What children need to be successful in school

Talented teachers + engaged students +challenging curriculum = Success for all.

To make this equation into a reality, children need devoted and caring adults to be successful in and out of school.

As a new school year approaches, the conversation about what makes for good schools and good teachers begins. What do children actually need to be successful in school?  The questions are numerous —class size, teacher/student ratio, how well equipped is the school in terms of technology, how many resources are allocated for professional development and parent education? The questions don’t change and I believe they distract from seeing that children need first and foremost supportive parents and teachers.

Children need a champion, someone who believes in them. Someone who has his or her best interests in mind. Children need a close bond with their teachers. Teachers actually have to like their students to be good teachers. In general, school communities need social trust between parents, teachers and students. There is an intimacy involved in teaching and learning. How many times have we heard how a caring teacher showed a child that he could move beyond himself, into what they did not yet know. In 1977,California spent more money per student than any other state and now ranks 47th. Let’s not slide into faulty thinking that the crisis in education is only about money.

Teaching is a profession, a labor or love, and teachers need some basics to be able to do their job well. Teachers need coaching, they need professional development, and they need to have some autonomy in the classroom. In addition they need time to collaborate and learn from other teachers.

Teachers interact with students many hours of the day but during the school year, parents have less time for that interaction.  I suggest that reading to your children is one of the best ways to give children the attention they need. Talking with children about what you read helps parents be attuned to their thoughts and feelings, which shows children they are understood. In that attention, parents communicate love, respect and children then feel cared for in a gentle and tender way. I know of very few activities that accomplish this as well as reading does

Ongoing Dilemma: Which comes first: reading the book or seeing the movie?

I love the book The Giver but I feel ambivalent about it’s movie release on August 15. Since stories enter through the back door of our imaginations, they speak to our hearts and minds in very personal ways. I worry that if a person sees the movie before they read the book, they will know this story through the lens of another and that saddens me.

The story centers on a community that has eradicated worries and cares, where sadness doesn’t exist and one person holds the memories for all. The story unfolds and shows us what it would be like to live in such a world.

I highly suggest you read the story first and then see the movie. All too often I hear the disappointment people feel who see a movie first and then come to the book.

Every medium has advantages and disadvantages. But I can only seem to think of the advantages that come from reading a book. With a book, you can take your time. You can read it as fast or as slow as you want. You are in control. When it is all said and done, I want to be the one to bring a story to life. And only then I will be eager to see how another brought that story to life.

I don't want any movie to rob me of my first impressions or interfere with my fist encounter of reading the story. I am eager to see the movie but the book came first and in that order is how it should be.

Diane comments in NYT: We often find what we need in the stories we read.

I am in awe of how stories teach us to ask the questions we need to ask, to be the best people we can be. Read more>>

I am working with a young woman who never ceases to amaze me with her capacity to feel and act compassionately toward others. And I am also struck on how hard this woman is on herself, with standards she would never inflict on others. My hope was that through the compassion she felt for the characters she met in a story, she would find her wellspring of compassion that could also extend to herself.

Together we read a human-interest story, The Afterlife by Ted Gup, about his experience of losing a 21-year-old son to drugs and alcohol. When the young woman and I were done discussing this piece, I was moved by how she was able to see the contrast between the empathy and compassion she felt for this grieving father and the harsh way the father chose to frame a habit he began in response to his grief.

I was glad to see where this young woman’s thinking took her in response to this story. And I myself wanted to say something to Ted Gup, hence my Letter to the Editor of the NYT (7.15.14) Read more>>

A story within a story—the magic of coincidences.

I recently had the pleasure of presenting my Conversational Reading approach to a statewide group of CT Librarians. This was a dream come true audience for me since it satisfied a long held fantasy of mine—to know something about what people in my audiences actually do with the ideas I present. As part of the program, the librarians were offered a grant to implement programs in their individual libraries, using whatever portions of the Conversational Reading approach they had learned with me that best fit their needs.

I have been overwhelmed with the results and I just have to share one recent story that comes from Jane and Piper who work at the Library in West Hartford CT. Piper, a lovely lab and Jane do Story Time.

Meet Piper.

Jane choose Beatrice’s Goat to create a program based on Conversational Reading.Beatrice’s Goat is about how one small animal opened up a whole new world and made possible a young girl’s dream of attending school in her small Ugandan village after her family is given an income-producing goat. The story is based on a true story about the work of Heifer Project International.

Witness the magic that happens when adults and children with a passion for a story come together. www.piperlovesthelibrary.blogspot.com and scroll down to Wednesday, July 2, 2014 Reading Beatrice’s Goat Together

How it all started…with a little help from my friendsAndrew Eder & 

Diane W. Frankenstein

I couldn’t make up the unknown wonderful coincidences of how this particular story had a special significance to this town in CT.

“We discovered that Beatrice Biira, the real girl from Uganda, the girl in the book, came to the United States to continue her education.  She came to Connecticut -she graduated from Connecticut College. We’re one of those tiny states, so this was pretty cool.  Oh, there’s more…the Heifer Project International funds that brought the goats to Kisinga, Uganda, Beatrice’s village, came from a little village in Connecticut – Niantic.”

I want to thank Jane for this wonderful story within a story. And I want to meet Piper! 

“ Summer Reading for Parents” (WSJ) addresses the challenges parents face in choosing the right book for their child but I see more confusion ahead with the publishing industry’s attempt to label books, hoping to inform parents to make better-informed choices.

Here are some simple guidelines to follow. A just right book pairs a child with a book with the proper reading level (children are able to read the words of the story) with their appropriate developmental age and stage (children are ready to think and talk about the subjects a book brings up).

Appropriate developmental age and stage and correct reading level is simple enough to determine and when you add in a child’s interest, you have some very easy to follow guidelines to make informed choices on the books your child reads.

However, I believe that every child deserves and needs a Reading Fairy Godmother. They know that the very best of books make a sound in the heart. Books enter the back door of the imagination, not the front door of logic and herein lay their magic.

When choosing a book for a child, I look for books that cause a reader to pause, and inside those pauses, our hearts open and become more porous to ideas and feelings. With each book, the heart breaks open a tiny bit and into that space new ideas and feelings jump in. Every time a heart breaks, it creates a space that invites new understandings. After each “heart break,” the heart expands and becomes more than it was.

Readers, both adults and children, experience with each memorable read, how their heart has been “broken," added to and altered. I believe this is the gift of reading