Trust Issues

I've been ruminating on this post for a while, hence my recent absence from the blogosphere. Sorry if this post is a bit rambling.  I want to write about something I think is the undercurrent of all my contemplation on education.  Do I trust my child when it comes to her education?  Are children in general to be trusted?

If you asked me that when I taught first grade in the Bronx (about children in general, my kids weren't born yet then) the answer would have been a resounding "no."  I went to work everyday thinking that I had 24 to 28 little adults who needed to be cajoled, prodded, and forced (sometimes by any means necessary) to do things (read, write, do math, stand in a line, sit quietly, refrain from threatening suicide) they really didn't want to do.  Learning is hard work, I reasoned, and people are generally averse to hard work.  I know I am.  I started to re-think that when I was teaching pre-k, but I didn't really understand where that line of thought was taking me until I had kids, and really, until I met good friends who think about this sort of thing all the time.

I trust that my kids are going to develop certain skills without much, or really, any help from me.  I trust they are going to walk, talk, eat, potty train, sing, ask "why," and develop their own personal interests.  Why is it that I don't have to offer my one-year-old a sticker or a smiley face to get her to walk?  Why does my four-year-old ask why constantly, without punishing her if she doesn't?  Sure, I have to guide my kids, give them opportunities to do these things.  I have to talk to my kids to help them learn to talk, offer them the potty when I think they have to pee, answer my daughter when she asks "why" for the bazillionth time.  But coercion is not part of that equation.  So why is learning to read or add or follow the scientific method any different?  If I simply give my kids the opportunity to learn these things, with no pressure from me, will they?  Will they know what questions to ask?  Will they do the hard cognitive work it takes to practice and perfect skills?  The answer at the moment is, I don't know.

A friend of mine has been giving me a ton of workbooks and learning materials recently and my daughter is all over this stuff,  maybe partly because it comes from her "big sister," as she likes to call my friend's daughter. My daughter has literally been begging me to do a workbook with her.  She's developed an interest in letters and writing (mostly her name) and has perfected writing a pretty awesome letter "e," something she struggled with just a few weeks ago.  All with little more than the provision of writing materials and modest praise.  So, yes, I guess I do trust my daughter to learn to read and write, to a certain level.  But do I trust her to want to read and write well? To learn grammar? Algebra? Chemistry?  Those are certainly things I had no interest in learning.  And now, as an adult, there are things I'd like to learn, but lack the energy and discipline to sit down and learn them. At the end of the day, I'd rather switch off the old brain, put my feet up, and do something mindless. Why should I expect my kids to be different?

And although I trust my kids to want to be "grown up" sometimes (impetus to learn a great many things, I think), there are plenty of things I don't trust them to do.  I don't trust them to know when they're tired, or when something is unsafe.  I don't trust them to know how many cookies are too many, or when they need a bath.  Maybe these things will come in time, but until then, I have to force them to do these things.  Will I have to force them to learn? If I let them lead, I'm sure they'll learn a lot, but will that give them a complete education, by which I mean, will they develop the knowledge and skills necessary to be happy, fulfilled, and productive adults?  And how will they learn to do things they don't want to do but are necessary, like clean the house, take out the garbage, and do everything a boss asks them to do, even if it seems unproductive or unnecessary?

These are the hard questions I ask myself as I start to think about what kind of schooling will be best for my kids.  I wish there were a perfect balance between letting my kids completely take the lead, and sending them to a school where they'll strive for grades instead of mastery.  Maybe there is.  I have a lot to learn.

In Which Our Protagonist Makes a Shocking Admission

Something about stay-at-home motherhood feels terribly indulgent, (much like this venti pumpkin spice latte I’m enjoying in Starbucks right now) even though it’s terribly hard work.  Yes, I’m currently sitting in Starbucks, typing away at my computer, pretending mightily that I’m a very important person, writing the next great American novel, or the solution to the middle East conflicts, maybe.  Why is mommy-blogging not enough? 

Part of it is very simple.  I just need a break every now and again.  When my oldest daughter was a baby I felt very, very guilty for even wanting a break. I thought it meant I didn’t love her enough.  I always thought about the moms I knew (or thought I knew) that didn’t seem to need breaks.  They took so much frickin joy in their kids they made me sick with guilt.   I’m going to admit something now that I’m not actually sure is a great idea on a public blog.  Something I’m terribly ashamed of. 

I don’t actually like playing with my kids that much.  I find it, well, boring. 

Wow.  That was hard.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I love my kids more than life itself.  I’ve never loved anyone or anything like I love my kids.  It’s an unimaginable love.  Did I mention I really, really love my kids?  (Or, super love them, as my almost-four-year-old would say).  But when I take a block and give it back to my one-year-old over and over and over again sometimes I count the minutes till bedtime.  And pretending to be a princess kinda makes me want to die.  Ok, that’s a bit of dramatic hyperbole.  But playing with kids is hard, hard work.  It’s not cognitively engaging, it’s repetitive, it’s not productive, at least not in the sense that I have a pile of something I made or folded at the end of it.  But I do it, maybe not quite as much as I should, maybe I sneak glances at my phone now and again, but there I am, handing blocks to my baby and twirling with my four-year-old.  Who wouldn’t need a break from that?  I yearn to be more productive, to contribute to society in some way.  People say my contribution to society is that I’m raising great kids.  But what if all they do is raise great kids?  Then I’ve just contributed to over-population. 

So the above admission might seem a little strange to people who know me.  I’m a teacher for goodness sake, and I think a lot about education.  But somehow, when it’s not my kids, play is more interesting.  I analyze it.  I look at development.  I find it cognitively engaging.  I think I’m a bit afraid to do that with my kids.  I’m afraid I might find some developmental deficiency.  (Cue my mother, rolling her eyes). Or maybe I just already know them so well that their play isn’t all that revealing on a day to day basis.  Whatever it is, I find myself having to force myself to play with my kids.  Luckily, I’m more successful at forcing myself to play with my kids than I am say, at forcing myself to clean the bathroom.  But I think I’m getting better.  Maybe I just find my four-year-old more engaging recently.  I like teaching her things.  I like, as her preschool teacher puts it, “doping her play.”  I’ve been saving the tops of baby food pouches (thank you, pinterest), and today I poured them all out on the table and started sorting them by color.  My four-year-old, predictably, stopped what she was doing, and came over to me.

 “Whatcha doin’, Mom?”   

“Oh, just sorting these baby food tops.  I want to know if there are more purple or more green tops.”

“I want to do that!” she said as she practically pushed me out of the chair.  That’s play doping.  And man, it’s fun.  I’m sure there’s some psychological reason for that, but I think it’s disturbing, so I’ll let that one go. 

And I hope that play-doping is enough contribution to society. I hope I can somehow dope compassion and intelligence and ambition into play.  If anyone has any idea how to do that, please let me know.

But I still need a break sometimes.  I need to sit in a café and pretend I’m an adult, after pretending to be a princess all day long.  I’m deciding right now, I’m going to forgive myself for that.  Time will tell if my kids will forgive me.  For now I’ll just put a dollar in the therapy jar.

Thinking about Reading

I’ve been challenged recently to think, really think hard, about everything I know about how children learn to read.  This is something that I have devoted my professional life to, something I have loved learning about, teaching, analyzing, and observing for many years.  Language is fascinating.  This code of lines and circles that we’ve developed to communicate without speaking is fascinating.  What I’m now discovering is that is also basic and human.

I’ve been thinking a lot about reading because my four-year-old is on the brink of it.  A lot of parents put a lot of pressure on themselves and on their children to learn letters, numbers, and words very early.  If your kid can identify the letters of the alphabet before age 3, you have some serious bragging rights on the playground.  I certainly don’t have that bragging right.  My daughter can spell her name and the word “stop”, and can identify maybe half of the letters by name, but none of the sounds.  But she loves books. She loves to be read to. She loves books on CD.  I’ve seen her pick up just about anything with print on it, move her finger under a line of text (left to right and top to bottom), and speak nonsense.  She spends anywhere between half and hour and 2 hours looking at books in bed all by herself before she goes to sleep.   Now I’m not saying that she’s any smarter or better than those kids who know the alphabet already, but this is one thing I’m not worried about (and those of you who know me well understand what I’m saying).  As I read more and observe more I’m beginning to decide that I want my kids to love books and love reading more than I want them to possess reading as a skill.  This passage from Brief Intervals of Horrible Sanity by Elizabeth Gold really spoke to me:

I have not even begin to talk about the American confusion about the intellectual life, and how that confusion has been exacerbated by our adoration of new technology and the computer, which is seen not as a tool, but somehow, as a cure.  Now don’t get be wrong: computer knowledge is a useful and practical thing to possess.  But to replace the culture of the book—the concept that anything worth learning is both difficult and time-consuming, but pays the learner back with all kids of contradictory pleasures—with the concept that in our busy, multitasking world, knowledge is something that should be broken down in to easily digested nuggets and “skills” is a mistake.  Efficient such a way of learning might be.  Better it is not.  And if you don’t believe me, check our country’s reading scores.  The more guaranteed-to-work computers and magic programs they drag in the worse a lot of students do.  As for me, I believe not in “reading skills” but in literature….

I see so many children parked in front of “educational” TV programs or iphone apps; programs that will teach children letters, shapes, numbers, I don’t dispute that.  But do they teach children that reading is worth while?  That reading can be frustrating and interesting and fun?  That books themselves are communication devices?  My mother told me recently that she has often thought that anyone who lives near a good library is not poor.  In a time when we think so much about the “achievement gap” and the inequality and injustice in the American school system, I think this is truly wise.  Schools focus more and more on teaching students reading “skills” that are completely divorced from actual books, which is sadly ironic when you think about how much these reading curricula cost. 

        I spent countless hours in graduate school and in teaching trying to deconstruct this mental process we call “reading,” which most adults do as effortlessly as speaking, in order to identify and teach the component skills.   Most teachers are familiar with the assessment tool known as “running records” or “miscue analysis.”  As a child is reading, the teacher follows along and makes a check mark for each word read correctly.  Each word read incorrectly is notated, with marks for false starts, numerous tries, and appeals for help from the teacher.  When the book or passage is done, the words read correctly and incorrectly are taken as a percentage of all the words in the book, and all mistakes are carefully analyzed to find out why the child is making those mistakes and what skill or phonics sound needs to be taught.  This is truly a science.  Now I don’t mean to say that this method is bad or wrong; I have found it to be incredibly useful in teaching children who are struggling in reading.  But is it necessary, or, perhaps, should it be necessary?  I’ve just begun John Holt’s Learning All the Time, and while I certainly don’t agree with everything I’ve read so far, I’m beginning to understand what I think is his basic premise: learning to read is natural, and when children are exposed to books and print early and often, easy.  Breaking down this process, which comes so naturally to adults as to become hard to teach, seems ludicrous when you compare it to learning to walk, or maybe speak.  When a baby is born, the parents don’t parents don’t teach her to speak.  She picks it up by being spoken to, and by hearing language all around her.  Can you imagine having to break each word into its constituent sounds, manipulating the baby’s mouth and tongue to teach her how to form those sounds? 

When I interview applicants for a reading tutor position at the tutoring company I work for I like to give them a little test.  I write the vowels on a piece of paper: a, e, i, o, u, and I ask them to tell me the short sounds of each of these vowels.  Often they start by saying “A,” as in the name of the letter. I stop them and say, “no, not the letter name, the sound it makes.” I’d say probably 90% of the applicants can’t tell me the short sounds of all five vowels.  Go ahead and try it now.  Did you get it?  How long did it take you?  The answer, in case you’re wondering if you’re my star pupil, is: a, as in apple, eh, as in elephant, i as in igloo, ah as in octopus, and uh as in umbrella.  My point is not that anyone who doesn’t know that is stupid , it’s that it’s hard to come up with these sounds!  Why?  Because we don’t use them in isolation like that. Unless you run into a word you don’t know, you’re never sounding out words.  You take them in as a whole, quickly and without thinking.  You have an incredible vocabulary of these words, what teachers call “sight words” because you know them on sight. 

Now this is a tremendous debate in education, and my point is that the phonics versus whole language versus balanced literacy arguments are, perhaps, moot, or at least unimportant to me right now.  Maybe we don't have to break words into their constituent sounds or give children endless flashcards and whole words to memorize.  Maybe all we need to do is read.  Read an awful lot.  Read to them.  Read to ourselves, while children watch and play.  Read novels, brochures, signs, newspapers, magazines, instructions. 

But then again, this is something I’m still struggling with and my views are still evolving.   Is it enough to absorb this code we use to communicate?  Do children need to be able to identify the short vowel sounds so they can figure out new words, words that haven’t been memorized, are unfamiliar, and can’t be understood in context?  What about learning to read in other languages, when the learner hasn’t been steeped in that language they way they have their native tongue.  And how does a child learn to write?  These are questions I’m still pondering.  After seeing so many children struggling to learn how to read, even children who do live in a print and book rich environment, I’m not quite ready to give up the idea that some aspects of reading have to be taught explicitly.  But how and when is the best way to do that?   I’d love to know what you think…

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Introducing...

Picture yourself driving on County Road 99 (a boring road).  The kids are sleeping the backseat, and while you're thankful for the momentary silence, it is with resignation that you accept that bedtime just isn't happening tonight.  Your thoughts wander to the various blogs to which you've subscribed (all parenting related) and it occurs to you that you are at least as smart as those moms.  You have things to say.  You have Profound Thoughts.  You should have a blog, too.  Perhaps you are, in fact, a literary prodigy, and will become one of those people who are actually paid to have Profound Thoughts and share them with the world.  Yes, you smile to yourself, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Or I'll just write whatever floats through my sleep deprived brain.  That works, too.

Disclaimer: I make no apologies for the abrasive humor, lack of technical prowess, stream-of-consciousness inanity, poor grammar, misspellings, and dark thoughts about my children.  Subscribe at your own risk.