c u r b s i d e

Busy Actually Helping

2009-01-24T18:55:00.007-04:00

Saturday morning.

Our day started with an old lady and her walker carefully navigating an ill-plowed, ice-rutted street. Slowly, carefully, up the middle of the street, because the sidewalk was in even worse shape, and nobody from the city was around to do anything about it.

Just another Saturday in January.

Not just any Saturday, I suppose. Today, National Family Literacy Day will be celebrated in communities across the country - a few days early, but weekends are often family time.

In our region, several groups have joined with the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick in inviting the public to participate in an attempt to break a Guinness World Record: for “most children reading with an adult – multiple locations.”

Officially, since 1999, Family Literacy Day has been January 27th. This is a nation-wide initiative that promotes the importance of reading and learning together as a family. The promotion campaign originated with ABC Canada Literacy Foundation and founding Family Literacy Day sponsor, Honda Canada.

We used to hustle about in search of some P.R. event that could to mark the day. But, lately, we've been more busy actually helping families.

It can be a lonely business. Sometimes it seems like the gap between support for promotional campaigns that highlight the importance of literacy in families, and support for field work that actually aids families has never been greater.

Getting appropriately-leveled books to adults and children, listening to their successes and struggles, helping parents access emergency food and health resources in the midst of scarcity, acting as advocates, correcting school-taught misconceptions about early childhood education, making phone calls to child protection or the police.... and then doing what we need to to stay positive and healthy ourselves. This (mostly unpaid) work occupies our hearts and time completely.

First Bookwagon of 2009

2009-01-04T18:30:00.002-04:00

The first bookwagon of 2009. Yay!

Our work in the community has been shifting as the community itself has been undergoing changes. Last fall was a rough time in the neighbourhood. Besides the usual technical troubles...

... we lost about half our numbers when a large portion of the public housing community was torn down. Families relocated elsewhere throughout the city, and we stopped crossing Somerset Street.

You can see that the new route (in red) is significantly shorter.

As well, last fall, we reduced our runs to every other Saturday. We wanted to give time to building a community-run static library. As it turned out, the library hasn't been successful in the short-term, and our reduced wagon schedule appears to have cost us some users.

We talked about this during our last 2008 bookwagon, and again over Christmas. We've decided to go back to doing bookwagon every weekend. We're making the library as user-friendly and self-sustaining as possible, and we still believe in it, but we need to dedicate more hours to keeping and rebuilding our wagon clientele.

Build on success. Find what works. Do more of it.

That's the only way community literacy work can succeed.

* cross posted from qualities ~ communities ~ literacies

Closed for the Season

2008-10-05T19:22:00.000-04:00

I'm not making new posts here for awhile... maybe a long while. QLNB has its own news site, and my other community literacy posting will happen on my Q~C~L blog.

Just FYI

:)

45,000 Good Reads

2008-08-30T13:37:00.002-04:00

Robert Munsch's Stephanie's Ponytail is one of the 45,000 good reads experience by the kids in Crescent Valley, New Brunswick's largest public housing neighbourhood.

"45,000 Good Reads" is the theme of our upcoming 2008 Storytent thanking-funders / media-event.

The number refers to the total number of books read over the past six summers (according to our Summer Reading Club stats) plus the number of books borrowed from the bookwagon over the 200+ trips we've made since December 2003.

The yearly breakdown looks like this:

- 4,000 books recorded read in 2003 Storytent program
- 4,400 books recorded read in 2004 Storytent program
- 5,694 books recorded read in 2005 Storytent program
- 4,882 books recorded read in 2006 Storytent program
- 5023 books recorded read in 2007 Storytent program
- 4,414 books recorded read in 2008 Storytent program
sub total = 28,413
plus
- 17,224 running total from Bookwagon
________________________
- 45,637

You might notice the apparent drop-off in Storytent reading in 2008. That's a bit misleading and has a couple of causes.

One was a change in the neighbourhood. NB Housing (the provincial government sub-department responsible for public housing) is rebuilding one portion of the neighbourhood. In the early stages, this involves relocating families and tearing down the old structures. What that meant for us was declining attendance in one Storytent location.

Another cause of reduced numbers was the lowering of the average age of Storytent participants. In past years, we've mostly hosted 6 to 10 year olds, with a lesser number of younger children tagging along. This year, we hosted many more children aged 3 to 7. Kids in the younger range certainly wanted to read or be read to, but they weren't very interested in signing up for Summer Reading Club. Signing up for the SRC is optional, and we don't stress over kids who just want to read. Still, since we use our SRC stats to tally "children signed up" and "books recorded read" each summer, this year's tallies came out smaller than they might have.

Still, our weekly attendances were up over previous years. That is, although we had fewer children joining the SRC, we had more children attending per week right through to the end of the program. I suspect our number of over all participation remained somewhere around 160 - 180 kids.

In particular, two Storytent locations were more than a little busy. At one Coronation tent we recorded 36 children and 4 adults, and saw 30 or more children on three other occasions. Participation at this site never dipped below 11. From my staff notes:

30 kids at Coronation, with the wind picking up later on. I’m exhausted. Glad to see it. Glad to see it end.

By the way, Stephanie's Ponytail and two other Munsch classics, The Paperbag Princess and Mortimer, are easily the most-often read books in Storytent, with Phoebe Gilman's Jillian Jiggs close behind.

Year Six

2008-07-06T12:42:00.004-04:00

After a month of uncertainty around funding and partnerships (a dark, discouraging time), we're up and running again with the Quality Storytents program, year six. We finished our fifth "winter" of bookwagon. I don't have all the numbers put together yet, but I expect to see the total books borrowed increase by another 3000 books.

Changes in the public housing neighbourhood have meant a reduction in users: the province is taking down about twenty buildings, relocating 70 or 80 families, in preparation for redesigning and rebuilding several courts.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and I have been writing (old school pen and paper, then off to the editor stuff) and working with another community group that wants us to help them create a static library for the community. They have also given us space to run an alternative adult literacy program.

As well, we've had the chance to offer two communities a storytent orientation. It looks like there will be storytent programs running in six other New Brunswick communities this summer.

All of which may go to explain, just a little, why there's been no posting here for awhile.

;)

I'd Like to thank the Academy...

2008-05-11T16:49:00.009-04:00

Yay for us!

Our Quality Storytents program was recognized this year with a Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell Early Childhood Literacy Award.

(Yes, that's me up there... needing a haircut, ill-dressed and intensely uncomfortable. Our org's VP and fellow wagon-wrangler Kate Wright was also on hand.)

The Dr. Marilyn Trenholme Counsell Early Childhood Literacy awards recognize women and men throughout the province who make an outstanding contribution to the lives of young children through literacy. This is a province-wide award administered by our two literacy coalitions, continuing a tradition begun by the Honourable Marilyn Trenholme Counsell when she served as Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick.

There's a bit more about the award on the QLNB News site here.

This is the second time our work has been recognized in this way: in 2006 the Saint John Free Public Library won in the "Library Category" for our Bookwagon program. (Which looks like this...)

Thanks everybody! (You know who you are.)

(Un)-Making Myths

2008-05-11T10:15:00.009-04:00

Evan: Mom, are boys and girls different species?

That's the beginning of a conversation shared on Deanna Hoak's post "Conversation with my five year old - or - exasperating mother" Ms. Hoak is a mom and a fantasy and sci-fi copyeditor (hip and accurate enough to be short-listed for a 2007 World Fantasy Award for copyediting). Apparently she is also a video game player and a girl!

Her son is a five year old gamely learning our social myths about men vs. women, and expressing frustration when his mom won't fall into her assigned role. *mothers! sheese!*

The exchange caught my eye... well, let's just admit it. It caught my eye because I've been soap-boxing about the socially manufactured myth that boy literacy is different than girl literacy.

But also because I just finished reading Deborah Cameron's The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? (2007:OUP).

For a quick overview, see here. But, really, just do read the book.

It's short, clear and to the point.

In Other News...

2008-05-01T15:54:00.002-04:00

The library held a fund-raiser for us featuring some bar band from Ontario, and Alison crafted a couple of Storytent mugs with a design I'm slowly morphing into a logo for the band... er, organization QLNB.

Play

2008-04-24T12:55:00.002-04:00

Dead People Only Use Half Their Brain

2008-03-27T21:18:00.005-04:00

"Dead people" is the only population group I can think of to put before a statement like that.

Suppose you read "Mexicans employ only 50% of their mental capacity when cooking" in a discourse of the tastelessness of Mexican food. Imagine a public lecture where it was stated as a scientific fact that Newfoundland's weak economic performance was tied to "Newfoundlanders engaging only half their brains when thinking about business or financial matters." Consider writing that Jews or Muslims or African Americans or women or ...

Well, let's not. The whole thing is tasteless.

As tasteless as using a cartooned image of Arnold Schwarzenegger to represent boys and men in an article, published by ABC Canada (September 2006), that informs us "Dr. David Booth... suggests that in language operations women use both hemispheres of the brain at once while men use just the left hemisphere."

Perhaps Booth is a half-witted idiot. That's no reason for him to trash-talk the rest of us.

International Adult Learners Week

2008-03-05T17:18:00.012-04:00

We had a pleasant IALW celebration at my public library. The library used the occasion to showcase it's relocated and refurbished "New Adult Reader" section. They also invited local literacy organizations to set up some displays. We set up one for our organization, Quality Learning New Brunswick (art in case, plus stand-up display).

The Mayor spoke. (He told us he'd been in the States, talking up the city and also Storytent. "They didn't know anything about it," he said, "but think it's a wonderful idea." "Hmmm..."thinks us, "Storytent training in California....")

Mr. Ian Wilson, Regional Director, Fundy Library Region, and constant literacy supporter, had some remarks, as did the library Board Chair.

Cheryl took a minute to thank the Greater Saint John Community Foundation, major sponsor of our "Women's Art and Literacies" workshop series. Items from that series made up part of our Quality Learning NB display (with Storytent and Bookwagon being the other big items).

I had a couple of learners on hand from my Local Adult Learners Group - well, actually, we were poking away at math and poetry when the event started.

And afterward? The adult learning just carried on.

(International) Adult Learner's Week

2008-03-03T18:41:00.005-04:00

In an embarrassing hustle to get Federal budget money spent before the end of the fiscal year, Canada's UNESCO chapter thingy is celebrating IALW this week (pdf media release here).

The Province of New Brunswick is celebrating by laying off all its Adult Literacy facilitators.

Actually, its just coincidence that IALW falls on the public school's March Break. (Why the gov't thinks adult literacy classes should match step with the public school system is another matter - neither coincidental nor particularly pleasant.)

I'm spending most of the week at the public library - where some of my adult learners will join me. I spent today working with friends to set up a Quality Learning NB display for a small event the library is hosting tomorrow.

Then, next week, I get hired back and classes resume.

*sigh*

National Family Literacy Day, 2008

2008-01-27T20:03:00.000-04:00

Robert Munsch remembered us with some of his small, purse size, kid size, take-anywhere size books. He sent us a boxful to give out along our route. (Back story here.)

We also gave out winter hats and pencils, erasers and wash-off tattoos, and some t-shirts we had left over from another event.

We handed them out wherever we met kids - at home or along the way. (This is a poor picture because both I and my camera had been outside in -23 cold for two hours. We were both a little shaky.)

Where kids weren't home, we packed little grab-bags...

... and slipped them through the mail-slot.

The Mind Learns When the Body Heals

2008-01-11T14:24:00.001-04:00

One day, Lesra Martin came to town.

I was looking forward to hearing Mr. Martin speak. I'd seen his video as well as the movie (thorough review here), and was interested in both his and Hurricane Carter's story. (Boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was wrongly convicted and spent many years in jail, during which time he corresponded and met with Lesra, to the benefit of both.)

I was looking forward... but I can't say the evening began well.

In fact, it began with short video clips from Oprah, and all the swelling music and emotions and close-ups daytime television thrives on. Then Mr. Martin plunged into a classic "believe in yourself and everything is possible" speech. He used the standard metaphors and slogans all motivational speakers use, and I thought, "This is the kind of speech you could give to a room full of stockbrokers."

Well, he is a motivational speaker, I thought, and settled in glumly for a dull night.

Here's a quote from a 2002 article the Lantern (Ohio State University) that gives a good sense of how he talks:

"I encourage people to be steadfast, take power of the human spirit and watch out for negative people and negative voices in your head. Take hold of opportunities and coincidences that come your way and don't let yourself be deterred by difficulties."

There's more of Lesra Martin on his website, and I'd encourage you to go there if you're interested. All I'm saying is that, by halfway through the speech, I stopped being interested.

At last, the speech ended. Then, in the question-and-answer discussion that followed, Lesra Martin began to tell a much more interesting - and honest - story.

He talked about a process of recovering his physical health. He said, "When I came up to Toronto I was basically malnourished." He needed access to healthy food for a sustained period of time. "I was almost blind", he said. His eyesight was poor and he needed glasses.

He also described a process of recovering his mental and emotional health. He spoke of the new sense of security he grew into as he came to trust his new environment. He talked about his long struggle with self-doubt, and his triumph over that as a result of being in a place where patient people believed in him.

He talked about an individualized or tailored curriculum and a one-on-one learning environment. Lesra Martin was allowed to learn at his own (increasing) pace and learn whatever he wished. His tutor began with his strength - command of a New York ghetto dialect - and slowly helped him translate his speech, and then his writing, into more standard English. More famously, his tutor allowed him to use the Hurricane's 1974 autobiography The Sixteenth Round as his core learning tool. Lesra Martin's interest in the story - in the tale, yes, but also in the words, the writing - nurtured a growing ability in the use of words and writing.

Finally, he also talked about the wealth of these young Canadians who brought him to Toronto. This was a self-funded outreach of theirs (they having made a bundle in an earlier business deal). That meant they were in a position where their ability to help him was not limited by funding or the demands of funders or the dictates of civil servants. There were no organizational or institutional barriers of the sort so common to literacy providers.

This doesn't mean Mr. Martin's self-perceptions or the stories he told himself as a young man were not important. Surely they were! But his remarkable progress was not a matter of him believing in himself. He came to believe in himself in the context of appropriate funding, significant physical and emotional care and safety, and an intensely self-paced and learner-centered curriculum. More, he indicated in his follow-up remarks that his academic improvement "really began" (his words) after his physical and emotional needs were met.

Well, this was a story you can't tell stockbrokers: addressing our country's literacy problems means first addressing issues of physical and emotional health and safety, and then protecting learners from the vagaries of funding fluctuations or the whims of funders, accountants and bureaucrats.

It's not a story of believing in oneself. It's a story of spending so much money on our kids and families that they grow up with all the advantages and potential of the rich.

Literacy Talk from PEI

2008-01-04T14:36:00.000-04:00

Literacy Talk

Say... what's that doing there!

I got blog-rolled by the good folks over on the Island. Go take a look. Read, comment, vote in the sidebar poll... then come right back!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T09:55:00.000-04:00

... from the Storytent - Bookwagon team.

Snowed Out

2007-12-29T23:36:00.000-04:00

The snow was wet and heavy, and the day was dark! With 30 klick winds, the barometer dropping, and the threat of freezing rain as the temp crept up to the freezing mark, we decided to cancel bookwagon.

It's just four days past Christmas, so our families may be feeling crowded and busy enough to not miss us. Or, maybe, it's just four days past Christmas and we're feeling fat and lazy!

I don't think so. The streets were a mess, the sidewalks unplowed, and it just didn't feel practical or safe to try dragging the wagon through the courts.

Instead, we got some related business down uptown, and brainstormed ideas for attaching reflectors or orange panels to the wagon to increase our profile on dark days like this.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T22:31:00.000-04:00

Five Days Later

2007-12-21T10:29:00.000-04:00

I'm hoping to get a submission to the good folks at Literacies for their barriers issue.

In community literacy work, identifying and working around barriers is a constant theme. Sometimes, the barriers are metaphorical or psychological or institutional or relational. Sometimes they're as ordinary as this: five days after the snowstorm, the sidewalks still hadn't been cleared.

The streets were bare and safe enough that parents felt able to let their kids walk to school again. But many kept them home for an extra day right after the storm because the local streets and sidewalks were unsafe for pedestrians.

This particular barrier to literacy and learning appeared in the low-rent, low-income public housing neighbourhood. The up-town business district, where I live, was whistle clean the first morning after.

Great Expectations - poor outcomes

2007-12-12T12:25:00.000-04:00

"Also, it said on the piece of paper, he needs to put it on Word... Word... soft..... Software? Will he get in trouble if he doesn't do that? I mean, he has it on paper...."

This from a mom whose grade eight child is required to complete at home a computerized project-report on one of Canada's provinces. The subject here is geography or social studies - not computer science. But even were that the case, it is simply unacceptable for schools charged with providing an equal opportunity education to require children to turn in computerized homework.

Not everyone has a computer at home.

Not everyone's home computer works.

Not everyone with a working home computer has a printer and MS Word software.

This year, our province will post a $79 million dollar surplus. That's $79 million extra - a lot for a province with about 800 thousand residents. We will also continue to have staggering rates of family poverty (not to be confused with being home to one of the 5 richest families in Canada).

And we will continue to be blessed with an education system than ignores, marginalizes or punishes kids and parents who lack social and economic resources.

Will he get in trouble? Probably.

Most kids do when they fall into the gap between what's realistic and what their teachers want.

(almost) 50 Below Zero

2007-12-02T01:53:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, we were visited by Canada's foremost children's author, Robert Munsch. Mr. Munsch has published about 50 books - including The Paperbag Princess, Mortimer, 50 Below Zero and Love You Forever - which, all together, have sold more than 30 million copies. He came, at his own expense, to be part of the Bookwagon program and tell stories to the children of a public housing neighbourhood in Saint John.

On Saturday morning, in minus nineteen degree wind chill, Robert Munsch joined the Bookwagon program. The bookwagon is a small, hand-pulled garden wagon which follows a 3 ½ kilometer route lending books door-to-door. Over the past 5 winters, children and adults have borrowed more than 15,000 books from the wagon. At each stop where Robert Munsch met children, he made up a story about them on the spot. We had hot soup for lunch and swapped stories. Then, later that day, he told stories to the families at the local community centre.

Curbside

2007-11-05T23:16:00.000-04:00

He came from the other side of the court, intent on the book boxes. I pulled the lid off one - the picture book box - and he pawed through the titles until he reached the Dr. Seuss.

"Green... eggs... and... ham," he read in that Captain Kirk staccato so common among new readers.

His sisters spotted him then, abandoning the easy-read chapter book box and reaching to take the Seuss book away from him. I blocked them with my right arm and shoulder - bookwagon work can be a lot like football - and then eased him, still reading, further from the crowd.

"I... am... Sam."

He read well until the phrase "would not, could not" baffled him. This was no time for a lesson in poetics: I just leaned close and fed him the words. Then I found a second copy and knelt down beside him. This meant I could read along quietly, speaking up when needed.

By the time we were half way through the book, the wagon was down the street, my knees were sore and he was shivering. (They never wear their coats.) I said, "Do you want to finish reading the book indoors where it's warm?"

"Okay."

"Here," I said, giving him my copy. "When your sisters take that book away from you, you can read mine."

Tell me again about how boys don't like to read.

Listening

2007-10-22T19:53:00.000-04:00

If you can, please, go read this.

http://www.angelamaiers.com/2007/10/listenin-to-wri.html

Suddenly It Was Autumn

2007-10-13T16:05:00.000-04:00

Brrr... A bleak morning for Bookwagon. Fall came so fast - a day of heavy rain, and then it was here.

Writing Words

2007-10-10T18:10:00.000-04:00

I saw him coming across the greenspace. He paused, tottering on the curb, and then crossed the street. Geeze, I groaned. Because one of the constant, nerve-racking parts of bookwagon is watching little kids cross a busy street to get to us instead of waiting for us to come to them.

What had he risked life and limb for this week? Spiderman? Franklin?

Turns out he came to show us his words. Someone had given him a diary with a broken lock and a pen. He wanted to show me pokemon which, he earnestly explained, he had copied off his game.

Good going, kid.

His other words were less exciting: Nanny, Douglas, like, car.

I asked if he would like to write down bookwagon in his book. "Okay. How do you spell 'bookwagon'?"

I spelled it out, and he wrote it down. Then one of his friends showed up. They looked at the words together for a minute, borrowed a couple of books, and wandered off.

Missing the "community" in Community Lit.

2007-09-09T10:11:00.000-04:00

Something we used to do around here to celebrate International Literacy Day was run the Read Across New Brunswick Challenge.

I don't know who was really responsible for the idea. But the Read Across New Brunswick Challenge was started in 1997, by New Brunswick's Ministry of State for Literacy, with Sobeys (grocery) stores and NBTel (provincial telephone company) as corporate sponsors. It was characterized as "a friendly community competition to motivate citizens into reading on a regular basis" *

By 2002, the sixth annual Read Across New Brunswick Challenge was officially deemed "a tremendous success," with 60,665 New Brunswickers from 135 communities registering their 20 minutes of reading. New Brunswick's Education Minister, Dennis Furlong, said "It is wonderful to see the people of our province rise to the challenge and show their dedication to literacy... The Read Across New Brunswick Challenge is a great awareness activity. A 25% increase in the participation numbers this year tells us New Brunswickers value literacy now more than ever." *

Of the 7th annual Read Across New Brunswick Challenge, set for International Literacy Day, Sept. 8, 2003, Education Minister Madeleine Dubé said "Literacy is everyone's responsibility and literacy promotions like the Read Across New Brunswick Challenge provide an incentive for all New Brunswickers to make reading part of what they do each day throughout the year."

She added "This week is dedicated to the promotion and celebration of learning throughout life.... It is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the joy of learning and to embark on a new journey of learning as we commence the Decade for Literacy (2003-2012) being launched by the United Nations." *

And then, between 2003 and 2004, the Challenge vanished from view.

What happened?

Certainly, the literacy climate in New Brunswick changed in 2004. The provincial Department of Education ceased to be the primary provincial department for community literacy services. Instead, community literacy - they sometimes call it "community learning" - became a mandate of the Department of Training and Employment Development. But under this new structure, regional committees were set up to replace local (community) committees as overseers of NB's government sponsored adult literacy program, and fixed curriculum objectives descended from on high. "Get a job" became everyone's goal - all learners were supposed to go meet with employment counselors - and "community literacy" became "adult literacy" and/or "workplace literacy".

At the same time, early childhood and school-aged literacy was folded into the mumbo-jumbo of Quality Schools, High Results, part of the Quality Learning Agenda.

Family literacy, such as it was, disappeared almost entirely.

And with this fracturing of literacy responsibilities - and funding streams, and promotional responsibilities - came the fracturing of what had been a growing community of literacy learners and workers and supporters.

Small wonder, then, that we stopped celebrating the reading-est community in the province each year. Indeed, we hardly celebrate reading at all around here anymore. We celebrate test results and benchmarks and outcomes and processes to move us forward.

But we don't do that wonderful, family-friendly, community-friendly "feel good about yourself and your province" thing called Read Across New Brunswick.

We're losing "community literacy". I wrote an earlier post about this, and I want to repeat part of what I said, if only to myself:

I wrote a letter to a government minister responsible for literacy once [after the 2004 reorganization]. Because I was writing as a private citizen and not the employee or representative of some agency, I signed it as a Community Literacy Worker. "What's a community literacy worker?" he asked his senior staff. Of course, they didn't know. How could they? Its not a government category. Our local universities don't license people to do "community literacy" work. It's scarcely a real thing at all when measured the way the powerful folk measure reality.

But its real in the community, on the street.

In 1990, the good folks at Frontier College published An Inside Approach: Organizing integrated learning opportunities. It's a guide for bringing literacy supports to a community through the community's own networks and structures. In a section on "community-based literacy programs" they define "community" as "a geographic location," "a set of common values," and "a shared involvement."

The Challenge was a "perfect opportunity to celebrate the joy of learning" and New Brunswickers did indeed "rise to the challenge and show their dedication to literacy." Too bad it's gone.

There goes the sun...

2007-09-08T08:11:00.000-04:00

The first part-week of school is over. Already, teachers are letting parents know that their kindergarten children aren't reading well enough - and that it's up to the parents to do something about it.

Summer's over. Back to the world of developmentally inappropriate curriculum, poor teacher parent relations, and the blame game.

Oh, and you can forget about "family time" buster - we've got homework to do.

It's what we eat... and who we eat it with

2007-09-06T19:11:00.000-04:00

You can read the self-doubt in my notes:

[Boy's name] came over. First time this summer. Eating a tub of ice cream. I ~~called out to~~ yelled at him before he got across the street. "You can't eat that here!" His face fell. He turned and walked away. Wonder if he'll ever come back?

A boy was coming to read, and I publicly drove him away! Why would I do such a thing?

The answer is we believe certain kinds of food can make kids crazy. We've always strictly limited what kids are allowed to eat in the tents. No popsicles, no Tim-bits, no chocolate ice cream. The deal is, if you want to come to the Storytent, you have to leave the crazy-making stuff behind. That's one way we have of creating an environment that works.

Is this an extremist position? A left-wing nutritionist's voodoo superstition? I'm guessing lots of people would say so. And then, today, there it was...

The lead headline on the Atlantic edition of Canada's Globe & Mail: Food additives found to fuel hyperactivity in children

I don't know what possessed the editors to make this the front page headline (the online version, here, sits much further down the Globe's homepage). It's not really new science. Despite the claim to originality made in the British researchers' media release, various scientists and groups have been presenting this information in Great Britain for the past half decade. Over there, it's the Guardian newspaper that's been leading the charge (and it's the Guardian that the Globe & Mail is quoting). But most other media have published or aired study results and summary pieces. The best summary used to be found in a pdf document called Feeding Minds (though I may be behind the times as well).

The Globe & Mail is an odd paper where the same people often write the news and opinion columns (so that everything reads like an op-ed piece). But it is our sole national newspaper, and so this 'news story' does lend an air of authority or sensibility or something to the rest of us who say things like "That popsicle is gonna make you crazy."

Of course, ingestion isn't the end of the story. What we eat matters: it's not the same as who we are.

In the Quality Storytent program, we provide a healthy snack. From Year One, we've included clementines. Clementines are like oranges but smaller, easier to peel and seedless - at least, that's true of the ones we buy, Moroccan imports sold at our local Superstore. In Year Three, staff wondered about the suitability of this fruit. It seemed as though children were becoming rowdy and less able to maintain concentration after eating the clementines. We were falling into a pattern of feeding them the fruit and then, a little while later, asking them to leave. It seemed unlikely - how can citrus be bad for you - but the pattern was there. To my embarrassment, we went so far as to publicly blame the clementines in our Storytent how-to manual, writing:

We usually bring two kinds of organic fruits or vegetables, in order to avoid the negative effects poor quality food has on health and behaviour (Van de Weyer, 2005). Our shopping list includes apples, pears, bananas, watermelon, cantaloupe, dulse, and seasonal garden vegetables (green beans, peas in the pod). We used to offer citrus fruit (oranges, clementines or mineolas), but discovered that they too had a negative impact on behaviour: ten to fifteen minutes after a citrus snack, many children became too boisterous to remain in the tent.

The next summer, we avoided clementines - not all the time, but usually. Did it make a difference? I'm not sure. But this past summer, when we again fed the children clementines, behaviour problems didn't appear.

It was the same kids, more or less. It was, apparently, the same fruit. But it was different behaviour. Why? What changed?

Well, the staff changed. I'm going to be politely non-committal about the people we hired in Year Three. But there is no doubt that we just finished a summer with the most wonderfully committed, reflective, compassionate staff members we've ever had.

So what, then, was the issue in Year Three? Fruit? People? Some combination?

I'm glad the Globe is telling Canadians about the trouble additives bring, even if it isn't news. We are what we eat. It has a profound effect on all of us. That's why we don't want you to eat ice cream just before you come to Storytent - why lots of kids do their best reading and writing before lunch.

But we are more than what we eat. We are also... how the person beside us sees us and treats us and leads us to see ourselves.

(bad) Wizard News!

2007-09-04T16:56:00.000-04:00

Harry Potter, the Musical?

Oh, no!

Meanwhile, also according to Wizard News (who got it from Haaretz, Israel):

Seven boys and one girl are translating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into Hebrew for an Israeli website, and none of them are older than 15. The professional translator says the amateur translations are poor, but many fans in Israel don't speak English and are very eager to read the book.

I'm not You

2007-07-29T21:03:00.000-04:00

Reading for every one of us involves seeing squiggles on a page (graphemes) and translating those squiggles into sounds (phonemes). Good readers do this astonishingly quickly and silently. The “sound” bit is accomplished inside our heads and we are not aware that we’re doing it. It seems as though we recognise every word by sight. Most people learn this implicitly and stop trying to memorise whole words.

People who don’t read or don’t read well DO recognise each word by sight and that is why they can’t access most text. They have a certain number of “sight words” and, beyond that, are unable to turn the printed squiggles into spoken words (inside their heads or otherwise). These are way too often the young people who think they’re stupid.

When I started blogging, I told myself I wouldn't comment on or otherwise dis' a post or site I disagreed with. What would be the point? The web's wide enough for everybody. But I had to copy part of the above post because it so clearly illustrates the arrogance that pervades education - including self-described innovative education.

Look at that first, bold assertion: reading is looking at squiggles and making them into sounds (quickly and silently if you are a good reader). Guess I can't read Hebrew or Greek. Despite the fact that I can look at those squiggly lines and know what they mean - I can't make the right sounds. I have no idea what most Hebrew or Greek words sound like. Yep, I'm a baaaddd reader. All I can do is (silently) comprehend and reflect upon 2000 year old text.

For that matter, I'm a lousy reader of English as well. I know what the word cacophony means, but I can never remember how to say it. For that matter, simple words like read (rEad or red?) or bass (bAss or baass?) have been known to challenge my pronunciation when they appear in isolation. And how about that missing r in Chicago?

Well, okay. That's enough. Fact is, I read like the wind, effectively and critically. So do you, no doubt. Maybe you depend on memorized sounds in your decoding. Maybe you use chiefly visual-memory cues. Maybe you do some other kind of inside-the-head magic. I don't know, because I'm not you. And you're not me.

And, with luck, neither of us are one of those arrogant wackos called teachers.

Freedom

2007-07-26T18:41:00.000-04:00

Nate was talking to one of the boys about somebody else being home-schooled. "Home-schooled? That's bad," the boy said.

"No it's not," Nate countered. "I was home-schooled."

"What does that mean?"

"That means you don't have to go to school. You learn stuff at home."

"Cool! You don't have to ask the teacher to go to the bathroom!"

Families are our Stakeholders

2007-07-09T15:21:00.000-04:00

"Participants stressed the importance of better coordination across stakeholders to ensure the education system fulfills its role of preparing students/workers for the labour market."

That's from “What We Heard”, a happily self-serving "Summary of Key Findings for the province of New Brunswick Canadian Labour and Business Centre Workplace Partners Panel."

Know what? The Storytent and Bookwagon programs do not train up children to be good little workers. Preparing human beings for the labour market is not among our goals.

I'm so glad.

Quality Storytents

2007-07-09T06:25:00.000-04:00

We're done Week Two. I'll do a stats up-date later, but just off-hand I'd guess we're running roughly equal numbers of girls and boys. It's the same every Summer. There are individual tents that tend one way or another - we had seven boys and one girl Friday morning - but they always even out.

Good Books

2007-07-09T05:59:00.000-04:00

I asked this kid, "Why are you such a good reader?" She says, "I don't know." I waited, and she added, "When I was little my mom and dad read me a lot of stories." Good for you, Mom and Dad!

But here comes the interesting part.

She said they had to read every day at school, and she didn't like that. "Why not?" "Sometimes I don't feel like reading." "No?" "I don't like to read very much." "Really?" I ask. "Then why do you come to Storytent all the time?"

She doesn't even have to think about it: "Because these books are interesting!"

One for the Bean-Counters

2007-07-02T20:26:00.000-04:00

I've been doing up our "Winter" stats for the bookwagon. I'm missing data for two trips, but this is what I do have. Between Sept. 16, 2006 and June 16 2007, we lent out 2,375 books. Of these, 1,837 were returned: that's 77% of the books, returned in a program without fines, fees or membership cards. There were 867 instances of children borrowing, and 73 instances of adults borrowing.

Since beginning (about 160 trips ago... and, again, I'm missing data from a half dozen trips), there have been 5,176 instances of kids borrowing and 464 instances of adults borrowing. Between them, they borrowed 14,185 books and returned 11,082 (78%).

We've also dragged the wagon about 575 kilometres. (More, actually, since we also use the wagon for storytent - small wonder we're on our second wagon and have gone through maybe 20 tires!)

I don't know if any of these numbers mean very much. I do know how and why the program matters to the families we serve, and to the larger community. But that usually involves stuff the bean-counters just can't seem to understand, so it's nice to have the numbers on hand.

Quality Storytents - Week One

2007-07-02T15:21:00.000-04:00

Stats at the end of week one...

We've had 92 kids sign up for Summer Reading Club (not everyone signs up, but most do). Our total attendance for the week's tents was 171 kids, 12 adults. These kids logged approximately 1,000 books read. Although we had one wet day, we were able to deliver all 10 scheduled tents (twice in each of the five locations).

All in all, a good start.

Accessibility

2007-07-02T15:01:00.000-04:00

Three sides to being an "accessible" program. Kids can come without adult help - even when they're in a wheelchair. When they arrive, they find books they are interested in, at their reading level. And, the program runs when and where we promised, even on the rainiest days.

Mid-Afternoon

2007-06-29T06:20:00.000-04:00

Quality Storytent

2007-06-28T06:31:00.000-04:00

The Boy Who Lived vs Junie B.

2007-06-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

"And remember", she yelled. "As soon as you're done Harry Potter 7, it comes to me. Right?"

Right. Harry Potter is holding his own, with new readers all the time. (Most of them much younger than the mom who was yelling at me.) Of course, everyone knows there's a new movie coming out in a couple of weeks, besides the book that goes on sale at the end of July. Because the Potter books are big, and we need to have multiple copies, we put them in a box of their own - often near the top.

But this morning I was reminded again of the popularity of Junie B Jones. Both sexes, and a wide variety of ages, still borrow books from her series. The books are thin, and so share a box with Flat Stanley and Cap't Underpants. But we often carry and loan out more Junie B. than we do Harry P.

Junie B. is not universally popular, according to Wikipedia:

The books were challenged in a Lisbon, Wisconsin school district in 1999 when a parent voiced their objection to Junie B. calling characters "morons" and "stupid", stating that "the books model disrespect for parents and teachers". The challenge was not upheld and the books remained available to students in the school district. In 2006, the title Junie B Jones and Some Sneaky, Peaky Spying was challenged in the Wake County, North Carolina school district.

I expect Harry's had some school board troubles as well.

Community Literacy Work

2007-06-16T18:00:00.000-04:00

"Storytents are voluntary social gatherings. No one comes, or sends their children, unless they want. Storytents provide books for, and reading to, children and families, two activities cited as important factors in supporting children's literacy development (Allington, 1997; Kropp, 1993; Trelease, 1989; Doake, 1988; Taylor& Strickland, 1986). No one is pressured to get a job, excel in school or even read more regularly as some kind of social payment for accessing this service. All that is asked of participants is that they not unreasonably inconvenience other participants. Beyond that, they are trusted to make of the program and of themselves whatever they think best."

Quality Storytents

This philosophy applies to the Bookwagon as well. And to the adult learning group I host at the public library. In fact, it applies to almost all of our community literacy work. People are trusted to direct their own education. We're just resource people: we bring ideas, information, strategies, support, encouragement, access. Mostly access and information. Because, besides respect and compassion, access and information are about all you can give people when you're a community literacy worker. We can't certify people. We don't pass or fail them; approve or disapprove their choices. We haven't got the financial resources to bribe them or the police resources to compel them. All we can do is offer information, access and trust.

I wrote a letter to a government minister responsible for literacy once. Because I was writing as a private citizen and not the employee or representative of some agency, I signed it as a Community Literacy Worker. "What's a community literacy worker?" he asked his senior staff. Of course, they didn't know. How could they? Its not a government category. Our local universities don't license people to do "community literacy" work. It's scarcely a real thing at all when measured the way the powerful folk measure reality.

But its real in the community, on the street.

In 1990, the good folks at Frontier College published An Inside Approach: Organizing integrated learning opportunies. It's a guide for bringing literacy supports to a community through the community's own networks and structures. In a section on "community-based literacy programs" they define "community" as "a geographic location," "a set of common values," and "a shared involvement."

I would only add that a community is something you belong to only when you can enter and leave freely.

You can't compel community. Nor can you compel literacy. These things need to be freely chosen, or they won't exist at all.

Reading What They Want (Part 2)

2007-05-06T19:00:00.000-04:00

There are so many stories.

I could tell you about the four year old boy who sneered at us in the summer of 2003, and told us that books were for "pussies". A year later, he would come running across the court to read with us, or to borrow another book about NASCAR or the World Wrestling Federation or Franklin. I could tell of the nine and ten year old boys singing - singing! - their way through a children's story. Or of the fathers with uncertain literacy skills who borrow I Spy books and Archie's Digest comics week after week.

One winter, on our rounds, we would often pass a man out gathering up shopping carts and recyclables. The man was shy and his rare verbal utterances suggested a serious cognitive delay of some kind. All the same, one morning we asked if he would like to borrow a book. He answered, "No", adding, "I can't read."

My response to this was to visit a used bookstore and purchase several coffee-table books full of interesting pictures and little or no text. Two weeks later, when we met this man, I showed him the books and asked if he would like to borrow one. He said yes and took a book with him.

The following week, we met him at his house with new coffee-table books. Standing at his door I asked, "How did you make out with the book you borrowed last week?"

He replied, "I read it."

"I can't read": "I read it". In the space of a week, this man went from being a non-reader to a reader, from alliterate to literate. There was no magic in this, and no need for hundreds of thousands of dollars. What was required, on our part, was a diversity of strategies for supporting literacy, and the freedom to innovate as we saw fit.

Of course, someone else - someone from industry or government or the dominant culture - might say he really couldn't "read". All he was doing was looking at pictures. How was he ever going to get a job and get off welfare?

Well, here's the thing. When we met him, he already had a job - gathering up shopping carts and recyclables. What he didn't have was relevant, accessible, literacy support appropriate to his personal goals and abilities.

These positive stories matter. In our reflections, we take deliberate note of the books men ask to read, and how boys incorporate literacy into their play and lives. We do this because the media has been running a constant silly and alarming story about males, young and old, in a literacy crisis.

Mind you, that story is about boys not reading assigned books, not passing an academic reading test, not keeping up with someone else's expectations. That story is not a heartening story about twelve year olds borrowing adult books on Hulk Hogan, young men decoding Tupac to their own satisfaction, or middle-aged men discovering themselves to be readers with the aid of coffee-table books. It is not a story about the functional, self-directed literacy of males who read because, in that moment, they see value in the text before them.

We could use a few more of these affirming stories.

Send me one. I'll post it here.

I know some guys who'd enjoy reading it.

popular with the boys (and girls).

2007-05-05T16:53:00.000-04:00

From this morning's bookwagon I learned that Harry Potter, Captain Underpants, Junie B. Jones, and Amelia Bedelia remain popular. Oh, and there was a bit of a buzz about the multiple copies of Spiderman 3 books we had with us - we are so cool! (Actually, I look a little like Tobey Maguire. No, really.)

Reading What They Want (Part 1)

2007-05-05T07:21:00.000-04:00

I remember a cool, cloudy Wednesday in July.

We had been dragging a wagon of books around New Brunswick's largest Anglophone public housing neighbourhood. It was part of what we call 'community literacy,' a bringing of literacy resources and support to a whole community. In this instance, we were bringing books for people to borrow.

One of us knelt on a doorstep, talking with a young mom about books for her child. The other stood by the wagon, waiting to carry up the chapter-book box, or the picture-book box, or whichever box was needed. We were at the far end of a cul-de-sac. At the other end, three young men appeared.

They wore Carolina blue and a practiced swagger. They were plainly hip or cool or whatever socially correct males are these days. "Hey!" one called out, not quite de sotto. "Get away from my door." His friends laughed. "We don't want any!" There was more laughter. There was some profanity.

In our work, we have become dense or sturdy enough to weather these displays. When he arrived at the doorstep, his friends sidling off to another stoop, my co-worker asked if he would like to borrow a book.

"Do you have...?" he asked. I could not catch the author or title. Judging by the laughter it created among his friends, I assume it was the witty equivalent of "a playboy magazine."

"No, I don't think so," she replied. More laughter. "But we do have a Tupac book."

"What?"

"The rapper guy? Tupac?" And to me, "Wendell, get out the Tupac book."

A word for the uninitiated: Tupac Shakur was a rapper who passed away in 1996. His books are very popular here. A local bookstore clerk told me they hide them behind the counter to keep them from "walking out of the store." The book we had, Tupac: Resurrection 1971-1996, was particularly coveted that summer.

This young man borrowed the Tupac book, and kept it for some weeks. Word got out, and other young adults approached us, asking, "Do you guys have, like, rapper books?" Throughout that summer and the next our borrowing program developed a respectable adult customer base. We hauled around Pieces to Weight, Biggies' biography, a couple of books on Eminem, a DMX autobiog... Then there was a crack down. A lot of our readers got evicted or jail time.

That's one story about boys and men and access to literacy.

I Had A Great Workshop (not in Ontario)

2007-04-23T19:46:00.000-04:00

There's a document out there developed by the Province of Ontario called Me Read? No Way! A practical guide to improving boys' literacy skills. It is available online, and may be of use to someone somewhere. In fact, if it was subtitled "A practical guide to improving somebody's literacy skills" I might be recommending it.

But it's not about "somebody": it's about people who have penises and the need to give them a fair shake (the people, I mean).

"All educators share the common goal of providing equitable learning opportunities for every student in the classroom. Providing equitable opportunities for girls is a familiar topic; providing them for boys is a relatively recent issue, but one that is appearing with increasing urgency on education agendas around the world."

It's great that we're treating girls in an equitable way, it says. Now, let's be fair to the boys as well.

At first glance, that's not a bad ethos: give each one what they need. But there's a rock inside that snowball. We have offered girls equitable opportunities, they say. Okay, but equitable with whom? Equitable with boys? Yes? No? How do you treat only one gender "equitably" at a time?

To my tired old ears, this sounds like shock-jock radio stuff: "Affirmative action has gone too far, immigrants just cause problems, handicapped people get the best parking spots, and girls always get treated better than boys in school." Hmm....

Actually, the authors do show some concern for balance. Here's another quote from the document:

"Although gender is a significant factor, it is not the only factor at play in determining performance in reading and writing. In fact, the differences among boys and among girls are greater than the differences between boys and girls. Consequently, educators must be careful not to focus on the gender differences between students, but rather to recognize that the effectiveness of certain approaches in literacy instruction may be tied to gender. With that understanding, teachers will be better able to provide appropriate and equitable opportunities for both boys and girls.

"Although the strategies contained in this guide focus on engaging boys in reading and writing, they also represent practices that will enhance the learning environment for both boys and girls."

Did you catch that? Educators "must be careful not to focus on the gender differences between students, but rather to recognize that the effectiveness of certain approaches in literacy instruction may be tied to gender." Well, they're half right.

Listen, fellas. You can't have it both ways. If learning styles are gender/genetic specific, then educators absolutely need to focus on these gender differences. Or, if learning styles appear across genders, then educators need to focus on learning styles.

Doesn't matter though. Any ambiguity is washed away on the next page (we're still in the intro here, by the way):

"Michael Smith and Jeffrey Wilhelm identify the following gender differences related to literacy that teachers may encounter in their work with individual learners:

With respect to achievement:
• Boys take longer to learn to read than girls do.
• Boys read less than girls.
• Girls tend to comprehend narrative texts and most expository texts significantly better than boys do.
• Boys tend to be better at information retrieval and work-related literacy tasks than girls are.

With respect to attitude:
• Boys generally provide lower estimations of their reading abilities than girls do.
• Boys value reading as an activity less than girls do.
• Boys have much less interest in leisure reading than girls do, and are far more likely to read for utilitarian purposes than girls are.
• Significantly more boys than girls declare themselves to be non-readers.
• Boys . . . express less enthusiasm for reading than girls do.
(Smith and Wilhelm, 2002, p. 10)"

Well, there it is. Boys take longer to learn to read than girls do. Boys read less than girls. Boys are better at work-related literacy tasks. Girls are better at nurturing, raising the kids, cooking and cleaning. Boys are better at shooting guns and leading and dealing with big salaries.

Okay, they didn't say all that, but people used to. And right now, somebody somewhere is saying all that. And if they could get away with it, they'd start talking about brain size and women's emotions and God's plan for us all.

Gone is the "fact" that gender differences are less than individual difference, that "the differences among boys and among girls are greater than the differences between boys and girls." (What about differences between kids from different socio-economic backgrounds, or from schools with differing access to funds?) From here on in, the document is all about finding ways to "close the literacy gender gap" by "ensuring that reading and writing assignments engage boys as well as girls". Well, good luck.

I've written about sexism already (here); about what happens when we make assumptions about someone's abilities, potential and proclivities based on their gender. By "proclivities" I meant those things they tend toward (tastes, habits, intentions, valuations). Not just what they think or do, but what they are likely to think or do. What they are apt to want to think or do. Drawing conclusions on the basis of alleged gender(=genetic) determined characteristics is always sexism.

I don't want to repeat myself. But I do want to tell you this: I was at a two day workshop put on by Jenny Horsman where the topic was Learning and Violence, and I did not hear a single sexist remark.

None.

People who know me - who know my arm-waving, zealot-making sensitivity about this stuff - will be rightly impressed by that. I'm impressed by that.

Well done, Jenny. Well done, everybody.

Oh, by the way. You see that boy up there? You know what it took to get him to read? We pulled up in front of him with a wagon and a bunch of books and said, "Hey, do you want to borrow a book?" He said, "Sure." Then he picked some out. Got one to read to his little brother, too. Been borrowing off and on ever since.

And then it was Spring...

2007-04-22T12:53:00.000-04:00

"I don't need those baby books anymore" he said, dissing our box of picture books. Instead he wandered off reading Dav Pilkey's Cap't Underpants.

Curiosity (Motivation Revisited)

2007-04-22T11:29:00.000-04:00

Last week I went to the library to return a book. I noticed Serpico in the stacks. This was the Peter Maas biography of Frank Serpico, a New York City cop who exposed corruption in the police department in the early 1970s. I'd seen the film years ago with my dad, and thought I'd sit down for a moment to skim the book.

Two and a half hours later I was done, late for everything else I was supposed to do that day, and amazed once again at the power of a good book to utterly disrupt my life.

For many book lovers, library stacks create halls of wonder. We seize a book - or it seizes us - because something on the cover or spine or fly-leaf spoke to us, and now we want to know more. A "good book" is a book that snags and holds our attention. It's a "page turner" or "pot boiler" that robs us of sleep because we so want to know what happens next. It's a book that connects somehow with our wonderings - about ourselves, about the world. It's a "what if" book that promises, before its done, to tell us the answer.

I wrote earlier about motivation and safety as requirements for learning. I'm having second thoughts about using that term. My trusty Oxford Canadian Dictionary (2001) offers "motivation" as a noun without definition - it's tucked in under "motivate" (verb). Yeah, well, okay. But what is it? Is "motivation" anything more than a four syllable word meaning "motive" or "rationale" or, better, "a reason to"?

What do you say of people who appear to work hard at learning, but who just don't seem to grasp or retain things? Are they unmotivated? Ineffective? Or, do they lack curiosity, that desire to know more?

Maybe, people grasp and retain only information that they are curious about. Maybe, a precondition of learning geography or photography or how to add fractions is a curiosity about these things.

Well, you ask, do people learn to ride a bike because they are curious about bike riding? Good question. Let me respond by suggesting people learn to ride bikes because they have a real interest (in both senses) in learning to ride. Riding a bike really is something they want to do. In the case of acquiring information - about, say, Canadian history or the mechanics of volcanoes - effective learners will really want to know about these things.

That's what I mean by curiosity: someone really wanting to know about something, or about how to do something, because, well, they're interested in it for its own sake.

I think I'm expressing this badly. But I'm sure - surer each day - that the person who says "I'm just not interested in politics" or "I hate math - its just so confusing" is not going to "get" algebra or political science. They're not interested, not curious.

Too, whether children or adults choose to read - to read this or that book, or to read at all - has to do with curiosity. Would anyone read a book they weren't curious about? Seems unlikely. And if they struggle with reading through lack of practice or a limited sight vocabulary, there is even less likelihood they would want to bother with something they had no interest in.

The sub-text of much talk about boys and reading is that we need to get them interested in reading for its own sake by introducing them to sports figures who read or bribing them with thematic ribbons and stickers. But, surely, the starting point is "what do you want to know about?" What are you - or I, or anyone - so curious about that we'd take on the task of reading, even giving up a sunny afternoon for the library or reading deep into the night.

Photo by Thomas Hawks, William and the Books
http://static.zooomr.com/images/897556_d5d16eaede_b.jpg

Winter's Bleak End

2007-04-14T18:56:00.000-04:00

We felt Winter's last breath doing Bookwagon this morning. A cold, misty snow and a raw North wind. Numbers were down, as is usual for this time of year. Only a couple of dozen kids borrowed. (Half of them boys: the neighbourhood continues to resist the university clamour about boys choosing to not read.)

This always feels like the end of the year for us. I think our morale sinks a little as well, so I chose to treat my teammates to a hot lunch. We got to talk a little, complain a little, dream a little. Share our hopes for the up-coming Storytent season just nine weeks away.

My (Google) Maps

2007-04-12T13:26:00.000-04:00

Hmmm... This looks interesting. My test map here. It's of our Bookwagon route.

Sexism

2007-02-24T22:39:00.000-04:00

In my perception (White, Anglo-Saxon [Danish-cum-Lowland-Scot-cum-English actually], Protestant, First World, Male)...

Sexism is what happens when we make assumptions about someone's abilities, potential and proclivities based on their gender. And, I'd add, racism and/or classism is when we do the same assuming on the basis of race and/or class.

"Proclivity" is a big word that I might not be using correctly. By "someone's proclivities" I mean those things they tend toward (tastes, habits, intentions, valuations). Not just what they think or do, but what they are likely to think or do. What they are apt to want to think or do. Does that make sense?

Sexism is drawing conclusions on the basis of alleged gender(=genetic) determined characteristics.

This is a hard point to make because classes and racial or gender groups do have shared behaviour and experiences. Sometimes boys act like boys, black people act like black people, catholics act like cathoics, trade union members act like trade union members. The question is whether the source of this sameness is genetic.

Yes! say our mad-doctor scientists. But they always say that. About African-American, or Jews, or Native Americans, or "Asians" (as though they were all the same), or Welshmen, or Gypsies or women... Or men. Or boys.

They don't say people are the way they are because we treat them differently, teach them differently, tell different stories about and to them. They say people just are like that. Very existential. Very convenient.

I was part of a conversation today where it was said that "men blah blah blah whereas women blah blah blah" with lots of pseudo-science and religion in disguise. It used to make me angry, but I'm a little more relaxed now. (Or shell shocked, or something.) But I heard it - heard the sexism. And thought, "that's not quite right."

It's bad enough to assume you know what a friend or family member thinks or wants, or is apt to think or want, or is capable of thinking and wanting. To make assumptions about a whole class, race or gender is just a mean-spirited delusion.

A Destructive, False Belief

2007-02-05T21:28:00.000-04:00

I'm not done being mad about that newspaper story, so I want to post something a co-worker and I wrote in another context:

In brief, humanism is a philosophy that dates back to the mid-1300s. It holds that all human beings have a potential for goodness or full humanity. Whether or not they reach their potential depends on the choices each person makes as an individual (Atherton, 2003; Hiemstra, 1994). Early humanists believed that education, whether formal or informal, was the best way to help people make effective choices.

Modern humanists agree that humans are born with a desire to learn and to become, and that the human potential for development is inherently unlimited. Humanists expect learners to be most successful when they reach for goals they themselves see as important and attainable. Therefore, humanists give information and invite learning rather than try to coerce people into doing or learning (Purkey & Stanley, 1989).

However, critical humanists, believe that individual development depends on more than individual efforts. We believe there are social, physical, mental, and temporal constraints set on each person's potential. All learning is influenced by its context. People learn and grow best in the context of a community where their needs are met. They learn best where they feel secure and valued. This is rooted in the assumption that humans have a hierarchy of needs and wants, but also in the belief that learning is a social phenomenon, as humans are social creatures (Berk & Winsler, 1995; Street, 1995; Rogers, 1961; Maslow, 1970).

In the context of early childhood education, humanistic thinking appears under the banner of Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP). This approach became widely known after an American organization, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), published a position paper highlighting the need to individualize curriculum and assessment, and to take into account the age, culture, interests, and physical and emotional development of each child (Bredekamp, 1987). This view of education is holistic. It says the whole person is involved in learning. DAP also promotes a play-based learning approach, similar to what Auerbach (2002) calls "embedded literacy"; that is, learning that takes place in the context of a task the learner engages in for non-educational reasons.

However, DAP goes beyond conventional play-based learning, and treats learning as a social event in which a child's relationships with adults and older children play a crucial role. The theory behind this approach comes from Vygotsky who described learning as "a form of social transaction with more competent peers and adults" (Iturrindo & Vega, nd). According to Vygotsky, "human learning presupposes a specific social nature as a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 88). Bredekamp et al (1992) express a similar idea: "We believe that from the time of birth, all children are ready to learn though] what we do or don't do as individuals, educators, and collectively as society can impede a child's success in learning." (Bredekamp et al, 1992, p. 1). The challenge for anyone wishing to facilitate successful learning, therefore, is to provide for an appropriate environment, content and relationship.

William Glasser, introducing Choice Theory, writes "if we are not sick, poverty stricken, or suffering the ravages of old age, the major human problems we struggle with ... are caused by unsatisfying relationships"> (Glasser, 1998a, p.ix). When he looks at the problem of academic failure, Glasser sees its root in the way teachers and students interact. He states that the "main reason so many students are doing badly"> in schools is a "destructive, false belief" that kids ought to learn whatever we want them to learn, and that they should be punished for any refusal or failure. He calls this false belief, and the behaviour it creates, "schooling" (Glasser, 1998a, p.237).

According to Glasser, "schooling" is an example of something he sees everywhere in our society. He calls it "external control psychology" (Glasser, 1998a, p.5) or the "ancient I-know-what's-right-for-you tradition" (Glasser, 1998a, p.4). This is the same top-down, didactic, expert-driven model of human education that humanists deplore and groups like the NAEYC speak out against.

For Glasser, an external control approach is destructive because it damages human relationships and makes impossible the kind of "learning as social transaction" Vygotsky described. "Teaching is a hard job when students make an effort to learn," he writes. "When they make no effort, it is an impossible one." (Glasser, 1988, p.1). Glasser believes that teachers can encourage learners to make the effort by building a positive relationship with each student.

According to Choice Theory, learning is a by-product of need-satisfying relationships formed in an environment where freely chosen, authentic, useful activities are present and possible. Here the phrase "need-satisfying" has an exact meaning. Glasser believes in five basic human needs (survival, freedom, fun, power, love and belonging). He says these are genetic in origin, and he states that all human actions are attempts, of varying degrees of effectiveness, to satisfy these needs (Glasser, 1998a).

Choice Theory and Humanism share a view of humans as holistic, social creatures driven to satisfy longings; who, to paraphrase Rogers (1961), choose and then learn from the consequences. In common with DAP and Auerbach's (2002) notion of the power of embedded learning, Glasser insists that students will not gladly perform useless tasks, and certainly will not learn a great deal. Rather, students will apply themselves only when they believe that the work they do is useful and valuable. This belief is most easily fostered where learners co-construct the curriculum with a teacher, facilitator, manager or coach they like and trust.

"Make It Compulsory"

2007-02-05T20:43:00.000-04:00

From today's local newspaper....

Back in New Brunswick, a compulsory intensive French program beginning in Grade 5 would give all students a foundation in the language when they reach later grades, says Université de Moncton education professor Dorothy White.

That foundation, she says, would vastly improve poor French-speaking skills in high school.

"I like the idea of an intensive French program, but it needs to be implemented across the province", she says. "It should be compulsory in Grade 5 and then an option for late immersion."

If it were compulsory in Grade 5, White argues that students would "arrive in Grade 6 in a better comfort zone", ready to make progress in French.

"The program is there. Make it compulsory and results would be much better," says White.

Wow! This is so bad on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin. Let's leave out Université de Moncton's sorry 30 year history of stirring up social intolerance and language hysteria in New Brunswick. Here you have an "education professor" asserting - it's a bald assertion, not even an argument - that compulsion is all that's needed to get "much better results" in our public schools.

Well, I suppose its possible she's thinking of different results than the rest of us. More likely she showing the sort of arrogant, uncritical thinking our universities are so good at producing.

This same unreflective thinking says you can raise Grade 6 grades by "introducing" the material in Grade 5. This is why we have four and five year-olds in Kindergarten doing schoolwork that used to be done by seven and eight year olds in Grade 2.

The newsstory seems to be that the provincial government had promised that 70% of this years' graduates (or maybe Grade 9) would be "proficient" in French, despite coming from monolingual, Anglophone families. Instead, about 17% of the students are "proficient" - probably about the same number that are "proficient" in mathematics. So, the Liberals are being urged to reinforce the Conservatives' miserable strategy of teaching to the same test at earlier and earlier grades.

In other news, we're implementing "literacy assessments" for 3 year-olds in the near future. Why wait until the last moment before diagnosing learning problems (its never the fault of the program or teacher) and mandating reading drills?

Oh, hey! Remember the kids reading to dogs program? Maybe that's the answer. Let's get some hounds in those compulsory intensive French programs. And, yes, of course - hockey players for the boys.

You know, I used to say "I wouldn't send a dog to public school." Now....

12,923 and Snow

2007-02-04T22:38:00.000-04:00

So, as of yesterday our total count of books lent out - this includes children's and adult - has reached twelve thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three. We're just... um... seventy-seven books shy of 13,000!

Yesterday was snowy! The sidewalks were in their typical February state (no City Councillors live on these streets), and we plowed as much as dragged the wagon. I still think a Crazy-Carpet, carefully cut and attached, could solve our problems. Anyway, today I bought a short-handled shovel for us to carry on the wagon.

One woman (who also happened to be a mom) was borrowing books and expressed satisfaction at finding one she knew her two sons would also enjoy. She remarked that books in her house often hold three bookmarks - one for each on them. How's that for a definition of Family Literacy?

Oh, just by the by - here what the important people's streets looked like. Carefully plowed, sanded and salted. Even some bare concrete. I'm so pleased with how our city's being run. That $150,000 plus we pay our City Manager each year is money Well Spent.

(I think I'll just stop now.)

Just Another Saturday in January

2007-01-27T22:57:00.000-04:00

From the ABC-Canada website (link here):

Created by ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation in 1999, ABC CANADA Family Literacy Day® (FLD) is a national initiative that promotes the importance of reading and learning together as a family. Every year, on January 27, families and communities across Canada celebrate this special day at literacy-themed events coordinated by literacy organizations, schools and libraries. ABC CANADA Family Literacy Day® is promoted through a national marketing campaign, with advertising in magazines and newspapers, on TV, radio and the Internet, as well as public relations initiatives, and corporate support from companies like Honda Canada, the Founding Sponsor of ABC CANADA Family Literacy Day®.

Some really good people work pretty hard to remind Canadians that literacy matters, that reading to your kids matters. You can decide for yourself what all those "registered trademark" symbols are doing there.* If you want, you can take a closer look at the budget, promotion materials, and stuff like that. Maybe ask some people in the field how much support they get from ABC, or if ABC even talks to them. I guess I'll just leave it at that.

Me, I'm going to celebrate ~~National Family Literacy Day~~ (oops! sorry guys! didn't mean to trespass on your property)... um... celebrate January 27th with a story.

Last Fall sometime, a young fellow got a bit disappointed with us. We came to his door with the bookwagon - regular rounds and all that. He'd finished Sara Plain and Tall and Skylark by L.W. Beech, and wanted the others in the series. "Other?" I asked, foolishly. "I didn't think there were others." There were, he informed us - his teacher told him - and he set us to task.

What struck me then, and strikes me now, is the number of good things in that moment. One is that he's found a chapter book compelling enough that he wanted to read the next in the series. Another is that he had been spared teasing from other children and adults for enjoying what's typically described as a "popular girls' book series" (à la Random Houses' Eighteen Highly Recommended Books for Girls or ReadWriteThink.Org's "Girls Read: Online Literature Circles"). Another is that he saw us as a reliable source of good reading material; enough to appear a little disgruntled that we didn't stock more of Beech's books. Another is that there was a link between his home reading habits and talk about reading and books in his school.

And best of all, he had been untouched by all the Canadian clamour, scientific proof and university pronouncements (three examples here, here and here) aimed at telling him schools are too feminised and he'd best get some reading advice from a hockey player cause, everyone knows, real boys don't like to read.

* ABC CANADA says: Please ensure that the registered trademark symbol ® or (R) appears whenever ABC CANADA Family Literacy Day® or Family Literacy Day® are used.

because I want to...

2007-01-08T14:57:00.000-04:00

... and it's my own business (so don't judge me).

I was telling my friend about writing messages in French to the authors of blogs français. I can't speak or write French - as recently as five years ago I accepted instruction that taught me not one word. Yet, the third or fourth time I was struggling to say "I liked your blog very much", I realised, hey! this isn't so hard!

"Motivation" she said. She went on to describe her son, who reads well below grade level, sitting on the floor Christmas Day reading the instructions to each of his new toys. It didn't matter that the instructions were written at a level well (in theory) beyond his reach. The adults were busy, he wanted to get his stuff working, so he read. He read and then he constructed and applied and, as the French might say, voilà

Motivation. Yes. But also, I think, safety. No one to criticise. (I knew those bloggers would be too polite - or at least sympathetic - to make harsh remarks.) No tests beyond the tests of life. Does it work? Do they answer? Do I feel good?

Yes I do!

'Hard Core'

2007-01-06T19:50:00.000-04:00

That's what Alison calls doing Bookwagon in single-digit temperatures, a falling barometer, 40 klick winds and early January rain... "Doing hardcore".

"What are you guys doing out here on a day like today?" one dad asked. I asked him about the books we leave his son each week. "Yeah. They're really helping. His reading's getting better. He enjoys them. The main thing. I help with some of them. Read them to him." Then he pulled me aside to ask about joining an adult class. "You know, just to help the kids with their school stuff. Math and whatever. I've just been thinking about it." I told him that would be great, and I had space morning, afternoon and evening.

And that's how it happens. That's the way it works.
On somebody's doorstep in a cold January rain.
Community literacy.
Hard core.

Year by Year

2007-01-04T08:32:00.000-04:00

Someone asked for a year by year breakdown of books borrowed: here it is. You can see the dip over the last 12 months. My perception is that changing neighbourhood demographics left us with physically fewer young families to deal with. But there may have been other factors as well. We don't worry about it because our (unofficial) goal is to stay above the 4000 mark.

b-r-r-r-r-r

2006-12-31T17:38:00.000-04:00

Minus 12 or 2000 or something. Oh, how the short, sweet summer has softened us up! Still, we did the rounds, lending books to 24 kids and 5 adults.

Since starting a little more than 3 years ago, we've travelled 470 km and lent 12,686 books. With a 20% loss rate, we've had more than 10,000 books returned. Mark that: no cards, no i.d., no deadlines, no fines, no fear, no suspended privileges or collections crap, and yet 10,000 books were returned in good condition.

Tell me again about how kids don't like to read. Tell me again about how today's parents don't value literacy and books. Tell me, because where I live and work they wait and watch for us, no matter what the weather.

All it takes is the doing.

for my team - our 4th winter in CV

2006-12-21T01:06:00.000-04:00

Christmas

Someplace else you'll find
the storybook children and puddings and trees
leaded windows and churchpathes and
tophat clerks.
Someplace else kings and pine log fires,
feast days and fealty, a chorus of
angels trudging after each
good page.
Someplace else city sidewalks are wrapped
in chintz and chisel frost,
a fiction of starlit snowfall
sparkling and tasteful as
Bing Crosby
skating past
on champagne ice.

here, small electric lights
run behind the radio
microwave hot chocolate
skeleton snow on the torn lawn
the boy at the door,
asking for an orange.

here is where we live
small and grim
and if I could
I would give you these defiant lights
each christmas
for all of our years.

Wendell Dryden

How It All Began

2006-12-10T20:14:00.000-04:00

Not really. But you have to pick some kind of starting point, or you're right back to the Flood.

In the summer of 2003, the Crescent Valley Community Tenant's Association (CVCTA), the Saint John Free Public Library, and ourselves (Community Learning New Brunswick) joined in a project to improve one neighbourhood's access to literacy and library services. The plan was to provide a summer reading program for children / families.

The Crescent Valley neighbourhood is located in Saint John's North End. It is a residential neighbourhood made up of multi-unit buildings, grouped about common green spaces and bordered by mixed commercial and residential properties. It is some distance from the nearest public library (via an indirect bus route). It is also New Brunswick's largest Anglophone public housing community.

The model we used incorporated providing books for, and reading to, children in a "storytent". For us, a storytent is an 8x8 foot canopy with blankets and a ground sheet, a box of books and two to three adults. The role of the adults is to read, sing and talk with children as requested; to listen to children who wish to read to them; and to provide positive adult role models. We also let children borrow books from the tent. We offered this program twice weekly in each of five different locations.

The methods we used were based on established principles of an humanistic, learner-centered philosophy of delivery and management (Glasser, 1994: Knowles, 1988); early childhood education (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 1990) and Quality Education (Glasser, 2000; Glasser, 1998 - hence the name Quality Storytents). It is our belief that this process was instrumental to the success of the project. And success there was. Qualitative and quantitative research showed:

a positive impact on reading frequency
more children from this community participating in Summer Reading Club than the previous year
all assessed children maintaining or gaining in independent reading level
strengthening relationships between the neighbourhood and the library

As Summer turned to Fall, the children and families asked us to continue the Storytents on Saturday. Not knowing how to decide between locations, we began offering "Twenty-minute Storytents" in each location. It was hectic, but readership remained high. At last, however, the Canadian cold made even 20 min. too long.

What to do?

We'd been hauling our Storytent set-up around in a metal garden wagon. Discussions with families led to the idea of simply travelling door to door with books to borrow. Soon enough, we had a travelling library. The Bookwagon program operated each Saturday, rolling over a course of 3.5 km (2.2 mi). Since December of 2003, we've lent just over 12,600 books - children's and adult's - in snow, sleet and hail.

Glasser, W. (2000). Every student can succeed. California: Black Forest Press.
Glasser, W. (1998). Choice theory: A new psychology of personal freedom. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Glasser, W. (1994). The control theory manager. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
Knowles, M. (1980). The modern practice of adult education. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
O'Sullivan, J. & Howe, M. (1999). Overcoming poverty: Promoting literacy in children from low-income families. (NALD Full-text Documents). Available: http://www.nald.ca/PROVINCE/ALT/CRL/Projects/Opoverty/cover.htm.

More details, see the documents at the CLNB Linkhub

Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

2006-11-27T21:48:00.000-04:00

This image was on My Yahoo! tonight. I thought maybe it was a pointer to some discussion of how we have over-drugged our children. Quite the contrary, the headline read: The memory pill Would you want a pill which could lessen bad memories?

Well, look, getting your news from Yahoo! is like getting your news from the National Inquirer or maybe your crazy Aunt Ruth. And as for getting your Mental Health News...

Still, it bespeaks a conversation in the mainstream (it links to a 60 Minutes video) that suggests more drugs for our kids may be just what the doctor ordered.

You know, when I started this blog I told people it would stay positive: I was going to offer good news about reading and boys. But, my, its hard to be online without being constantly alarmed and dismayed.

Beware of the Adults

2006-11-26T21:20:00.000-04:00

This September, I sat in an expensive room with other professionals, government representatives, business people and members of the university. Almost all nodded in appreciation when one speaker described a program wherein dogs were placed in the classroom to provide an audience for younger students who needed to practise reading aloud. The explanation for this extraordinary thing was that the children did better when they weren't nervous about - and, indeed, liked - the 'person' to whom they read.

No one outside the very small circle of my colleagues (we had shown up to receive an award) remarked then or after at the bleakness of this picture. Children so fear or dislike those human adults we employ in some schools that we must now bring dogs into the classroom to ensure students have a quiet, non-judgmental, audience - an audience that won't interrupt, won't chastise, won't mock, won't correct.

In the 1983 revision to his book How Children Fail, John Holt wrote

....This book did not change, as I hoped it might, the way schools deal with children. I said, trust them to learn. The schools would not trust them, and even if they had wanted to, the great majority of the public would not have let them. Their reasons boil down to these: (1) Children are no good; they won't learn unless we make them. (2) The world is no good; children must be broken to it. (3) I had to put up with it; why shouldn't they? To people who think this way, I don't know what to say. Telling them about the real learning of real children only makes them cling to their theories about the badness and stupidity of children more stubbornly and angrily than ever. Why do they do this? Because it gives them a license to act like tyrants and to feel like saints.

Maybe, if we staffed the whole of our schools with dogs, the children might begin to learn after all.

2006-11-26T19:18:00.000-04:00

Technorati Profile

Give them the right books

2006-11-20T09:46:00.000-04:00

A new kid borrowed this weekend. We'd just picked up the last book in the "Unfortunate Events" series. I suppose it was in the wagon for about half an hour before he spotted it at twenty paces. "Hey! You guys got good books! Can I borrow this one?"

Our rapper/gansta kid passed by, giving the wagon a once-over. I winced insided, knowing I had nothing new for him: I'd again forgotten to pick up "Thug Life" or whatever its called. "Yeah..." (He starts most sentences with "yeah".) "Yeah, I just came out. I been reading all morning." Was he? Does he say that to impress us? I don't know. None of my business, really.

Left a passel of books with a dad. His son needs to read 15 minutes a day and then write about it for school. "They used to send books home with them," he complained. "Now they just tell them to read." In fact, they used to send a trio of leveled books home - more or less at the reader's independent level - so that the kids could read, and their parents could see where they were. Now, parents are left to guess at their children's reading level. Luckily, in this case, we spent time reading with the boy this summer. That meant we were able to leave books that matched both his reading level and his interests.

Access, support, knowledge. We're approaching 13,000 books loaned out. Not bad for a garden wagon on Saturday mornings.

UK - "Boys read better, but not for pleasure"

2006-11-19T20:43:00.000-04:00

The headline reads Boys read better, but not for pleasure

Inside, the story is short and bitter

The proportion of 10-year-old-boys who read books at home nearly halved during the first five years of the national literacy strategy. ... new statistics on reading come from an annual survey of 10 to 15-year-olds by the Schools Health Education Unit in Exeter. Dr David Regis, the unit's research manager, said a connection could be made between the drop in boy readers and the literacy strategy. The strategy came under fire in 2003 from authors including Philip Pullman who say it has stopped children taking pleasure in books.

It comes from http://www.literacytrust.org.uk In turn, they cite the Times Educational Supplement (TES, 10 October 2003).

This isn't new news, of course. It's three years old. But it may be a good place to start. After all, it was about three years ago that professionals in New Brunswick began telling each other that boys were, as a gender, alliterate.

As a gender. Seemed to be something wrong with their brains. Or maybe it was a case of too many women in the classroom. Least, that's what them professionals said.

Community Literacy

2006-11-13T11:59:00.000-04:00

Neither rain nor snow nor dark of night.... But for housework, I gots to stop.