Well my 1st grade Sheltered Immersion had quite an interesting week.
It's not everyday that your 1st grade year coincides with such a historic occasion as the election/inauguration of a leader America sees as a 1st too. And also the continuation of the work of a man who lead a movement whose birthday was celebrated the day before. That's a lot for any of us to hold. The fulfillment of a dream, the wish and hope for a better, fairer future. My first grade made several portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Obama learning that portraits are not easy at all. I am really proud of the portraits so I'm going to place the three slideshows here, two I previously posted but the first is new and they are remarkable. They should be praised for the good work they are. Quite a few observational and interpretive skills went into these pieces.I wish President Obama could see them.



And these:
And the final of MLK


Our class has enjoyed seeing a new President into office because by and large most children had no idea at all what a country was or what a President does and it certainly helps to have a sense of this in the "group mind." Part of the Social Studies asks us to develop the constructs of town, community, home, place, state, country, leadership, government, national symbols. So this felt a rare opportunity for starting out on an idea. I'm going to be doing one President portrait a week in similar fashion and learning a bit more about that leader. Naturally we'll start with Washington. It takes us about thirty minutes and the work is worth it. I believe by year's end that collection will be very meaningful to my students. If they suggest or parents suggest a particular President we will be sure to cover them. So the President Portrait Gallery idea is born. I know as we talk and read it'll help them understand this idea of "history" and "the past" something that for 6 year olds that is as liquid as holding quicksilver in our palm.

That said another enjoyable thing was finding a set of new books so we could try to learn about President Obama. I have ordered 5 books that seemed available. Two stood out in those coming in so far and I'd like to share them. The third is an outstanding collection of front pages from newspapers the day he was elected. My class has spent tons of time at the Obama Center checking it out. There they can look at, read, color and write as well as create books o share about this new leader. So far a very popular center.
So onto those books...

Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope by Nikki Grimes

Some children's books are read to them at times when they fall to sleep or when they just wake and are really with you, like say in a classroom after lunch at U Pick It Time, and these moments contain the hope and dreams of the reader for the child....yes in a way it is the instilling of this...yes, we do that. As a teacher the greatest sadness comes when no one cares enough to do that or really cannot in illiteracy and poverty or in a state that they are so self involved and cynical they are frozen. Perhaps it's a song sung into the heart of a child as our meanings, we desire they fully attend on some unseen level, and the personal prayer of continuing on this represents is wished into them. It will come into their being as meaningful one day, our hope. You cannot find that wrong. It is the work of the adults in raising children, ever a hard and important work.
Nikki Grimes' text is read like this into children.

This book opens with the premise that this is being told on a day from a mother to son, a song of hope and an embodiment of that being demonstrated as she tells him Obama's story. He is sitting, questioning, applying, making text connection of course to SELF. Just as a child will do with a great story. How am I like him. It's meant to connect to King on some invisible level, and contains other echoes and it does something here hard to write.....it connects. Here hope for future is repeated like a refrain to the child, explained, put into real form as an example within Barack Obama's life.... over the paralyzing of fear, poverty, really the notions that hold us back, and the drain of inadequacy and measuring up is being eschewed. Hope is defined and displayed as the operant within this leader. As an operant for this child from his mother to hold in hard times as meaning.
If only it can be heard.

I like the way the story works because I recognize her poetic devices and I like the way this telling mother and son keep reappearing in this text so that we take it back into our lives, into real lives and into personal contexts. Great device used by a master writer. Don't forget who is writing, you get nothing but masterful in her text.

Now I really like the beautiful illustrations and know this artist from other work. I'd prefer exact likenesses of Obama, these aren't, but even there I suspect it's more off to give this to the thought that it might be many of our stories. It's funny but it calls to me of the lines and stiffness of Grant Wood and WPA artists. I hope fervently artists are employed again to transmit the message of hope to this nation in this our worst crisis in many years. Great work.

Books like this are so great as classroom gifts. We most likely lack them and (at least in CA) our schools are being dismantled through the politics of greed, and now AFTER the choice was made of a leader, it is nice to delve into teaching children as positively as possible about the President. We teach to young children who is their nation's leader naturally. It's so confusing for them these concepts. One of mine happily thinking MLK was now back as the President with a new life and name. It helps to be able to use story, and here story based in a man telling his life in his own way. Nice to share this "how to grow up" construct of making choices based in hope with kids. You know kids in my room are very young, in difficult lives, they need to see successful males demonstrate in their choices hope (and in their lives reach toward love and hope.) Over half my class knows no Dad and some are in foster care with the greatest of difficulties to face daily and from inside their contexts they must spring into good lives.Yes, they can. Here, finally a man does not give in to the inclination to see difficulties as destroying him, but making him who he is. A quilt of meaning.

You have to take that from this book. A song of hope sung to children.
I recommend it along with some reins on the politicizing and deploying of cynicism into the young. They are on a long journey. It matters to know some hope along the way. Our job might be to pass that along.

Barack by Jonah Winter

And use it we will.

Teachers will be very happy to receive this book into the now disappearing read aloud book boxes ( thanks NCLB) to share with their children something about their new national leader. Donate it to a classroom today! Along with books on Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, and the Presidents we study in school this book will help students especially at the time of this inaugural. I haven't read everything, in fact I have read only some of his biography, (that by the way is a very complex fascinating biography), and it is interesting to me that the writer of this book took from that several things. First, it speaks to the diversity of his own personal background, the world in a man. Second, it speaks to his search for understanding himself and his purposes and finally how this is materialized now in his actions, this use of "hope." Since those strands seem important, we understand the book carries this well out to kids within a biographic structure.

I like, no I love, the illustrations. Wow, this is a first time children's illustrator. Sorry art is subjective. The images carry the flatness of Asian art at times, at times exotic strand, at times the Africa tradition, the work alludes back pictorially to times and books produced for children celebrating African American poetry/literature too and somehow the images are well enough drawn and painted to give an appropriate feeling of the text. No easy job. All too often it is such a difficult task the illustrator drops into cartoon. This is going to be extremely useful in my work.

I will be reading with 6 and 7 year olds, it just came in the mail. I'm glad I ordered it. It's not a lengthy read, good for us and it will be a good way to initiate them knowing a bit about their new leader. I am in mandated units requiring we present these kinds of experiences for kids that fail tremendously to contextualize them with a piece of literature or a way to make them real.

I read a little bit about his mom and dad. I have to add here that the writer and the illustrator dealt with that in a way that's remarkable. And for the children I teach they have a keen ear to these issues. They do indeed need to know how to go on to live a good and positive life.They need models.
Great book.

President Obama Election 2008: Collection of Newspaper Front Pages by the Poynter Institute by The Poynter Institute

My Mom, I got this originally for my mom. A person that tells me, as I give it to her, that she thinks it's best to give it to my daughter who has decided to become a journalist...this totally making my mom a happy little old crudgmudeony fact checker. Mom, who lived a very interesting long life (stationed in Montgomery, Alabama in service just as once all this important history was made) and in her 80's has joined me in crying buckets ALL this week. We can't even remotely keep it together. I'm so teared up I can barely grin from ear to ear. But I saw this impulsively buying it for her as a keepsake. Perfect.

She is a newspaperclipper. Now a print out internet paper keeper. We have I'd say 150 boxes of clippings from her diligent work over the last 15 years. It's organized, collated, slipped in plastic covers and nails a heck of a lot of folks on subjects ranging from oil, to corruption, racists, her thing about serial killers, Kennedy boxes...so on. No one can ever get you to the bottom of our rather question needing history overseas like she can, trust me on this. And I add she trusts very few. And they aren't in office anymore. But we have John Glenn's signature on the headlines on his 1st flight. Did you know if you send these things to public servants with envelopes and requests they often send them back to you...autographed...Mom keeps these because she doesn't trust us. The free press she says, is everything.

Mom pointed out to me something immediately about this terrific book. This collection of front pages from newspapers on Election Day 2008 was chosen by the Poynter Institute. She says to me on seeing this word Poynter, "Can it be?" Then followed, "It is really important to us." "Why so ?" I asked. Because it is a few short blocks from Grandma Lucas' house in St. Petersburg, where my long passed grandmum who lived in Fla was. It's next to the Dali Museum, she continued, into the story of how it was set up to keep the St. Petersburg paper free. (She's spent time there of course. I bet they'd remember her. Sorry folks.) Free of the crappy stuff you see in the press now. Set up to protect it in it's work..you can investigate this on your own. Worth it. My mother knew the meanings in her life, our life. It's been dedicated to truths like the importance of journalists and free press doing their job well.

So this lovely, shiny book takes front pages from around the world and prints them well enough you can fully read them. Newspapers, cool. And it's fascinating to see the joy in these headlines of something historically wonderful finally, finally falling to our piece of earth. Well that's my feeling. Obama really was elected.
Gary Trudeau (hint, hint) writes the intro, you can't go wrong if you want something to put away for the kids. After awhile I'm going to get it signed for mom. For all my life she's done this for me so I, and then my kids will have these things to have to remember.Let's hope it works like it used to!

Believe me come tomorrow morning I'll be sitting with some very cool kiddies, sharing this book of glossy pictures, talking about the importance of freedom, the press, and why that building in St. Pete means something to my mom.
Great publication. Great occasion.....I can't wait to look at it and start the waterworks again.

One of my children recalled to me how they had their pictures taken with the President. What I said? I forgot the day we had a cut out brought in and stopped in after the election and took pictures. I just forgot.
Here they are.......




And on my to do list goes that I need to print these out for them on glossy paper. Yikes I work long days.
The children tried to answer what they thought a President was all about. I'd like to share that writing....

The Question I asked was "What Do You Think A President Does?"

ET-" A President has to write well."

EJ - " A President is about learning and leading."

AD- "He makes a country able to make more money."

LP-"Cares about the children, their family and help us all."

AD-"To lead people, to unite us, not allowing hitting or fighting."

KM-"A President does (not) want to fight."

EV-" A president does things in charge."

JA-" A President works hard to lead us and follow laws."

KG-"He works really hard, on writing, on listening, thinking, and showing the world who we are. He is smart."

GA-"He works a lot."

MP- "Works hard, organizes America and makes a living by signing laws and he lives a good life. We try to. He has a nice......He promises to not quit on us."

AM- " He does nice things, talks, gives speeches, teaches American ways to be and stops us from mistakes."

OV-"Works hard in his job, helps people, stops fighting."

TG-" "He does hard work, they think up important stuff. They say what we are going to think over."

SH-"He is helping but he can make war so he tries to find peace."

EZ-using a poetic device-
"He works.
He prays.
He helps.
He smiles.
He cares.
That's it."

Well this is it for tonight. Our next project is to draw the White House and to work on many house/home related projects and some cool Me on the Map stuff. Lots going on in our little class. With a tired teacher dragging....behind. I so enjoyed matting and looking at their portraits in a very busy week.

Yes we did. We watched TV all day thanks to our school helping us as a school and saw the President-elect become our newest 44th President. Wonderful way to teach. Later in the day during the parade we made portraits. That was a pretty hard task. In fact I may do another with them tomorrow.


Terrific social studies!

Here is my snippet from President Obama's speech, well, address, today:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sanh.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today.

You can read it entirely here. I enjoyed Rev. Lowery's Benediction as well.

Check out the portraits!

I just did an interesting thing. I searched "The Strength To Love" on my own blog. Admittedly a tautological activity of narcissistic merit but it brought up a lot of posts I do like.

You can see that here.

What a good book Martin Luther King gave us for thinking about each other and our relating.
Do you know when i first brought it into my school years passed when we freely shared books with one another it was borrowed by a good many folks that never read it? I still find that amazing.

So here is Chapter Three

On Being A Good Neighbor
Martin Luther King Junior, from Strength To Love

I should like to talk with you about a good man, whose exemplary life will always be a flashing light to plague the dozing consciousness of mankind. His goodness was not found in a passive commitment to a particular creed, but in his active participation in a life-saving deed; not in a moral pilgrimage that reached its destination point but in the love ethic by which he journeyed life's highway. He was good because he was a good neighbor.

The ethical concern of this man is expressed in a magnificent little story, which begins with a theological discussion on the meaning of eternal life and concludes in a concrete expression of compassion on a dangerous road. Jesus is asked a question by a man who had trained in the details of Jewish law: "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? "The retort is prompt: "What is written in the law? how readest thou?" After a moment the lawyer recites articulately: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself." Then comes the decisive word from Jesus: "Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live."

The lawyer was chagrined. "Why," the people might ask, "would an expert in law raise a question that even the novice can answer?" Desiring to justify himself and to show that Jesus' reply was far from conclusive, the lawyer asks, "And who is my neighbor?" The lawyer was now taking up the cudgels of debate that might have turned the conversation into an abstract theological discussion. But Jesus, determined not to be caught in th "paralysis of analysis," pulls the question from mid-air and places t on a dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho.

He told the story of "a certain man" who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him, and, departing, left him half dead. By chance a certain priest appeared, but he passe by on the other sie=de, and later a Levite also passed by. Finally, a certain Samaritan, a half-breed from a people with whom the Jews had no dealings, appeared.When he saw the wounded man, he was moved with compassion, administered first aid, placed him on his beast, "and brught him to an inn, and took care of him."

Who is my neihbor? "I do not know him name," says Jesus in essence. "He is anyone toward whom you are neighborly. He is anyone wjo lies in need at life's roadside. He is neither Jew nor Gentile; he is neither Russian nor American; he is neither Negro nor white. He is 'a certain man'--any needy man--on one of the numerous Jericho roads of life." So Jesus defines a neighbor, not in the theological definition, but in a life situation.

What constituted the goodness of the good Samaritan? Why will he alway be an inspiring paragon of neighborly virtue? It seems to me that this man's goodness may be described by one word--altruism. The good Samaritan was altruistic to the core. What is altruism? The dictionary defines altruism as "regard for, and devotion to, the interest of others." The Samaritan was good because he made concern for others the first law of his life.

I

The Samaritan had the capacity for universal altruism. He had a piercing insight into that which is beyond the eternal accidents of race, religion, and nationality. One of the great tragedies of man's long trek along the highway of history has been the limiting of neighborly concern to tribe, race, class, or nation. The god of early Old Testament days was a tribal god and the ethic was tribal "Thou shal not kill" meant "Thou shalt not kill a fellow Israelite, but for God's sake, kill a Philistine." Greek democracy embraced a certain aristocracy, but not the hordes of Greek slaves whose labors built the city-states. The universalism at the center of the Declaration of Independence has been shamefully negated by America's appalling tendency to substitute "some" for "all." Numerous people in the Noth and South still believe that the affirmation, "All men are created equal," means "All white men are created equal." Our unswerving devotion to monopolistic capitalism makes us more concerned about the economic security of the captains of industry than for the laboring men whose sweat and skills keep industry functioning.

What are the devastating consequences of this narrow group-centered attitude? It means that one does not really mind what happens to the people outside his group. If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, and South America. is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of the of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of the citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? If manufacturers are concerned only with their personal interests, they will pass by on the other side while thousands of working people are stripped of their jobs and left displaced on some Jericho road as a result of automation, and they will judge every move toward a better distribution of wealth and a better life for the working man to be socialistic. If a white man is concerned only about his race, he will casually pass by the Negro who has been robbed of his personhood, stripped of his sense of dignity, and left dying on some wayside road.

A few years ago, when the automobile carying several members of a Negro college basketball team had an accident on a Southern highway, three of the oung men were severely injured. An ambulance was immediately called, but on arriving at the place of the accident, the driver, who was white, said without apology that it was not his policy to service Negroes, and he drove away. The driver of a passing automobile graciously drove the boys to the nearest hospital, but the attending physician belligerently said, "We don't take niggers in this hospital." When the boys finally arrived at a "colored" hospital in a town some fifty miles away from the scene of the accident, one was dead and the other two died thirty and fifty munites later, respectively. Probably all three could have been saved if they had been given immediate treatment. This is only one of thousands of inhuman incidents that occur daily in the South, an unbelievable expression of the barbaric consequences of any tribal-centered, national-centered, or racial-centered ethic.

The real tragedy of such narrow provincialism is that we see people as entities or merely as things. Too seldom do we see people in their true humanness. As spiritual myopia limits our vision to external accidents. We see men as Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or Protestants, Chinese or American, Negroes or whites. We fails to think of them as fellow human beings made from the same basic stuff as we, molded in the same divine image. The priest and the Levite saw only a bleeding body, not a human being like themselves. But the good Samaritan will always remind us to remove the cataracts of provincialism from our spritual eyes and see men as men. If the Samaritan had considered the wounded man as a Jew first, he would not have stopped, for the Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings. He saw him as a human being first, who was a Jew only by accident. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and therefore, brothers.

II

The Samaritan possessed the capacity for a dangerous altruism. He risked his life to save a brother. When we ask why the priest and the Levite did not stop to help the wounded man, numerous suggestions come to mind. Perhaps they could delay their arrival at an important ecclesiastical meeting. Perhaps religious regualtions demanded that they touch no human body for several hours prior to the performing of their temple functions. Or perhaps they were on their way to an oganizational meeting of a Jericho Road Imprvement Association.

I spent Sunday working alone in a classroom and then went home at 6 to see the beautiful concert on the Mall in Washington, DC. Wow.
( Plus I'm a Steeler's fan, what can I say?) Loved it all. Every drop.

I wrote a poem last year for the kids. On things to do to serve others.
I think I'll open my thoughts with this.

A Random Act of Service ....is the love our actions do.

Kiss a frog.
Dress your sister's doll,
Climb an Everest in your way,
Give something to everyday
End this in a hug
Or Dig a flower bed
Or put a little spice in there instead

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Drop the subject
Carry her backpack
Plan a project
That sends blankets, it's all healing logic
Go to places where people have lost homes.
You could cook
Take it over
When your grandma's all alone.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Get a shiny quarter
Collect a dulling dime
Gather pennies in your shoe
It not a very hard
Thing to do
Send them over
To someone who just really, after all, needs some more of you.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

You have your two hands
And a beautiful face
You can be so helpful
In this earthly space
Clean a beach
Wash a car
Your actions can go so far.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Bending over
To pick up a spill
Is a way of saying I'm here
For you ever still
We serve each other
In the actions that we do
Every minute of our life what we do, must be true.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Pick a pansy
Make your bouquet
Volunteer your time
There's nothing like today
Brother Martin, he is here
Seeing the actions that you do
Proud of the helping and especially of you.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Make a friend
Reach out to those homebound
Take a bit of energy
Make o' bit of synergy
You can be the answer
To the problems of the times
Give a little love and watch it spin around.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.


A random act of service is the love our actions do.

Sarah Puglisi

This is an OLD post. But I do love my son's 4 year old poem.....

"Martin Luther King, Junior" by my son at 4, in Answer to "What Can Kids Understand"

When my son was very young he fell in love with watching two videos, The Snowman and Our Friend Martin. Both were daily repertoire pieces for him. I thought the Martin Luther King Jr. video was wayyyyyy over his head.

Luca, my son, spoke very, very late. At four. So I called him over one day and asked him to "talk" to me about Martin, his friend writing it down as I heard it. This is one of my favorite Martin Luther King Jr. poems in the world.
So subtle.

For years, years in our family the phrase "love it by all" means something very special. When said, we just laugh and feel closer. I'm sorry, I know it is my son, but the poem, is our classic. The video is one where with young kids you need to explain flashbacks and be ready to explain and talk as you go. A bit much for 1st, but with that adult support, it is good. In fact a nice work in elementary to help understand hard concepts. First the video,



Our Friend Martin (1998)
Starring: Edward Asner, Angela Bassett
Director: Rob Smiley

Now the poem by Luca Puglisi....(at 4)


Martin Memories
by Luca Vernon Puglisi


When he was young we called him RAINBOW.


He lived in the world a junior.


Don't let, no bottles, no wood
No everything that's bad for love.


I saw him on TV talking to these mans.


He was at a boycott meeting where grandma went last week.


His family, his daughter, his man


This man got in jail. Not.


The kids, the dad, and the mother was playing piano.


I don't want to be in jail.
I miss my mom and cry
Then everybody calls me a crybaby.


The boys had dark, the ladies have dark.
I have light.
He said love it by all.


I'm gonna hate her back, he said.
Me too, I'm gonna hate her black.
The man said her skin is darker than ours,
I don't know what. Not right.


It was bad to have punching and hitting.


I'm not going to be in jail for that.


Martin Luther King is not a fighting guy.
________________________________



(written circa 1998 at age 4)

My class tried to make you a video today.
They are 1st graders, Sheltered Immersion.
Anyway it was a special day today as we learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It was a special birthday. I sure hope this works.



And to see it clearer in a slideshow.
I'm awfully proud of these 6 year olds.
We had to add in the pictures of our kids that missed the project so I was talked into this movie version two with Mingus playing this time.....they have come to enjoy watching these pieces. Tuesday as we watch the inauguration, facilitated by our school, we will draw President Obama and Vice President Biden and try to write a bit.



Some 1st grade thoughts....

"Dr. King was important to me because....he helped us to think about love for one another."

"Dr. King helped people of all ages. He taught friendship. If we love we will live."

"Dr. King helped the world. He was a great person. He had children, they had to go on after he lost his life."

"Dr King helps people to be nice. Black people were now able to ride a bus or be freerer trying to live a life."

"Dr. King changed the way it was."

"Dr. King told us not to fight and just be friends. I think we should follow Dr. King because he taught us to listen to something worth learning to do."

"Dr. King helped black Americans not lose their self. And to let us black and white be in the same school."

"Dr. King was a helpful man and he seemed kind and he made America better."

"Dr. King was important to me he made us to think of love and not to fight."

"If Dr. King did not stand up for himself we would not have a model today."

"Dr. King made us equal and he made us think about loving each other not fighting and try not to lie to each other."

" Dr. King was a great man cause he helped all the people cause when he doesn't know he goes and learns it in school and books."

"Dr. King he helped the world. He was a real person. Real. He happened. He had his own kids too. He was shot for his new and important ideas."

"Dr. King changed and used laws for blacks and whites. He said don't get mad and use your fists or kill the enemy. Try to see them as yourself."

"Dr. King helped us to be in school with very different people."

"Dr. King told us it doesn't matter what is the skin color but we are all family no matter what."
( the last Elvis wrote....but I forget the pen names here at home and I typed for them this time we only have one working computer, so this is just their text.....)

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

We all can relate to a bad day. What is the equivalent of this book for an adult?

The Odyssey? Not really. But definitely a bad day.
Herakles had a bad day. Let's not forget the act touching off all those labors, even if Hera did trick him into killing his family raging with anger. So did the guy in Death of a Salesman but what adult book do you go to to be able to chant back to the day with some sass about it, name it, and re-enact it in a kind of cathartic drama where you proclaim it to a group of on-looking peers or family or readers as you sort of shout it all out. Let you say...I feel lousy. And announce you are moving to Australia to get away. Top this one book in adult reading because I need it.
Just what do you do, go journal it? That hardly matches as big enough. Or a blog, I can tell you from experience a void of response isn't filling that need, and it sounds narcissistic. And then you have to write it down? What can you do, read, movies? Try reading this children's book again. It really isn't Twitter...but it is a vehicle. Art, you know...the domain of feeling.

I've been teaching a long time and let me tell you, bad days are very real.
In school even under NCLB rigid controls and all they do, bad days happen all too often. How is that possible? The mandate gives you the pacing. That should wipe out your humanity or needs, shouldn't it? Assign you what to feel. Then validate you when you do it "right." Maybe the teacher isn't working hard enough, or planning long enough. That's what prevents these situations and feelings surely. Hum.
And they are valid bad days too. How unbelievable this can't be automatized away. With enough tests and forms turned into controlled proscribed situations where the focus is re-directed into the learning goals. We all know the power that holds when you feel your life slipping away cause you just got evicted.


Oh yeah, the country is in some bad times/days right now. Lines are blurring. They told us they knew everything at the training, but this bleeds into the room some days. Feeling low. I recall that because structures were set up here to validate and allow people to do very mean things to anyone that disagreed or shared a different point of view about "change" or the efficacy of the program using the behavioral control strategies placed into an environment, unwilling to see the poverty and the issues at hand for what they are. What? No matter, I'm silent now.
Well, you remember the days long past when you were treated professionally.
When you raised a hand and did not have to write your question on a small notepad sticky thing and put it on a poster in the back of the room called the "parking lot" and wait for another time that isn't coming when your question can be addressed so you, you a person, won't interrupt the group? Anyone in another time and place would view that as rude in the extreme, now you are rude for thinking of a way to express a question. No way is that ok. walls might tumble. You recall times that passed before these times of silence in the face of UNBELIEVABLE TRUTHS unspoken. Talk about the Sounds of Silence.
Oh...let's play that...look at text.


What was unusual once when we were allowed kid's literature was a writer came along, Viorst, and let ideas like this be in her books. It was actually at the time rather shocking and refreshing to see something like a big, bad day ( over a wolf or holiday or sanitized stuff ) make it into a book as the driver of a story in the way this worked. Rather like Seize the Day for kids you know?

So Alexander gets to hold the day for the class or the reader to "just look at it." Have you ever noticed that seeing another kid's boo-boo at 6 is one of the most status producing, meaningful things? Kids will run across a totally behaviorally managed room to see a cut. Wonder why? Voirst gets that.

I'm careful, reading this one comes out after the day has really announced itself as a true bomb. A day that isn't going to be ok really fast, one where at the best we are stopping some crying, not necessarily the day the hamster dies. More the day when someone moves unexpectedly, another child pukes but no one can pick them up and the office sends them back, the "inspectors" caught you off the "mandate," the sink stops up, two kids got head bumps at recess....you get the idea.... you can make a LIST. And then after reading this book you can turn your bad day into a class or personal writing project. So and so's very bad awful (add some other word's you call adjectives) bad day. Then at another time you can teach opposites and make a very good day version.

This book allows you to be derivative in a way that starts children writing. I appreciate the pattern she used here, adding nightmare after nightmare then recounting the one before it. Say the whole list each additional problem, normally this drives me nuts, but for 6 year olds it grasps something interesting to them. Repetition. And it kind of yells too.Provides a way to manage something. Make a list. Shout it out. Tell it. Repeat it. Speak your truth. (Of course I think that requires a common humanity and others compassion but I'm not teaching that I guess. I like to think we might. ) It's actually what drives 99% of adults-repetition compulsions- but adults like to think it ain't so....opps, off topic.

So Alexander came along to give us a way to address this idea of a day just spinning OUT of YOUR control. As it spins into disaster and you need to fully address it."I'm not happy here." Good work. I can't think of anything comparable. For a gift to someone in certain situations, this can be perfect. It just depends.

I had a really bad day Friday.
I might read this book and tell my class on Monday. I might not. It depends. No adult there will hear it. My son came home from high school, after a wrestling tumbling drill for two hours. This is how they sent him to me...he lost the sight in one eye, he lost feeling in one arm, he had a sudden onset of crushing head pain at home so severe he could not speak, he got dizzy, he threw up. Waiting by himself in a 50 degree parking lot I found him with no coat and no adult. Why should they notice? He had a concussion less than a month ago ( same thing then, nothing noticed, done at the wrestling though the blow knocked him senseless so he had no logical speech) and wrestling practice gave him to me like this then too, beyond out of it, but Friday was the worst yet. I picked up my broken boy.
Rushed to ER. Bad word comes to mind.
He had tests, a spinal tap. AND.........We still don't know. We have some theories of possibilities we are not telling him until we see.
SOME VERY BAD STUFF CANNOT BE RULED OUT.
But an MRI is next. The ER could not do it at night or weekend apparently. Great.

No sports for a year now ordered, but not ordered last concussion with his doctor, thanks that made this worse. Now he gets restrictions.
Well no friggin kidding he can't see in one eye on the opposite side of the head blowI guess not.
And he gets a neurologist, ( they will let us schedule it ourselves) as we wait til Monday. It was such a bad day I am actually playing that had a Bad Day song in my head over and over and over....yeah I had a terrible day one of the worst of life (maybe it's the commercial invading my head though, as we sit and watch him and run the TV) the commercial on TV right now that won't go away and I'm seriously thinking of reading this book to him (though he outgrew it a few years ago)
He had a very bad, serious, and irreconcilably bad day. With a powerlessness that his adult, me, could only put the car in gear and get to an ER to stay til 4 AM. And feel as we did as kids ourselves-at the mercy of something unknown. Both of us out of control and at the mercy of something with the potential to strip me of my son. There aren't too many ways to reconcile it.

It has to be shared to hold.I just did.

Get the book. Kids need it sometimes. I need something.
Australia looks fine. I want to run somewhere. To someone.

My son on a recent hike.

I'm making things, bowls included...these I got from the kiln today. In the new year I'm going to handbuild bowls with my 1st grade and glaze and fire them. We may use molds, maybe will be okay building. I am getting this ready. Best way to teach it is to do it yourself....

The Little Prince Bowl. This was my daughter's present...despite these poor pictures it was large and actually reasonably good. Considering.







Then we have the rest..

The cherry bowl




This is the desert bowl, fox and road runner.


The second Little Prince bowl photographed awfully but isn't so hot....
heav



Too much brown, photo is bad...awful....


My world of the child bowl.






Well there we go so far. Few to make tomorrow. Photos seem washed out.
But I'll be able to project it for the kids.
Oh no that's right my blog is blocked.

This task of choosing representative moments of a year, and writing a cheery comedy piece is almost impossible. But I'll write a few things that struck me today looking over a shoulder after taking my daughter back to college...ugh.

For best series 2008 of jaw dropping articles 2008 I think I really will go with the Philly Enquirer keeping us up to date on the EPA.

I have been reading about these awful baby monitors at the insistence of my mother. At 80 plus she's not easily dissuaded by a "sure I saw it," so she prints everything and tapes it over my computer. I can't do that for you. You'll have to follow this link. But this can spur you into thinking about a love of "scientific study." I once wondered if a cockatiel could eat avocado and I'm awfully proud I didn't say later, "Well he was eating anyway...so..." I never thought to slip him the Raid and see how it went. Much less test it on the baby. A really good piece by the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Clearly, Johnson has been eager to execute the Bush agenda. John D. Graham, who was the regulatory guru of the White House Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2006, said one of Johnson's biggest accomplishments as assistant administrator was the repeal of a Clinton-era ban on human pesticide testing.

"Johnson faced a dilemma," said Graham, now dean of the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

The human testing studies were not perfect; some did not meet modern ethical standards, Graham said. But advocates were pushing for a ban regardless of their scientific value.

Johnson fixed that. He played a key role in reversing the ban, Graham said, fulfilling a goal shared by Bush and the pesticide industry.

"The White House loved Steve because he was the ultimate staffer," said another Republican colleague who worked at EPA. "He knew how to get things done."

Ironically, Johnson's success at restoring human testing while assistant administrator nearly derailed his Senate confirmation for the top job.

One of the new human tests was the Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS). Funded with $2 million from the chemical industry, CHEERS proposed to record the effects of household pesticides on low-income children in Florida. EPA gave participating families $970, a video camera to record exposure, and a CHEERS T-shirt, calendar and baby bib. EPA scientists would collect urine samples and the children would wear a watch-size sensor one week each month.

Several Democrats were aghast. Boxer and other Democrats put a public hold on his nomination.

"Ethics 101: Testing pesticides on small children and infants is wrong," Boxer said. "This is sick. It's a sick, sick thing."

EPA officials said that the senators were overreacting, that CHEERS merely paid families already using pesticides to monitor their children. Johnson, who began his EPA career in the pesticide office, said that although EPA had no improper ethical intent, it could no longer overcome such an appearance.

He canceled CHEERS - though not other human testing programs - and the senators removed the hold on his confirmation.

Oh it is better if you go read yourself.

Definitely the most Amazing tautology of a homo sapien 2008 remains for me.....
yes dare I speak it......

If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media." --Sarah Palin, getting First Amendment rights backwards while suggesting that criticism of her is unconstitutional, radio interview with WMAL-AM, Oct. 31, 2008

There are so many quotes to use but this one seemed adequate. It was tied with a Colbert one early on in the running. But Palin gets the prize for me. My spouse informs me this is entirely inappropriate, though correct.

Then there were the Pictures I saw on war 2008 that I can't put here because they are so ridiculously painful. Nor could I pick one out as my eyes were pretty much glued shut......War 2008, images...try this on for an idea of the scale of world stupidity we have ...
a world gone mad. I'm sorry but I will borrow one I saw Doug Noon bookmarked into a feed reader today. It's representative of the sheer non humor this year brought me most of its days. Most days I had nothing left to cry with. ( preposition dangling) I don't know about the content I was too stunned by the visual to get through it. I really was.

What I Worry About the Most 2008....that's hard. Health, me, you, world, re-election, NCLB re-upping, corporation, them, us, air, water, life, money, tests, medical costs, children in poverty, debt, lawsuits....in the end I suppose I spent the most time worrying over my kids.
So I put them here as a reminder that this matters the most to every being I think in our world, no matter who we are.
OUR Kids:

Most Unexpected Song Played Spontaneously ( with positive results) 2008 ( 94 7 the wave) on the radio during a repeated crying session (this time with a spouse clearly to "blame" .....I unfairly editorialize)



Okay I just found this.
I celebrate You Tube....


Most disappointing book though seemingly pretty cool when insisted on... 2008

Without a doubt, This book........
Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation by Sheila Weller
Do you like 500 page Vogue articles?


Weirdest phone calls .....2008

"Dad Happy Birthday, well it's September 29th the day the market died, it justcame home to my head, welcome to your childhood. How bad is it?" Hi, me.

Followed by VERY sincere wishes I listened to what my economics trained, Galbraith following Dad once said...
(For the record he said we'd been in a recession if not a depression for months, that congress was doing a poor job, that their bailout was opposed by competent economists for how poorly drawn and that they were not "up to the job" and basically explained money to me again. He sais a lot more but I need permission to blast it here. )


Favorite

Vice-Presidential Quote 2008, Biden

Q: What do you plan to do about No Child Left Behind? Do you believe that this issue is simply one of never having provided the resources to carry out the original mission of the program or are there other fundamental flaws inherent in a program with so much emphasis on teaching to the test?

A: Both. I sleep with a teacher every night -- my wife. She taught high school -- had three remedial classes and two advanced classes. Those kids in the remedial class went from sixth grade to 10th grade, and they were still penalized. Those kids in the advanced class, she didn't have to do a thing with. They passed the test. There is something fundamentally wrong with it. And we've underfunded it by about $70 billion. We know the problem:

1. Classrooms are too big; we need smaller classrooms, period.
2. A lot of teachers are going to be retiring. We need a program where we attract the best and brightest students coming out of our colleges to be teachers, and pay them.

Help me with this a second. What do you PLAN to do about it.
"We know the Problem." Hum, do we actually?
Is it a several tiered ed system perhaps? Equity? Quality? Funding? Poverty? Societal issues?
I teach in it and I'm not sure I get it.
(and the tanking economy ought to pick up a few kids into teaching jobs).
What we know appears to be as complicated as everything else. We know this wasn't answered.
But recall this:

Voting for No Child Left Behind was a mistake

Q: Everyone else on this stage who was in Congress in 2001 voted for No Child Left Behind. Would you scrap it or revise it?

It was a mistake. The reason I voted for it, against my better instinct, is I have great faith in Ted Kennedy, who is so devoted to education. But I would scrap it--or I guess, theoretically, you could do a major overhaul. But I think I'd start from the beginning. You need better teachers. You need smaller classrooms. You need to start kids earlier. It's all basic.

My Personal Favorite book of 2008 wasn't written in 2008. I just found it this year.
That counts on your own blog.

The Tao of Teaching: The Ageless Wisdom of Taoism and the Art of Teaching (Paperback)

by Greta K. Nagel (Author) "The wise teacher does not choose to give a particular name to her or his style of educating children..." (more)

Plus she wrote me and she's just terrific, utterly helped me calm and get through one of the darkest nights of my teaching life finding joy and calm every day. It's a quiet book. Full of power.

I see she has a parenting one too. Awesome.
The Tao of Parenting: The Ageless Wisdom of Taoism and the Art of Raising Children by Greta K. Nagel

Best Poet 2008, Michael Salcman. He was also my poet Laureate 2007.
Read him.
The Clock Made of Confetti by Michael Salcman

Really.

I re-read a great book of poetry so it's going to get "Best Found Again 2008"
The Moon Is Always Female The Moon Is Always Female by Marge Piercy

If you are a man...just move on.

Best idea I had a drawn with kids in a 5 second break in the day, so far...in 2008


This made me think of the best photo's I took...umm...not yet ready for that job....going through a lot of pics.....wait for tomorrow....
Well here is a set I loved:



Kid Stuff.


You realize picking stuff to recall that there is "the world," then there is "your world," and then those you love's world and finally all down to self. Your inner world.
I spent a year thinking of the entirety of some rather painful adult stuff that needs all of our help. Environment, treating each other, fairness, children, the beauty of a life. And rather discouraged.....but...it's nice to see the student images come through on my Flickr, nice I had the technology even if I did buy it, amazing how much I have compared to another. Lots to think about. It might not be so funny after all but there were nice things too, to sort out this year.
More later, few tears left to shed.Sorry.

My favorite photo, Santa Barbara Botanical Garden, Dec. 31, 2008
Wish it was larger.

I thought about it and decided to go to Santa Barbara today with the family and walk in the woods to say goodbye to two students I lost this year. Goodbye to so many days in the cycle around the sun. Goodbye to yesterday. Time to let go the pain of 2008.
Embrace a new path. Another cycle. I contemplated the beach and changed my mind. Trees. Better.

And to the year I say a fare thee well.

I usually look at years as way, way too complex to contain in any thought I could ever hold onto. Like a wish it starts, like a prayer it ends. This was no exception, but I did suffer feeling so horribly drained and down in the summer over the loss of the child I taught, Larry King, over the job situation which is too stressful and not good, the horrifying realization that my tummy intestinal mess was back once more to square one. My intestines are not really working, gastro bleeds, pain; it all got to be a bit much to carry. Vomiting is a daily life way for me until I get to an answer (on insurance that is ever more precarious that I do have) in a world ever more precarious and I worry. Too much to see through. I suspect that's a very human condition. Muck.

In the children I taught over many years.....these two that left us this year.... that died.... I gave everything I had to give. And loved them as a teacher does for who they are, who they would be....very much. You should have the chance to know them too. It is impossibly hard to tell you that. I really did try, but cannot live it well, very ill over it actually, but I do know a little of what happened in their brief life. Good kids. No one should ever die as a child. I should never outlive these kids. Sad that is. All wrong.


From teaching Larry to crochet and love music, in our raising butterflies, giving songs to our air, to having my other child from her wheelchair teach me how to interact and be a person, helping her find art and then be a teacher through it all, it rebounded within my soul, being, core like the tree that falls in the forest.

If only for this year I was the tree in the forest. The one no one sees. I accept this.



I was awfully afraid this park might have burned in the fires. The ones devastating Santa Barbara this year. So I've been dreading going, but it was actually fine where we walked on a couple mile hike. It looked beautiful and I enjoyed it immensely for the sound and the dampness. The cool of a forest is remarkable. It speaks into your heart and anything you want to say is unutterable. It just knows perhaps. Or you lose the need for "word."
Much of 2008 was clouded by this for me. No words for it. It was so deeply felt. A lot of pain. As I was walking and talking pictures, taking images, I realized how deeply you become intertwined when you work with children that are growing up with serious issues, carrying essentially the unresolved societal burdens on slim shoulders.
You are not heard, if you speak into silence, you are invisible, and if seen then silenced by any means necessary by the reasons that got the kids into these places. I found that out.

No one is listening enough to teachers. Not the best we've had. They are all TELLING. One thing teachers are told is they are irrelevant or just old. It's a problem this silence besides the absolute silence required now of the child. I once read a great piece on who writes history, boy is that accurate. Wish we could use the $ for art supplies, laptops, real innovation like maybe a state of the art facility like you get in Finland where evidentially they care enough to care.


( this picture is a tree gargoyle)

I learned this year some people will hurt you intentionally, not by some oversight, no INTENDING IT, but that also happens all the time too I'm told, especially when you can least deal with it and when it is the least "fair." "Job" kind of stuff. (biblical Job, not job)
.....How does the song go they mock you, they'll take your life if you let them......they destroy you, misinterpret, flame, twist for reasons that remain unclear to me. In part the internet brought that to me in an Amazon review situation from someone who appears completely unscathed, blithely going on to do it again to someone new.....with a complete circle of support in tow, the other situation through my work was mostly the same. I learned that. Look at the real world.
It boggles the mind. Happy 2008. Sorry.

I'm still struggling to "get it." But I felt this in 2008. Deeply. I should have felt support and kindness, you too.
Maybe if you teach a note expressing appreciation for our dedication to this work we do and to the lives of these kids, as like a candle lit in darkness. At the least. At the least. And I still care, and I did my work with integrity the best i could. It was a searing lesson.
A tree fell into the dark silent night.
Into the absolute silence.




That was 2008.


Then I noticed that it was September , four months just gone and I have no real memory of my days, as my father's birth date hit on the 29th so did "the fall" and it recycled back to the year of his birth. Dad was raised in the Depression. He called it, himself, the lost generation. (Read Galbraith, I did this summer.) When everything had crashed. I thought it sort of shook me out of a personal sense of defeat into looking around at other's grief and pain too that seemed to balloon in front of you like these mortgages I can't get...looking out only when my blocked intestine hasn't required my presence over a toilet bowl.

I saw a lot of silent trees falling in the forest. A friend lost a job, others lost homes, family members, pride, security, health coverage, stocks, we lost and lost in this year. Private desperation grew. A President that never was quite brilliant suddenly was....going... an election that cost so much my mind is still boggled. While kids still died fighting the wars that go on and on. Loss of the thing that is so precious. Life.
Loss of the proportion so needed.
A mess. We see it now.



My job as a 1st grade teacher is rather tricky. I've always seen it as a bridge. It's my persona to look that way, a language to my heart.
I coax kids into reading, bridge family to school, built confidences, find ways to help children cope, use skills others don't particularly respect or see . I could look pathologically, with the tests I'm required to do but I choose personally to look optimistically. What might be. What can we do. How can we. ..What I do is sense potentials and see them into happening. Yep. What is there to care about and celebrate, that is a lot more meaningful to me and I don't see that model yet in place. I choose to think of the work differently. I do consider myself "old' at 50, but not brain dead not conforming to do something that sheers away children's confidences. Nope. I was called a jumped shark in the internet experience here two years ago, I resent that, of being therefore less qualified implied and dismissed for calling out in the darkness once down.

I still call out.

But wiser, more adaptable, able to deliver, able to finesse, shut up, be silent, and yet in a system you can't shine too sparkly. I never will shine for you, neither will far too many of my kids, and I ask out nationally why is that ok?

Some schools still are vacuums to the development of a love for learning, discipline, pride, hard work and resiliencies and a desire to use them as ways to grow. And communities need them to be powerful places. Not models of decay, inbreeding and decision by firing squad. Higher standards? How about finding a way to do this work a bit more ethically? Like treating each other respectfully. How about that as a real thing.

I am pretty sure 2009 can be the creation of hearing the trees falling in the forest. Hearing the pain, caring, building from the ground up by admitting stuff...like greed isn't so very good. Not good for some of our kids at all. It isn't good to sabotage another, it feels badly to invent tests to pathologize, yeah, it requires owning up to some "stuff."

So, anyway, I walked in the forest recalling all the beautiful kids with real problems I've taught and how much the art, music , the science, math and that beautiful literature meant to them, really changed the kids. Being a vehicle in that change, this has been an honor. So that went on in 2008 too maybe more than the other stuff that careened me around. I enjoyed this. Will hope conditions knock down the impediments the last few years threw up.

Yes. It was a very strange year. Mossy.

I turned to the forest.

At some point I heard on NPR a writer and he said something like you read to try to connect to someone. Never before had I really realized that. You write the same. To be wanted, to feel supported, connected, listened to, heard, helped. Yeah. I would imagine schools need this. Technology could do the work I think. It must do far better to HELP kids where I am. I could barely write a sentence that was worth anything this year of 2008. Speaking to my father about this student's death he said about the only thing of comfort I heard, "There isn't anything to say, it's a sad tragic thing." At least he was straight about it. So was my heart.
It broke in pieces in 2008. And scattered.

I have yet to write the tributes to these children they deserve, but I will one day write that year we had of life as my notes re-frame it for me. Thank goodness I keep field notes. My only real advise is write for an hour a day everything you teach, make time. Everyday.

But we are resilient, humans, we suffer and we try to make a better day for our kids, for ourselves, we even delude ourselves that we know something or speak or think something unique. I do. Boy is that foolish. It's just news to me. I realized my art exists out of my pain, out of the beauty of creating forces, love forces. I reconnected with that in a different way. I understand that my way of being , reacting, going into teaching really hasn't been pathological. It's been to create, structure, see future in children, eschew as much of the limitations and nonsenses as I could, get beyond stuff move forward.

And so here we go into 2009. Let's listen better to those who fall around us. Let's be kinder and care more.

I took a few little clips today and got a slideshow's worth of pictures to lead you through the forest. The light today was magnificent and there was a lot speaking to me of what an agent love can be in our lives. Pretty nice walk into a new year.

This is a video of the beauty of the water we all need. Talk about amazing. Water really is a powerhouse. The Origin of Life....chemical and practical....let's preserve it.
(I like this on water...yep...

Mayonnaise and the Origin of Life: Thoughts of Minds and Molecules by Harold J. Morowitz)

This is my son and he's rock jumping.




I think this is a water run.....




The slideshow