Learning Styles - Fact or Fiction?

This fall, I started as an adjunct professor in the MFA program at WCSU, a new field of teaching for me (grownups!!) which I'm really enjoying, because as always, I find I'm learning from my students. Two weeks ago, I attended a training session for new adjuncts, and one of the speakers was the Director for the Center of Excellence in Learning and Teaching on the topic of "Enhancing Student Learning." I learned some very interesting things about studying and learning - apparently I got through college (graduating magna cum laude) and grad school by using ALL THE WRONG STUDYING TECHNIQUES!! According to my adjunct training , the research shows that everything I did to study has little or no efficacy and , one thing - highlighting and underlining - "may reduce performance on "higher-level tasts that require inference-making." Mes amis, au secors! Do you think I go back for a do-over?

To those of you who are students of the Brave New World of EdReform, guess what IS supposed to be highly effective:

I bet there's a purely altruistic tech company out there just waiting to sell us a tablet and a "personalized education program" with ready-made practice tests. Because it's all for the kids!!

As a new adjunct, I kept my mouth shut for most of this. It's my first time teaching adults, rather than young people, so I am open to learning as much as I possibly can about how I can be effective. But this is where I couldn't keep quiet any more.

I raised my hand and said, "I beg to differ. Just in my own home I have two very different kinds of learners. In the small writing workshops I teach, I have to alter my approach to reach kids effectively."

The speaker directed me to this video by a Professor at UVA, Dan Willingham:



I watched this, and his last sentence encapsulates what is wrong with edreform in general because it's what happens when we take the art out of teaching and try to reduce it to science.

"Good teaching is good teaching and teachers don't need to adjust their teaching for individual students."

I've been brooding on this ever since that training, but felt compelled to write this blog post after teaching a new group of students for Writopia Lab yesterday. The wonderful Lena Roy our fearless leader in Westchester/Fairfield, coordinated with a group of homeschooling parents - we will be working with the students weekly at the Greenwich YMCA. Christine Pakkala and I were working with the younger group (7-8 year olds). In our group, we have a wonderful mix of kids. We played some writing games and then sat them down to write. Some of the kids wrote diligently. Some needed more assistance - issues with word formation, spelling. But what was really interesting was that two of the kids - boys - drew instead. One of the boys first drew a grid, then proceeded to draw a series of images in the grid, like a graphic novel. I told both boys they would have to tell us story about their images when it was time to share.

Now you could say - these kids should should be writing! They are there to WRITE!! And I will tell you - they will write. But first I want to get them to tell a story, and understand what telling a story is all about.

And here's the most fascinating part, and the reason why I say the Dan Willingham's of this world don't get it when they say "teachers don't need to adjust their teaching for individual students."

Because when I asked the kid who'd drawn the images in a grid to share, his story was by FAR the most well thought out, richly-imagined, and complex of any of the ones we'd heard. It blew me away - and this was the kid who was fidgety and taking his name tag apart and hiding it under the carpet at the beginning of the session. I asked him if he'd like it if I brought my scanner in next week and scanned his pictures into my computer, and then he could dictate what he'd told me into the computer, and then we could have his story with the pictures. His eyes lit up - he was thrilled by the idea, and said "And I can draw the rest of the pictures for my homework!"

Now Christine and I could have just said to that kid - "Stop drawing and use words! You're here to write!" But a) we would have totally lost him if we'd done that and b) that isn't the Writopia way. Writopia is the anti-edreform way of teaching kids writing. It's about making kids better writers by making writing fun - not through drill and kill. It's the antithesis of David Coleman's "as you grow up in this world you realize people really don't give a shit about what you feel or what you think." At Writopia, we're telling kids - "You have a unique story inside you and we're here to help you find your voice and tell it well."

So the "effective teaching strategies" of the Center for "Excellence" are duly noted - but I'm going to continue to use what works for me with REAL KIDS. Because frankly, I do give a shit about what they think and feel. That's part of my job as their teacher.

On bullying - in memory of Bart Palosz

About a month before the end of my son’s eighth grade year*, I took him out of school for a doctor’s appointment. When the doctor asked my son to lift his shirt so he could listen to his heartbeat with a stethoscope, I was horrified to see words half written, half carved into his stomach with a ball point pen: I AM HATED.

Even as someone who spends every day expressing myself through words, it’s hard to find the right ones to describe how I felt seeing that carved into my son’s skin that morning. As a mother, you want to protect your children, from danger, from physical pain, and from emotional pain dealt out by the kind of insensitive kids who hurt you when you were their age. Seeing “I AM HATED” carved into my son’s skin, made me realize the depth of my failure.

It was no great secret that my son was having a difficult time in middle school. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, and while that means he got into Mensa at nine and his brain works in ways that never cease to fascinate me, it also results in the fact that he’s not your “typical” kid.

He is now in college, and fortunately his peers have matured enough to recognize that differences are what make our society and the world such an interesting place. Indeed, many of our greatest scientific discoveries and cultural achievements we made by people who didn’t fit our definition of “normal.” Albert Einstein, Andy Warhol, Vincent Van Gough, Satoshi Tajiri (inventor of Pokemon), Alan Turing, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Isaac Newton, are all thought to have had Aspergers. My son’s fascination with, and almost encyclopedic knowledge of international affairs makes him a great person to know if you’re interested in politics. He also has remarkable sense of humor.

But middle school, as I know from my own difficult experiences back in the Stone Age when it was called Junior High, is about fitting in. For those who don’t, it can be a tortuous, unforgiving place.

I’d been to my son’s school too many times to count to talk about the problems he’d had with bullying. There were phone calls. E-mails. Meetings with administrators. At one point we tried to set up a meeting the parents of a child with whom there were continuing issues. As a single mom, I asked to bring someone with me for support. The other parents refused to meet unless I came alone. The vice-principal shrugged and said, “What can I do?” The meeting never happened.

That pretty much summed up the school’s attitude. With the exception of one person in the building, the school psychologist, without whose genuine compassion and caring I’m not sure my son would have made it through middle school intact, the rest of the administration threw up their hands in helplessness and said, “What can we do?”

Perhaps if I hadn’t been engaged in a protracted divorce from my son’s dad I would have been able to devote more energy to fighting the school. In my “I’m a bad Mom” moments, I punish myself for not doing more. But that day in the doctor’s office, I was filled with an anger so fierce I wasn’t going to take any more excuses.

Shaking with rage, I drove back to school, had my son to wait in the car, and told the administration what I’d seen. I said my son wouldn’t be setting foot back in the building until they could guarantee him a safe environment.

For the next few days, I home schooled my son, while the administration tried to figure out what to do. Their solution? He would finish out his eight-grade year doing independent study in the guidance office. In other words, rather than dealing with the actual bullies, they would just hide him away, out of sight, so they could get the year over with and be done with the “problem.”

And sadly, that’s how it happened. The good news is that my son wasn’t being tormented for that last month and a half of eighth grade. But the tragedy is that once again, it was the victim who was punished.

As I contemplated with dread the thought of my son having to navigate the local high school with its student population of 2,700 students, Winston Preparatory School, a New York-based school for kids with learning differences announced it was opening a Connecticut campus. When headmistress, Beth Sugerman told me that my son was accepted, I burst into tears of relief.

You’d think it would be a happily ever after story from here on, but it wasn’t. My son was so used to being bullied, so reactive against everything and everyone, that it took him almost a year to realize that the world wasn’t his enemy. That’s one of the many reasons bullying sucks. The pain is deep, insidious and lasting, and that’s why we find that sometimes the bullied end up becoming bullies themselves.

I’m eternally grateful that there were resources within the family to send my son to a school where, once he realized that life was no longer going to be a day-to-day struggle for survival, he thrived. But as I am all too well aware, not everyone is as fortunate, and the Greenwich school district fights such placements tooth-and-nail, despite the fact that it’s clear they do not have the will power to deal with the problem of bullying themselves.

As research for my upcoming book with Scholastic, BAITED**, I read Barbara Coloroso's book, THE BULLY, THE BULLIED, AND THE BYSTANDER: From Preschool to High School How Parents and Teachers can help break the cycle of violence. I think this should be a town wide read, and basis for discussion. We have to stop the denial, stop pretending that this doesn't happen here in perfect Greenwich with our high SAT scores and our manicured lawns. It DOES. And Greenwich Public Schools is complicit in the denial and the enabling.

I learned something important when I was a docent at the Anne Frank exhibition at our high school back in 2003– Don’t be a bystander. As Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Okay, Burke’s one of those old dead guys who wrote a long time ago when women didn’t have the rights they have now, so I’m changing “men” to “people”. But here’s the thing. If you watch someone being bullied -in person or online - and you do nothing, you’re an accomplice. We all need to stand up to bullies – each and every one of us. It’s the only way to end the pain and prevent more tragic deaths.


*My son attended Western Middle School, the same middle school at which Bart Palosz allegedly experienced bullying. What makes me so furious is that so much time has passed and nothing has been done. GPS continues to protect the bullies over the bullied.


** Edited later:  The title of BAITED has been changed to BACKLASH. 

What does College Ready really MEAN?

The phrase "college ready" is being bandied about in education circles ad nauseum (another thing for which we can thank Mr and Mrs Bill Gates) and after a conversation with my daughter last night I've been doing a lot of thinking about what this really means for our kids. My daughter started her senior year today, and we were having another discussion last night about what classes she was taking and for various reasons got onto the subject of Calculus vs. Statistics. She told me that the colleges she wants to go to wouldn't look at her if she doesn't take Calculus.

This is my second child, and I've sat through enough of these admissions talks now to know what college admissions officers are saying. And I have to question some of the values that I see being beaten into our kids' heads in these college admissions sessions. For example, if I have to sit in another admissions session saying that they want kids who have held leadership positions, I might well stand up and scream, "HOW THE HELL ARE ALL OF THESE KIDS SUPPOSED TO HOLD LEADERSHIP POSITIONS? THERE AREN'T ENOUGH CLUBS IN ALL THE SCHOOLS FOR EVERY SINGLE KID TO BE A LEADER?" And what message is that giving kids? That NOT being the CEO is failure? Really? There are plenty of CEOS whose tenure could be viewed as a failure (*cough* Steve Ballmer *cough*). One can be a leader in so many different ways, without holding an official title.

But it's this prescribed view of what kids need to take in order to be college ready that makes me the most crazy. I understand the focus on a rigorous curriculum. I understand that they should be challenging themselves. But calculus vs statistics? Really?

I didn't take calculus in HS or college. It's not that I'm not good with numbers. I got an A+ in Accounting in college, and in my work life created and analyzed budgets for a multimillion pound business.

Financial numbers like balance sheets and income statements make sense to me. They're like putting together pieces of a puzzle. I've told both my kids that no matter what they want to do in life, they should take a basic accounting class, because they need to be able to understand how to read financial statements.

When I got to business school, I had to take calculus as a pass/fail prerequisite. It's the only class I've almost failed in my entire life. I don't know if it was the professor or my brain, but I couldn't wrap my head around the concepts. I tried so hard to understand. I tried to do it by understanding the concepts. I tried to do it by rote memorization of formulas. I passed, but barely. It traumatized me so much that for almost a decade after I got my MBA in Finance, I would wake up in a cold sweat, having dreamed that I'd failed calculus, and I'd actually have to go down to the study and look at my framed diploma to make sure it was still there.

It traumatized me so much I was worried about taking statistics, assuming that I was total dunce. But I did fine in statistics. Statistics made total sense to me.

In my working life since taking calculus, I have never once had to use it. Not when I worked in finance, not as the financial director of a business, not in my current fields of endeavor.In my life since taking statistics, I use that knowledge all the time. Having a working knowledge of statistics enables me to understand how they are being used or misused in political discourse. I can't help wondering - why do colleges value that less than calculus for an educated person?

Again, I wonder what does "college ready" really mean? Who is defining it? And what is the end game? What kind of life is this "college readiness" making kids ready FOR?

As parents we need to ask these questions of our schools, our elected representatives, our government - and we must do it loudly. It matters, for our children, and for the future of this country.

I'm Walking for Alzheimers - in honor of Dad

I've written about my father and how painful it is losing him to Alzheimer's in previous posts here. I describe it to people has having my heart cut out with a butter knife. It's slow. It's painful.

But it's not without moments of beauty and love. My father has always been a dog person. We were rarely without a dog growing up, and although he could be very strict with us, my dad was a complete marshmallow when it came to dogs. Dogs know these things. By the time I got Benny in early 2008, Dad was already fading. But they established a very strong bond.

Fortunately, the Waveney Care Center ,where Dad lives now, is brilliant about allowing family members to bring in pets. Benny,despite having been turned down as an official therapy dog as a puppy because he couldn't maintain a sit/stay for long enough, is a regular visitor and has developed quite the fan club. What's even more amazing to me is that he's learned which residents are real dog people and makes a beeline for them as soon as we walk in the door.

But it's my father he's most excited to see. We have to go up in the elevator, and Benny knows exactly where to go:




As you can see from the pictures below, when he gets there, the love is mutual. Even if Dad is sleeping or agitated, Benny brings a smile to his face.

But Alzheimer's is a one way street, unfortunately, and Dad's condition has deteriorated since last year at this time. He is even more confused, and once when I went to visit him he'd forgotten how to pet Benny - I had to take Dad's hand and remind him how to stroke Benny's soft coat with his palm. It was heartbreaking.

And then there are what I call the tragicomic moments - the ones I am saving up for the adult novel I plan to write some day when I have some distance from all of this. Like when I went to visit Dad and I think he thought I was my mother (because I look like my mom) and told me he just wanted me to kiss him all day.

I was like, "Um, Dad, I'm your daughter. Folks tend to frown on that kind of thing."

Figuring I better get him to a more populated area, I walked him to the elevator. I'd just thrown on a sundress, and I guess it showed a little more cleavage than I usual. And we're in the elevator and I see that's where Dad is staring. And one part of my brain, the teenage part is like, "OMFG, my DAD IS STARING AT MY BOOBS!! I AM TOTALLY FREAKING OUT!!!!" and another part of my brain, the writer part, is thinking "This is going to make a hilarious scene in a book someday" and the third part of my brain, the rational part, is like, "This isn't going to end well" and sure enough, Dad lunges at me and I'm like "DAD! You can't DO THAT! I'm YOUR DAUGHTER!" at which point he looks all sheepish and gives me a cute grin and I can't be mad at him because it's Alzheimer's Dad, not Dad Dad and really, this IS going to make a great scene in my novel some day but OMG, teenage me is still freaking out because her dad just made a pass at her in the elevator.

Or the times when he gets agitated and reverts back to his time working in the intelligence service. "Did you see the men with the guns?" He'll ask me. I've learned to just meet him where he is. "I've scanned the area, Dad, and it's all secure now. But it's safe because of you. Great job of being on the look out."

I try to find the humor in it, but that's because I have to in order to stay sane. There is nothing funny about this disease. I hate it with a passion. It is evil and heartbreaking, and it has robbed me of conversations I want to have with my father, ones I kick myself for not having before.

That is why I'm once again participating in the Walk for Alzheimer's. If you are able to support our team at any level, I will be extremely grateful.

Here's where to donate: http://act.alz.org/site/TR/Walk/CT-Connecticut?px=6866996&pg=personal&fr_id=3300

The Gates Foundation - spending billions to make my creative writing students' dystopia a reality

This evening during my creative writing workshop we talked about setting and world building. I had the kids do one of my favorite brainstorming exercises for this topic: EXTRAPOLATING INTO THE FUTURE.

I ask the students to make two columns. In column one, they write a current law, issues or technology. In the second column, I ask them to extrapolate what they have written in column one, imagining it in a future society. Is it being taken to an extreme? Is it being used for good or not so good purposes?

The example I gave them is scientists currently using brain imaging for various forms of research (ie/Alzheimers, Autism, MS, etc.) What if in the future they used that technology see how a subject reacted to images of murder or other forms of crime and isolated those who reacted positively to those images because they were likely criminals?

My younger kids (rising 6-7 graders) were more lighthearted, yet I'm amazed by the cynicism and distrust of government I see in all of my students. (Heckuva job, Washington!)

One student had some wonderfully innovative ideas - I told her I want to be her business manager and pitch them to Shark Tank.

One of my guys wrote an interesting, humorous piece about how the government, in an attempt to ensure everyone's safety, created bubbles around everyone's houses for protection. But eventually the citizens started getting upset because they couldn't get out to go do things like go on vacation. The Commander in Chief was President Imafraud. Like I said, cynical!

The same kid, in his brainstorming list, wrote about the iPhone 3D. "They're coming out with the 4D with a few months but it's hard to see the difference." (LOL!)

His piece led to an interesting discussion about the impact the government's protective bubbles would have on community and citizenship. This is an example of why the setting and world building workshop is always one of the most lively and fun.

My older kids (rising 8-9 graders) are all working on dystopian novels, so this exercise was particularly useful.

What was really interesting to me as a political writer was one student's projection that schools would be abolished and kids would be educated via computer - because it sounds very much like vision promoted by the Gates Foundation.

I asked the student how he would feel if that really happened.

"I wouldn't like it," he said. "We're required to have iPads next year. I'm not happy. I like to write things down."

We had another lively discussion about a certain class all my kids had shared last year in school, in which computer instruction was used.

Verbatim comments from my students:

"Our teacher sits us in front of the computer for the entire class. He doesn't actually teach us anything."

"Half the time the keyboard doesn't work and then you can't finish the assignment."

"If you don't get it right you just have to keep on practicing until you do. It's really frustrating."

And then the student who wrote that school would be reduced to a computer said to me, "I like this kind of class, like we're having here."

Here's the thing, Mr. Gates: I am not anti-technology. I love technology. I use it every day. I couldn't even consider writing the two books I have with an October 1st deadline if it weren't for my Macbook Pro (Yeah, gave up PCs years ago) and my Scrivener.

But the difference between you and me is that I see technology as a tool - one among many that can be used to reach students.

You are spending billions of dollars to influence policy to make it THE SOLUTION, thus forcing it on my kids - because I view all of the students I work with as my kids. And that, Mr. Gates, is wrong. Maybe you should get out of your Billionaire Bubble, stop listening to the yes men and the Wall Street folks and hear from some actual young people - the ones who are being affected by your misguided policies.

Music, Memory and Alzheimers

One of the many things I love about my MidLifeCrisisMobile is Sirius Radio, because sometimes when I'm listening to Deep Tracks, Classic Vinyl or Classic Rewind, a song will come on and boom, I'm taken to another time and place. It happened yesterday when I was on the way back from visiting my dad at his assisted living facility - "Fat Man in the Bathtub" by Little Feat came on and I was suddenly back at Duke, sitting on the little balcony above the doorway at Wilson House, the one you had to climb out of the bathroom window of my suite to access, drinking beers and watching people hang out and play frisbee on the East Campus quad.



(Note, this is not a song where you have to ask for "More Cowbell". It is freaking Cowbelltastic.)


A month or so ago, I heard this song, which I had on vinyl but hadn't listened to since 1989 when I moved to England and last owned a turntable:



Even though I hadn't heard it over twenty years, I still remembered all the words. I asked my social network friends the question: Why do I remember the lyrics to a song I haven't heard in over twenty years, but I can't remember what I ate for breakfast?

I was thinking about this yesterday when I went to visit Dad. He was pretty out of it when I arrived. His circadian rhythms are reversed, so he spends a lot of the night walking the floors, and then is sleepy during the day. When Benny and I arrived for our visit, it took Benny a lot of face and hand licking to wake him up, and when he did wake up, he was very groggy. Downstairs, they were having the weekly singalong, so I encouraged Dad to get up and come for a walk with us so we could go join in. He held his head when he stood up, and because he can't articulate what he is feeling, we (his family and the staff) have to work together to figure it out from his past medical history and the clues he gives us). Are his medications affecting his blood pressure, causing him dizziness? Does he have a headache? It's like a giant guessing game, where the patient can't tell you if you have the right answer. All you can do is watch and observe and see if he looks happier and more comfortable.

We went to join the singing, and Dad sat quite happily with Benny on his lap, and was even happier after my brother John joined us.

The songs they sing are mostly from the 40's and 50's. "Smoke gets in Your Eyes." "As Time Goes Bye" "The Tennessee Waltz" "I love you truly, dear" (which always makes me verkempt, because my Grandma Mollie, Dad's mom, who also ended up with Alzheimer's, used to sing it to us).

Yesterday, I witnessed one of the ladies, who usually smiles at me but never speaks, get totally excited and talkative when her favorite song came up. She sang, loudly and not particularly tunefully, but it didn't matter. She was responding, and it was beautiful to see her face light up and to witness how it was the music that had touched some memory deep within her and turned on the switch.

I turned to my brother and asked, "What songs do you think they'll play when it's our turn?"

And I had this vision of myself, my wrinkled face lighting up, shouting "BISMILLAH, NO! WE WILL NOT LET HIM GO! LET HIM GO!!" as my middle aged children cringe. Or maybe, by then, they'll just be happy that Mom remembers, and sing along with me.

A firearm is not an appropriate gift for a five year old - EVER

There was another horrifying story of an accidental gun death today. A five year-old boy in Kentucky shot and killed his 2 year-old sister. The mother was home, but had stepped outside for a moment.

But what struck me about this story, was that this five year-old boy accidentally killed his sister with "the .22-caliber rifle he got for his birthday," according to state officials.

Say WHAT?!

The .22 was a Crickett, advertised on their website as "My First Rifle."




I'm not going to get into a discussion of 2nd Amendment Rights here. I'm not even going to get into a discussion of what constitutes sensible
gun laws. But Auntie Sarah is about to rant on the subject of age appropriate toys and parenting.

A firearm is not, in any rational world, an age appropriate gift for a FIVE YEAR OLD. EVER. I don't care if you live in the country. I don't care if you live in a "gun culture." This isn't anything about me wanting to deny you your 2nd Amendment Rights. I'm talking about using COMMON SENSE here, people. If "guns don't kill people, people kill people," why on earth would you be stupid enough to give one to a five year old? Would you let a five year old have access to bleach or paint thinner? Would you let a five year old drive your car? Would you let a five year old play with matches and fireworks? Would you give a five year old a sharp knife as a toy?

If you are a responsible parent with half a brain, the answer to all of these things would be a resounding NO. It's nothing to do with "rights". It's everything to do with being a responsible parent with a brain, who understands the socio-emotional and physical capabilities of your child at a particular age.

What "gift" have these parents given this poor kid? A lifetime of guilt, knowing that he killed his baby sister, when he was too young to even bear the responsibility for doing it. But it's not him who should bear that guilt. It's his grossly negligent parents. And it's the gun manufacturer that is sick enough to purposely market firearms to children. We don't allow tobacco companies to market cigarettes to children. Why do we allow gun manufacturers to market guns?