Outside Providence

Social Protests

2011-12-07T10:18:00.004-05:00

I've been having an ongoing argument about the #Occupy movement with my sisters, and it's made me want to explore some ideas about the nature of protest movements.

Simply put, my claim is that non-violent protests are designed as such to reveal the violent lengths that police/armies will go to in order to preserve the status quo. I'm not a student of literature about non-violent protest, so I am sure that has been said before, but people these days do not seem to REALIZE this essential truth.

That does not mean that protesters are TO BLAME for the violence perpetrated on them by police or armies. The police or armies could choose not to use violent means to disperse a crowd. They choose to use these means. I am afraid that what is happening is that people are becoming desensitized to the violence police are using. I also worry that the idea that the individuals are responsible for the violence inflicted upon them means that they deserve it.

As I pointed out to one of my sisters, the believe in non-violent protest needs to transcend political ideology. I may not particularly like the people who protest outside of abortion clinics screaming at women going inside to get an abortion, but they do have that right.

Farm Life

2011-08-21T14:43:00.008-05:00

I've been home only 4 days out of the month so far. I never want to leave my bed again.

After spending 10 days at my mom's when my father died, I went home, then turned back around a few days later to go on a family camping trip. My sister had planned this several months ago. We rented 3 cabins at a campground that we used to go to with our parents when we were kids. Two of my sisters and I took these cabins, and my other sister came up for the day with her husband, kids (including a 1-month-old), and my mother, who stayed with her a few nights.

It was idyllic. First of all, my BILs are good at this camping stuff, and they had plenty of stuff. Whatever we didn't have, they had. Except a can opener, but then I remembered I'd brought a Swiss Army Knife. Second of all, my kids, who normally HATE anything like camping because it's "boring" found that camping was not boring at all when they were with their cousins. The kids ran and frolicked all over the campground while the adults sat around and drank beer.

One of the afternoons, while my mom was there, my sister, mom and I went to the farm. I won't be too specific about the farm, but a few important things about it:
1. My mom's best friend's family owns it. The family matriarch is still alive at age 92, but her husband died 9 months before my daughter was born, and my mom's friend died when my daughter was a few months old (breast cancer).
2. My husband and I were married there.
3. It's a very special place to us and was, particularly, to my mom and dad.

I took some pics while I was there, so I'll share. My mom's best friend had several siblings, but some are dead and some have moved further away. Their grandkids are scattered all over, and many of them have their own children now, as my sisters and I do. They have a guest house that is available to hunters during hunting season and to fishers during fishing season.

They did more tourism in the past, when it was more of a working farm, but the remaining family members aren't quite up to that.

Here are some pics:

My dad always called this the "quintessential farm pic."

A view from the front of the guest house.

I've climbed that mountain.

We were married next to that lilac bush.

They're in the process of renovating the guest house. They removed two bedrooms and turned the space into a kitchen/living room combination. So when I saw the knotty pine they installed, I had to take a pic for Laura:

My father

2011-08-13T08:00:00.003-05:00

The past 2 months have been a blur. Most significantly, my father passed away last week 4 years after being diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer. You have to give him credit for surviving so long in such a damaged body. He was bedridden because the cancer had metastasized in his spine and rendered him mostly paralyzed. He also had had a triple bypass some years ago, a stroke when he was 50, and had renal disease and had lost function in one kidney.

A month before he died, his youngest brother died of COPD and cirrhosis. I was with my dad when he got the call; he was devastated.

My father was a science teacher who loved music, particularly rock and roll music. He made his own playlist for his end days, and it's filled with awesome songs. It's all on Rhapsody, which is an evil horrible difficult to use service, so I can't quite figure out how to export this playlist to keep, but when I figure it out, I will share it.

One other thing about my father: he was a devotee of intelligent design and a critic of evolution theory. His criticisms were fairly nuanced and scientific, not based on religion at all. In fact, he was pretty much an atheist, though even that was nuanced in that he was kind of convinced that we all had lives before the one we're living, and as babies we still had memories of those past lives that we couldn't articulate. When he first held my daughter, his first grandchild, he said, "Sophie, where you been?" He would later ask that question of all his grandchildren. :)

My dad posted on talk.origins and later as a blog commenter, particularly on PZ Myers' Pharyngula, from which he was often banned for being a troll. On talk.origins, I believe he often signed himself as "Pookie, the kid from space." That was because his theory of the origins of life was that life came to earth from outer space in DNA, which acted as computer programs of sorts. He believed that the mutations we see as random were actually coded into DNA. Thus, I couldn't believe the irony that this article appeared the week after his death. He would have felt so vindicated.

RIP Dad.

Catching Up

2011-06-05T21:01:00.004-05:00

March/April/May are always my busiest months. Something about the end of the academic year that brings on the work, no matter how hard I try to shed load.

So, where am I at? What's new? A lot of good stuff. I would feel a little guilty for my relative good fortune these days, but I know all things are temporary (or rather, cyclical--life is full of ups and downs--right now is an up).

1. I was promoted to full professor. We do not have tenure, so don't get too excited. But it's still nice.

2. We are travelling to England and France for our summer vacation. Highlight: my daughter and I are going to see Tennant and Tate in Much Ado About Nothing. It's going to be awesomesauce.

3. I wrote fanfiction for Parks and Rec. No, I will not show you what I wrote (and it's not on ff.net). But I scratched the itch, so to speak, and now I could care less about writing fanfic.

4. My son was accepted into the Davidson Young Scholars Program. I have no idea yet what that will do for us, but I guess it's an honor.

5. I've been working on genealogy, which is a relatively new pursuit. I decided to try to track down more info about my father's father's side of the family. And I've had remarkable success thanks to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Online and the fact that my great-great-grandfather did not in fact come from a long line of ditchdiggers, as my father always said, but was in fact a highly respected musician and music teacher in the Brooklyn Public Schools. He died of a brain infection, when he was about 42 years old.

6. I got my husband tickets to see Book of Mormon on Broadway as a combined anniversary/Father's Day/birthday present. We don't go till the end of the summer.

7. I had to work very hard to get my daughter to agree with it after a few refusals, but she's taking flute lessons with a very skilled HS student and is enjoying them! All my old ways of parenting started failing once she turned 11, but I have adapted and am making progress in getting her to comply with my wishes.

8. My son has a basketball jones and is driving me insane dribbling in the house constantly. Maybe that's why I can't sleep at night!

9. I've been reading a bit. My favorite book of the year so far is Dash and Lily's Book of Dares, written by the same people who wrote Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (and better than N&N, I think). I'm in the middle of a Regency romance now, then will read a Julia Quinn, but I'm contemplating reading the Game of Thrones series before the next book comes out next month. If I know myself, that will really involve me skimming until I get to the Tyrion parts. I'm also starting my Peter Dinklage Emmy Campaign soon.

10. I watched the Doctor Who midseason finale somehow *coughcough* and think it was superb. It'll air on BBC America next week? And then I'm just counting down to my favorite slutty vampire show, True Blood.

10 is a nice round number!

Paper Tiger Moms?

2011-02-19T19:53:00.002-05:00

Every Friday once a month I meet with other faculty working on research projects (as we're not a research-driven school, there aren't many who show!). But one of the faculty, who specializes in teaching international students, is working on a project on plagiarism and Chinese students. We get a lot of Chinese students at our university; I like to say we figured out earlier than most that the one thing left of value to export from America is higher ed.

It ends up that the issue of academic integrity is a perfect storm of a problem in China. First, Chinese culture expects students to show deference to teachers and experts, and what better way to demonstrate expertise than quoting the experts directly? Second, China has weak copyright protection. One of my Chinese students once said that China doesn't believe in copyright protection, but I'm not sure that is entirely true. But it is different in China than in the US. Third, the students are under tremendous pressure to succeed. My colleague told us that several students write about having attempted suicide because of the pressure from their parents to succeed.

My colleague also mentioned that an American college disbanded an MBA program in China because of plagiarism.

And we too have problems with students (well, all kinds of students) who plagiarize, but with Chinese students we have to address cultural differences, not necessarily moral issues. It's a pretty big challenge.

Of course, where I'm going with this is that we should not necessarily see the Chinese educational system as the be-all and end-all.

Death, be not crowded

2011-02-18T09:11:00.004-05:00

This blogging stuff is hard.

Last night I went to my very first wake in Rhode Island, after 8 years in the area. Now, in New York, where I'm from, this is how we do wakes/services:
Day 1: wake/visiting hours at the funeral home, usually about 2 sessions, afternoon and evening hours, like 1-4 and 6-9.
Day 2: the same. If there's not going to be a church funeral, usually the evening session includes some sort of service.
Day 3: if there is a church funeral, this is when it's held, usually in the morning.

Sometimes there might be one day of visiting hours at the funeral home. When a family friend passed last September, I think there was one day of visiting hours, in two sessions, and then the funeral the next morning. I could only attend the funeral due to my work schedule.

In the funeral home, everyone kind of mingles. Family is scattered about. When you get a chance, you respectfully go to the casket to pay your respects to the deceased. You sit in the chairs and pray or contemplate mortality. You reminisce.

In RI, apparently you get to the funeral home and stand in line for hours. OK, not hours. But you stand in a line, file past the casket, pausing to pray/pay respects, then you see the family and offer your condolences. And there were only 4 hours at the funeral home! The person I was there for (his wife is a colleague) was much beloved (and way too young, at 62--cancer sucks) was much beloved plus you have the lifetime Rhode Islander factor (meaning he knew everyone in the state), so the line was hugely long. Somehow that seems incredibly inefficient and weird to me.

Are funeral practices in your area similar to those in NY or RI?

The Darkest Hour is Always in February

2011-02-16T17:42:00.003-05:00

The last week of the term (we do trimesters here) is kicking my ass. The students get so [redacted].

Rhee-ality Bites

2011-02-15T09:28:00.003-05:00

Since I never much liked Michelle Rhee, I've been enjoying the spectacle of watching Jay Mathews keep trying to defend her despite growing evidence that she's a fraud.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the way to "fix" public education has nothing to do with the education system and has everything to do with growing income inequality and the unrelenting decline of the middle class.

ETA: Also this. Let's see if I can hotlink that chart:

Kids and Sports

2011-02-14T10:34:00.003-05:00

One of my recurring pet peeves is parents who try to live their dreams through their children. Also, one of my favorite things to do is read Jeff Opdyke's semi-weekly WSJ column and rag on him for being a loser. This weekend I hit a double: a column about how he was living his dreams about being the dad of a soccer star through his son, who, it ends up, didn't really love soccer as much as Opdyke thought he did.

The parents who attend every practice and every game drive me nuts. You have to leave the kid alone for a while and let him or her see if s/he enjoys the sport for the fun of it or because mom and/or dad like it. The problem is that so many of these team sports are run by parent volunteers, and the parents make a commitment then can't let the kid back out.

I'm probably going to have to let me daughter give up dance soon. I hope she sticks with it, but she has been having a hard year. I'm sure 11 is a tough year for dancers (or whenever they have growth spurts and hit puberty). I think my daughter just feels tall and busty and gawky around the other girls who haven't reached puberty yet (well, my daughter technically hasn't yet, but just had a massive growth spurt). But I have to find that balance between being Amy Chua and insisting on mastery Or Else vs. forcing my daughter to do something that makes her unhappy. Nowadays, she loves music, anyway. It fills her need to perform and she is good at it. That's all I want for her--to practice something and become good at it so it gives her pleasure to do it.

I'm sad... though I won't miss those godawful competitions. I like the jazz and tap numbers, but the stupid endless power ballads for the lyrical dances and the annoying hip-hop songs drive me insane.

S A TUR DAY. Night!

2011-02-12T19:18:00.002-05:00

So, what do you guys do on Saturday nights? We catch up on the Wednesday/Thursday sitcoms, if necessary, or watch a movie. I never stay up for Saturday Night Live any more. If my husband goes to sleep early, I catch up on Chuck, Parenthood, or costume dramas like Downton Abbey.

It's a life, I guess.

Parenting's Extra Expenses

2011-02-11T10:27:00.005-05:00

Amy pointed out this article on the effects of poverty on social capital, the ability to connect with community by joining in community rituals and relationships.

" The frustration of poverty is not the lack of things or money rather it is the social pressure that comes in the most subtle forms."

This is making me think about things in our community and how to accommodate those going through financial difficulties. I just e-ed our principal to ask about band and instrument rentals, for example. Are there some children who are being excluded from band because their families can't afford the rentals? (Music education is becoming a big deal for me as I see my son thrive from learning an instrument.)

Our PTO does a great job of doing free or very cheap events, like Bingo Family Night (the kids *love* it) and a Spring Fling where 90% of the fun is just seeing everyone. But then there is also stuff like the Snowflake Ball, a father-daughter "dance" that costs $45 for a dad/daughter.

11D In Absentia

2011-02-10T13:56:00.003-05:00

Laura from 11D is on hiatus. Can't deal with the thought of not being able to find out what the regular commenters think about stuff going on, so um, here's a thread. Feel free to ask me to post a link to something. I think my e- is in the sidebar somehow. Or just comment. I know I'm not as good a writer as Laura, and I tend to have my own weird obsessions (Parks and Rec anyone?). But I'll stop posting here with a sigh of relief (I have found I am not much of a regular blogger) when she comes back.

Sex and Marriage

2011-02-10T11:47:00.002-05:00

The whole Christopher Lee situation was bizarre, and basically, it seems like either 1. he has done way worse stuff that he doesn't want to come out or 2. he's not really an ambitious guy and is not enough of a sociopath to think that power is more important than family. If the second, I actually like him a lot better. Look at people like Edwards, Gingrich and Vitter, so ambitious, so lacking in empathy and the ability to connect with others that they plow on through their lives regardless of the consequences for the people unfortunate enough to be related to them.

That said, I liked this post on Balloon Juice talking about sex and marriage:

Any regular Dan Savage reader/listener knows that one of his most common caller/writer is one part of a married couple who’s sexually frustrated. Usually there are children involved. Often, this person knew that they were sexually incompatible when they married, but was hoping things would change. Usually, their marriage is under a sexual death penalty: if there’s an affair, there’s a divorce.

This kind of call or letter is pretty boring because there’s really no solution accepted by mainstream society. Most of these marriages would be a hell of a lot better if the sexually unsatisfied partner had a discreet affair, but that puts the other partner in a socially untenable situation. “Open marriage” is something for dirty hippies or sleazy swingers, not an upstanding member of society. And, since the first stop for marital therapy is often a pastor or priest, it’s very unlikely that the open option will even be broached.

So, instead of negotiating an outlet, these marriages move on to a badly executed affair, tears, recriminations and, usually, divorce. The cheated-on member of the pair has the moral and legal high ground, they’re under intense social pressure to make the cheater pay, and by the time the cheating happens, the cheater’s resentment over their lack of satisfaction has probably already poisoned the well.

I often shock people when I say that adultery is not a dealbreaker in my marriage, and I think mistermix has explained why. It's not that I support "open marriages" per se. It's that I'd see adultery as a symptom of a problem that is not necessarily the problem of an inherently bad marriage. Obviously, adultery has potentially other bad consequences, especially these days (STDs, lack of privacy, effects on the children if the adultery is made public).

But I agree with mistermix that we spend a whole lot of time judging people for what they do in their marriages and making it impossible for their marriages to work, because for public figures, the public itself becomes a fourth "person" in the marriage (after the two spouses and the children, if any). But whereas children *do* have an investment in their parents' marriage, the public doesn't.

2010-12-21T21:52:00.002-05:00

A definition of intelligence that explains why people with Aspergers are seen as intelligent:

Do you think SAT scores define intelligence?
No. They define the capacity to answer questions on an SAT test.

How would you define intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.

Global Achievement Gap

2010-12-15T09:56:00.003-05:00

I have an interesting group of students in my 7 am class this term. One of my students is exploring conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds and who controls the world's money. One is from Ghana, and another from Cape Verde. One's family is from Liberia, and she hopes to settle there when she graduates. One of my students is, I think, a fellow geek. At least two had attended vocational high schools. They're just all interesting people and it's not a hardship to come in at 7 am! The first 15 minutes or so are tough as I wait for students to trickle in, though.

This morning, I did News Day. Since the class is a persuasive writing class, we have a lot of persuasive genres to write in, and I let students choose the topics they're interested in. Sometimes, it helps to pique their interest in topics by getting discussions going. Today we talked a lot about education. I'm reading Tony Wagner's Global Achievement Gap and, as our next project is the Problem-Solution essay, I shared with them the Albert Einstein quote that leads off the book:

"The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science."

However, we started talking about education. I pointed out that Wagner's main claim is that we need to formulate the problem of education differently. The problem is not that schools have gotten worse; it's that the world has changed, and the schools need to teach different skills because our workforce requires different skills. What's interesting to me is that I also watched Hanna Rosin's TED Talk on "New data on the rise of women" last night, and she made similar points. The workplace has become less dependent on manufacturing skills and instead relies more on service and knowledge/creativity. Leadership and management is no longer hierarchical but collaborative and team-oriented. Women are more likely to excel at the new skills.

We talked about education for a while. The student from Ghana reminded us how privileged we are in the United States. He told us that when students wrote research papers when he went to school there, they had about 5 books and no Internet to rely on. We talked about how discipline is different in the U.S. Parents here don't require total obedience, nor do teachers. I suggested this was a reaction against arbitrary use of power. Some students said that they don't mind harsh punishments from good teachers, but they do mind them from bad teachers. I pointed out that what was happening was a kind of ethos appeal; if you have confidence and trust in the teacher, you can be persuaded that the punishment is justified.

I told the students about an article in Sunday's paper about the truancy courts in RI. They were initially shocked by the idea that a judge would send a 12 year old to (essentially) jail for slamming a door, but then a few wondered what could be done with the more difficult students. I asked questions: is the problem the girl's parent(s)? The school system? The judge abusing his power? (the ACLU thinks so). All of those? None of those? Asking the right questions is essential in a case like this one.

The students were very engaged in this 7 am class. We really didn't want to stop talking, but I had to move along and cover some other material. They crave discussion of these kinds of issues. So far, we have a wide range of opinions on most topics, too, and we've done a good job of respecting them, I think. Maybe I should do an anonymous survey when we get back just to make sure.

I will continue to read the Global Achievement Gap next week when we're on break (trimester system here--we are in the 3rd week of winter tri now) and report further on Wagner and his 21st century skills project.

Geeky 40 Year Old Gift Guide

2010-12-01T17:06:00.003-05:00

Here's my version of a geeky gift guide for geeky moms.

Special gloves that make it easy to use iPod/Phone/Pad in cold weather.

World links necklace.

Alone Together, by my new favorite academic-type, Sherry Turkle.

Cooking Light Way to Cook Vegetarian.

Calendar icon pillows.

Sherlock on DVD. Mmm, Benedict Cumberbatch.

New York pencil set.

Illness

2010-11-15T10:40:00.002-05:00

On Saturday night, I brought cashews into the house. Now, I know my son has an allergy to nuts, but he can eat almonds and he has never had a problem with anyone eating peanut butter in front of him. He did not ingest the cashews, as I prepared separate servings for him (not that he eats everything I make).

About an hour or so after dinner, the wheezing started. Then the coughing and the difficulty breathing. He seemed flushed and slightly puffy, though that could have been him rubbing his face.

It seemed a full-fledged asthma attack. But why? Signs pointed to the cashews. We administered a variety of medicines from our vast array of respiratory medicines: Benedryl as an anti-histimine (if indeed he was having an allergic reaction); albuterol inhaler as a bronchodilator, so he could breathe; eventually some Flovent (a steroid) in case his lungs were irritated.

Unfortunately, 1.5 days later, he is still congested despite multiple applications of meds. His lungs sound horrible. We kept him home from school and my husband is home with him. No fever. No real lethargy. Just horrible sounds in his lungs. He has an appointment with his allergy/asthma doctor this afternoon.

The pediatrician on call this weekend seemed surprised when I called him Sunday and told him that E still had congestion. Could it be a cold that came on suddenly and coincidentally, he wondered. His point is well-taken. Every other kid I know has a cold. Could he too simply have a cold? Or was it the cashews? Could it be a reaction to environmental irritants (we had the windows in his room open all day Saturday because it was nice out)?

What's so frustrating is that we almost never know for sure, especially when it's happening. We just treat the symptoms, then days later, when we can see it all in perspective, we try to make sense of it.

It reminds me, too, how rarely we are sick in my family. And we are. We certainly get the random cold virus here and there, but for three of us it usually passes pretty quickly. But for my poor respiratorily sensitive boy, it usually hits a little harder.

Smart Aleck

2010-11-06T19:00:00.006-05:00

In addition to our son having Asperger's Syndrome, he is highly gifted. This isn't unusual for kids with AS, but it really complicates dealing with our son. For one thing, he is "logic boy," which means he can argue his way out of anything, and second, he's developing a bit of overconfidence, even arrogance. "Yeah, I don't care" is his new catchphrase (I miss the days of the more charming "That does not make sense"). But he's getting really irritating lately.

So tonight I am researching resources for gifted kids. I want him to connect with other gifted kids. No, not so he can reach his potential. And no, not so he can have better opportunities to attend Harvard or something.

I want my kid to hang out with other gifted kids so he can be taken down a peg or two. I want him not to be the smartest 8 year old in the room. I'm not sure it's good for him socially. He's starting to remind me of Benedict Cumberbatch's interpretation of Sherlock Holmes.

ETA: Awesome clip from tonight's episode:

I'm not sure if that makes me a Good Parent or not.

Halloween

2010-10-31T12:01:00.006-05:00

My son is Harry Potter for Halloween:

My daughter is the 11th Doctor from Doctor Who. Right now, she is forbidding me to take a pic because she's punishing me for something *eyeroll* but here is what the real 11th Doctor looks like:

Maybe she will give in and let us take a pic later. She won 2nd prize at a Halloween Party costume contest on Friday night. Out of a lot of costumes.

Edited to say, Here she is!

Yesterday we went to the Rally to Restore Sanity:

It was ... crowded.

2010-10-24T09:18:00.003-05:00

These are the books on the Massachusetts Book Awards (Children's Books) list for 2010-2011. I'm putting this list here and hyperlinking to Amazon so it's easy to buy them if I want. My daughter likes to go through the list and read them all. I'm posting this now and will hyperlink throughout the day today.

Anderson, L. H. (2008). Chains. (Simon & Schuster).
Appelt, K. (2008). The Underneath. (Atheneum).
Applegate, K. (2007). Home of the Brave. (Feiwel & Friends).
Avi. (2007). Iron Thunder. (Hyperion Books).
Balliett, B. (2008). The Calder Game. (Scholastic).
Barrows, A. (2007). The Magic Half. (Bloomsbury).
Baskin, N. (2009). Anything but Typical. (Simon & Schuster).
Berlin, E. (2009). The Potato Chip Puzzles: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen. (Putnam).
Blume, J. (2008). Cool Zone with the Pain and the Great One. (Delacorte).
Clements, A. (2007). No Talking! (Atheneum).
Goodman, A. (2008). The Other Side of the Island. (Razorbill).
Harper, C. (2007). Just Grace. (Houghton Mifflin).
Key, W. (2006). Alabama Moon. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
Law, I. (2008). Savvy. (Dial).
Lowery, L. (2006). Truth and Salsa . (Peachtree).
Lowry, L. (2008). The Willoughbys. (Houghton Mifflin).
MacLachlan, P. (2007). Edward's Eyes. (Atheneum).
Mass, W. (2009). 11 Birthdays. (Scholastic).
Mortenson, G., & Relin, D. (2009). Three Cups of Tea (Young Edition). (Dial).
Reilly Giff, P. (2008). Eleven. (Wendy Lamb Books).
Scaletta, K. (2009). Mudville. (Knopf).
Stead, R. (2007). First Light. (Wendy Lamb Books).
St. John, L. (2007). The White Giraffe. (Dial).
Stuchner, J. (2008). Honey Cake. (Random House).
Wilson, N. D. (2007). 100 Cupboards: Book 1. (Random House).

I'm also intrigued by this post, which talks about building a free bookstore at a school. I'd love to do something like this at the middle school where we do our community service.

More Education Stuff

2010-10-02T08:50:00.003-05:00

Last week was education week at 11D, and I was surly as a result. Yes, I come from a family of public school teachers. Do I have a financial interest in supporting public education? I don't think of myself as having one. I don't sit around and worry about what kinds of jobs they'll have if public education is consigned to the dustbin some wish for it.

My thing is that I *believe* in public education. I believe in the concept. I believe in the execution. Are there problems? There are problems in everything out there. Everything should be subject to continuous improvement. Is public education suffering from 30 years of being treated like shit? Yes. Yet I still believe in it and get defensive by what I see as simplistic attacks on public education, a lack of consensus among people purporting to agree that public education needs "fixing," and the boneheaded calls for "merit pay" in many quarters. Nicholas Lemann in this week's New Yorker decries this "narrative of crisis" the same way I do.

As an alternative to the Oprahfication and Guggenheimization of the education debate, I offer up a few of the people I admire and follow when it comes to discussion of education. Do I endorse 100% of what they say? No. But I respect them for asking questions with more depth and complexity than much of what I see in the media lately.

Will Richardson. In this piece, he mentions something I truly believe is a weakness I see in my college students:
"In fact, there’s only one question that the folks at my kids’ school have to answer for me these days: Are you doing whatever you can to make my children self-directed, self-organized, passionate learners? Answer that one “yes,” and I’ll be happy. "

Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier, whose blog conversation "Bridging Differences" has been a must-read for me even before Diane Ravitch came out and said she was wrong about a lot of educational reforms she had previously supported.

Jackie Gerstein, whom I follow on Twitter and whose tagline is "I don’t do teaching for a living, I live teaching as my doing, and technology has AMPLIFIED the passion."

Gary Stager, another one I follow on Twitter.

I'll also be watching Tony Danza in Teach. (Link opens with sound/video.) I have a long history with Tony Danza, as he's practically a hometown hero (I didn't live in Malverne, but my grandfather worked in a diner there where Tony often ate before he made it big on Taxi).

Education and the Demonization of Teachers

2010-09-26T10:54:00.002-05:00

Laura at 11D cannot wait to see Waiting for Superman. I cannot think of a movie I'd least like to see. In fact, I am so underwhelmed by what I've read of it (specifically, Roger Ebert's glowing review) that I am thinking An Inconvenient Truth must be a bad movie because of Guggenheim's involvement in both.

All the edtech people I read on Twitter have been down on it. Will Richardson twinked (twitter-linked--hey, I can make up twords, too!) to Gary Stager's post on NBC's Education Nation, which outlines several myths about education, which I will quote:

That narrative is based on the following myths:

1. Public education is destroying America
2. There is a sudden emergency of bad teachers sweeping the land
3. Schools should be run more like businesses (Education Nation’s patron Eli Broad believes this, but should we listen to a man who served on the board of AIG?)
4. Charter schools, merit pay, standardized testing and mayoral control are the magic beans that will save children from wretched teachers
5. When we fire all of the zillions of bad teachers a whole new crop of fantastic ones will grow in a Washington D.C. cornfield
6. The best and brightest will eagerly become teachers when we remove all teacher autonomy and reduce teaching to test prep and script reading
7. Unqualified is the new qualified as exemplified by Teach for America’s zeal to create unqualified missionaries to replace teachers
8. Getting tougher is the same as reform
9. Michelle Rhee was victimized by enemies of school reform (teachers) when voters rejected her tactics and bankrupt educational vision (thanks Nora O’Donnell)
10. Billionaires are smart!
11. Racism and intergenerational poverty have nothing to do with academic achievement
12. The purpose of education is job readiness
13. Teacher layoffs, budget cuts and union busting are just three ways of saying “We should pay teachers more, but them accountable.”
14. Poor children need educational experiences much different from those afforded the children of the powerful
15. We should all run out to the cineplex and see Waiting for Superman!

I love #5. I disagree a little with 12.

Am writing a post on my experience at AANE this weekend (positive experience but it's a long one and I'm still working on it).

Asperger's Conference

2010-09-25T18:06:00.005-05:00

Friday and Saturday I attended the AANE (Asperger's Association of New England) conference in Massachusetts. Strangely enough, the people with Asperger's who attended were not the weirdest people there. There was a gun show in the adjacent convention space, and let me tell you, people who attend gun shows are kind of weird.

Anyway.

Quirky Kids

First up, I went to the first keynote, by Dr. Eileen Costello, who co-wrote Quirky Kids with Dr. Perri Klass. Costello was quite enjoyable to watch/listen to, but I'm not sure I got anything out of her talk that I didn't already know. A few takeaways:
* The ability to name 3 people/adults to go to for help is crucial in helping kids through the school years, especially middle school.
*Pediatricians are now required to screen for autism spectrum disorders, but parents still complain that pediatricians make light of their concerns. However, that number (data obtained via surveys) has been falling.
*Inclusion isn't always the best strategy because many kids with ASDs need direct instruction. They don't learn by following other children as role models.

Sibling Support

I went to a workshop led by Emily Rubin of the new group Massachusetts Sibling Support Network, which I think I will try to join on my daughter's behalf. However, I was kind of dismayed to find that all the people on the panel were dealing with an older kid with ASD/younger NT kid combo. My problem is that my older NT daughter kind of bullies her younger brother with AS. She can also be quite good with him and teaches him a lot, but over the last year or two, the level of not-nice stuff has increased.

I am a Slacker

I skipped the Friday afternoon workshops to go home and deal with home-related stuff. I also skipped the Saturday morning keynote by Dr. Ami Klin, which was apparently a huge mistake as he was reported to be an amazing, excellent speaker. But I was so tired from aforementioned home-related stuff that I really needed to sleep in.

Friendships

The first workshop I attended Saturday was on Friendships, and it ended up being amazing! It started out with the basic Michelle Garcia Winner stuff about social thinking. But what I really appreciated was how they started to look at friendship from the perspective of the kids with AS themselves. They broke it down into preK-2nd, 3rd-5th, and MS and HS and outlined what the kid with AS might feel like when engaged with another child. One of the reasons for a shift in 3rd-5th is that kids in general are becoming less adult-directed and more child-directed, so bullying is more likely to happen.

I'll focus on 3rd-5th, as that's my area of interest, but you can get in touch with the presenters via their website, SuperKids. These kids need a lot of direct instruction to help them think through their responses. If they feel left out because no one else wants to do what they want to do, they can be taught to adapt and go with the plan of others. If they can't handle losing, they have to be told and taught again and again about the social benefits of being a good loser (then other people want to play with you). Kids with AS sometimes think no one is their friend, or they think everyone is their friend.

These are some of the things I wrote in the margins of the handouts:
* Use pictures to help students take their big thoughts and put them in the though-shrinker, or put them in the dumpster for a while so they can focus on what they need to focus on.
* Focus on telling them how they can feel safer.
The #1 predictor of bullying is being alone. When kids are with other kids whom they feel safe with (and are safe with), they are less likely to be bullied.
* Don't let your kids win at home just to avoid meltdowns. The more they learn how to lose in a safe place like home, the better they will learn to deal with it in less safe places.
* Kids with AS don't always understand what it means to calm down or what a jerk is.
* We have to teach them to stay away from people who will get them in trouble. Very often, kids with AS are encouraged to do things that the bully won't do. We can teach them to ask the bully to do it. If the bully won't, then the kid with AS shouldn't.
*Sometimes kids with AS go back to the bullies to try to get them in trouble so that justice can happen. However, kids with stronger social skills are adept at hiding bad behaviors, so all the teachers see are the retaliation by the kid with AS. Kids have to realize that sometimes life isn't fair.
* Kids with AS need to learn to cope with the bad feelings when someone is not receptive to friendship. Kids with AS are *very* persistent and sometimes think if they just try hard enough, they will *make* that person be their friend.
* They have to learn different levels of friendship. They tend to think all acquaintances who are friendly to them are their close friends.
* Sometimes they reject friendship possibilities because their ideal friend is someone just like them. If they don't share exactly the same interests, they assume they cannot be friends.

There was so much that was useful and interesting in this presentation. I was so glad I went!

Jason Katims

Jason Katims was the afternoon keynote. He stumbled a bit at the beginning before getting into more of a groove later in his talk. He showed an 8-minute video of Parenthood clips that had me sniffling. Dude, did you have to show every single moment on the show that made me cry? Katims pointed out that he didn't set out to be an advocate for Aspergers; as a tv show writer, he was simply writing what he knew and what from real life he could mine for the show (common characteristic of tv writers, which is why so many tv shows are about tv writers and narcissists ;). As he went through the process of creating the show, he saw that he needed to separate the personal from the professional but at the same time so many moments on the show do find inspiration from his own life. He has deliberately made some changes so that Max and his son are not the same. He has brought experts on Aspergers and autism into the writers' room to share stories and information with the writers. He has to streamline/edit out stories when they don't quite seem appropriate for tv drama, like IEP meetings. I mean, he has a point. :) A fun fact: the girl whom Max asked to play foursquare in one episode was played by Katims' daughter.

The last thing Katims said really struck me. He said that someone once told him that when you enter into the world of Aspergers, you start engaging with a better class of people. (That's not an exact quote, btw--was trying to capture spirit of what he was saying). he has felt so enriched by the interactions with people, other families, therapist, schools, etc., that he never would have been involved with if his son did not have Aspergers. It was such a lovely way to end the talk, because it showed a lot of affection and warmth towards the many people there in the room with him.

Higher Education

The final workshop I went to was about People with AS entering into Higher Education. The presenter made the point that for people with AS, this is a huge transition. They go from HS, where they've had IEPs and supports and accommodations, all mandated by law, to college, where the only law that applies is the one mandating accommodations so as to not discriminate against people with disabilities.

The workshop was mainly geared towards parents of teenagers/college-aged kids, so as a college prof and mother of a 3rd grader, not a lot was immediately useful. However, the presenter also said that preparation is crucial, not just preparing kids to be independent, but also being prepared by finding the right environment and choosing the right college. Parents should keep in mind proximity to areas of interest (i.e., a kid who loves trains maybe shouldn't go to a college with few trains nearby), sensory issues (kids from the South should avoid, perhaps, going to schools in cold areas where they will have to adjust to wearing a bulky overcoat), and availability of services and supports for people with disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders.

This workshop along with a discussion at our lunch table with a mom of a high school dropout (he was having a very negative experience in the school, and once he was old enough to drop out, he did) made me rethink seriously the idea that my son with AS needs to go to college. It may very well be that the kind of 4-year residential experience that was right for me may not be right for him. We are lucky in that we have an Ivy League experience 6 miles away, not to mention that his father works for that same Ivy League institution. He'll also have plenty of pre-college enrichment opportunities there, too. But I am definitely going to take a very open stance to the idea that attending college may not be what he wants or what is best for him.

Re the above mom of a HSer with AS: She mentioned that she wanted for her son to get his GED and go to a CC. One of the people at our table strongly recommended encouraging him to take one college course in an area of interest, so he could get a taste of what a college course is like in an area that's very familiar and interesting to him, before he has to run off and take a freshman composition course.

At the second day's lunch I was talking to people at my table about how I want to take everything I learned and just teach it to other people. Guess it's the college professor in me. But I keep coming back to how lucky I am to have gone, but how underinformed others can be. We had a playdate for the kids in our summer social skills group today, and one of the moms said the school psych at her son's school doesn't think her son has an ASD. (He has a PPD/NOS diagnosis.) But we have a horrible problem with needing more education of clinicians and support staff, even though things are getting much much better.

Rally to Restore Sanity

2010-09-18T11:59:00.003-05:00

I just made plane reservations to attend this:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Rally to Restore Sanity

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

All 4 of us are going. We are strangely giddy about it all.

Our only dilemma: do we Rally to Restore Sanity or do we March to Keep Fear Alive? Decisions, decisions!

Kids and Bicycling

2010-08-31T14:37:00.005-05:00

Last June, I was driving somewhere and passed by a school in the next town over. I didn't have my camera with me, but today I was going the same way and brought my camera in case I saw the same sight. I did! It was a beautiful sight, and one that gives me hope. This is an elementary school in Rhode Island for grades 4 and 5.

And that wasn't all. There was also this:

Since there wasn't any room in the racks in the first pic, the kids all left their bikes on the grass in the circle.

Kids *do* drive their bikes to school, even in the Northeast, in a community that does get a lot of through traffic (I was driving by because I was taking a shortcut).

When I saw all the bikes last June, I thought it might be some end-of-school special circumstance, but to see them all there again, on the second day of school, was heart-warming.

Checking In

2010-07-10T19:34:00.004-05:00

I figured I should check in and write about what's been going on.

1. I have no social life, which is why I am typing this post at 8:30 on a Saturday night. :)
2. My daughter does have a social life, which is why she is off at a sleepover, thus freeing me from the nightly project to watch every Doctor Who episode in existence. I am regretting introducing that girl to the show.
3. We were on vacation for two weeks. We went to Yellowstone and saw bears, but fortunately, far enough away so they did not try to bite me.

That photo is by my husband, by the way.
4. My son has begun attending a 6-week summer social skills program at a local autism center. The kids there are all high-functioning, mainly Asperger's kids. The parents are all lovely, and it is such a relief to talk to other parents dealing with the same stuff.
5. My son is ending up being quite the arrogant brat who refuses to practice his greetings. He gets into a whole literalism thing that he uses as a weapon. "When we meet someone we haven't seen in a while, we say what?" "Oh, you want me to say What. OK, what!" *sigh* We have more practice tomorrow, as we will be hanging out with our friend Matt and his wife and kids, who will be on the Cape for the week instead of in New Jersey.
6. Both my kids have had birthdays the past two weeks. My daughter had a small at-home birthday party, and my son will have a Lego birthday party at home next weekend. Meanwhile, the house is littered with Legos and Lego creations.
7. I taught my son how to do Sudoku and got him a book of the puzzles. Yes, I am looking for peace and quiet. He has two modes: total absorption in what he's doing, or "I'm bored."
8. I am determined not to allow my children to wallow next to me all day wondering what to do, so I am bribing them to go outside and do household chores by setting up a reward system trading screen time for outdoor play/playdates/household chores. We'll see how it works, but I suspect my daughter is already plotting how to game the system.
9. I really thought Joel McHale deserved an Emmy nomination over Matthew Morrison.
10. I missed my dog while were on vacation. Here is a pic of her.

One Month

2010-06-19T08:01:00.003-05:00

I've basically had about 4 weeks of vacation now, and as always, it's been a whirlwind of non-relaxation.

Work-related: I've submitted a conference paper proposal that was accepted, and now I have to write it. I started a report and a research project on our writing assessment program.

Home-related: I've been gardening till my bones ache, but I have been making quite a lot of progress.

I have a large area completed and mulched, with a few more small areas I need to work on before I have to stop and wait for my landscapers to install a walkway. I have plans for updating my living room, too.

Health-related: I've been working out 3x a week with a trainer and started counting calories, which has really made a difference.

Family-related: The kids' last day of school is Monday, but Wednesday was my daughter's "promotion" day. The last two weeks I've felt like I was in the car incessantly. I had to drive to Newport to meet a dogsitter, then to Braintree to the Lego store, then 20+ minutes to the only decent dance supply store in the area. My daughter had 3 rehearsals this week then a recital last night. I have two birthday parties to plan (including one today). Then there's the regular psychologist appointment and music lessons.

So, today we have my daughter's birthday party, which means we have to clean and do a few last minute errands. Tomorrow we're planning to see Toy Story 3. On Monday I have a doctor's appointment, and on Tuesday my daughter and I are both getting our hair cut (she gets it cut about once every two years) and going to the dentist.

Vacation-related: But the good news is that we go on vacation on Wednesday! Yellowstone, here we come!

Garden

2010-06-15T17:18:00.004-05:00

What I've been up to when I haven't been driving around incessantly:

and

Gardening's hard work, I'm finding. But really relaxing.

Music

2010-05-31T21:44:00.002-05:00

My son has taken guitar lessons and drum lessons but never stuck with either, and *never* practiced. My daughter didn't show much interest in music but always knew she wanted to play the flute when she got to 5th grade and could choose to learn a band instrument. She did, and she has excelled. At the concert in April, she was chosen to do a solo of the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the concert. She did great!

Over the past few months, my son has begun expressing interest in music lessons again. At S's last concert, he kept saying that he wanted to play the saxophone. Finally, a few weeks ago, I began to look into it, and I was told that sax is actually too difficult for a 7 year old, and most 7 year olds start on the clarinet first. So, I signed up S for flute lessons and E for clarinet lessons over the summer.

E had his first lesson Thursday night. Here is some video taken on Saturday afternoon:

And he keeps getting better. Today, I was sitting on the sofa reading a book while they practiced Frere Jacques, and at one point S told E not to slur the notes, and he adjusted quickly and perfectly. S wants to be a teacher; it's the only thing she's ever wanted to be (well, that and a zookeeper, but she figured she would be a zookeeper part-time and a teacher part-time). She craves opportunities to teach. And E loves nothing more than to learn. It's the perfect match. He soaks up everything she teaches him about music.

So now I am wondering what I'm going to do with them. They are both advancing beyond their age group. To be honest, I find it annoying to drive them back and forth to lessons weekly. :( But I may have to.

Oh well. My husband says that we should not assume E will stick with the clarinet, but I think he enjoys playing with S, and so that will keep him interested for a good long while.

Asperger's

2010-05-26T10:50:00.002-05:00

My father-in-law passed away on Friday. My husband, who knew him best, is convinced that he had Asperger Syndrome, like our son. He was socially awkward and introverted, into routines, and had obsessions. He also was an inflexible thinker. A note on my FIL's obit guestbook says: "I worked with [FIL] at [workplace] and knew him over 40 years. He was such a perfectionist about all his work. I will miss him." Aha. This is where my son gets it.

Like many with AS in the family, I now see it everywhere. Check out this guy:

What I am also finding is that E is very competitive with his sister (and vice versa). S plays the flute in 5th grade band. Well, now E is obsessed with the idea of playing the saxophone. He is too little for the sax, so he will be starting clarinet lessons tomorrow (his sister will be starting flute lessons). His sister wrote a 52 page, multi-chapter story. Well, now E has to write a story with chapters. He is on Chapter 2 now. It's about a kid who had no name until he was 13. Then he named himself Rodger. Chapter 2 is the first day of high school.

My job for the next few weeks is to get E some playdates. We put up the pool in the backyard, so that will be a draw if it stays warm enough. There are the Legos, but the kids are in the process of building a city downstairs with the Lego, and new people disrupt the city planning. I am afraid of conflict there. I think I may buy some more outdoor toys.

Self-Esteem

2010-05-11T08:54:00.002-05:00

My sister has a theory that what is wrong with the world today is that we have been coddling children's self-esteem way too much. Everyone has to be a winner, which is a problem.

I was teaching "Death of a Salesman" last week, a play I don't really enjoy reading, but I think there's a lot in it that students can connect with. Where we got to last week was this line by Happy:

"It's the only dream you can have-to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I'm gonna win it for him."

What's wrong with this statement, I asked. And the students could see that it's impossible for everyone to be the "number-one man." We can't *all* share that dream. At one point towards the end, Biff says "I know who I am." He knows he's *not* special. And that's ok with him. It just isn't ok with Willy, and therefore it's not ok with Willy's enablers, Happy and Linda.

It's ok if not everyone is special.

And yet, there is still such resentment against those who are, well, superior in some ways. I've always hated The Incredibles because I think it is in love with the idea that some people *are* special, but the same people who love the movie for that reason still resist acknowledging those who are. But they don't resist acknowledging physical superiority. They resist acknowledging intellectual superiority.

I wonder why that is? Why is it ok to admit, Hey, I'm not as strong as Mike Tyson or as good a golfer as Tiger Woods, or as good at tennis as Roger Federer, but it's still problematic for people to admit they are not as smart as others?

A Mighty Wind

2010-05-08T20:17:00.003-05:00

Interesting day today in the NYC area. We had a bit of wind.

Yes, that's my car meeting my mom's pear tree. My BIL and a neighbor and a few saws got it off the car with almost no damage.

Observations via Students

2010-04-23T09:31:00.002-05:00

My students gave presentations yesterday on problems in urban middle schools, and a lot of issues were raised, including two I thought particularly worthy of note.

1. One group argued that middle school teachers need training to teach differently. I observed that many taxpayers feel that there is too much running around after the latest educational fad in the school systems. So I asked them: how many of you noticed these fads? How many of you feel that your teachers were teaching different things/different ways? All except 2 felt that there had been no changes in the way teachers taught. Maybe the content of the curriculum changed, but not the teaching methods. The students mostly agreed: Even if you give teachers new materials to teach, they will still use their old ways of teaching.

2. One group discussed the problems of gangs, and we observed that poverty was a root cause of gang formation. So I said, "What if we redistributed income, so the rich were less rich and the poor had more money?" I was told that was a stupid idea. :) The desire to keep money one has made outweighs their desire to see gangs eliminated. I thought that was interesting (and a little sad). But I think of my expression of opinions as seeds, ideas they can gnaw over, possibilities they are at least exposed to.

(Note: lest anyone think I am trying to brainwash them... uh, no. These guys have no problem telling me I'm stupid or wrong when they think I am.)

Children and Physical Activity

2010-04-16T14:35:00.003-05:00

We all know we should increase our levels of physical activity, especially our children. Yet we never seem to make our policies work to support this knowledge.

This school has.

In terms of feasibility, I can see why it would be hard to have all classes do PE first thing, but it could be a good idea for at-risk kids at a school.

IEP

2010-04-09T16:16:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday we had a meeting with the special ed team to discuss whether my son was eligible for an IEP. We got stuck on the idea of "effective progress." Is E making effective progress? He could both have AS and yet still be making effective progress.

We brought an educational advocate with us to the meeting, which was good because I am very easily distracted. By the end of the meeting, we were all frazzled beyond belief, but what the advocate kept saying is that the school staff were agreeing E has AS but they couldn't provide any examples of him showing that he does. In a way, I think she forced them into thinking about specifically what aspects of AS he shows. This was incredibly useful, I think. I mean, all kids have varying levels of behavioral stuff. No kid is perfect all the time. But when we had to sit there and think "Hey, E does X because he has AS," I think that started to make an impression.

Anyway, as we left things on Wednesday, we all agreed that we were going to get an independent behavioral observation of E by an expert in AS.

I spoke with the principal today. He did some investigating on his own, specifically with the PE teacher (E has been receiving his only "2"s in this area--2 means he is not meeting standards) and the lunchroom staff.

The end result? He said E needs an IEP and he has spoken to the team and the team agrees.

I was prepared to go to BSEA, the board of special ed appeals, if necessary and make our case there. But now it seems we don't have to. I hate to say Victory! or Win! as it suggests this was a game, and it's not, but it is a relief that we can now start the process with all the members of the team in agreement.

Arthur

2010-04-05T22:36:00.002-05:00

This morning in my area, PBS aired a new episode of Arthur about George (the moose who is also a ventriloquist) making friends with Carl, who has Asperger's. I have to admit, I got teary in places, especially when George pulled out the puzzle piece.

I can't explain how it feels to watch a tv show that's about my son. He is 7, and sometimes it feels like we've been living with this for a hundred years and now we finally know there are other kids like him and other parents dealing with what we have dealt with. When I watch Parenthood and see the parents in the convenience store looking for Max's special kind of chips, I know someone out there gets it.

Glee

2010-04-04T12:02:00.004-05:00

I've been totally flummoxed by this Rolling Stone cover for Glee. I don't know if I have a coherent analysis, but the cover is a hot mess. I'll bullet-point some observations:

1. I'm told it's supposed to be a 40s-esque Rockwell homage, which would explain the dog, I guess. Otherwise, DOG? There's no dog in the show.

2. Lea Michele is a gorgeous woman and an amazing singer. (Totally irrelevant, but I am pretty sure I saw her in the original Ragtime on Broadway.) But why why why must we see her underwear? Talk about gratuitous!

3. Aside from the cover, the show does have a strange madonna/whore thing going on. Obviously, there is some irony involved that the head cheerleader who belongs to the Celibacy Club and comes from a conservative Christian family who gathers around the tv every night to watch Glenn Beck is the one who gets pregnant. That's really a cliché at this point.

But it's amazing how consistently *pure* Quinn comes across as despite her "fall" and her pregnancy. Dianna Agron is stunningly beautiful, and she looks like she could cry without getting blotchy. Thrown out of the Cheerios and relegated to wearing street clothes, she still wears demure, sweet dresses and tops.

Meanwhile, Rachel Berry is brunette, Jewish, and ambitious. She is socially liberal (the daughter of two gay men) and aware of her sexuality. She sees no need to use her sexuality to control men (though she does get tricked into trying to attract Finn with a sexy get-up). But it is her "natural" self, complete with weirdness, imperfections, and bad clothes, that Finn finds so appealing sexually. He can't stand her in many ways, but he's attracted to her. To some degree, so is Puck.

Quinn represents "true womanhood" in the world of Lima: she is religious, demure, feminine. She is not pure precisely, but maybe she is the 21st century socially conservative version of pure: since everyone has sex and everyone can be tempted, then she is ideologically pure for "choosing" to continue her pregnancy, the same way Bristol Palin seems to be exempt from criticism from conservatives for having a child before marriage.

Rachel represents "new womanhood," perhaps. She is pure in her motives. She doesn't lie about what she wants. But this is confusing to men who are used to dealing with women who lie/hide their desires. Rachel wants fame, she wants power, she wants Finn, and she probably also wants sex. She has talent, a remarkable talent she does not try to hide.

As a Cheerio, Quinn is a phenomenal athlete, but you'd never know it when she's with Finn. She was also an excellent singer, but Finn seemed to have no idea until she joined the glee club. Quinn's needs and desires are perpetually hidden.

Wish I could write more coherently about Glee, like these people.

Floods

2010-04-03T14:52:00.004-05:00

We were not seriously affected by the severe flooding in Rhode Island despite our proximity. Our basement did have a few inches of water in the furnace room, but none of it expanded to the finished area of the basement. We have had minor flooding there often, so everything is mostly up and off the floor. I should also note that my husband spent a lot of time watching the situation and using buckets to catch the water as it flowed in via the chimney. He also kept the dehumidifier running.

The other morning, my daughter took the dog for a walk and she said "I counted 12 hoses" coming from people's basements. Today I walked the dog, and not only were there hoses everywhere but also dumpsters. A lot of ruined basement furniture. What a shame. :(

As local Providence bloggers pointed out, a lot of this damage could have been avoided. The Warwick Mall had up to 20 inches of water inside. Well, check out where they built the mall:

I'm simply repeating the excellent post I linked to, so I'll let you take a look. But it's amazing how society takes risks thinking that the chances of bad things happening are so small.

Step Two

2010-03-27T14:12:00.003-05:00

Ever since E was about 2, I've known something was not quite right. Even though his sister was similarly slow to speak, E seemed a little slower, and I had him evaluated by the Early Intervention team in my area. They felt he was just within the borderline of acceptable speech. They were impressed by his obvious intelligence, though.

At his 4th and 5th year appointments, I brought up his behavioral issues with his pediatrician. I forget when I talked about "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" with him, but he reassured me that wasn't it. I eventually got a referral for a child psychologist and took E to him to get assessed for sensory issues. The psych was noncommittal. Felt like a waste of my time.

It was his first grade teacher who raised the issue of autistic behaviors. We met with the special ed team, who had him evaluated by the OT. They weren't convinced there was anything particularly needed, but they gave him small group social skills instruction.

Thanks to a parenting list friend who has a profoundly gifted daughter, I was informed about the twice-exceptional child, the child who is both gifted and has some sort of neurological deficit. She was the one who told me that I had one of the nation's experts in 2e kids right in my backyard. We saw this psychologist and got a comprehensive evaluation. This was Step One. She diagnosed E as having Asperger's and some ADHD. However, we only just got her full report and recommendations a few weeks ago.

I took Step Two: I e-mailed the school to ask for a meeting to determine eligibility for Eric to receive special ed services. We met yesterday, and they made it pretty clear they think he is not eligible because he is making effective progress. We refused to sign off yesterday and requested time to discuss it further.

So we contemplate Step Three: the appeal. And I am not looking forward to it.

I also have 8 weeks left in my academic year. I am teaching 6 separate class, the equivalent of 4.5 classes (3 are half-classes), and I have 4 different preps. It's time for the year-end evaluations, so I have to compile the narrative of my year, and I have more meetings to attend than I can deal with. I'm co-leading an inservice on technology this week, and I should be preparing for that now. My daughter had a dance competition last weekend and will have another in 3 weeks, and in June she has a recital.

The next time I go to the doctor (in June), my blood pressure had better be within range or my doctor will be making noises about my going on BP meds. I don't see how that's going to happen if I'm stressed like this. :( However, the good news is that our daffodils are blooming already here in New England:

Central Falls

2010-03-07T09:48:00.003-05:00

Disclosure: the husband of one of my good friends works in the Central Falls schools but was not someone who was fired.

I could not be more appalled by the firing of the teachers at the Central Falls HS, and I am even more appalled by the so-called reformists who think it's a good idea.

There is no question that the CF HS is having difficulties. It's a dropout factory. It's a difficult school to teach at. The kids do not achieve. But firing all the teachers is not the answer, and it's stupid for anyone to think it is. This is about UNION-BUSTING, not about improving the schools.

In order to understand this situation, you must look at the cause of the situation. The teachers were not fired because they were BAD teachers. If they were fired because they were BAD teachers, if that were superintendent Frances Gallo's reason for firing them, then we could have a discussion about whether this is really school reform.

No, they were fired because they refused to work more hours for less money. That makes this a MONEY issue. The job of the teacher's union is to ensure that the teachers are compensated appropriately for their work.

If Gallo had the money to pay the teachers to do these things, the reforms would happen. This is not an issue of the teachers refusing to try anything new. It's an issue of COMPENSATION.

This is what is at stake.

AS and Travel

2010-03-06T12:34:00.004-05:00

We love to travel. I was 6 months pregnant with my first child when I went to Paris (which I knew would be my last trip for many years). Now that the kids are 10 and 7, we've been traveling much more. In the past year or two, we've been to Florida (Disney), Seattle/Portland, San Diego, Washington DC, and as of this week, San Francisco.

The kids are pretty good travelers. On the plane, they bring books, puzzles, and toys and look out the window. We always fly Southwest, which has no tvs or in-plane movies. My husband usually brings his laptop, but they never seem to sit and watch it.

However, my son (who has AS) finds his traveling complicated by his allergies. Very often, a plane trip will result in an allergy attack (dust mites?). We bring Benedryl on the plane to protect against such events.

This trip, he needed a few doses of Benedryl and continued to be congested through much of the first few days of the trip. We also had jet lag and were tired. For the first two days in SF, he was quite difficult. The way it manifested was verbal. He doesn't have Tourette's, I think, because his vocalizations aren't tic-like. But he can start talking/making noise in the most disruptive way possible, usually by some kind of perseveration. He will repeat things again and again. Not single words, but phrases. And there's a kind of verbal aggressiveness to it, as if he is using his vocalizing to assert his power. He's not necessarily loud; he just speaks again and again.

On Monday, he had a dollar that my husband had given him (the Southwest in-flight magazine has an activity on folding dollar bills into origami shapes). E got obsessed with the idea of finding a vending machine so he could buy a snack. Again and again and again he told us he wanted to find a snack machine. Finally, my 10 year old daughter had had enough. "Did you say smack machine?" she said. And she smacked him. (ETA: Playfully! And later, she only pretended to.)

I was aggravated, but she wouldn't stop. So every time he mentioned the snack machine, she would say "Did you say smack machine?"

Then a strange thing happened. It started to become ... funny. So much so that even on the plan trip home, we were still cracking each other up over the "smack machine."

Maybe it was getting some more sleep, but by Tuesday, he had calmed down and was not so perseverative. That was a relief.

Wednesday, the Exploratorium was a big hit with the kids (I would have preferred the California Academy of Sciences, but in the end, the Exploratorium was free on Wednesday, which made it a better deal. I had a backup plan to escape to the CAS if it was too crowded at the Exploratorium, but we didn't need it.)

The Exploratorium has an exhibit on seeing. One of the parts of the exhibit involved large poster boards with similar items on it, like 100 Es and Rs. One of the Rs was in a different font. There were about 6 posters like this; one had about 100 small pics, 99 of which were dogs and 1 of which was a cat. Or they were all pointing one way except for one. It was an exercise to show how hard it is to perceive minor differences.

E went up to it, crossed in front of some people viewing it, and said "Oh, this is easy!" and proceeded to identify every single one of the differences almost immediately. The other people viewing the exhibit were amazed. I wanted to say "That's the Asperger's."

In another exhibit, he did a nice job of identifying the emotions expressed by eyes (the eyes only are shown, and the viewer must identify the emotions the face is expressing). However, he didn't do a very good job of distinguishing between fake smiles and real smiles.

And lastly, in a Free-Range Parenting moment, our first morning there, we went to Fort Point. The kids played along the water's edge as the rough surf splashed onto the walkway/roadway. At one point, one of the passersby said to me, "You must really love your kids" in a sarcastic voice. Well, yes, yes, I do. I love them enough not to treat them like fragile snowflakes. Did they get wet? Sure. Did they get sick? No (well, Eric had an asthma attack, but that was from all the running around). Did they get washed into the surf? No--I was watching them closely. I can't stand assholes who feel the need to comment on my parenting.

Clipped

2010-02-25T12:54:00.000-05:00

My intro comp students are allowed to bring a Works Cited page and notes/quotes to their final exam (writing an extensive sourced and documented essay). Usually I bring a stapler to corral all their papers together into one easy-to-access package. However, I forgot the stapler today.

Digging around in my book bag, I easily found 23 paper clips, with some to spare.

Epic facepalm.

Cheating Culture

2010-02-24T11:53:00.004-05:00

Feeling kind of blue today. Down the hall, my department chair is meeting with 2 students and their instructor over a plagiarism case I uncovered. We require all students in our advanced composition class to write an essay in class. They must achieve a certain assessment on the essay in order to graduate (but we give them workshops up the wazoo to help them, and they have multiple opportunities to write the essay again before they graduate, with the appropriate support given to them). But it is high stakes.

We're not sure how the students plagiarized but we're pretty sure the language on both essays matches that on a Yahoo Answers web site. Did they copy from each other? Did they bring up the site (separately) on their cell phones? Did they know the questions in advance and looked up the site and memorized it? I'll find out when the meeting is over.

I coordinate this writing assessment every term, and I read somewhere between 200 and 300 essays in the last 2 weeks of the term, and I just happened to notice this case because they both mentioned the golden lion tamarin, a monkey I enjoy seeing at our local zoo. It's weird how this happens, but it also makes you wonder how often it happens and I don't notice.

To add to the complexities, both these students are international students. My husband once suggested to me (in the case of the person who violated security at Newark and shut down the airport for hours) that people who live in totalitarian countries tend to be more likely to cheat or violate the laws because the laws are inherently unfair and overcontrolling laws, so the people develop the habit of violating them. Yet we also have high levels of cheating in American culture, a non-totalitarian culture (despite Bush/Cheney's best attempts). David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture, will be visiting my campus next month, and I plan to ask him for his input.

Meanwhile, I think what a lot of "21st century skills" people are thinking about is how to evade the problem. Joe Hoyle suggests that we stop trying to test for memorization and instead test for other skills, like critical thinking and learning. (Via Delaney Kirk.)

We are so used to seeing other countries, with their pedagogy of memorization, as superior learning environments to America's. But maybe time will tell if these strategies actually increase learning and education, or whether we still measuring success by old standards.

Amy Bishop Part 4 with a side order of Joe Stack

2010-02-21T21:03:00.004-05:00

I'm in a brief lull in the middle of a busy time, so this will probably be my last post on Bishop. A few things I wanted to add:

1. I originally thought that Bishop may have had some underlying racism due to the fact that she shot 4 out of 5 people of color in a small department. However, it seems that it may be coincidence. Survivors of the shooting say she simply was making her way around the table and shot in the order that people were sitting. Source.

2. MH made the point that Bishop is an outlier. He's right; she is, simply for being a woman--women rarely are mass murderers. Bishop, though, is also a woman in the field of science, which has been a traditionally male field. I think it's also interesting that she has four children. Women in academia seem to have smaller families; it is well documented how the demands of pursuing tenure in academia do not mesh well with being a parent. Did having that juggle add to Bishop's stresses? I don't know where Jim Anderson's family lives, but Amy's family certainly wasn't in Huntsville helping her out with raising 4 kids.

3. This was one of the most interesting stories I read on the Bishop case. As you know, it's the 1986 shooting in Braintree that fascinates me. I could not believe that Paul Frazier went out there less than 24 hours after the shooting and claimed that the 1986 police had instigated a cover-up. I knew there was more to this story, and there was. Frazier (the chief in 2010) and Polio (the chief in 1986) were at odds in 1986. Frazier was the police union rep; Polio was the police chief who was, according to the article above, taking away some of the police officers' perks.

As I suspected, Solimini's memories of the event, as expressed by Frazier in 2010, do not entirely match up with the police report Solimini wrote in 1986. Frazier made it sound all a lot worse. And now it sounds like he deliberately did so in order to make Polio look bad.

I still contend that after an accidental shooting, one wants to avoid arresting the shooter if one can help it. The worst has already happened, so why add more?

4. And one last thing: A few days after Bishop murdered three people, a man named Joe Stack flew a plane into the IRS office building in Austin, TX and killed one person and himself. But when you read the reports on Stack, you do not hear the same stories you heard about Bishop. Bishop was detached, behaved strangely, seemed to have an anger problem. From reading what the people in Austin had to say about Stack, you'd think he was the sweetest guy around. He never expressed his hatred of the IRS to others.

So again, I don't think it's a given that people planning mass murder (we were lucky Stack's plane killed only one IRS worker; he wanted to kill more, certainly) show signs of their murderous nature before they act. Stack certainly seemed to crack as early as a day before, but for most of his life he sounds like a lovely person to be around, just a little obsessed (for a guy who was pretty well off financially--gee, I'd like to have a 2500-sq-ft house and a private plane) with taxes.

Because maybe that's how becoming a murderer works. It's not something deep within you. It happens when you crack somehow. Amy Bishop happens to have been an occasionally unpleasant person before 2010; Joe Stack happens to be someone who was mostly very pleasant. But something set off both of these people, and they didn't have the psychological strength to pull themselves back from it.

And that led to tragedy.

Amy Bishop Part 3

2010-02-17T11:28:00.003-05:00

This will be short as I am in the middle of the last week of classes and writing assessment. Have to finish a ton of grading before tomorrow.

All the police records have been located in the Amy Bishop case.

First, JUDY BISHOP WAS NOT ON THE POLICE PERSONNEL BOARD. Can we get that straight once and for all? She went to Town Meeting. I guess that makes her "powerful," but when I think of the numbskulls in my town who are active at Town Meeting, I'm not all that impressed.

Second, NO ONE COVERED UP WHAT THEY THOUGHT WAS A MURDER.

If there was a cover-up, then it was not covering-up a murder. It was covering up/glossing over the charges on which Bishop could have faced.

Every single piece of evidence we have suggests it was an accidental shooting, including pretty much every police report that exists, which are labelled "Accidental Shooting." This does not mean she could not have been charged for other things, pointing the gun at the guys in the auto repair shop. But to quote from Solimini's report, Bishop was "frighten [sic], disoriented and confused." Solimini also says she had a fight with her father, not her brother.

It therefore makes absolutely no sense to say that Amy had a fight with her brother and shot him deliberately.

What was covered up? This looks like the likeliest scenario:

Amy shot her brother by mistake. She freaked out. She was picked up by police. She was brought to the station. She could have been charged. Because she was a rich white girl who was obviously traumatized, and because her parents were well-known, they let her go home.

That is basically about the whole of it.

We have GOT to look at this incident from the perspective of the people facing it in 1986. They did not know that in 2010 she would murder three people. She looked and acted like a kid who had made a horrible mistake.

My third point is that WE STILL HAVE NO EVIDENCE OF A THIRD SHOT. What we know is that Amy accidentally discharged the gun in her room then freaked out, tried to hide it, couldn't, then came downstairs and tried to get her brother's help, then accidentally (negligently, some gun owners insist on calling it) discharged it again. Why that seems like an illogical sequence to anyone is beyond me. It makes perfect sense.

I have a fascination with Columbine and with research/journalism, so this reminds me very much of the assumption-making and myth-creating that happened shortly after the Columbine shooting. I can't imagine why anyone would want to be part of that. If I end up writing a lot and challenging others' assumptions, it's mainly because I think the truth deserves that. We need to question assumptions and claims, particularly before all the information is in. This is a version of what Tim Burke was warning about in the thread on 11D, but I see the process a little bit differently. I think that the more we talk about all the possible explanations, the less likely we are to settle on one possibly wrong one.

I think Paul Frazier acted incredibly irresponsibly in giving that first press conference. Were I a resident of Braintree, I would be leading the call to question his judgment.

Part 4 will be about race and gender, but I am not allowed to write that till I finish my grading.

Edited to link to 11D thread.

Amy Bishop Part 2

2010-02-14T22:02:00.007-05:00

There are some additional aspects of the Amy Bishop case I'd like to discuss, subjects of great personal relevance. I'm going to start by talking about Asperger Syndrome/autism spectrum disorders and Amy Bishop. My son was recently diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome, and understandably, I have been reading and talking about it a lot lately.

I am aware that diagnosis via newspaper article/Internet is wrong. But the descriptions of Amy Bishop from just about everyone who knew her strongly suggest someone who has an autism spectrum disorder.

Please note: this is not going to turn into an apology or excuse for Bishop's crime in Alabama (or her possible crime in Massachusetts).

Here are some of the things people have said about her:

"She didn’t know how to make small talk," she said. "It’s like she didn’t have that gene." Source. (Added on 2/21/10)

In meetings, Mr. Setzer remembered, she would go off on "bizarre" rambles about topics not related to tasks at hand — "left-field kind of stuff," he said. Source.

"She was kind of weird," he said. "I mean, all scientists are weird, right? But she was just kind of weird. She didn't strike me as psychotic." Source.

There was no doubt, however, about her intelligence or pedigree. "She's pretty smart," said Mr. Setzer. "That was not a question. There might have been some question about how good of a [principal investigator] and mentor she was. Yeah, she knows her stuff, and she's a good technical person, but as far as being the boss and running the lab, that was kind of the question." Source.

Shortly after the attempted bombing, Fluckiger said, Bishop told her she had been questioned by police. According to Fluckiger, Bishop said police asked her if she had ever taken stamps off an envelope that had been mailed to her and put them on something else.

"She said it with a smirk on her face,'' said Fluckiger. Source.

Nursing students repeatedly complained to Dr. Podila, the department chairman, as well as to the dean, and even sent a petition, said Caitlin Phillips, a junior in the nursing program, who took two courses with Dr. Bishop in her sophomore year

She was “very socially awkward with students” and never made eye contact during personal conversations, Ms. Phillips said. “We all had kind of a problem with her. She never really taught much. She just read straight from the book.” Source.

The Boston Herald has an entire article identifying her as an "oddball":

“She was an oddball - just not very sociable,” said Sylvia Fluckiger, a former lab technician who worked with Bishop in 1993.

“She was quite cavalier about it,” Fluckiger said of Bishop’s description of her interview with police. She said Bishop “grinned” as she described being asked by cops whether she’d ever taken stamps off an envelope and fastened them onto something else. “I cannot tell you what the grin meant,” Fluckiger said.

A classmate of Seth Bishop’s recalled yesterday that the boy, who was “painfully shy,” never talked about his older, only sibling.

“It was as if he was a complete stranger in her life. It seemed like a dysfunctional family. We just accepted them as being odd,” said the classmate, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity.

Amy Bishop, he said, “wasn’t mean because she wasn’t someone you could get close to. She wasn’t an attractive girl, she didn’t have friends. She didn’t work at having friends. I think people probably, over time, learned to leave her alone.”

The Bishop household, he said, “was anything but a home . . . It was just a really dreary, dark place where there wasn’t a lot of love.”

***

Sounds kind of like some sort of autism spectrum disorder, no? And that Seth had it, too. This was 1986, when people weren't knowledgeable about autism.

So let's back up a little. Nothing changes the fact that she murdered three people. But can other aspects of her life be explained by an ASD?

Amy graduated high school at age 16, apparently. This would be a sign not only of great intelligence but also perhaps of social awkwardness.

Her brother was shy and didn't mention their family very much. They seemed "dysfunctional."

Amy seems to have married one of her first boyfriends, as she was dating Jim Anderson when she shot her brother. Their marriage has lasted through that tragedy, through graduate school, through working together, through four children. That doesn't sound to me like someone who lacks love. It may be someone who can't *show* love very easily.

As the mother of a child with Asperger's, I know all too well that failure to act in a socially appropriate manner. I know how it appears he is uninterested or uncaring when he doesn't look someone in the eye. I know he often seems uncaring if he doesn't respond to others' pain (the example I use is when I broke my ankle right in front of him).

Is my son going be looked at with suspicion and distrust his entire life? What if crimes or accidents occur around him? Will he be railroaded into investigations because he smirks at the wrong time? Will these investigations be held against him for the rest of his life (as apparently the investigation of Bishop in the pipe bombing case is being held against her even though she was cleared)?

As a parent, these issues concern me. They petrify me. They make me feel protective of my son. I can only imagine that Judy Bishop felt the same way.

In the end, even though I am, like Bishop, an Ivy-League-trained academic without tenure, the person I really relate to in this whole matter is her mother.

(Edited for grammar.)

Amy Bishop, Part 1

2010-02-14T18:33:00.010-05:00

This is Part 1 of a series of posts I want to do on Amy Bishop. I get incredibly frustrated by misinformation, so I am trying to bring together everything that is known about her and about the case.

Here, I construct a timeline of Bishop's life and then examine the police reports and other information on her brother's death.

Edited 2/21/10

Timeline:

1965 Amy born (edited to correct)
1968 Seth born
1983 Amy graduates HS
1985 House is broken into/Sam and Seth buy gun, get gun licenses?
1986 Seth graduates HS?
1986 Seth is shot and killed.
1988 Amy graduates Northeastern (Added 2/21/10)
1991 Amy has first child
1993 Amy gets her doctorate from Harvard
1993 Amy and husband Jim Anderson are investigated in case of pipe bomb sent to Amy’s lab supervisor
1996 Sam and Judy sell the house in Braintree; Amy rents carriage house
1999 Sam retires from Northeastern
2001 Amy has 4th child
2005 Amy and Jim move to Huntsville/UAH

Reports differ as to Bishop’s age. Police say she is 42. The university website says she is 44. The state police report says she was 19 in December 1986. She was likely born in 1967 and is 42. She graduated high school in 1983 (the same year I did). I skipped a grade; Amy seems to have skipped one or two grades and graduated early. Edited 2/21/10--Apparently I was over-reading the situation.

Her brother Seth was born April 9, 1968. (State police report) Her father was Samuel Bishop, a professor (of art) at Northeastern U. Her mother was Judith (Judy) Bishop. Judy Bishop was on the Town of Braintree’s Personnel Board at the time of the shooting.

On Saturday, December 6, 1986, Bishop shot her brother. She and her brother were attending Northeastern at the time. It is unclear whether she and her brother were dorming at Northeastern or living at home and commuting. As it was a Saturday, it makes sense that everyone was home.

According to the interviews in the state police report, at approximately 11:30 am, Sam Bishop left the house. His wife was out. After 11:30 and before 2:22, Amy, Judy, and Seth ended up together in the house. Amy took the shotgun from her parents’ room and loaded it and the gun discharged in her room. At some point she came downstairs and the gun discharged there, killing her brother. Amy left the house after that.

At 14:22 (2:22 pm), officers responded to the house at 46 Hollis Ave after a report of a shooting. The officers responding were Officers Jordan and Murphy.

The Braintree Daily Police Log reads 1422 46 Hollis Ave Accidental shooting 814 813 817 BS C-10 Code 51 QGH Sudden death. Code 91 Sgt. Brady

A later code in the log reads: Marks 811 Condon 812 R Jordan and T Murphy 813 Finn 814 Depisa 815 Solimini 816.

This suggests that the officers on the scene were Finn, Jordan, Murphy and (817?)

At 1507 (3:07) Finn reported that Seth Bishop was pronounced dead at the hospital. He
must have accompanied the paramedics to the hospital.

At 1516 (3:16) Solimini was listed as the officer responding to an alarm going off at a pharmacy.

At 15:43 (3:43) Solimini was listed as the officer responding to a motor vehicle accident on Quincy Ave.

In his remarks on Feb. 13, 2010, Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier says he spoke to Officer Solimini, who said:

“Officer Ronald Solimini informed me that he wrote the report and said that I wouldn’t find it as it has been missing from the files for over 20 years. He said that former Police Chief Edward Flynn had looked for the report and that it was missing. He believes this was in 1988.”
Officer Solimini recalled the incident as follows: He said he remembers that Ms. Bishop fired a round from a pump action shotgun into the wall of her bedroom. She had a fight with her brother and shot him, which caused his death. She fired a third round from the shotgun into the ceiling as she exited the home. She fled down the street with the shotgun in her hand. At one point she allegedly pointed the shotgun at a motor vehicle in an attempt to get the driver to stop. Officer Solimini found her behind a business on Washington Street. Officer Timothy Murphy was able to take control of the suspect at gunpoint and seized the shotgun. Ms. Bishop was subsequently handcuffed and transported to the police station under arrest.”

On December 8, 1986, the Patriot-Ledger (local paper) published a news account of the shooting. The article claims that:

"Police said his sister, Amy Bishop, was trying to unload the pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun when it discharged."

"She pumped a round from the magazine into the firing chamber of the shotgun, then went into the kitchen and asked her brother and mother for help when she couldn’t eject the shell from the chamber, investigators said."

Her mother instructed Amy Bishop to pump the shotgun again, which ejected the first shell, according to an investigator. However, she apparently pumped the weapon again and unknowingly advanced a second shell from the magazine to the chamber.

Thinking the weapon was empty, she pulled the trigger, the investigator said. The blast struck her brother, who was standing three to four feet in front of her, authorities said."

"The accident is under investigation by Braintree police and the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, but authorities said they don’t expect charges to be filed."

Timeline of December 6 to 17, 1986

December 6:
11:30 Sam Bishop leaves house.
11:30 to 2:22 Amy Bishop takes shotgun from father's room; Judy Bishop comes home; Seth Bishop goes out to get food for lunch and returns; Amy Bishop shoots Seth Bishop.
2:22 Police respond to report of shooting.
3:07 Seth Bishop is pronounced dead at the hospital.
3:16 Officer Solimini responds to a report of an alarm going off, i.e., he is back on patrol in Braintree.

Other events of the day: Amy Bishop is apprehended and brought to the police station. Amy Bishop is allowed to leave in the custody of her mother. Then-Police Chief John Polio refuses to name shooter and says that the shooting of Seth Bishop was accidental.

December 7:
Chief Polio tells press that Amy Bishop accidentally discharged the shotgun, killing her brother.

December 8:
Patriot Ledger reports that Amy Bishop shot her brother accidentally. The fatal shooting was witnessed by Bishop’s mother, Judith, according to authorities.
The article also says: The accident is under investigation by Braintree police and the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office, but authorities said they don’t expect charges to be filed.

December 9:
Patriot Ledger reports further, quoting Judy Bishop. “It all happened in a split-second in front of me,” Judith Bishop, their mother, said this morning. “I keep seeing it over and over in my mind.”
Braintree Police Captain Theodore Buker is quoted: When the shotgun went off in her bedroom, Amy Bishop, 20, became frightened and “highly emotional” and went downstairs to her mother and brother to find out how to unload it, Braintree Police Capt. Theodore Buker said.

December 17:
From the state police report filed by Trooper Brian Howe:
On December 17, 1986, this officer, Captian Theodore Buker and Detective Michael Carey of the Braintree Police Department proceeded to 46 Hollis Avenue in the Town of Braintree.

Sources:
Braintree Police Daily Log, December 6, 1986
Patriot Ledger articles, December 8, 1986 and December 9, 1986
State Police Investigation Report, March 30, 1987 based on interviews conducted on December 17, 1986
Braintree Police Chief Paul Frazier's comments on the Bishop case, February 13, 2010
'Everyone Thought She Was Gentle,' Boston Herald, February 14, 2010.
Contradictory Tales of 1986 Bishop Shooting, NECN, February 14, 2010
Alleged Ala. killer was suspect in Harvard professor bomb attempt

A Few Thoughts:

Officer Solimini is the source for the doubts about the conclusion that Seth Bishop's shooting was accidental. However, the timeline is unclear about his involvement. A simple error could explain why he is not listed as one of the officers responding to the scene of the shooting (817 could have been wrongly put down instead of 816). However, later entries indicate that Solimini was responding elsewhere less than an hour after the shooting. Could he have apprehended Bishop behind a building on Washington St, then arrested her? Did he then bring her to the police station, then return to patrol? Or did he return later and then observe Bishop's release? Why was he the one to write the report?

The shotgun may have been a Remington 870 or something similar. According to Wikipedia, it is one of the most popular/common models of pump-action, 12-gauge shotgun. One can imagine that it was easily available in a place like Coleman's Sporting Goods.

There are contradictory statements about the number of shots fired. Solimini says 3 shots: 1 in Amy's bedroom and 2 in the kitchen (1 shot fatally struck Seth, the other was discharged into the ceiling). The state police investigative report mentions only two shots.

At no time does anyone claim three shots in a row were fired.

The Braintree police department says that the original police report is missing.

2010-02-10T13:05:00.002-05:00

Snow Day here in Southern New England. I'm supposed to grade 24 papers by tomorrow. But I can't think with 3 other people in the house, and I can't leave.

I think this is professorial hell.

So I keep distracting myself with planning our Yellowstone trip but I'm not liking the available airfares.

*sigh*

Wikipedia

2010-01-24T23:23:00.002-05:00

I am quite excited, perhaps more so than circumstances warrant. I just edited my very first Wikipedia entry ever! It's the entry for Cindy Oh Cindy, a 1956 hit by Eddie Fisher and later apparently sung by the Beach Boys, though I don't know anything about that.

My guess is that a Beach Boys aficionado originally wrote the entry and just pulled in a link to the Robert Barron entry that already existed on Wikipedia. There is a Robert Barron who was an actor, and there is a web page out there that claims him as the author of "Cindy Oh Cindy." However, I think it's a mix-up. Robert Nemiroff, aka Lorraine Hansberry's husband, co-wrote the song with a friend. It's pretty much documented in Philip Rose's memoir.

I got intrigued because I learned that when Nemiroff wrote a hit pop song that made him rich, Hansberry was able to stop working and concentrate on writing. "Cindy Oh Cindy" was written in 1956, 3 years before "A Raisin in the Sun" debuted on Broadway.

We wouldn't have "A Raisin in the Sun" if not for "Cindy Oh Cindy."

AS and Wii

2010-01-24T16:26:00.004-05:00

My son tends to get frustrated with computer games. He has gotten angry and frustrated with Webkinz games, but now it's gotten even worse with the Wii. Sometimes he makes Miis using instructions from the Internet, and this can take a while and it's very calm. But when he's playing several kinds of games (the Wii Carnival games are his bete noire now), he gets increasingly frustrated. It's even worse when he's playing with his (older) sister and loses. So, for the second time in about 2 weeks, I just unplugged the Wii and took it away. He's in his room getting some control over himself.

He's been having a lot of trouble all week. In school, he's had trouble with two auxiliary teachers (phys ed and library). He normally thrives in library, but this week he crawled under a table and was making the other kids laugh and couldn't stop what he was doing when rebuked. I'm not sure what's going on in phys ed, but he has had negative comments on his report card before (doesn't listen, doesn't take turns). The thing I hate about AS is that I don't have a frickin' clue what to do. I sense that there is some sort of sensory overload issue happening both in phys ed and with the Wii. At the library, I am clueless. His teacher said he seemed to be getting something positive out of making the other kids laugh, and he couldn't extricate himself from that loop.

On Wednesday evening, my husband and I went to a panel discussion sponsored by AANE. The panel featured a neuro/behavioral pediatrician, an educational lawyer/special ed advocate, a social worker with the Groden Center, and a school psychologist. It was all very interesting, but I find myself just needing to know What To Do. I don't have enough of a toolbox. I feel the way I did when E was diagnoses with asthma. It took over a year for us to be able to manage his asthma effectively.

I think this week's problems may be related to one or more of these factors:
1. He's not getting enough sleep. We are having a lot of trouble getting these kids to bed early. This is partially due to our own hours. We don't eat dinner till 6 or 7, and then the kids want some play time after dinner.
2. He's eating poorly at school and at home. He has been eating hot lunch at school, but on days he doesn't have hot lunch, he insists on eating Lunchables. He won't eat anything else, and I'm about 70% sure he doesn't eat the actual meat and cheese in the Lunchable, only the jello and cookie. We have always had a lot of trouble with managing the kids' food intake. Furthermore, it is nearly impossible to get E to ask for some specific food. He says "I'm hungry" and will never ask for a specific food. It drives us insane, but it seems to be part of some sort of communication issue. He is indirect about just about everything.
3. The Wii. Sensory overload can lead to all sorts of emotional imbalances.

We've been seeing Dr. Lovecky, but I think I need to be more forthcoming or direct about what I feel like we need. I need him to be able to ask for what he wants, directly. I need for him to be able to eat yogurt at school (he refuses; he will eat yogurt at home, but not at school). I need for him to be able to control his frustration when he's playing Wii. I need for him to be able to do his evening bedtime routine without too much prompting. I need him to not let his sister provoke him into getting mad.

And I'd like to be able to walk into the school, run into his teacher, and not have to hear about the latest problems. :(

The Juggle

2010-01-22T09:37:00.005-05:00

I've been on the run almost constantly since the holiday vacation, and I don't really see it easing up very much.

The work situation is somewhat stable/predictable. I had a tough week this week because I had grading to return to students, plus I had conferences with about 8 students. I basically am at work from 9:20 to 2:40 4 days a week (20 hours), and 12 of those hours are in class.

Normally I can get a bit of work done at home, but there is where things got complicated.

First, I agreed to write two encyclopedia entries. Normally, when one signs up for such assignments, one has several months before the deadline. Much to my surprise, the deadline was in December. I missed it and got an extension till January 15. I missed that deadline by a few days, too.

Second, because my schedule is more flexible, I tend to be in charge of ferrying the children about. Tuesday at 5:30: My daughter goes to dance class. Wednesday at 3:30: my son has a psychologist appointment. Thursday at 4:30: Cub Scouts. And now I've added in Lego Club on Fridays at 3 pm.

Third, I mistakenly got it into my head to start reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Steig Larsson. I had been waiting for it on hold at the libary, but I suddenly was overcome with the overwhelming desire to read it immediately, so I downloaded it to my Touch via the Kindle app. I had several late nights staying up reading, but I'm done now and have decided to give myself the early birthday present of the UK edition of the third and final book in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

And then there are the one-time things this week: finding a costume for my daughter's dance solo (performance next Friday night); the elementary school art show; an AANE panel on Wednesday night (very interesting); a Cub Scout cake auction for which I baked and decorated a cake as a baseball field (my idea--and probably the one truly fun thing I did all week).

Now my body aches all over, but I have to think ahead for next week and make sure next week's juggle doesn't end with me tripping over a bunch of balls I've dropped.

Name change to "Inside Providence"?

2010-01-19T12:53:00.003-05:00

Gah. I don't want to move to Rhode Island. Please don't make me move to Rhode Island.

Vote Coakley.

Daughter

2009-12-23T21:35:00.004-05:00

My daughter cracks me up. Tonight I took the dog to obedience training and was out past her bedtime. When I got home, I found this:

So I turned it on and found this:

Merry Happy, everyone!

Student of the Week

2009-12-13T21:40:00.005-05:00

My daughter's classroom has "student of the week," which is a totally random/non-merit-based thing, fwiw. But my daughter has to go in front of the class and talk about herself. I'm proud that she is so comfortable about talking in front of others. I was never that confident. I'm also thrilled with what she's talking about:
1. Her love of Legos
2. How we've traveled a lot in recent years
3. Our Xmas cards
4. Her favorite animal being koalas and how we foster a koala in Australia.
Interestingly, she refuses to tell anyone in school that she dances competitively.

I've had massive computer problems this weekend, and we've been maniacally doing XMas stuff.

Here's a bad pic featuring our Xmas tree and a menorah, which we've been lighting all week. We happened to not be Jewish, but my husband got a menorah for a photo shoot idea, and we decided to light it. I feel like I'm back in New York again.

Here are some of our ornaments:

All of our ornaments are fairly unique and represent trips we've taken and places we've visited, or special interests of ours.

Flu Shot Moms Part Deux

2009-12-08T19:55:00.002-05:00

I believe it's a special kind of irony when one of the Flu Shot Moms gets the swine flu herself. My poor friend R! She just called to see if I could cover for her tomorrow. Unfortunately, I am probably going to be out because my son is sick with a virus of some sort that's making him cough and have stomach issues.

Key Hacks

2009-12-07T13:16:00.003-05:00

E-mail from my sister:

"[Her husband] wants to go to [my town] so we can leave "strange things" in your fridge Wendy. LOL."

Yeah, I left a bag of yogurts in her fridge. We were there for a birthday party yesterday, and I had bought the yogurts for my kids, who eat nothing anyone else provides for them. I stuck them in her fridge when we got there then forgot them.

I forgot one of the best "hacks" I ever read: when you're visiting someone else's house and have something you need to remember to bring home with you, leave your keys next to the item you need to remember to bring home.

Turkey

2009-12-07T10:56:00.002-05:00

My son, writing on the following prompt:

Pretend you are a turkey and write a list of reasons why you should not be on the menu for Thanksgiving dinner.

He wrote:

1. I wouldn't want to be tryed and puked out by little children that haven't had turkey before because that would be waisting my flesh.
2. There is an increasing number of people that like turkey so then all of my turkey friends will be very sad. But it would be worse because the turkeys that are related to me would die too.
3. If there are left-overs and everybody was full (even the pets) then I would be thrown in the trash can. So that would be waisting my flesh (again (see on Reason #1)).
4. It would be very painful being roasted and toasted by the hot and steamy grill. I would hate it so much; and so much that I would really, really want to be a human.

All errors are his.

He also had to write about what he was thankful for. He wrote:

"I am thankful for my family because my family brings me toys that I want. The stuff that I mostly want is lego. I even save up for lego! Right now, I am saving up for the recycle truck and the tow truck. They might sound boring but I know they aren't."

It's accompanied by a picture he drew of him asking me "Mom, can I have 9 dollars?" and me answering "No." Four times. In other words, a true representation of reality. :) However, it doesn't illustrate his point!

His teacher wrote on the side of the page: "Please stick to one topic: your family or legos!"

Hartford

2009-11-23T08:19:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we took a day trip to Hartford to attend the Lego Kidsfest:

The kids and husband got a chance to see the new sets for 2010, which include a Prince of Persia tie-in as well as a new Toy Story set. (Toy Story 2 is one of my top movies ever.)

The Kidsfest was exceedingly crowded. We'd bought our tickets online and were able to go right in, but the line to buy tickets at the box office was 3 hours long. A fire marshal was counting ins and outs to make sure the convention center didn't exceed capacity (apparently it reached capacity on Saturday).

But we found ourselves done by about 1 pm (we'd arrived at 10), so we decided to check out the Mark Twain House. As a student of 19th century American lit, I am always ready to go to the house of a famous 19th century author. I would have preferred Harriet Beecher Stowe, but I felt Twain would have more general appeal to my initially recalcitrant* kids. It helped that when we arrived a petting zoo was set up outside. The kids had fun petting the alpaca, sheep, and bunnies. The pot-bellied pig was also adorable. Inside there was a penny machine--always a big hit! And there was a display of toys and toy trains in a Christmas theme, and that was also interesting.

*Sophie just asked me what this word means. I told her she didn't want to do it at first. She says that she didn't want to do it the whole time.

The house itself is wonderful. I love old houses to begin with, but Twain was such an interesting person and his house befits him. The tour guide was good, and she told us the house will be featured on Ghost Hunters on SyFy on Dec. 2!

It's A Very Dylan Christmas

2009-11-18T11:27:00.002-05:00

The video I have been waiting for all my life. Bob Dylan. Christmas.

Flu Shot Moms

2009-11-17T23:12:00.003-05:00

I can't say I'm emerging from grading hell. I spent 2 hours tonight grading. A weird series of quirks of fate gave me a fairly light schedule this term. I have one final tomorrow, 15 students, and then I'm done.

The past few weeks I've spent in frequent consultation with the Flu Shot Moms. They're a bunch of colleagues, all moms, obviously. We all have kids with respiratory issues, considered high risk if they contract H1N1. And so we've all been invested heavily in finding flu shots for our respiratorily challenged boys--and they're all boys, for some reason.

However, one of the boys of the Flu Shot Moms got H1N1 last week. He started showing symptoms about 4 days after he got the shot. He didn't have enough time to develop the antibodies. But he is fine now--has been through the first run of it and the secondary relapse. So the Flu Shot Moms are feeling a bit relieved, though I'm sure we all think to ourselves "Oh, my son's issues are worse than their sons' issues!" It's part and parcel of being a Flu Shot Mom.

My son got his shot today. A week or two ago, the school district gave a round of shots to 60 kids who were hand-picked by the school nurses as those at highest risk in the district. After several consultations with the Flu Shot Moms, I got huffy and vented on a public bulletin board for my town. Who was making these decisions? How could a child with asthma not be considered among the highest risk children in the district? How could there be 60 other kids in the district worse off than my son? I had a good rant going.

Not two hours later, the phone rang. It was the school, telling me that my son was eligible for the next round of shots. Woohoo! I became Smug Flu Shot Mom!

And then I got to the clinic today (held in the auditorium--how incredibly awkward a waiting room!) and I looked around and saw every kid that sits with mine at the nut-free/dairy-free table. :) E was uncharacteristically recognizing other kids right and left. You get to know the other highly allergic kids, I guess! They seemed to have more than 100 doses this time; we were number 94.

And in a month, we do this all over again. *sigh*

Hasan

2009-11-16T12:38:00.002-05:00

Via Ginmar:

Hassan's faith was incidental to the fact that for all intents and purposes he was just another single white loser who couldn't get a date and as he stewed in his own bitterness he got more and more mad and blamed others for it. Classic. Add to this the anti-Muslim prejudice he apparently experienced, and you got yourself another single white loser shooting, like school shootings, mall shootings, post office shootings, Amish school house shootings, etc. etc., ad nauseum, the end. Add bombs in there and you get Timothy McVeigh. I'm not saying precisely that exposure to feminism would have kicked these guys' asses out into the world and given them coping skills, but the absence of women in their lives was notable, and seems fairly typical of guys who turn violent.

My thoughts exactly.

ETA: I was just interrupted by a student who brought me a gift and told me I was one of her favorite professors here. The gift is a necklace from Tibet. Beautiful!

Motherhood

2009-11-15T09:42:00.002-05:00

Lisa Belkin pegs it on what it means to be a working mother. I am sure some working dads are like this*, but I am fairly positive that the rate of working moms who are like this is much higher.

*I have always been bemused by a story that a friend told me about her post-9/11 experience. She and her family lived in Tribeca. She worked a few blocks from home and her husband worked in midtown, and the kids were home with a nanny. When the planes hit the towers, she stayed at work until the towers fell, then she headed toward home to evacuate the kids. When she got there, her husband had already left work, gotten home, and evacuated with the kids. I would have done exactly what her husband did, and my husband would have stayed at work like she did.

What's On My Mind

2009-11-13T16:57:00.003-05:00

Can't seem to get up the mental energy for a whole post, so I'll go the numbered-list route:

1. Amy, I'll do Chapter 7 of Different Minds. Eventually.

2. Google Reader: I think I am oversubscribed because I can't quite keep up. So much interesting stuff to read out there, and I blame Prof Hacker for being especially interesting, useful and prolific.

3. Sitcoms: When did they become so awesome again? I haven't been watching more than 1 or 2 a season, but now I have 7 must-see sitcoms: HIMYM, BBT, The Office, 30 Rock, relative newcomer Parks and Rec, and 2 brand new sitcoms, Community and The Middle. At least 3 of these sitcoms feature characters who probably have Asperger's: BBT, Community, and The Middle.

4. Holidays: They're really a mess this year in my family circle, and now everything is further complicated because my nephew's birthday is December 23 (his first birthday is coming up). Not to mention the additional complications that my dad can't travel very far.

5. H1N1: We're in the middle of a clusterf*** because we live in MA but our pediatrician is in RI. But the end result is that Asthma Boy was just invited to get the H1N1 vaccine on Tuesday via the school district. I am guessing he has been identified as high risk, which makes sense because he is Asthma Boy. He's also undergoing sublingual immunotherapy, and who knows what that's doing to his immune system, plus he has an awful case of molluscum that his body isn't getting around to fighting off.

6. My ankle: It is pretty much better now, and I'm left with soreness (arthritis?) in the knees. I'm going up and downstairs pretty well now, and the crutch has long been put aside.

7. Hot air balloons: As I left the house one morning (at 6:45 am!), I glanced to the right and saw one flying over the kids' school.

Different Minds: Chapter 5

2009-10-17T13:32:00.007-05:00

Chapter 5 is "Finding Flow: The Wellspring of Creative Endeavor."

What is creativity?

Lovecky looks at different understandings of creativity. Is it original thinking? Problem solving? Problem finding? Is it mental flexibility, the ability to imagine alternatives? Is it building on and elaborating upon the already known? Is is being able to make analogies, seeing that the process by which one thing works could be applied to other areas? Is it divergent thinking ability (fluency of ideas)? (She is less sure about this last one.)

Development of creativity

Young gifted children engage in a lot of imaginative dramatic play, as well as fantasy play (which may lead to an interest in role-playing games as an adult). They also often lead this kind of play, involving friends and/or family. They are more interested in the process of creative play, not the products they can create.
Older gifted children start to become more interested in the products, but not always. They still value the process of playing creatively.
Adolescents take creativity to a further extent, becoming mature enough to work with adults as mentors. They can also accumulate a lot of knowledge, negotiate between the known and the unknown and form /test hypotheses, and use analogy to extend their knowledge.
Unfortunately, asynchrony comes into play here. Asynchrony is when the child's ability to conceive an idea does not match up with the ability to express it. They lack technical skills to give their ideas concrete shape (via words, music, art, science, etc.).
Some researchers speculate that high-achieving students may also be less creative, as if they are making a choice between creativity and achievement. They spend their time achieving success according to the rules of the educational system, but they do not have the kind of time needed to generate creative thinking. Also, some blame the media for pre-programming children to think in certain ways, thus stifling creativity.
Creative gifted children are often very different from the norm; they see things from different perspectives and are less likely to go with the flow. They tend to have unconventional beliefs and ideas. Sometimes the child's creativity can isolate him or her from peers.

Creativity and attention deficits

Gifted kids with ADHD can be highly creative. They tolerate chaos well, they have hyperreactive and flexible minds, and they're willing to go along with unusual ideas and see where they lead. They may have some executive functioning deficits that can make expressing their creativity a challenge. They cannot always recombine parts of a whole into new wholes, and they are primarily holistic thinkers who struggle with details.
It can be challenging for professionals to identify the balance of characteristics of ADHD, creativity and giftedness. Children who have strong ADHD symptoms will be very difficult to manage, but those with milder symptoms may find that their attention deficits have minimal/low impact on their lives. That said, they may need accommodations to help them compensate and thus maximize their creativity.

Gifted kids with AS can lack or seem to lack imagination, but they can be very creative. Demonstrating imagination can involve shifting attention and planning, executive functioning skills that AS kids tend to lack.
Gifted kids with AS tend to be deficient in language when it comes to imagining or predicting social or people-related events. However, they do very well with imagination in other non-social circumstances. Gifted kids with AS can be creative thinkers, but they need to work from already existing knowledge, not be urged to invent something wholly new.

Cognitive and affective aspects of creativity

"Creative people need a combination of six resources...: divergent thinking, problem solving and insight knowledge within a domain; styles of thinking that focus on making one's own rules and working independently; personality traits such as tolerance of ambiguity, moderate risk-taking, and willingness to persevere; intrinsic and extrinsic motivation; and a supportive environment."

Divergent thinking is looking at things from multiple, unusual perspectives. GK (gifted kids) with ADHD are good at this, but they can be easily sidetracked into non-productive, ineffective ways of thinking. AS kids can be good at divergent thinking but can also fail to see the big picture or how the ideas they're having can be put together into a whole. They also don't really understand what the "usual" responses should be because they lack pragmatic language skills.

GK with ADHD are good at problem solving and problem finding (being able to see that there is a questionbut can easily end up with ineffective solutions or, if they lack the ability to work independently, cannot focus enough. GK with AS are good at problem solving and problem finding in their areas of interest. They may lack the ability to explain the problem effectively because they focus on only one part of it.

Visualization is something GK with ADHD and AS are good at. ADHD kids can spend a lot of time visualizing fantasy worlds; AS kids can use visualization effectively to be productive creatively. Lovecky notes Temple Grandin's work on how visualization was so important to her inventions.

GK with ADHD tolerate ambiguity very well, but GL with AS are less able to. Lovecky notes that ADHD kids can sometimes be too open to ambiguity, and they may not be able to critically distinguish among worthwhile ideas. AS kids are more into finding the "right" answers that they have a harder time with ambiguity. They do bettwe with ambiguity with language, enjoying word play and punning.

GK with ADHD work well mainly with intrinsic motivation but may also require short-term extrinsic motivators to help them keep on task and focus. Kids with AS are much more intrinsically motivated when it comes to areas of interest and rarely respond to extrinsic motivators. However, they are hard to motivate at all (intrinsic or extrinsic) when it comes to areas that do not interest them.

Suggestions for developing creativity

*Provide quiet places and unstructured time
*Teach convergent thinking as well as divergent thinking skills
*Understanding the different processes. For example, AS kids will have difficulty with open-ended prompts and need more structuring/scaffolding of a creative assignment
*Use tragic stuff to inspire creativity. (I'm not to thrilled with this suggestion--Wendy)
*Creative work can help students get over bumps in the learning process. (Example: E has some trouble with some things, and Lovecky found that asking him to draw was a way of opening him up and drawing him out. E loves to draw.)
*Control time spent on special interests. As should be obvious, some areas of interest can impede creativity (too much time on video games, for example).
*Some areas of interest are really open-ended, so you have to give kids with these interests more time to develop them.
*Read books to kids that are above their reading level so they can develop more complex language.
*Model your own experiences with creativity with your kids.
*Help kids get started, and work with them to develop a structure for completing tasks when they have a hard time completing them. Offer extrinsic rewards when necessary.

Whew, done! :)

Recovery

2009-10-15T07:33:00.005-05:00

A week ago, the orthopedist removed my cast and declined to put any additional boot or device on my ankle and pronounced me ready to drive (yay!) and walk on crutches.

What this meant was that my family figured I was ready to 1. go to NY and 2. resume my everyday activities and 3. take care of them.

Today my ankle is rebelling from all the extra activity, so I decided to bang in today. However much I need the rest, though, I know I will end up working on cleaning/organizing.

One of the problems that AS/ADHD kids have is "executive functioning." This means that E will bring his homework folder into the bedroom to show me his spelling words aren't in it, leave it there, go with me into the living room to look for his spelling words then, when his spelling words are found, he will say "Where's my homework folder?" And really not know where to look.

And my husband isn't really strong in this area, either. Yet I keep meeting resistance when I try to get everyone organized. *sigh* My husband made it very clear that while I was in the cast, cleaning was *not* going to be his priority. And now my house is a mess. Now that we have the dog, we have dog hair mixed in with the usual dust, detritus and scraps of paper.

I've been researching books on "executive functioning" as right now that seems to be the major area of concern for E. I have Late, Lost and Unprepared and Smart But Scattered on hold at the library, plus I ordered a copy of Tools of the Mind, the curriculum featured recently in the NY Times and also in Nurtureshock.

Socially, things seem to be improving a little. E now has Cub Scouts every week, which he seems to enjoy (though he's had only one den meeting so far). I still need to work on the social networking with the other parents at school, but I'm starting the process 6 weeks late, and I have to remember it takes some time.

His latest favorite activity is making potholders. I'd bought one of these once upon a time, and a few weeks ago I brought it out for some reason, and he has really taken to it. In fact, we bought a large bag of more loops. He follows the directions beautifully and makes gorgeous designs. He's very good at seeing the patterns and keeping track of everything. But now I have way more too-small potholders than I need. :)

Nurtureshock

2009-10-06T15:43:00.003-05:00

I'm halfway through this book and it just showed up an hour and a half ago. Fast read.

OK, what I've learned:

1. Don't overpraise.
2. Kids don't get enough sleep.
3. White parents need to acknowledge racial difference instead of refusing to talk about it.
4. Kids lie a lot. They do it to avoid punishment/disapproval. They will tell the truth more if there is no threat of punishment/disapproval.
5. IQ tests are not predictive. NYC schools make decisions on gifted and talented placement for kids based on one single IQ test administered at the age of 5. This sucks for the late bloomers.
6. Siblings fight not because they resent the other taking away a parent's attention. They fight over toys. Fighting is ok so long as they have more net positive interactions.
7. Teenagers lie because they don't want to disappoint their parents and because they're practically programmed to. When teens argue with you, it's a good thing. They're negotiating, and when they negotiate, they feel that rules exist but that their parents are being reasonably flexible, and they are less likely to lie.

It's all very interesting to read, but I don't feel like there's a huge lot of there there. However, the endnotes are extensive and probably full of supporting info/evidence.

Different Minds: Meta

2009-09-26T21:32:00.002-05:00

AmyP has said that Different Minds by Deirdre Lovecky feels like 3 books in one. She's so right! I'm currently struggling with summarizing Chapter 4, which is about Cognitive Differences in Gifted Kids with Attention Deficits.

There is the book that explains the learning deficits and all the previous research on these disorders.
There is the book that describes kids who are gifted and have one or more of these learning deficits.
There is the book that gives suggestions, like a how-to manual, for dealing with these kids.

It's a huge amount of information.

The funny thing is that specific as this book is, I still have questions about where my son fits in. Is he visual-spatial? Or is he auditory-sequential? I was convinced he was the former, then I read the latter and was convinced he was that. He doesn't hear very well, doesn't process information that way very effectively. So how could he be auditory-sequential? Could he be visual-sequential? Spatial-sequential?

We're having a lot of difficulty getting him to follow directions. My kids are so different. My daughter will follow directions the first or sometimes second time, but she'll bitch the whole time about it. E will put it off and put it off and put it off until you're screaming at him, then he'll do it with a smile on his face, like he can't think of anything better to do than put the yogurt lid in the trash can.

OK, I've put off tackling the rest of Chapter 4 long enough.

Different Minds: Chapter 4

2009-09-26T11:26:00.006-05:00

I'm totally doing this the opposite of the way I told AmyP I would. Now I'm working on Chapter 4 of Different Minds, on "Cognitive Issues: How Those with a Different Mind Think."

My summary:
Gifted kids with AS or ADHD have less flexible learning styles, inefficient executive functioning, some troubles with central coherence, and most importantly outputs of learning, i.e., being able to demonstrate their knowledge.

Lovecky uses a computer analogy to explain cognitive functioning. Abstract reasoning is like telling how many things the computer (child) can do. Learning styles of children are like the different computer OSes (Windows, Mac, Linux). Executive functioning is like the efficiency of the computer--how fast can it be done/how fast can the child accomplish these tasks?

She breaks down this chapter into 4 areas:

1. Abstract reasoning and concept formation

Gifted children are generally good at abstract reasoning. They see things and ask questions about, make conclusions about, classify, categorize, and analyze these things.
(An example using my son: I'd bought a package of little plastic animals to decorate a cake. He opened the package and divided them into 4 categories--animals that came in pairs and animals that were single, then he broke both those groups up into animals that could stand by themselves and those that couldn't. Then he ripped a piece of paper in 4 and wrote down each category and put the animals on top of each category.) he did all of this while his sister and I were talking about my plans for decorating the cake.)
Gifted children ask complex questions and need complex responses, especially by the time they reach an intellectual age of 12 or 13, which some gifted children do as early as 5.
Gifted kids with ADHD will make hypotheses to explain their observations, but kids with AS do not do so as often.
Gifted kids can recognize patterns and algorithms, and some may create mathematical knowledge themselves rather than being taught it.
Asynchrony is when there is a range of these cognitive abilities in the same child based on interest levels, the kinds of tasks the kids do, and the kids' personalities/temperaments. They might be intellectually advanced in one area yet not in another, even if it's closely related. The example Lovecky gives is of a child who uses Hawking's theories to explain how Santa can travel to so many different houses and get down chimneys, but didn't question Santa's existence.

2. Learning Styles
Lovecky talks about two main learning styles: visual-spatial and auditory-sequential. Lovecky links this to left brain (auditory, verbal, analytical, sequential) and right brain (visual, pictorial, holistic, intuitive).Gifted children often excel in both areas, but some do not and need evaluation. Interestingly, studies show that mathematically adept students tend to have deficits in verbal areas, but verbally adept students tend to be more balanced.

Visual spatial learners "like to picture things. Asked to think about a problem they will use a picture or spatial schema or find a mental pattern.... [They] can be very creative, quick to grasp concepts and find patterns. They excel at tasks that require inductive reasoning, holistic thinking, and seeing complex relationships among parts." Visual-spatial learners can be weak in sequential thinking, planning, organization and details. Research has shown some connection to dyslexia. Also, there are difficulties of visual-spatial thinkers with central auditory processing disorders, who have trouble following directions, seeing the main point, prioritizing details, and interpreting qualifiers.
ADHD kids tend to be visual-spatial learners. Gifted kids with ADHD can have difficulty expressing their visual-spatial ideas on paper and sharing them with others. Others have problems with impulsivity that prevent them form seeing the "big picture." However, gifted children with ADHD can be intuitive and creative and think outside the box, from new perspectives.

Lovecky suggests the following strategies:
*Emphasise visualization in tasks (i.e., color coding)
*Emphasize inductive reasoning, allowing kids to use intuition to find the answer, then support it with data.
*Use visual models and diagrams to help with sequencing.
*Big picture first, then smaller steps.
*Use graphic organizers to teach organization; use categories.
*Work on listening skills by having the child watch the speaker's mouth and repeat the directions.

Gifted kids with ADHD who are slow to process info can have trouble because they "form partial wholes, or wholes based on erroneous info." These students need to have teaching slowed down for them and have the "big picture" presented to them first.
Gifted kids with AS have a lot of trouble with holistic thinking and cannot create a "whole" form the parts very easily. (This goes back to weak "central coherence.")
This is why people with AS also have trouble with facial recognition (hard to put the parts into a whole to recognize a person) and with social situations (reading body language and facial expression and hearing words in order to understand the full social situation).

Lovecky has the following suggestions for visual/non-holistic learners:
*Similar to other visual-spatial learners. Need more time to complete tasks and more space, as well as compensatory tools such as computers, calculators, etc.
*Teach these kids by starting with the big picture, breaking it down into parts, then reiterating the big picture again.
*Build a "repertoire of parts" so they can construct wholes.
*Provide models of what a completed task looks like.

Auditory-sequential learners tend to thrive in traditional school settings, which are geared towards auditory-sequential learners. Whereas visual-spatial thinkers learn with pictures, auditory-sequential learn with words.

Auditory-sequential learners learn with facts and words.. They can work on smaller parts without needing the big picture. They are good at deductive reasoning and developing hypotheses. They can pick out main points. They're usually early readers and good at spelling.

It's harder to see auditory-sequential learners' weaknesses because they are easily compensated for. They may have some difficulty with putting together parts to see the whole, and they may have some weakness in spatial organization.

Lovecky suggests the following strategies for auditory-sequential learners:
*Encourage use of words (speaking and listening)
*Encourage debate, seeing both sides of an issue
*Use verbal skills to compensate for visual and spatial weaknesses
*Make lists of steps/rules to help overcome weaknesses in visual-spatial thinking
*Use auditory-based strategies for studying
*Encourage them to play games that require visual-spatial skills to develop in these areas.

Gifted ADHD kids may be strong auditory learners but lack sequential skills. They have a harder time putting it all together into a big picture and rely too much on the smaller parts they can see.
Lovecky brings up NVLD (Non-Verbal Learning Disorder) here. These kids have great difficulty with organizing their learning. They have difficulty writing because they don't know where to begin. They would benefit from very specific steps given to approach a writing or other similar assignment.
These kids can forget and lose things very often. They may hyperfocus on details. Sometimes they have OCD tendencies.

Gifted kids with AS are similar, specifically in determining what parts are most important and focusing on those. They are good when it comes to memorizing, but weaker when it comes to organizing material. They are prone to rigid thinking, specifically, thinking that because something happened one way once, it will happen the same way forever. They have limited perspectives and can't see that there are solutions that haven't occurred to them. They can be "overwhelmed by complexiy" very easily.

Lovecky suggests the following for Auditory Learners with NVLD:
*Encourage reading/listening to learn new content.
*Use logic and deduction for problem-solving.
*Teach brainstorming and looking for multiple alternative solutions
*Encourage them to memorize facts/info then show how they relate to a larger concept.
*Start with the big picture, teach the steps, then go back and look at the big picture again.
*Explain the "why" of an action, not just the steps
*Reduce "visual overload" and distractions.
*Build on existing verbal skills whenever possible.

Different Minds

2009-09-20T13:02:00.004-05:00

Xantippe's Blog is having a book club on Different Minds: Gifted Children with ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, and Other Learning Deficits. I think I pointed her to this book; in full disclosure, the author, Deirdre Lovecky, was the one who evaluated my son. Dr. Lovecky hasn't mentioned the book to me at all; I found it when I was researching her before I called to arrange an evaluation for my son. And for the record, my son tested as highly gifted (IQ over 145) and having Asperger Syndrome.

I'll summarize Chapter 3, "Attention Deficits: Asperger Syndrome."

Lovecky explains that gifted children with AS have "difficulties with communication and social development." They want to have friends, but they don't really have interest in other children. They see the world as revolving around them. They're really kind of self-centered. Lovecky breaks the chapter down into 5 sections.

1. Development and types of AS

Once upon a time, AS was seen as HFA (high functioning autism). It was Hans Asperger who started to notice some differences. AS kids usually are fairly normal in language and social development but start to show deficits when they enter formalized school settings. They tend to rely more on rote memorization in interacting with the world than in processing new information and applying it in new ways to adapt to the situation. They prefer routines and order, and the lack of such leads to anxiety and depression. They lack pragmatic language skills (knowing what to say and when to say it) and they often have motor clumsiness. (My apologies for the too-close paraphrase.)
Lovecky goes into the difficulties of diagnosing AS; clinicians don't usually follow the DSM criteria. There does seem to be a genetic component, as AS seems to cluster in families.

AS co-exists with a lot of conditions, especially ADHD. Here are some ways to tell them apart:

* AS kids have more developmental delays than ADHD kids. AS kids are also especially
* AS kids have deficits in social reciprocity, two-sided relationships. AS kids have idiosyncratic behaviors that make it hard to connect with other kids. AS kids like rules and will obey them as long as the rules make sense to them.
* AS kids are more anxious about changes inroutine.
* AS kids have trouble seeing the big picture and get caught up in details.
* Both AS and ADHD kids have impulsive behaviors, lack structure/organization, and can't control or modulate their behavior very well.

Lovecky then explores co-existence with other issues such as OCD, Tourette, and other anxiety/depressive disorders.

2. Symptoms of AS
* Kids with AS have social deficits. They don't understand reciprocity and turn-taking, and they don't know how to negotiate activities. They also can be teased for being different; gifted kids have extra trouble because they're teased for their academic success. AS kids have trouble sharing interests with others; they are too one-sided. They have trouble with empathy and understanding how others feel and what others need. Their obsessive interests make it hard for them to connect with others who don't share that interest. They often have stereotypies (repetitive behaviors) as well.
* Kids with AS have difficulties communicating. They mostly have trouble with nonverbal communication, such as reading body language. Their pragmatic (social use of) language is weak. Prosody (sound of speech) can be flat and lack emotional inflection. They also talk "too much and too long" on their favorite subjects, as if they were lecturing their audience. Thus, conversational skills are weak. Since they have trouble making a coherent whole out of information (as opposed to focusing on details), they can't really follow the thread of a conversation for a long time. They don't remember things about other people that can help them make a connection. They can also lack the ability to identify irony or sarcasm.
*It's unclear whether AS kids have higher IQs on average, though there seems to be some connection. AS kids do have executive function deficits, meaning a difficulty in organizing, planning, and being mentally flexible.
*Empathy is impaired in AS kids. They also can't control their feelings/responses and they have no "language of feelings." They can also develop emotional obsessions.
*AS kids have motor functioning deficits, a lack of manual dexterity, awkward gait and balance, and "dyspraxia" (planning/controlling movement).
*Sensory functioning issues are not part of DSM criteria but are observed in AS kids. These issues involve touch (needing or avoiding it), overarousal, and mixed sensory perceptions (synaesthesia).

3. Understanding AS
There are three areas of cognitive difference that Lovecky focuses on: Theory of Mind, central coherence, and executive function.
*Theory of Mind involves the ability to understand that other people have other perspectives and apply that knowledge in social interactions.
*Central coherence involves AS kids' inability to see the "big picture." Most people can take in information and see the main points, how the information works together to form a whole. AS kids have difficulty with this because all pieces of information seem equally important.
*Executive function refers to tasks involving organizing, planning, transitioning and handling these effectively. When AS kids hyperfocus on an activity they prefer, they tend to have difficulty moving on to another activity. If they are not interested in an activity, they do not focus on it. They find it difficult to follow directions because they can't see the big picture and get bogged down in minor details. They can't be flexible and transfer information from one area to another very easily.

4. Gifted Children with AS as compared to Typical AS Kids
Now Lovecky gets into the meat of it: the characteristics of gifted children who have AS. As AS kids have many similarities with gifted kids, it can be hard to distinguish among the 3 groups: AS gifted kids, gifted non-AS kids, and AS non-gifted kids.
There has been some research on gifted children with AS, but not much.
* Gifted children with AS have more "passion to learn," a wider variety of interests they are passionate about, and more ability to make connections among the different areas of interest.
* Gifted children with AS can be imaginative and creative and involve others in their play. They also can use their visual skills to solve problems. (Note from Wendy: Temple Grandin's work comes to mind.)
* Gifted children with AS seem to develop vocabulary and reading skills more quickly.

Gifted Children with AS as compared to Typical Gifted Kids
* Gifted kids with AS may have a more difficult time making connections than Typical Gifted Kids (TGK). They may have a perfectionist approach that leads them to persevere in their field of interest. They have more difficulty communicating their imaginative and creative ideas to others. Gifted kids with AS have difficulty with *output*. They have the understanding but cannot communicate it effectively. Gifted students with AS also have trouble with interpreting literature. They also show the ability to adhere to moral rules/values but less ability to be flexible in applying them. TGK are better able to socialize than gifted kids with AS, who act immaturely in most social situations.

5. Positive Aspects of AS
Social: loyalty, dependability, freedom from sexism or prejudice, being upfront with what they think, determination and disinclination to be swayed by doubters, ability to follow patterns/rules and/or notice trends, avoidance of small talk, sincerity, truth-telling.
Cognitive: Interest in words, good verbal skills, visual thinking skills, detail-oriented, sometimes photographic memory, encyclopedic knowledge of topics of interest.
Personal/emotional: Sensory sensitivity leading to interesting perspectives, trusting of others, compassionate and caretaking nature.

Lovecky: "In helping gifted children with AS, it is important to work on the areas of deficits to encourage as much growth as possible. At the same time, it is vital that these gifted children be afforded the chance to develop areas of strength and interest. Their interests are the key to adult success."

**

My thoughts:
My favorite part was the section on Positive Aspects of AS because these are exactly the things I find so charming about my son. :) The more I can get into his mind, the happier I am because I love seeing the world from his perspective, and he and I share interest in words/language.

My concern is that in a (school) world where rote memorization is emphasized and the basic skills are the focus of testing, my son will be overlooked because he is already good at those things. He longs for people who share his interests, and I want for him to be able to talk with those children/people as much as possible. In those kinds of arenas, he will perhaps best be able to build some of the social skills he needs.

Another important section here was the section on Theory of Mind, cognitive coherence, and executive functioning. It's these abilities to make connections that are so crucially absent in many AS kids. Gifted kids with AS are better at that, but my experience is that I'll run across huge gaps in my son's understanding that stand out like holes in Swiss cheese.

Disability

2009-09-15T09:20:00.002-05:00

Disability has been on my mind lately. It's so true that you have to have experienced a disability in order to truly understand how stacked the world is against people with disabilities, even those who are temporarily disabled, like myself.

My building has two elevators. One goes to the courtyard entrance, which is wheelchair/disability-friendly. The other doesn't. I can take only the one elevator to go meet my drivers. It's amazing how long it takes.

I've found that the door to the handicapped stall in the bathroom opens towards me. When I am outside of the door, I have to pull it towards me (standing precariously on crutches). When I'm in the stall, I have to pull it towards me. Not easy. I've started using the non-handicapped stall because it's easier to close the door.

Speaking of doors, I never noticed how many of them are heavy. It's pretty awkward to use the crutches I am using for balance and propulsion as door stops. I'm surprised I haven't fallen yet.

I'm also considering my son's disability and more and more convinced of my own. How can I teach a boy social skills that I found so difficult to master? None of it comes easy to me. I lack patience as much as he does; I just hide it better. I hear myself respond to him and it's as if I am hearing my parents again, 35 years later, talking to me. I can't ask E a question without getting a guessing game in return. ("Why can't you just answer the question?" I hear my father's voice say.) He has become the master at finding the loophole. ("Eric, don't play soccer in the house!" "I'm not *playing* soccer. I have no one to play with. I'm not on a soccer field playing a game." Grrrr.) This weekend he wanted to know what perpendicular meant. He couldn't understand that perpendicular is about a relationship of two things. He wanted to say that the hammer was perpendicular. We tried to tell him the *parts* of the hammer were perpendicular.

He is also bored at school already. I can't decide what to do. I'm not sure a "gifted" school would work for him. I'm not sure an Asperger's-only school would work for him. Maybe a Montessori school would be good as it would allow him to explore his individual passions. But I don't want to experiment with all different schools, because he doesn't like transitions. It's easiest to keep him where he is and just try to get his work made more challenging. He shouldn't have to deal with spelling words like "if" and "mitt" and "fish" when he can spell most of his sister's 5th grade spelling words. He wants the challenge. His brain is craving it. Were his social skills any better, I'd insist on skipping him a grade (I skipped 2nd grade, myself).

Both E's disability and my own broken ankle also remind me about how hard it is to ask for help. We have help for both our disabilities required by law, but that doesn't make it any easier to ask for it.

One last thing: I have spoken often about how wonderful my husband's and my workplaces are, how family friendly they are. We can now add a new level of support: my dean is arranging for her administrative assistant to drive me home two days a week (the AA doesn't mind at all--it's nice to get out of the office for a half hour). I cannot imagine any other boss in the world arranging such a thing. I am very lucky.

Food for Thought

2009-09-07T17:34:00.004-05:00

In our textbook is an essay by Susan Brady Konig, "They've Got To Be Carefully Taught." In it, Konig decries the insistence of schools on instilling ideas about racial difference in children. It is better, she feels, for children not to be taught about racial difference:

So now these sweet, innocent babies who thought they were all the same are becoming culturally aware. Two little girls are touching each other's hair and saying, ``Your hair is blonde, just like mine.'' Off to one side a little dark-haired girl stands alone, excluded. She looks confused as to what to do next. She knows she's not blonde. Sure, all children notice these things eventually, but, thanks to the concerted efforts of their teachers, these two- and three-year-olds are talking about things that separate rather than connect.

Apparently, Konig is wrong to think that such attempts to instill multiculturalism are damaging to kids. In fact, Konig's strategy of denying racial difference actually backfires, according to a new study. The Newsweek article discussing the study asks:

We all want our children to be unintimidated by differences and have the social skills necessary for a diverse world. The question is, do we make it worse, or do we make it better, by calling attention to race?

The researchers think that we make a mistake in believing children have no ideas about racial difference until they are taught that there are. Remember Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God: "Aw, aw, I'm colored!" she says after seeing herself in a photograph. Until then, she had thought she looked like everyone else.

That moment is interpreted by scholars as evidence that children do not understand racial difference until it is pointed out to them, but that may be a gross misinterpretation of the moment. The point is not that children do not understand racial difference. The children understand that Janie is of a different race; they can recognize her in the photo. It is Janie herself who lacks self-knowledge. Until that moment, she cannot associate herself and her identity with that of others who are deemed "colored" and thus treated differently.

That is a digression, but it goes to show how badly we have wanted to see people as born blind to racial difference, and it might explain why the problem of the color-line, what DuBois called the most important problem of the 20th century, might also be the most important one of the 21st, and probably was of the 18th and 19th centuries as well.

Omi and Winant have a famous definition of racial formation as "a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies." The work of the researchers mentioned in this article seem to support that:

We might imagine we're creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender—they're plainly visible. Even if no teacher or parent mentions race, kids will use skin color on their own, the same way they use T-shirt colors. Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much further—believing that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do. Anything a child doesn't like thus belongs to those who look the least similar to him. The spontaneous tendency to assume your group shares characteristics—such as niceness, or smarts—is called essentialism.

It is race's apparentness, its obviousness, that makes it the organizing principle of difference. We can see the difference, and we ascribe meanings to that difference.

It's all very fascinating, and I'm looking forward to responses to the article on other blogs.

Insane People

2009-09-03T09:12:00.002-05:00

Yglesia writes:

Probably the biggest moral of the story is that the contemporary conservative movement is run by crazy people with no scruples, who’ll turn anything into a pretext to level wild accusations.

Thanks to Lexis Nexis, I found an article written by Thomas Ferraro of the AP in 1991 on Bush's speech to school children. Probably in violation of copyright law, I repost it here:

With reports showing American students lagging behind, President Bush challenged them in a televised address Tuesday to take responsibility for their own fate and hit the books.

''Education means the differences between a good future and a lousy one,'' said Bush, sitting before a camera in an eighth grade classroom at Alice Deal Junior High in the nation's capital.

The self-proclaimed ''Education President,'' criticized for paying inadequate attention to schools himself, delivered his pep talk a day after release of the latest in a series of studies on the grim state of American education.

The report found that the nation has a long way to go to reach president's education goals, which include making students No. 1 in the world in math and science by the year 2000.

The report by Bush's National Education Goals Panel showed that five of six eighth graders don't know enough math to move up to the ninth grade, and most have difficulty reading a newspaper.

Bush's address was beamed nationwide and the White House expressed hope that it was shown at virtually all of the country's 110,000 schools, which have a combined enrollment of 46.8 million.

Although students at Alice Deal Junior High, a magnet school in the city's fashionable northwest, gave Bush a big hand when he arrived, many were fidgeting by the time he finished his 12-minute speech.

The president spoke frankly.

''I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid,'' Bush said. He implored youngsters to ''block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart'' and ''work harder, learn more.''

He said, ''Let's put it on the line. You've got the brains. Now put them to work. Not for me, but for you.''

Among Bush's six education goals for year 2000 is making schools safe and drug free. On Monday, for the fourth time in a month, there was a shooting at a Washington area high school.

''As a student, you have the right to be physically safe at school,'' Bush told students. ''Demand discipline. If good people chicken out, bad people take control.''

Bush has been accused by Democrats of focusing most of his attention on foreign policy at the expense of domestic concerns, including education.

Although the president's top education goal is making all children ''ready to learn'' by the time they start school, he has yet to seek full funding of the Head Start program.

Other education goals include: raising the high school graduation rate from 83 percent to 90 percent; obtaining 100 percent literacy among adults, and making students competent in all the basics.

Bush closed his address by saying, ''Let me leave you with a simple message: Every time you walk through that door, make it your mission to get a good education.''

He also asked students ''let me know how you are doing. Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals.''

Lucas Fleirscher, president of the school's 9th grade class, presented Bush with a sweatshirt inscribed with the message: ''A Child is a Terrible Thing to Waste.''

Please note that Bush asked kids to "Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals."

Reading

2009-08-31T18:40:00.005-05:00

I was always a voracious reader as a child. Reading that was required for school barely pinged my radar; I read it and moved on to something else, like the Narnia Chronicles or Madeline L'Engle or Alcott or Hardy. I liked doing well in school, so I liked doing the reading and getting a good grade on the test. I remember not liking Silas Marner and hating Great Expectations. I was meh on MacBeth but really *liked* Hamlet.

There's a mini-debate going on in the blogosphere over English classes that no longer center around required reading but instead are run as reading workshops in which students choose their own books. The NY Times reports, Meg Cabot responds and points to an essay on the Accelerated Reader program and Smart Bitches responds to Cabot as does Linda Holmes of NPR. Joanne Jacobs wants to see both required common reading and reading choice.

A lot of this comes down to effective teaching, I think. I've gained a bit of a rep in my college for teaching "The Office" in my lit survey class. But I taught it alongside "Bartleby the Scrivener" and "Death of a Salesman," two texts I usually find difficult to engage students in. I throw in "Dirge" by Kenneth Fearing, too, and it makes a nice little cohesive unit about work, consumerism, capitalism, and masculinity. I recently watched "Office Space" for the first time (yeah, I know--in my defense it came out while I was 6 months pregnant with my first child) and Peter is a kind of Bartleby-esque figure.

I think Cabot misses the boat totally, though. It seems to me we have a series of challenges when it comes to reading. We have to:
*get students to see value in reading (Cabot would argue therefore we have to let them read what they want)
*continually challenge students to read more complex language (one of the arguments for developmentally contructed reading lists--increase the challenge bit by bit)
*teach students about how language works.

This latter aspect is where Cabot misses the boat, but I have heard her complaint echoed again and again, by students and by friends who complain about their days in high school. She writes:

I don’t think there should be mandatory reading lists in school. I cannot think of a single book I enjoyed that I was required to read in school….

…with the exceptions of books I had read before they were assigned to me in school, like To Kill A Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye, which were then ruined by someone going on and on about all the “symbolism” in them, and what the authors really meant, which, as an author myself, I can tell you–THE PEOPLE WRITING ABOUT THESE BOOKS DO NOT KNOW. Seriously. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE AUTHOR REALLY MEANT AT ALL, AND ARE MORE THAN LIKELY WRONG. THIS IS WHY THESE AUTHORS ARE IN HIDING.

How is it that understanding symbolism can *ruin* a book for someone?

Furthermore, isn't understanding symbolism (and metaphor and tone) a crucial lifelong learning skill? Isn't it essential to understand how writers can influence us with their words? Doesn't symbolism, metaphor and tone exist outside of fictional writing?

When I'm teaching writing, I often use a passage from this essay, written by Mona Charen:

On Dec. 10, 2003, freedom took two body blows. The first was the decision by the Supreme Court of the United States to permit the limitation of political speech. This is not exotic dancing or flag burning. This is "Vote for Sam Smith" -- the beating heart of our democracy. The Supreme Court has just tied a gag around our mouths, and most of the intellectual class is delighted....

Liberals have howled for three solid years now that in 2000, the conservatives on the court stampeded over the law to place their preferred candidate in the White House. (The truth is that the Democrats had successfully suborned the Florida Supreme Court to flout the law and the U.S. Supreme Court merely stopped them from hijacking the election.) But look carefully at McConnell vs. Federal Election Commission, and what do you find? The conservatives on the court were vehemently opposed to this assault on speech despite the fact that these restrictions will undoubtedly favor incumbents.

When my students are done reading it, I ask them if they know what Charen is talking about. They have no clue. I say, well, is it good or bad? They know it's bad. In this case, it's so obvious that Charen is deliberately using imagery of violence to describe McCain-Feingold.

It's important that they learn those skills, and richly written literature can help them learn. They need to understand how word choice contributes to tone because they need to be able to interpret tone in an age where most communication is done online in written language. They may not want to read "Bartleby the Scrivener," but they need to understand precisely how pompous and self-serving the narrator is, and how Melville is crafting the story to mock the narrator.

Scholarship of popular culture can help draw out the ways that seemingly unserious writers also use the elements of literature, patterns of imagery, meaningful symbols, in order to craft a particular response from readers. Plot is one element, but use of language is another.

I am never one who believes in the One True Way of teaching something. My feeling is that you have to use what works with that group of students and adapt accordingly. This is why I would find it hard to teach anywhere with a standardized curriculum, and I'll be honest that I chafe a bit against having a required textbook. The problem is there is so much at stake--or so much perceived to be at stake--with K-12 education that it's difficult to be that adaptable.

I think if we had less high stakes testing, we could see more experimenting from teachers trying to increase the challenge of the reading selections while still promoting the joy of reading.

2009-08-28T20:35:00.002-05:00

I'd like to think that any officer would have noticed something weird, but I suspect it was a good thing that the officers who first met Philip Garrido and his two daughters at UCBerkeley were women. (This link doesn't mention one officer's name, but I'm pretty sure from a different article that both officers were women.)

I'm telling you--that area of CA is weird. Tracy (where Melissa Huckaby allegedly murdered Sandra Cantu and where the Schumachers kept a teenage boy imprisoned) is about an hour away.

2009-08-25T20:58:00.005-05:00

I understand that what I am about to write has absolutely no basis in what anyone would consider acceptable evidence. It's just a hunch.

But my gd, Katie Roiphe must be miserable.

My general experience is that conservatives and people who make really really stupid arguments (note: these two groups usually consist of the same people) usually are projecting their own feelings on others. The more bizarre and out-there the accusation, the more likely it is that they're masking their own feelings.

"Why won't feminists admit the pleasure of infants?" the subhead to Roiphe's article reads. She is amazed that her favorite feminist authors never had children or had only one. She sees feminist writers as minimizing the pleasures of motherhood:

Historically, feminists have emphasized the difficulty, the drudgery of new motherhood. They have tried to analogize childcare to the work of men; and so for a long time, women have called motherhood a "vocation." The act of caring for a baby is demanding, and arduous, of course, but it is wilder and more narcotic than any kind of work I have ever done.

I think Roiphe has mixed up cause and effect. The only women writers that men would take seriously were childless and.or who wrote about how motherhood was a vocation. If they started writing about the pleasures of motherhood, they would be taken far less seriously. Many writers have pushed through those barriers and written about motherhood. Tillie Olsen wrote about the pleasures and pains of motherhood in "Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother: A Daybook." From "Tell Me a Riddle," when Eva visits her daughter and brand new granddaughter:

"A new baby. How many warm seductive babies."

From "I Stand Here Ironing":

"She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur."

Roiphe's argument only makes sense if you ignore the many feminist writers who did write about the pleasures of motherhood. Or it makes sense as the ravings of a woman who is trying to persuade herself and those who know her of her devotion to her child.

Cape Cod or Bust? Bust.

2009-08-20T11:16:00.002-05:00

My friend Ernie used to always say "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it."

I wished for some quiet time to read and enjoy sitting by the pond at the house we're renting on Cape Cod.

Well, I got it. Tuesday night we were biking back from an ice cream place when a biking clusterfuck happened, I tipped over and couldn't get my right foot out of the pedal clip in time. Broke my ankle: spiral fracture of the distal fibula. I'd post a pic of the beautiful wishbone-shaped fracture as seen on my x-ray, but I don't have a scanner, and the CD they gave me with my images works only on Windoze, and I haven't set up my Macbook to run Windoze yet.

I am still amazed that apparently I did not let lose any "unacceptable" language in front of the kids when I fell because it hurt so badly I thought I was going to throw up.

Yesterday I spent most of the day getting it cared for. First thing was to get an in-network doctor to look at it. That was a bitch and a half. I spoke to a "find a physician outside of RI" rep (she was located in Minnesota) and a customer service rep, and then my husband spoke to a CS rep because he had a different question about the deductible. It ends up we have 3 kinds of deductibles! A deductible for out of network care, a deductible for an individual's uncovered expenses and a deductible for the family's uncovered expenses. Wow.

Anyway, what no one at BCBS could tell me was that the walk-in center in Harwich was part of Cape COd Hospital which WAS covered under BCBS. However, the provider directory says no such thing. It also says there are no orthopedists in my plan within 50 miles of my zip code.

Fuck this health insurance/health care system. Just fuck it. Anyway, $125 later ($25 for the walk-in center to x-ray my foot and send me to CCH, which was $100 for ER care) and $8 for the crutches, which could be purchased only from a place in Yarmouth, apparently, I made it home, exhausted. We were all exhausted--kids, husband, me.

Now I have to contemplate the difficulties of what happens when a parent is incapacitated. I have crutches, but I can barely get around in them today. My body is still adjusting to having to use different muscles, and I'm sore all over. It doesn't feel bad enough to use pain meds, but maybe I should.

The other issue is that apparently the mom is not allowed to get sick/incapacitated. My kids are so nonplussed they don't know what to do. They're all starting to realize, I think, how much they depend on me keeping everything running smoothly. Right now they're in annoying stage. "Pick the crap up off the floor so I don't trip over it getting around on my crutches" is met with blank stares or annoyed sighs. Asking them to get me something so Ken doesn't have to run around to do it is met with resistance. Asperger's boy is actually a bit better than his older and supposedly more mature sister, who seems personally offended by my injury.

I think today is emotional angst day, though, so I'm willing to give it a little longer. Ken is going to talk to them while they're out on their outing. Meanwhile, my goal is to accomplish the following:
1. Bathe somehow. I stink. I swear, I needed a shower before the accident. It's way worse now.
2. Read my book (Hot Pursuit by Suzanne Brockmann).
3. Watch Monday's ep of The Closer.

I also have to work through a whole lot of other problems. I broke my right ankle, so I can't drive. How I am supposed to parent when I can't drive, I don't know. Also, we have 2 cars here on the Cape, and I have to figure out how to get two cars home when we have one driver. I also have to find an orthopedist to get me a cast, and I have to find out how long it's going to be so I can figure out how I'm going to get to and from work when it starts for me on September 2.

Some vacation! And it started so nicely. :(

Vacation at the Cape

2009-08-16T21:42:00.003-05:00

The family and I have arrived at our rental house on Cape Cod. The goal for the next week: Read lots of books, rest, relax, recharge, and ride my bike on the Cape's famous Rail Trail.

My son digs into the sand on our first night here:

More Summer Camp

2009-08-01T11:02:00.003-05:00

Via DoubleX (which I almost never read), I found this article on a Berkeley mom's guilt over sending her 6 year old to day camp 3 out of 12 weeks of summer.

I really do think that what we need is to have more *longer-lasting* camps, not these one-week things. The longer camps give kids the time to build relationships and friendships. For the self-employed who have a little more flexibility, like the author of this article, the kids could go to camp for a shorter day, not 9 to 5 or 8:30 to 3:30.

I'm also interested in how so many of these articles are written by urban-ish moms from Berkeley or the NYC area. How about moms in Birmingham, Alabama? What do they do? Moms in Fargo, ND? Moms in Greene, NY? Why is it always Berkeley-area moms or NYC-area moms?

Lying

2009-07-31T11:23:00.001-05:00

No wonder this country is so fucked up.

Mom lies and teaches her kids to lie in order to save money.. Via Consumerist.

I'm with Ben: "Can't wait to hear what this girl starts lying about to her mother when she's 16."

ZooCamp

2009-07-31T08:55:00.004-05:00

My kids have been attending camp at the local zoo this week. First, we love the zoo, though we know it so well by now that there are few to no surprises. So I think we thought ZooCamp would give us a peek inside at something we've never seen before. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case. It's just a camp that happens to take place at the zoo. They don't really get an inside look behind the scenes, or learn to be zookeepers or anything like that.

My 10 year old daughter is doing fine, but my 7 year old son is not as happy. I think he expected more. Right now, he's at his tennis class, which he prefers to ZooCamp. I'll pick him up in 15 minutes and bring him to camp for the last day.

So I am a bit underwhelmed by ZooCamp and happy as usual with the camp the kids have been attending the rest of the summer. Maybe it's my cautious/transition-disliking kids, but I am happier with a camp where there is more continuity. The camp run at the school across the street offers my kids a familiar set of friends and counselors and activities. There are new people every summer, but not the constant barrage of change.

I know many parents during the summer ferry kids from soccer camp to baseball camp to art camp to zoo camp--a different camp every week or two. Obviously, this works best for the parents/kids or they wouldn't do it, but in my pessimistic, half-empty-glass sort of way, I can't help wondering what is lost when we send kids to a different camp every week. They learn to make friends in one-week increments, then move on. There's no community. What is the chance that we will have playdates with the friend S made in ZooCamp? She lives in TownofCorruption, a good 20-30 minute drive away. I've never met her parents. On the other hand, at the camp across the street, S has made friends with H. H is not in her school (she's in the other elementary school in our town) but they girls will see each other again in middle school in a year. We might even set up a playdate or two; I can meet her parents more easily. S worked diligently for days on a birthday present (a friendship bracelet/necklace thing) for H. She can't build that kind of connection with someone from ZooCamp.

Exposing kids to new things is nice, but I guess I lean more toward deepening and building on what's already there. Maybe it's because I lack deep relationships in this community because I didn't grow up here.

Drinking

2009-07-28T12:40:00.002-05:00

So, I was at the dentist yesterday for my semi-annual cleaning, and the hygienist was late getting to me, which is unusual. When she came out, she told me why she was late. She had left her 13 and 9 year old sons home alone today and they had just called her because some guy drove up in a truck and started taking pics of their house, even walking around on their deck. The kids didn't call the police first because they were worried that they'd get their parents in trouble for leaving them home alone. First, I have the urge to submit this story to Free Range Kids. I was surprised to hear another hygienist she was telling complain about how the kids' concern showed that "the government" was interfering too much in our lives. I find it interesting how sometimes the police are the "government" and sometimes they are just citizens doing their jobs to protect us from people yelling in their own homes.

Second, I was talking with her a bit to calm her down and reassure her, and we got on the subject of parents leaving their kids alone, and we started talking about this story. To sum up, a bunch of kids from a neighboring town were drinking and boating, and one of the kids deliberately ran over another kid with the boat. He was recently convicted, and this story tells the most complete story of what happened that day.

Anyway, she was telling me that she hangs out with families from this town because of hockey, and one thing she noticed is that the kids' parents DRINK so much. Their idea of any good time is to drink till they're drunk. If they have a spare hour while the kids are at practice, they go out for a drink. So it's no wonder drinking is such a horrible problem in that town. I mean, sure, kids will probably drink as part of growing up and experimentation, etc., but the culture of drinking is really crazy. And you can see from that article that the day of the accident, those kids had been drinking since lunchtime.

So it was interesting for me to run across this post via Atrios today. We recognize binge drinking as a problem, but do we understand how we contribute to it? Do we show our kids how to have fun without beer or wine?

Whether to change the drinking age is a popular topic for my student writers (I've pretty much banned it for a while because I'm so tired of it). I find that students tend to break down 50-50 on whether to lower the drinking age to 18. Many observe that we will just lower the age when students start to drink. I think they're onto something. The reason why kids will simply start drinking sooner is because they equate drinking with fun. And why shouldn't they? We adults do.

2009-07-27T08:18:00.002-05:00

I am by nature fairly cautious. As a child I didn't go to a lot of new and different places on my own, and even as an adult I like to do new things, but I plan/anticipate them very carefully.

So to send my kids to Zoo Camp for one week (instead of their usual summer camp where we know all the counselors and it's right across the street) is a major stressor for me. I became one of *those* parents. The hovering one telling the counselors 20 different things about E that they will likely (and rightfully) ignore. I walked away totally embarrassed by myself.

If I'm this way for a one-week Zoo Camp, what will I be like when they go to college? Or does it get better?

Academia

2009-07-24T09:05:00.003-05:00

Once again, I am amazed at how different departmental culture is in different academic institutions.

Dr. Crazy asserted her right (now that she is tenured) not to have to be a team player and pick up the slack for other faculty who have child care commitments. I understand on one level, but on another, I'm pretty concerned about her attitude.

My context is that I work in a department where we all look out for each other and help each other out. Some of us have child care commitments, some of us have elderly parents, some of us have classes (we have a few faculty currently in PhD programs). We have a 2-week teaching opportunity in Asia, and we don't control the schedule. If the opportunity happens during the term, we pitch in and sub for the other faculty so they can go. I've taken on last minute schedule changes so that I could accommodate another faculty member for a non-child-related reason.

Furthermore, there are opportunities that I as a parent of young children can NOT take. I just learned that my colleague is going to Europe to teach in one of our programs next spring. I have been DYING to have that opportunity. I can't take it because I have young children, and I would have to leave them behind for 3 months. I would take them with me, but I am not allowed to teach in the program with my children there. How fair is that? Only the childless or those with older children get that opportunity. I hate it. I don't want to wait 10 more years (my son is 7) to teach there. But that's the way it is.

I think part of the solution to this problem is that a chair/dean has to create the culture of support and reinforce the idea that everyone is sacrificing. One term, we had 3 faculty in my college (of Arts and Sciences) who were severely ill, enough to take significant time off. The 11 faculty who helped out during that time were honored at our end of the year awards ceremony. They got nothing really, except they got the thanks of everyone and the acknowledgement that what they had done was above and beyond. That's the kind of thing departments can do. People usually don't mind making sacrifices if they feel that people appreciate them and do not take their work for granted.

I understand that Dr. Crazy lives in a particular university/department culture where she had to assert her rights or be given the less desirable teaching times. But what I would suggest to Dr. Crazy is that now that she has tenure, she could use her new-found power not to simply assert only *her* rights in a Randian way, but also to change the culture of her department. I hope she doesn't just sit back in her office with her books and her computer and pat herself on the back for asserting herself. Some day she may need consideration for a struggle to balance life and work, and I hope she would have helped to change her department culture by then instead of simply saying "now it's my turn" and victimizing some other untenured faculty member in her department the same way she was.

Gates and Police Power

2009-07-24T07:29:00.003-05:00

I had an epiphany last night while thinking about responses to the Gates case.

To preface, I've been talking about it on an online forum with several male Republicans in my town. All of them have in the past shown extreme concern about abuses of state power (IOW, they frequently complain about Obama being a fascist or a socialist).

This concern is reflected in the posts of older white male Republicans across the country. You can read their comments on blog posts and online articles, and you know what their political views are.

What strikes me is that these men normally come across as libertarian and anti-state. Via Alicublog I found this entry by Jonah Goldberg:

conservatives, like Americans generally, are of two views when it comes to cops. One side is inclined to distrust them, see them as potential abusers of authority — mere men with badges and guns. Another side is deferential to police. That is not to say they condone abuse or sanction cops being above the law. But they give cops the benefit of the doubt for a host of reasons.

Here's my epiphany: I look at those conservatives who distrust cops, and I see their anger at Gates. And I realize what the deal is.

They're angry because Gates did what they WISH they could do but are too afraid to: he challenged the police for invading his home. Older conservative men bluster all the time about "the state" abusing its power, coming into our homes. I had an argument yesterday with a fire fighter who was complaining that Obama's health care reform would be a "violation of the 4th Amendment"! LOL! I'm still trying to figure out that one.

This is just another version of the Yellow Elephants. These are the men who define manhood a certain way, assert their support for this construction of manhood, then fail to live up to it themselves.

It has to gall the crap out of them that an older physically disabled black man asserted the very rights they demand on a regular basis. They dream of exerting their power as citizens, the right to control their territory (their homes). But they defer to police authority because they fear the consequences.

And here's Gates, who talked back, demanded badge numbers, asserted his civil rights to be in his own house, expressed anger--all the things they wish they could have done in a similar situation.

But to assert that he acted legitimately, that he acted the way they wish they could? That would mean that a black man was a better man than they could ever be.

And we can't have that, can we?

Skip Gates

2009-07-22T09:41:00.003-05:00

I find myself continuing to be enraged and outraged and every kind of raged over the arrest of Skip Gates and the surrounding commentary. I had written a long post, but then I found that much of what I was saying had been said elsewhere.

I'll point out this post by a lawyer writing about the police officer's actions. Henry at CT already made a similar point.

I find that what I am most interested in is the issue of the officer's abuse of power, which I believe is inflected by racism, but which is endemic in way too many police departments these days. We watch the news from Iran and shudder in horror over the police violence against protesters there, but we hardly blink when a police officer in our own backyard abuses his power because he's pissed off that someone has yelled at him. I'm interested in how immune, how numb we have become to police abuse of power and violations of our civil rights in the name of "safety."

Full disclosure: Gates was my professor as an undergrad and grad student. I wouldn't be in academia if it weren't for him. He's the person who told me to go to grad school and get a PhD in English.

Driving While Talking/Texting

2009-07-19T11:18:00.002-05:00

Via Yglesias, I read this article.

I can't say I have never talked on the phone while driving, though I can't remember the last time I did it. I can say I have never texted while driving. I rarely talk on my cell and text even less often. Cellphones are not part of my lifestyle.

I do change songs on my iPod a lot, and often I have to look at the iPod screen to do so. Even then it's a major distraction.

Over at 11D we were talking about kids and unstructured time and the fears of letting kids bike or walk around the neighborhood. The real danger, as I see it, isn't the possibility that my kids will be kidnapped or molested. It's that they'll be hit by cars.

Last summer, a mother was walking with her daughter (on a bike) down one of our local streets. A car careened towards them. The mother pushed her daughter out of the way and was hit herself - and killed. They found her teeth in the grill of the car. That street is not precisely the one that is the direct route to my daughter's best friend's house, but it is a parallel/similar street, very windy, no sidewalks.

I am sorely tempted to have a sign next to me on the car seat, and whenever I see someone on a cell phone, I will put up the sign, which will read "Get off your fucking cell before you kill someone." Unfortunately for my desire for confrontation, I do recognize that such a sign would probably lead to more distraction and disruption on the road and put people's lives in danger.

I wish police would more frequently enforce restrictions on driving while on the cell. Of course, they themselves are on their cells a lot; a couple of days ago, a squad car turned its lights on next to me, and when I looked over to see if the officer wanted me to pull over, I saw he was on a cell phone talking.

*sigh*

Mush for brains

2009-07-08T09:14:00.002-05:00

No, not Sarah Palin. ;) Me!

Today is my son's 7th birthday, which followed his sister's 10th birthday by 12 days. It's amazing how much work it is to prepare for children's birthdays when you're not even giving them a party.

I made another one of my famous cakes. I'm not *good* at it, but I enjoy creating cakes for the kids' birthdays. Today's cake was a jungle safari cake, and we brought it to his summer camp this morning for them to enjoy later.

The past few weeks have been overwhelmingly busy. For six months, I had been on a waiting list for my son to see a psychologist who specializes in "twice exceptional" children, children who are gifted and are neuro-atypical in some way (ADD, Aspergers, etc). For three months I had been trying to adopt a dog. We were looking at Brittany spaniels in need of rescue, but the process was difficult. And then for a month, the new pool I'd bought was sitting on my patio still in the box getting rained on as we endured one of the rainiest Junes on record.

In the space of 3 days, we 1. had our first psych appt, 2. got a dog, and 3. put up the pool. I needed a Valium IV by the end of the weekend. I settled for a beer or two. :)

In the meantime I'm teaching a course on Mondays and Wednesdays through July 22, which I probably need to get ready for now.

Unions and salaries and overtime pay

2009-06-29T12:11:00.002-05:00

A commenter at 11D contended that academic K-12 teachers resent/have resented in the past, PE teachers for having less work to do. I disagreed and mentioned that my father had never complained about PE teachers. Well, when I saw him this weekend, I asked him, and he said yes, he and the other teachers resented the PE teachers for doing less work and making the same money.

That led to a discussion that is kind of interesting to me. My dad obsreved that teaching is the only job where you get paid *less* for overtime. As we had just spent the previous evening talking with my NYPD brother-in-law about his desire to work as much overtime as possible so he can get the biggest pension possible when he retires next month (at age 41, may I add), I realized how true that is! Even my overloads as a professor aren't really as much as my full-time salary.

I also just ran across this article in my RSS feed. People always blame teachers for refusing to do extra, for, as Mathews puts it, "It is, [critics of teacher unions] contend, a sign of how unions dumb down public education by focusing on salaries, not learning."

I cannot even imagine expecting a police officer agreeing to work an extra hour a week for no money. And they have people's safety in their hands.

Frazzled

2009-06-24T21:47:00.002-05:00

I've had a rough week, with the dance recital trauma of last weekend, then being on my own with the kids for 2 days while my husband was at a conference, and of course the usual end-of-year stuff. Not to mention that my daughter's birthday is Friday and I'm trying to not be a failure. It's hard for me not to take so much responsibility for this, but I am not working now, and my husband is pretty busy at work. I just work better when I'm bouncing off someone else.

But today was the last day of school. I went in to volunteer for the ice cream party at my daughter's class only to find that they started 15 minutes early and were done by 1:30. So I sauntered through the halls, walked past my son's classroom, and realized pretty much every teacher was showing the kids a movie. Unfortunately, that's the consequence of the miserable weather we've been having. It's been 64 degrees and damp/drizzly for the past week.

The school is now having a kind of moving-up day routine/ritual. All students are told who their teacher will be next year and are brought to the classroom to meet (her) (all the teachers are female here). So my kids found out who their teacher would be and who would be in their class.

We're all kind of disappointed. My daughter is not in a class with either of her two best friends. My son is apparently in a class with none of the boys from his current class. I couldn't get him to identify anyone who is in his new class. He's not the most observant, so this may mean little, but I asked about all the kids I knew from kindergarten to see if they were in his class. He only could name one kid I knew.

This will be great for his social skills development. Not.

When it comes to teacher assignment, I always feel so powerless. I'm powerless in part because I lack information. I simply don't know these teachers! I am totally ignorant about the 5th grade teachers, and though I should have some knowledge of 2nd grade because my daughter's already been through it, I don't. Several second grade teachers retired after she moved up.

But I also feel powerless because the teachers work out all the classes based on what they know of the students. It's a reminder that my kid's needs aren't paramount. It's quite possible that his needs will be at odds with those of the majority of students. I may want my son to be in a class with Z, but maybe it's not the best thing for Z or for other kids.

The only thing I put my foot down about is that I found out that one of the second grade teachers would be on maternity leave for the first month of the school year, and I requested my son not go into that class. Why? Well, it takes E a while to warm up and become comfortable with someone. I didn't want him to have to go through it twice.

He is not feeling anxious about next year yet; his summer vacation has just begun, and he has 2 months of fun ahead of him. But for me, the dread is already creeping in. It's the dread of wondering whether I've done the right thing. Have I advocated for him enough? Should I have known more about how to help him succeed in school?

I don't think I can wait 2 months to find out.

A Scourge of Humanity

2009-06-19T22:04:00.001-05:00

We must now discuss the true enemy of common sense and rationality and all that is good in the world.

The dance recital.

Why are dance recitals so long? Is there any reason why they should last from 5:30 to almost 9 pm on a Friday night?

And why don't they serve wine, beer and hard liquor at these events?

Elementary and Middle School

2009-06-17T09:15:00.003-05:00

I attended a School Committee meeting recently and learned of a few changes.

First, the elementary school is going to start using standards-based grading. This will not be ABCDF or 100-pt grading. Instead, a 1-4 scale will be used, with the numbers referring to whether the child has met the standards. The goal would be to have all students with 3 or 4 by the end of the year, and parents should not be surprised if their kids have 1 or 2 early in the year. It means we will have to rethink how we respond to grades.

The good news is that the standards will be pretty clearly spelled out, so we will know what to work on with our kids at home. "Can count to 100"--well, I can help with that. "Can add fractions." Yep, I can help with that, too.

Second, the middle school is eliminating tracking. I'm ambivalent about this. On one hand, I was tracked myself and I seem to have benefited. That's the system of education I knew, I was familiar with. On the other hand, Stamford public schools have eliminated tracking in middle schools and seen benefits for the lower-performing students, and they've resisted un-tracking the longest. The article says:

These mixed-ability classes have reported fewer behavior problems and better grades for struggling students, but have also drawn complaints of boredom from some high-performing students who say they are not learning as much.

I'd be concerned except that I remember being bored even in my classes, which were "advanced."

Back in the 90s I used to post about these kinds of issues on misc.education, taking on many conservative critics of public education, teacher unions, and "outcomes-based education." Back then the bogeyman was "whole language" reading curricula, which was denounced in favor of phonics. Parents were also Deeply Concerned that eliminating tracking would make it harder for their gifted children to learn.

And now I have my own kids. One thrives in school and does very well. The other does very well, and damned if I can tell if he's thriving. His grades are good. He's got "quirks," mainly in the social skills area, though I feel like he's a little bit quirky in terms of attention, sensory processing, and receptive communication skills as well. I wish they were teaching him more social skills and less academics, to be honest, because I can co-teach academics, but I apparently lack social skills and/or the ability to teach them.

My kids may be gifted. But day after day, what I keep coming back to is not worrying about whether they should be learning algebra tomorrow, but about their social skills, their emotional intelligence. My daughter is progressing pretty well, though we're about to start one of the most difficult phases for a girl, the 5th to 9th grade years. My son can recite the capitals of little-known countries and can recognize and draw the flag of Nepal. But he can't seem to make a friend at recess (I guess the other boys and girls have little interest in knowing where Burundi is).

Nation's Capital

2009-06-09T09:45:00.003-05:00

We just got back from a trip to Washington, DC, where I attended the Teaching Professor conference and saw the sights with my family.

I like the Teaching Professor conference because it's an extremely pragmatic conference, filled with great tidbits of info and new ideas to try. I'll post about some of my thoughts on it later, but for now I'd like to talk about Washington, DC.

As a city, DC gets a lot of criticism. However, I do believe they do an excellent job of creating and maintaining a public space. The Mall is an amazing creation, if you think about it. We saw the monuments via a Bike the Sites tour, which is a fabulous way to see many of the monuments in 3 hours). It was expensive, costing us $140 as a family, but well worth the money.

I was last in DC when Sophie was 18 months old, and before that I had made a few short visits for rallies in support of reproductive freedom. Since I last visited, a few new memorials have popped up: the World War II Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and the FDR Memorial.

I find the World War II Memorial to be incredibly ostentatious and even somewhat tacky. It seems kind of palatial and reminds me of Versailles a bit. I just Googled a bit to find out if others felt the same way, and the short answe ris yes. From Daniel Honan, posting on HNN:

"Unfortunately, the World War II Memorial has less in common with the classical "temples of democracy" built in Washington during the 1930s than it does with Albert Speer's 'stripped classicism' that was fashionable in Nazi Germany. Stripped classicism involves classical designs reduced to their structural elements and rendered on an immense scale intended to overwhelm the spectator with the experience of raw power."

I also find the FDR Memorial to be a bit much. It consists of 4 large "rooms," each one representing one term of his presidency. We had to walk our bikes through it, and it seemed kind of endless. It's beautiful, and I do like the way it evokes the period of the Great Depression and honors Eleanor Roosevelt. But it's HUGE.

The Korean War Memorial is my favorite. For some reason, it touches me in a way the Vietnam Memorial doesn't (though I admire the Vietnam Memorial greatly). The figures seems to rise up out of the earth, a group of men alert to danger, trudging through the swamps. For a moment, you wonder if you are the enemy they are watching for. I find it discomfiting, though in a good way.

I'm also interesting in why all these monuments popped up during the last 2 decades. I can imagine that the WW2 vets were pretty pissed off that the Vietnam vets got a memorial before they did, and this probably led to a kind of competition. Then of course the Korean vets had to get their due. But it feels so silly, in a way. And it does make me wonder how we will eventually remember the veterans of the Iraq wars, two of the most wrong-headed wars of American history.

Generalists vs. Specialists

2009-06-01T21:52:00.002-05:00

OK, how to square this (and Libby's response) with this?

Choice and Schools

2009-06-01T11:00:00.004-05:00

Will Richardson just tweeted that he thinks the impediment to real change in schools is the lack of choice. I disagree.

Coincidentally, Will also tweeted today about Michael Moore's post, Goodbye GM, which I wrote about in the previous post. I think the example of GM provides an excellent reason why change cannot always be driven by "choice." We have plenty of choices for cars. Within GM, I could at one time choose between Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Pontiac, and Saturn. And then there were the Fords, the Chryslers, the Dodges, and all the Japanese, Swedish, German, and Korean models out there.

And yet the auto companies would simply refuse to get with the times and create better cars that relied less on oil and more on alternative energy sources. These changes may finally come with the intervention of the Obama administration, or so Moore and I hope.

Schools do need to change, but there are very powerful forces out there working against it. Primary among these is the simple fact that people resist change. We know what works, and we hate to take risks on something that *might* work better. I'm not sure "choice" can make us willing to take risks.

I work in a great department with great people. I'm probably the only person in my department who knows or cares what Twitter is. About once a week I get a powerful urge to run into my boss's office, push her away from the computer, and set up some sort of useful Web 2.0 application to make her life easier. But I resist the urge, because I know she doesn't want it. No one in my department does.

Choice can be overwhelming. If we feel we lack information about our choices, we become paralyzed. We don't want to invest a lot of money in something when we don't know if it will work. Cars are expensive; few want to buy a hybrid or electric car without knowing for sure that it is well-tested. The same goes for education. It's expensive to educate our children.

The most powerful force working against change is fear. We fear taking risks when we don't have safety nets. And all our safety nets have been taken away over the past 20-30 years. That's why we seem stuck here in this period of history, sensing what can be but afraid to take the leap. Failure has too high of a cost.

GM

2009-06-01T08:38:00.003-05:00

I've spent some time this morning reading about GM and reminding myself of the documentary Roger and Me (which was the first movie my husband and I saw together; I remember knowing nothing about it except that Ken wanted to see it, and I was young and in love and went along with him. Good choice :).

Anyway, many have criticized Obama for going after the auto companies but letting the banks off easy. But I think he has been harder on the auto companies because they need to undergo substantive changes that they are reluctant to try, and the government needs to step in and make it happen. Specifically, what the auto companies need to do is provide alternatives to carbon-fuel-based automobiles. GM killed the electric car--why? Chris Paine suggested many factors, but among them was the influence of the oil companies, who didn't want to see a challenge to their monopoly. Obama's campaign ran on the promise of challenging our dependence on oil. I can't help but see that GM's bankruptcy is part of an overall plan to force the auto companies to change and to adopt new technologies.

Michael Moore just posted a letter titled Goodbye GM calling for just this kind of change. Among his suggestions:

Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

If Obama keeps people employed and provides education so that they can keep working in the factories in their hometowns, he will be a hero.

Moore's letter is full of excellent suggestions to use the GM factories as the foundation of a new transportation policy and a revitalized transportation industry. GM wasn't about to make that leap on their own; I'm glad we have a president who is willing to make it happen. Our country will be better for it.

What My Children Are Reading

2009-05-28T09:44:00.003-05:00

The Well-Read Child has started a new weekly meme: What Our Children Are Reading. I figured I'd hop on the bandwagon.

Sophie (almost 10 years old) is reading Landry News, by Andrew Clement. I have to sit down and read Clement's books myself. I read the summaries and I like Clement's themes of children's creativity and empowerment.

At school she is reading Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan with her reading group.

Eric (almost 7 years old) is reading the Peanuts collection at night with his dad. He also is reading through the Magic Tree House series. Eric's reading habits are interesting. He'll often see the book somewhere (floor, kitchen table, couch), open it and start reading it wherever he is until he finishes it. He has been making a list of the Magic Tree House books he has read. He has a paper where he's written all the ones he has read on one side and all the ones he hasn't on the other. I think he erases a title and writes it on the right side when he finishes a book.

Summer Plans and Goals

2009-05-26T07:57:00.004-05:00

Today begins my first day of summer vacation. Ironically, I am going to the office today to give a student a makeup exam, but really I will just be cleaning out my office and getting my papers in order. I coordinate the administration of the writing assessment, and at the end of every term I get to throw away the essays that are a year old. I also was able to donate several old textbooks to a Liberian student who plans to ship them to his home country. (We have parasitical textbook buyers who prowl our halls asking if we have any books to sell back, but I always feel that's wrong to do since I am usually given those books by textbook publishers.) So I should be able to clean out a year's worth of academic detritus from my office today.

I am also teaching in July. However, it is our developmental writing course, which runs for 8 2.5-hour classes on Monday and Wednesday afternoons. A quick look at my roster shows 18 students, none of whom I know (many former students tend to seek me out, but not this term). I do see quite a number of international students, which means I need to brush up on my ESL teaching strategies.

Today also brings the first day of my husband's workplace's summer hours. He works 8 to 4 in the summer, which means he is home between 4:30 and 5 most days, either because he bikes or dawdles. :) (It's really a 15 minute drive door to door.) But summer vacation also means that I take on the primary childcare duties, getting the kids to school or camp and, usually, picking them up. I also do the doctor's appointments and dentist appointments and anything else that comes up.

This is the part I hate, especially regarding my son. Recently, I turned over all allergy management to my husband for a few reasons. First, he tends to administer nebulizer treatments for asthma during their bedtime routine. Second, he also has allergies/respiratory issues, so it's something he understands better than I do. If I have the sniffles for more than a day, I'm a wreck. K and E deal with sniffles constantly in their lives. But also, my husband was asking me questions all the time, questions I couldn't answer, and he kept questioning the treatment options. Finally I said YOU GO, THEN. So even though he has to take time off work, he does it, and we're all happier.

My big project for the summer is to increase my measures of social cohesion (I've been reading this. I've lived here in CorruptSmallTown for 6 years. I know a bunch of people, but I don't really have a strong sense of community yet. I'm going to increase my volunteering this summer, not only to give back to the community, but to try to build some ties with people who care about the same things I do. I'll be volunteering in CorruptEasternCity as well. Maybe this will be the year I make a few new friends. I like my current friends, but I seem to need more.

Laptops

2009-05-12T20:14:00.002-05:00

It's hard to explain how I feel about laptops in the classroom. Timothy Burke has a post on the issue, and I replied in the comment thread a little, but my feelings on the issue are more complex than can be explained in comments.

I allowed laptops in the classroom at first. Then I discovered that Michael, who had a laptop, was sitting in the back row watching movies while I was teaching about literature. So I banned them for several years.

In the meantime, I started using the computer in the classroom more and more. During group work, I opened up a browser and welcomed students to come to the computer to look things up. As I moved from group to group, they'd ask questions, and I started turning on the projector and answering them, or showing clips (some of my students had never heard of John Wayne before! How am I supposed to discuss ideas about masculinity in the 1940s in relation to Death of a Salesman if they don't know who the 40s male icons are?). I show YouTube clips and bring up websites. I make all my appointments using Google Calendar. I let people use the Dictionary app on my iPod Touch (or on their own Touches). I used a Ning in my lit class to collect images, video clips, and even a map of Pershing Square from when I taught Chester Himes' "Lunching at the Ritzmore." I wanted them to see where the drifter, student, and black man were walking around, followed by the crowd and the police officer.

At a certain point, students in one class got so comfortable with me that they understood that I hated the texting but didn't mind additional info being raised, so Derek started using his smartphone for research during class discussions. He was pretty fast, and the other students didn't mind because it meant he was talking just a little bit less while researching. :)

We want our students not to be merely receptacles of information we give them in class, of course. We want them to be engaged. When I am exposed to new information, my brain explodes in really productive ways, and the energy transfer results in the generation of new knowledge. But sometimes that process is antithetical to the process of the classroom, which must be governed by a kind of consensus. One student can't run off on a tangent that, while educating him or her, may not benefit the rest of the class.

I find those opposed to bans on laptops in the classroom to be pedagogically teacher-centered, which may seem paradoxical, but hear (read?) me out. Deep in my heart, I don't care if students are texting or reading Facebook or doodling or daydreaming or even sleeping. When I'm in the groove of a discussion, and I have enough feedback from some students, I don't care what the others are doing. It's easier sometimes not to have to monitor the classroom for distracted students. I don't notice a lot of the distracted behaviors, in fact, unless I'm looking for them.

I only started to care about the texting etc. when students told me they didn't like it when other students did it. They told me that they thought other students who texted (or read Facebook or passed notes or slept) were disrespectful. And I realized that I am not the only person in the classroom. :) I know that sounds strange, but I hadn't thought about the impact of distracted students on other students. They resent those who are not paying attention. They are distracted by them. They breathe a sigh of relief when I call them out for talking to each other in class, because usually, at least one member of the pair didn't want to be rude and tell the instigator to be quiet. They want me to create a classroom environment that values learning, and they want not to be tempted by easy access to distractions.

I don't want to be their mother, so what I've started to do is explain the origin of my classroom "rules" I present each one as a problem. I validate the need of some people to behave in certain ways (getting up to use the bathroom; answering an important text) and the concerns of students who get distracted and bothered by other students' behaviors. In a way, I have to model for them (my students are usually first-year students) effective ways to express disapproval of distracting behaviors and control the classroom environment without having negative conflicts. Having been in a high school environment where the teacher is the enemy, they have to learn how to become partners with the college professor.

I'm almost done with the academic year and am thinking about next year. I have a community service project on social media that my fall class will be working on. However, I will ban latops at first. Then when we start the social media project, I'll raise the issue with the students and explain my reasons for banning laptops. I expect them to start connecting the dots and understanding that there is more to laptops/smartphones than just Facebook and texting. And that lesson may be more important than anything else I do in the class. We'll see.

Tweeter and the Monkey Man

2009-05-11T11:11:00.003-05:00

Saturday morning we packed up the car with enough clothes for one night, and we headed to the Lakes region of New Hampshire. Our plan was to visit the dog we are planning to adopt (he's undergoing some medical treatment - he's a rescue dog - and we won't be able to pick him up till the first week in June. But I figured we could make a little overnight trip out of it.

The Lakes region in NH in the spring is characterized by emptiness and blackflies. All the tourism brochures tout the beauties of the fall, the winter sports of the winter, and the fun of summer on the lake. Nothing about spring. I read somewhere it's called "Maple and Mud" season. Mm-hm.

After we visited the dog, we checked into our hotel, right on Lake Winnepesaukee, and immediately headed for the indoor pool, leading my daughter to pronounce this the "best hotel ever." Afterwards, we went to Friendly's, which I had promised my children. And on the way back, we stopped at Funspot, a famous local indoor arcade. I could play skee ball all day, but the kids were restless and wanted to bowl and play mini-golf. Sophie also played Pac-Man, which of course reminded us of this:

The next morning, we breakfasted and then scrapped our plans to go to the Squam Lake Nature Center because it was cold and windy. Instead, we went to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord. How anyone stays awake during those planetarium show, I have no idea. I got in a nice half-hour nap.

We returned home to find our yard robin celebrating mother's day with the hatching of 3 of her eggs:

The fourth one hatched overnight, but I was in a rush to get to my last 7 am class until September and couldn't pause to get a new photo.

And finally, the subject header of the post. Very often, we bring an iPod on car trips and end up listening to the kids' music. This time, I decided that it was mother's day and I should be able to listen to my music. My kids don't really get exposed to my favorite songs the way I was to my parents' music. I remember growing up listening to Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, doo-wop, and 45s like "Hooked on a Feeling." So I made the kids listen to Stevie Nicks, "Gold" by John Stewart, Paradise by the Dashboard Light, and Tweeter and the Monkey Man.

Now, what does Dylan have against Springsteen? Online sites claim it's a playful homage, but I can't help feeling a note of mockery. Maybe Dylan was resenting the fact that his son was obviously modeling himself after Springsteen:

Watching videos

2009-05-06T11:01:00.002-05:00

I'm fascinated by what my children find interesting.

Every night, my daughter and I settle in my bed for our bedtime routine with the laptop. We read all the websites in the LOLCats franchise, then we check out the videos on wimp.com, which bills itself as featuring the best videos on the Internet. And you know what? It does have many great videos on a variety of topics. I get a little tired of the manic Japanese game show clips, though a few can be funny, and he's overdoing it with the Britain's Got talent clips, but we see a lot of interesting stuff about animals, people, and machines. Very often, watching the clips leads my daughter and me to have conversations about life and human nature. She loves videos about card tricks, magic tricks, and hidden cameras where people are put in difficult interpersonal situations (i.e., watching a clerk act in a racist manner towards another customer), and we can see how they respond.

Here are a few we've watched recently:

Pranking people with water. Some of the pranks were funny, but Sophie was quick to identify when they started to go a little too far, like in the last prank when the man was being honored, and then he was pranked. She said, "He felt proud, but then he fell in the water and felt the opposite of proud."

Film about oxygen's relationships with other molecules. Sophie loved this so much we went looking for more examples. Unfortunately, it was a senior project aka one-time-thing.

Ping pong ball tricks. Sophie claims to have been bored, but Eric (whom we showed it to the next night) loved it. I was impressed.

Mythbusters on the Giant Lego Ball. Another one we showed to Eric. We all love Legos in our family, so it was very interesting to the kids, especially when ... well, when they busted the myth. Watch it. :)

Parasitic wasp controls caterpillar. The day after I saw this, I read an article about how a disease we get from cats can make humans more neurotic, and it made me wonder about the issue this clip raises: can parasitic beings control the minds/actions of the organisms they inhabit and what are the implications of this?

Bystanders help baby squirrel climb wall. I like to show examples of people being kind, especially to animals.

Pregnant woman song. I was never like this, I swear!