Listen to What I Say, Not What I Do

Yesterday, I circulated a link to a story out of New Zealand about a school that has abandoned rules at recess as part of a study being conducted by two universities. I loved the story, as did a lot of other people, but I don't trust the love. While parents may do a lot of cheering for these posts, and help them go viral, I don't think we are ready to allow our own children to get physically dinged up or emotionally bruised. The post went live this morning at the Atlantic, here.

So...what do you think? Could you handle no-rules recess?

A Piece of "The Lucky American Girl"

A gaggle of the most talented writers I have ever met are celebrating the release of their book, The Good Mother Myth. I loved the whole thing, but my favorite chapter, predictably, is by one K.J. Dell'Antonia, my friend and editor. I am so proud of all these fantastic writers, but particularly proud of K.J. and wanted to share her chapter excerpt, recently posted at Mutha Magazine. You can read the excerpt here. Enjoy!

Oh, The Places I'll Go!

As I will resume my travel and speaking schedule next month, and my new super-duper and more professional website is not quite up and running yet (soon!), I thought I'd post my upcoming public appearances in case anyone would like to show up and listen to a talk about intrinsic motivation, autonomy, Henry IV and his attempts to convince his son, Hal, get serious about his courtly duties, and the research on rewards, praise, and learning. All presentations are one hour unless otherwise specified, most are at schools, so please, if I indicate you should RSVP, please do.

February 4: NEST+m, New Explorations into Science Technology and Math, 6:00 PM. Please RSVP to wholechildcommittee@gmail.com if you plan to attend, as three schools have been invited. 111 Columbia Street (Avenue D and Houston. Subway - F train to Second Avenue.  Sit in the first two cars. About a 15 minute walk to the school)

February 5: International Charter School/St. Joseph's High School, 6-7 PM with time for chatting afterward. Located at St. Joseph's, 80 Willoughby St, Brooklyn. Evite is here, please RSVP so we can get our arms around attendance as several schools are attending. 

February 6: Gill St. Bernard School, Brueckner Hall. I will be speaking to students in the afternoon, but the parent talk will be after drop-off at 8:30 AM-ish (you know how drop-off goes...).

February 21-22: Association of Illinois Montessori Schools "One Voice, One Mission" conference. Parent Night, is the 21st, from 7-8:30, and open for registration here. I speak on the 22nd as well, but it's full and wait-listed. Feel free to register for the wait-list here.

March 27-29 EARCOS Teaching Conference, Bangkok, Thailand. Yeah, that one's kind of out of the way...and unless the protests calm down in the wake of the February election, who knows...?

April 17 Joslin Memorial Library, Waitsfield, VT, 6PM.

There are a few others in there, but sadly, they are private. I will post them if that changes. And if things go well, it looks like I will be speaking at some Upper Valley NH/VT public schools, too! I love speaking at schools; it's one of my favorite parts of this gig. But speaking to schools where I know the parents, teachers, and students? That makes me a little nauseous. 

I will be doing a Google Hangout tomorrow, January 22, at 9PM with Zoobean on the same topic I'm always prattling on about...if you've never done a Hangout, try it. It's fun! 

And today's post at the Atlantic, "Students Should Be Tested More, Not Less," is about the benefits of frequent, formative assessments on learning and memory. Yes. I know. Testing. I will get to work on a new piece about TESTING v. testing v. tests v. quizzes v. the assessments every good teaching does every day to check in on where students are with the material, collectively and individually. 

I Must Love the Little Birdies

I'm on day seven of life without concussion symptoms. I was hesitant to speak these truths out loud at first, as I could hardly believe it, but with an entire week under my belt, I'm ready to shout it from the rooftops. I'm still being careful about how much I write and read, but so far, so good.

To cap off four months of dizziness, memory lapse, headaches, visual migraines, and word-finding problems, I wrote an article for the Atlantic about a recent study that showed kids who take some cognitive rest after suffering a concussion recovered in 20-50 days, while kids who returned to their normal, pre-trauma cognitive levels took twice as long to recover, an average of 100 days.

Then, in a fun twist, I was asked to appear on WGBH's show, Greater Boston, to talk about how to properly praise your kids, and I met the author of the same concussion study in the green room. He walked in, and we introduced ourselves. I asked what he was on the show to talk about, and he started to tell me about his study. I opened up my computer and pointed to his name, Dr. William Meehan, in my article, and we had a good laugh about the serendipity. I'd spoken to his colleague for a quote, so we had never met. We spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how we know each other. We never figured it out, so he settled on the fact that he thinks I look like Nancy, the blonde married to Timothy Busfield on Thirtysomething. Whatever, I was tired of working through our possible social connections, so I took that and we moved on.

His segment on the show was being taped just before mine, so we were on set at the same time, on opposite sides of the host. I sat quietly during his segment, and when his segment ended, he had to slither slowly and silently out of his microphone and sidle away from the desk. It was quite difficult to keep from giggling during the start of my segment, what with all that sibilant, silent slithering.

I've done a fair amount of TV at this point, but I'm still learning a lot each time I have an appearance. Two important things I learned this week:

1. Greater Boston (and many other shows, for that matter, train their camera on the guest during the guest's introduction, so don't do "dead face." I always forget about this, and don't tend to smile until the very end, as my name is mentioned. I think that's a conversational thing. I've watched, and this is what people do during casual, real-life introductions. I forgot to remember this fact on the show, so for a visual example of dead face, watch the beginning of my interview (link below). Warning, it's not pretty. When I watched the segment at home, Ben walked into the room and quipped, "What are you doing with your face?" What, indeed.

2. When Greater Boston does two one-on-one interviews in a row, the first guest goes to the right of the host, and the cameras shoot that interview straight on. HOWEVER, if you are the second guest, they will put you in what the floor guy told me was "position five," which is to Emily's left. Now, even though there is a camera in front of you, they are not using that camera to shoot the two-shot in the interview (I assumed they were). They are, in fact, using the camera to your left. Therefore, if you have a honkin' schnoz, as I do, the entire interview will be conducted as a profile shot, and your nose will be the third guest. I watch my interviews in order to find ways to improve, and I have to admit, this one was hard to watch. I'm not sure what I could have done about it if I had known ahead of time; maybe angled out to my left more than I did.

3. This was not a huge deal, but I would also have chosen a different shirt. I knew I would be waist up, behind a table, but did not know my billowy top would be shot from the side, thus tenting out in such a mummu-ish fashion. I should have thought of the time my father informed me that I look pregnant in that shirt, and selected a different outfit.

Here's that segment, if you dare.

I actually had a lovely time and really enjoyed being on the show. The staff of Greater Boston are quite lovely, and I can't remember when I have laughed so much in a green room. The Today Show may be exciting, and Fox and Friends was certainly a trip of another kind, but I don't remember a lot of giggling (well, unless my friends Alicia Ybarbo and Jennifer Hartstein are with me). Every experience is an opportunity to learn, I just did not know I would be learning so much about my potential as a love interest in the film Roxanne II: The Marriage of Cyrano.

Luckily for me, the powers that be at Greater Boston liked the segment and have asked me to come back and do more commentary on education and parenting issues. Consequently, I will have ample opportunities to commit novel crimes of television broadcasting. In the meantime, enjoy this lesson in how to avoid 1) dead face and 2) unfortunate angles and 3 ) a tent-like appearance when sitting in Greater Boston's position five.

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.

True Confessions

Today's topic over at the Atlantic is cheating. Why students cheat, and how teachers can prevent it according to a new book Cheating Lessons, by James Lang. You can access the article here.

A couple of hours after the article at the Atlantic went live, the following email landed in my inbox. I was overwhelmed by this student's honesty and asked him if I could reprint his letter here as long as I remove any identifying details. And yes, I did my due diligence. He is who he says he is, and he did the things and was given the honors he claims in the letter. So here goes; I'm curious what other educators think about his confessions and his thought process.

Ms. Lahey,

My name is [name withheld] and I am a freshman at [name withheld], and I read your article in the Atlantic, "A Classroom Where No One Cheats." This article caught my attention because too rarely do I see liberated educators brave enough to internalize the malady of academic dishonesty as a product of their classroom, rather than a social pathogen threatening them. I'm majoring in sociology and communications with a minor in education, and I've been involved in student advocacy and education policy since my sophomore year of high school, but that's not why I've decided to contact you. 

I'm contacting you because I cheated all throughout high school. Not only that, but I graduated as a valedictorian, National AP Scholar, Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, and I was accepted into the honors program at [name withheld]. To most educators, my true story is a disgrace to the system; I'm the one who got away. Now, I was talented enough in my cheating to be mostly hailed as one of the smartest and most ambitious students in my graduating class. But the one time I was caught cast a chilling shadow over my school, a shadow that briefly illuminated the overwhelming extent of cheating in my school, a shadow that no educator was then willing to confront. I have thought about that episode literally every day since it happened, and from those thoughts I have come to terms with my philosophy on cheating and how that fits into my greater perspective on education. 

It boils down to this: we are told that cheating is wrong because we are attempting to earn a grade that we do not deserve. A grade earned by cheating is not a grade reflective of our true achievement. But my contention uses identical reasoning. I cheated because the grade I would have otherwise been given was not reflective of my true learning. I never cheated in a subject that I did not learn on my own terms. That is supported by my performance in AP testing. I took 9 AP tests in high school, scoring 5s on all of them except the one I self-studied for, on which I earned a 4. Never did I cheat on any of those tests, because I felt that they were fair representations of my learning. But in AP Biology, I cheated on literally every in-class test. The curriculum and test techniques of my absolutely atrocious AP Biology class were not fair representations of my knowledge. I felt cheated of the education I deserved, and thus to earn the grade I knew I deserved, I had to cheat the system. This is only one example. I also cheated throughout physics, introduction to statistics, Spanish, chemistry, and so on. But never did I cheat a subject that I did not learn on my own terms. 

While most of my fellow cheaters, with whom I often colluded, may not have philosophized their cheating as deeply as I have, they intuitively followed the same reasoning. They knew that the classes they were attending were largely not adequately teaching them. And most of them went on to attend prestigious universities, majoring in the very fields they shamelessly cheated through in high school. 

This message is largely for my own good, to finally externalize these thoughts for another human being. But if you would like to investigate further this idea of principled cheating, as I call it, I would love to assist you with your journalism.

Thank you for reading. 

Update: After I posted this, James Lang, author of Cheating Lessons, posted something about the student's letter on his own blog, which you can read here. The comments are piling up on my Facebook page, and I will tuck those down at the bottom of this post.

The debate over on my Facebook page:

Farm Aid

While I (im)patiently wait for my concussion to heal (yep, we are on week seven now), I've relied on audiobooks and podcasts to keep me sane. As my time looking at screens and the mucking about with the printed word is still restricted to a couple of hours a day, my mind needs alternative fodder to keep it fertile. In order to soothe my heart and soul, I have been listening to some old favorites (On Writing by Stephen King and Dry by Augusten Burroughs), and some new friends. I've found just the balm for my broken brain in the farming podcasts of Andy and Kelli, farmers at Chicken Thistle Farm in Walworth, NY.

I had to blow off much of my usual gardening and food storage this year in favor of work on the book, but thanks to Andy and Kelli's podcast, fantasies of next year's crops and projects are alive and well. I have even pulled the pork fat out of the freezer and will build an outdoor fire later on today to render my leaf lard. So thank you, Andi and Kelli, for sharing your farm and stories with me and for lending this frustrated writer some sanity as I head into the deep midwinter. As you have sent me your healing farm aid on the interwebs, I wanted to send some chicken aid right back to you.

Finn's friend Eli and a sick Buff Orpington (no, chickens don't usually let you hold them like that).

Chicken Aid

The hatchet is not, in fact, an easy tool to use on a chicken. Their necks are very short, and I wasn’t sure how I’d keep a struggling chicken still on the chopping block. I set her down on the stump, raised the hatchet, then stood back up. I put her in place again, raised the hatchet…then lowered it again. I’ve had this same feeling when I’ve stood at the base of a tree, chainsaw in hand, realizing that a job was more impressive than my skill level.

I stood there, with a hen in one hand and a hatchet in the other, looking around the backyard, as if a solution might appear out of the sky. If I held the hatchet with my right hand, I held her head with my left, my hand and her neck would be in dangerous proximity. I’d sharpened the hatchet to a gleaming edge, and while I am pretty good at splitting kindling, I tend to take my hand out of range at the last second, even on the largest logs. But if I take my hand off of a  chicken at the last second, she would move, and I could injure rather than kill her. I really wanted to make this as quick as possible.

The chickens had made it through a long cold spell - Alberta Clipper - that kept nighttime temperatures at around twenty degrees below zero. I’d added extra bedding and installed a heat lamp in the coop, and they spent their days huddled under the red glow. Even with the addition of warm mash breakfasts, egg production had dipped with the mercury.

After a couple of weeks of this cold, one of the Buff Orpington hens began to act strangely. She’d been nesting with her head tucked pitifully in the corner of the coop, looking more like a feathered football than a chicken. I talked to her and nudged her with my foot to make sure she was alive, but she’d barely lifted her head in response.

Tim was in the mudroom roasting coffee when I came in from the morning chicken chores.

“I think we have a chicken down,” I told him. “Tomorrow morning, I bet she’s stretched out with those horrible dead chicken eyes. I hate touching dead chickens in the morning.”

Besides, nothing throws the ladies off their routine like a dead colleague splayed out in rigor mortis beside the laying box.

The sun came out the next day, and I prepared the chicken run so they could get out of the coop and enjoy the fresh air. After the last big storm, I had cleared a large run in the snow and, because chickens hate the feel of snow under their feet, I spread a layer of straw on the ground. I shoveled the new snow off the straw, spread some compost and cracked corn on the ground, and called out the food alarm.

“Heeeeeeeeere chick-chick-chick-chick! Heeeeeeeeeeere chick-chick-chick!”

When the chickens did not come running at the sound of my voice, I went into the coop to shoo them outside physically. I plucked the hens off the roost and placed them down on the ground one by one. As soon as the lethargic Buff Orpington touched the ground, the other chickens –led by Dewey – rushed her, squawking and pecking wildly. She dove out the door and took refuge in the outdoor nesting box as the other chickens did their best let her know she was a chickana non grata.

They stood around her as she cowered and protected her face. They looked like an elementary school bully-huddle. Their sounds and posturing made it clear that she had been excommunicated. Permanently.

They wandered back into the coop once they were confident she would not try to return home. She remained, motionless, in the outdoor nesting box for over an hour, and even when I pulled her out, she ducked back inside as soon as my hands left her sides. I left her out there with a small bowl of the choice bits from the kitchen scrap bucket and went back inside to talk to Tim.

“I have to kill a chicken today. You wanna help?”

He looked at my face in order to assess how much I needed his help. He returned to reading his book without a word. I guess not.

I picked up the phone. But how do I call Chantal, who I have not called in three months, without making it obvious that the purpose of my call was not social, but poultry? I would have called her eventually to check in on her girls and the farm, but my real agenda would be painfully obvious when I started asking chicken questions. She knows me too well. Trusting in her pragmatic nature, I dialed her number anyway.

“Hey Chantal, it’s Jess. Yeah – how are you? Good, good. And Mackenzie? Oh….hockey, yeah. So cute…yeah…hey, while I have you on the phone, I have a question. If you had a lethargic chicken, with diarrhea sticking to her butt, looking all raggedy and limp, and the rest of the chickens were pecking at her, what would you do? Would you kill her to protect the rest of the flock from whatever it is she’s got, or would you wait and see?”

See what I did there? Subtle.

True to form, Chantal was understanding of my indelicate approach. She gets it. One illness can wipe out the whole flock if a sick bird is not quarantined.

“If it were me, I’d give her a shot of electrolytes and see how she does for a day. Maybe the cold just has her off-balance.”

A shot of electrolytes.

While Chantal went on to talk about viruses, diarrhea, eggs, and some other stuff I did not hear, I was contemplating how to acquire a chicken-sized hypodermic needle. Where do you even give chickens a shot? If it were Finn, I’d do it in the thigh, but…

“Oh, a fox? Really? Did you shoot it?” I dipped back into the conversation.

Maybe Tim could pick up a spare needle at his clinic…or maybe Tom, the vet down the road could….

“Ummmm…so yeah. I’ll just give her that shot – hey, question - if I don’t have the stuff to give a shot, can I just put some Gatorade-type drink in her water?” I asked, casually.

There was silence on Chantal’s end of the line.

“That’s what I meant. What did you think I meant?”

Doh.

I dug around in the pantry until I found a cellophane-wrapped package of various electrolyte powders. I found three envelopes – a pre-race mix, a workout mix, and a post-race mix.

They all claim to contain distinct blends of electrolytes, protein, carbohydrates and other magical high-tech ingredients. The lemon-lime pre-race blend claims to intensify the workout, enhance performance, and delay the onset of muscle fatigue. The workout blend has all sorts of -ose words – glucose, fructose, mentos - that promise muscular endurance and energy. Finally, the post-race blend claims to speed muscle recovery and replenish glycogen stores.

But how to choose? I want to sustain her energy levels, but what if she needs protein and glycogen replenishment? I don’t know if she has muscle aches, but all that fleeing from her coop mates must have her feeling fatigued. In the end, I went for the post-race mix, in case she needs the antioxidants, carbohydrates, and protein. It was more of a crap-shoot than any sort of educated decision. I dissolved the tang-orange contents into her water and took it into the coop. She was perched on the roost next to the other chickens, something I chose to interpret as a good sign.

The next day, the sick hen was still up on the roost with her flock mates, in the coveted spot under the heat lamp. Maybe the electrolytes were just what she needed to feel like her old self again. I was rather proud of myself, truth be told. As I stood there gazing at my feathered wards in a haze of self-congratulation, she let loose with a dribble of diarrhea and I noticed when it pooled under the roost that it had blood in it. I put on some latex gloves from the first aid kit, plucked her off of her roost and put her down near the water so at least she’d have a chance to drink the tangy, healing elixir. I had to give it a shot, anyway.

The second I let go of her, the other chickens set upon her and pecked her until she ran out the open door and into the outdoor laying box in an exact re-enactment of the previous day’s events. I looked at her cowering form with my most objective eye, and I had to admit that she looked pretty bad – her feathers had lost their luster and were rumpled, all cattywompus and hectic, tufted up and stuck to each other. Her movements were weak, and her eyes were dull.

I sighed and went back into the garage to retrieve the hatchet from its nail on the wall. I put the hatchet in my pocket, tucked the hen under my arm, and walked out toward the wood-splitting stump. I cleared the snow off of the stump with my free hand so the hen could lie on her side without having to put her head in the snow. I placed her down on the stump in order to get my hatchet out of my pocket. She sat, very still, and utterly silent. Chickens tend to keep up a stream, of little clucks and sighs, but I had not heard her make a sound in days.

I lay her down on her side, stretched out her neck, and held my hand over her head.

No matter how many times I composed myself and committed to the act, something felt wrong. I’d prepare, lay her on her side, raise the hatchet, then stand up again. Straighten her body out, put my hand over her head, raise the hatchet…and stand up. But then, after two attempts, I looked down at her. She looked halfway dead as it was, still lying on her side where I’d placed her, one eye staring up at the sky. I took a breath, put my hand back over her head, and took a mighty whack with the hatchet. I severed the spinal cord on the first blow, but I hacked away twice more, just to make sure she was no longer suffering.

Normal, healthy chickens flap freakishly and messily after decapitation, spraying blood and feathers everywhere. This chicken barely twitched. I just don’t think there was much fight left in her, and as I stood there waiting for the death twitches to cease, I was sure I’d done the right thing.

It’s unwise – nay, insane – to eat meat from an animal that’s been ill, so I threw her limp body deep into the woods. It sank into the fluffy, deep snow. Days later, there were dozens of little footsteps in the snow around the crater her body had created as it had cooled.

Back in the coop, the five remaining ladies have resumed laying, and I have been planning for future generations of my flock. It’s been precisely one year since this flock arrived via the U.S. Postal Service, and as much as I love my heritage breed hens, I won’t be ordering chicks by mail this year. I like the looks and health of Dewey and my five remaining hens, so I will be hatching some of our fertile eggs to see what emerges. Dewey is half Spangled Sussex, and I think he will mix nicely with my Buff Orpington, Silver-Laced Wyandottes, and Black Australorps.

Twenty-one days from now, I hope to watch the future of the flock hatch from our own eggs. Last year, the chickens came first, but this year, it all begins with the eggs.