I returned from Kenya over a month ago and am still reflecting on the conversations that I had there with teachers, students, administrators, and officials at the Kenya Institute of Education. There’s so much to think about and digest. The one thing, however, that I have been thinking about ever since I came back is the lack of reading culture in Kenyan schools. One of the main things that all English teachers we worked with wanted to learn from our workshops was how to encourage reading in their classrooms.

You may think that this problem is not unique to Kenya, that in many classrooms in wealthy developed nations students are also often uninterested in reading. I agree. As an English teacher in Canada I often struggled with this challenge in my classroom. However, in Kenya, this problem is compounded by some deep-rooted issues that have been part of the education system since Kenya gained independence in 1963.

First, almost all the students and teachers we came into contact with in the rural schools we visited speak English as their second or even third language. Yet, when teachers speak of encouraging a culture of reading, they invariably mean the culture of reading in English. In other words, they want to encourage a culture of reading in a language that students use very rarely outside the classroom.

Second, the Kenyan system of education is dominated by exams which play a crucial role in deciding the students’ future. Results obtained on these exams determine whether or not the student can move on to the next grade, to high school, or to post-secondary education. If the results are not high enough, the student is almost always left without options.

English as a Second/Third Language

Kiswahili and English are both taught in Kenyan schools. Kiswahili is the language of instruction in grades 1 through 3, while English is taught as a subject. In grade 4, English replaces Kiswahili as the language of instruction and Kiswahili is taught as a subject until grade 12. The language policy is bilingual, but from what we’ve observed some Kenyans are monolingual, some bilingual, and some multilingual. In other words, most of the children we observed and most of the teachers we worked with speak three languages: they speak their mother tongue (Kikuyu in the region we visited), Kiswahili, and also English. English is not the language you hear on the street in small towns and villages in rural Kenya. It is rarely used by the students outside of class time.

What this means in the classroom is that the mother tongue or Kiswahili are used quite often. Occasionally, even the teacher uses the mother tongue or Kiswahili to explain challenging concepts (personal observation; Muthwii, 2004). Also, when students converse with each other, both in class and outside instructional times, they very rarely use English. I observed this phenomenon in every elementary and secondary school we visited.

English is therefore seen in very pragmatic terms. It is used to obtain an education and write exams. As a result, students do not use colloquial English, and it could even be argued that in a country where English is often a third language, there are limited opportunities for them to do so. As Commeyras and Inyega argue, “their instruction in English typically lacks meaningful interactive use in meaningful contexts” (2007). English is not the language of social interaction. Code-switching is very common in instructional contexts. The use of Kiswahili or mother tongue among students outside of class is the norm. Voluntary reading in English is therefore rare because English is perceived as a tool used only to pass exams and secure employment (Commeyras & Inyega, 2007).

Exams

This lack of interest in English is greatly exacerbated by the fact that, in Kenya, students write exams at the end of every grade. They must pass that final exam to proceed to the next grade. They also write a cumulative exam at the end of elementary school (grade 8). Known as the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), this exam determines whether or not the child will go on to secondary school and also the kind of secondary school he or she will attend. Then, at the end of high school, students write another exam, known as the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). This exam determines whether or not the student can be considered for admission to a post-secondary institution.

If a child fails either one of the exams, her educational opportunities end. She will not proceed to high school or post-secondary education. She cannot try again. Her entire life depends on two hours at the end of grade eight or grade twelve.

Needless to say, reading and the use of English are associated with formal schooling. One uses the language to prepare for and pass exams. Reading and writing in English are perceived as skills that students need to develop to function successfully in school, not something that a student perceives as valuable (or even usable) outside the classroom in her community and in social contexts.

So What?

Imagine trying to build a culture of reading in English in a classroom where the students see English only as a means to an end. It’s a language they do not use in their daily lives outside of school. In fact, students in rural communities do not have many opportunities to practice the language in interactive and meaningful social contexts. This lack of what Commeyras and Inyega call “enabling environment” (2007) certainly contributes to the students’ perception that English is a tool one must master only in order to study and pass exams. It is not personally meaningful at all. English is predominantly the language of academic contexts.

One could argue that reading in English could help the students increase their chances of performing well on their exams. Unfortunately, the exams consist of fill in the blanks questions, and some multiple choice and short answer questions. They certainly do not require too much critical thinking. Rote memorization is quite sufficient.

Can Anything Be Done?

While I agree that it is challenging to encourage students to use English outside of school where they seem perfectly happy communicating in their mother tongue or Kiswahili, it is imperative that the use of English in school change from purely formal and transactional to more expressive, interactive, and socially meaningful. One of the main barriers that has traditionally made this shift impossible is that teaching in Kenya is very teacher-centred. In addition, instruction in an English classroom is often limited to cloze tests, reading comprehension exercises, and short answer questions. Students are generally not given opportunities to express their opinions or engage in class discussions or debates. Chalk and talk dominates classroom interactions.

But, how do we encourage teachers in Kenya to adopt a more student-centred approach? How can we support them in this shift to a more participatory environment?

I think that the small, gradual steps - the approach we used this past summer - are necessary to help teachers move out of their current comfort zone and test themselves using a different teaching methodology. According to Commeyras and Inyega (2007), two research-based Kenyan documents (MOEST, 2001; Willis, 1988) suggest that teachers can promote greater interest in reading by reading aloud to their students. Furthermore, talking with students about the texts as preparation for independent reading can also be very effective (Willis, 1988). Of course, the challenge here is that this approach requires that the teachers themselves be committed and enthusiastic readers willing to share their personal stories and reactions with their students. I believe that the students need to see in their teachers a high level of authentic engagement with a text in order to be encouraged by this approach. Teachers need to learn how to communicate their passion for reading and they need support in learning how to initiate and sustain meaningful conversations about texts in their classrooms. This is not an easy task for a teacher who is used to lecturing and who every day walks into a classroom where the students have been conditioned to sit quietly and listen.

I learned this past summer that creating a participatory environment in Kenya involves two steps:

1. Helping the teacher understand the value of the Socratic method and student voice in the classroom

2. Helping the teacher convey that value to students who have spent years in a teacher-centred system that rewards those who are quiet and equate learning with rote memorization.

The teachers who attended the TWB-Canada workshops in Kenya were very open to new ideas and most were very enthusiastic about creating a more student-centred environment in their classrooms. I look forward to meeting many of them again next summer and I plan to continue to work on encouraging independent reading and an open, participatory classroom culture.

Access to Reading Materials

The importance of independent reading has been addressed by the Kenyan Ministry of Education (MOEST, 2001). The ministry even listed a number of suggestions to encourage reading in Kenyan classrooms:

MOEST (2001) provides a variety of ways for encouraging students to read, including setting aside time each week to be used for reading in class; specifying the amount of reading to be done out of class and keeping a record to track the reading that the pupil has done; asking students to give oral reports of what they are reading; using resource persons to read to the pupils, modeling how they want the pupils to read; and rewarding effort made to read (Commeyras & Inyega, 2007).

The one barrier that still needs to be addressed, however, is the question of access. When we discuss independent reading in North America,  or in any developed nation, we don’t spend too much time thinking about access to appropriate materials. We take for granted that students have access to libraries, either in their schools or in the community. We know that their parents can also purchase books or magazines. Access to reading material is not an issue.

In Kenya, things are very different. Efforts to encourage independent reading will be pointless if the students have no access to reading materials. While some schools we visited in rural Kenya had small libraries or book collections, most did not have any reading material except textbooks. Consequently, another goal for our next project in Kenya is to help improve access to reading materials by fundraising for paperbacks or magazine subscriptions that can be purchased locally to eliminate shipping costs.

In short, as I begin to prepare for next year’s Teachers Without Borders workshops in Kenya, I think about how we can best assist Kenyan teachers in creating an environment in their classrooms where the students will be given opportunities to share their views, participate in debates, and use English in an expressive, creative way, not merely as a tool to help them fill in the blanks on a test. The teachers I met in Kenya were very open to making the kind of shift in their pedagogy that is required to ensure that their students have opportunities to move away from the formal and transactional uses of English and towards a more expressive and personal voice. At the same time, I realize that access to paperbacks and magazines will be crucial and I hope that, as a team, Teachers Without Borders - Canada will be able to raise enough funds to bring more books to Kenyan classrooms.

If you think you might be able to help, please let me know.

References:

Commeyras, M. & Inyega, H. (2007). An integrative review of teaching reading in Kenyan primary schools. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(2), 258-281.

Ministry of Education Science and Technology. (2001). Teaching and learning English in the primary classroom: English module. Nairobi: Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.

Muthwii, M. (2004). Language of instruction: A qualitative analysis of the perception of parents, pupils, and teachers among the Kalenjin in Kenya. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 17, 15-32.

Willis, B.J. (1988). Aspects of the acquisition of orality and literacy in Kenyan primary school children (Kiswahili). Dissertation Abstracts International, 50, 433. (UMI No. 8908590).

Amazon just acquired Shelfari along with used and rare book company Abe Books. Abe Books has been a long-time partner with and 40% investor in LibraryThing, a Shelfari competitor, so the Abe Books acquisition also gives Amazon a 40% stake in LibraryThing. A crowded shelf indeed. Details covered by Publishers Weekly and TechCrunch.

I’ve never been a fan of Shelfari: the UI is gaudy, the site is slow, there’s no way to make edits on large numbers of books quickly, and there’s very little room for user input or modifications. As for organizing your collection, Shelfari’s use of tags is so secondary that it’s nearly useless. Plus, if Amazon isn’t selling it, good luck getting it onto your shelf.

Tim Spalding, founder and CEO of LibraryThing, has more serious issues with Shelfari that I think are worth repeating:

As I’ve said before, I have respect for LibraryThing’s 40+ competitors, but withhold it for Shelfari. They were rather famously called out by me and by others in a series of blog posts exposing a program of spamming and of “astroturfing” (paid employees posing as excited users in blog comments). They apologized on both occasions, but I have, quite frankly, the greatest contempt for them, and for what book-based social networking will become if they beat out LibraryThing.

Picture a boot stomping on a human face forever. Well, okay, not that. But picture the book social network wars ending with a site created by music people who probably wouldn’t get that allusion, with advertising all over, with “community managers” “managing” conversations between book lovers, and under the shadow of what will sell books and not books’ other, greater values. In short, I believe there’s something “to” the idea of book-based social networking which they don’t get, and to which they are a danger. Yes, I’ve drunk my own Kool-Aid.

I’ve been a long-time user of LibraryThing. It’s quick, allows users to contribute to book details, has active and thoughtful discussions that revolve around the books, and is great at allowing users to organize their books easily in a variety of ways. I tend to think of Shelfari as the choice for people who like to look at shiny book covers sitting on their shelf and LibraryThing as the choice for people who like what’s between those covers.

I do have two gripes with LibraryThing, though. While the UI is faster and more useful than Shelfari, and allows for lots of great ways to organize and benefit from the information surrounding the books, the actual look of the site could be improved, particularly if it hopes to compete with Shelfari.

More importantly, LibraryThing, after a long series of promises, discussions, and flip-flopping, decided not to create an official Facebook application. This was a serious mistake, in my opinion. While many of my friends are book-lovers, only a few have that combination of book-lover and web-geek that would compel them to enter, tag, and discuss their book collections on a books-only social network. However, many of my friends will happily share what they’re reading with others on Facebook, and since LibraryThing doesn’t have an app through which I can do that, I have to use another service if I want to join in on that sharing. That’s a lot of word-of-mouth support for LibraryThing that just ain’t happening.

I’ve been reading Postman and Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity (more info), and I’m finding myself extremely drawn into it. It’s the kind of book that I may have read as an undergrad, but just wasn’t ready for. It’s the kind of book where you need to be ready to really engage with it before it makes sense. And it’s the kind of book that has me rethinking pretty much everything, and seeing new patterns everywhere. The book was written before I was born, and published only a few months before I was. But it feels so intrinsically relevant and important today - maybe moreso now than in 1969.

One of the chapters is describing inquiry, and what an honest adoption of inquiry would mean for curriculum, education, and society at large. What does it mean when curriculum isn’t predefined, and must be pulled from individuals and groups through the act of questioning, and the process of making sense? What does that look like?

Although much of it rings as important, even critical, to adopt in education, I think a full-scale adoption of inquiry would require more than just a tweak of the education system - it would require essentially nuking every concept of curriculum, and assessment, which would in turn require nuking large parts of entire educational institutions (and non-educational ones as well) and rebuilding from scratch. Sounds nice, but it’s just not practical.

Then, I turned the page and hit something I hadn’t seen before. A blank page, filled with handwritten sentences. At first I thought there was something wrong with the book. Postman and Weingartner had been talking about eliciting questions from the reader. And their implementation was to actually leave room inside the book for contributions from the reader. Not a blank page at the back of the book with “Notes:” stenciled on the top. Not a generic page for random scribbling. A blank page, with the specific purpose of eliciting responses from the reader: What questions would you ask if there was no curriculum? What is worth knowing?

It’s a simple technique, but shows a few things in action.

1. The simple act of honestly asking for contributions radically changes the nature of the experience. One is no longer simply “reading” the book - they are helping to write it.
2. Inquiry doesn’t need to be a Big Scary Thing - it can be as small and simple as asking a question, and allowing all responses. Note that the authors didn’t say “what topics are important?” or “what are the fundamental subjects that should be taught?” - they asked “what is worth knowing?” and that is a pretty simple yet powerful question, leading to further simple yet powerful questions in response.
3. Starting from a set of open-ended questions, one can start to define some paths for further inquiry pretty quickly. Inquiry isn’t chaos - it’s finding out what matters to the individual participants, and then searching for strategies to finding solutions and answers. It’s not the absence of content, or the absence of direction. It’s placing the focus of the activities of teaching and learning on the individual, and finding what their needs are, in various contexts.

And others have used similar strategies to draw people into conversations and presentations. I was able to help facilitate an inquiry-based session a few years ago with Brian and Alan, and it was one of the most powerful experiences I can remember. Stephen Downes has been doing this for years - I had the pleasure to see his new EduRSS (now gRSShopper) backchannel running at TLt this summer during his presentation.

Sure, some of the responses are silly when there are no restraints placed on contributions. But some responses are deep, thoughtful, relevant, engaging, engaged, and enriching. And the participants care about what is going on.

If inquiry is honest, and participants are working together to identify questions that they feel are valid - and then to answer them - that is a powerfully subversive activity that can change education from simple content dissemination into something that is so much more engaging and relevant. It changes education from being an industrial age “teaching factory” to an organic, adaptive, extensible process.

And I’m not using subversion in a negative sense. From Wikipedia:

Subversion refers to an attempt to overthrow structures of authority, including the state. It is an overturning or uprooting.

Reading Despite Teaching

or,

How the hulk led me to Hamlet

Artifact: 1976 Killraven Comic Book (final issue)
Date: 1969-1980
Cultural Element: Education: Standardized Curriculum; Aesthetics of Class: ‘High’ v. ‘Pop’ Culture
Commentary:

Old Skull (seated) and Killraven on Lookout Mountain

I was born to a middle class family of Tennessee and Alabama origins, and raised in a house with few books (okay, we had a family Bible on dusty display; a lonely edition of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet I found shoved out of mind in my father’s closet, and enjoyed; a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and another of The Great Books that I imagine some salesman twisted my parents’ arms to buy for the sake of their children’s educations and of 1950s middle-class respectability and which, oddly enough, we enjoyed rummaging through as children).

My schools had books in the library, which I recall using briefly in fifth grade to read a series of boys’ action mysteries and a few baseball dramas—but overall, school libraries meant homework, and homework meant no play, and play was fun and homework wasn’t. In short, I didn’t read books because I didn’t like what they were associated with: reports.

I did, however, read comic books. Devoured them. The X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Thor, Spiderman…these and other titles constituted my first library. I started reading them in grade school, under my big brother’s influence, and evolved into a connoisseur. I knew the names and styles of the authors and illustrators, the colorists, even the letterers. I suffered when my favorite titles underwent changes in writers or artists. Would the new team maintain the character subtleties and personalities I’d come to love from their predecessors? Could the new artist match the galactic or subatomic vistas the old one drew me into? Would Valhalla still sparkle? Would Daredevil’s deltoids still look so cool?

The first of every month was an event to pine for, because that was when the new issues hit the racks. I made pilgrimages three miles on foot to the nearest convenience store to buy or, funds being unavailable, steal the latest installments. Keeping them in mint condition was important: I would roll seven or eight comics into a cylinder and slide them very carefully into my sock and under my pants-leg, carefully walk to the cashier to pay for one other one, then hobble stiff-legged behind the store and uncoil my loot from my legs, checking for damage.

The hours of reading these books in my room once back home were my earliest experience of that reader’s pleasure known as “flow.” Everything environmental disappeared, everything personal, emotional, physical. I recall one month reading an episode of an obscure but brilliant title based on War of the Worlds called Killraven, which happened to be set on Lookout Mountain…in Chattanooga, my home town. I was elated to discover that my locale was known to the authors, that it had significance, that I belonged to a larger world.

Better still, it was the only comic I recall ever reading that attained such aesthetic heights that I wept and wept: Old Skull, the bald, brawny, but kindly and simple sidekick to Killraven—very much a sort of loyal Kent to Killraven’s Lear—enjoys an idyllic moment appreciating butterflies and childishly chatting to squirrels by a mountain stream (my mountain!). It is lyrical perfection, it brings fond laughter, and the illustrations are so lovely…I remember the artist’s name, P. Craig Russel, and his ornate and elegant art nouveau signature on the title page of every issue, and I haven’t seen or discussed these books since the late ‘70s…and then there is a sound from the forest that breaks Old Skull’s reverie, and out steps a Martian who breaks all conventional comic serial rules by killing a main character. Old Skull died on Lookout Mountain, and I wept on its foothills.

My Favorite Artist in high school: Craig Russel, Illustrator of Killraven

My neighborhood friends (also Killraven fans) and I could not get over our amazement at all of this. We often discussed the stories from the Marvel Universe, but this was the high point. (It turns out Old Skull could be killed because Killraven’s circulation was so low, attempting as it did to pioneer new territory in comics, that it was discontinued with this issue.)

I would hope that the pedagogical implications of my formative experience with reading are self-evident: My public school’s curriculum and pedagogy failed to make me a reader. I became a reader despite, not because of, book reports and assigned readings. This is the strongest personal confirmation I can offer of the value of free voluntary reading time at school, and of letting the students bond with whatever literature appeals to them—and I hope I’ve succeeded at showing that Killraven, for instance, was literature. The experience of flow is part of what lifelong readers read for; it constitutes one of the central aesthetic pleasures of reading (traditional aestheticians describe it as ‘absorption’ of the self by the work of art; politically suspect as this may be, I think its an essential stage of aesthetic development); and I believe it should be the primary aim of reading classes. Once students have experienced that, their desire to repeat that experience will motivate them to read for the rest of their lives. I soon graduated to science fiction in high school, and dropped comics altogether in college in favor of a new Valhalla containing my new gods: Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, Wilde, and Nietzsche—all owing to my start in comics. Only after reading for flow creates the reading habit will exercises in critical reading and writing about/of literature be significant for them, as opposed to aversive exercises to be dashed off as quickly as possible in order to do other, ‘fun,’ things.

The fact that I remember the authors and artists of these comics, and was critically aware of their stylistic differences without ever doing homework about them, further suggests that even critical reading skills develop independent of instruction. The fact that I remember Old Skull’s death scene so vividly—more so than most books I was ever assigned in my education, college included—almost thirty years later is a revelation even to me. And traditionalists, take note: as a child, I very likely would have enjoyed writing a report on this scene, if only I’d been invited. I never was.

A multicultural note of a different sort—because pop culture could be seen as a multicultural category—is the significance of my personal-local connection to the story I described. This encounter in text with my own soil and sky—could this be why I haven’t forgotten it like I have practically all the other comics I read? This can’t be known. But there’s no doubting the intensifying effect this local-cultural connection had on my relation to the text. This points yet again to the vital importance of student choice and relevance in reading curricula.

Finally, my public school teachers probably had no idea that their desperate attempts to make us students engage in sincere reflection about books through book reports were so futile because we were naturally reflecting on our own cultural texts in authentic social reading groups—normally in the woods in our neighborhood. If my goal as a language arts teacher is to make good book-reporters of my kids, then I should keep assigning book reports; but if I want to make them lifelong readers who read like we adults do—we read books and discuss them with others—I’ll allow authentic book chats in class.

[Part 2 in the autobiographical "Web Legacies" series. Part 1: Ambivalent Apostasy (or, Fear and Trembling at Camp Joy)]

10 Comments

• At July 30, 2008, /gradster(1)/ wrote:

  For the most part, I have always disagreed with assigned reading - sure, it gets people actually processing the text, but if it's a book they hate, then they're going to fight every inch of it. And rightly so.

  I'm interested to learn what some strategies you have for making assigned reading fun are.

  Oh, umm... "networkchallenge".

  Please reply,

  /gradster(1)/

  /gradster(1)/s last blog post..Knight Spent Fighting Crime

• At July 30, 2008, Jason Priem wrote:

  Interesting ideas, Clay; I like your observations on the power of locality in fiction.  Whenever I travel, I always try to read some fiction centered on the place I'll be going, both before and after the trip; I've found that the practice creates an interesting synergy, illuminating both the story and the place.

  I can see how being able to identify with one's own locality in fiction would be a powerful draw, especially to younger readers. In a sense, it's a return to the spoken, informal narrative, often (though by no means always) crafted by one's own people about one's own place.  We want a certain amount of familiarity in our stories.

  Written fiction offers powerful leverage to distribute a story across space and time, but (like all mass-produced products) at the cost of personalization. A lot of fiction (especially regional fiction) deals with this by making the location one of the characters, getting mileage out of fascination in the exotic and the Other. Preliterate stories did this, too, of course (Odyssey, anyone?), but they were and are also able to anchor things in the familiar. Ghost stories may be the apotheosis of this anchoring: "And it happened in these very woods...".

  So anyways, I wonder if that's part of Killraven's draw. Although I wouldn't underestimate the power of great art, either...I've always been in awe of some of the great comic book artists' illustration skills, and I think it's real shame that both the stories and art in comic books (and I'm so glad you resisted the desperately-clutching-for-respectability "graphic novel" appelation) have always gotten such critical short shrift.

  Although perhaps the future may be different...I know the ALA has been doing more stuff with comic books, partly driven by the popularity of Manga.  There's been some literature on how comic books may be a sort of gateway drug to more serious fiction. I've also seen some literature realizing that comics have value in their own right--and end, not just a means--as well.

  Jason Priems last blog post..79% of oft-cited statistics are total garbage

• At July 30, 2008, Clay Burell wrote:

  @Gradster I'll have to point you to the language arts category in my sidebar to look at some examples of ways I've tried to make reading assigned works more engaging (or the "teaching gallery" page up top). The problem is, it's a bear for a teacher to manage a totally free reading approach, as I'm sure you can imagine.

  @Jason, Nice remarks. They sort of link to the post a few days ago questioning whether "Local collaboration" is maybe preferable to "Global."

  As for Killraven, I was hooked by it for over a year before they journeyed through my hometown in their last episode. The art was definitely a factor, but so was the writing and characterization (and it was based on _The War of the Worlds_, too, so it had a decent plot frame).

  I haven't read many graphic novels (and without meaning to quibble, I find the term useful to distinguish between a "novel"-length comic and a 20-page "comic book"), but I did teach V for Vendetta at the end of grade 9 last year, as a followup to Animal Farm - a sort of "AF for the 21st C. Surveillance Society" hook, which I think Cory Doctorow's new _Little Brother_ would do even better. But I LOVED _V_ - and it was hard for my students to get.

  Glad to see you mention Krashen (check out his _The Power of Reading_ too), whom I was too lazy to reference. The PoR research is a bit old, and I don't know if comics are as textually dense as they were in my teen '70s, but his plug of comics as a way of developing vocab and syntactic skill is spot-on for me. It's clear to anybody who looks at comics with fresh eyes. I had a strong vocab in hs, and it came from comics and sci-fi.

  Stay tuned for the next Legacy post, re: that "Comics as a Gateway Drug to Literature" bit. :)

  Thanks for stopping by.

• At July 30, 2008, Paul V wrote:

  Ironic for me that I encountered your post in the public library with a stack of X-Men and Batman comics next to me. I have enountered some powerful graphic novels that have changed the way I see the world- "Blankets," "Pride of Bagdad," "The Castaways" to name a few. I agree that Little Brother would go well with V for Vendetta (I doubt my school would pay for a class set of g.n. though.)

  As I was reading I tried to think of books, stories, comics even that have transported me and shaped my reading, and I thought of my 12th grade English teacher (Ms. George- with whom I think I was secretly in love) and how she introduced me to Keats, Byron, Shelley, and Shakespeare. That one class (I think I maxed out at a C) changed me and shaped the course of my life. Why else did I think teaching English would be fun? I fell in love with poetry then and even deluded myself that I could write the stuff. Silly rabbit.

  Thanks for these posts.

  Paul Vs last blog post..What’s the buzz? Tell me what’sa happenin’

• At July 30, 2008, Legacy 4: In the Crumbling Temple of the Dead White Males (the College Years) | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] Legacy Series So Far: 1. Fear and Trembling: Goodbye to Christianity 2. The Hulk Leads to Hamlet: Reading Despite School 3. Of Jocks and Fags: The High School Bullying [...]

• At July 31, 2008, Of Jocks and Fags - A Bullying Memoir | Beyond School wrote:

  [...] *Earlier Years: Legacy 1: Baptist Childhood Legacy 2: Comic Books [...]

• At August 1, 2008, diane wrote:

  Random thoughts:

  -I was allowed to roam the stacks at the Troy Public Library, where I read an exotic mix of novels and short stories

  -Jo March in Little Women was the first of many literary characters who fed my secret desire to become an author

  -We all read Superman comics, but what I remember best are the Great Illustrated Classics that I devoured in my grandfather's little grocery store

  -Your Killraven reminds me of my son's boyhood favorite, He-Man

  dianes last blog post..Hard Questions for Tough Times

• At August 1, 2008, Paul C wrote:

  'but if I want to make them lifelong readers who read like we adults do—we read books and discuss them with others—I’ll allow authentic book chats in class.'

  Your conclusion reminds me of the power of the literature circle. Groups of five students agree to read the same novel over a period of time and they take on different roles: discussion director, wordsmith, character profiler, conflict dissector, etc.

  I've seen some dynamic discussions; they're simply not following a lame outline provided by the teacher.

  Paul Cs last blog post..Widgets:Convenient Blog Enhancements

• At August 3, 2008, Kate Tabor wrote:

  Hi Clay -

  I completely agree with you about the power of book choice for students. As a seventh grade teacher I turned over 10% of my class time to free reading. Every other Monday was a reading day, alternated with a free writing Monday. I read lots of wonderful books that my students recommended to me. I read during that time, too. [A real gift on a Monday - read whatever you want!]

  I was not sure if the students got as much out of it as I did until this year. Last year I moved to the upper school to teach juniors and seniors, and it was at the beginning of this year that a former student of mine from the seventh grade, Zac, told me that free reading had changed his mind about books. Up until then he hated reading, but we spent hours looking for titles that might tickle his reading fancy. We found it: Master and Commander by O'Brien. Zac spent this summer at Oxford studying Shakespeare.

  He tells me that his literature class is always his favorite class now, and when he had mono at the beginning of the year and he was too tired to do anything (he's a soccer player of some talent) what he chose to do was read. He's the student that altered me to the South Park episode that riffed on the Grapes of Wrath.

  I didn't "teach" him anything in this except that there is a book for everyone.

  Kate Tabors last blog post..Reading, today

• At August 3, 2008, Kate Tabor wrote:

  Oh, and... that's alerting me (not altering me)

  We did some really interesting work this year in American Literature around the rise of the American superhero (analyzing, reading, creating) and Michael Chabon's Kavalier and Clay (and his Escapist character). It was a great way to end May.

  Kate Tabors last blog post..Reading, today

Over on the Infinite Thinking Machine, Wesley Fryer has a blog post about creating a Netflix-style website for readers, with an emphasis on COPPA compliance for readers under 13.

Here's how I'd go about building that site using Drupal.

The main functional requirements:

These requirements are pulled and paraphrased from Wes' post; any that I have added are italicized.

• COPPA compliant -- no personal data collected from minors without the prior consent of an adult;
• Readers can rate books they have read;
• Readers can create lists of friends; these "friendships" can be one way, or reciprocal;
• Readers can write reviews on books; these reviews can be shared publicly, or privately between friends;
• The site should recommend books to readers based on their likes and dislikes of other books;
• Readers should be able to see what their friends are reading, and any reviews/recommendations of their friends;
• Readers should be able to keep a reading log on the site; this reading log should have the ability to be public or private;
• Readers should be able to form public and private groups/communities.

There are other features that will need attention, of course; for example, a site like this will require a detail-rich user profile page, and pages for recent recommendations, featured books, featured readers, etc.

Building the Site:

As a start, in addition to Drupal core, we'll need the CCK, Views, and Organic Groups modules. These modules will provide the main functionality to power the site. Other modules will be discussed in context below.

For user profiles, we'll use the Bio module.

For book ratings, we'll use the VotingAPI and the FiveStar modules.

For friends, we have a few different possibilities, and the best choice for the specific site would require some module evaluation. The shortlist: Buddylist (the original module of this type in Drupal, which we have used and liked in the past); Buddylist2 (an upgrade of Buddylist that looks promising, but it is younger code and we have yet to try it); and the Friend and Notice modules (also newer than Buddylist. Another possibility is the User Relationships module, that came out around the same time as Buddylist2. The "best" solution here will require some analysis of the existing code, cross-referenced against some precise descriptions of the desired functionality. This is also a place where the right design and UI is critical.

Views of friends recommendations, reading lists, etc: the Views module.

Reading log: CCK, with access control via the Coherent Access module.

Book reviews: CCK, with access control via Coherent Access

COPPA: this requires some custom development. We actually have some COPPA code that we worked on a while back that we need to dust off, clean up, and release. At its most basic, we need to branch the registration process, with all users under 13 directed to get their parent, or (alternately) to enter their parent's email address. The specifics would need to be vetted with legal counsel.

Content Recommendation: this is where things get interesting, and we have a few options. The shortest route could be dusting off the Content Recommendation Engine. We could also get some basic recommendations by looking at content a reader has reviewed favorably, looking at other readers who have reviewed that item favorably, and then drawing from their lists of recommended items. Also, creating lists of similar items when looking at both books and book reviews would be a nice feature to have. In short, content recommendation would also require some custom development, with the Content Recommendation Engine, the Similar by Terms module, the Similar Module, and the Memetracker all having code that could be useful/relevant for this project.

Public and Private Communities: Organic Groups, with Views to customize how content is presented within groups.

Module List

A list of the modules mentioned in this post:

http://drupal.org/project/og
http://drupal.org/project/views
http://drupal.org/project/cck
http://drupal.org/project/bio
http://drupal.org/project/votingapi
http://drupal.org/project/fivestar
http://drupal.org/project/buddylist
http://drupal.org/project/buddylist2
http://drupal.org/project/friend
http://drupal.org/project/notice
http://drupal.org/project/user_relationships
http://drupal.org/project/coherent_access
http://drupal.org/project/cre
http://drupal.org/project/similar
http://drupal.org/project/similarterms
http://drupal.org/project/memetracker

Wrapping Up

This is a quick overview. As with any implementation, the details would need to be clarified to the point where we could generate solid design mockups of the key screens. But, given what I've seen of the functional requirements, Drupal would provide an ideal platform for this functionality. Building this site in Drupal, from open source components, and documenting the process would allow any organization who wanted a site like this to create it; or, several schools could join together to use a common space.

At the recommendation of Gary Stager and Chris Lehmann, one of my summer reads is A Schoolmaster of the Great City by Angelo Patri.  Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. The book was written by Patri in 1917. It rings true, though, with much of what I worry about in our schools today. Patri faced the same problems and shares many of my passions. That’s both troublesome and reassuring.  I’ll be seeking out more of his work.  In the meantime, here are some of the lines that jumped out at me as I read today:

• The antagonism between the children and teachers was far stronger than I had ever seen it before. The antagonism between the school and the neighborhood was intense. Both came from mutual distrust founded on mutual misunderstanding. The children were afraid of the teachers, and the teachers feared the children. (p. 14)
• As each day went by, cautiously I put the problem of school discipline before them and they responded by taking over much of the responsibility for it themselves. (p. 15)
• In this restless, uncertain sea of motion, noise, color and goings; of constant goings upstairs and downstairs, one learned to ‘go slow’ and watch and wait for his opportunity. (p. 19)
• The rod idea was at work. Books, benches, crowded rooms, sitting still, listening; talking only when called upon to recite, teaching where the teachers did the thinking; these conditions have meant and always will mean an imposed discipline, an imposed routine, whereas real discipline is a personal thing, a part of the understanding soul. To replace discipline of teacher-responsibility by the discipline of child-responsibility is a long, slow process. (p. 27)
• It was difficult to get teachers away from subject matter, from machinery, and toward children. How could it be otherwise? (p.30)
• I wanted ideas  expressed in color, movement, fun and not lines, ideas and not perfect papers, every one alike . .  .  . I wanted nature that would make the child’s heart warm with sympathy .  .  .that would make him laugh to feel the snow and the rain and the wind beating on his face. (p. 30)
• The feeling for the things that I wanted was rather more definite than the knowledge of how to attain the desired results. (p. 30)(Karl - that quote was just for you.  We all get stuck.)
• (On teaching robins) ‘Suppose you meet the class under the big oak tree in the morning and look for robins. Watch them until you and the children know as much about them as one can learn by looking  .  .  .  . Then talk over what you’ve seen and learned. Let everybody say his say sometime or other.  .  .  . Then when you have all the facts about him select those that are most worthwhile, and present them as the robin story.  You’ll find you’ll need very little drill.’ (p. 32)
• I felt that we had to win the parents as well as the taechers if the changes we were making, our emphasis on the ‘fads and frills’ of education, were to be accepted in the homes. (p. 33)
• Many parents believe that this is education. .  .  . They fear freedom, they fear to let the child grow by himself. (p. 37)
• I wanted opportunity for the masses, the best schools for the crowds, the best teachers for the heaviest load.  I thought in terms of service, they in terms of tradition. (p. 41)

Plenty more good stuff within.  I’d encourage you to read the book.

Here are some recent articles I published in District Administration Magazine...

Enjoy!

Keep the Wish List Short

Giving parents a laundry list of supplies to buy is lousy public relations and exacerbates economic hardships.

Published in the July 2008 issue of District Administration

What's a Computer For? Part II
Computer science is the new basic skill.
Published in the July 2008 issue of District Administration

What's a Computer For? Part 1
It all depends on your educational philosophy.
Published in the June 2008 issue of District Administration

Online Videoconferencing
Web tools such as uStream make video broadcasting accessible.
Published in the June 2008 issue of District Administration

Keeping Up with the Future
Consider these suggestions for staying informed and inspired.
Published in the May 2008 issue of District Administration

The Games Teachers Play
We are cheating our students by turning reading into a game of dodgeball.
Published in the April 2008 issue of District Administration

Public Schools?
Be wary of a gift that might squash the benefits of public education.

Published in the April 2008 issue of District Administration

Today, two new articles I wrote were published by The Huffington Post.

Read:

Spelling Porn (about the televised National Spelling Bee)

When the Jumbotron says, "Read," You Read! (about the merits of "summer reading")

and my earlier article

The Surge Against First Graders (about the Reading First scandal)

Then comment, cross-post, dig, subscribe - anything necessary to tell the world that different perspectives on education need to be expressed in the media.

Tomorrow night, the folks at Teacher Teaching Teachers will be having a conversation with the authors or the book I mentioned in my last podcast.  How timely.  Here’s the info:

Many of us are planning to use Reinventing Project-Based Learning in our Writing Project Summer Institutes and elsewhere in our work with teachers.  The researchers, teachers, and authors, Susie Boss and Jane Krauss will be joining us on Teachers Teaching Teachers tomorrow.

Join us at http://EdTechTalk.com/live at 9:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm Pacific USA Wednesdays / 01:00 UTC Thursdays World Times

Suzie Boss
Suzie is a veteran journalist who writes about teaching and learning in the 21st century. She and Jane have authored a book on using technology to empower teaching and learning called Reinventing Project-Based Learning. From interviewing and observing hundreds of teachers in both formal and informal contexts, she has seen how innovative approaches to education can engage learners and transform communities. The book is a unique educational resource that integrates interviews with leading experts, storytelling, and suggestions for putting research into practice. She has been an editor for the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, a freelance writer contributing to wide range of publications, and a community college instructor.

Jane Krauss
Jane is a long-time educator, curriculum writer, and expert in professional development. An innovative teacher and early adopter of instructional technologies, Jane and her elementary classroom were showcased in a video case study that thousands of teachers have used to learn about authentic, project-based learning. As former director of professional development for the International Society for Technology in Education and a consultant for Intel’s education initiative, she has helped educators around the world improve their practice. She recently co-authored a book with Suzie Boss on the effective use of technology in education, entitled Reinventing Project-Based Learning.

I suspect it’ll be a good conversation.  You might want to join in live.

I think I'm going to be able to attend this interactive fiction event at the Unversity of Maryland:

As part of our work on a project funded by the Library of Congress dedicated to Preserving Virtual Worlds (http://www.ndiipp.uiuc.edu/pca/), MITH will be hosting a table-read of the original version of ADVENTURE, recently recovered from backup tapes at Stanford University. We will read through the complete text of the game, and also (geeks that we are) have a look at its FORTRAN source code.

read more