I hope that the beauty of these works can be appreciated.
Don McLean I'm listening. I hope other's can see the worth of art. Now I understand.

When my mother died, a month ago, I went and took a set of pictures of the sky. The clouds seemed unique.
I intend to write poems to these clouds, but the sky/time seems to defeat my words. One of the students that offered me condolences over this month, for my mother's passing, stated to me she was "in the clouds" and I asked if he felt we went upward at death. He and several other children took some time to give me their perspective on this. My mother scanned films for several years in the physics labs at the University of Wisconsin looking for particular events both in nuclear explosions ( I think) and in the images from space. She often looked at clouds and saw faces or images.
And now I find myself wishing I could find her there.

These are zebras, as seen by a group of 8 year olds. Each day or so my students write a paragraph- with me -about an animal. To do that writing they use several on-line and book "sources," organizing their information into a coherent and respectable paragraph, demonstrating an on-going involvement with terms that we are learning in our animal science/ELD unit. After the paragraph is completed I try to lead them in a directed drawing exercise. This is the result of our first really nice work. I enjoy these as possible masks. They are just terrific.Especially the negative space.



Each child in my room brought a signed, thorough permission so that I could use their art in this blog. Peers of mine are welcome to access this by: 1)walking to my room and asking to see them, 2) asking via some communication form other than directly to my face. These permissions will be filed with the ed. leader- as indicated to me was necessary. This follows the process I have used in the past excepting prior I sent the permissions to the district.
Phew...

Today was Constitution Day.
Our school is a public one in California. We celebrated with a Flag salute outside.
I celebrated by buying on my Kindle Dr. Ravitch's new book Reign of Error.

This is my celebration of the Constitution.
I'm just a few chapters into the book and the first thing I can say is -order the book.
Get a copy for a school, donate it to a teacher's lounge, include it in a gift basket for a family you care about. It's readable, common sense, and it talks directly to the things going on in our schools demystifying the process of making them suck so they can be privatized.
As I said here not too long ago- I'm so looking forward to Common Core dropping our very capable kids into the toilet  (or making it appear they are there) and demanding we then sell away, give away- our PUBLIC schools. We've already lost funding school's equitably. We don't NEED to do this to the children. It is entirely our choice. Her book will better explain this. Right now I'm unable to do so-I'm recovering from a deeply heartbreaking loss in my family.

And lest you think it's a liberal bias-I remind you of her work under Bush. It isn't. Neither "side" worked. Both abrogated the construct of a public education. Personally I think it's a straightforward explanation of turning kids into commodities, certainly turning schools into them-and what we are losing. Wall streeting it.  If you read this book and argue for markets in regards to public schools there is a pretty good chance you are either a billionaire or a pretender to the throne.
Or a sorry excuse for a citizen.

When I finish I'll take the parts i enjoyed the most as a teacher and discuss them. I have ordered a few hard copy copies-one will be my highlighted version so I can speak to the issues from my eye level view-through a quote. When she discusses poverty I'm hearing her. Or rather, she's hearing me.

And thank you. 

How often do I recommend writers-so take a chance and read about her perspective on this "reform."
Already I'm so disgusted with President Obama, her reminding me of his ed policy- I want to cry.
I saw a newsperson saying Michelle's today promoting kid's drinking water.
What about their public schools Michelle?
What about getting up and MOVE a few mountains and alter the mess of a failed reform?
Why not read this book? Why not show up at the party and assist teachers in recovering our profession.

In honor of Constitution Day, yes, I'm re-printing my 100 Standards.
Old as they are I feel proud I once wrote them. Her book made me feel it.
All the way down in my broken heart.


 I just felt it.


 See my Mrs. Puglisi's 100 National Standards


I just read a nice editorial about HOW RELIEVED a newspaper is if we have National Standards.
In the New York Times, you can read it here.
Finally, it said, as if stranded in the desert seeing at the very last moment of possibility the solution to their thirst there at the oasis on the horizon. And like that, it's probably a mirage.
At least this writer isn't aware how much we are and have been standards driven in the 30 some years I've been working in the field. But it must feel more "right" if the nation says "knows the 50 states" or "understands separation of church and state" or more importantly "understands the role of the free press in democracy." Yeah, well, national control, now that's a cheering thought, so much works so well once that gets going.

My mom had printed out the commentary and before you knew it, I read the thing.

For months I've tried not to read too much she handed over fearing it might contain yet another blow. Being a teacher right now is open season. I believe they expanded the season.
I work in an Underperforming school, in some very difficult poverty, and therefore the Secretary of Education and my President may well label me "bad." Neat. That's the reality, among many now sadly. My close friend and partner teacher continually invites this National leadership to her classroom. To spend real time, and then maybe open awareness, dialog and learn about the realities. So far, no helicopter on the lawn.

Last night I began thinking about my own "standards" what I'd wish for children.
What I OFTEN do not see. But we aren't allowed to talk about that. And all too often as teachers we have been labeled if we did talk, about that anyway. Labeled as excuse makers. But just the same I'd like to see these things as standard.
I know that's not what's being talked about. Still, it's what I assert matters "nationally."

What I'd wish for the children I work with is this kind of bottom line. A set of standards. According to the best theory we have our not attending to these underpinnings of care and security prevent educational, personal, community health, well being, and stunt normal development. But that's not as easy as saying the teacher is bad. Not as target ready. Rather than fire, you might have to approach the entire situation by building good facilities, launching into community health, figuring out how to provide work, you might have to build a butterfly pavilion in every community, imagine, or cough up some art supplies, time, you might need to drive where I drive and really in-depth and individually look at things.

So Today, before I do other things that I need to do, I'm going to list my standards:

1. All children should know love.

2. All children should know that they have a bed to sleep in tonight, and next week, and for their life.

3. All children should have adequate, even delicious food, and know all about their food.

4. All children should have support within the walls of their homes.

5. All children should have the experience of play.

6. All children should know nature, value nature, interact within nature, and be in families that have some capacity to do the same.

7. All children should know, have, and be able to be friends.

8. All children should have clothes to wear that help keep them warm, and expresses their beauty.

9. All children should feel that their family is accepted, and is of value.

10. All children should learn language, learn to speak by finding their world one that enjoys communication, the more languages that they know the more broadened the understanding.

11. All children should have health and DENTAL care that their families are not fearful about, or simply can't afford or have, and know illness cannot bankrupt them. They need health care that attends to their well being.

12. All children should be regarded as potentially, and individually, and instantly a part of whatever cosmic beauty, goodness,whatever we wish to call it, that exists and as such is the reason we all live with hope and possibility.

13. All children should be permitted to listen to adults that are permitted to think.

14. All children should be assured of schools, fair schools, schools where we do not reinforce unfair notions that already existed at birth, like if your family "has more" or lives on some piece of real estate or is somehow smarter or edging out another, then your school will be better. This unfortunately underpins the current national policy. That even includes the President. Whoever they are every child deserves a very nice school. Not a me, then everyone else educational model. (Check out Finland)

15. All children should have books. Libraries are great.

16. All children should have toys, but maybe ones parents make as well as buy.

17. All children should have parents, family, neighbors, mentors that make things.

18. All children should have systems at work within their lives that build healthy communities seeing them as the reason the community exists.

19. All children should have adults that can cooperate, hear one another, resolve conflict, have the capacity to demonstrate love, attention, concern, solutions, turn taking, deference.

20. All children should have paper, pencils, crayons, scissors, sprinkles, cookies, cups,cans, materials, glue, paste, making and doing.

21. All children should have adequate sleep and rest.

22. All children should have music. Every form, in utero on, to listen and sing to, in choir, to play, as a part of life. As a part of study.

23. All children should be involved in learning projects.

24. All children should know transportation systems to get them around safely.

25. All children should enjoy celebrations, the most important at least once per year a celebration of that child and their value to our life.

26. All children should begin the process of literacy not as a race but as a right, a joy, an exploration, and a normal function.

27. All children should enter school believing and maintaining as long as possible a joy in learning, and a belief in self as not "behind", not labeled, not seen as less.

28. All children should experience lives without bullies, and when there are bullies, teasing, cruelty, be able to easily find the resources, the support, the fairness to have access to help. To be heard.

29. All children should know technology.

30. All children should be given opportunities to demonstrate understandings.

31. All children should learn within family and school to cook and care for their food.

32. All children should be served food at school that is interesting, fresh, well made, delicious and not a frozen, re-baked, cultural wasteland.

33. All children should be allowed to respect, care about, and return to teachers as important to their lives. They should know Mrs. P may well be in the same school in her room waiting 20 years later to see you again!

34. All children should have time with the adults that conceived them. Daycare should be an option that is last on the list.

35. All children should be allowed comfortable school furniture. Very comfortable.

36. All children should do more each day in a school than they sit, or rarely be engaged in passive workbooking.

37. All children should be educated in reasonable, perhaps even outrageously small groups, so that each child can and does get the care they need. No more than 15.

38. Children should have opportunities to draw, color, illustrate, print make, dye, batik, sketch, paste, cut, collage, design, sparkle, explore, respond within art so that they have experienced quality materials and competent artists actively. Real papers, real crayolas, real inks, paints, that allow them to become human through art. And not bought by their underpaid teacher.

39. All children need to hear the big pictures, even when we are still engaged in understanding the big pictures.

40. All children should learn about their brain, body, systems, and how they work.

41. All children should see the differences in cultures, people, societies as opportunities to become aware and to be amazed.

42. All children should find mathematics from the time they hold the concept of three, until they are fully grown, as a part of everything we do, that mathematics has history, context, thought, theory and that they can find themselves perfectly a part of the understandings of this within its forms and functions. Male or female, rich or poor. (I'm pleased this worked out to be number 42)

43. All children should learn to observe, should learn this within natural settings.

44. All children should be engaged in science.

45. All children should know animals, their care, to care for animals, support, raise and love them and understand as well the cycle of life.

46. All children should know schools that support all of the above, and fight for these things ahead of anything else.

47. All children should run on beaches, in grass, have playgrounds, feel forest floors, fly kites, gather leaves, cross streets safely, visit fire stations, meet the police in nice days to learn about hard jobs with the ability to ask them about their work, go to groceries, learn about money, see movies, roll down hills, sled, walk by crocus, talk to grandmas and grandpas, collect and recycle, play cards, take turns, have dice, play Candyland, do dance, gymnastics, try waterslides, learn swimming safety, go to farms, pet animals, cut pumpkins, smell pine, wash the floor with a friend, have chores, taste baked bread, knead dough, water plants, grow seeds, take care of fish, walk in lines, put on shows, sing with friends, flop on the floor, use blocks, without feeling anything but how good all of that feels.

48. All children should develop constructs of learning that set and achieve goals, with the child involved.

49. All children should be read to and start to read in a lap in a house or a home.

50. All children should be cleaned, bathed, cared for as if they were a joy.

51. All children should have shoes.

52. All children should have coats and sweaters, gloves, hats and people that care whether or not they are wearing them or have them. And possibly make them for them.

53. All children should have rules, limits, safety nets, systems, understandable patterns, routines, mentors, and those that love them well enough to have flexibility and judgment in using them ahead of rigidity and power.

54. Children should be able to learn about work.

55. Children should learn about how their society functions in terms of money, jobs, labor, roles, learning of others and their situations and within something hard to define, with open minds, with introduction of the complexity in society, the stratification.

56. All children should feel that their family has capacity, intelligence, worth and intrinsic value.

57. All children should sometimes ask and receive.

58. All children should sometimes cope with a no.

59. All children should have sharing time, if possible far longer than adults teaching them want to tolerate.

60. All children should be allowed to wash their hands before eating, after play times as a normal experience.

61. All children should attend schools, live in houses with adequate facilities to know a toilet, a bath, a way to clean clothes and to enjoy being clean.

62. All children should live in a world where if mental illness affects the family there are ways to have, find, sustain help for them, and not drown.

63. All children should have bandaids, both the real thing and the metaphorical kind. To heal.

64. All children should be able to hear stories of kith and kin, hear other children's story, and grow within structures that value these experiences of "our story" above all else.

65. All children should move in dance.

66. All children should know sport.

67. All children should watch Reading Rainbows, once per week well through 8th grade.

68. All children should learn to build a fire, how to use a compass, how to set up a tent, ways to safely do the things that ensure our survival, taught in ways that don't frighten, but do allow them confidences and maturation. Camp, they should get to go to camp and ALL children need a trip to the nations capitol and to museums.

69. All children should skip a stone over a pond, catch and cook a fish, throw back more than they catch, know snow, understand seasons, begin to feel the earth under their feet, be taught the earth's movement, time, the calendaring systems with contexts that engage them fully in experiential learning.

70. All children should make large sidewalk drawings in chalk.

71. All children should make presentations, displays, have fairs and experiences to present to families that come, watch, interact, appreciate and value as community experience.

72. All children should learn about feelings.

73. All children should make, have, use puppets, experience drama and plays.

74. All children should find that they are valued for their opinion, and asked why, and expected to be heard as well as listen to another.

75. All children should have literacy as a foundational right, have books be the center of educational experiences, find that what they read, experience within words to be valued as highly as possible.

76. All children need access and understanding of history, time-lines, historical figures, historical perspectives, historical understanding of things we have learned from both our successes, but also our mistakes.

77. All children should write, read and engage with poetry.

78. All children should respect their own learning, and understand that their achievements help them individually to evolve, not to better over others, but to become more fully alive. And thus of value to others.

79. All children should learn about the systems of religion, philosophy, schools of thought.

80. All children should learn about death, in caring ways we should allow them to develop their understandings so they are not paralyzed by both their fears, but the realities they will face.

81. All children should have a backpack.

82. All children should look forward to each day.

83. All children should be allowed to wear hats. Sunglasses too.

84. All children should have someplace to do their homework, and someone that cares to talk about it with them.

85. All children should find their talents and learn to use their strengths understanding as well their weaknesses.

86. All children should laugh.

87. All children should watch the sky. Value weather, learn about the earth, be engaged in the atmosphere, understand water tables, be aware of how these systems work.

88. All children should learn to answer a phone, safely , and intelligently.

89. All children should write, in a multiplicity of ways, all day and as a part of understanding, as a tool.

90. All children should one day look up in their classrooms and rather than seeing an authority in the "watch" their teacher mode, see a President or an Ed Secretary or other important folk in looking at all the things they are doing, valuing their learning, finding within that community things to see as right in their learning.

91. All children should take turns and know they will have a turn.

92. All children should understand that if they do work, try, show themselves to be willing to learn, make mistakes and process them, that they can enter into fields they choose, that no door is closed because they are not rich, they should understand careers and opportunities and their roles, as well as community roles, in seeing them into futures.It should not be a mystery.

93. All children when they fall, need a helping hand.

94. All children should feel that they work within dynamics that see success over failure.

95. All children should know the warmth of a heater, the light of a bulb, the luxury of air conditioning in rooms over 80. All children should see the value in those comforts and fully understand how that is provided to them.

96. All children should get gifts.

97. All children should make and give cards and gifts as expressions of thankfulness and connection.

98. All children should have a blog in a child safe atmosphere.

99. All children should learn within local settings that help to set goals and standards and to maintain ways to over see this.

100. All children should be integrated, rich, poor, black, white, restricted by disability, glasses wearing, free thinking, Republican household, Democratic, representing every color, creed, view, and from such a base learn about self and others to the best of our ability to mix ourselves together within community, neighborhood, nation, to think of such things as more important than writing a bunch of standards and thinking that was the same as doing all of the above.


I have more but I have work to do.
I've taught children missing all of the above.
I've taught these last 27 years knowing stories of kids that might break your heart that renders much of what I hear "proposed" into a joke like stance for some of our children while I was, and teachers like me were, scapegoated over understanding the complexities of the issues. Children deserve better than that. They deserve thinking adults. And schools and systems designed for them to do well. If this is addressed as the NY Times writer thought by these standards then I assume the above has been articulated into systems, structures and supports.

I did not teach September 11 today to my 3rd grade students.
I had several reasons.
None of them in the last week mentioned it.
I read their birth years a day before realizing that being born in 2005 in a way they were free of knowing about this as anything but history.
And finally my own grief 18 days after my mom's passing makes it difficult for me.

I remember in perfect detail where I was-at Bard School teaching Kinder, where two of my three my children were in school and my daughter Sophia being the one to discover this in her cartoon watching in the early morning after I'd already left super early for work, she brought it to my Mom's attention. I remember my mother so well that day, and the days after.
I remember how much comfort I got from being with her.
My daughter Sylvia was at Blackstock Junior High where her father was Principal. He dropped off my kids and went on with her to face a long day for him. That day was picture day, Sylvia always says. She tells of how he handled this-telling them the news, reassuring the students.

Right now I am watching a program on this day, on the History Channel, and another switching back and forth to it on the Commission's findings. It's so sobering I have to stop- as my heart is already arrhythmic and my chest feeling pressure-at a certain point your grief grows too much. This day changed America and in ways we are not capable today of understanding-so much hurt unleashed.
Each year I post Sylvia's poem.

This poem was written while my daughter was teaching in my room.
She captured, for me, something that I feel but cannot-myself-put into form.


september 11th, by Sylvia Puglisi,
A depressing sort of poem. But there could hardly be a happy one today, I suppose.

* * *

september 11
17 first-graders
moment of silence skipped
for the immediacy of fresh strawberries
and the novelty of pencil sharpeners
(which may never wear off in this lifetime)

invisible principal over the intercom
(like in the old cartoons that reliably reproduced so many aspects of school particularly the cliched plots and precocious love lives)
reading bad poetry in a
flat lifeless voice
like shakespeare in junior high
with unenthused classmates
esoteric
and meaningless.
stephen asks me to sharp his pencil
and wonders why i
teacher stands there for several moments
staring blankly ahead
looking like she's about to cry
and then laughing quietly
at how absurd it all is.

come to the rug, children.
i want to tell you a story
of something that happened before you were born
to people you will never get to know
in a place you've never been.
(next will be a story of a
giant blue-green ball hurtling through space
and a giant yellow ball
they hold like lovers
el sol y la tierra
we love story time
especially doctor seuss!)

in the story it is a tuesday
just like today.
here is the sign for tuesday, make a t with your fingers and circle
tuesday
a cold bright tuesday just like today
it was september 11 that day
just like today.
september is a long word that starts with an s
and let's count to eleven
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven
and in spanish
uno dos tres quatro cinco seis siete ocho nueve diez once
once upon a time
in the year 2001
before most of you were
born or when you were the tiniest infant
gnawing your fist and smiling to the delight of your parents.
on a day just like today
when little children just like you were counting the date
a bad thing happened.
a very bad thing.

bad people
very angry, nasty people
who perhaps did not have enough
people to love them
hurt our country
the United States of America
you know America in sign language, children
it is like a hug in a circle
show me, children.

our country was attacked
some airplanes were flown into buildings
important buildings
two tall ones in New York
which fell down
also a military building called the Pentagon
which has five sides
show me five fingers, children.
very good.
and the last plane
the good people took from the bad people
and flew into the ground instead of a building.
many, many people died.
the people in the planes and the buildings
and some of the firefighters who tried to save them
they were heros, do you know that word?
it means brave, brave people who did something amazing
like going into a building that is on fire and falling down
and rescuing people.
are you listening, children?
isaac, put your head down.

this was the biggest attack on American soil ever
which means
that it was really scary for us
really scary for your parents
who probably grabbed you
their babies
from the cradles
and held you close
and whispered soft comforting words to themselves
as they watched pictures on the tv
and cried or
just sat
watching.

the world is different now
you don't know because you don't remember
how it was before
you can't ever know the time when parents
worried about teething rings and toes
and not fiery explosions.
you weren't sitting there like i was
in a classroom on tuesday
(which was picture day and everyone
was dressed to the nines
it was two days after my birthday
and i had new clothes
i was looking sharp)
a whisper went around
that something terrible had happened
a disaster
an earthquake
a bomb
people were dying
where? new york
new york which was more magical and mystical to us than disneyland
new york with the giant apple and the statue of liberty
with the buildings that scraped the sky.

there was a moment of silence

kids fidgeted a little just like
you fidget today just like
we fidgeted when old men with gravelly voices told us of pearl harbor.
they speak of it like an old scar
the memory is still fresh.
september 11 is for me a cut
that it took a long time for me to realize was bleeding
like the scrape on the leg that i got from band
which i didn't feel at the time any more than a poke
but later my band teacher gasped and
pointed at when the blood was dripping to the floor.
i have a scar now, too.

but you children have no scars
you are young and
tiny and unblemished and i
truly hope no history is made in your lifetime
because it is a messy business
or so i have found.
we with memory scars will age and fade
recounting stories for
our childrens' school reports on historical events.
you will grow and replace us and get your own scars
falling off your bicycle.
you will remember the date as a
sad story and me
teacher crying a little when you're not looking
and so will move past me
into the future
without my fears and doubts.

this consoles me, children
on this big blue ball going around the big yellow ball
you have danced around six times
keep dancing, children
the slow beautiful waltz of time.

Poems For My Mother

The Story Went

She took at least one bus
Maybe two
Getting to the hospital
The day Sylvia was born

I still see her face
As it lit
With recognition she beheld
This amazing daughter delivered

My best accomplishment
To date
Mom seemed so young
In my memory of that day

Dressed in her heels and silken blouse.
My baby
With her turtle neck turning to see
Blotches, flushed red skin.

Grandma never forgot
Her coming
We'd air the story together
Every September 9th.

But this year I told it
To myself
Quietly, remembering
Her being there for me.




Astrologer

Age of Aquarius
Her collection of ephemerus
Your rising and falling
Charted, plotted, star studded
What was the ascendant?
Why were you dependant?
Where was Saturn housed
Which planet opposed Mars?
T-square or some affliction
Mom analyzed with her conviction.





Green Raincoat

Big
Round
Buttons
London Fog,
Olive
A frame
Scarf
Her cause.



All Things She Loved

All things she loved
Stick in my brain
Avocadoes, cookbooks
Doylestown, baskets
Oranges and mandarins
Le Cage Aux Folles
Pillows and her pottery
(And sort of hypocritically- horse races)
Reading especially, her papers
Details, facts
Southern writers
Pecans, fudge, Hershey bars
Mr. Pisto on the pier
Rock collections, birds, her oriole
Blue blooms, our children
Recipes, a shrimp cocktail
Cerviche
Uncle Tony, Aunt Lenore
Ferne, Gladys and Jane
A game of bridge
Charlotte, Norma -all her friends
Hydrangeas and viennas.

Each day her favorites
Remain.




Loss of Innocence


With the logic of childhood
I keep repeating,
"I miss you so much Momma."
Too much.

At 85 her passing
Shy a granddaughter's 24th birthday
Pokes holes in my notions
Of life

A naivete she wove
Right into my heart
Looking for some fair play 
Escaping chance

Everything changes
The day a mother dies
One ages while the other
Looks on.

A child emerging
Restless, careening out of control
Fumbling with a medical cap
Dependant again

The cat wants to walk outside, Mom
Around the house
Sniffing each spot you sat in
Just yesterday.



Not Quite A Malaprop

It was  a cas- e-tas
Or a burr-e-ta
On a tor- till-a, (pronounce those L's)
The hawk she called an "Owl"
Pasta was past
With an "ah" at the end. 
Yes, we teased her for it
Sometimes about offering
Ed's Amy over lima beans
Or Natch-Oh's with cheese.

I'd give  A LOT
To hear her say
Cheat-ohs
Or get me a Clean-x,
Put out my crowns to color
with today.






Divorce
divides the heart,
house, wallet
And ultimately
the mind.

She lost
on every front
but one
He split
and that was
Ultimately
fun.




Conversation

You seemed to set down in
The middle of something
Charles Sheeler in Buck's County
Looking at a barn
When she began to
Interrogate you about
The relationship to light
Or some relative that might
Have roamed the Doylestown street
Sometime, the boy Michner
Grandma once knew
You'd be piecing this
Puzzle back into meaning
While she moved on
Frustrated with your lagging
A question to clarify,
on your part,
Might be rapidly
Spoken over
Initiating another line of thought,
Until some insight
Revealed a shift in form
And her meanings
Could be absorbed.




"What Is Man?"

Mom wasn't buying into
The Existentialists
When she penned
My high school
Essay on our
Inner nature
That failed
With a comma splice.

She simply wafted
On in romantic form
About heights
with poetry
That roared,
"Your Mom wrote
this."
Right after
The Civil War.

But I took
The paper in
Handing off to Mr. Hohmann
With no
Thought of a
Rescue from
His scorn.

She'd tried all
Night
My edit into final form
Told me
we'd face
Man's red pen.

Still that afternoon
She looked up
Expectantly,
"How did we do?"
I lied
And said,
"Brilliantly."