"The Clock Made of Confetti" by Michael Salcman



I'm not a very good with waiting. So having a desire to read this collection,
The Clock Made of Confetti by Michael Salcman,
( who I will confess to writing even BEFORE I read his work)
I was seriously irked when it took several weeks to arrive. Coming home after a 1st grade "Open House" last evening, wheezing and still struggling with such virulent on-going infection from my lingering worsening two month nightmare chest stuff, of course it was there sitting on the wing chair inviting me to be my other self. Invitation to sit to be the woman self that isn't holding tiny hands and singing silly songs about Polka Dots, signing "A You're Adorable" while giving the "eye" to someone about to snatch their 5th raison oatmeal cookie after a serious discussion of "fair shares" in the earlier day.

So I became Sarah again, not a Mrs. Whomever that quotes rules and praises our little gentleman for manners, wondering how I ever will survive another year of talking duck rhymes in front of parents newly immigrant who look at me as if I have grown another head. Stepping away from one world into another into another finds its way into this book by Michael Salcman.

I found after curling up last night in my fuzzy green blanket, with cold medicines from one end of the chair to the other, wheezing, it seemed better that things happen when they happen. You cannot rush art into form, or expectation into bringing you a volume of poems so very interior. I felt my thoughts emerging from the brain matter this poet knows so well, despite the day's chaos and demands. I had not expected that journey at all. I truthfully appreciated this beyond words.

I did stay up last night alone reading, thinking of how it must be to carry his realities, medical, surgical, knowledge of all that he can and cannot do in managing life, along with the beauty and appreciation of art which is a kind of place where I am keeping, combined with the desires, dreams, feelings of a man. I thought about how much his poetry pulsates and lifts. And considered pieces of the works just for their searing beat. Sometimes when I read I can work to wholeness; sometimes rather like meeting a new person, I'm captured by nuances and bits, pieces that will slowly in time build into an understanding. I'll hang up in text on a finger inserted into a heart chamber or the "suicidal forsythia" as I come to know of the ranges and connections. At any rate this was how it was last evening.

So this "review" which is just a few thoughts... is written after my initial read...long before I am finished, but when I'm enjoying the lovely taste in my mouth of a new poem.

I like this...no, I almost can't tell you, it is so personal. This writer can cradle the masculine and feminine and almost cause me to blush reading. "Afterwards, I smell you like hot butter rising from my thighs, my hand pollinated with your musk.." That affects you late in the night silences; in my days I can push those connections away...but...

These kinds of images root. Maybe it was the evening, the darkening of a long week, maybe loneliness or the spring...or a private personal hope we carry for completing. A 1st grade teacher isn't allowed this line of exploration in working life. Those pieces were speaking to me last night as soft whispers. He can write of some skin caressing touch, amid very visceral and personal story. I think Dr. Salcman has crossed into a place of art and mind, spirit and emotional charge that grinds in with its headiness, it's a book to hold and read and return to caress with contemplation. It really is.

There is a poem of his mom dying at 46. "Perhaps she did not want to live beyond her selflessness," and it continues, which carried me into the most reflective I have been about my own health in awhile. I'm taken with his words into places I have been avoiding considering, as illness repeatedly confounds me, and forced to recall saying for many years, as I was younger, something unwarranted by circumstances; it just sprang out of mouth feeling foreign-"I could not imagine living past 45". Realizing at 45 my mother broke in pieces with schizophrenia, and my relationship to everything else never was to be the same. I am now at the place my illusions died, as I am 47. Funny. A funny connection to this poem. But there. Life dealing me a sense of timeline and promise of that's enough to live. Sometimes at 47 I feel I wander in this no man's land of being beyond that date. Just a bit like I have to discover what it all was about. Ridiculous to mention, but it made me consider where my Mother was at 45, where I am, what watching my daughter going to college makes me feel, glimpsing reconciling me in a different form than the Mom of baby days, it is churning forward.

But often I have put down my guard and wondered why people dear to me seemed to come with a notion of going, like my father in law at 51 who was compelled not to face his heart issues by some internal, what, I do not know. Said he was here today, gone tomorrow. Spoke in those terms. And died. Disappearing so painfully it was like an ice bath. This poem, The Plow Into Winter, I read to my husband. And he looked sadly at me and said, "I do miss my parents."

If we write what we know then this reflects the knowledge of a very rich intellectual, positive, forward, life affirming person. Serious, sensual. The then and now of a life lived so fully as to be a monument to human capacity. For me just in the bit I know he is that Carl Rogers construct of an actualized being. And whenever in my life I am aware of such a person it is almost a celebration. I teach to bring these beings into our world. To realize potentials. To celebrate life.

He can't completely gift you with what he knows, for it is so much. So you see the traces.
I like the mark of paint or pencil in art, having trained under an artist who had a wonderful surface that was beyond my limitations in expressing here. She had a way to move you with mark. And I just don't know exactly why this poetry has the same kind of heart-gut pull. Actually I do "know" why, but my limits as a 1st grade teacher make me squander finding the expression. Sometimes when I read, say, a Larkin poem, I go a bit into the warm mud and find my foot squishing and the shoe pulling off and the smell of the morning carried from here to there. Then to be reminded of the loss of something, or the juxtaposition of another line, times like those in childhood when a walk like this in the mud was followed by a long day of surviving dark angers, rumblings and things not understood by my child self. Looking without knowing yet. An Appalachian thought of mountain laurel or trillium floods in unexpectedly as I read....... I think of wiping the several noses of kids I taught today who have so little connection to nature as I knew it. They seem so much at the whim of forces too. But their limits seem so much more real. They have no way in to understandings of some of the times/experiences that he speaks from; backgrounds I have had too and realize were beyond wonderful in giving me insights and life meaning. So much deprivation in their ghetto school disconnects. I guess I am saying I felt collisions of different universes, reading. And glad for touching what he brings forward with story of family, his experience, art. I suppose that's a timeless truth collision. At these moments I am overwhelmed with knowing that time is such an illusion and experiences are both tactile and molten but fleeting into memory. Oh I can't even express this....... For some reason this poet has pushed me into reflection that is personal, internal, and silent. I'll be reading for a good long time.

If you have the opportunity to get this, please do. If you order it for someone it will mean something to them. I have a friend I want to have this particular book. Maybe it can find its way across time and space to him in his own world of healing and poetry. I'll keep one copy for my daughter, who will say nothing to me, but read lost in her inner world. And I suppose what I am saying is finding a poet is a very rare thing, like finding a love, when you find it, you know it. And you know the value it adds to your life.
And that changes everything.

Hear the literary editor of Baltimore's Urbanite Magazine review The Clock Made of Confetti on our NPR affiliate. Go to Maryland Morning (just Google that phrase, the show is on WYPR) and take a listen.Click on the archived shows for March 12- 16 (it aired yesterday morning), scroll down until you get to The Clock Made of Confetti and click on "listen".

Read a beautiful poem from his website here. Listen here.

A "perfect lady" by Sharon Goodman, my teacher.
I forgot her humor.

Found art and art made from the things around us takes a moment.

It is almost so undervalued in our consumer culture now as to be considered laughably hippy or some other tossed off nonsense.
So take a minute to recall what feels good as a child, felt good. Being allowed to make and to do always felt good to me. Putting icing on a gingerbread house, sticking on beans on a turkey shape, wire sculptures from telephone wire, felt terrific to me. Being allowed to find beauty in the ordinary, to invent, it felt very good. Being able to communicate meaning felt like I existed and mattered. A breath of this is the fresh air our children need now after the stifling NCLB nightmare of being forced to focus on tests to the exclusion of being able to develop creative potentials.

I think I have found a book, Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini, to begin my re- celebration of Earth Day, with the kinds of environmental and holistic artistic experience building for children that really matter for them long run. It is a book with powerful message embedded in happiness, common sense and just good art educational principles refined through many years. All of Cathy Weisman Topal's books on children and art are the best out there to teach a teacher or parent what we are doing in working and living with our children. Every parent needs them and every teacher. Children deserve the training they give and this process reflects the best of the best out with it's ties to Reggio Emilia, which incidentally lived in process in this country in the lives of children in the 70's. My art teacher, Sharon Goodman easily could have authored this text.
And as an aside I CAN LINK TO MY TEACHER THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING FOR ME.

I took a long minute reading this with such personal joy and gratification today to become again in touch with my younger self, my better self, my childhood days where I invented every chance I got or looked at life with a kind of open sincerity and a desire to make and do. It hasn't left me, obviously I am teaching now from those early values. So when opening this book for a moment I thought, oh it's long ago and far away. Almost cried thinking of the days when I strolled over to Sharon Goodman's for our art classes and created from everything found. A time when collage meant you felt great for weeks just for saying it. Yeah the 60's never died for me either.

And as I turned the pages today taking a brief rest and planned for 1st grade teaching next week, I began to re-love all my junk, my saving, my storing. As an art teacher, credentialed and degreed in art and in education teaching in primary in southern, CA in a school as devoid of making and art aesthetic as I have seen, aside from deep inside South Central where it was a little worse, one of my purposes is developing art for students as a working constrcution tool to bridge to meanings. Creation blooms in strange ways and this book is going to be used planning after school art projects. My program is several weeks underway. I am older and tired but this re-invigorates you even after an operation which you simply did and hit the ground running 2 weeks later....so let me see. The book discusses noticing, observing, finding, looking aesthetically at found pieces and found things. These are collected and brought to the school where the text talks about ordering principles, seeing form, and the art process inner dialogs (I believe you say "meta cognition" now), talking of working through the process of re-invention from this found thing. From this point of observation the student is going towards this other place of reinvention..to a work of art, creation of beauty. We better understand that process or how will we re-create this pretty darn messed up world?

Listen to this Topal quote early in her book after children have brought in found things from home to begin the process of working towards creating many varied projects. I think this ownership in bringing from the child's home, their place, their finding, this piece of recycling things from home, and collecting there first is such a strong one...an empowerment tool. But then this leads into:

"Noticing, Sorting, Collecting
After watching children pick out and study one item from another-commenting on it, guessing what it is and where it came from-it is clear that the children's main interest is in looking, feeling, comparing, describing, contrasting and exchanging observations with one another. They are really not interested in making anything yet.

By standing back, observing, and recording the children's discussions, teachers learn that children have unique and unexpected ways of organizing and catagorizing and describing-ways adults may not have even considered. Being open and attentive to the fresh and unusual ways in which children think is to be open to new ideas. This is one of the ways in which adults can learn from children. But these moments often pass, unnoticed or forgotten, if not recorded."

Let me talk about that for a minute. Right now our students are invested all day in test prep. Period. A nation-wide insanity, leading, I think to possible critical loss of something that has made our nation singularly strong. We have lost ourselves to some test based "see what my kids scored" competitive nonsense and the desire for a million dollar child. It's as if we forgot the lessons of our own childhood and where we found our joy, the thing given us to fuel our life and bring it meaning. And we are taking our children as far from psychological health and happiness schemas as they can go before some kind of psychosis will set in. You can't do this as a teacher without speaking, noticing, seeing the repercussions sitting in your room worried, acting out, feeling stupid or wrong relative to whatever is the test definition of the day..... I see it close up in teaching Under performing children as creative projects are jettisoned, they can't even be happy in art. Do you understand how serious this is when giving effort to art is hard for them?

Sarcasm, freezing, inhibition in risking to think are running so high as I listen teaching after school art there are days I force myself to remain steady and tranquil. In testing regimens these things called imitation and teacher direction are being sold to our kids as academic rigor. It's appalling. That's it with rigid teacher control. Teacher directs, students do. No thoughts deviate, children are in monkey see, monkey do mode.... So the limits of your teacher (for a student) are in a very real way are your personal limits forever. There is no appreciation or "allowing" divergence, no room to create, no give of self, no self direction. The result is you go to teach art after school and kids are unlike any I've ever encountered, fearful, burning through things, unable to see subtlety, awkward, clumsy in form. Also unable to listen to you talk to this process....so you get work that lacks aesthetic construction. Oh...I thought, I am thinking... oh no..., I can't change the child can only change myself in relationship to the child. So I have to back up and teach design principles, how to see, what is art. They just haven't had it.

All of Weisman Topal's books do this. They help me put my feet back on this good earth the way Susan Ohanian puts my feet back on this earth. The way Nell Noddings does. The way Doug Noon and Mark Ahlness and his wonderful The Earth Day Groceries project does. Oh yes, children, yes, I remember. It's about you. I remember what good teaching is. I am remembering my love of working with those who see the lights burning. The potentials that we are gifted to steer. The importance of what we do is...... it's process.... Adults have failed to get to these meaning too much in recent test prep nonsense. These must be children who can make, they have to make the future.

I know the found material Topal is presenting true to experiences in classroom that "work". Well, I've lived it. We had no money to buy in schools, so we "found" for one thing. And used this making in thematic and Whole Language projects. I'm not apologizing for that no matter the political ramifications. But I could fall down on my knees and kiss her feet for this book. Because I have no one, no one, to talk to about this and this, my dear reader, is the all of teaching a child the art of seeing. I know this observational piece described here very well is the foundation that art can give to the budding scientist. We are looking at the world under a lens or a set of glasses as little artists. A set of glasses that is tuned to what works, how to organize, how to measure, how to work with choices, observe results, re try an idea, accept and work out of problems, view making as problem solving.

Listen to this observation from her text. Here she is commenting on teaching after a stage where children are processing their found pieces, looking at them , sorting out groups they feel go together, playing if you will with the group collections, a stage moving them into other aesthetic dialogs and considerations:

"Teaching is learning
It is a learning experience for us to watch this exploration take place. The children are totally absorbed by all the treasures. The tone in the room changes to a quiet hum. The little set ups that children create are varied and inventive. Some children choose only a few items and stop. Some keep going and going until their entire (sorting) pages are full. Some children are so involved in looking at the materials that they never get around to arranging at all-and this is all right! We discovered so many exciting and interesting things about children's interests, intelligence, and ways of working-and about our own insecurities by standing back and observing."

All of this rich material is discussed through out the chapters. So then the book relates exploring found materials, using "universal" design principals , story telling through making which is just a powerful part of the book, if you have worked with the young you know they will be talking their concepts and projects. When I was in art training I used to sit and record what the children said at these times, something that has never left me. Their decisions, their finding relationships just can be very humor filled and insightful. Picasso got it. . As children talk the work they engage in visual metaphor making. See this for the power it holds as the child invents, he or she creates the story of what they are doing. It is another kind of place bound in language now tied to making and this thing they hold. It is this process that is the connection of mind to reality. It is for me the science. Perhaps another doesn't understand but i just hear hypothesis and trial and error when I'm recording their thoughts. This is the earth...child...art.....meaning making connection.
She slides this into become sensitized to "listening" to the child in creation...my most valued role is simply a listener as the room begins to generate objects and images. Always.
And then...you go forward into your role. As teacher carefully you make observations.."I like this" ...or "that works". You ask questions and everyone is a listener to the answers given, group constructions of meaning found in this room, in this time , in this place which is the true meaning of the making.

Here my art teacher of old springs through my being reappearing working with children again. Less is more. The teacher role is an art.

I love the talk about grouping and collecting the materials incidentally. The sensualist in me is captivated by the pictures in her book (absolutely perfect pictures)...things in luscious trays awaiting an organizer and a story with children so glad to assist.

I made Fandango-esque puppets with my group Friday..we too slid into chaos and out again as you do in making and I felt anxiety levels rise and fall. My task was to gather things I heard the children say, record them, things to bring up as we talked of what we made later. In my hearing I'm telling the children essentially, listen in your words I hear important and valuable information. And we had several beautiful products...better products, ones we could talk about and use to re-inspire better work. It is absolutely wonderful to see a child take a handful of blue feathers and turn it into the best blue chicken puppet I've ever seen made. It was royal blue with the bright orange feet and beak. Color selection, his self dialog, all a part of things recorded. When I asked why a blue chicken he said, "I can do it because in art i can change reality." Yes, little man we can.


This book such a help in setting up my thinking about what was working right Friday and what way to go. My Gosh will the world just wake up to these kinds of truths please. It's the language of childhood.

There is at section on constructing with wood scraps. I know this from childhood when Sharon brought the scraps from the lumberyard and we sorted and constructed. I still have mine today 40 years later glued together looking like a Stella. I just think truthfully that this sculpture process combined with drawing these forms is invaluable. The book writes of sorting the forms, noticing the basic constructs. Imagine not a ditto with a name of a sphere or cone or polygon, but actually looking, naming , drawing and then eventually working toward linking and building with the pieces. Larger, smaller, balance, and practicalities like gluing and affixing...soon you are helping a child into being your budding construction engineer. Thinking three dimensionally is built in actual doing. Don't we want a doing world?

At the end of Topal's discussions in her book Beautiful Stuff she is relating the principles of Reggio Emilia as students draw their wooden constructions and use self reflection in written and drawn language. This becomes a part of the trip in this making experience which has had so many stages. She follows with a book making "reflection" where the process of the art experience has been re-created. With photos and writing, transcribing the dialogs heard and thoughts written down during all the process... combined with the children's drawings/sculpture/found art the journey of making is represented. I liked this, it's why I think I'm blogging actually:

"The Need to tell our story
Telling our story is a way of documenting experience. The process of documenting helps us understand the children's thinking processes, their desires, and the surprises that they have lived through. Documenting gives teachers an opportunity to re-examine why they think a particular experience is important. It also gives them a chance to think about what they might do differently in the future.
Documenting is a vehicle for communication between teachers and between teachers and children. It is also a vehicle for communicating with parents. Parents become stronger participants in the life of the classroom when they can follow the interesting work that is taking place. "

Again from Topal after displays of the entire found process bring in parents to view all that has been done,

" Parents respond with interest to the display. They look at other children's work, not only the work of their own child. They become more interested in the kinds of interactions between children and between children and materials that they see documented in the chilldren's creations, photo's, and dialogs. This is a way to begin to create a sense of community in the classroom. We feel that we are beginning to understand what it means to see potential in materials.We are amazed by the many ways in which we can use materials."

When I hear people talking of the need for "creativity" for schools of the future with "out of the box" thinking I will redirect them to this book, Beautiful Stuff, and this writer's series of books because her language of meaning gathered from these kinds of explorations are the coat hangers upon which the structures of children's real life future are hung.

I read this book to my first grade Friday and showed a Christopher
Plummer video as a follow up.
I'm rather enjoying the fact I bought Madeline sets of class-books
and videos years ago in Whole Language and have such wonderful
resources to use with my Sheltered Immersion first graders. They
really all did think the Eiffel Tower is in Vegas, but I won't go
into all the confusion the casinos have brought to my spring attempts
to teach the landmarks of the world.

Using books and maps, experiences with video and song, food and
visitors I try to build global awareness. Madeline is such a wonderful
series as she goes to London, New York and the Wild West and just all
over. And this series has things I need in teaching reading, rhymes,
pattern, interest and motivation plus a charming female model of
bravery and wit. Bemelman's made a lovely series. Of all of the
versions this one and The Bad Hat (about that irrepressible Pepito)
are my favorites.

My love of this particular story is multi-fold. First Madeline falls
in the canal showing her spunk. A teacher loves this if only for the
"See, what happens," feature. I mean reading that every year is
something that brings me infinite pleasure. Then she is heroically
saved by a dog. And it was just yesterday a student who reads maybe
twenty five words, he screams out God ahead of my saying dog.
Reversals at this age, that's what happened but there was more to it
than that. Just as I read the book and he sat close enough to see I
could look at where he is in a natural way, as a Mom might. That told
me he is tracking words and it made sense to him (because God might
save you)so he is fitting text to logical thoughts-or we used to say
"good guessing" or apprehending. And then I gently referred him to the
picture and he self-corrected to say "dog". Perfect.

Yes she is rescued by a charming hound eventually named Genevieve. As
a child I was extremely afraid of dogs as one tried to bite my stomach
and did make marks at 15 months. I never got quite over the attack. So
I had to build, as I do about many things, ways into my living to
begin to face my fears and aversions and take on the issue. This book
I read over and over as a child to that end. Pretty common I address
those same fears with first graders with this text. Way to go at it ,
not so directly but embedded within story work. This way too, when
they bring over the police dogs for the demo every year we've already
heard about it via a talk Madeline's Rescue spurred. So that is a
great thematic piece. I love to work on "dozens" also at this time
with their twelve little girls in those two straight lines as we look
at number families. So Madeline moves curriculum. Now another fine
feature is the amount of expression one can teach in animating this
text. Terrific.
I suppose my greatest love is the pictorial work in this book. By far
some of the loveliest plates. Bemelmans has the most charming Paris
scenes from Sacre-Coeur to the markets. That alone makes it award
winning. And I give it the big hug from first grade. I am working in
times now where public education is being destroyed in areas of
poverty under "reforms' and I just decided I would teach this and I
would allow these children to experience the pleasure of reading. Can
you imagine a life where everything is proscribed, where it is all
scripted and everyone did the same thing at the same time everyday?
Madeline would never allow that. And to the bullies in the systems, I
say as Madeline, children shall have their Vengeance.

That of course coming from text where the lovely dog Genevieve, is
made to leave by Lord Cucuface the Board Director. Not to worry by
books end there is plenty of hound to go around. And with a charming
repetition children are laughing with delight at all the night wake up
calls.
Do get this for your kids/classroom...it's adorable.

And I think a little
bravery is great to promote in a world full of those who have very
little in their desire for position and comfort. In the long run this
series has lots to offer a class or home. Stand up....
--

When I was very young this book was given to me, in 1962, at 3 years old. Ummm.... by the wife of the person who hired my Dad to teach- coming out of my beginnings in Madison, Wisconsin (where we returned for him to do his PHD’s and then came back)- at West Virginia University, Mrs. Armentrout. She, also I am remembering, gave me the original books from The Sound of Music when it came out as a movie these were generated. Quite wonderful to grow up with these presents.

I looked exactly like the child on the cover here once. Exactly, which is why she gave it to me I think. I thought for years, and years, and years that it was me on the cover. Of course, making a fool of myself, sharing that tidbit in 1st grade- a habit I formed early on in life-then plummeting down the narcissism hill into the puddle of idiocy at the bottom of the fall. (My excuse is bolstered by my mom commenting she always told me it was me-bailing me out a little)

Just thought of this wonderful poetry collection yesterday on a very nice day.

And got it out of the depths of lost memories to find tonight. Tried to order it on Amazon and was sent the wrong book. Memorized the beautiful Robert Louis Stevenson poems when I was little, and loved the photographs in this book. Just for fun a while ago my daughter Sylvia recited them all to me, because when she memorizes it just stays. At 17 she's still got them all, while I'm just able now to recite Block City. When I say, "What am I able to build with my blocks? Castles..." anyway it always gets to me.

In 4th grade we memorized a poem a week and nothing "silly" (my teacher's words). I did Larkin, Stevenson, Hopkins, Shakespeare, Wordsworth poetry, and so many others, because Miss Dubois my teacher had a father in his 80's then who was Poet Laureate of the state of West Virginia, and we were doing that part of our literature right. I still believe frankly that stretching those memorizing capacities in children is one of the most meaningful things ever done. So I strongly encourage reading, re-reading, and diving into the sound of poetry. Memorization as a weekly ritual.

Those that struggle with the task can go later in the hour, or retake, or even finally read it (like written on your hand ha ha) but once you do this task as the weeks go by it becomes easier. Then amazingly it becomes enjoyable. And that never dies. You plant a gift with that. A real life-long gift. It’s the secret to everything. It really is.It is but you have to read either Robert or John Kennedy on why-I ran into that once and it stirred in me even greater thanks than I had for the expectations my teachers had for us.

For three year olds with a certain temperament R. L. Stevenson is the way to go. Later Treasure Island will thrill them again too. A couple poems every night then lights down, and it's just a lovely way to say good evening. Songs get you there too of course. My kids also read a few at sunset, my girls like poetry at sunset.

Despite all the fancy illustrated volumes, there are beautiful ones, I still far, far prefer the beautiful photographs in this book. Lovely black and White, nothing to match that. science I have not seen them in easily 38 years. So I just re-ordered this used. I'm looking so forward to giving this to my grand kids one day. That looks a little doubtful as one daughter is now going into science and has sworn NEVER to become involved with anyone to fulfill her lifelong ambitions and the other is 15 with a father that swears death to anyone who crosses her path before 30. Italian, well, Sicilian fathers are nothing to cross, and I think she is happy with thinking of her design and art plans...this leaves an 11 year old son and somehow I just know I'll never get along with his wife-so that means I'll need to read it to my 1st graders and be happy with that…ah well.

But I loved this book, and I know it to be a life long love.

Oh I can’t resist,

A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)
by
Robert Louis Stevenson

Block City

What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.

Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.

Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on the top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.

This one is sailing and that one is moored:
Hark to the song of the sailors aboard!
And see, on the steps of my palace, the kings
Coming and going with presents and things!

Yet as I saw it, I see it again,
The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men,
And as long as I live and where'er I may be,
I'll always remember my town by the sea.

I like to place on my blog books that "meant something" to my work as a teacher. in Women's history month I've been weaving in and out of thinking about the contributions of female teachers, thinking about my own daughters futrues in school, college. My daughter sylvia wants to work in physics whixch appears at least on the surface to still be "a man's world" but ...we will see. Accepted into the mighty world's of science at MIT and Cal Tech I'm still over excited about her future. One I hope full of the best science has to offer and in which she can blossom.. I just read on Borderland about science, the science in reading...something Sylvia recently commented she found to be a loose handling of her conception of the term. I would concur emphatically but ...no need to open that can of worms. it just made me recall a book. LEARNING TO READ AND THE SPIN DOCTORS OF SCIENCE: The Political Campaign to Change America's Mind About How Children Learn To Read. D. Taylor. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1998. This book was one I read in 1999 and found extremely valuable in sorting out the issues primary reading instruction threw on my 1st grade teaching shoulders. My District probably like many did an about face in it's work in this area aligning itself now with whatever got politically pushed through Sacramento and then interpreted and re-interpreted until almost no meaning is left. As a practicioner I can verify what Allington is describing. Children are really scripted into nonsensical phonics programs that are not bridging to meaning. But as soon as I assert this I have "taken a stand". However if teaching is indeed now a political or a scientific act I would like to state that the feel out here in the field seems to be less than "labrotory". My biggest concern is just how poorly the program proscribed fits the needs of the Sheltered Immersion kids I actually have. These are students that can sound out using the "rules" but quite possibly not recognize the word they just "got". That simple fact is quite a conundrum as basically students do have a recognition factor in play when reading. I would humbly suggest that if this is a scientific enterproiise something like this is not fully addressed by the basic reading program nor fully enough in the ELD pieces . It is all so canned it seldom meets any kind of building towards understanding. But that's just the view of an experienced Master teacher who is currently disappointed with the program's that were "imposed".

I found quite a few reviews of the Taylor book. I really cannot say enough how helpful it was to me. It should be read. It really needs to be read. Again it's worth reading in entirety because her book is very well done. Here are a few articles reviewing;

Today was magic, Jack's music festival was terrific...Sylvia accepted into not only into MIT, but also CalTech and UCSB in the College of Creative Sciences in Physics plus....it felt amazing....

She's coming out of PUBLIC schools in a hood and our life (schools Jack, Roger, myself and all our friends worked at- a part of her doing this) so I'm rambling ..Sylvia is getting lots of good college news...my 17 year old joy...she was accepted this 6AM into MIT. Now for me...this really means a lot. You have no idea how much I value these affirmations. This is just a dream for a momma.
Her dream is physics. Her...dream...you have to know how happy I am this morning.
Jack had a music festival today at Mesa Union. He invited terrific people, professionals, children, singers, players and school bands for a day of jazz and more..I think it's a perfect match.

Oh I'm putting her letter just cause I'm ridiculously happy. And she is happy( this being where she wants to go...though she has incredible options.)

My laptop died(dead forever died) taking with it a world of writing...bummer. After her letter is something she wrote I found on her site...

MIT OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS

Dear Sylvia,

On behalf of the Admissions Committee, it is my pleasure to offer you admission to the MIT Class of 2011. You were identified as one of the most talented and promising students in one of MIT's most competitive applicant pools ever. Your commitment to personal excellence makes you stand out as someone who will thrive within our academic environment as well as contribute to our diverse community. At MIT, you join kindred spirits: scholars, builders, entrepreneurs, and humanitarians. We believe that you and MIT are very well matched for each other.

You'll have offers from many fine schools, but we hope that you'll choose to enroll at MIT. The deadline to accept our offer is May 1, and you'll soon receive a reply form via postal mail.

just a series of blurs, like I never occured

from But I Digress... by Foureyedsnail

Do you ever feel like you're the only person in the whole world?

Not, exactly, like the world revolves around you. You're still a tiny, finite, ephemeral person-speck on the face of an enormous blue planet in a massive universe that doesn't really care one way or the other about your star, let alone your species or yourself. It's not a feeling of importance like that.

No, it's more like feeling that your life is a book and you are the author, or the main character; it is only around you that the words unfold. Though events may occur in between the lines and during chapter breaks and off the page, what is truly there, what exists is what you read--what you see. The only things that I know for sure exist are the things that I am looking at, feeling, and thinking about at this second.

Perhaps that is that same feeling of importance, I don't know.

I felt like that yesterday on the bus going to our band competition; when I closed my eyes for a second the entire universe blinked into blackness. Every car we passed, every little old man crossing the street, every bicycle-rider--their life stories seemed only to exist for the brief moment that they flashed past, only because I gave them my attention, and then disappearing again into the abyss only to be called up again when I looked.

Sort of like minimizing a window on a computer. Where does it go to? The computer is certainly not wasting energy rendering it visually for the benefit of no viewer. It is gone until I look at it again.

I was playing on the bus, what I term in my head the Literary Game, in which I attempt to describe the things I see, hear, sense in a rather flowery descriptive literate style, and see which things lend themselves well to description as such. Certain people, objects, and places (regardless of beauty) just must be captured in words; I feel like I'm collecting things, descriptions of things, that I may write into something some day. I remember things best when they're in words, anyway.

For instance, I remember the thin, bored-looking blond woman at the intersection; one hand resting lazily on the steering wheel, the other on the windowsill, cigarette dangling from her fingers. And in my current solipsistic mindset, this is the only moment she ever existed; and if that verbal snapshot were not etched into my memory, she would never have existed at all.

It is a bizarre place my mind goes to, this pseudo-solipsism, and it can be quite happy or quite sad. It is happy when you see a baby smile, as I did yesterday, in a nearby car while staring at us mysterious band kids trundling past in our big yellow bus. (I suspect, though, that every philosophy makes one happy when you see a baby smile.) It is sad when you read the news and feel that you must read every horrible story, note every soldier's name, because it is only you who remembers them and they deserve to be remembered.

I know I'm not the only person in the world. But I am the only person that I am referring to when I say "I," and that is almost the same. I am one point of view out of many, but I'm the only one that I get to experience. My world, if not the world, is of course just a compilation of snapshots, each one my experiences; and my world is the only world I can have.

Our band concert for a moment erased this feeling of aloneness; music does that, a bit. You are simultaneously at your seat, playing, and in the booming bass note of the tuba, on the tinny muted wail of the trumpet, concentrated at the tip of your conductor's baton. If the bus ride gave me a sense of being alone, the concert gave me a sense of being...I dunno. Not many, just...spread out. Blended together. Something.

The bus ride back was strange. Fog, thick fog, of the sort that things just appear out of the mist, startlingly close by, stay for a moment, and then disappear into the clouds as if they'd never existed at all, as if they no longer did. I couldn't see any street signs to tell my dad how close we were. There aren't any signs, I said. There aren't any.

Mmm.

* * *

In other, less rambly news, I got accepted to MIT? I keep telling people that with a question mark, as if I'm not really sure if it's some sort of prank, yet. haha.

The percentage of men teachers
2005 BLS Current Population Survey	Total Employed	Men	African American (men & women)	Asian (men & women)	Latino (men & women)
Child Care	1,329,000	5.2%	15.5%	2.5%	18.1%
Teacher Assistants	947,000	9.1%	14.1%	1.8%	14.0%
Preschool & Kindergarten	719,000	2.3%	14.7%	3.0%	10.4%
Elementary & Middle School	2,616,000	17.8%	9.6%	2.4%	5.9%
Secondary School Teachers	1,136,000	43.2%	7.3%	1.1%	5.2%

2004 BLS Current Population Survey	Total Employed	Men	African American (men & women)	Asian (men & women)	Latino (men & women)
Child Care	1,332,000	5.5%	17.8%	2.1%	16.5%
Teacher Assistants	920,000	8.4%	14.6%	1.8%	14.3%
Preschool & Kindergarten	656,000	1.9%	15.2%	2.5%	8.2%
Elementary & Middle School	2,580,000	18.7%	9.5%	1.7%	6.4%
Secondary School Teachers	1,151,000	44.7%	6.6%	1.5%	5.2%

"The percentage of males in teaching has hit a 40-year low, the National Education Association reports, at slightly fewer than one of every four teachers in U.S. public schools.

The vast majority of them teach in middle and high schools.

There is little to no hard evidence that this affects student achievement. Male teachers can be just as good, or as bad, as their female counterparts.

Still, there remains a general sense in some corners that kids should be exposed to both genders as teachers.

The steadily dropping percentage of male teachers unsettles many experts, who see the trend as a signal that teaching holds little esteem as a profession.

Culturally, men are expected to support their families and be respected in the community. Teaching offers neither the high pay nor the high profile.

When it comes to elementary school, considered by many the “nurturing years,” the prospects for attracting men are even lower. The perception among many in society is that there’s something wrong with a man who wants to work with small children.

Some of the same issues that repel men have the same effect on women, whose job options are vastly broader than 50 years ago, when teaching and nursing were the two main professions for women.

Excerpt. The few. The proud. The male teachers.By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer Published January 12, 2007

I'm exhausted........teaching is exhausting me.........especially the after school art classes. I'm old at 47. I wanted to put together a dozen zippy things about who is teaching. But I can't as I'm going to fall over and the whole table will fall apart at my demise. However I can tell you that I really have some fascinating figures and facts that i need to put out on teaching. Sometimes if I stare at things like this something comes to me from out of the blue. And it's percolating.

Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?

Words by Woody Guthrie and Music by Martin Hoffman

Rosalia

My husband and I always sang this Guthrie song.
Neither one of us can stop singing once we start it.....it pours out all over our teaching life.
Do you know it? If not you must learn it, very easy to play.
It's my favorite. I substitute Rosalia for the name, after my dear student from Greenfield.
She will always be so dear to me, I'd go into teaching in a heart beat if I knew I'd meet a child like she was, or an adult like she is. She means my life was well spent.

Rosalia used to say, maybe still says , she doesn't much care for people.
And her eagle eye for character in a person is razor sharp. When she was young we used to sit by my desk and chat. I'm not sure if this is acceptable to ed folks now. I intuited at the time that she was a child out of time and when we talk now there is no difference at all, none. We are both connected and able to love one another through time and space. She was awesome in math then, fast, really good at spotting jackasses if you'll pardon the expression, a child that wrote and did all things in school world beautifully but had a clear idea of the different realities. Hers and Anglos. Understood life. And she taught me a good bit about the cultural realities for a child born to immigrant field workers living in California. She is so phenomenally beautiful I always figured she descended from royalty. At least for sure those that were modeled in marble by the Greeks. Rosalia was in many ways like a Flemish painting reborn. Living art.

I remember her talking to me once as a nine year old about the health of her parents. Life took a toll on them. About that moment another child's Dad came to the door to collect his son. He looked like the granddad so I said something to her about this. She said, "No, he's about 35 and looks 60". And this is the part I wrote down in my notes, she said explaining to her dim witted teacher, "He's been working in the grapes picking so he's aged ten times faster, it would kill most people what he has to do." And that was what she could see and explain at age nine. Imagine her now approaching thirty. Oh, I wrote in my notes then, look at the truth once in awhile Sarah.

The field work in CA is so difficult it ages people exponentially.
Did you know that one day she and I were out in the big yard playing and were sprayed overhead by the planes.? Happened. I drove out to one of the vineyard fields another time with Jack to just look on a Saturday. Field workers wear scarves over their faces and wrap up, even in the sun-always. As we were sitting there a plane swooped down spraying them and the fields. Is it any wonder my best friends mom in law died of brain cancer after years working the fields? Is it any wonder that a good friend developed lupus, is it any wonder that another good friend's sister died of a rapid horrible de-generative nerve or muscle disorder? No, it's no wonder at all. And school kids get sprayed. Or at least they did then, when the wind carried.

So how is it that I think of Rosalia as so far from this memory place, she's now living in another part of the country, married working in a law firm....Rosie knowing the lessons learned of beginnings in California fields. I ask myself the question , where is my mind? Like the song I keep hearing in my head another tune running around along with Woody tonight. Today a teacher said of one immigrant child in my class a phrase she oft repeats, "You can't make chicken salad out of chicken sh@&." She's just been rewarded at our school with a teaching award recently.Very good at implementing mandates. No matter, just did it. I really believe if they mandate us in chicken feathers , she'd organize the doing. For me there comes a place of asking why. She used to say pick your battles but never picked them and I think moved on to other expressions. And she goes daily. And I ask myself the question, "Where is my mind?" I'm singing it actually in my head.

Rosalia was and is a fine piece of porcelain, exquisite. She said to me once, not so very long ago..."I was taught nothing I needed in high school. Not at all ready to do this work." All I ever think about was how capable and ready she was to learn in 4th grade when she was my student for a year....capable of anything. Jack brought home a term for me "dream killers" from someone he saw in a conference discussing teachers that the presenter a woman administrator felt destroyed children-she a Principal that ran a successful school...in a ghetto. This was the term she coined to describe some few teachers who see chicken sh%$ and get teaching awards from leaders who aren't aware enough of the repercussions of honoring this. They can't see the Rosalia's all around us. And they honor the dedication of one who never believed. To this my Rosie would say, "People are stupid." Because she surely saw through it all by nine.

But somewhere out in the world tonight a bright fire is burning inside the heart of a young champion among us, she is a shining example of the best in all of us. Strong, beautiful, honorable, fair , unflinchingly honest, able to think. A child that grew to love to read, to hold onto and value independent thought. A child I taught who managed to make my life one terrifically better place for her being. And I ask myself the question...where is my mind? And I ask myself the question....where is my mind? I am thinking of you Rosalia and thinking of the education of children just like yourself......a child of my life carrying me into the future with the potentials of infinite truths. I ask myself the question where are we now?

Found some Woody Guthrie Lesson plans.
Here is a good set from American Master's.
This seemed cool too.
This one is a mapping one.

The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life
by Parker Palmer

This book was an end of year gift June 2006 given to our under performing elementary school staff in Oxnard,California in the Hueneme School District.

I have invested 24 years trying to bring to my job the attributes and kinds of integrity strands the book calls for in teaching children. In my career I've been given one book on what we're here to do (this is it). I've given many books to staff, principals, and friends on our school site with the hope we might enter into more dialog on public education and our role in educational leadership.

That kind of discussion often feels risky to leadership; it has yet to occur enough at Hathaway, my site. It's pretty top down in the real world. And so the gift of a book oriented towards an "internal reflection on teaching" is a very good sign in a rather dark time for educators of children in poverty. Teachers need these starting points to think about what we do.

The first thought I had receiving this book, besides thank you, was that I "could" read it. We had been told by our principal that it would probably be too hard and that we should "stick with the text." I suspect that as a staff we are not viewed as desiring to synthesize, unpack and deconstruct texts on education in our daily lives. That perception is not really a good fit, the staff is very able to read to meaning.

My staff is also teaching in very difficult times, with difficult language, societal issues falling on their shoulders, with difficult issues confronting them from NCLB and the requirement that all students produce results, and most teachers lack connection often times to their student successes. I find it comparable to the Slow Train Coming in Dylan, but I am the artist of our group and often the dreamer. This set of realities and difficulties everyday might well cause a ho-hum at such a book at first..

The second thought I had after a first read was how the text might be reshaped considerably by a person who actually taught in public schools for 25 years and who has encountered legislated reform within their walls and what that has done to affect the kinds of teacher empowerment recommended here. Women are 70% at least of our workforce in elementary and we need writers from our ranks to speak to the realities of how teaching "works" inside the organizational structures. It hit me right away, as much as I loved the words, it was written outside of the role of an elementary teacher. And in a male voice. Which does not disconnect to meaning or importance. It is however something I think might be shaded differently in the hands of the practitioner.

At this point in my career, I need inspirational works. I look for stories of success and the "why we are here". In part this is to offset the difficulties teaching within failures of systems, within peer groups that act out of self interest and self involvement way too much of the time, and in times where it's hard to drag a leader into the position to lead--much less have them lead towards educational improvement and use reform to wisely shape the school.

We seem to lose our leadership every three years. There are many fine and inspirational points made and many lecture circuit head nodding happy characterizations to be gleaned.There is much to help you feel less alone in a teaching world often a Catch-22, reset in a CA. public ed setting. Teaching in my world knowing daily you are asked to do that which is not exactly the right thing and told you are not the right person to do the thinking in the model about what might work better. In schools facing mandates and reforms much is done imperfectly.

The text talks to courage and it is also possible that fundamental educational shifts to disadvantage the poor guised as Standards based education have been closing the mouths of teachers fearing rightly the times we are in now. To my mind it is not courage we lack, or character, we lack individuals who fundamentally are able to understand the bigger picture and who can be our Rosa Parks. Hiring is not looking for individuals of quality, inspiration, character to the degree the job requires. One need only apply for teacher work in Orange County to encounter a Gallup survey to initially screen applicants in which "I plan to write a book" is one of the quickie disqualifiers to keep on going towards getting in to an interview, irregardless of your ability or background. So teachers right from the get go who are there to "make a difference" may well not be hired to do so. To understand the ground as it is right now for a teacher who might enter the field value centered around a desire to help the less fortunate.....well you may need to see what Personnel offices listen for to get through the door.So courage is just a piece of the puzzle. It takes tremendous personal integrity.

Then too, I'm watching fantastic peers early retire in droves. Escaping. We have allowed many fine teachers to be scapegoated, discouraged and be rushed out of the profession. That is a very sad note.

While I acquire an inner voice and refine teaching praxis and center on self, my capacities to explore inner landscapes, meaning and my capacity to connect and make meaning for students.... my District, as are many, are completely scripting our voice, removing my ability to make meaning, dictating what occurs today, taking literature decisions out of teacher hands and doing so to "improve instruction". I believe many use their courage to remove themselves from these choices , they leave the profession, and these kinds of fundamental issues are pretty down and dirty.

But I do appreciate a book talking to the spirit of the job I once was able to do well and once proud of being involved in doing. Public education is /was a calling of the heart.

On Martyrdom and teaching and Women's History Month....

Hmmm……I hear branding of late...was called a martyr teacher recently for efforts I have written about here in teaching stories in an email. It seemed/felt less than positive...

Better go wiki…

See below

A martyr is a person who is put to death or endures suffering because of a belief, principle or cause. The death of a martyr or the value attributed to it is called martyrdom. In different belief systems, the criteria for being considered a martyr is different. In the Christian context, a martyr is an innocent person who, without seeking death, is murdered or put to death for his or her religious faith or convictions. An example is the persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire. Christian martyrs sometimes decline to defend themselves at all, in what they see as an imitation of Jesus' willing sacrifice.

Islam accepts a much broader view of what constitutes a martyr, including anyone who dies in the struggle between those lands under Muslim government and those areas outside Muslim rule. Generally, some seek to include suicide bombers as a "martyr" of Islam, however, this is widely disputed in the Muslim community.

In a secular context, too, the term is sometimes applied to those who use violence, such as those who die for a nation's glory during wartime (usually known under other names such as "fallen warriors"). Outside of an academic or religious context, the word "martyr" is used ironically in casual conversation to refer to someone who seeks attention or sympathy by exaggerating the impact upon themselves of some deprivation or work.

Better Webster for the antiwikis…

Main Entry: ¹mar·tyr
Pronunciation: 'mär-t&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English, from Late Latin, from Greek martyr-, martys witness
1 : a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion
2 : a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle
3 : VICTIM; especially : a great or constant sufferer martyr to asthma all his life –

Wait.. better uncyclopedia…

The Only Good Martyr is a Dead Martyr, Oh, wait. That's the only kind of martyr.”

~ Oscar Wilde on Martyr

A person whose only achievement in life is dying a pointless and futile death.

Also recently, I would say that the word scapegoat comes to mind as some have attempted to commandeer the heroic, principle based, social justice oriented, poorly paid, heroic single woman brand of teacher that emerged in America and elsewhere in the early 1900’s.

And I see repeatedly in my reading....martyr used to label teaching and teaching lives often when a person/teacher/speaker/writer/commentator might disagree with and /or talk about the role of teaching from their particular perspective. As a tool used to discuss and frame thoughts. Thinking today lead me to the body of this article on our word meanings and how they frame dialogs. Specifically this engaged me as I was looking:

....A more accurate description is that the speaker attempts to code ideas, feelings, and images with words. Those words are transmitted to the listener who then matches them with his/her own experiences. There is no universal codebook, so what A thinks of as "success" will not necessarily match person B's definition. Words correspond to different ideas and feelings for different people, and it can take multiple attempts before an idea has been understood satisfactorily. The more cultural differences there are between speakers, the more frequently they will have to stop and work out differences of meaning.

The "conduit metaphor" highlights two important aspects of language: metaphor and semantics. Semantics refers to the specific meanings of words, as well as the value they carry beyond their definition. For example, one could call a woman, "lady," "girl," "ma'am," "miss" or any of dozens of synonymous terms. The difference between these terms, and the reason the addressee will prefer some of them and be offended by others, is based on the value she places on each definition.

A clear understanding of semantics is crucial to preventing misunderstandings. Arguments frequently occur when two people think they are talking about the same thing, but really are just using the same word for two different ideas or things

Those that commandeered the brand..deconstructed it and told us who teachers really are,

not as Daniel Lortie spelling out roles and ways of viewing the job,

nor as Maxine Greene as sited here,

She argues that teachers must learn how to "do philosophy. " To do philosophy is to become highly conscious of the many facets of the world as it presents itself to consciousness, to be "wide awake" to new possibilities. To do philosophy is to develop a fundamental project, moving beyond reality as given to construct new conceptions of reality. "To do educational philosophy is to become critically conscious of what is involved in the complex business of teaching and learning" in all its particularities (Greene, 1973, pp.6 & 7).

Greene contends that teachers must be self-conscious about their role in the sense-making process; they must clarify for themselves the meanings of education. They must take an authentic stance, choose to be personally responsible, think about their own commitments and actions, no matter how terrifying it might be to do so. "If he [the teacher] can learn to do philosophy, he may liberate himself for understanding and for choosing. He may liberate himself for reflective action as someone who knows who he is as a historical being, acting on his freedom, trying each day just to be" (Greene, 1973, p. 7)

.

but others who sought benefit in the re branding process.

For calling the martry label, as a teacher frames their life work, surely is now to disparage and imply lack of intellect, sophistication, teaching quality. It's a tool to an end in a rhetorical banter. But it just lessens all parties. In response to the lack of good pay, and or other social and political contexts of teaching in the society, some folks may feel they sacrifice things for being a teacher. Easily it is not a road to riches. I feel this. Though I am no martyr.It is reflected in the writing of the job.

Others may feel oppressed by bureaucracy or hierarchy or hegemony. Still, a fight for justice and freedom and equality and level playing field for children, a fight for respect, and tolerance, and talent found in children, a fight for what’s right in the mind of the teacher, community, situation, is less politically correct these days for those who teach.. or for anyone in this society.That power is being removed from the two hands and the thinking of the teacher... If we sacrifice, as a society, this old brand for the new brand… we will create more than martyrs.. at least in my eyes...we will create a lot of unhappy, tuned off, and shut little people….who will grow into larger people for better or worse.Which is why I started to blog and tell the stories of the children. It was necessary for me. Not a right or a wrong. As shared story. Just from one point in time and one perspective.

Clearly there are no rewards waiting for the retired teacher…but some of the greatest teachers in our culture have died or been imprisoned or ostracized for their activities and their principles…women and men worthy of our honoring. And many given lives to good works to make our country stronger for their efforts in teaching lives.

If you complain or try to shed light on injustice and injury, on a loss of power or increase in oppression, this does not make you a martyr.. perhaps one can find more eloquent words to battle against the rebranding forces at work, but let us not go down without a fight, rhetorical or otherwise.

Words like martyr, particularly in the current global military environment are packed with overwhelming and ugly stuff.

There are some folks left speaking for children…thinking...risking. Mothers first, fathers, then teachers..and some mother teachers, they need to speak up. Risk the martyr label or whatever….it may be a response to some imperfectly omitted bile letting, but nevertheless, there is no dishonor in attempting to see in teaching ways to make a difference. Speak your truths. It is not an either/or though I suspect the branding wants to push this there...this is not done at the expense of good instruction and quality. I can process views unlike my own.We need to speak not just to our answers but to our realities. Especially when told from a day in the life of the classroom. It's a function of operation within context, it helps to build understandings, meanings.. I think it very powerful to talk about daily teaching.

And NOW the Article I want to copy and post here.
THIS INITIATES MY........ WOMAN's History Month Celebration......

PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE ON WOMEN AND TEACHING.

It's an awesome bit of work.
And Here is Another from PBS. Learn More about teaching...