Best of All Worlds

Little Soldiers:  An American Boy, a Chinese School and the Global Race to Achieve was a super interesting and insightful.  Lenora Chu and her husband have decided to live in China and send their son to a Chinese school.  She has a lot of special insight because she is the daughter of parents who came from China and raised her in the US and now she is raising an American-born son in China.  He husband is from the US.  So there are all kinds of different POVs that figure in here. 
The conclusion that their family comes to is that hybrid of the US and Chinese school systems might be best.  And it just made me think about how good the grey is.  And how much better we all would be if we were willing to blend and mix and combine the best of certain things with the best of other things.  Great book.  It is super readable and so well done!

Hang in There...

I say that to the characters in book, as most of them probably have thought that giving up and going Home was the best thing, and also to readers of I Crawl Through It.
I read some reviews in which the reader said they just couldn't finish the book.  And I completely understand.
I started it and read a book in between and thought about not going back to it, but I am really glad I did.
A.S. King is an incredible writer.  And I am the first to call someone pretentious!  (Terrible, terrible, but sadly, that is true.) but I don't agree with others who have said that King's writing here is pretentious.  I really don't.  I think that she really is just that smart.  She really is just that creative.  She really does care that much about telling the stories of teens who have experienced trauma.
Make no mistake, this IS an odd book.
It is more surreal than magical realism, but it is well worth reading.
Check out the book trailer, too.

I Don't Know...

It's not so much that I don't believe Jon Krakauer's criticisms of the Three Cups of Tea guy, Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute.  Mortenson's antics have been well documented elsewhere and Mortenson himself has publicly confessed.  It's just that Three Cups of Deceit, I don't know...there was just something off about it.  I don't mean that it didn't tell the truth or that Krakauer lied or anything, no, not at all.  It was more like a personal attack or criticism or something.  Which I know it was, but the reviewer on goodreads who said, "the moral of the story is, don't f*&k with Jon Krakauer's money."  seems to have said it best.  Krakauer himself gave money to CAI and when he found out that there were lies in Three Cups of Tea he went on an investigation and did a piece for 60 Minutes and this ebook came out of it.  The good part of the book was that it was super short, unlike those that you need to listen to quickly to get through them.  I still sped this one up though.  I never read Three Cups of Tea, it is really not my thing at all.

Public Schools Matter!

So I mentioned in this post how I came to read Reign of Error:  The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools.  I loved this book for many reasons.  There is so much that I want to say about it!
When I finished reading it, I wrote to my school board director and suggested that the board read the book together.  The reason I did this was because last fall, our teachers exercised their right to strike, as they had been working without a contract for two years.  It made me pretty angry that the school board thought nothing of paying lawyers $100 an hour but yet didn't value our teachers.  Now the board has changed, and an agreement has been reached, and so I hope we have more pro-education members on the board, but I feel that this book really has some important things to say about how important teachers are.  Indeed, my school board director said that a pro-teacher book would be "preaching to the choir" so that was good to hear.  I am blessed to work closely with the teachers in our district and am in the schools quite a bit.  I see how hard they work.  I know how much they care.
Just last night I talked to a teacher who, along with another teacher, was taking their Life Skills high school students, the next day, to the musical production that our middle school was presenting.  Last night was a Friday night.  The next day then, being Saturday, is a day off for teachers, right?  Not for these ladies.  They love their students.  They care about them, deeply.  These are the kinds of things that the school board might never know.  But they should.  And so that is one of the reasons why I loved this very pro-teacher, pro-public education book. 
Ravitch rips both the Bush and the Obama administrations for their teach-to-the-test education policies.  No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are very alike and not very helpful.  Attacks on public education come from both the left and the right. 
It makes me wonder, and you know I love a good conspiracy theory, if it isn't true that the powerful, are all in bed together and really don't want our children to succeed.   Now I am a nut, I know that!  But man...I wonder if there isn't some truth to the New World Order when I learn that "liberals" and "conservatives" both promote policies that are contrary to the good of the regular Joe and Jane! 
Ravitch talks about what would make a difference in bettering education:  prenatal care, early childhood learning programs for example.  Now, who, who, who, who can argue with that?  Policy makers, that's who!  So you have to wonder...why? 
What a difference it would make if ALL mothers-to-be had quality care before they give birth, if all children had access to free and quality early childhood education and enough to eat, a safe place to sleep! 
That's the answer, man.  So why, why, why, do we end up instead with things like NCLB and RTTT?  Why! 
It's weird, isn't it? 
The only thing that I didn't really agree with about Ravitch's book was her complete criticism of Teach for America.  And that is personal, probably, because I know some brilliant young people who work for Teach for America.  But I do agree that it takes more than six weeks to make someone a teacher!  It's just that she sees TFA as complete invaluable.  While TFA does need to be changed in some ways, it does have a lot of value.  I just don't think she gave it a fair shake.
The bottom line is this:  teachers are the most important people in our country, next to parents.  Teachers need to be valued as such. 

Another Recommendation...

A friend in Sewickley recommended The Smartest Kids in the World:  and how they got that way and I am glad they did.  This was a super interesting book, and it really gets you thinking.  The author, Amanda Ripley is a really great writer.  She is an investigative journalist and the book is really accessible and interesting.  Super well done.  I had never heard of the PISA test, so it was interesting to learn about PISA and how it started this whole project of Ripley's.  When I went to the PISA website I took the sample question and got it wrong.  Very sad.  But not surprising.  It was math related and I have always had a fear of math. 
I can see now that my fear of math has hurt me.  It is odd that now I teach a preschool math class and it is my most favorite class in the world. 
The book takes a look at exchange students from the US who travel to Finland, Poland and South Korea.  These countries both scored very highly on the PISA tests.  Poland's scores were particularly interesting because their changes came in such a short period of time.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting the book to say.  I figured that the United States wouldn't come in super high compared to some other countries, but when it appeared as low as it did, I was surprised.  Here is a nice summary of the results.  Here is some criticism of the PISA test.  And here is my man, Jonathan Kozol on this book, referred to in the criticism of the PISA test link.  Reign of Error is on my to-read list.
Ripley then sets out to figure out some kind of explanation for these results and I was surprised by some of her findings. One of the things that she said that really made sense to me was that in Finland, teachers are held in high regard.  They are the cream of the crop and they are treated as such.  It makes me super mad when I hear so much criticism about teachers.  I am not a teacher, nor do I have the gifts and skills necessary to be one.
Just this week one of our local news channels offered the teaser that our students might have to go to school on Saturdays because of the bad weather and teachers' strike that happened last fall.  It was unreal, the hateful backlash that filled Facebook and Twitter after people heard just this teaser.  This was the headline:  Shaler Considering Saturday Classes to Make Up Snow, Strike Days.
Well, actual truth, as revealed in the story, is that "Saturday Classes" would be a graduation practice just for seniors.
A graduation practice.
Just for seniors.
Now I am not going to vent about this TV station's ridiculous reporting.  Everyone knows that TV stations are known for this kind of garbage.  It isn't even worth the typing exercise.  It's like this, but warning, there is strong language in the video.  This one, too.  But the hateful comments that were posted on Facebook were unreal.  Before knowing the story, and there wasn't even a real story here, people were ripping the teachers apart.
I wonder how many of those hateful comments came from people who really know what a teacher's life is like.  There is no way that those critics have seen the teachers that I have seen.  Our teachers are committed and caring professionals.  Teaching is their life.  Anyway...don't get me started!  Why don't we treat our teachers like the folks in Finland do!  Blah! 
Okay, rant over. 
Anyway, very thought-provoking book. 

Overheard...

It was interesting.  I was walking from the Washington Convention Center, the site of this year's NAEYC Annual Conference.  Educators gather to learn more about serving their children and families. There were two women beside me, attendees of the conference and one said to the other, "Those people don't use that money for food.  They are going to buy drugs."  She went on to say how gross it was that this man came up to her and asked her for money for food.
I was astonished that an educator would say something like this.  That someone who has the responsibility of caring and educating children would say something full of ignorance and hate.
Then as we walked along, I continued to eavesdrop, I realized that the woman was actually a girl of 17.  Then I felt guilty.  Because this girl is just a child and she doesn't know any better.  Why?  Because people like me, if I am to think of myself as an educator, failed to help her understand, failed to give her information about homelessness and addiction and caring for others.
So maybe the people I gave money to on this trip went out and bought booze or drugs.  That's not my business.  I am just trying to be about my Father's business.
So I will pray for forgiveness and I will try to be a better educator.  One who promotes empathy and compassion and knowledge and understanding.

About a Million Years Ago...

When I was in school at Duquesne, I happened upon a book at work called Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol.  It was one of those life-changing books for me and it was good to read his latest book, Fire in the Ashes:  twenty-five years among the poorest children in America.  Kozol and Alex Kotlowitz have done an important job.  Using language that we can understand they have shed light on the lives of people right here in our own country who struggle every day to survive.  They have exposed the greed and neglect of all of us.  I think that everyone should read their books.  In Fire, Kozol brings us up to date, lets us know what some of those kids he introduced us to in Amazing Grace and Rachel and Her Children are doing now.  Great, great book.