Last Year's Birthday Dinner

A Blasphemous Confession

I know I will take a lot of criticism for the following blog, but as they say, confession is good for the soul. There are a couple of confessions that follow. Maybe they will not be earth-shattering to you, but educators will understand my shame.

Those of you who know me know that my life has taken a new and better direction since I developed a goal-setting program for my students. I know on the surface "goal-setting" sounds like another one of those goofy, fads that educators so willingly start only to have it flop, as so many do. My program is not gimmicky. It simply shows students how to set and achieve thier goals for the pure joy of achieving goals. There are no "rewards" for reaching a goal, other that delicious feeling of reaching the goal. The program has been successful beyond my wildest dreams and gave me a whole "lease" on my teaching life. I was able to teach kids to become self-motivated, and that had always been my dream; for kids to learn to love to learn.

So, where are the confessions, you ask? Here is one of them; not all kids buy it. Not all kids want to learn, or care about learning, and Mother Teresa (who we now know had her own struggles) probably couldn't reach them, and believe me, I ain't no Mother Teresa.

The joke among teachers about the "No Child Left Behind" program has been, "What about the kids who don't want to come?" Here is one of the hardest thing for me to admit, I can't, despite all my best efforts, teach every child who comes to my class to love to learn and to be self-motivated. One of my goals has been that I must let them go. (LIG)

What? What kind of cruel harpy am I? After 30 years I realize that some kids, for whatever reason, don't care about learning. They firmly believe that they will be a rock star, movie star, television star, or lottery winner. They will be so rich that education won't be important. Yea, good luck. Studies have shown that nearly 20% of all kids believe that. However, and here I must make a hugely important distinction; not all kids care about grades, which is very, very different from not wanting to learn. Not caring about grades is not really so horribly bad. Grades are not indicative of what a child has learned.

Here is my other confession, I don't care about grades either. As I just said, grades are not indicative of what a child has learned. I made it my policy nearly 20 years ago that any child who wanted staright A's could get them. I made high grades something within every child's reach. (Yes, it can be done without compromise, believe me.) Why? Because for many parents grades are monumentally important. They don't think, "My child GOT a 'C'", they think "My child IS a 'C', " and nothing, nothing can convince them otherwise. I knew years ago that grades were a very poor indicator of the knowledge that a child acquired. Grades don't work.

So here is the last part of my confession; if I have made every effort to see that getting high grades is attainable for ALL students and if they do not choose to take advantage of it, then I have to allow them to do so. The big picture is what has the child learned, not what grades a child recieves, or how well he or she performs on a test.

I have been a real hypocrite about this. I have told students I wouldn't chase them around about getting their work done and turned in, and yet I have. "Where is your work?" I will ask. It becomes a game that I always lose, and as long as I play the game I will always lose. Kids have much more energy and stamina than I do. So, am I saying that I am allowing children to fail? NO! I am allowing kids gets to recieve the bad grades they have earned. They have made that choice. BIG, big difference.

So there it is folks; if students don't turn in their work they get (stupid, meaningless) bad grades, and I declare here that I must let that go.

Nora's Barn

I wish I could show you a picture of our barn. * Yes, we have an actual barn. The owner's before us kept horses in it. The main resident, and Princess of the barn, is Nora the cat, whom I inherited from my daughter. Nora does not know she is a cat. I'm not sure just what she thinks she is but whatever it is, is pretty darn special.

Nora, although clawless, has decimated any mice that would dare to trod in her domain. She must have some kind of truce with the scorpions and black widow spiders though. I am not merciful if I find them. They are sent to their end swiftly. They may live in the barn, but I own the barn.

The truth of the matter is that I love the barn. It used to be horribly hot but now that it has been re-roofed and is in the shade nearly the entire day, it holds a temperature that is always pleasant. Gary hates the way it smells, but I love it. It smells like wood, dirt, cat, dust, bugs, paper, and lots of old junk. We used to have a fair collection of deceased vacuum cleaners out there, too. I have no idea why Gary put them in the barn because I told him directly that the barn would not heal them and make them new and young and frisky.

The barn is never moldy either because we are so dry here. It doesn't have the creepy dampness of a basement or attic. It has an aliveness. It is patiently waiting to be cleaned. Right now I could probably toss most everything, except Nora, the Barn Princess and it could be a work area, except that I like that it is my place.

I like taking Nora's breakfast and dinner to her and we talk about her day. She has quite a vocabulary and is never bored, or boring. I brush her, which she likes sometimes, and other times not at all. That is her prerogative. Lately she goes nose-to-nose with the beagles as they watch her through the baby gate that is at the door. They are not allowed in the barn. They accept the rule philosophically, as dogs do. Nora, does not mock them which makes the no-dog rule at least tolerable.

As Robert Frost said, I will be telling this with a sigh, but I know I will clean the junk out of the barn and perhaps have to share the barn with Gary, and that would only be fair. I will still love my barn, only a little differently.

Barns are ancient structures and maybe their specialness is that they are homes for animals, in this case, Nora's barn. Nora has made the barn unique in her own way.




*I can't because I am still using Gary's computer and can't download my pictures to it. My computer should be up and running within a week in it's shiny new office.