Reading Is FUN-damental

Put this one on your reading list: "The Pet Goat" by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. It's just one of the stories that can be found in "Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1," part of the thirty-one volume Reading Mastery series published by the SRA Macmillan early-childhood education division of McGraw-Hill. It uses the direct instruction teaching style.
At the school I work at, we use the Open Court reading curriculum, which is also created by SRA. Five years ago, I was the computer teacher, so I don't have a specific story to connect me to the events of September 11, 2001. If I had been teaching fourth grade back then, I would have been just beginning my first unit, themed "Risks and Consequences." I suspect that we may have been reading about a little elephant who gets separated from his mother called "Toto."
But, as I said, I was the computer teacher, and on that day I sat in my room and watched television. None of the classroom teachers were sending their kids to my room, or anywhere else. That's what happened at our school. Students at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School have the historical distinction of knowing exactly what story was being read to them that morning. "A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps." And now, five years later, those little minds are scarred for life. Why didn't the President of the United States stop reading, get up, and go do something about all those terrible things that were happening? Was he scared? Was he confused? Did he want to find out how the story ended?
It hasn't ended yet. That goat is still out there, running and eating. God help us all.

Wash 'n' Wear

This morning I received a compliment on my clothes from another teacher as I strolled out to the playground before the morning bell. I thanked him, and immediately deflected the praise, since the person who really takes the responsibility for my sartorial state is my wife. I have been fortunate to be on the pity end of her fashion stick, which sometimes comes with the carefully aimed, "Are you going to wear that?"
The answer, on any given day, would be a shrug and a "why not?" In my previous life, I had uniforms, or even better, when I ran a warehouse, I could wear any of the hundreds of t-shirts that I have collected over the latter half of the twentieth century. South Park and Ramones are not considered appropriate attire for elementary school teachers. Nor are the vast array of sports jerseys that I have stashed away. I know of a number of teachers who have made a career out of their Hawaiian shirt collections, but I prefer to save mine for occasions outside of school. In this way I create only positive associations with my "fun" shirts. We have a new fifth grade teacher who has set a campus record by wearing a tie for each of the first seven days of school. How long will that last? I know that I have worn a tie to school a total of fourteen times in ten years. Clothes are fairly low on my list of priorities, I confess.
To a certain extent, I rely on the popular myth about Albert Einstein wearing an identical suit every day of the week. I have my school clothes, and my play clothes. In my youth, I relied on the magic of Garanimals to confirm my sense of style. Without the aid of matching tags, I am left to sort out combinations from a select number of pants (primarily Dockers) of polite shades, and a slightly larger group of "shirts with collars." Every so often I stop and think about which pants "go" with which shirts, but for the most part, I grab a pair of pants, pull a shirt off a hanger in the early morning light, and off I go. Being well-dressed means that I choose to wear socks that are not white. You know I'm trying to impress when I'm wearing argyles.
So, thanks for noticing, and I'll pass along all the kind words to my fashion consultant. And for those days when it looks like I got dressed in the dark - well, you'd be right.

2,4,6,8 - We're All Gonna Caliphate

Consider this juxtaposition: Steve Irwin, the "Crocodile Hunter" gets a stingray tail jabbed through his chest one day. The next day, President Pinhead releases his defense strategy which says, "we are not yet safe." Well, how about that? Just when you thought that you might be able to safely swim with large and certainly potentially dangerous fish, along comes the leader of the free world to let us know that we still have so very much left to fear.
I know that Pinhead didn't have television's naturalists in mind as he made his proclamation, but it certainly makes you think: If I stay on the shore, or even the relative comfort of a glass bottom boat, the terrorists win. By not rushing out into the wild and grabbing nature by the short hairs and yanking, I'm surrendering to a world of fanatics - fanatics who mean to do us harm: bite us, blow us up, thumbing their noses at democracy and/or walking upright.
Pinhead said al Qaeda's vision was to create a "unified totalitarian Islamic state that can confront and eventually destroy the free world." Not if he gets to it first, however. The amazingly intricate circular logic that drives this terror (hence the term "terrorist," one supposes) is initially mind-boggling, then ultimately soothing. The terror in Iraq occurred in a power vacuum created by our invasion and the limited success we have had installing a fully-functional democracy - or police force, or military, or running water. John Kerry replied, "Afghanistan is slipping back into chaos, Pakistan is one coup away from becoming a radical Islamic state with nuclear weapons, Iran is closer to a nuclear arsenal, and Iraq has become a recruitment poster for terror." Kerry, not known for his rapier-wit did make a clever suggestion in response to the numerous quotes from Osama bin Laden in his speech, asserting that if Pinhead had killed bin Laden in late 2001, "he wouldn't have to quote this barbarian's words today."
Poor Steve Irwin. If only he had read the transcripts of the most recent meeting of al-Dasyatids, maybe he would have had a chance.

Wild Life

The easiest thing to do today would be to pile on the whole "Croc Hunter" pile, but that might be too simple. If you spend the bulk of your life taunting reptiles with sharp, pointy teeth, maybe you shouldn't be surprised when something jumps up from the swamp and bites you on the cargo shorts. For the record, it should be noted that it was a stingray barb that finally caught up with Mister Irwin. He was, after all, the "Crocodile Hunter" and not the "Stingray Molester."
Steve Irwin is just another link in the long chain of animal annoyers. Marlin Perkins sits on the top of that particular heap, for me. Watching "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" as we waited for "The Wonderful World Of Disney" to start, I often wondered how Marlin stayed so clean and nattily dressed while Jim was out in the bush, attempting to subdue an enraged ocelot. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that his obituary contained the line, "one of only a handful of people to survive the bite of a West African Gaboon viper." So Marlin may at one time put his finger where it shouldn't have been. Jim was the hired hand, after all, and not the host. It was expected that he would be stomping about the underbrush, trying to flush out any number of foul-tempered beasts. And why were they in such bad moods? Some "naturalist" was knocking dirt down their hole, or disturbing their nest, or smelling just a little too much like lunch.
Okay. So I said I wouldn't pile on. Sue me. Or maybe instead we should take the most archetypal example of this "man versus nature" fixation to heart: Carl Denham, adventurer and film maker found himself on Skull Island, locked in a life or death struggle with an ape the size of Def Leppard's tour bus. When he was afforded the chance to escape, he chose instead to go back and try to box up the eighth wonder of the world and bring him back to civilization. We all know how that turned out. My guess is that Carl Denham never worked New York City again. I'm a big fan of nature, and I applaud the efforts of all those, Steve Irwin included, to create a better understanding of the planet that we share with all other birds, beasts and bugs. To this end, I leave you with the words of my favorite naturalist, Mark Trail: "Take only pictures, leave only footprints."

Crisis? What Crisis?

A few days ago Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, was captured north of Baghdad. Who is Abu, or Hamed, as the case may be? According to coalition forces (the coalition of the willing, mind you - at least the countries are, even if the individual soldiers need encouragement from time to time), this is the second most senior figure in al-Qaida in Iraq. Nice work, guys. I will continue to be impressed with the effort of our soldiers. Extremely dangerous, hard work in conditions that most sane people would expressly avoid. It's the mission. From above it's the message that gets all messed up.
Here's the most recent example: Iraq's national security adviser announced on Sunday, that al-Qaida now suffers from a "serious leadership crisis." Please feel free to take a moment to pick yourself up off the floor and stop that giggling while you fully savor the irony. What exactly constitutes a "serious leadership crisis?" Poor communication, faulty vision, and dissent among the rank and file? That sounds a lot like the 2006 Republican approach to the mid-term elections.
Here's how the power vacuum in Iraq has impacted the violence this weekend:
• An overnight mortar attack east of the capital killed six people, including two children, and wounded 15.
• A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol in eastern Baghdad killed two policemen and a civilian and wounded three policemen.
• Gunmen killed two policemen in a civilian car and wounded a third in Baqouba.
• A car bomb also killed three people in Baqouba.
• A civilian was gunned down and killed in a drive-by shooting in Amarah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad.
• A suicide car bomb struck a police patrol in the northern city of Mosul, killing two policemen and wounding five people.
But seriously folks, we are coming up on the fifth anniversary of one of the most pivotal moments in world history in the past twenty-five years. We have heard President Pinhead wring his hands and apologize for his failure of leadership during one of thedevastatingtating natural disasters just one year ago, how long should we have to wait for him to apologize for him dropping the ball at what could have been America's greatest opportunity to unite the world? Abu Humam or Rana is no doubt a dangerous character and the world is better off if he is locked up or removed from his position of power. He is not Osama bin Laden. That would be a "serious leadership crisis."

Putting The "U" Back In Labour

Labor Day weekend, the official end of summer is here (though I tend to cling to the notion that it lingers until September 20, when the Vernal Equinox occurs). Aside from a reminder to put those white bucks back into the closet for another year, it's also a time to reflect on the efforts of organized labor here in the United States - and to fire up the grill one last time.
I will probably do both this year, as the past twelve months have afforded me an up-close and personal view of labor relations. Way back when I first signed up to do this teaching gig, I wondered when I would get a chance to decide whether or not to join the union. I was clever enough to have anticipated the existence of a teacher's union, I just didn't know that by signing a contract with the district that I was signing a contract with the Oakland Education Association. I had never been a union man before that - quite to the contrary. I had been on the "management" side of things for most of my working life. I was that guy with a clipboard and an extra set of keys. I was "the man."
Still, I understood the history and purpose of labor organization, and agree with the loose definition: "A Trade Union (Labour union), ... is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment." I'm a big fan of worker's rights, especially when I'm working. The challenge I encountered was the somewhat Byzantine nature of union politics. More to the point, I discovered the extremely Byzantine nature of Oakland Teachers' union politics.
Over the past several years, the Oakland Unified School District has suffered and struggled through a great many financial and organizational crises. There were month long strikes in 1986 and 1996, the year before I became a teacher. This past year, after wrestling with a state administrator for several months, another strike was narrowly avoided by a settlement at the proverbial eleventh hour. The result of this "victory" for this union member was a nine hundred dollar deduction from the last paycheck of the year, with the promise of an ongoing two percent raise that would be retroactive from the previous year. The deduction was part of the settlement, and it essentially covered the extra days that I had already worked beyond those contractually obligated - they were "voluntary" then, and became "required."
I confess I'm still not completely sure how it all worked out, since I spend most of my contractually obligated hours unraveling fourth grade math, and reading, and California history, and then spend numerous additional hours preparing to unravel those mysteries both at school and at home, before collapsing in a teaching-induced coma on Friday night. So here's the deal: Back in April, I got a call from our local Peace Action group, asking us for an additional donation to help support their efforts to inform and support "Peace Voting" in the upcoming mid-term elections. At the time, I related to this patient volunteer that my heart was certainly there, but I was concerned that my family might be needing our extra nickels and dimes if there was a teachers' strike. I evoked the classic bumper sticker in my response: "What if the schools had all the money they needed and the Air Force had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?"
It's time to put my money where my mouth, or my bumper sticker, is. I'll be sending along a little extra to Peace Action this month - not the whole two percent raise - but something that starts to make sense to me, balancing out all of my political convictions.

The Week That Was

It is not the first week of school that drags on and on, it's the last week. It feels like I just looked up at the clock in my room on Monday morning and it was eight thirty. Wait a second, there still aren't any clocks in our rooms. You know what I mean. The week is already over, and the magical number has dipped from one hundred eighty to one hundred seventy-five. That's the number of instructional days on our calendar.
I tell my kids we have one hundred and eighty days to learn everything they need to know about fourth grade, so we can't waste any time. This week they all seemed to believe me. Right now there is some romance, some mystery in the air. Does Mister Caven really give homework every night? Yes, he does. Does Mister Caven really charge two dollars for a drink of water in his room? Actually, the price went up in the first week to three (classroom) dollars when the demand went through the roof - going to the bathroom during class time remains a relative bargain at two dollars. Does Mister Caven really think he's funny? Yes, and by the time you learn everything you're supposed to know in fourth grade, you'll think he's a hoot, too.
It's just a week, and I know there are a lot more in my future, but this one didn't raise a welt on me or any of my students, so I remain cautiously optimistic. Maybe it has something to do with the convergence of my life here in my tenth year of teaching. I now live with fourth grader, so his lifespan mirrors my tenure. I have told my son that after this year I will no longer be qualified to help him with his homework, as I specialize specifically in the curriculum of the fourth grade. Next year he's on his own. For now we pause, briefly, and reflect on our first week successes. Next week we'll see about getting a clock for the wall. Fourth graders need to know how many minutes there are until recess.