Nagahimo's Ants

October

2010-10-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

October 31, and I am overwhelmed by memories of my Pennsylvania beginnings. Today I should be walking along the railroad tracks or through the woods, soaking up the fall color. But I don't think I could bear looking for the old house and finding something ugly built there. Maybe next year I will be up to it. So I reach back to some pictures I took October 30, 2005, when by happenstance both foliage and light were perfect. On that day both my memories and photographs came together in a blaze of color.
I began my walk taking a right onto the old logging trail leading to Jonah Whale Rock, wishing the once nearly impenetrable wild crab apple trees were still there.
I meandered along the path through the leaves trying to find the old tree where Tim and I built a tree house with a limb swinging over the trail.I remember a time when Ema was walking the path many years later and I pointed out where we had created our perch high above the path. She gasped and remarked she had no idea we had done such dangerous things. It is amazing to remember how free we were to roam the land without adult supervision. And there was Jonah Whale Rock. I remember writing in one of my On the Hill books,

Fifty years later, Jon came back with his camera, and there, like the picture in his memory, was the rock—with the same patchy sunlight and green moss.

I left Jonah Whale Rock, walked on to the tracks, then across to the hillside where we found the vines, so great for swinging.

“We could swing on that vine,” said Tim. He grabbed hold of a vine. He flew far down the hill. He swung back and dropped to the ground.

I returned to the tracks and walked the place where Rusty met his fate.

Rusty tried to beat the train to the crossing. When the train passed, Jon looked along the side of the tracks. He saw a sad, red bundle of fur. It was Rusty.

Walking toward the trestle, I looked back to the house on the hill. So sad to think of it not being there!The trestle of my dreams. I remember the story Orie told of being caught on the bridge when a train came and he had climbed on to the safety rails.
The Pirate's Cave under the trestle that featured in many Nagahimo Ants stories I created with Dan in bed at night.
“There might be snakes,” said Dan.
“Or maybe pirates,” said Jon with a shudder.
“Or maybe little crabs that will pinch your toes,” said Tim.
One day the kids felt brave. They would walk through the tunnel.
Dan, Jon, and Tim took off their shoes and socks. They looked through the dark, gloomy tunnel and saw the small white opening on the other side. The boys walked slowly through the tunnel. They had to bend their heads because the roof was low.

“Snakes!” shouted Dan.
“Pirates!” yelled Jon.

“Crabs!” screamed Tim.
The boys ran shouting out the other side of the tunnel.
“Wow! That was scary,” said Jon.
“Yes,” said Dan, “but it sure was fun.”This is the old maple tree across from the house where old Sipe would occasionally tie up his old horse. It is where Boots bit me when Ellen was trying to get him to open his mouth.

Jon came over to see Ellen.

“You must hurry. Boots is sick. He won’t open his mouth.”
Ellen knew what to do. “I will open Boots’s mouth.”
That did not suit Boots. Jon was close to Boots. Boots bit Jon with his big teeth. Boots bit through Jon’s shirt. His teeth gave Jon a bad bruise.
The lake was a late addition and I have many good memories of adventures in the valley below. There was all the playing in the stream that emptied into Jacob's Creek--swimming, crab and snake hunting, being washed down the creek after a storm. I remember Dr. Buckeye, sitting up beside the tracks with his rifle, shooting groundhogs.The backyard--tree climbing, ball playing, swinging, kick the can--it can't be gone.The chicken house where we would thump the floor, bringing mice running. We would watch with amazement when the large brown hens pounced on the rodents, gulping them down. Chickens really are omnivores.
And so ends my walk back in time, the colors ever as bright as in my memory.

A Portable Peer Group

2010-09-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

What is it like to have your own peer group with you for your first eighteen years? I have no idea but I observe with fascination and a bit of envy the daily interactions between Libby and Nate. Libby and Nate sit down at the piano and play their duet: We All Fall Down.
Nate comments on Maisy the mouse going to the library. Both Libby and Nate are crazy over the Lucy Cousins' Maisy books: Doctor Maisy, Maisy at the Beach, Maisy at the Farm, Maisy Cleans Up, Maisy goes Camping, etc.

Give them some running water and stones, and the twins will spend many minutes carrying the rocks back and fourth to drop in the water. This has been a favorite activity ever since they could walk. If there is a bridge handy, the fun multiplies, accompanied by commentary on possible trolls and billy goats.
"It's Nemo," says Nate, pointing to a striped fish. "Yes," says Libby, "but it's not Nemo." "That's Thomas," remarks Libby, pointing the the Amtrak train entering the station. "No," replies Nate, "That is Diesel 10." As Libby puts a monkey on the bed Nate narrates, "One little monkey, jumping on the bed," followed by Libby's "He fell off and broke his head."

Value Added

2010-09-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

Value added assessment is the in-vogue expression for the latest in assessing students, teachers, and schools. It asks the question, "If you can't measure the value that has been added by the teacher or school, then how can you expect to improve or reform education?" But this is a dangerous route for the education establishment to take, because once value is measured both the bad and good news is difficult to act on. Management practices, vested interests, and just plain bad ideas all converge to shoot the messenger. Much better to ignore value added and build an assessment system that makes reform impossible but creates a fiction that it is being attempted. Hello, state assessment!

Most parents know how to add value to the education of their own children. By interacting positively with their children, parents can immediately measure the desired effects. When reform is impossible, the only clear alternative for the parent is to take the child out of the system. Only that will protect the children and ultimately result in true reform--bringing down the system by taking away what it needs to function--children.

But parents are struggling in an economic environment where they have to provide for their families and that usually means they must leave their children with someone else while they go off to work. When it is strangers or even worse, a dysfunctional system run by strangers, what is a parent to do?

For the lucky parents, the answer is grandparents. Grandparents who are healthy, motivated, and understand how critically important their role can be in helping to educate their grandchildren while parents are away at work. And once this vocation is undertaken, what rewards!

Education or Day Care?

2010-09-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

When parents go off to work they are preoccupied with finding quality day care for their kids. It is curious that very young children, learning at a rate that will never be equaled in their life-times, are seen as "being taken care of" instead of being educated. When I look back to when Julie and Andrew were very young, I grow pensive when I remember their day care while Anda and I worked. But now I have the opportunity to educate my twin grandchildren and after the first week I am both excited and humbled by this opportunity. There is a learning curve here, because although I have a lot of experience with five to twelve year-olds, two-year-olds are another proposition. So the first few weeks are a discovery process... These are the rules of the chalk art, as established by Nate. He takes me by the hand and leads me to the asphalt driveway. He points to the driveway and says, "You sit here papa. Now you wait here," he says, and he walks with his sister back to the chalk pail, chooses two colors and returns, draws a few lines on the driveway, then repeats the instructions and returns the chalk for two more colors. Back and forth for 30 minutes, with Libby picking up on the instructions and adding a few more admonitions and comments, like the inevitable, "I'm back!" Getting the twins to sleep is a work in progress. We pick them up and wheel them down to 8804 Barnett at eight in the morning. Sometime after 11:30 they are ready for a nap. But how that is to be done? We have tried the idea of, "OK, lets go lie down in your room on your beds for your nap." Good luck with that! I have heard that some kids go docilely along with such requests but I have as much success for that napping procedure as I did when I tried it on Julie and Andrew more than twenty-five years ago. A ride in the car or the stroller, however, results in sleep within fifteen minutes and a nap of one to two hours long. Thank you God!

I am reminded of how Sarah and Ema described their attempts to get Julie to sleep when they took care of her in her toddler days. "I would get so mad at her," Sarah would say, upon returning with a sleeping toddler on the stroller, only to have her wake up when arriving at the house.
Toddlers are very good at associative learning. They are piling up new words every day and have no trouble pointing to a map and finding continents, countries, oceans and rivers. The rule is "keep it short and quit before they are ready." This rule stands for any activity. If there is no smile on their faces, then what am I doing? Here Libby points to the map and says "North America".

Twin Beginnings

2010-08-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

They arrive with their new backpacks--Libby's Elmo pack and Nate's Thomas pack--ready for their for their first day of "school."

Mom is going back to work and both Mom and Dad have new teaching jobs. They intentionally bought a house a couple blocks from the twins' Grandpa and Grandma. The heart-rending leaving of their children with "strangers" will not happen and they go to work with smiles on their faces.

And Grandpa? What was he thinking?! Well, for one, a better class ratio. And no pacing guides, Standards of Learning or idiots looking over his shoulder.

And Grandma? Was she drafted for this?! Stay tuned.

The Lottery of Opportunity

2009-05-13T19:18:00.000-07:00

For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Matthew 25, verse 29.

"We didn't have any bank account, and we had few possessions. But we had faith, shared interests, our family, and in our weather-beaten shack we felt rich enough." Miriam Lind

And they had an abundance of language. Both were avid readers and writers, fresh out of college and surrounded by literate friends and a large extended family all who valued the pursuit of knowledge and education.

So I entered into life lucky, having won the most important lottery of all--birth into a family rich in ideas and literacy, and to a father and mother who brought their own luck and language expertise into their children's lives.

How many adult language interactions did I have with my parents and with the constant stream of their adult friends who swirled and eddied around me for the first five years of my life? Nearly all of these adults spoke in extended speech, in the language of books and written language. Like all children I learned the language I was surrounded by effortlessly. I spent hours listening to my parents read books to me--novels, poetry, fairy tales.

I was awake about 25,000 hours the first five years of life. Cognitive scientists estimate that it takes 10,000 hours of expert instruction and practice to gain expertise in a domain or skill. The amount of direct verbal interaction between parents and their children fluctuate hugely in families, but in my case it was likely very high--perhaps a total of 3000 hours of direct verbal interaction (including being read to) with my parents and other incidental or intentional encounters with other verbal experts over the first five years. This contrasts with the approximately 100 hours of verbal interaction teachers engage in with an individual child over a child's six years of elementary school.

So when I entered school in my sixth year of life I was well on my way to expertise in spoken language and, being immersed in print culture and having been read to frequently, I already had a jump on beginning reading.

This year I have taught kindergartners to read. I have entered into their young lives for a single moment, a snapshot of their lives, and I am overwhelmed how arbitrary fate is, how capricious is the way opportunity opens to all of us, and how ineffective formal education is in ameliorating the Matthew Effect. The irony is that not only does formal education not ameliorate the effect, but it augments it, and the gap between the haves and have nots in educational capital expands throughout the school years.

Nathaniel walks into kindergarten with deep and flexible knowledge of extended language. He speaks in complete sentences and has broad general knowledge of the world. He has already begun to read, and by the end of kindergarten his reading ability has nearly caught up to his rich language experience and knowledge and he reads and comprehends at a sixth grade level. He is a jackpot winner in the educational lottery before he barely begins schooling.

Roberta walks into kindergarten with several words of English. Her parents are illiterate in their own language and she speaks haltingly in her native language. If Roberta receives the same amount of instruction Nathaniel receives, the large gap between the two will increase dramatically. To significantly narrow the gap would take more instructional minutes than are available in the school day and would be beyond both Roberta's ability to absorb and her teacher's ability to provide.

This in the unsavory truth about public education. It does not provide the early interventions necessary to change the circumstances most children are born into. It crystallizes differences and rewards those already rich in educational capital. We should embrace this truth and use it to guide us out of these dark ages of public education. Doing so will take a seismic shift in our ideas about education and about how we can effect educational change.

"Dream, Dream, Dream...I'm dreaming my life away."

2009-05-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

Jon looked down from his perch high in the wild black cherry tree behind the house. He swayed in the breeze and gazed east, over the cabin roof down into the valley where the trestle spanned Jacob's Creek. The screen door slammed and Jon watched as Mom came into the back yard and gazed up at him, her hand screening her eyes from the August afternoon sun.

"Jon, come down, the school bus schedule is out and I need to talk to you about your class assignment."

Jon scrambled down the tree and ran down to the back porch in excitement. Third grade, and his first year at the new school--well, not quite, he had spent the last two weeks of second grade there. But now he would have a new teacher and Mrs. Weitzel would be behind him. Jon looked quizzically up at his mom, surprised to see the shadow of worry on her face.

"I'm sorry, Jonathan, but Mrs. Weitzel is teaching third grade this year and you are in her class."

At that moment Jon felt the summer collapse behind him. He looked with bewilderment into his mom's face and then ran past her into the house, down the hall to his room, slammed the door, and threw himself face down onto his bed. He heard the door open and felt his mom's hand on his back.

"Jonathan, it won't be that bad, it's a new school and third grade will be better."

But Jon knew it wouldn't be better --and it wasn't. Mrs. Weitzel still had the baseball bat in the corner near her desk--not that she ever used it--but it remained a stark reminder to every boy that he'd better watch himself in her room. Jon was so scared of Mrs. Weitzel that one day he forgot his math assignment and, afraid she would see him not passing his paper forward, he passed an empty paper up the row. Jon felt trapped--in a soulless room with nothing to do but watch the minute hand of the big clock on the wall creep so slowly towards three o'clock.

But then something happened. It was as if a wormhole opened and Jon was whisked into another universe. Well, maybe it didn't happen that abruptly, but daydreams that had before been only brief reveries became increasingly sophisticated escapes into a fantasy world Jon could control. And the daydreams became indispensable in getting him through the next eight years of schooling.

I remember third grade as the time when I first began building elaborate fantasies that helped get me from recess to lunch to recess and home. They also became very useful getting me through the many church services I had to sit through.

My daydreams became so enjoyable that I began using them in stories I would tell my older brother in the bed we shared each night. Often he would say, "Jon tell a story so we can fall asleep," and I would begin or continue telling some fantasy until we drifted off. When we get together as adults we occasionally say "Remember Nagahimo and His Army of Ants?" I don't remember that daydream but I always get a good emotional buzz thinking of how I felt when I was telling the story and its many sequels.

Into the Storm

2009-04-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

...and down the road went our firstborn son, in his new blue jeans and bright shirt, carrying his shiny lunchbox. His back straight, he seemed not to care a bit that he was leaving us!

...and we watched our second son clutch his lunchbox and go down the road with his brother and cousins, his brown eyes dancing in excitement...

...our third son clutched...his lunch money and went down the road with his brothers...to board the bus for his first day of school...

...Number Four Boy left us, erect and confident...he left us with a nonchalant peck at the door and flew to join his brothers at the bus stop, his new blue jeans and red shirt flashing like the foliage of a bright bird in the morning sunshine...

...one more apron string cut--snip...Andrewshek...

...another year of school has begun...Minka's red dress flashes through the green of the trees and bushes between our window and the mailbox [bus stop]...

...after fifteen years she is alone...the whole day is hers--hers!

MSL On the Hill

Memory, you fickle thing, open the window and let me see that six-year-old climb those steps into that stone building. Let me watch his exuberant step into the unknown. And let me fast forward through the next 12,000 hours he spends within school walls, stopping to browse at will and reflect on the myriad events and interactions along the way.

I was once that young boy, yet I am forever separated by a river of experience and consciousness. I am at a different place and am forever barred from entering that bright but precarious world.

I remember a thought--a thought so clear and vivid it cuts across to the present. A thought emanating from that six year old during his first year of school and born of the entitlement lucky kids get from parents who intuitively protect their wonder and enthusiasm for their new life.

I can do anything I want. I can fool all of these adults. I am in charge.

As I fast forward now to the present I see the little boy in the kindergarten children I work with all day. I marvel at their exuberance, their zest for new experiences, but I am sobered by the fragility of their energy and how easily they are diverted away from enthusiasm for knowledge by the perfect storm of bad ideas that shape our schools.

...coming home, slightly wilted and bone-tired as anyone could see, his only comment, "You have to sit so long at school!"

MSL [Number Four Boy]

The Story Begins

2009-04-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

See the three windows on the bottom right? In 1952 I sat behind those windows. I was in first grade, and this was my first experience with schooling. The four room school was built in 1900 and served for 27 years as the first Alverton high school before it became an elementary school. I remember the bell tower and listening with awe when my older brother in Mrs. Green's fourth grade room recounted kids pulling the bell rope to signal the start of the school day.

The most thrilling feature of the school was the little door in the fourth grade room that opened in the back to the round, metal tube fire escape. At least once I remember having the rare opportunity to go hurtling down the tube, spilling out onto the dirt playing area below. The dirt playground was a great place to slide in the winter. The older boys would pour water over the snow to make long icy paths and kids would line up, take a run, and go sliding down to arrive breathless in a pile of bodies at the bottom. Today in Virginia, kids are rarely out in the snow for recess, and are usually prohibited from going out if the temperature gets below forty.

Looking back, I have a good feeling about my first grade teacher, Mrs. Felgar. She is the only elementary teacher I can recall reading stories to the class and I distinctly recall her stories about the Big Bad Wolf. She also had some interesting behaviors, like going from desk to desk smelling every butt, trying to find the culprit who crapped in his pants. And no wonder. We students would go to any lengths to avoid going to the the outside privies. I remember the old wooden structures with four or five seats and a smell that tensed the sphincters of many a young boy.

I have a vague memory that the class was big. There were five rows of desks, fastened solidly to the floor, and they were full, so there may have been forty kids in the classroom. I found an old picture of Mrs. Green's fourth grade class from 1946 and there were an impossible 49 students standing for their picture in front of the school steps.

First grade was my one and only wholly good school year as an elementary school student. For second grade I moved across to Mrs. Weitzel's second grade room, and that began a long and dreary story to be repeated in five more chapters the following years. The only thing I remember of second grade was Mrs. Weitzel digging her fingernail into my thumb as I tried ineptly to do the Round, Round, Ready Write, the mantra for making ovals courtesy of the Peterson method of handwriting. The only good that came of that episode was Mom feeling sorry for me and allowing me to stay home with my infected thumb the following day. It was with profound relief that I looked forward to third grade at the brand new school up the road.