling around our playground in 28 days. If everyone, even the youngest children, can stay away from that nest, we will all benefit. 

Marge explained the situation to her second graders thusly: we get to see ducks a lot, living here in rural New Hampshire. However, what we don't get to see every day is a mother duck leading her ten ducklings across the playground, teaching them to nibble on the grass and find the power of their wings. If we make the right decisions now, and allow her to keep those eggs warm, we will all get to share in the reward, knowing we did our best by Mom Mallard and ourselves.

The sight of those ducklings won't increase Crossroads Academy's scores on the standardized testing we endure each year, but this 28-day education in temperance is not a skill that can be measured with number two pencils and bubble forms. 

This afternoon, I plan to hand the following quote to my seventh grade English students:

"Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power." 

Seneca, Epistles

I will then send them out to the playground, to spend five minutes in silent study of that quote. I will ask them to ponder the relevance of Seneca's words on this day, in this place. My hope is that, if they pay attention and look, they will find the real-world lesson nestled down, underneath Seneca's words, the lesson Mom Mallard and I have constructed on this beautiful spring day in New Hampshire.

At the very least, they will have learned that conventional wisdom isn't always right; sometimes the eleven birds in the bush are worth more than the one bird in the hand.

Photo by Mary Howell

Trespass Freely and Fearlessly

A teacher emailed me a while back with a great question. I’ve been meaning to answer and there’s no better time than today, when I have five other deadlines to avoid.

Dear Jess,

Here’s my question for today: how much can high school age students benefit from a classical curriculum like the one at my kids’ school?   I love that next year my son will read, for example, Plato, as part of the Great Books type humanities program. That stuff is challenging for even the best educated adults. We chose to transfer our kids this year to [name deleted] specifically because of their humanities program. The other option was having them take many AP courses while attending the nearby traditional public high school. I had nothing like the [name deleted] curriculum back in my high school days, and I only read Great Books stuff on my own, many years after I graduated from college.  So I’m excited for my kids to have this opportunity, but only if it benefits them.

Are “Great Books” relevant for today’s students?  My answer is an emphatic “yes,” and I whip out my favorite quote on the subject, by Michael Dirda: “Classics are classics not because they are educational, but because people have found them worth reading, generation after generation, century after century.”

The argument against asking young people to read great books goes something like this discussion from the Diane Rehm Show. Panelists were discussing the novel Ethan Frome, and a caller said he thought students should not read some books until they are forty, with the life experience and perspective to understand the darker, more mature themes.

While I would shy away from teaching Ethan Frome in the darkest weeks of our New Hampshire winter – just for sanity’s sake, mind you – I respectfully disagree. I have heard this argument among teachers, that Romeo and Juliet is appropriate for middle school, while King Lear is not. Romeo and Juliet concerns itself with the heartache of young love, while King Lear stares down the naked torment Lear finds at the end of his useful life. Students may find connections to their own life in the story of Romeo and Juliet’s love tragedy, but the pain of losing a child and the treachery of the vile Edmund are just too mature for younger readers.

Sure, the familiar may be strange in King Lear, but there is much to offer young people in a story such as Lear’s. My students love the treachery of Edmund, the way he plots against the seemingly perfect and legitimate Edgar. Lovely, bookish, kind, Edgar, who can do no wrong in his father’s eyes. And the tensions runs high as Edmund is overtaken by sibling rivalry and plots to steal a place in his father’s heart – or at least his inheritance.

Or what of Cordelia? The youngest child, who cannot heave her heart into her mouth in order to satisfy her father’s outlandish expectations and is eclipsed by her more rapacious older sisters? Or Gloucester, who does not realize until too late that he has hurt someone he loves, and must find a way to make amends.

No, King Lear is not an easy read. It would be much easier for me to reach for The Hunger Games or Inkheart – both commonly assigned in middle school, and books with entertaining plots, to be sure, but they are…lacking. Reader’s questions are too easily answered. “Of all the virtues related to intellectual functioning, the most passive is the virtue of knowing the right answer. Knowing the right answer requires no decisions, carries no risks, and makes no demands,” writes Elanor Duckworth in The Having of Wonderful Ideas.

It is important that we ask students to read great works of literature because, when we hand them Dickens or Shakespeare, we offer students so much more than a good story. We give them the opportunity to step beyond the safe boundary of the known world and journey into the uncharted territory of challenging vocabulary, unpredictable plot, and shifting perspectives. I’m with Virginia Woolf on this one, “Literature is no one’s private ground. Literature is common ground; let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves.”

In the end, that’s what I hope I do. I teach my students how to find their own way through a complex and challenging world, and these books are the maps I hand my students.

Great books are literary proving grounds, safe places for students to try, fail, and in the end, find unexpected moments of wonder and pride in their own abilities. Students cannot approach these works lightly; they must brave these works armed with their own experiences and ability to reason, because great works of literature require more than simple retrieval and regurgitation of other’s ideas; they demand feats of intellectual bravery, patience, and trust.

Great books contain more than challenging vocabulary and syntax. Great books contain novel ideas, universal themes, vivid sensory experiences and complex literary construction absent from commonplace works of literature. Great books teach great lessons. When students learn to ask more of the books they read, they learn to ask more of themselves.

Sic Semper Tyrranis et Aspergillis Fumigatis.

I took a [very] informal poll, and it turns out that people in regular, non-dorkish professions never experience this.

People run up to me in public and toss out Latin phrases, with huge grins of excitement, expectant, waiting eagerly for approbation.

My husband is an infectious disease doctor, and people never approach him in public and holler the names of fungi or bacterium. People never run up to him and yell "Pseudomonas aeruginosa!" or "Aspergillis fumigatis!" as he's topping off his morning coffee.

But this happens to me. It happened to me this very morning, in fact.

Our town's Fire Chief accosted me this very morning in the Lyme Country Store with "Good morning, Jess. Hey! SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!"

And then disappeared into the next aisle, in search of a breakfast sandwich.

And this isn't the first time this has happened to me.

It's pretty predictable - I get "semper ubi sub ubi" a lot, paired with a guffaw, from former Latin students with a sense of wit. Sometimes I get "semper fidelis," which is a little weird, as I was never a Marine. Once, at the library, I got "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori!" and I'm rather sure that person had no idea that they were hailing me with a jaunty greeting from a World War poet, "It is sweet and right to die for one's country!"

Is this something that only happens to Latin teachers, or do teachers of other languages get this treatment as well? Just wondering.

NB: Apologies for the re-post; I've been pretty sick and the words slowed to a trickle. There's not much interesting in the ones I was using, either: "cough," "popsicles," "sleep," and "phlegm."

Out of the Red

I can be very, very stubborn. I am sure my parents, husband, sister, sons, friends, in-laws...pretty much anyone who knows me well can attest to this. When something or someone I love is criticized, my first instinct is to suit up for battle, stare the enemy down until he or she bends to my will while I bash them into submission with my keyboard. 

So when my beloved red ink, the ink of choice for teachers everywhere, was implicated as a weapon of teacher cruelty and cause of students' suffering, I dug in my heels. 

So much so that when one of my former students was given her first full-time post as a teacher this year, I searched and searched for the perfect fountain pen, and then, to complete the gift, provided a couple of bottles of lovely red ink. 

She sent a lovely thank you note - in red ink, of course - because she has to use all of that ink somewhere. It won't, she reported, be used at school, because teachers at her new school are not allowed to correct student work in red ink. 

I had no idea. Despite my love of researching and reading all things educational, I'd somehow managed to miss this entire controversy.

I looked around, and asked some teacher tweeps and Facebook friends about the situation, and yes, it's a thing. Apparently, the red ink controversy rears its head every decade or so. 

My first reaction was to mock the entire “controversy.” I know, I know -hello haters, I see your ire rising - but many of the early comments I got back from teachers and psychologists egged me on. 

From a middle school teacher: "Gosh, heaven forbid we express any sort of disapproval!!"

From an adolescent psychologist: "That is nuts. How much should we coddle kids?"

From a writer and teacher: "Why.... because it hurts kids' feeeeeelings? Pardon me while I barf."

From an education writer: “Oh. God. No. I remember sitting through a PD about this and how dispiriting it supposedly was for students to get papers back marked up with red ink. We read a piece about a group of teachers receiving training in this, which concluded with the newly enlightened and chastened teachers dropping their red pens in the trash as they marched out the door. Gag me.”

From a professor: “… boy can I tell which students have never seen red ink before. They also happen to be the same ones who have a nervous breakdown or have their parents call me when they get anything less than an A. One of them actually told me, ‘I don't like it that you give edits in red ink. It makes me feel like I'm not perfect.’"

And again, from that same professor: "Two years ago, one of my students told me he preferred red-ink edits. He said it made him pay attention, and it made him see those edits as corrections and learning moments rather than just notes that he might've perceived as optional or not important."

As you can see, the overwhelming reaction to the complaints about red ink was a strangled, gagging sound.

But then, a teaching miracle occurred. One of my former students offered up evidence. Actual, real, live evidence. This is sheer heaven for for me, particularly because this former student has become a teacher himself. It turns out that NPR, among other news outfits, covered the red ink controversy a while back. Guy Raz interviewed Abraham Rutchcick on All Things Considered about an article Rutchick published on the subject in the European Journal of Social Psychology.

I listened to the NPR piece, then located the original article. According to Rutchick’s article, "The Pen is Mightier Than the Word: Object Priming of Evaluative Standards:"

Because red pens are closely associated with error-marking and poor performance, the use of red pens when correcting student work can activate these concepts. People using red pens to complete a word-stem task completed more words related to errors and poor performance than did people using black pens (Study 1), suggesting relatively greater accessibility of these concepts. Moreover, people using red pens to correct essays marked more errors (Study 2) and awarded lower grades (Study 3) than people using blue pens. Thus, despite teachers' efforts to free themselves from extraneous influences when grading, the very act of picking up a red pen can bias their evaluations.

I was torn. I love my red ink. I have a large bottle of it at school, all sorts of red pens in felt-tip, rollerball, ball-point, and some fancy artists' felt tips I bought for a small fortune in an art supply store in Paris a couple of years ago. I save those for extra-special editing. 

I can’t imagine parting with my lovely collection just because a few students might be a little irked by the color. Besides, I have this lovely letter from a former student, decorated with comments I'd written on her papers over the year I taught her, and it just makes me so happy when I look at it. She saved those papers, valued those comments, and used them to become a better writer. How bad could red ink really be?

To seal the deal, I offer up the concluding questions from the NPR interview: 

RAZ: Professor Rutchick, you are a psychology professor at Cal State Northridge, right?

Prof. RUTCHICK: I am.

RAZ: And when you grade papers, what color pen do you use?

Prof. RUTCHICK: I use a red pen, actually. It's - I have to override somehow my urge to be nice and kind.

See! Even the author of the study that reveals the catastrophic psychic harm red ink can do to students is keeping his red pens!

Just when I was determined to hold on to that red pen until someone pried it out of my cold, dead, fingers, a discussion heated up on my Facebook page:

From an editor at a major publishing house: "As an editor I was always taught to use pencil, not pen, because authors might balk at the permanence of pen (as if the edits were a mandate and not a suggestion). Now I use Track Changes! I do know of one editor who objected to using red (pen or pencil) for its even more dictatorial connotations--he didn't want an author flashing back to some horrible childhood experience. Also, I remember a teacher once writing "awkward" in the margin of a junior high writing assignment, and it took me years to get over!"

And from my always-logical mother-in-law, Kate, a writer and former law professor: "I had no trouble requesting "accommodations" from my students, but only when it made sense. Pissing people off over the color of ink I used just didn't seem worth it, either personally or pedagogically. [...] The red-ink phobia wasn't my imagination; I regularly heard students complain about teachers who 'bled all over their papers.' I'd rather have a student focus on the content of my comments than on the color of my ink."

There it was: “I'd rather have a student focus on the content of my comments than on the color of my ink.”

I may be stubborn, but I am also a sucker for a reasoned, evidence-based argument. And, as I have been engaged in my own "Classroom Happiness Project" thanks to Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project and Happiness at Home, I had to recognize the possibility that I might be making my own students uncomfortable rather than sacrifice my precious red ink. Gretchen writes about how important it is to "acknowledge the reality of people's feelings" in The Happiness Project, so I am. 

This year, I will be correcting my students’ papers in...drumroll...forest green. It’s my favorite color, and if there’s any possibility that my comments will be more readily heard in green rather than red, I’m willing to retire the red ink.

So if anyone out there needs to dye some clothes or whip up a batch of fake blood for Halloween, I happen to know where you can get about a half-gallon of quality red ink, cheap.

P.S. My students asked me to return to red. Or at least some of them did. I switch it up - I have orange, green, turquoise - the new Sharpie pens are lovely - but my sentimental favorite is still red.