The Third Way Blog

In My Backpack

  

The first day of training here I realized that I had left my bathing suit at home (that is my Montana home), and that that might be a mistake, since who knew what I might have an opportunity to swim.  Yesterday I got half way to the school where I am training tutors and I realized that I had left my computer at home and I might wish I had it. I turned around and decided that I also had to remember to always carry my computer. So the black knapsack that will sit in my rental car for the next few weeks will have my computer, my camera, my bathing suit and assorted notebooks. Oh yes, and some kind of snack, since it is easy to be heading out along the lake, hurrying to get to one orchard or another and suddenly realize that I am tired and have forgotten to eat. (An activity I seldom forget, except in the midst of this all engrossing project.)

We have finished two and a half days of training. We spent yesterday afternoon making a full tour around the lake, talking to families, hugging old friends, exclaiming at children who have grown over the winter, meeting with owners, pigging out on cherries, and looking carefully at the cherry trees. And I got to take a swim, jumping out of the car when we were stopped for a half hour by the lake because of a motorcycle accident in front of us. Today the project starts. Here are a few pictures from my new camera. 

This is the view from our front porch.  Not on the lake this year, but in the middle of hay fields, looking out over the lake.

 

 

 

 

Again early morning view from the porch.  I am the first to get up, expecially on days when I had to get ready to start training. Usually I get to see sunsets here, this time sunrises.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandbox Capitalism

Recently I was at the sandbox on River Side Drive with my granddaughter. (The strange thing about this experience is that I probably played in this very sandbox myself as a child, watched over by my grandmother, and my daughter did so too. If not this one on 119th street, then the next one down on 105th.) I have been eves dropping on sandbox interactions for the last few years, noticing how often I over hear the words “yours”, “hers or his” and “mine.” Here is what happens over and over and over. A child brings a toy to the sandbox, then eventually tires of it, and leaves it lying in the sand. Another child toddles over and picks up the pink shovel, or blue cup. The mother of the second child says "Don't play with that. It's not yours!" Or alternatively the "owner" of the toy, sees that someone else is touching "her" toy, and rushes over to grab it. Parents intervene on the side of the child who brought the toy. "Give it back. It's not yours." So the lesson is: ownership is what counts, even if you are not using it.

The year my daughter was four and playing in these sandboxes, we had just come back from East Africa. Over there she was part of a changing crowd of children who roamed around the property sharing corn cobs, little fruits, flowers (for catching bees), and other odds and ends. If the children fought or cried the older ones were called in and scolded. So peace generally reigned and she was treated very kindly. Then she was back in Riverside Park as we passed through New York. I remember my grandmother remarking that she was surprisingly at how easy going about sharing toys in the sandbox my daughter was. I wondered if it was because she had been treated so nicely in Kenya, part of a world where the concept of “mine” and “yours” seemed more fluid.   

 Then last week I was back in the same territory for the third time. We had brought two blue cups to the sandbox. My granddaughter quickly abandoned them in favor of climbing the stairs to the slide endlessly. Soon two older (3 or 4 years old) girls picked up not only these two toys, but also a battered paper cup and a shovel. After a while my granddaughter went back to the sandbox, found the shovel unused and picked it up. The older girls pounced, grabbing the shovel from her bewildered hands.  I intervened. I said something like, "You have four toys there. Give her one to play with."  They said, "But we don't want to and we're bigger." as if that settled it. "I said, that's exactly why you should share.  Bigger kids are nice to littler kids." They looked at me dubiously. I just kept firmly but gently insisting, and eventually they reluctantly handed over the shovel. After a while, I showed them how to hold out their cup and my granddaughter happily poured her sand into it. Peace returned. And most interestingly the girls were attracted to me. They kept coming over to talk to me and when I left them ran after me asking my name and saying goodbye.  

I thought about this. I could have said, "The blue cups are hers so give them to her. They're not yours."  I didn't particularly want her to learn the lesson that ownership is paramount. I decided to frame the encounter as one that had to do with sharing and being kind to younger children rather than ownership. The up date from New York is that my grand daughter, who will soon be 2, has become fascinated by possessive pronouns

Intermittent Blogger

 I’m afraid this is an off and on blog. Many people have told me that I cannot do a blog this way. I will lose my audience. And I probably have, but I have come to realize that this blog is more than simply a search for an audience. It is a way of keeping track and so if you (whoever you are) like reading this blog, please do not give up on me. I suggest that you either sign up to be notified when I post, or just check in every once in a while to see what is up. When I am at home (as I am for the next two and a half weeks) I blog regularly early in the morning. When I am on the road, it is a little more problematic, since sometimes I do not even have access to the internet. But the next trip is to Montana where I will have internet and much to say. And I am also stockpiling. So there more to come.  

In any case, I am about to break down and buy an iphone. I made this decision finally last Saturday as I sat on the L train into Brooklyn, having already mistakenly taken the D, the K (I think), and the A, all in search of the M, which was not running on the holiday weekend. I couldn't get good information about where to go; I couldn't communicate with the people I was trying to reach. I finally had to ask a hip looking young man with head phones to use his little screen to try to find out what route I could take. He was more than willing to help, but the screen was wrong and so I went barreling off across Brooklyn in the wrong direction. In the end a conductor (a real human being) helped me find the J which took me to my stop, only 40 minutes late.  

Back on my blue and green summer porch yesterday afternoon, I thought about these different roles I am playing these days. Intermittent blogger, itinerant teacher, occasional gardener, dormant artist, persistent writer, part time New Yorker, and, of course, parent, grandparent, and friend. More on the teacher part in the next post. 

20 Minutes a Day

 
 Last Sunday there was a fascinating article in the NY Times called "Fast Track to Kindergarten." It described the new rush to enroll children as young as 3 in tutoring programs in NY.

The article says that parents of pre schoolers must commit themselves to spend 20 minutes a day on "homework" with their children. As far as I can tell from the tidbits of description in the article, the homework consists of worksheets that the children must complete, undoubtedly with their parents standing over them, alternating between the carrot and the stick. ("Write that number neatly and I'll give you two stickers." or "No DVD until you finish your homework.") This cannot be much fun for anyone. But then no one ever said homework was fun.   My approach is a little different, although I think 20 (or even 10, or 5)                                                                        
minutes a day with a parent is indeed the key to kindergarten readiness. We sit on the floor with blocks, or chips, or other small objects that are almost, but not quite the same. (little trucks and cars of all colors, multi colored dominos, even buttons or macaroni). The first step is to look closely at the objects, and then begin to sort them. My goal is to have a short teaching session, where the child and I are working together, and where the child eventually will follow my lead, let me  teach her so to speak. If the child throws the stuff around, the session is over for the day. No punishment or bribary, just try again tomorrow.  It can take several weeks before the child is hooked in enough so we can work together. I suppose one way to harness the attention of a young child is to give her a piece of paper, and say in essence "Do this, and I will give you a sticker." The underlying message, is "This is an unpleasant task, but there is a reward at the end." The child will inevitably try to get the job done as quickly as possible to move on to the sticker or the DVD. 

  I wonder if there are parents out there who would like to try a whole different approach. Small, pleasant, interludes that start by helping the child to slow down and pay attention. No hurry to finish or move on - a message that says "Look at this stuff. It's interesting. Let's examine it together...." I also just read some interesting research with monkeys. If they practice a new skill quickly without full focused attention, they remember it for a while and then forget it. Skills that are practiced with full attention last much longer, they are wired into long term rather than short term memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things I like about being 66

 

 

I was riding home from dinner with friends last night in the spring dusk and began composing a list in my head. It was a list of reasons I enjoy being 66. Here they are:

• It is fun to have friends with whom I have a long history, people I have known for 40 years or more. 
• It is fun to look at old pictures and feel like I am part of many past eras. The past is real. This thought because of two recent experiences: ( 1) being given an old picture of my daughter and other children from the 70's and (2) being "interviewed" last night by phone by a 16 year old in upstate New York about the cold war and the partition of Germany - something about which I know little, except through the eyes of a father who was intimately involved in German history.  
• I get to lecture young people every once in a while. This is a privilege which can easily be abused, of course. It should be used in moderation. But occasionally I just let loose and deliver a little rant. Justifiable of course.
• I really do know what is going on at least some of the time.
• I have full medical insurance for the first time in my life. I have managed to have a work history which never included "benefits." I didn't realize I would like having some insurance, but I do.
• Changes in feelings are less overwhelming. I have finally caught on to the truism that feelings come and go. Sometimes you just ride them out.
• I like being the mother of a grown child (and also a grandmother, of course). These are both relatively new and totally enjoyable relationships. 
• I have been gardening in the same place for about 25 years and I can tell. Every spring good friends reappear just outside my doorstep. 

        

 

End of April

   
 Leaving town again tomorrow, and this is a hard time to go since the outdoors has become so inviting.  Every year I give myself a birthday present of guilt free flower bed weeding in the last week in April.  Yesterday, sitting in the dirt, carefully trying to pull single blades of grass, roots and all, without disturbing the delicate California Poppy plants, I wondered what it says about my personality that I love to do this so much.  Sit on the ground, look at every single little weed and then essentially sculpt the flower beds, plant by plant.  I was also thinking about birthdays.  My mother had died before reaching 66.  My father at age 66 was the proud parent of two very young children.  I am somewhere in between.  Very much alive, and yet certainly not in the parent stage of my life.  Although I have shared my home with a 13 year old off and on this month, and will probably do so again.  I have been regretting leaving because I will not get to see the slow emergence of the water lilies, all the different 100 year old daffodils, the apple tree in full bloom, and the many little green sprouts that are just beginning to take on their adult form, although not size.  So I decided to take a few pictures before I go and my garden becomes a May garden.

 
 
 
  
 

Next time I take this picture we will be full into the buttercups.  Moved from blues to yellows as the dominant color.   
  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time for the next stage.  I have often thought that spring goes by so much more quickly than winter because the landscape changes from day to day, while during the winter it does not.   

 

 

Changing the Face of Education??

Here are some thoughts after watching the movie “Waiting for Superman,” the documentary that is supposed to “change the face of education.”

1. It was interesting to see the endless parade of middle aged men in suits and ties (mostly white, a few black) who were the experts, leaders, and commentators, when the majority of people who deal with children on a day to day basis at home and in the classroom are women (teachers and mothers). Only two women spoke at length and both were polarizing and controversial figures. 

2. Any school that is willing to hold the kind of spectacle that was shown in the final scenes of the lotteries is NOT thinking about what is best for the children - all the children, not just the ones who "win," but also the vast majority who are “not accepted.” Why in the world does this have to be done publicly with the children present? One mother left, murmuring to herself "I wish this had been done without B... present, so by the time I got home I could gather my thoughts and be ready to talk to her!" It is interesting that the lotteries for entrance into the exclusive private schools in New York (for middle class and upper middle class families) are done either by mail or without the children present. These public lotteries seem almost designed to give the vast majority of children the message that they are "not lucky" and "not accepted"; they lost the lottery and so had lost their chance for success. What kind of message is this to give children? That your chance of success in life is determined entirely by luck, by forces outside your own hands?

3. Why so much scripted chanting and rote learning in these charter schools? This is something I want to write about more. It is an important point in light of brain research that shows that learning that is done by rote, without real attention, forms pathways in the brain that are only temporary. (You might pass the test, but the understanding will quickly fade.) For permanent changes in brain wiring, you need full attention, and ideally, the participation of all the senses. I’ve seen for years that chanting vocabulary in language classes, for example, is very inefficient. But I see groups of children mindlessly chanting after the teacher in clip after clip of the KIP schools, and the other schools profiled in this movie. 

4. Finally, the whole system of charter schools, lotteries, longer school days, even boarding schools, gives the message to parents (especially poor and working class parents) that they are powerless. Their job is to work their assess off and hand their children over to someone else to educate. What happens to any one child depends, as a school principal said, on "geography and luck." How about putting the tools for giving children a powerful, individualized education into the hands of parents? This is possible and would be a true change in the "face education." That's what I am about anyway. 

  

Life in the Fast Lane

 
Easter Sunday, and I am still being stalked by "my" robin, who has actually begun to follow me from room to room. Sometimes, I take my computer into a chair in the living room, where it is warm and cozy when I've made a fire. This last week has been damp and cool, so I moved in there to work.  Suddenly, thump, there was the robin, sitting on the banister out the window, and thudding against the window at the end of the living room. Then the window right next to my chair. The last straw was when I strolled into the bathroom the day before yesterday, sat down, and there he was banging the bathroom window. He is circling the house. I keep thinking of his female mate, sitting on some branch looking at him, and thinking to herself "this pathetic nut is the father of my children!" 

The high point of the week also took place in the bathroom. I fixed the toilet myself! This was definitely a triumph of ingenuity over gender. Suddenly, one morning, the handle did nothing. I looked inside and saw what was wrong (the chain was broken). I did not assume I couldn't deal with the problem. A first step. Instead of calling for help, I went to the hardware store and looked for the part I needed. I had a chat with the guy at the register about if it would work for a very old toilet. (Everything in this house is very old.) The part, he told me, could be used in two ways, depending on the age of the toilet. I took it home, opened up the back and began to tinker. It took several tries, and even cutting the new part, then adjusting the chain. Suddenly I had a working toilet and I did it myself! I was very proud. I wanted to call someone and brag, but no one to call. So here I am actually posting about this small triumph. I have the feeling that this experience should tell me something about learning, experimentation, the pleasures of figuring things out, not matter your age.  

Mostly I've been working, and then wandering outside to enjoy the increasingly porous feeling between inside and out. Pull a few weeds and think about the list of forgotten lessons learned every year from the first days in the garden. The one I seem to have to learn over and over and over again is to watch where I put my feet. Small tender plants, once stepped on, will not recover. 

 

 

Really Ready to Learn

 

For many years my house was a pit stop for the Mexican workers who came into this region to pick apples every fall . Some time in mid August I would hear a door slam, the sound of Spanish being spoken on the road, and look up to see groups of young men, or men, women and children coming down the pathway to say, “Hello! We’re back! When can the English lessons start?” People would then be in and out all fall, sitting on my porch, bringing papers to be translated, using the phone to call Mexico, or just stopping in with a box of apples. Often the children had to sit around for hours as their parents worked on some paper or other or waited their turn to use the phone (This was pre cell phone days).

I began to notice something interesting about these young children. They were never intrusive, restless, or bored, and they didn’t fight with each other. Unlike their Anglo contemporaries, they didn’t bug their parents or anyone else. They just played, or sat and day dreamed. If someone was there to play with, good, they would disappear around the side of the house. If not, they found some small toy and invented a game. It wasn’t that they were intimidated; they were just able to amuse themselves for long periods of time. They were obviously used to following adults around, listening to the murmur of adult conversation, and making their own fun. (Visiting the camps, I also noticed that the children were passed around a lot, made much of, cuddled and played with, not only by their own families, but by all the young men who were, after all, far from their own brothers and sisters.)

We popped the school age children into our local country school where no Spanish was spoken and there were no other Hispanic children. In spite of this, they did very well, especially the youngest ones. They bravely climbed onto a bus full of English speaking strangers in the morning, made friends in school, and brought home glowing reports from their teachers. These were well behaved, friendly, surprisingly resilient, and unusually confident young children. In spite of the itinerant life style, the poverty, the language and cultural issues, they were “school ready.”

I’ve been thinking about those days this week as I prepare a talk/training for migrant parents that I will be giving at the National Migrant Conference in a couple of weeks. I ran across an article called "The Social Competence of Latino Kindergartners and Growth in Mathematical Understanding" (Galindo and Fuller, Developmental Psychology, 2010 vol 46, No 3). This article reiterated what I had observed. Latino (especially Mexican) kindergartners come to school with a set of "social" skills that equals those of middle class "white" children. The article speculates that Mexican culture and family life is behind this surprising finding. The article also says, however, that their math skills are not what they should be. (Interesting in view of the fact, that I have also noticed over the years that adults educated in Mexico tend to have much better math skills than minimally educated adults in this country. I think the parents simply do not realize that they can help their children mathematically, and that not speaking English does not matter.)

I suspect that parents create a little bubble of loving security for their children especially in the early years. It is almost as if the families carry the village with them as they move around the country, and village life is healthy one for young children. Working now with parents in New York City (as well as Hispanic families), I’ve been thinking about how parents could combine the intellectual and verbal stimulation that we want to give our children with a little dose of village life. This is one time when it is possible, I believe, to have to best of both worlds in any one family.

 

Mini Posts

 For more than twenty years I got up every morning, started the fires, and
prepared a breakfast for my partner's mother, then in her late seventies and eighties. (As I write this I think "Oh no, she must have been older than that! She seemed so old.") I would take a big bowl and put in a variety of supplements, including lecithin, a mixture of ground nuts, wheat germ and a special yeast, called "Dragon's Milk", a variety of vitamins, a banana, and the cereal. She added artificial sweetener, hot water and evaporated milk herself. I have recently added lecithin to my morning routine, so suddenly I find myself mixing a bowl of cereal with Dragon's Milk, lecithin, banana, (vitamins on the side).  The first time I put in the lecithin, I got quite a pang. Was she old or wasn't she old? Am I old or aren't I old? As I write this I  realize that the pang is not about aging, but about change. After all I still feel the same, probably even a little better.    

 

   
Spring is a funny time here in the country. The animals are a little nuts. A couple of years ago it was that sleepy little bear that came on the porch and peered through the door. Now it is this poor demented robin. Every morning it sits on the lilac bush right outside my window and dive bombs the window over and over and over again. I don’t know if it is trying to get in, if it sees its reflection in the window, or what.  I wonder when it has time to build a nest, take care of its babies, do all the things robins are supposed to do in the spring.  I have asked my young friend who draws Manga all the time, to make a picture with big eyes to put in the window, but she hasn't gotten around to it.  So the birds are trying to get in and it looks to me like my house plants are trying to get out.  They get longer and leggier and press themselves longingly against the window.  I like plants; they are so quiet.  At least they only press against the window instead of banging and banging and banging.