Kazakhstan Travel Plans

Kazakhstan lies in the north of the central Asian republics and is bounded by Russia in the north, China in the east, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the south, and the Caspian Sea and part of Turkmenistan in the west. It has almost 1,177 mi (1,894 km) of coastline on the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan is about four times the size of Texas. The territory is mostly steppe land with hilly plains and plateaus.

In January, Michael and I are traveling to Almaty, Kazakhstan to visit The Almaty International School http://www.qsi.org/kaz/ and speak at a teacher's conference. Already I am impressed by the school and its philosophy which leads with an emphasis on kindness. Kindness is not a word that gets airtime in US school goals. How do you develop a standardized test for kindness? If you go to the website, be sure and check out the online student newspaper which is very informative and the little video.

Airline tickets all booked and new down coat purchased, we are ready to go to the cold cold steppes -- in January (did I mention?) The trip will be long -- what the travel agent calls an "over over." Overnight to Amsterdam, get on another plane, and overnight to Almaty. The flip side of the world.

So, naturally we are looking for some background reading material to help activate and assess our prior knowledge (which amounts to zip) of this area to help increase our comprehension. Unfortunately, Lonely Planet does not have a guide. Neither does Fodor's or Frommer's. Mmmmm.

So when we went for our visa pictures at AAA and (just thought I'd ask) I asked the travel agent there if she had any brochures or travel information for Kazakhstan, she replied, "What country is that in?" Mmmmmm.

We politely informed her that Kazakhstan IS a country -- in fact the 8th largest country in the world. Casting a suspicious eye on both of us, she informed us she only had information about Europe, which looks to be only a launch pad for this trip.

Filling out the VISA application, I notice that the word for NO (as is "have you ever visited Kazakhstan before?") is OK. OK means NO? That'll make your number two pencil turn backflips. Mmmmmm.

Our contacts at the school have been warm and inviting -- in direct contrast to online descriptions we have read about the geography in January. Lonely Planet online has this caution: If you do decide to battle the winter, be aware that many domestic flights are grounded and finding food can be a problem since lots of eateries close for the season. Mmmmmmm.

But then there are the rich descriptions of the food, the hospitality, the friendliness -- all in direct contrast to the weather. Just now, I was back on the site looking at the buildings and the faces of the students, getting excited.

So, here's my today thought to ponder: Is January considered winter in a land when OK means NO?

Thanksgiving

And there we are. Left to right: Scottie (aka Scooter), Stephie, Thomas, Sara Kelly, Sara Ellen, Danny, Ben. Ready -- Swing! A little unsure. Holding on. A lot to be thankful for this year.

I've read a lot of articles about people boycotting thanksgiving because of the dastardly acts the settlers committed against indigenous peoples, but I like the idea of taking a day of the year to be thankful. It's the outdated textbooks and folklore that we need to leave behind, not the extra helping of gratitude. A day to celebrate the harvest of another year. This year I'm thankful for the above, for all my extended functioning dysfunctional family, for a warm home to come home to with running water and lights. I'm truly fortunate and pausing to be grateful is important for every reason I can think of, including a way to stave off the blues that often drag in on the skirts of winter. Something to keep us all laughing and hanging on.

NCTE Middle School Mosaic

Thirteen minutes. That's the time Kylene Beers allotted for poetry during the 2.5 hour event at NCTE in NYC this year. Thirteen and a guillotine was to descend at 14. I can't explain how much I obsessed about this time limit. I made power point slides for a read along. I deleted them. I added more. Deleted. I celebrated by not sleeping the night before so that I arrived 1.5 hours early with cotton candy for brains.

I downloaded photoshop brushes. Emailed just the right font to moderator and Goddess of YA literature, Teri Lesesne. Let me just stop for a moment and say, in case you were wondering, that this is THE best read person not only in YA lit, but probably in the galaxy. I lurk on her blog occasionally, but too often and it makes me depressed that I don't read more at traffic lights. I have no idea how she reads as much as she does. Go here to fact check: http://professornana.livejournal.com/

Once the mosaic began, I relaxed into listening to Christopher Paul Curtis and Pam Ryan, Jeff Wilhelm and Janet Allen and others. A whole lot of talent was packed into that hotel ballroom, much of it carried into the room in canvas bags on the weary shoulders of teachers. It was a great afternoon and those 2.5 hours flew by. When it came time for my 13 minutes, I jumped up and raced through the whole thing in 10 minutes. Zip zip. And back to enjoying hearing others talk about their passions.

I started on the performance poetry circuit (could this be?) 16 years ago and I know that people assume I am beyond being nervous. But not true. Believe it or not, I get more nervous to deliver a poem for a small audience, say a dinner table of folks, than a ballroom. That I've known forever. But now I know that I can get EXTREMELY twisted over 13 minutes, when an hour is a breeze. Who understands these things?

Things to do to avoid writing . . .

Get a snack. This is a long list.

Starting with: Get a snack. Walk the dog. Stare out the window. Play solitaire. Knit something that is destined to fit no one. Crochet a cover to fit a tennis ball. Mend socks. Swim. Read a magazine about something you already know or don't care about. Feed the dogs, the family, the worms (another story), the plants, yourself (nothing healthy, see above). Clean off desk by putting everything in neat stacks and then shuffle the papers up again. Do taxes (only works once a year, but provides weeks of obsessive hand wringing). Answer email. Read the news anxiously as if reading can change the world and as if in not reading every little announcement, you have abandoned the world and in its last final gasp, everyone will blame you. Write blog entries. Sweep under the dining room table without moving the chairs, no use overdoing it. Get to the airport too early or too late, both are distractions, but the late option messes with your blood pressure longer. Reboot. Run a virus check on the computer. Call the kids so you can say, well, that's it, I really didn't have anything to say. Check the time on the clock on the kitchen stove, the one in the office isn't good enough. More solitaire. File nails. Search for just the right pen. Take a finger shriveling bath long enough to knock off a Tolstoy or a couple of Shakespeares. Count the pores in your nose. Remove a kitchen wall (deadlines require extreme measures). Walk the beach and collect glass. Put the dogs out in the backyard, it's been hours (days) since walking them last. Clean out that little catch basin in the car where three pennies are fused to the plastic by a month old coffee spill. Plan a trip. A long trip. A trip requiring visas and multiple calls to travel agents and visits to cranky websites. Read other people's books that have been sent to you and marvel at how they ever got them done. Wow. Watch a rerun and to see if it turns out the same way it did the last time. Rewash the load of laundry you left in the machine a couple days ago and is beginning to smell like sauerkraut. Satisfy your desperate need to go by vitamins to make you think clearer. While you are out, go to Home Depot and buy any project that requires installation and tools you can't find. Gather up last seasons clothes and put them in tubs all over the bedroom. Belly crawl under the bed looking for stray socks. Attempt to learn photoshop. Do this without classes or a book that would make the process go smoothly. Use hours, days, weeks wandering art sites on line and downloading brushes.

In fact, if you really get into the photoshop thing --just hand the dog a leash and tell him/her to take a hike, because Photoshop will eat your entire day, days on end. No problem. Photoshop is the best time sucker there is.

Democracy: the votes are in

Carolyn Bucey finished off her slimy opponent Bill Snow with a knock out punch of truth and we won. Not only that council seat, but two others, also. It was a sweep of local proportions.

A commenter on my last post suggested I name names, so here we go. Our neighborhood was unhappy with our councilman Bill Snow for failing to stand up for us against the over development of a former school property by Junior Properties, ltd. Junior's daddy, the Big Shot, Osborne, gave a pile of money to the financially crippled school district, earmarked solely for the football stadium. Period. No books, no AP teachers hired back, no computers or classroom remodels. Football. In exchange for this "contribution" he was gifted Center Street Elementary School and surrounding properties for development by good ol' Junior, who has proposed squeezing in 50-60-70 (depends what day you ask) condos onto the former playground.

Why is our council representative so important? It is council who will decide how many units go onto that land. In our minds, rubber stampers need not apply. And rubber stampers who have a whole lot of unexplained cash in their election campaign accounts should get lost.

Most people think the Osbornes bought Center Street School for the fire sale price of $700,000, but that's unclear. Nothing was ever recorded. Did the district gave it to them as swag for the gift to the football team? Who knows. Very fishy. And Mr. Snow and the rest of council just kept smiling and rubber stamping approvals. Keep in mind that this neighborhood is still reeling from 2003 when 63% of the town voted to stop developers from plugging a different development (Newell Creek) into our limited green space. The developers took the case to court and a judge OVERTURNED the popular vote. To say the neighborhood is a little skeptical of sincerity of developers is an understatement.

And now this new Junior Properties development at Center Street School threatens to overwhelm our ancient sewers, threaten our trees, and increase our population density and traffic flow at one of the busiest intersections in town beyond the point of safety. We've already sacrificed the playground I used to walk to with my grandkids and the ball diamond that throbbed with T ballers on any given summer evening. And guess what? Osborn also owns the bank that is doing the financing and owns the gas company which is also drilling (with council approval) at more and more sites in this semi-urban neighborhood. Could it be that Osborn rhymes with Halliburton?

Carolyn Bucey was party to a lawsuit against the Newell Creek developers and in fact she and her husband received a small settlement for loss of value to their home due to the Newell Creek development. So, wasn't it a surprise to all when a glossy, four color copy of her confidential settlement check was mailed first class to the entire Ward along with an implication that she was taking payoffs? How did Snow get a copy of that check? Who paid for the expense of mailing? Who would want such a person as Mr. Snow to represent them after he did such a thing?

Well, guess what. The majority of voters do NOT trust Mr. Snow to represent them anymore. Here's the best part about grass roots efforts, Bucey's committee was able to xerox a simple letter explaining that the copy of the check was obtained underhandedly, that the check was NOT a payoff but a perfectly legal settlement, and get that info hand delivered to the entire ward, 1/4 of Mentor inside of two days. The majority of voters decided.

And that is what democracy looks like.

This is what democracy looks like

It's people meeting at one house in the neighborhood at 9:00AM on a Saturday morning to pass out literature. The smell of coffee from one of those 30 cup stainless towers. A plate of coffee cake cut in 2 inch squares. It's pulling your scarf up over your mouth and snugging on a hat and gloves because the morning frost has finally caught up with the calendar. It's talking to your neighbors about the polls, the rumors, the fact that the republican party has paid for a first class mailing, a glossy, four color smear campaign (all untrue) and robo calls, over $20,000 for a measly, supposedly non-partisan city council seat in a mid-sized suburb. Why? Whose corporate interests are they protecting this time? Is it the SOB (son of a big shot) who is trying to overdevelop the neighborhood? Are they planning to develop the wild lagoon wetlands again? This council seat only pays a few thousand a year; who in their right minds would spend that kind of money on such a campaign?

It's shaking your head and reaching for a stack of literature and a list of addresses to hit the streets. It's mentioning that you will be out of town for the election and having your neighbors take the literature out of your hand and telling you to get your number 2 pencil to the board of elections and vote early because (new policy) they are open on Saturday for early voters and this election is SO small that every vote, every single pencil mark, counts. There will always be more little guys than big guys in this country, but we have to make our marks.

And the best part about voting early, we actually were able to make a mark on a paper rather than a touch screen that swallows votes and doesn't spit them out again, which is an whole other issue.

Too many of us are inclined to complain about a loss of democratic rights and not actively involved in the democratic rites -- like standing on street corners and passing out literature, trying to engage neighbors in real conversation. I'm just as bad. I'm spotty in my involvement in this mud-wrestling match called democracy. But every time I put myself up out of my chair and away from my computer and TV where pundits shout their opinions, every time I get around to expressing mine by jumping into the process, this time only by showing up at my neighbor's house to be sent away to vote early, I am grateful for the experience. It all seems so reasonable. It makes me hopeful.

Neighbors actually talking to one another. It's a great concept.

A First in Performance Poetry

Stephie is Katie's daughter and like her mother, she likes being first. She likes to walk first when we go to the woods or the beach. She likes to cartwheel the fastest and swing the highest. Stephie loves first grade.

Her teacher has a great plan for helping kids with reading -- every week the children are assigned a poem to read, re-read and then perform. Then the kids take the poem home and perform it for parents who record their written applause in a response journal. It's about the funnest approach to homework I've ever heard of. AND a true assessment of her knowledge of word mastery. Stephie is great at this and reads with intense drama and expression.

I will have to ask Stephie's teacher if there is a source I should cite for that classroom idea, but it is a fabulous one for primary kids.

And oh so much better of a way of assessing her reading fluency than taking a stop watch to her reading nonsense syllables, where reading with expression and drama only slows a reader down. And how much drama can a reader put into sounds with nothing attached to them? No bugs, no pumpkins, no mystery, no enchantment? Just sounds. Where the only skill being tested is speed, as if speed could ever equate to interpreting the real meaning of words. This testing practice is inflicted on her, a political mandate by the federal government, every other week so that there is a score to write next to her name, so that people in suits can brag that her building's scores are up. Not the children's reading, not their happiness, not their love of learning. Their scores.

Ask yourself sometime: what motivated you to read? What excited you? What made you want to learn new words. Now ask yourself -- was it a stopwatch, a list of nonsense syllables and a stranger keeping score? Was it you sweating it out every other week to read sounds with no meaning faster and faster? This is DIBELS, "the worst thing to happen to the teaching of reading since the development of flash cards," according to P.David Pearson in Ken Goodman's book, What's the Matter with DIBELS. (Heinemann, 2007). Yesterday I was reading this book with my lunch and it gave me an upset stomach. Seriously, I couldn't finish my salad.

Thankfully, Stephie's teacher has not allowed this test to totally dictate her methods of instruction. Thankfully, Stephie wound up in a class with an experienced teacher, not a newby who was trained to believe that this bogus assessment plan has any impact on actually teaching kids to read. Thankfully, Stephie's teacher is countering this testing madness by leading a group of "firsts" in performance poetry.

Now there's a medium that can really get kids jazzed about reading!

Travel dreams

It was a big event in my life when the National Geographic came every month. I can't recall ever seeing my mother reading one, or my dad. I suppose they did, or maybe the subscription was just something they did for the kids. I didn't come home from school to video games or online chats. I came home to snack on pretzels and apples, maybe some peanut butter spread on whatever was handy (just the tip of a knife if mom wasn't looking) and avoid my homework by either making up dance routines involving chairs and stools in the living room to the accompaniment of Rogers and Hammerstein or reading my mail. How much mail could a 10 year old kid get beyond the $5 card from granny on my birthday? Let me tell you -- boxes. I got mail almost everyday.

On the one day a month when the National Geographic came I'd snatch it up immediately. I'm sure I gleaned some educational benefit from the magazine. I looked at the pictures of the volcanoes and hummingbirds, the camels with flies on their eyes and oh yes, the naked indigenous people. It was there that I read about the space shots which lead me on a wild goose chase to find space food at the grocery store. That was before you could find your wildest desire on the Internet and Kroger's had yet to stock food in flavor saving pouches.

After a quick flip through, I would get down to studying the last few pages in the magazine where there were columns of 1 x 2" ads for countries all over the world beckoning American tourist dollars. They wanted those dollars so bad that they offered travel brochures, maps, coupons and other enticements to anyone for (get this) FREE.

Free was just what I could afford. Some of the poorer countries asked for a self addressed stamped envelope, but stamps were only a nickle and I could sneak one of those out of the middle drawer of the desk easily enough. I'd spread out my clipped coupons from the back of the magazine on my bed and slip them into envelops, guaranteeing a continual stream of mail. I dreamed of traveling to all those places.

Last night Micheal reports that once again I was dreaming of travel -- spouting numbers in my sleep. We have three big trips in various stages of planning: Kazakhstan in Jan., Jakarta in Feb., and Istanbul in March. Figures and itineraries were dancing in my brain all night.

One thing I never dreamed when I sat down at the kitchen table to write poems for Katie and Kelly was that those poems would take me to places like Vietnam, China, Italy, Croatia, Sumatra, Vancouver, Toronto, Bahrain and Tell City, Indiana -- to name a few.

All I know is that this travel dream has been with me since I memorized every word to South Pacific. I just never dreamed it would come true. And I NEVER dreamed that the coupon that would get me there would be a poem.

jack kerouac's words turn 50

I never liked the man. Personally, I think the beat poets were a self-absorbed lot both in their writing and their lives. Pumped on drugs, alcohol, and their own selfishness -- the myth surrounding the beats collective genius still makes it hard for a sober female to be taken seriously. These words are spoken with tongue firmly planted in cheek and squinty eyes -- half serious because to be otherwise is to invite an avalanche of are-you-freaking-kidding-mes from all those who have been inspired by Kerouac and the rest of the beats to write, explore, and at least dream about casually abusing the emotions and intellect of women. Substitute broad and dame for B* and ho and Jack is the misogynistic rapper of the 50s.

Maybe it's because I never studied him in high school in my formative years when the natural instinct to go on the road yearns in the adolescent soul -- to leave all responsibility behind -- when it is a comfort to read affirmations of self-centeredness. I'm not sure I EVER would have identified with his relentless pursuit of women, but I can see how many an adolescent male has. Instead, I was introduced to Kerouac in a modern literature class in college during the decomposition of my parents marriage due to the anguish of my mother's alcoholism and drug abuse and in the midst of my own struggles to shed that pain and become a responsible adult. When the professor popped the top on ol' Jack's writing, I took one whiff and fled. Rendering humor out of drinking, drugging, and ridiculing the ones left behind to clean up the puke and keep the lights on was not my idea of a good read.

So, my rejection of Kerouac is personal. I know he influenced a generation, that his writing style spoke for a literary time period and went on to influence the next. And let's face it, literary icons are often people you would never want to ask to dinner -- Hemingway would have torn the place up and insulted everyone before using the table cloth as a bull fighter's cape, Dorothy Parker would have passed out in the powder room, and Byron slept with his sister -- I've read and enjoyed all of them. I was in a bad place when Kerouac and I were introduced, like meeting someone when you are a little cranky -- we just made a bad impression on one another.

Which is all to say, I went to two events this weekend commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of On the Road expecting to be, well not really expecting to be anything. So many people spoke of how Kerouac had touched their lives. Cavana said he read him in HS and asked himself, "could poetry be like this?" Ray has spent residency time at the Kerouac house and spoke in jazz rhythms of the vibe. Kisha never read the man before and gave an appropriately sardonic interpretation. Nina Gibbons lived in San Fransisco in the 50s and was THERE for readings at the City Lights Bookstore. Salinger alternately growled and blasted through 35 sentences from the text that contained the word "window" in his very best Burroughs impersonation. I was thoroughly entertained. And maybe (maybe) a little tempted to see if perhaps time has enabled me to acquire a taste for vintage Kerouac.

Take my mike -- PLEASE

Ah, the bold, the reluctant, the hesitant, the seventh grade poets take turns at the mike at Oakwood Middle and Glenwood Middle in Canton. We wrote, we projected, we loosened our minds and our voices and finally the few, the brave, the wordsmiths came to the mike to read their poems of personal conflict. This poet, after bravely reading his newly written piece into the mike, couldn't wait to get rid of that thing. But you know what? I think he'll be back.

I wish I had more pictures from the day, but the fact is I bought a new camera and experienced as I am with my old PhD (press here dummy) camera, this one actually has a manual (yet unread) and comes with a class (yet untaken). Obviously, I had the wrong setting on because this photo was not photoshopped, that's the way it came out. But I love the action of it. You can almost read the "OMG what was I thinking" in his eyes.

After visiting both schools, I spoke at a reading at the HS which houses the public library (now there's a concept!). A woman came up to me and asked if I could remember her. Like the poet in the picture above, I could read her eyes, but she had to remind me of her name . . . Cindy Horne is retired now, but she is one of the very first educators that took a chance on a self-published poet and invited me to her school (we estimated) in 1991 and then was kind enough to pass my name along to others. She graciously accepted a thank you hug oh these many years later. How often do we get a chance to thank someone who really made a difference in our lives?

Big thanks to the friends of the community library for sponsoring my visit and for all the writers and performers in Canton. Great day.

Up North -- The Upper Peninsula Reading Association

Traveling from Florida to the Upper Peninsula is like going from the nation's left ankle to its eyebrow. When I was a kid growing up outside of Deeetroit, we used to call everything above Flint, "up north." But this trip took me REALLY up north, about as north as you can go without taking a dip in Lake Superior. In between the airport and the car, I got my first whiff of winter. Believe it or not, it smelled pretty good.

But inside was all was warm and cozy. Loved listing to Marc Brown and his tales of Arthur and the gang -- most interesting was his story of tangling with Bill O'Reilly who misrepresented and detonated an episode of his PBS series on tolerance in which one of the characters came from a home with two mommies. The entire right wing media machine came down on his head, funding dried up and perhaps most frightening -- 5 large envelops arrived in his mailbox from the IRS. He and all of his companies were being audited.

We live in frightening times. But as long as we keep speaking out -- the poets, the kind hearted aardvarks on PBS, and all the teachers spreading peace and tolerance, there is hope that calmer, more just philosophies will prevail. That's what all this testing is about if you ask me -- it's putting restrictions on teachers so that kids can't find independent voices -- so that they are trained to reiterate only limited information, and in the case of the dasterdly DIBELS, nonsense syllables. More on that topic later. Anyway, all of this drilling threatens to murder a kid's natural sense of curiosity and love of learning -- the tests loom over their heads like a relentless continum of IRS audits.

But Up North I met a lot of teachers and student teachers dedicated to helping kids find their own voices. A group of U-ppers are studying my book, helping kids develop their own poems in response to learning across the curriculum. Thank you thank you to Mandy, Sandy, Lucy and all the teachers who are putting my meager poems and ideas to Superior use. And this picture, with all the post-its sent me through the roof!

Fern Creek Elementary

This picture was taken at the end of the school day. Notice who is looking tired and who is looking bright as sunshine.

I LOVE visiting the classrooms of my friends (that goes for Katie aka Mrs. Lufkin, too). You know someone in a certain setting. You can see him/her as a person who empties the dishwasher or drives a car or likes to order steak. You may even know how that person likes the steak. But nothing prepares you for watching how that individual steers a classroom of kids toward learning. It is like trying to organize lint in the bathtub -- every kid comes in with a separate agenda. How a single teacher gathers the group and gets them focused is like watching a magician -- the polar opposite of how I felt when I once saw my algebra teacher at the movies with a date -- OMG, she had another life outside of school!

I loved visiting Steve Czerniejewski's fifth grade classroom. I have known Steve for 12 years as part of the traveling troop of teachers working with the Janet Allen Literacy Institutes. As a group, we've hiked in Alaska, picnicked in Arizona, sweated in Baltimore, swatted mosquitoes in Florida, watched the sunset in San Diego, toured in D.C., sucked down lobster rolls in Maine and gotten lost in more cities than we can count. But, I'd never been to where he does his teaching thing. As soon as I arrived, I knew it was going to be good.

The kids all checked themselves in, committed themselves to learning by moving a clothes pin on a chart and set to work solving a math problem on the board that had me stumped. Okay, here it is:

What number is a multiple of 80 and 100.

It is a square number.

It is less than 500 and more than 100.

Solve that, and you are officially as smart as a fifth grader. The kids worked independently and then discussed the possibilities, solving the problem and setting the stage for a successful day.

Decorating the widows were poetic reflections -- pictures and textual responses to my poems where the kids used crayons and words to make connections. They were ALL great -- much better than my ability to take pictures into the light -- here are just a couple that came out clear enough to see. Click on the pictures to see them up close.

Extra bonus: I got to meet Steve's gorgeous, charming, smart family. I always thought he was just flashing around the pictures that came with his wallet -- but Kim and Carissa are real and they are really wonderful.

To Kim, Carissa, Mr. CZ and all of his students -- xxoo

Atlantic High School, Daytona, FL

Two photos -- both taken by teacher Meg Roa who was kind enough to invite me to her school. Although this is common place in Southern climes, it still seems odd to me that the school hallways are on the outside of the buildings, the classroom doors opening to the elements like Motel 6. Atlantic HS circles its classrooms like Conestogas. Within the inside courtyard students lounge on planters and gather in clusters, same as in Cleveland -- except with a whole lot more sunshine. So when we began to write our poems of conflict and an "almost fight," I had to ask, "What do you call that area where you pass between classes?" Answer: They call it the hallway. A remnant of the old days -- kind of like calling an ITunes release an "album" when hardly any kids around have ever laid their hands on one of those giant CDs.

Great visit, great writers. Wish I had had more time to hear more of the poems. Time goes so quickly. Whoosh. We wrote some, performed some. Hope some more poems are loosened up by the exercise. Hope hope hope.

IUP -- which is not in Indiana

This is Dr. Lynne Alvine's adolescent lit class at IUP (that's Indiana University of PA) where I had the privilege of speaking on Thursday. Not only were they patient enough to sit through my poetry, they even sat through readings from unpublished manuscripts and in one case a rejected manuscript. On Friday night at Dr. Lynne's house one student teacher asked me if I had any advice for her as a new teacher and my answer was YES. YOU HAVE TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF! Believe in your own intellect and abilities no matter what. It's a tough time in teaching today, but happily new, dedicated teachers are still following their hearts into the profession.

The next day on Friday IUP played host to 17 local high schools who sent students there for a day of writing and learning. It was fabulous. I spoke in the morning with some help from Michael and he hosted a sharing session at the end of the day where students shared their writing. In between they were treated to break out sessions on everything from Diary writing to poetry to Harry Potter fantasy -- and stacks -- I MEAN STACKS of pizzas.

Thank you to my dear friend and inspirational mentor Dr. Lynne and to Sue Johnson and the Northwest PA Writing Project for all their hard work and dedication to making this a terrific day.

I can't imagine having an opportunity like this when I was in HS. Had I, perhaps I wouldn't have waited until I was 40 to launch a writing career. There really are so many opportunities for kids these days, but too many don't even know the opportunities are out there. A day like this widens horizons beyond the cafeteria table and the bank of lockers in the hall. Truly valuable.

Ben turns 8

Ben had his 8th birthday today.

He is the oldest of Kelly's three sons, a sportsman, football player, soccer player, basketball player who has electric guitar dreams and a GREAT imagination for stories. I love Ben's stories and for his part, he is patient with mine. He seems to take my idol worship in stride and just goes about the important business of second grade.

Last weekend Michael and I traveled to D.C. to babysit for Ben and his brothers Dan and Thomas while Kel and Brian went to Houston for a wedding. Thomas is potty training -- been a long time since I been there and done that! Danny is obsessed with Tom and Jerry, playing soccer and his favorite drink: chocolate milk. All the boys like a good turn on the playground equipment.

Danny is 4 and Thomas is 2.5 and both need more attention than Ben these days. He's pretty self sufficient in the food, shower, brush your teeth department. I came home wondering if he felt shortchanged while we were visiting because the younger ones (aka the diaper boys) issue a continuous stream of mandates totally appropriate for boys their ages. I wish (as I always do) that Ben and I had more time together.

Today when he arrived home from school there was a new bike in the driveway, a combination gift from grandparents and parents. A really nice bike. I can't wait to see him ride. Oh, the places he'll go.

I hope he sends back word.

Where is Suzi?

Here's a hint -- we were at Dempsey Middle School in Delaware, OH, a very happenin' place. Only insiders, however, can tell where Suzi is in this picture. For more information on Dempsey, follow the link above.

Okay, these were the best prepared students for a visit that ANY author could hope for. Here you can see the student body (and me) congratulating two of the winners of the poetry contest. Raucous applause! The judges for the contest were AP English students at Hayes High School -- how cool is that for peer review?



At a different assembly, tech students presented me with books that they had made where they chose cool graphics to go along with poems that they had written based on my work. They took the first couple lines of one of my poems and developed the poem on their own, kind of like using sour dough bread starter. The responses were creative, honest, thoughtful -- taking my poems to the next -- and more personal -- level. Here's just a sample chosen at random -- all the writings were very cool.

Wrong

I'd rather starve myself
Or pay a million dollar fine,
or serve a lengthy sentence of the solitary kind.

I'd rather sky dive
or do fifty pages of homework
or get thrown out of Wal-mart
Cause my little sister bit the manager

Than to say I'm wrong

Holbrook/Dawson

One final idea (also with an assist from the tech teacher) is displayed on the bulletin board in this final picture. Media Specialist Karen Hildebrandt is pictured here beside power point slides that the students created in computer class. Why not combine a poetry lesson with power point instruction? Now, look carefully and you will see Jesus' notebook, from Sheldon ISD outside of Houston now proudly hanging on a bulletin board in Delaware, OH. Poetry does indeed bring folks together, building bridges!


Big big thanks to Karen for all her hard work getting the kids and the staff jazzed in advance. Lots and lots of work. And thanks to all the teachers for seeing that poetry can live outside of language arts class.

But . . . but . . . but . . . where is Suzi?

St. Thomas Aquinas/St. Phillip School Cleveland

LOVE this photo. The woman who took the picture was disappointed and took a couple more, explaining I wasn't in the first one. But this is the shot. Not only because I don't particularly like looking at myself (which I don't) but because I'm hoping this is a representation of how my poetry impacts kids -- that I am somewhere in the background, a not-quite memory, nudging them on.

Why I like the catholic schools of today: First, they all have great sound systems. They have bingo and family events and they know the importance of mortals making themselves heard to one another. They have VERY committed teachers who work for even less pay than most teachers because they really want to be there. They seem organized somehow. Usually small, they seem more manageable than some. And finally, they are not the crack-your-knuckles-with-a-ruler places made infamous on stage and screen and at dinner tables. In fact, compared to some public schools where the unintelligent-design folks have taken over, these schools seem freer to pursue education free of outside intervention, including the restrictive perils of NCLB.

None of these musings made a bit of difference to these kids, though. They were just having a good time at a poetry assembly, pushing to be in the picture. Thanks to Janie Reinhart for inviting me to meet her students and to Principal Sr. Michelle for sending me the picture below of the eighth grade girls practicing "talk to the hand."

The basecoat

"It was my Granny who taught me to sew"

That's a line out of a poem I wrote on the occasion of my grandfather's 100th birthday. Thinking back on their house, the sweet smell of bacon, whir of the manual lawnmower, rose garden, and the goodie drawer, the memory of Granny was stronger. I think Pappy, Willie Holbrook, was never quite sure what to do with his (at that time) six grandchildren, all girls. He'd raised three boys before we came along. Visits to Akron consisted of good meals followed by the men sitting in the living room discussing politics (no girls allowed) praising the U.S.military (between the four of them, they represented all branches, Pappy having been a Marine) and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company while condemning Franklin D. Roosevelt in the strongest language possible without using profanity. Well, an occasional "damn" might slip out, but only in reference to Roosevelt. They'd talk and then spontaneously jump up and go wash cars. It didn't occur to me until years later that what I perceived as Pappy not having time for his grand kids might really have been him still raising his sons, veterans trying to assimilate into a rapidly changing world. That was back when I thought being grownup meant you had it together. What did I know?

These were the post WWII Eisenhower years, prosperous and full of hope -- as long as one was a white male, which everyone in the living room was. Pappy worked 40+ years at Goodyear, only taking 2 days off -- once to get all his teeth pulled and two half days when his sons came home from war. A veteran of WWI, his life went from ox-carts and a log cabin in Hickory, KY to space shots. After his war, he never picked up a fire arm or committed an act of violence. He did his job, raised his sons, married three times, the last time at 72 when folks said it wouldn't last and was married to Lela for 23 years. Until he died at 103, he still read the newspaper, took no medication and always raged against Roosevelt. He was frugal in a way that is considered un-American these days -- he wasted not, not anything, not ever.

I remember meeting him at the bus after work, placing my leaf of a hand into the powerful mitt he wrapped around a mallet to beat rubber into molds for earth-moving tires for 8 hours that day -- and every other day. It may be the only memory I have that we shared, just the two of us. I know him mostly from the stories he liked to tell and retell until we knew all the words and could sing along. I can't remember why I ever thought that was annoying, but as a teen, I did. He had dropped out of school in the early grades to work in the tobacco fields, later reading his son's textbooks a chapter ahead of them as they went through school so he could help them with their homework. In his growing up days, before life took him from a log cabin to Versailles, wisdom was passed along through stories. He had landed in Akron, OH, blustering with industry, far away from the old homeplace. He knew how to adapt. My father and his brothers all went to school, grew to be accomplished men, fathers, and republicans, never having to labor as Pappy had. Their bank accounts may have been larger, but their hands never grew to the breadth of his.

Pappy owned rental property, part of what carried them through the depression when Goodyear cut its workforce back to one or two days a week. Rather than laying men off, the union made the company keep everyone on at reduced hours, living on oatmeal but not starving. That was back before all the laws were changed to favor shareholder rights and workers still had a say, before the country forgot about Roosevelt and what he stood for, Eleanor going into the coal mines with the workers, and Eisenhower's grim predictions about the military industrial complex. Pappy was a rubber worker but he was also a handyman, wallpaper hanger, painter, whatever it took to keep things running while Granny stirred Fels Naptha into the laundry and had a hot meal waiting after every job. They were cast into those roles in their youth and lived them well and by all appearances, happily, a hard concept for all the female grandchildren to understand as we grew to take our roles in life as moms, a business owner, writer, professor, artist, dentist and activists, and new-dealers (save one), living an egalitarian life even Roosevelt couldn't have envisioned.

When Pappy's rental property changed hands, everyone was pressed into service painting. Gender wasn't an issue. If you could hold a brush or a broom, you were in. It was my Pappy who taught me to paint. Only dip the brush into the can part way, don't scrub at the wall, smooth strokes, paint into where you have just been to reduce brush marks, the first coat is more important than the last, and never try to paint with a dry brush. My first job was to paint a closet. He put me onto the task with a bucket of paint thinned to white wash and a sawed off broom. Latex paint either hadn't been invented yet or was under some kind of cloud of new-fangled suspicion, because we used the old, smelly kind. That first experience resulted in the closest I think I ever came to hearing Granny use profanity, as she later dipped my ponytail into turpentine, yanking the brush through my thick hair and mumbling under her breath. But that was just the first in a series of painting lessons.

This past weekend I painted the basement hallway and stairs a warm ivory, thinking of Pappy as I do each time I pick up a brush. I carefully applied the base coat so that subsequent coats would go on smoothly using oil based primer (which is still the best), meticulously brushing into where I had just been, not counting on the finish coats to cover up mistakes on the base, repeatedly dipping the brush only partway in, trying not to streak with a dry brush.

Just the smell of paint brings Pappy to my mind. I don't think he would have approved of all the disposable products available in the paint department these days, but he probably wouldn't have been too critical of the job I did on the staircase. He had a way of looking over flaws, part of what carried him through 103 years. I think he would have been damned proud of the fact that I found a $5 gallon of paint at Home Depot to do the job.

Back to School in Houston

Today I visited three elementary schools in Sheldon ISD. My thoughts about foreign language skills fresh in my mind, I asked every group, "How many people here can speak two languages?" In every case, the majority could! I let them know how much I admired their skills. I think it's important to let kids know that being multi-lingual is an amazing opportunity, not an embarrassing disability.

I had a great time sharing poetry with a whole lot of help from my friends -- call and response with attitude! In each school I was impressed with how attentive and involved the principals were with what was happening. In each school, kids had prepared questions leading to some fun discussions.

And then there was Jesus. Most students had prepared one question or maybe two. At the end of the assembly there was the usual gathering of kids who had more to say about their own writing or other cool stuff to talk about. Jesus came up with his small notebook and asked me a question. I talked to other students and Jesus stepped forward again -- he had another question and when I responded, he carefully wrote down the answer. More interaction and I noticed, there was Jesus again.
"How many questions do you have?"
"Six"
"Okay, let's hear 'em." And he seriously asked each, writing down the answer.
One of his questions was, "What did you want to grow up to be when you were a kid?"
"A reporter," I answered. "You know, for a newspaper."
"Like the Houston Chronicle?" Jesus asked.
"Yeah. Exactly like that."
Jesus wrote that down. I asked to take a picture of Jesus' notebook and he agreed. I had to enhance the photo so that his careful note taking showed clearly in the photo.

A reporter needs to have the tenacity of a pit bull and and an unquenchable curiosity -- the urgent need to get an answer. I never made it as a reporter, but today I think I met a young man who really has the stuff.

Hable Espanol?

Here's something I don't get and it's come up in casual conversation twice in the last two days -- once with a guy buying aspirin for his bad knees in the check-out line at Drug Mart, me holding my soon to be new hangers. "All these people speaking Spanish. They should just learn to speak English." And not a soul around us was speaking anything but English. It was pressing on his mind enough to blurt out his viewpoint to a stranger (me) in line, along with the entire story of his knees, soon to be replaced but not without major fighting with the insurance folks. No, he hadn't seen Sicko, his son is a physician.

Another situation of "what I should have asked."

What's the harm in learning some Spanish? Taking it one step further, what's could possibly be the benefit? Some people (Fox News?) treat English as if it were a religion and any other language as pure blasphemy.

The USA is the ONLY industrialized country that routinely graduates students who are NOT fluent in another language. So, what's the problem with that? Doesn't most of the world speak English? Ah, no, as a matter of fact, they don't. More people speak Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish than speak English as a first language. Add in the second language speakers and English scoots ahead of Spanish and Hindi, but doesn't even begin to approach the over 1 billion people who speak Chinese. In fact, only 5.6 % of the world's total population speaks English.

Doesn't it kind of make sense that if we English speakers are engaging in a global marketplace our future citizens should be able to talk to their business partners? I've seen enough spy movies to know that translators don't always give it to you straight. If the news from abroad is any indication of our ability to make our needs known(China re: toys and dog food, Iraq re: the war to name two) we could benefit from some better communication skills. Where we going to get those? At some school that throws in token hello-how-are-you language courses only at the HS level?

Ten years ago I visited a classroom of second language learners in Stockholm (the Swedes take in a lot of political refugees). In the classroom, the Hindi kids sat here, the Bulgarian kids there, over there the Arabic speakers, and in this corner the Cambodian kids and so on. If the kids had a question on the lesson, they turned to their neighbor for clarification in their mother tongue, to their teacher to whom they spoke in Swedish or to me in English. I was there to teaching the writing of poetry in English -- their THIRD language. The children were in fifth grade. They all wrote poems in English. Nice poems. Funny. Adorable poems.

In this country an ESL school has a stigma -- instead of being seen as a place where students can get some extra language skills along with fractions and phonics, they are seen as second class. What kind of backwards thinking is that? No one ever died an infection of foreign language or was denied a job for diversity of language.

When I was growing up outside of Detroit post WWII many many of my friends had a grandmother in a back bedroom who didn't speak English. DPs they called them. (these women, always made the best cookies, perogies, and pasties btw). The parents might have had a lingering accent, the kids spoke perfect English but were also defensively conversant enough in that other language so that the parents couldn't pull the wool over their eyes. Hamtramack had street signs in Polish, Greektown in Greek, so that the DPs could get around, helping one another out in their selective groups while they assimilated into a new culture and struggled with the language. We all thought we were very cool learning to swear in those languages plus of course yiddish which was the funnest of all. The thing is, we grew up with a hands on, day in, day out awareness that not everybody in the world talked the same and diversity in language and cookies could be a very good thing.

As I visit International Schools I am so impressed with the students' mastery of languages and can't help thinking that they have an edge up over our home grown kids. Do you think the next generation of engineers might have an advantage if they can talk to both the executives and the folks working on the factory floors, no matter where that factory is or what language is being spoken? Yeah. We are not helping our kids by insisting on "English only," we are holding them back. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for hearing an unfamiliar language; we need that kind of reminder in places like Mentor, OH, that there is a whole world of people out there who aren't exactly like us. And that's okay, and they are okay people, and we are all struggling to make ourselves understood.

I want those days in Detroit back. I want to share them with my kids and my grandkids. Do kids need good English language skills to succeed today? Of course they do. NOT developing these skills WILL put a definite cramp on future employability.

But putting self-imposed limitations on language learning is like restricting your snack diet to Oreos. They're okay, but there is so much more out there.