I copied this from eNotes school blog "The English Teacher Blog"
LOC: National Book FestivalNovember 10th, 2008 by carla
The Library of Congress publishes online a wide variety of materials teachers can use. This includes the webcasts of National Book Festival presentations by authors and illustrators. Are your students doing an author study? See if there’s a clip here they can use. Are you getting ready to read? Let the author say a few words to your students first.
The presentations are organized by the pavilion at which they occurred.
Samples from 2008:
Tiki Barber
Jan Brett
Joseph Bruchac
Judith Viorst
Paul Theroux
From 2007
Jodi Picault
Maria Celeste Arrarás
From 2006
Khaled Hosseini
Louis Sachar
Explore the complete list, dating back to 2001.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Twelve Years of Apples
In "Learning in Depth," Kieran Egan muses about a school curriculum that is based on depth rather than breadth.
Kids should be given a topic during first grade -- apples is his first example-- and learn about it for the next 12 years. She would first make lists of apples and taste different apples, and her portfolio would grow. She would "become active in compaigns to preserve rare apple varieties;" later, she "knows the locations of the major orchards of the world as well as their owners, costs of production, profits, and transportation problems." Other kids would learn about birds, the circus, railways, the solar system, "and so on."
Egan asks us to "Imagine what school would be like if we implemented such a project on a large scale." My imagination tells me that the kids that are curious, inquisitive, independent will do well; the kids who are especially conscious about grades will wonder about how many artifacts need to go into the portfolio for an A; and most kids who are apathetic now will not suddenly have an epiphany of interest given the topic of "the circus."
I agree that teachers and schools should make a move to value depth over breadth, especially in the context of testing requirements that winnow the curriculum. And I really admire the notion that you are encouraging the kind of deep research that encourages students to make connections between static objects and the world. But Egan's hopes are not just unrealistic, but silly. What happens if I really don't care much about circuses, but love insects, the topic of my friend Manny, who like licorice? Does the 10th grade English teacher help each of her 150 students go futher in depth with each of the 150 topics?
The kind of 12-year committment Egan describes is more like an avocation. Kids will learn deeply about things, will spend countless hours on specific topics... but rarely on randomly chosen topics. In my experience, those avocations, even in high school, tend to be things like "vampires," and "wizards," rather than "apples." That's not to say, of course, that someone might put together a great portfolio on "vampires," but the number of kids who could follow through on vampires from age 6 to age 18 would be, I venture to guess, small.
There are better ways to value depth over breadth. A teacher could ask a student to read three books in a year about a single topic, or by a single author. A teacher could create a writing class around the topic of a single topic, "air," "water," even "apples," and ask kids to investigate facets of the issue. A school department could have a "theme" for a year. In my school, for instance, the social studies department is focusing on "genocide" next year.
Egan says that such programs have already begun. In Japan, for instance, "students make fortune cookies, slip a piece of paper with a topic inside, then randomly choose a cookie -- and their topic." It wouldn't be long before some young wit writes "boobs" on the slip. At least there might be more interest in that than "circus."
Kids should be given a topic during first grade -- apples is his first example-- and learn about it for the next 12 years. She would first make lists of apples and taste different apples, and her portfolio would grow. She would "become active in compaigns to preserve rare apple varieties;" later, she "knows the locations of the major orchards of the world as well as their owners, costs of production, profits, and transportation problems." Other kids would learn about birds, the circus, railways, the solar system, "and so on."
Egan asks us to "Imagine what school would be like if we implemented such a project on a large scale." My imagination tells me that the kids that are curious, inquisitive, independent will do well; the kids who are especially conscious about grades will wonder about how many artifacts need to go into the portfolio for an A; and most kids who are apathetic now will not suddenly have an epiphany of interest given the topic of "the circus."
I agree that teachers and schools should make a move to value depth over breadth, especially in the context of testing requirements that winnow the curriculum. And I really admire the notion that you are encouraging the kind of deep research that encourages students to make connections between static objects and the world. But Egan's hopes are not just unrealistic, but silly. What happens if I really don't care much about circuses, but love insects, the topic of my friend Manny, who like licorice? Does the 10th grade English teacher help each of her 150 students go futher in depth with each of the 150 topics?
The kind of 12-year committment Egan describes is more like an avocation. Kids will learn deeply about things, will spend countless hours on specific topics... but rarely on randomly chosen topics. In my experience, those avocations, even in high school, tend to be things like "vampires," and "wizards," rather than "apples." That's not to say, of course, that someone might put together a great portfolio on "vampires," but the number of kids who could follow through on vampires from age 6 to age 18 would be, I venture to guess, small.
There are better ways to value depth over breadth. A teacher could ask a student to read three books in a year about a single topic, or by a single author. A teacher could create a writing class around the topic of a single topic, "air," "water," even "apples," and ask kids to investigate facets of the issue. A school department could have a "theme" for a year. In my school, for instance, the social studies department is focusing on "genocide" next year.
Egan says that such programs have already begun. In Japan, for instance, "students make fortune cookies, slip a piece of paper with a topic inside, then randomly choose a cookie -- and their topic." It wouldn't be long before some young wit writes "boobs" on the slip. At least there might be more interest in that than "circus."
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
From Twista to Twain? Tim Shanahan weighs in
UIC professor Timothy Shanahan doubts here in his blog that while it's important to pay attention to literacy trends in kids, like IMing, reading teachers should keep their eyes on the prize. He challenges those who would argue that teachers should be investing much validity in the forms of literacy that come easily to kids. He writes:
One basic flaw is the claim that the skills students use when playing video games are commensurate with those evident in reading. We don’t have good measures of cognitive equivalence across tasks, so there just isn’t convincing support for the idea that understanding the conflict in a video war is equal to understanding the conflicts in novel like, The Scarlet Letter.
Book Review: Galbraith "The Predator State"
Benjamin Friedman's review of James K. Galbraith's book is in the Nov. 6 issue of The New York Review of Books.
After you read this book review summary, consider David Gelernter's NYT magazine article "Capitalism to the Rescue" from Oct. 3, 2008. The article suggests that venture capital will cause spur green change better, and more efficiently, than government.
Is Bush conservative? He sucessfully proposed large tax cuts; he has provided "faith-based" social programs; he has opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. On the other hand, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit is unprecedented (Christopher DeMuth says it adds $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities) and without provisions for funding. NCLB mandates, with exactness, when states must test kids, what "failing is," and what a school board should do when a school "fails." Most recently, Bush has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, approved $85 billion rescue of AIG, asked Congress to approve $700 billion bailout.
The same criticism can be made about Republicans in general. Galbraith argues that Bush and Republicans "have ceased being genuine conservatives because the conservative policy agenda has ceased to be helpful... or relevant, to today's issues." Among these old ideas: free trade, a balanced federal budget, and keeping inflation in check by limiting the increase in the supply of money. The question is what should replace traditional Reagon-era conservativism.
Liberals have bought into the rhetoric of the free market and accept "regulation only where it can be shown that markets fail." Liberals "praise the 'free market' simply because they fear that, otherwise, they will be exposed as heretics, accused of being socialists." They should reject this fundamentalism. Conservatives have abadoned old traditions and replaced them with greed (the predator state of the title).
Galbraith puts forth a different worldview, based on the belief that free markets generally do not achieve favorable outcomes, for individuals or business, that elementary economics and conservative politicians claim. They do not allocate scarce resources efficiently or distribute goods and services to those who value them the most. Liberals must acknowledge the failure of markets to deliver wha'ts promised. Sometimes buyers and sellers can affect prices, they cooperate among themselves to their benefit; large actors determine not just whether they will buy or sell, but whether it will be produced at all; that selers can use advertizing to influence buyer's behavior; that the government intervenes in favor of individual buyers (AIG).
"predation" "the systemic abuse of public institutions for private profit or, equivalently, the systemic undermining of public protections for the benefit of private clients" is at the center of today's system. Income inequality is widening. The majority of American families earn less today than at the beginning of the decade. Pay for CEOs has exploded. A very large proportion of tax cuts goes to families at the top of the income scale. The government rushes to bail out big firms, and to protect their creditors (and executive pensions), but declines to help ordinary citizens. . The government awards rich contracts to companies owned or run by politcal supporters and former colleagues. Currenlty, financiers control businesses, but done care if they're productive, honestly run, whether they deliver benefits to customers, workers, communities, or anyone other than whoever controls them. Democrats are in the bag, too, particularly its support of the technolgoy sector of the financial markets. There is a "new class" of people who don't fear big government, because it supports them.
What's the solution? the government is involved in bigger economic initiatives: how much to invest, the directions to be taken by new technology, the question of how much urgency for environmental issues, the role of educaiton, and of scientific knowledge, and culture. Also a much wider use of regulation, of standards for wages and prices, markets, of carbon emissions, health care, utilities.
But, asks the author, how do we know that the same "predators" wouldn't influence these things? Also, pointing to the failure of markets is not the same as showing that nay specific planning would be superior.
After you read this book review summary, consider David Gelernter's NYT magazine article "Capitalism to the Rescue" from Oct. 3, 2008. The article suggests that venture capital will cause spur green change better, and more efficiently, than government.
Is Bush conservative? He sucessfully proposed large tax cuts; he has provided "faith-based" social programs; he has opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. On the other hand, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit is unprecedented (Christopher DeMuth says it adds $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities) and without provisions for funding. NCLB mandates, with exactness, when states must test kids, what "failing is," and what a school board should do when a school "fails." Most recently, Bush has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, approved $85 billion rescue of AIG, asked Congress to approve $700 billion bailout.
The same criticism can be made about Republicans in general. Galbraith argues that Bush and Republicans "have ceased being genuine conservatives because the conservative policy agenda has ceased to be helpful... or relevant, to today's issues." Among these old ideas: free trade, a balanced federal budget, and keeping inflation in check by limiting the increase in the supply of money. The question is what should replace traditional Reagon-era conservativism.
Liberals have bought into the rhetoric of the free market and accept "regulation only where it can be shown that markets fail." Liberals "praise the 'free market' simply because they fear that, otherwise, they will be exposed as heretics, accused of being socialists." They should reject this fundamentalism. Conservatives have abadoned old traditions and replaced them with greed (the predator state of the title).
Galbraith puts forth a different worldview, based on the belief that free markets generally do not achieve favorable outcomes, for individuals or business, that elementary economics and conservative politicians claim. They do not allocate scarce resources efficiently or distribute goods and services to those who value them the most. Liberals must acknowledge the failure of markets to deliver wha'ts promised. Sometimes buyers and sellers can affect prices, they cooperate among themselves to their benefit; large actors determine not just whether they will buy or sell, but whether it will be produced at all; that selers can use advertizing to influence buyer's behavior; that the government intervenes in favor of individual buyers (AIG).
"predation" "the systemic abuse of public institutions for private profit or, equivalently, the systemic undermining of public protections for the benefit of private clients" is at the center of today's system. Income inequality is widening. The majority of American families earn less today than at the beginning of the decade. Pay for CEOs has exploded. A very large proportion of tax cuts goes to families at the top of the income scale. The government rushes to bail out big firms, and to protect their creditors (and executive pensions), but declines to help ordinary citizens. . The government awards rich contracts to companies owned or run by politcal supporters and former colleagues. Currenlty, financiers control businesses, but done care if they're productive, honestly run, whether they deliver benefits to customers, workers, communities, or anyone other than whoever controls them. Democrats are in the bag, too, particularly its support of the technolgoy sector of the financial markets. There is a "new class" of people who don't fear big government, because it supports them.
What's the solution? the government is involved in bigger economic initiatives: how much to invest, the directions to be taken by new technology, the question of how much urgency for environmental issues, the role of educaiton, and of scientific knowledge, and culture. Also a much wider use of regulation, of standards for wages and prices, markets, of carbon emissions, health care, utilities.
But, asks the author, how do we know that the same "predators" wouldn't influence these things? Also, pointing to the failure of markets is not the same as showing that nay specific planning would be superior.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Happiness, Part II
This is a related post concerning the 60-Minutes story about happiness.
Ben-Shahar says that it's not just those overindulging in work who are unhappy: "There's a lot of unhappiness on college campuses. And it's not just at Harvard. Over 94 percent of college students nationwide are stressed and overwhelmed. And students are paying a very high price for this pressure." I've witnessed this as a high school teacher in a district with extraordinarily high expectations for kids: in athletics, in academics, and especially in getting an acceptance letter to a prestigious college. The problem with competitiveness for getting into college is that it's a game with unknowable rules. As a freshman in high school, you don't know if you're heading to the big leagues or the bush leagues for college choices. You don't know the kind of ACT score you'll get. The ACT will determine if you're headed, generally, the kind of college you're headed to. And even if you could know that you're going to post a 34 on the ACT, you don't know if that's going to land you at the University of Michigan or Standford. So, you try to make sure that you have all the attributes that will shoot you into the highest collegiate orbit -- volunteering at the animal shelter, joining the debate team, the chess team, the Gaussians, Model U.N., and the yearbook. It's the unknowability of the college-selection process that makes it so stressful. You don't know how much is good enough. Maybe you should add another club? Maybe you should START a club? The most strategic students are thinking about maximizing themselves every second of the day.
Ben-Shahar says that it's not just those overindulging in work who are unhappy: "There's a lot of unhappiness on college campuses. And it's not just at Harvard. Over 94 percent of college students nationwide are stressed and overwhelmed. And students are paying a very high price for this pressure." I've witnessed this as a high school teacher in a district with extraordinarily high expectations for kids: in athletics, in academics, and especially in getting an acceptance letter to a prestigious college. The problem with competitiveness for getting into college is that it's a game with unknowable rules. As a freshman in high school, you don't know if you're heading to the big leagues or the bush leagues for college choices. You don't know the kind of ACT score you'll get. The ACT will determine if you're headed, generally, the kind of college you're headed to. And even if you could know that you're going to post a 34 on the ACT, you don't know if that's going to land you at the University of Michigan or Standford. So, you try to make sure that you have all the attributes that will shoot you into the highest collegiate orbit -- volunteering at the animal shelter, joining the debate team, the chess team, the Gaussians, Model U.N., and the yearbook. It's the unknowability of the college-selection process that makes it so stressful. You don't know how much is good enough. Maybe you should add another club? Maybe you should START a club? The most strategic students are thinking about maximizing themselves every second of the day.
Denmark is Happiness
The family was driving back from St. Louis on Sunday night from a nephew's graduation when the clouds massed blackly to the west as winds blew a thick river of airborne dirt across I-55. I flipped on the AM radio to find some weather reports (70+ MPH in Peoria, tornado watch across several central Illinois counties), when I came to this "60 Minutes" segment with Morley Safer about the happiest country in the world: Denmark.The story proposes several different hypotheses about why Danes rated first prize in a international survey of happiness.Low Expectations. Professor Kaare Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark did a study of Danish happiness. He says in the 60 Minutes piece, "What we basically figured out that although the Danes were very happy with their life, when we looked at their expectations they were pretty modest." When you don't expect too much, you aren't too disappointed.Sameness and Security. Danish newspaper columnist Sebastian Dorset, claims that, "contentment may stem from the fact that Denmark is almost totally homogenous, has no large disparities of wealth, and has had very little national turmoil for more than a half century. 'We have very little violence. We have very little murders. So people are, feel very safe,' he says." That security is more basic than being less worried about knife attack. It's also about the Danish safety net. One student says:
"I'm being paid right now for not going to school. I'm being paid forparenting," another male student tells Safer. "It's 100 percent paid for by thegovernment for half a year."
Denmark also provides free health care, subsidizedchild care and elder care, a social safety net spread the length and breadth ofthe country.
The cost of these safety nets would be staggering to an American: a 50% tax rate.Anti-materialism. Americans, according to Harvard Psychology lecturer Tal Ben-Shahar, want it all. "In America, part of the ethos, part of the American dream, is that more is better and the more is better usually applies to the material realm. And that doesn't pan out. That doesn't work. It doesn't make us happier," he says. Intead, American are stressed, not happy, because of high expectations. According to the report, "wanting it all is a bacterium that stays with us from youth to old age - wanting a bigger house, fancier car, more stuff. And when we get more, there’s always someone with even more stuff, who's just as unhappy.Brave New WorldThis reminds me of some of the discussions I had this year while teaching Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in my English 2 Honors class. Our discussions kept running into a problem involving the word "happiness." Kids wanted to say that Huxley was suggesting that a life of sex and drugs and pleasure and comfort and outward.... um... happiness didn't really make you... er... happy. Instead, true happiness existed when you were doing something important, like when the character Helmholtz Watson writes poetry out of his loneliness and yearning. It involves going after beauty and truth! John Savage and Watson seem to agree that beauty and truth (and thus happiness) can only come from discomfort and... a-hem!... unhappiness.
Part of our discussion in class involved ferreting out words that would represent better the difference among various kinds of "happiness": "feeling no pain" and "being excited and laughing a lot" and "knowing that you're engaged in something meaningful." In the 60-Minutes story, one Danish student said that Danes don't feel happy, but content. But then why was the survey about "happiness" rather than "contentness"? Weren't the survey-creators smart enough to know the difference? Even in our sophomore English class we were more discriminating than that. There's "content" (laying on the beach in Jamaica, ), there's "joyful" (riding on a roller coaster, watching Spinal Tap), and there's "feeling signficant" (curing cancer, writing a great novel).
So what about this language problem about happiness? Why, in our everyday speech, do we find it hard to discriminate between "happy-content" and "happy-feeling significant"? We have this romantic notion of what "happy" is... which it really isn't (at least completely).
Are you "happy" with your life? Would you describe yourself as "happy"? To answer these questions, you have to call up some images of people you consider happy. Is your image an episode of "Seinfeld"? Is it a photo-op of Hollywood newlyweds? Is it a picture of yourself sipping champagne in a yacht? Celebrating a walk-off homerun in front of sixty thousand fans?
Is a "happy" life a stringing-together of as many joyful moments as possible? as many "content" moments as possible? as many "significant" endeavors as possible?
It's interesting in itself that the original study tried to figure out who was "happiest" rather than "who lived the life most worth living."
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Summer's begun
Today I created two new blogs, one for Henry (henrydavidlange.blogspot.com) and one for Charlotte (charlottecatherinelange.blogspot.com). Check them out! Here's a picture of both of them!
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