Video Blogging with the Wee Man

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Just thought I would share a typical conversation between me and my son. He says as little as he can get away with when I want to know how school went on a given day.

Today was Snow Day in TK (transitional kindergarten). We don't get actual snow here, so they made some from this polymer thing -- you add water, then keep it in the fridge to get cold. His teacher sent me a couple of pictures to prove that Cam actually dug in with his hands and played along. (He doesn't like to get stuff on his hands.)

The day I met Scott Budman

Okay, so this was originally from June 28, 2006, which is before I ever HAD this blog, I think. But I was reading it, and I thought it was funny, so I decided to post it. (FYI: Madeline is my MacBook, or rather the one my husband has now since the HD crashed last summer and had to be replaced under warranty.)

Yes, I know. You have all heard my exciting news. But I need to recap my day so that you can see the exciting part in its proper light.

At 6:43 AM, my son Cameron, who was NOT already in our bed for a nice change, started whining from his bed in his room. It's a crib, actually, and for all his apelike climbing prowess, the little urchin has never climbed out of the thing. The game was afoot. I tried to get him to snuggle and sleep in my bed with me. He normally likes that. But NO, he was up and that was that.

Okay, so I am supposed to drop him off at nine for his last day with this home childcare provider, Mrs. H. Despite screaming in freakin' agony whenever we drop him off, he LOVES Mrs. H and talks about her all the time. ("Mih AAAYYCH") It was his last day because she's awesome and you get what you pay for. And we don't have the "pay for" part so much. Plus, tomorrow, my step-daughter returns and gets to spend the summer babysitting her precious lil' bro.

Okay, so, as I am going in for my shower, some time later, I recall that I have an appointment at Kaiser to discuss the discouraging results of my follow-up blood testing. Turns out that I have rather high cholesterol. Oops! Good thing I remembered.

So, I drop Cam off closer to 9:30 and think, oh well, if I get there early for my 10:30 appointment, perhaps I can get in to see the doctor a little early. What on earth was I smoking? This is KAISER we're talking about here. Where was the "smack me when I'm gettin' stupid" committee when I needed them?


My special Kaiser timeline for June 28, 2006:
9:50 A.M. Check in for 10:30 appointment.
9:50 - 10:20ish A.M. Worked on brilliant plan for getting all the bloggers to tell me when they can do CG chat meetings . . . in a format my brain can handle.
Some time around 10:20? A.M. Get blood pressure, weight, and temperature taken. All that is fine, except of course my weight. Which I check every morning, sans clothes, before I shower. And which number I prefer to their psycho scales with all your clothes AND sneakers on. (as if)
Shortly thereafter: Back in waiting room.
After that: Read comics. Solved the Jumble in my head. (It was an easy one.) Did my first ever Sudoku puzzle, rating "gentle" -- all these were from yesterday's paper. And am I a good waiting room citizen or what? I copied the puzzle into the back of my IISME notebook and worked it out there.
11:00ish A.M. Go remind nursing staff that I exist, that I need to work to earn back that insane deductible I just paid, and that I had an appointment a HALF HOUR AGO. (Of course, I used all my charm and poise.)
11:40 A.M. Finally get called in. Doctor tells me what I already know, since I viewed the results of the most recent blood testing online last week the night I had the blood drawn. (TruGeek wif high cholesterol in da hizzy!) I am told about the medication I will go on, since a combination of my British fried-food eating genes and my extremely poor lifestyle habits (or lack thereof) didn't improve my numbers much in three months. I get to go back in October to play human pincushion again to see how the meds are working.

OH, and then I went off in my politest way about the wait I had to endure. Apparently they had a lot of walk-ins. Well, had I known that, they never woulda walked out! But the conclusion is that I will be switching primary care physicians to someone at Campbell, where my kids already go to Pediatrics. It is closer, smaller, and less like a factory than Santa Teresa. (I made my baby in their factory.)

Now ya gotta love this part of the timeline: 11:50 A.M. (yes, only ten minutes later) I am in my car, phoning my husband to rant. That's why people get married, you know. To have a built-in audience. Well I didn't get thru, but he called me back right away. (See, they can run, but they can't hide.)

So, now I have lost most of my Cameron-free day, as I have to pick him up at two.

Back up to WG and I stop at Elva's Coffee Stop on Lincoln. I thought I read online that they had free wifi. They don't. But I bought a bagel, since I have not eaten at this point at all today. Up the street to Monsieur Beans, former Willow Glen Coffee Roasting Co. I know they have wifi, free with purchase, but the girl behind the counter was not so sure. Then she's like, well, yeah, if we do it's free with purchase. I purchased a banana-strawberry smoothie to go with my bagel.

Wifi was good, but started lagging later on. Found out that Vin Santo, a restaurant across the street, has a stronger signal than the cafe I'm in. And you know (I digress), we took "friends" there years ago and it cost us a bomb, and they never reciprocated in any way, so I feel like I should start getting my Vin Santo money back in wifi. I shall return.

Quarter to two I pack up and head over to get my kid. Come to find out that after lying down since 12:30, he only finally fell asleep at 1:45. Well, I've got an errand to run, so I don't want to wake him up only to have him flake out in the car, so Mrs. H offered to keep him and call me when he woke up. The planets began to move into perfect alignment just then.

Over to SVCN (Silicon Valley Community Newspapers) to humbly request a couple dozen copies of yesterday's WG Resident starring . . . . Alec Main of SoccerMainia! (bugle fanfare here) They gave me 25. I've still got a Starbucks card burnin' hole in my pocket, so I'm off to the corner, across from Peet's and not far from a third coffee joint. And here I am, not a coffee drinker.

I've done far too much Vanilla Bean Frappucino recently . . . with whipped cream . . . because I mean, come ON, you're already basically having a milkshake, you might as well go for it, right? Oh yeah, so I get a venti iced tea lemonade (passion), thinking there's free wifi and I'll be here a while. The girl's like, no, there's this T-Mobile thing, but you have to, like, subscribe or something. I love it when the staff has been fully trained on all the available services at their place of employment. I will not be asking HER any more questions. Especially ones involving technology.

So, I get my beverage all Splenda'd (yes, it is now a verb) and I turn to the tables.

It was then that I saw him.

Scott Budman and . . . . some guy . . . sitting at a table. Yes, I admit it, I chose my seat for optimum proximity. They were kinda talking shop and kinda talking just friend stuff, so I don't think he was working.

I peruse the T-Mobile handout on how to get wifi. Okay, so you have to get online to sign up for it. The logic escapes me. I give up (far too easily . . . more on this later). I start working on the CG chat schedule thing, based on the first handful of spreadsheets I got back.

Scott and friend are clearly about to leave. They stand. I say, "Hey Scott, I love the show." Okay, so I don't tape it and watch it, and I miss it more than I catch it. But I do enjoy it. I was making small talk, people! He turns to thank me, and looks at Madeline. (I had seen him glance over before. Clearly she had already caught his eye.)

He asks about my new MacBook. (I didn't tell him her name was Madeline. It felt a bit premature to do formal introductions.) We talk features. His friend's iBook was about three years old, but the silver body made it look distinguished. And it still gets the job done. They drool a bit over Maddy's features. I offer (jokingly . . . sort of) to take our picture with PhotoBooth and the built-in camera. His friend says, "Or how about I take it with your camera phone?" Smooth. TruGeek all da wizzay.

They go. I immediately send the pic to my gmail account. And my husband's cell phone. His response: "Why" I had to text him back to explain about the geek bonding. He still doesn't get it. Whatever. Go kick a ball.

Then, I decide that since I have some offline time, I will figure out how to make the special c with the cedilla for Wanda's name on Madeline. I know it's Alt-0231 (keypad only) on the PC. The help won't run properly, as it requires online stuff. But in the help window . . . . . . T-Mobile. Asking me if I want to sign up. I had noticed that I was able to get their airport, but not get it to do anything. Or so I thought.

A few minutes and six dollars on my credit card later, I am surfing, blogging, e-mailing, IMing, and making sure everyone in my IISME circle of peeps knows about me and Scotty B.

Of course, I have, by this time, forgotten about Wanda's special c . . . but I'm on that as soon as this blog is done. (Which is longer than I had planned . . . sorry!)

Long story short, worked till 3:45, went to get my kid, hung out at Mrs. H's house for a while, came home, changed into shorts, took kid for walk on which he demanded to be carried but I did not give in and ended up coming away with a hug, a kiss, and a walking toddler. Blah blah blah. Did some stuff. Watched Jeopardy! Back online. Working to make up for all that lost time today in the Kaiser Zone.

Now I gotta go find Wanda's special C.

Another sample essay I wrote

This is originally from March 1, 2006. At the time, my teaching assignment was 6th grade language arts and math, and I had about 75 students in 6th grade that year.

The following is a sample five-paragraph essay I wrote for a topic I assigned my students. They have to write about three life lessons they have learned during sixth grade. (I gave them a brief summary of "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" for inspiration.) Since I've been out of sixth grade for more than twenty years, I wrote about three life lessons I've learned during my career as a teacher.


What’s the Difference?

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” These words are the end of my favorite Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken.” I like to think they describe so many points in my life when I have decided to go against what everyone else was doing and do what I knew was right for me. I have had these words, on a small poster I made my first year in teaching, near me during every teaching position I have held since I began my career in 1992. Where I have had my own classroom, the poster was stapled to the wall. Where I was a “traveling teacher,” the poster was taped to my cart or my crate of supplies. When I moved from New Jersey to California, my poster moved with me. And I can see that poster right now, out of the corner of my eye, as I type this on my computer at work. During all these years, at all these different jobs, I have learned some important life lessons. Among these are to be respectful, to avoid over committing myself, and to never stop learning. These three concepts have served me well in my life as a teacher and in my time outside the walls of school as well.

I start every school year telling my students that if I had only one rule, it would be one simple word: RESPECT. Respect God. Respect others. Respect yourself. Deserve and earn respect, and others will give it to you freely. Command respect, as I try to do every day, and people can’t help but respect you. The key, however, is that you only get respect when you give it to others, and if you don’t respect yourself, no one else will either. During my first two years as a teacher, I worked in an inner-city junior high school in New Jersey. Race is a huge issue there. All of my students were from different racial groups than I am. And a majority of the students were all one racial group. Those kids who were different from the rest had to almost prove themselves to get respect, which is not the way it is supposed to be. Some of the other teachers even taught their students to only show true respect to the teachers who were their same race. This is blatantly wrong too. But the students could see through all that. They respected the teachers and other kids who gave them respect first. As my basic life rule is respect, I made a big deal out of making sure everyone in my classroom showed and was given respect. The reward was that, despite what some of their other teachers may have told them to do, my students and I had a bond. Did they always do their homework? Were they perfect angels every day? No, of course not. But they knew that I cared about them, and they and I were sad to part ways when I moved on.

I did eventually have to move on, because the school where I worked was fifty miles from my home, and two hours or more in the car every day was beginning to wear on me, as was the stress of urban teaching. I had to begin to see myself as a person who was a teacher, not a teacher who happened to also have family, friends, and interests of my own. No matter what a person’s career, she has to make time for the things outside of work that are truly important. Even though I now work in a Christian school and get to pray and read the Bible at work, I still need to make time for God, prayer, and church in my regular life. I am now a wife, mother, and step-mother. Each of those relationships demands time from me. If all I ever do is work, I won’t be good at all my other roles. That means that if I am asked to do more than I can handle, I have to politely decline. That is not always easy to do, especially at work, but sometimes “no” is the only correct thing to say. There are classes I want to take, books I want to read, and hobbies I would love to take up. But what could be more important than just having the time on a Saturday to take my son to the park to play on the swings? In my time as a teacher, a very important lesson I have had to learn is to avoid over committing myself, especially to things that detract from my family life.

Even though I may not have enough time to take classes, that does not mean I have to stop learning. Some people may even think that by working in a school I have more opportunities to learn than most people do. That’s not really true either. But working with students means I have to keep on top of a lot of information. My students know more about pretty much everything than I ever had to when I was their age. And there is so much more information available now. I challenge myself to learn as much as I can, about all the things that interest me, so that I can be a better teacher. It also makes me a better parent and a better person all-around. When a student asks me a question I can’t answer, at least I can tell him or her, “I don’t know, but I know where we can look to find out.” Hopefully, I am modeling my love of learning to my students. There are subjects that have nothing to do with school that I enjoy pursuing also. I have been researching my family history since before I was a teacher, so British history is a topic of particular interest to me. I love computers, and I use them for keeping in touch with friends and family back East, editing the family pictures I take with my digital camera, and keeping track of my genealogy data. I’ve had to learn a lot to use my computer as much as I do, but I love it. I find learning to be immense fun, and I intend to stop only when I leave this world.

Whenever I look at that poster with the final lines of my favorite poem, I am forced to ask myself: have I followed the best path for my life? Have I made a difference? Did each of my decisions lead me to where God wants me to be? I don’t really know for sure, but I do know this: I have learned a lot along the journey. The lessons I have learned as a teacher are not just lessons for the classroom. They apply to every area of my life. The next time I am at a fork in the road, which road will I choose? I will draw on all these experiences and lessons learned, even the things I have learned from my mistakes. And then, that will have “made all the difference.”


Word Count: 1201

Why Grading Student Essays Is So Difficult (a five-paragraph essay)

This is originally from February 21, 2006. I was teaching 6th grade language arts and math.

Why Grading Student Essays Is So Difficult

Do you enjoy hearing what the younger generation has to say? Would you like to take a look inside the mind of an eleven year old? Have you ever graded an essay written by a sixth grader? In my career, I have graded thousands of student essays. This is a much more difficult task than one might think for several major reasons. The pre-teen seems to be locked in a never ending battle of refusal to follow a prescribed format. Young people just entering adolescence also resist deciding upon and committing to three concepts to support their arguments. And reading their essays to someone who might help them find and fix their mistakes is taken as a scandalous suggestion. When facing these obstacles, it’s a wonder we ever ask these children to put pen to paper at all.

My sixth grade students spend quite a bit of time, during the first few months of school, learning about the structure of a five-paragraph essay. We spend weeks on introductory paragraphs alone. Once we have practiced the introduction, we learn to develop the entire essay, finally focusing on the proper way to conclude the essay. We have visuals, handouts, and memory devices. We have six different tried-and-true methods of coming up with attention-grabbing introductions and equally gripping conclusions. Yet as I pore over the fourth assigned essay of the school year, I find that far too many of my students have thrown format out the window and have just decided to “wing it.” Introductions lack that attention-grabbing quality. Body paragraphs, if they can be called that, blur together in a sort of “stream of consciousness what do you expect I waited till the night before it was due” muddle. Conclusions conclude only that someone was not listening (or reading the detailed handout) that week in class.

Perhaps their reasons for abandoning the requirements has something to do with the trouble they have coming up with three different ideas to support their theses. Now, don’t get me wrong: the average eleven year old has plenty to say about things that really matter, such as why life is so unfair, popular culture, why life is so unfair, how uncool adults are, and why life is so unfair. Of course, they will not put these ideas down on paper; they will simply “instant message” them to their friends, “text” them over their cell phones, or whisper them over the phone when parents have just left the room. But ask the same young people to give three distinct, separate reasons why they strongly believe something, and they fall apart. Or perhaps they can come up with three supporting details, but those details, like the wild creatures they are, simply will not stay neatly confined to their assigned spaces in the essay. It becomes a kind of “free for all” of subtopics scaling the walls of their body paragraphs and raiding a neighboring paragraph village, where they sometimes settle, giving up on a life of pillage and plunder, even if they know darn well they don’t fit in there.

All these issues might not be so bad if each student found a responsible, mature user of our precious language to whom they could read their writing. Or perhaps they could simply use the spell check and grammar check options of their word processing programs. Ideally, each student would find a writing “mentor.” This could be a parent, an older sibling, another relative, or even a peer their own age. As long as the person can hear and has a fairly good grasp of the English language, another brain thinking about the ideas being produced is twice as much intelligence. Another set of ears to hear when things don’t sound quite right is a powerful tool. But what really happens is that students reading their own work out loud finally notice those things that never popped out as being incorrect before. The student actually ends up clarifying or correcting their work with very little input from the mentoring individual. However, for some odd reason, young people refuse to pursue this very effective option. They prefer to throw away the essay grade rather than experience a little awkwardness the first or second time they read their work aloud. I worry what will happen to them when they enter the work force. You can’t even ask “Do you want fries with that?” if you’re not willing to speak up. Forget about the corporate world.

The generation who will decide on the rest homes for my generation does have a lot going on in their minds. They are creative, they have good ideas, and they are very funny. But for some reason, they prefer to hide these talents from us old folks by ignoring proper essay structure, obscuring their fantastic ideas in bland body paragraphs, and including as many errors as they think will cause my red pens to run out of ink forever. Therefore I beseech the middle schoolers of America: Trust the English teacher. Plan the essay. Stick with your plan. And then get someone to listen to your essay before you hand it in. Your teachers forevermore will thank you for it. (And please type it. We really like that.)

Word count: 872

Sample essay about adjusting to parenting

This is from October 22, 2005. I had my students write an essay about having to adjust to something, such as sixth grade.

I just wrote this for my students to have a sample. And I graded some more math tests today. So I totally rock. Okay, here goes . . . .

“Well, ma’am, you’re having this baby tonight.” I could not believe my ears. I had only just finished work that day. I still had three and a half weeks to enjoy my maternity leave, get ready for the baby to arrive, finish childbirth preparation class . . . I hadn’t even finished childbirth preparation class! All we had in the house was the car seat and some things people had given us at the baby shower. Where was this baby going to sleep? I had not really had any time to adjust to having the baby. Little did I know, giving birth was just the start of a whole new life, and I would have a lot more to adjust to than I had ever realized. I would need to plan out all my time differently, I would need to budget our money more efficiently, and, most of all, I would instantly begin putting someone else before myself, all the time. Becoming a parent is the biggest adjustment I have ever had to make.

The first major change to my life was in the area of time management. Babies don’t really believe in or adhere to schedules. Even when they eventually fall into a routine, a new developmental stage comes along and messes all that up again. For example, Cameron did not sleep through the night at first. I was still recovering from my surgeries, so my husband got up with him a lot, which made him really tired during the days. When Cameron finally did sleep for longer periods, his nap times during the day changed. The only thing that never seemed to change was that he needed his diapers changed . . . a lot. After two and a half months at home, I had to go back to work. That meant we had to learn to juggle our different schedules. It also meant that my husband could not work much at first. When he did go back to work, we managed to find a friend to watch Cameron those few afternoons my husband had classes to teach. And now that I was back at work teaching, the demands on my time increased. But I also had to make sure I set aside time that was off-limits to everyone but my family.

My being a teacher, and my husband being self-employed, means that we don’t have much money. And the more my husband works, the more need we have to pay someone to babysit Cameron, so that cuts into our finances as well. Babies bring an extra financial burden into the picture. There were so many things we had to buy that we never bought before: diapers, formula, baby clothes, baby food, baby toiletries, baby everything . . . and a lot more paper towels. We went through so many paper towels that I wish we had owned stock in Bounty. Fortunately, my step-daughter came to live with us when Cameron was one year old. Not only was it great to add another family member (without surgery this time), but she’s old enough to watch Cameron from time to time when the adults in the home are both working. But she is also another person to feed, clothe, and house, so it adds to our expenses. We’ve had to learn to do without a lot of things in order to save money.

It may sound like having a baby is a negative thing, when you consider all you have to adjust to. But just the opposite is true. The biggest adjustment I had to make came naturally. When you’re married, you are part of a team, and you don’t put yourself first, but rather “tied for first” with someone else when you prioritize things in your life. When you have a baby, however, you and your spouse move over and put the baby’s needs first . . . all the time. You learn pretty quickly that if you only have a certain amount of money, you can eat less, put off buying some cleaning supplies, and buy nothing extra, but you will buy all the diapers this kid is going to need. You can’t cut them in half or only use them a few times a day. When you look down at that baby whose diaper you’re changing, it hits you: this little person depends on you for everything. You are in charge of another person’s life. And instead of feeling super-powerful, you feel weak and doubt yourself. But you get through each day, mainly driven by the knowledge that someone special is counting on you. The way you look at life is never the same again.

Eight days after that night when I went into labor, our son was finally released from the hospital and could come home with us. He was tiny and helpless, and he was beautiful. He has grown and changed so much since then. He just passed twenty-one months of age earlier this week. He walks and runs all over the place, and he talks a lot – but not in front of strangers much, and not really in English words yet. Our lives have changed immensely since Cameron was born. And even though it’s harder in some ways, it is definitely better. As I approach my son’s second birthday, I can’t help but reflect on how much life changes when a baby enters the family. I guess what you really have to adjust to, when you have a baby, is that every day there is something new to adjust to. Next, it will be toilet training and preschool. After that, it will be kindergarten and learning to read. And someday, it will be college graduation, and perhaps marriage and giving me grandchildren . . . and my son learning for the first time what it really means to have something to adjust to.

The Little Joys of Teaching Are Without Number

I've been teaching for about sixteen years now. Teaching can be a very rewarding career, but it's not often we get to hear back from a student who can specifically point out the things you taught that helped him or her. I use Facebook, and I have a lot of my former students as friends on there. Today I got a message from one that really made my day. No, my YEAR.

This student told me that in her biology class they're writing a research report, and they also did one recently in another class. The librarian had them in the computer lab and was going over search engines and research methods and ways it's okay and not okay to conduct research. My former student kept wondering why the librarian kept going on and on about things she (my student) thought everyone should know. Then she realized that her experience at Milpitas Christian School was why she already knew all this stuff. (My take on this: our staff are so consistent about making sure kids conduct honest, fair research -- and cite all those sources -- that our graduates leave our school truly ready to face these tasks in high school and beyond.)

My former student then went on to talk about how much MY class (technology) helped her and prepared her for all the work she does in high school. She told me she has classmates who don't know how to change margins in Word or even what Excel or PowerPoint are used for. When she was my student, she wondered what the point was to all the projects and assignments we made them do. But now things she takes for granted, believing everyone should know how to use them, are things she sees as having been very useful training. She thanked me profusely for what she learned from me in middle school, and she expressed how grateful she was to have all these skills to take with her into her future.

Of course it made me feel good to hear from a former student who is happy and successful in high school. But what made this especially wonderful for me is that it's pretty rare for a teacher to get such specific, enthusiastic feedback from students so soon after having them in class. Some of us teachers wait YEARS -- DECADES, even -- before we ever hear from our former students that we made a difference in their lives.

Now, this "difference" I made to this one student may not have been huge, but it reminds me that what I do here is important, has value for years to come, and is appreciated.

Like I said, it really made my day.

"Freedom is Not Free."

I wrote this letter to the San Jose Mercury News today. I wonder if they'll print it.

Today (Thursday, August 14, 2008), I was among thousands of people who paid $8 per car to park at the County Fairgrounds and NOT get to see my husband become an American citizen. It took ages for the new citizens to actually get inside the facility, but most of the guests who had come along to watch never got to go inside. At no time did USCIS tell people attending this ceremony what to expect upon arrival. No signs, no workers from the Fairgrounds or USCIS to tell people where to go or what to do. Much of today's terribly planned disaster could have been avoided with a simple "what to expect at your naturalization ceremony" document enclosed with the directions sent to new citizens.

I am a very proud and patriotic American by birth. I was embarrassed and ashamed at how we were treated today. When ONE person from USCIS FINALLY came outside to tell people how they might let people in five or ten at a time, he was very rude to the people who had assembled. The line of thousands dispersed for the most part after being told we would not be allowed inside to witness the ceremony. It was very hot and sunny, so most people headed for whatever shade they could find. And then we proceeded to wait and wonder how long it would take before the new citizens would be done with the ceremony many of us would never see. I am truly heartbroken that after all this time, all the forms and fees, and all the waiting inherent in the immigration system, I did not get to see my husband take his oath of naturalization. We had brought my son (age 4), my step-daughter and her boyfriend, and a family friend to the ceremony. If I had known what we would have encountered I would have gone alone or perhaps just brought my son. I had been telling him for weeks about when we would go to see Daddy become an American.

It is perhaps fitting that this ceremony is held at the County Fairgrounds. We were herded and spoken to like animals, and we were assumed to have the intelligence of cattle when the ONE representative from USCIS (or the Fairgrounds?) actually did bark at us. (The people who were waiting were actually surprising calm and respectful, despite the heat, dust, and aggravation.) I have to wonder if the lack of information about what to expect was just to get $8 per car (we had to bring two cars for our group, by the way) out of people ignorant to the mess that awaited us. At least WE live in San Jose. My heart goes out to the families and friends who traveled from all over Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San Benito, and Monterey counties today only to be charged to park and then turned away at the door.

Review of The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins

Robbins, Alexandra. The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. New York: Hyperion, 2006.

In this book, the author returns to her own high school (Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland) to follow nine students dealing with the competitive pressures of making the transition from high school to college. All but one of the students are juniors or seniors; the one other is a freshman at Harvard. As students prepare to go off to college, prestige is the key in their selection process. Ivy Leagues are preferred. Students (and their parents) frequently compare themselves to one another based on course loads, SAT and AP scores, GPAs and grades, and choices of colleges they’re applying to. When the parents get involved, the competitive comparison reaches epidemic proportions. The author also assigns each student she studies a nickname that is based on how that student is perceived by others around him or her.

Each chapter of The Overachievers takes us chronologically through a school year, chronicling the progress of the students while also focusing on topics that could fill entire volumes themselves, and about which many studies have been done. Robbins located and found many specialists and experts to consult for each topic. She distills each controversy or element of this overachieverism culture into what directly affects kids in this vicious trap of comparison and measuring up. These issues have a great impact on our country’s education system and the effect its having on our nation’s youth. The end of the book documents her thorough research to back up her assertions.

Here’s a quick overview of what she covers in each chapter:

In chapter one, “Meet the Overachievers,” Robbins introduces the students she followed as well as the overachiever culture that has transformed high school’s sole purpose into getting students into the most prestigious colleges and universities rather than the school that would be the best fit for each individual student.

In chapter two, “Pressure,” she describes the impact of Asian culture and expectations on Asian American students, especially where education is concerned. She also talks about how the problem of overachieving is universal across our entire country, not just in affluent areas or at well-known high schools.

Chapter three, entitled “Finding a Place,” details the impact of stress on adolescent health. We meet the world of professional college counselors whom parents hire to get their students into the colleges of choice. The emphasis is on the prestige of the university, not on the needs of the student.

Chapter four, “Numbers,” outlines the importance placed on teaching to tests, including AP exams, and how NCLB (No Child Left Behind) is changing the face of American education. In an effort to get us competing on the world stage, we’re sacrificing true education and academic integrity for a prized score. Robbins describes the epidemic of cheating in our country, including information about a 2004 incident at Saratoga High School here in our area.

Chapter five is called “Competition,” and it shows how this trend begins as early as preschool and kindergarten. There are even consultants for the process of getting kids admitted to selective schools at this young age. This chapter also covers class rank and GPA and several controversies over the titles of valedictorian and salutatorian, as well as more about how common cheating is, partly so that students can achieve high GPAs and class ranks.

In chapter six, “Perceptions,” Robbins is invited to observe the inside world of kindergarten admissions at Trinity School in New York City. In addition, there is a discussion of youth athletics and both their cause of major health issues in children and the intense competition at unhealthy levels and how it affects kids and their families.

Chapter seven is called “Left Behind.” Here we continue our inside look at Trinity’s admissions process, and then the topic turns to sleep and the adolescent. High school students go through a profound change. Their internal clocks keep them wired until at least 11:00 at night, and their bodies and brains now require 9.25 hours of sleep per night. However, high school days start at 7:00 or earlier. Some research has been done on later start times for high schools, and despite findings that this is a great success, most schools and districts will not even consider changing their schedules.

In chapter eight, “Verdicts,” the high schoolers we’ve been following start hearing back from the colleges to which they’ve applied for early decision admission. In their community, they feel judged based on where they applied and where they’re getting accepted. Robbins looks into whether a university’s prestige even matters in a student’s future success. (She cites many examples of well-known and successful CEOs and other executives who attended “ordinary” schools.) She also delves into the magazine rankings of colleges and universities. It turns out that this practice is pretty bogus and the entire process is plagued by dishonesty on the part of the competing schools. Finally, real admissions officers from Stanford and other prestigious schools share how the admissions process works, and we learn that much of what high school students kill themselves to achieve actually has little or no bearing on their acceptance.

Have you heard of “helicopter parents”? Chapter nine, “Family Matters,” brings this phenomenon to light. Helicopter parents hover around their children and swoop in to handle any crisis, no matter how big or small, causing their kids to be unable to fend for themselves when they need to. A professor and former administrator from Georgia is quoted as referring to the cell phone as “the world’s longest umbilical cord.” Parents living vicariously through their students cause the kids to not even know who they are or what they want. Eventually, the children “crash and burn” (word choice mine) and feel as though they have no value, especially if they fail to become what their parents unrealistically expect (demand) of them.

Chapter ten, “Breaks,” exposes the practice of “grade grubbing,” where students refuse to accept less than an A and will pester and cajole teachers point by point to get their grades raised on tests, projects, and report cards. It’s no surprise that this is rampant among students when schools cheat in their own ratings process by discouraging certain students from taking the SAT or by falsifying data about how their students have performed.

In chapter eleven, “Superlative,” we hear how students perceive one another, often mistakenly, and how in high school many students sacrifice exploring interests and having fun for trying to make their classes and activities fill out a perfect resume for impressing college admissions officers. Some students are actually pushed by their parents (like one young man who took 17 AP courses during high school), but others are driven by an unhealthy perfectionism within themselves.

Chapter twelve, “The Space Between,” is an eye opener. It discusses drinking, drug use, and sex among high school students.

Chapter thirteen is called “Tested.” It covers the SAT, why and how it was changed, and whether the revised version is any better at rating or evaluating students and their ability to succeed in college. We also learn about the new SAT and its essay component, which some college completely ignore. Some college and universities are eliminating their requirement for SAT or ACT scores in an effort to minimize their importance and the stress that surrounds them.

I found chapter fourteen, “Keeping Up,” a bit disturbing. It focuses on ADD and two commonly prescribed ADD medications: Ritalin and Adderall. Apparently, many non-ADD students are using other people’s prescriptions to get a competitive edge at school, especially during testing periods or finals. Even more shocking is that some parents actually push for their non-ADD children to be diagnosed so that they can get them drugs. They will shop around for a doctor and go through visit after visit until they find someone willing to prescribe. In the lives of the students, as SAT scores come out, one of the kids we’re following describes the different kinds of “score weasels” at her school – kids who spend all their time comparing and trying to find out each other’s scores. Another student reacts angrily when her mother talks to other parents about the student’s score report. This “Age of Comparison” phenomenon extends to students’ choices of schools where they apply – they are constantly asked where they’ve applied, where they’ve been accepted, and they feel as though they’re being judged.

In chapter fifteen, “Young ‘Adults’,” we see how this intense drive to succeed begins with parents of babies and toddlers, even some whose babies are still in the womb. Intense educational efforts are being made to give the youngest children an early start at becoming geniuses (and some of these in utero efforts are even being considered potentially harmful to the developing fetus). We then lament overscheduled kids and the demise of recess, despite its proven effect of impriving student wellness and achievement. We learn about the rise in suicide among children (not just high school students) due to stress. The concept of taking a “gap year” is discussed as a way to give kids a break.

Chapter sixteen, “Changes,” sees some of the student stories brought to a resolution as they seek to change certain aspects of their lives. We discover first hand the inability of overachievers to function as adults capable of making their own decisions and allowing themselves to seek happiness over “success.”

Chapter seventeen, “Back to School,” continues winding down the student stories as each individual moves on to the next year of schooling. There is a review of overachiever culture and the author suggests how we can begin to remedy the situation. So I close my review with a quote from the author, and a skeletal list of her suggestions (which she describes in more detail in the book).


“Let me be clear: This is not a call for mediocrity. It is a call for perspective. What good is a nation with the highest test scores in the world if many of its youngest citizens are so miserable they kill themselves?”

What Schools Can Do:
• Delay High School Start Times
• Drop Class Rank
• Deemphasize Testing
• Provide Less-Competitive Alternatives
• Assign – and Enforce – Coordinated Departmental Project and Test Days
• Increase Awareness
• Limit APs
• Reinstitute Recess

What Colleges Can Do:
• Boycott the Rankings
• Scrap the SAT
• Eliminate Early Decision
• Prioritize Mental Health
• Send a Message (by changing applications to reflect what the school is truly looking for)

What Counselors Can Do: Focus on the Student, Not on the Schools

What Parents Can Do:
• Limit Young Children’s Activities
• Get a Life
• Schedule Family Time
• Place Character Above Performance

What Students and Parents Can Do:
• Stop the Guilt
• Adjust the Superstar Mentality
• Carve an Individual Path
• Ignore the Peanut Gallery
• Accept That Name Does Not Reflect Ability

What Students Can Do:
• Pare Down Activities
• Take a Year Off
• Try an “Unrewarding” Activity
• Reclaim Summer
• Accept That Admissions Aren’t Personal
• Take Charge



My opinion: if you are a parent or if you work in the field of education (or if you ever plan to do either), you MUST read this book. The sooner the better.

America's Hidden History by Kenneth C. Davis

Recently I read America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation by Kenneth C. Davis. He wrote Don't Know Much About History, followed by a bunch more books in the "Don't Know Much" series. This particular book was six chapters, and I found it to be a fairly quick read. The chapters have interesting names that entice you to go deeper to find out "what the deal is" about each: Isabella's Pigs, Hannah's Escape, Washington's Confession, Warren's Toga, Arnold's Boot, and Lafayette's Sword.

These catchy titles (I just noticed there's a pattern of sorts to them) uncover true chapters from our nation's early history -- things that we never learn in the history books or in school. I personally love American history, especially Colonial and Revolution-era stuff. So this book was perfect for me. It has a slight ring of conspiracy theory, so if you enjoyed National Treasure (which had a lot of fictional stuff), you will enjoy this read (which is all fact).

My husband also read this book (he finished it before I did), and then went and started re-reading Rise to Rebellion by Jeff Shaara. Back a few years, I had bought The Glorious Cause by the same author and then picked up Rise to Rebellion as it came first. You may know Jeff Shaara for his Civil War piece Gods and Generals, which actually took over as the second in a trilogy started by his father Michael Shaara. Gods and Generals was made into a movie (which I have not seen, nor have I read any of the trilogy) that won critical acclaim and was popular with the masses.

Shaara's works are fictionalized versions of historical events, and I feel they bring these distant days to life through the eyes of those involved . . . at least how the author thinks they may have thought, spoken, and acted at the time. Whenever possible, he bases his story on what actually happened, but he fills in the dramatic in-between with dialogue as he imagines it would have been. What I like best is that he shifts the perspective with each chapter to that of a different character -- on both sides of the war. In his Revolutionary War books, we get to "be" George Washington, John Adams, Benedict Arnold, Lafayette, Cornwallis, and others. I recommend these two of Shaara's books as an entertaining telling of the real events of our country's beginnings.

Freedom is Not Free (first time)

I've been looking back through some of last year's writing and marking those posts I want to be able to find again as "memories" in LiveJournal. I found something I wrote in response to a post by one of my summer blogging group. He posted something brief asking for responses. I was the only one who responded and my response was so long that I ended up having to cut it into five responses, one after another.

It was weird to read something I had written, talking about my family and how we reacted to the September 11th attacks, when my father was alive. He died on March 27th of this year, and it was sudden and unexpected. I want to remember what I wrote, so I am copying and pasting it here:

I grew up as the child of immigrant parents who came to this country and became naturalized citizens. I can't tell you they came here to escape poverty or persecution or better basic rights. My parents are both from the UK. While it's true that they did come here and have a good, successful middle-class life, they both probably would have done okay back home too . . but then there would be no ME! (They met over here.)

My son is the child of one immigrant parent (Alec is from Glasgow, Scotland too, like my Mom) and one first-generation American. His big sister, my step-daughter, is an immigrant.

The United Kingdom (from whom we celebrated our independence last week) is also a democratic society, though it's a bit different from ours in many ways. People there do not lack in human rights; in fact, there are more social services available to an extent (think socialized medicine and better public housing in some ways).

However, my parents came HERE, to the United States. And you'll never meet another couple more patriotic than my folks. (I may have blogged some of this elsewhere, but here goes.)

The reason my father came to America was because his older sister had married an American soldier stationed near their home, and she had written home from America about life in the US. My grandparents wanted to see what it was like. So they moved, bringing their two sons with them. My Dad was their youngest. Long story short, after many moves back and forth, my Dad joined the US Air Force and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

My mother's parents died before she reached adulthood. Her father died when she was three, her sister was two, and her brother was one. My mother remembers her father. She also remembers crying on her first day of school because she thought she would never see her mother again, like she never saw her father again. My mother was about seventeen when her mother died. They went to live with an uncle and his wife (who despised them), and became very close with their younger cousins. They had a pretty poor life, though.

When my mother was old enough, she became legal guardian for her sister and brother. They moved from one condemned apartment building to another, occupying perfectly good apartments until the buildings were scheduled for demolition. (This was apparently not all that uncommon in the Gorbals in Glasgow at the time. There's nothing left of my mother's childhood neighborhood now.) My mother's friend talked her into trying America. They came as au pairs, I guess you could say.

My mother didn't like the first family she was assigned to. Her assignment was changed. That wasn't going so well either. She and her friend ended up living at the YWCA in Passaic, NJ. She was still there, considering a trip back home -- perhaps for good -- when she met my father on a double date.

The other couple never hit it off. My parents are coming up on fifty years of marriage (November 1, 2008).

They vote in every election. They support local organizations, such as the volunteer fire department (of which my brother is a firefighter, and for which my mother is a member of the Ladies' Auxiliary). Mom is active in church groups, local women's groups, and she held an office in the local regional high school board of education. She also worked, for a time, as the Social Security officer for my small hometown. She only has the equivalent of a high school education. She has mostly worked in stores and small restaurants. But my Mom is for sure one of the biggest heroes in my life.

My Dad isn't as active socially or politically, but he drives up to my sister's house, a half hour or so away, every school day, and he takes her three girls to their three different schools, and then he picks them up at the end of each day. He is very friendly with the crossing guard outside the elementary school. He has talked a few other grandparents there through the changes in MediCare. He has taken a fellow kid-picker-upper for a doctor's appointment when she could not get there herself.

During the summer, my Mom and Dad are at my sister's house about three days a week, I would say. They watch the kids and get them to lessons or to the town swimming hole, or out for lunch, or to a friend's house. I sometimes envy my sister for having them so close . . . but then, it was my decision to move to California from New Jersey.

What does this have to do with the 4th of July? Before September 11, 2001, I so often saw Americans, often second- or third- or later generation Americans, completely disregarding the importance of our freedom and of our way of life here. It was only when that was threatened by terrorists that many people began to proudly display American flags instead of just watching on the news as people in faraway lands burned them.


When September 11th happened, I was in bed. I had not turned on the news before leaving for work, so as I drove the eleven miles across San Jose and turned on the radio, I found out for the first time what had happened. A mere eight miles from my parents' home. My brother, the fireman . . . where was he? Would he be sent into Manhattan to help? My parents, my sister, my nieces, were they all right? They go into New York to see shows or for a special dance class, I think. My sister's next-door neighbor was running late and stuck in a cab on her way to a meeting at the World Trade Center.


My sister was in court in Paterson, NJ. From a hallway outside a courtroom, they could see smoke at the Twin Towers. It was not so long ago that there had been a fire there (the first terrorist attempt), so they thought maybe something like that had happened. Later, after entering the courtroom, they were told a plane had hit the WTC. Everyone assumed it was a horrible, tragic accident. A few minutes later, it was announced that the second plane had hit the other tower.

There was that moment, she said, when everyone knew.

Immediately, as this was a county courthouse, they were evacuated. ALL government buildings in the region were similarly cleared of all occupants.

My sister knew people who worked in the Towers. Her daughters' softball coach. My parents and brother knew someone. A fellow volunteer fireman in our hometown. A guy who had graduated from my high school. He was in the Navy, and he died at the Pentagon.

It's amazing, given where I am from, that I didn't personally know more people who died that day in those attacks.

My husband and I had just been back home in August of 2001, for a friend's wedding. The next time I went home, flying into Newark Airport . . . I always used to find the towers, then scan with my eye into the harbor and find Lady Liberty . . . the skyline was left with a gaping emptiness. Of course, I cried as we landed. I had, after all, grown up being able to see the skyline from the street in front of my house.

So I guess what the 4th of July means to me is that we have something in this country so powerful . . . so amazing and brilliant and worthy . . . that people who fear freedom are willing to kill and die over it. To wipe it from our planet. Perhaps they fear that human nature can't handle the freedoms we have.

The first fireworks I saw after the terrorist attacks made me jump and quiver. And not in a good way. I have since gotten over that, and I reflect instead on the Battle of Trenton, which took place in my home state, and which was the turning point in the War for our Independence. (Of course, my family was still British then, so I should say the War for YOUR Independence.)

I reflect on the sacrifices being made every day by American men and women . . . and now the most recent attacks in my OTHER homeland. My mother, husband, and step-daughter are all from Glasgow. I can't tell you the number of times I have gone in and out of that airport. My father is from Northern England, currently a bit of a hotbed of home-grown terrorism in places.

Is all this simply so that I, as an American woman, can be educated? Work outside the home? Have an opinion? Wear what I choose? Show my legs and arms? Those things I take for granted . . . freedoms. They're not free.

What about the child's RIGHT behind?

Let me start off by saying that I work in a private school. We don't have buckets of money lying around, and my salary is less than that of many public school teachers with less experience than I have.

But what we DO have, that many public schools do not, are quite a few things.

1. Our students typically don't come to school hungry. Their parents have the time, energy, and funding to make sure their kids are dressed properly and appropriately and well-nourished.

2. Our parents are employed, typically in well-paying jobs. In some families, only one parent works, making big bucks while the other stays home to tend house and make sure the kids have all the attention and supervision they require. Some families have two highly-paid parents or two working parents whose combined incomes make the family's life comfortable enough to afford private school tuition.

3. Our parents, for the most part, are involved. They have clearly communicated to their children that education is top priority, and they walk their talk by attending school functions, taking the time to find out what their kids are learning, helping with homework, and maintaining good communication with teachers. Our parents have e-mail, with access at both home and work, so they can reach teachers almost instantly. This is the case in most of our families. Some parents are TOO involved, which leads to other issues, but we've learned to manage that.

4. Because it is a Christian school, although many of our families are not churched or belong to other religions (Buddhism and Hinduism are big ones here), we have the luxury of teaching our students values education in a single, unabashed framework of the Christian faith. That means they get the same message throughout the school, and we, as staff, can back one another up. I know that most teachers impart values to their students, and most schools have a central values framework, but ours comes from outside our school (the Bible) and is one we can all adhere to because of our faith beliefs. We can tell kids that something is wrong because the Bible says so, not because of one teacher's or administrator's personal preference.

(Not everyone has to agree that this is a good thing, but it works well for us in our school.)

5. Most important to me, when I consider what my public school colleagues face, is that we DON'T have to bow down to the Almighty test score. We are not bound by NCLB, API ratings, or the results on our annual standardized tests. Our students do very well on tests, by the way, but I think that has more to do with my above-stated reasons than anything else. As teachers, we can do our jobs without having to worry about all the other things our public school counterparts face every day. That's not to say our kids don't have problems and issues. Theirs just aren't issues of day-to-day survival or safety.

What we've discovered is that test scores don't tell you much more than how that group of kids was doing with that information or skill set on that particular testing day. Teach to the test all you want; we know the kids aren't really learning anything useful (except how to play the system) when we do that. If the government (which is made up of individuals who live in nice areas and/or send their kids to private schools) could be more patient and await results, maybe public schools all over our country would have a better chance of succeeding where it really counts. Kids could work collaboratively on projects that would give them the 21st Century Skills most of our "ruling class" doesn't even know exist.

I am so tired of the hypocrisy inherent in big government, full of wealthy white guys and out-of-touch old folks, telling professional educators how kids learn and how we measure the quality of that learning. Maybe they would see us more as the professionals we are if our salary were commensurate with our responsibilities.

But that's another rant for another day.

Skills/attributes necessary for outstanding teachers

Today, Steve Dembo blogged about how people arrive at his blog by searching for an answer to the question “Describe the skills or attributes you believe are necessary to be an outstanding teacher.”

Within today's entry, he linked back to when he initially discovered this phenomenon, and how he felt these potential teachers were only cheating themselves by looking for someone else's answers to use.

From there, you can get back to his "Writing When It Counts" entry from April of 2005, when he first wrestled with the short-essay question himself.

I found the entire process fascinating, and (I admit) I am kind of wondering what Steve wrote in his response to the application question back some three years ago.

I agree totally with his assessment that each teacher needs to write his or her own response, from the heart, and not take what someone else wrote as their own. But, of course, if someone does find something inspiring from another educator, it would be only fair to cite that person's original writing. I know that when my students ask me a question to which I don't know the answer, I tell them, "I don't know that right now, but I know where we can go look to find out." Isn't that really what teaching, and indeed parenting, is all about?

Teaching prepared me immeasurably for becoming a parent. I feel the single most important attribute a teacher can have is respect, and along with that inevitably comes honesty. The funny thing is, these are the qualities by which I try to guide my entire life, not just my career as an educator or the choices I make as a parent. When we respect others, we are, above all, honest with them. We must force ourselves to be humble, even when we know that we're right about something and the other person is wrong. Students know instantly whether or not we have respect for them. But it's also a good idea to have a conversation about respect, what it means, and what it looks like, with each group of students with whom we interact.

Kids also know when we're flying by the seats of our pants. If we make it fun enough -- a sort of adventure we're on together -- they don't seem to mind as much. But if we have enough respect for them to be honest about the fact that we're discovering something together, they will feel that we genuinely care about them enough to admit that . . . "You know what, kids? Adults don't always know everything, and it's better you learn that now before you become one of us and expect too much of yourself too soon!"

Of the adults reading this, I ask: Can you remember a time that, in your role as a responsible adult (teacher, parent, etc.), you simply did not know what to do? I sure can. The key to being grown-up (other than being taller than my four year old son) is knowing that you don't know everything.

So, what if I had to answer that short-essay question right now? (Although I feel I must point out that it's not really a question but rather a command -- imperative sentence.) Would I talk about respect, honesty, and humility? Knowing me, I would probably quote the end of my favorite Robert Frost poem ("The Road Not Taken") and talk about how I have had a mini-poster of that posted in every place in which I have taught since I began my career sixteen years ago. I'm a bit of a weirdo in most settings. I have my summer hair, my funny t-shirts, my tattoo (soon to be tattoos), and I don't wear makeup or dresses. How would this serve to answer the question?

Respect starts with self. How can I respect others if I do not honor and respect myself? If I require respect from those around me, modeling respect in how I treat others, it's a win-win situation, right? I guess I have just learned to try to live by the Golden Rule and not be too hard on myself when I don't get it right. Being an outstanding teacher really comes down to learning who you are as a person, maximizing your ability to teach others using the traits you have always had, and always striving to grow in your ability to be comfortable being yourself for a living.

Almost sounds easy. Ha.

Cha-ching!

Earlier this school year, I applied on behalf of a group of us for a National Semiconductor Science in Action grant. As a group, we could apply for a $5000 grant. I got our three 5th grade teachers and the 6th grade teacher who covers science and math to be in the group with me. Yesterday, at a staff meeting after school, we found out (quite by surprise) that our proposal was approved to receive a grant!

Our project is like a dream come true for me. I teach computer technology to grades one through eight at a private school here in San Jose. Students come to our class once a week (or twice a week in middle school) to learn computer skills. Last year and this year, since I have come into this particular position, we have really tried to push for true technology integration into the curriculum our classroom teachers are already covering. We have had some success, especially this school year, in meeting their standards while also accomplishing our own goals, which generally involve Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher, in addition to online research skills, e-mail (in grades three through eight), and information literacy (citing sources of information and images). This year we have also been using Google Earth.

Another new addition to this year's program has been geocaching. We've had 4th graders answer questions about California Indians, and we've had 5th graders make decisions on behalf of the main character of the novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. This was done through an on-campus geocaching activity during our class time. I'm also going to have a mini-course (like a non-graded elective class) for middle school students during our third trimester. But I have long wanted to combine true scientific investigation, data entry and graphing, and this hobby of mine (that would be the geocaching) into a truly engaging activity for our older elementary and middle school students. Enter the grant project.

What we're going to do is set up real geocache containers, which would be hidden and published on the leading geocaching website, and have them be data collection sites for weather and water quality testing. I'll get some thermometer/hygrometers, mini cloud charts, and notebooks for recording temperature, humidity, cloud cover, and general weather for the 5th grade geocaches. I'll have water testing strips and notebooks in the 6th grade geocaches, which we will hide along creeks in our area. When people find the hidden containers, they will be directed to take readings and record them both in writing in the logbooks, and also on the website when they log their finds. (I am going to have take-away sheets so they can write down their notes to refer to later when they go online.)

We will monitor the geocaches and keep track of the data we collect. I am also really happy I live in the Bay Area, as there is a fantastic geocaching community here, and I know people will be eager to help out by visiting the geocaches and participating in the data collection. I just shared the news with them last night, and I have already gotten some messages with suggestions about possible hide locations and contacts with area volunteers who work with the creek managers and city officials.

Best of all, I know the students will be very enthusiastic to have this real data, gathered in real time, to track and graph (in our technology class, of course) in Excel and Chart Wizard.

I have my sinister ulterior motives too. Maybe kids will find out that the creeks become littered often and they will want to organize creek clean-ups. Maybe they and their family members will discover geocaching as a fun activity to do as a family, and they will learn more about the natural wonders in our own backyards and neighborhood parks. Maybe the kids will become even more environmentally aware and take a proactive role in rescuing our planet from the brink of destruction. I am so sneaky.

This is an exciting development for me and my colleagues. We are excited about how this project will take shape over the coming years. Watch this space for updates . . . almost semi-sorta-regularly.

MINDSET: The New Psychology of Success

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Ph. D. arrived Saturday morning (along with Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin) from Amazon. I started reading it soon after and finished it Sunday night. That should tell you that it's not a difficult read.

The main premise is the contrast between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset -- not just in students, but in all people. Implications of this in sports, business, and relationships are explored before focusing on education and parenting.

Fixed mindset is the belief that traits such as talent and intelligence occur naturally in some people and not in others. People in the fixed mindset believe that they either "have it" or they don't. And they scorn effort toward improvement, because they think that people with natural talent shouldn't need to work hard. This is why some students who do well all through school with a minimum of effort fall apart later in their academic careers when they suddenly don't get straight-As without studying. The message often comes from parents and the praise they give, telling a child he is so smart or she is so artistic or athletic. The problem occurs when a child has a setback and fears that the parent will no longer think these good things about them. The child, in his or her own mind, suddenly goes from smart to dumb, athletic to clumsy, and so forth.

Growth mindset is the belief that talent, intelligence, and other such traits can be achieved through hard work, and that they are accessible to almost anyone. Certainly, some students may struggle due to handicaps or learning differences, but usually what is required, even for them, is just extraordinary effort. A key finding was that when students could be taught how to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, to learn about how the brain grows inside as it learns, they believed they could get smarter and they were willing to put in the effort necessary to improve their achievement. Often, math scores were used to measure such growth, since mathematical work requires growth and learning in a sequential, step-by-step manner that builds on earlier learning. Another important observation was how people with a growth mindset handle stressful events such as failure, rejection, and even shyness. (There are shy people of both mindsets.) Incidentally, students with a growth mindset steadily improved their math scores while students with a fixed mindset stayed the same or declined.

People with the growth mindset did not fear challenges, because these presented opportunities for growth and learning, which these individuals saw as a good thing. People with the fixed mindset feared challenges, because if they failed at a task, it would expose their (perceived) lack of intelligence or talent. As this is how they defined their value, this could be a crushing experience. This is why you will sometimes see a child who claims to be smarter than others, who brags he or she can do harder things than others, but who refuses to actually make good on these claims. Somewhere along the line, they have internalized the message that their value lies in some fixed ability or trait. And if they fail, they don't have that ability after all!

In sports, there was an illustration of Coach Bobby Knight versus Coach John Wooden, as well as a John McEnroe or Pedro Martinez versus a Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. The growth mindset coach or athlete does not see it as being all about him (or her . . . case in point, Mia Hamm) but rather about how the team improves as a whole through effort. (Okay, tennis and golf are not team sports, but no athlete truly "makes it" alone; there are always a host of support staff.) In business, Lee Iacocca had a fixed mindset; Lou Gerstner, who turned around IBM, a growth mindset. Examples were also given in the arts. But I am oversimplifying it to give the bigger picture.

What should we, as teachers (and parents), be doing differently? First, we have to analyze our own mindsets, in different areas, including academics, sports, art, and relationships. Do we project this onto our children and students? I always start thinking about myself as a parent. Do I tell Cameron he is a smart little boy because he knows letters, numbers, shapes, etc.? What I need to learn how to praise is how hard he worked to learn all these things. Conversely, would we belittle an infant because she can't talk? No, because she simply has not learned how yet. So, in many different areas, can we re-learn how to send messages to our children about their own worth and value? Can I start talking to my son about his effort and achievement rather than the gifts I suspect he possesses?

When we lead our students at school, can we re-train their mindsets, in many cases against what their parents have taught them, to value growth through hard work (even if it means learning from some mistakes and failures)? This is a tough one for me, because so many of my students live in a situation where failure of any kind is intolerable. Often, when a student gets a B or lower, parents will come in demanding to know what the teacher did wrong. The idea is that their child possesses such infallible talent or intelligence that missing an A grade must mean that the teacher tricked the child or did not do her job. The danger inherent in this arises later in life, when a friendship or other relationship falls apart, or a job opportunity is not won because someone else was better qualified. Or, more immediately, the high school or college of choice does not accept the student, regardless of grades and other rated achievements. The child, encouraged by their parents' limited view (fixed mindset), labels him- or herself as a nothing. "If I couldn't get into (insert name of school here), then I never was smart or talented or gifted or ANYTHING."

Imagine, now, the power of teaching these same kids the value of hard work as the means to achieve anything they desire. That means that opportunities can be achieved by anyone, not just a chosen few. Some will have to work harder than others, but they will have exercised and grown their brains more, thus becoming more intelligent. And then, when a friendship fizzles, when a marriage falls apart, when a test comes back with a D grade, or when the team loses, these are opportunities to learn how not to repeat the same mistakes. (NOT a reflection of a person's individual worth or value.)

See why I recommend this book?

What IS blogging? I mean . . . really?

As you may know, I have been blogging for a while. This is the third consecutive summer in which I was actually paid to blog, and this is my second summer of having it be my full-time employment. I think, in all this time of watching bloggers who are also teachers, I have come to a decision about blogging and education.



Would you like to know what that decision is?

Much of the time, in many cases and situations, it's just not worth it. A waste of time.

However, it CAN be done well. And it can get kids motivated to work harder and better than they would without it. But there are so many things to consider:

• What if it takes your students SO long to type what they want to say that they end up frustrated and they give up? Do you have the time to devote to their being trained in keyboarding skills? Do they suddenly become aware of spelling and grammar errors they've been making all along in writing, yet are ill-equipped to deal with them?


• What if you get a whole big ol' blogging project all planned out, and then the first day you take your kids to the lab, there is a power failure? Or, worse yet, everything is working fine, but your top three choices of blog clients are blocked in your school/district?


• What if you end up taking more time teaching people how to blog than you can afford? What if they never truly learn the ins and outs and you have neither a product created nor a standard met? How's your principal gonna like that?


• What if everything works fine, is not blocked, and your kids learn how to use their blogs quickly? What if they become pros and figure out features you never intended them to use, mainly because you did not know they existed? What if you get called in to see your principal because your students are staging an online revolt against you and/or the school and you never even knew about it?


• What if the precious darlings you have blogging end up either filling their blogs with profanity (which you will get to find and address) or nothing at all because all the posts they attempt get blocked by the content filters?


• What if you assign a blogging homework assignment, only to be hit with a plethora of excuses (some of them genuine) about why half the class can't blog anywhere but the school's computers?

There are plenty more "what-ifs," but I think you get the picture. A part of me is convinced that there are only ever really twelve to fifteen different conversations taking place on the Internet at any given time, and they just keep getting brought back up with different window dressing. Some of these include:

• What I did at (school/work) today


• What I did this weekend instead of my (homework/housework/chores)


• Stuff and/or people I totally love


• Stuff and/or people I totally despise


• Who should win this round of American Idol and why


• Why you believe (or don't believe) in something


• Here's a link to something I found (interesting/funny/disturbing/a little too close to home)


• What I want to do when I (grow up/grow old/graduate/retire/get married/get divorced/have kids/empty my nest)


• What I want to do before I (grow up/grow old/graduate/retire/get married/get divorced/have kids/empty my nest/die)


• A list of my favorite Your Mama Jokes (or similar fluff)


• Political ranting and/or commentary on current events


• Surveys and other Memes

Go ahead; prove me wrong. I want you to. Really.

A letter I will never send

I was skimming through one of the featured communities this evening (dear_you) and found the concept rather interesting. To whom would I write such a letter? My ex-husband? My friend Billy who died at age 38 in 1995? My former students? A teacher from my past? Maybe. Maybe not.

I know.

My son.

Dear Cameron,

We wanted you so much. We had to pay a lot of money to make you happen. The first time I thought I was going to have a baby, I was wrong. That was so disappointing. But then, just a month later, it turned out to be positive news! All that time, I thought about you constantly. What did you look like? Would you like the same things I like? What would your voice sound like? When would you understand that I was your Mommy and that Daddy was your Daddy?

And then . . . we weren't even ready yet! You came so soon. I had only just finished up at work, had only just written a letter to my fifth graders on the board, telling them to be good for the sub. And I started to feel really uncomfortable. Early the next morning, after a long night of trying to get you to come out the regular way, they told me I would need an operation. Less than two hours later, I got a brief glimpse of you before they whisked you off to a special room to make sure you were okay. You were three and a half weeks early, after all. They made Daddy sit in a wheelchair and rolled him out of where we first met you. He followed you down to the special room. It was a long time before I got to see you again.

That night, the nurse brought a wheelchair for me. I was still wondering what you looked like. I was still trying to imagine how big you might be. Or how small. It hurt more than anything I have ever felt to get out of the bed and into that wheelchair. The nurse tried to talk me out of it, to get me to go back into the bed. I looked at her and yelled, with tears in my eyes, "It's been eight hours since I had him, and I haven't even held my son!" The next thing I knew, I was being wheeled down the hall to where you lay waiting. Were you waiting?

When I saw you, it took my breath away. You were small. And there were all these tubes and wires and machines. You were in a kind of dome thing. Four or five different machines were making noises telling the doctors about your breathing, your heart, your pulse. Every twitch another beep. Sometimes you forgot to breathe. I was so scared. I was even afraid to move you or touch you. They carefully moved enough things out of the way so that you could come out from under your dome. I didn't even know how to hold a baby. They handed you over to me. I sat in the rocker and looked at you. Machines beeped, and sometimes their alarms sounded. Sometimes it was not a big deal. Sometimes I had to rub you and tell you to breathe. It was only later that I would notice the other babies in there. Most of them were even smaller and earlier than you were. A nurse used Daddy's camera to take pictures of us with you. Daddy took some more of you in your little bed in the hospital. Now, when you see them in your little picture book, you tell me, "He's inna hop-sit-al. He gonna go home soon."

It wasn't soon enough. It was five days before they let me out. Eight days for you. Those were such long days. Every day, we had new hopes that you could come home. Every night we had to leave you there and come home without you. I woke up and cried at night. I called the hospital and asked about you. And I was always there in the morning to come hold you and feed you. Finally, you came home. You were still so tiny. Mr. Wes next door saw us driving home and he came by with flowers later. He was the first person to see you at home, other than Daddy and me. He said you were beautiful and amazing. He was right.

The rest is a blur. Daddy got up with you every night. He wanted me to rest, because I had to have another operation two weeks after the first one, and a week in between those I had to go to the hospital every day to see the doctor. It took me a long time to heal from the operation, but I have never regretted a thing. My scar reminds me of you. Every stitch and staple was worth it.

Now, when I look at you . . . when I talk to you, and you respond back . . . when I hold your hand as we walk around the neighborhood . . . I can't believe how amazing you are. I used to wonder what it would be like to have you hold my hand as we walked. Now, you won't let it go. And sometimes you climb up my leg and I have to pick you up when a doggy comes along. I used to wonder what your voice would sound like saying "Mommy." Now I wonder what it would sound like NOT saying "no!"

I still wonder about some things. I wonder if you will like school. I wonder if you will make friends with other kids. I wonder if I will someday have to deal with you NOT wanting hugs and kisses from your Mommy. In the meantime, I give you them every chance I get.

And when I get upset because you won't help clean up your toys . . . or when I lose my temper and get angry when you make a mess because you won't use your potty . . . I remember that helpless little baby with all the tubes and wires and machines hooked up to him. I remember praying to God that you would be all right. I remember crying as I hung up the phone after the nurses told me you were fine, but you still weren't home with me. I remember being so grateful that despite a few early setbacks, you were perfectly healthy, fine, normal, amazing, beautiful. And I remember when you were still inside my tummy, moving around a LOT when I would lie down in bed at night and wonder what you looked like. And now I can just go into your room and look at you as you sleep.

And thank God that you ARE all right.

Good night, baby.

Love,
Mommy

Final Reflection for Google Certified Teacher requirements

Diane Main, Computer Technology Lead Teacher
Milpitas Christian School
3435 Birchwood Lane
San Jose, California 95132
dianemain at gmail dot com

I offered a series of three courses, spread out over three months. Each was held on a Wednesday after school, for two hours per session. Teachers who attended all six hours were able to earn a CEU for free. About eighteen educators signed up, including two from our school’s preschool and three or four from another private Christian school several cities away. (Kings Academy in Sunnyvale) As it turned out, the people from our preschool and all but one of the people from Kings had to cancel due to other commitments. There were 13, 11, and 10 people in attendance at the three sessions, respectively. The sessions were Google Earth (January 24), Google Tools and Information Literacy (February 28), and Google Docs & Spreadsheets (March 21).

In the Google Earth session, I talked about what Google Earth is, and I demonstrated the program on the large screen via projector hooked to my laptop. Several attendees had brought their laptops and installed the program while we held the discussion. We brainstormed how teachers thought they could use Google Earth for their classes and with their students. I had downloaded several files from the Keyhole BBS in advance of the class, and the teachers enjoyed seeing how others had already created Google Earth activities. Some were created by teachers and some by students. I shared Google LitTrips and Postcards from the Past, both created by fellow Google Certified Teachers I had met at the Google Teacher Academy only a few months earlier. One fourth grade teacher, who had a student moving back to China two days later, spent some time the day after this session “flying over” the Earth from San Jose to this child’s village in China, showing the kids in her class where their classmate would be traveling the following day. The teacher showed an enthusiasm I had never seen in her before, and I was impressed with her willingness to dive right in with Google Earth.

In the Google Tools and Information Literacy session, we logged in to the PCs in my lab and I had each participant select a tool from “Even More” just to experiment with. As teachers began looking over one another’s shoulders, some found tools they planned to start using, either personally or professionally. But the excitement really started when we began to discuss the concept of information literacy. My co-teacher and I shared our experiences so far that year with having our students use Citation Machine to cite their sources of information. I also showed a short movie I had made for teaching my students how to cite sources of both information and images. Some of the teachers were relieved to know that we were helping kids understand why we cite sources and how to do it correctly. One of the teachers brought up Wikipedia and asked for my opinion about this well-known and much-maligned online resource. The conversation caused some participants to consider things they had never even thought about before, and I think it turned out to be a very good session, even though it veered strongly from my original plan. I think one thing that surprised a lot of people is when I told them we had found several errors in our Encarta CD-ROM Encyclopedia, and that other sources along with Wikipedia were correct and helped us to verify our information.

In the Google Docs & Spreadsheets session, it took no time at all to get the attendees hooked on collaborating. I had made sure each participant had been invited to gmail in advance of this final session, and that each one had set up their account so I could invite them all to collaborate on a document right before their eyes. Again, they logged in on lab computers, though some worked from their laptops instead, and we created a very silly document together. One teacher got the idea to have some of her sharper students begin collaborating on writing articles for the school’s newsletter, which gets sent home with all the students in our entire school. We had a great discussion about how teachers could use D&S with their students and we tentatively formulated a plan for getting kids set up with Google accounts next year. (I have since discovered that there is now a way to tie in Google Apps For Your Domain with Gaggle.net accounts, which our school has in grades three through eight, so I am pursuing that this summer.) In demonstrating the Spreadsheets section (before they added charting capability), I exported a spreadsheet from Google D&S into Excel and then used Chart Wizard to graph the data. This got the fourth grade teachers especially excited, as they had science projects coming up. This gave me a chance to show off the project their students were working on at that time, which involved graphing data about an assigned state (population change through history, ten most populated cities, and percentages of ethnic groups). The unexpected benefit here was that I suddenly got extreme buy-in for integration projects with these teachers, who had been reluctant before because they thought it would be more work and too hard to make happen, I think. By the end of the school year, we had a lot more participation by those teachers in signing up to bring their students to the open lab, AND we changed our curriculum to enable their students to complete several tasks related to the science project . . . including graphing their data in many cases . . . in our class when they came to us. This was done in Excel, but I would like to see it done with Google D&S in the future.

Most of the educators in attendance were very excited about the possibilities these tools presented. After each session, several teachers experimented with the tools and some began using them with their students, as I have already mentioned. We are also looking forward to expanding our use of these tools in our lab classes to support teacher use of the tools and to encourage more collaborative work by students.

Two challenges I faced in presenting these sessions were as follows. One or two attendees were seriously behind the rest in basic computing skills, and it meant that the entire session could sometimes get held up over a minor technical glitch that had to be overcome here or there. The person visiting us from another school was an art teacher, and while she felt she got a lot out of the sessions, I felt I could not tailor my presentation to meet her needs enough. When discussions were specific to what we do at our school, she kept herself very busy exploring Google Images, which she had not used much before that time, so at least she got something out of it.

I think my own personal growth was impacted in several ways. First, I had been struggling all year up to this point to really connect with certain teachers and to encourage better communication regarding technology integration between their classrooms and the computer lab classes I teach. Once we took the time to hypothetically discuss the uses for some of these tools, a lot of things became clearer as to how we could collaborate better on projects the kids could do to meet both our technology standards and the state’s curriculum content standards. In addition, I got more practice presenting to groups, and since a lot of things came up that I had not anticipated, I got the chance to both improve my “thinking on my feet” skills and to share my passion for technology in education. I think my enthusiasm alone during these workshops helped bridge some gaps that had been gaping a bit too widely before this point.

As for the future, my plan is to investigate the tie-in with Google Apps For Your Domain and Gaggle.net and make full use of these in my classes next year. I already anticipate a better success rate with technology integration projects, as the administration at my school has promised to be stronger in encouraging classroom teachers to fully take advantage of what we’re trying to accomplish in our lab. I hope to reach more educators in the coming year by having some of the teachers from my school co-present with me, perhaps having their students present their own work as well, in an effort to not only share what we do but to also encourage other teachers to want to learn more about the applications I shared this past winter.