“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.”

            Joseph Joubert, French writer and philosopher (1754-1824)

“The freedom to read is at the heart of what libraries provide.”

            Amy Brownlee (see item #3)

“Morally healthy communities habituate people to behave in certain ways and make it easier to be good.”

            David Brooks (see item #1)

 “I see explicit instruction in writing skills, along with challenging content and assignments, as an inclusive pedagogical approach, leveling the playing field and enabling students who are unfamiliar with the implicit rules of the ‘culture of power’ to succeed.”

            Emily Isaacs (see item #2)

“It’s time to take a clear-eyed look at the ever-spiraling demand we place upon teachers and talk seriously about taking things off their plate and making the job doable for the workforce we have. To my mind, the most obvious target is curriculum… Teachers spend seven hours per week searching for instructional resources and another five hours creating their own classroom materials. That’s twelve hours not spent reviewing student work, giving feedback, building relationships with students and parents, and many other potentially higher-value activities that a classroom teacher is literally the only person positioned to perform. Curriculum materials can be created or selected by someone else.”

            Robert Pondiscio in “The ‘Case for Curriculum’ Is About Reducing Teachers’ 

Workload” in Education Gadfly, April 11, 2024

“Most tutors just won’t shut up.”

            Miki Chi (Institute for the Science of Teaching and Learning), quoted in “Schools Must 

Go Beyond Surface-Level Learning, and Better Tutoring Can Help” by Laurence Holt 

in Education Gadfly, April 11, 2024

 In this New York Times column, David Brooks sings the praises of those in middle management positions like school principals and church deacons. The best among them are the “unsung heroes of our age,” he says, “the frontline workers who try to resolve tensions and keep communities working, their teams united, and relationships afloat… The democratic fabric is held together by daily acts of consideration that middle managers are in a position to practice and foster.” He describes the key characteristics of this kind of ethical leadership:

            • Knowing that moral formation is part of the job – Like Ted Lasso, good middle managers believe that if you help your co-workers be the best versions of themselves on and off the field, sought-after results “will take care of themselves.” 

            • Communicating high expectations – When Brooks started work at the PBS NewsHour, his boss Jim Lehrer’s eyes would “crinkle with pleasure” when Brooks said something smart and his mouth would “turn down in displeasure” when Brooks messed up. “For 10 years,” he says, “I chased the eye crinkles and tried to avoid the mouth downturns. Jim never had to say anything to me, but with those kinds of slight gestures he taught us how to do our jobs… Morally healthy communities habituate people to behave in certain ways and make it easier to be good.” 

            • Being hyperattentive – Effective leaders pay close attention to their colleagues, says Brooks. “If you cast a just and loving attention on people, they blossom.” 

            • Watch what leaders do, not just what they say – Colleagues pay less attention to official pronouncements, says Brooks, than to “the casual gifts of politeness, the little compliment or, on the other hand, the cold shoulder of thoughtlessness.”

            • Generativity – The best leaders don’t do mentoring and supervision “for” their colleagues, says Brooks, but “with” them.

            • The absence of a heroic sense – The humble willingness to do “uncelebrated work, day after day,” without the pretense of heroism, is characteristic of good leaders.

            • Preserving the moral lens – “In day-to-day life,” says Brooks, “it is easy for the utilitarian lens of metrics to eclipse the moral lens that drew us to our work in the first place. Ethical leaders push against the creeping pressures of utilitarianism” so colleagues remember the deeper purpose. 

            • A posture of joy – “We assume we are being judged on our competence, but mostly we are judged on our warmth,” says Brooks. “Ethical leaders communicate a joyfulness in what they do and attract followers in part by showing pleasure.” 

“In Praise of Middle Managers” by David Brooks in The New York Times, April 12, 2024

In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Emily Isaacs (Montclair State University) says too many students are arriving in college without certain proficiencies. ”The absence of those skills does not reflect on the individual’s capacity for creativity, critical thinking, or even advanced reading, writing, and problem-solving,” says Isaacs. “It doesn’t necessarily mean the student is incapable of the intellectual rigor of a college education. But their absence does make learning and college success very difficult.” 

During the pandemic, many instructors dialed back their expectations, but now that in-person instruction is back, Isaacs says it’s time to raise the bar. She urges her colleagues to explicitly address “studenting skills,” and hopes K-12 educators, especially in high schools, will do the same. Students shouldn’t have to guess what their instructors want, which is especially important for students who enter school with any kind of disadvantage. “I see explicit instruction in writing skills, along with challenging content and assignments, as an inclusive pedagogical approach,” says Isaacs, “leveling the playing field and enabling students who are unfamiliar with the implicit rules of the ‘culture of power’ to succeed.”

Here’s her list of studenting skills; note their reciprocal nature, with students and instructors both having agency and responsibility:

            • Attending regularly – “Make attendance matter,” says Isaacs. “If students can learn everything they need to know without coming to class, why would they show up?” 

            • Being engaged in class – Teachers need to build in active student involvement and be clear about cellphones and earbuds put away and students contributing without being called on.

            • Being savvy about study skills – These include annotating readings and using the retrieval effect and spaced review to commit important information to memory.

            • Doing homework – Out-of-class assignments need to be meaningful; if students need help managing their time, they should be pointed to counseling resources and online tools.

            • Completing assignments on time – Policies for late work and personal emergencies should be explicit up front, says Isaacs. “Students should experience consequences for late work early in the semester so they learn from their mistakes while recovery is still possible.” 

            • Resisting digital distractions – Many students need to learn strategies like Pomodoro work/break scheduling, deleting certain apps, finding quiet places to work, and putting their phones out of immediate reach while they’re studying.

            • No more Lone Ranger – Students should take advantage of all available help to maintain balance and achieve – office hours, study groups, tutoring, online resources.

• Staying healthy – Psychological distress is a real issue. Students need support coming to terms with their mental state, keeping their lives in balance, and getting counseling when they need it.

“Teaching Students to Be Students” by Emily Isaacs in The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 12, 2024 (Vol. 70, #16, pp. 54-55); Isaacs can be reached at isaacse@montclair.edu. 

 In this Knowledge Quest article, veteran teacher/librarian Amy Brownlee (she’s now teaching the children of some of her former students) describes the way she leverages the power of the libraries in her rural Kansas school district:

            • Getting to know learners – Brownlee learns the names of all 500 students (and how to pronounce them correctly) in the first two weeks of school, has students fill out a Getting to Know You questionnaire, pays attention to the books they request and their evolving interests – animals, trains, gymnastics (Simone Biles!), karate, soccer, swimming, biographies – and keeps track of older students’ sports events and chatter on social media.

            • Engaging students and staying relevant – Brownlee and her library paraprofessional write a new joke on the library whiteboard every two or three days and students and colleagues drop by for a chuckle. She uses music, movement, author talks, news of books that win awards, designing bookmarks, contests (was this line of poetry written by Robert Frost or Taylor Swift?), and other activities to jazz up the library, and makes sure students know about new book acquisitions. 

            • A safe, inclusive space – “It is essential that our libraries welcome every learner and staff member in the school,” says Brownlee. She accomplishes this by curating a diverse collection of books and magazines (mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors) and assuring students and colleagues that their checkout history and research interests will be kept confidential. “Learners know they are free to seek the information they want without fear of judgment or comment from others. Now more than ever our library ethics guaranteeing privacy and confidentiality are essential. The freedom to read is at the heart of what libraries provide.” 

            • Giving learners a voice – Brownlee tries to accomplish this by encouraging students to request books; displaying students’ artwork, projects, and writing; showcasing connections to classroom learning; letting kids serve as library aides; and maintaining a student advisory board. 

            • Tuning in on life outside the library – Brownlee praises students for their accomplishments and displays around the school, tries to attend student performances and athletic events, and chats with parents about what students are doing. 

            • Leveraging the power of books as a bonding agent – She is a fan of Kylene Beers and Robert Probst’s Book, Head, and Heart (BHH) framework, which encourages students to think about books at three levels:

-   Book – What is this about? Who’s telling the story? What does the author want me to know?

-   Head – What surprised me? What does the author think I already know? What changed, challenged, or confirmed my thinking? What did I notice?

-   Heart – What did I learn about me? How will this help me to be better?

Brownlee modeled the protocol for her students using the Shel Silverstein poem, “The Little Boy and the Old Man” and created a poster encouraging students to think about all the books they read on the three BHH dimensions.

“Building Bonds With Young Readers: The Power of Relationships” by Amy Brownlee in Knowledge Quest, March/April 2024 (Vol. 52, #4, pp. 16-23); Brownlee can be reached at amybrownlee93@gmail.com. 

 In this Edutopia article, Andrew Boryga says it’s a positive development in K-12 schools that students are increasingly being encouraged to see mistakes and “productive struggle” as a helpful part of the learning process. But some teachers take this a step further, getting students to think about the types of mistakes they’re making so “they become more reflective learners who can self-diagnose issues as they tackle challenging academic work on their own.” 

Elementary teacher Jennifer Mangels, for example, has her students draw a heart by their mistakes on a summative assessment and decide which category each falls into:

• Sloppy mistakes – These are the most common, occurring not because students didn’t understand the skill or concept but because they were in a hurry and didn’t slow down and focus on accuracy. With these errors, the teacher might ask students how they can work to prevent them.

• Aha! mistakes – These can produce a new insight – for example, a student believes they are on the right path toward a solution but lack the information they need to solve the problem. 

            • Stretch mistakes – These occur when students are challenged by new and unfamiliar information or skill demands. It’s helpful for the teacher to take photos of several examples of this type of error and project the most interesting attempt for an all-class discussion, illuminating what was right and what the missing pieces were. 

            Mangels then has students write a short reflection on the pattern they noticed and set an improvement goal. She meets individually with students who made lots of mistakes, helping them develop growth strategies. “The assessment score becomes less about a low number,” she says, “and more about an action plan for continued growth.” 

“Tapping into the Metacognition of Mistakes” by Andrew Boryga in Edutopia, April 5, 2024

In this EdSurge article, Ohio social studies teacher Alex Brouhard laments that many students think history is a tedious exercise in memorizing dates, people, and places. He suggests four ways to capture students’ attention and make history their favorite subject:

            • Lead with a dramatic event. Rather than plodding through a timeline of the precursors to World War I, start with the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand. “This approach is similar to a TV crime show that reveals the body in the first minute,” says Brouhard, “and then spends the rest of the show assembling evidence.” After an effective hook, historical details have relevance and interest. 

            • Make students the investigators. Students might be challenged to explain why it was almost two years after the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, with almost 1,200 civilian casualties, that the United States declared war on Germany. Allowing students to investigate historical events “appeals to their inherent curiosity,” says Brouhard, making them active participants in a history unit. 

            • Tell the stories of individual historical actors. In 1918, Eugene Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for a speech that had “disloyal language” about the U.S. government. How does that comport with the Constitution’s words about freedom of speech? Students now have an active interest in the details of the Sedition Act and can debate whether Debs deserved to be in prison. Another example: having students read primary-source documents about trench warfare in World War I. “This history is inherently dramatic and engaging,” says Brouhard; “teachers simply need to tap into these powerful stories.”

            • Make history personal. His great-grandfather’s World War I uniform fascinates students, who “are intrigued by the wool fabric’s weight, the helmet’s dent,” says Brouhard. So does his other great-grandfather’s World War II journal describing hard time as a prisoner of war. Sharing his family’s history often encourages students to share artifacts and stories from their families.

            “Infusing these dramatic elements into history classes,” Brouhard concludes, “can cultivate a lasting passion for comprehending the past and its profound impact on the present and future.” 

“Most Students Think History Is Boring. Here’s How We Change That” by Alex Brouhard in EdSurge, April 3, 2024

In this article in The Reading Teacher, Anna Elizabeth Kambach (Roanoke College) and Heidi Anne Mesmer (Virginia Tech School of Education) say the recent push for systematic phonics instruction in the primary grades “has been a needed reminder that reading instruction must be rooted in quality reading research.” But the emphasis on decoding, say Kambach and Mesmer, has led some to underemphasize reading comprehension. “In reality,” they say, “reading science stretches far beyond teaching how to read words, providing evidence for ways to teach children how to comprehend as well.”

            Scarborough’s Reading Rope, they believe, pulls all the elements of skilled reading together, graphically demonstrating the need for a full-court press in early reading combining these key elements:

-   Word recognition: phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition;

-   Language comprehension: background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.

Even if students correctly decode all the letter strings in a passage, said Scarborough (2001), “the text will not be well comprehended if the child (1) does not know the words in their spoken form, (2) cannot parse the syntactic and semantic relationships among the words, or (3) lacks critical background knowledge or inferential skills to interpret the text appropriately and ‘read between the lines.’” 

            Many teachers say they are familiar with Scarborough’s Rope, say Kambach and Mesmer, but when questioned, they are hazy on some of the components, especially language structures, verbal reading, and literacy knowledge. This has led to an unbalanced emphasis on decoding, leaving some students – especially those who have not had extensive language experience before kindergarten – with an incomplete early reading experience. “Explicit comprehension instruction cannot wait until children are independently decoding,” say the authors; “instead, the concept of understanding what is read must be introduced and taught at the same time.” 

            This means that as systematic phonics instruction proceeds, teachers also need to build background knowledge (facts and concepts); vocabulary (with breadth, precision, and links among words); syntax and semantics; inferences and metaphors; and print concepts and text genres. Some examples:

-   In the book Last Stop on Market Street, with characters riding on a public bus, students who know about school buses might be confused about why adults are riding a bus.

-   Reading a narrative like Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes calls on different skills than reading an informational text about cats. 

-   Learning that words have different meanings in different contexts and different sentence structures. 

-   Progressing from understanding words to reading sentences to connecting meaning across several sentences – and getting the main idea.

-   Oral interactions in the classroom are a vital component, with students learning to take turns, ask questions, listen and extend, and follow a conversational thread.

-   Moving beyond the IRE dynamic (initiate, respond, evaluate) to “striving for five” – aiming for five conversational turns with prompts like “I wonder…” and “Tell me…”

-   Unpacking different syntactic structures with big ideas and extra information in mind – for example, in a readaloud of the book Olivia, students unpack the sentence: In the morning, after she gets up, and moves the cat and brushes her teeth, and combs her ears, and moves the cat, Olivia gets dressed.

-   Learning about anaphoric relationships, for example, pronouns and antecedents: Javier packed the burro with food. He knew he would need it for the long trip. 

-   Combining sentences, which requires readers to play with syntax by identifying the main idea in each sentence and then considering how the information in the second can be added to the first. Sherry went to the store. The store sold candy.

-   Using verbal reasoning to go beyond the explicit meaning of a text to develop a deeper understanding – for example, making inferences about a character’s feelings in a story.

“Comprehension for Emergent Readers: Revisiting the Reading Rope” by Anna Elizabeth Kambach and Heidi Anne Mesmer in The Reading Teacher, March 25, 2024 (pp. 1-36); the authors can be reached at alauth@vt.edu and hamesmer@vt.edu. 

In this New York Times article, J.D. Biersdorfer teamed up with the Book Review staff to create a quiz challenging us to identify the literary provenance of lines from poems and plays – from ancient Greece to modern pop songs. Here’s a selection (you can take the full quiz online by clicking the link below):

a. Who used the words “I sing the body electric” first?

-   Benjamin Franklin

-   Mary Shelley

-   Walt Whitman

-   Paule Marshall

b. Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart, Joan Didion’s 1998 essay collection Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and Robert Parker’s 1983 thriller The Widening Gyre all take their titles from the same poem. What’s the poem, and who is the author?

-   “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

-   “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost

-   “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” by Emily Dickinson

-   “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred Tennyson

c. Band of Brothers, the 2001 World War II TV drama, is based on a 1992 book by Stephen Ambrose. But which previous work used the phrase quite notably?

-   All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

-   Henry V by William Shakespeare

-   Richard III by William Shakespeare

-   The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

d. The title of The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch’s 1978 novel, is also a famous line shouted by Greek warriors when they reached the top of a mountain and could see a nearby body of water. What is the name of the Greek work?

-   Odyssey by Homer

-   Lysistrata by Aristophanes

-   The Persians by Aeschylus

-   Anabasis by Xenophon

e. Which 1951 poem by Langston Hughes gave the playwright Lorraine Hansberry the title for her 1959 stage play, A Raisin in the Sun?

-   “Harlem”

-   “Let America Be America Again”

-   “The Weary Blues”

-   “I, Too”

f. Which of the following books does not take its title from Macbeth?

-   The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

-   Let It Come Down by Paul Bowles

-   For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

-   Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

-   The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck

g. Which novelist is renowned for his allusions to popular music and literature in his work – and named his 1987 novel after a Beatles song on the band’s 1965 Rubber Soul album?

-   Bret Easton Ellis

-   Haruki Marakami

-   Paul Beatty

-   Nanif Kureishi

h. In the epigraph of his 2015 book, Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes a passage of a poem with the same title that influenced him. Who wrote that poem?

-   Gwendolyn Books

-   James Baldwin

-   Toni Morrison

-   Richard Wright

“Use Your Allusion: See How Many Literary References You Recognize” by J.D. Biersdorfer in The New York Times, March 28, 2024

In this article in Time, Angela Haupt says that when we hear or read a rude or offensive comment, we usually aren’t ready with a witty, snappy response. “That’s why planning ahead is essential,” says Haupt, and shares some responses she’s gathered from interviews with psychologists and therapists:

• Hey, flag on the play. The sports analogy signals that something is out of bounds or needs clarification. A clueless offender would be led to ask, What are you noticing?

• Could you repeat that? I don’t think I heard you correctly. Asking the person to say something again gives them a chance to rethink what they may have been said impulsively and without much thought. This is especially effective when the remark is made in a group.

• What a wild thing to say out loud. This can be effective with a prejudiced or outright bigoted remark. By throwing the person off their stride, they might rethink something they’ve said before without being challenged, questioning why it didn’t go over well this time.

• You should come with a warning label. This tactic can work when someone pursues a line of conversation that’s inappropriate to a particular context – for example, talking politics at a child’s birthday party. Most people get the message and hold that thought for another time.

            • I don’t get it. Can you explain the joke? Naively asking someone to spell out the meaning of an offensive attempt at humor can hold them accountable and make them think twice about telling that kind of joke. “The goal isn’t to humiliate the other person or appear holier than thou,” says Haupt, quoting one of her interviewees. “It’s to create curiosity about the purpose of their comment.” 

“How to Respond to an Insult, According to Therapists” by Angela Haupt in Time, March 11, 2024

 “The ancient Greeks thought logic so important that they made it one of the core components of their curriculum,” says Alex Kekauoha in this Stanford Report article. “We use it in solving puzzles and playing games, in selecting products and evaluating political arguments. Doctors use logic to diagnose patients, lawyers use it to defend their positions in court, and programmers use it to debug computer programs.” Yet it’s seldom taught as a standalone course in U.S. high schools. 

            Kekauoha interviewed computer science professor Michael Genesereth, who has taught an Introduction to Logic course at Stanford, as well as a MOOC on logic that has enrolled hundreds of thousands of students of all ages and backgrounds, including high-school students (who tend to perform well). Genesereth has launched Logic for All, a campaign to introduce the subject in U.S. high schools, and there’s been some traction. An Easton, Pennsylvania, computer science teacher credited the introduction of logic to a major increase in students passing AP computer science – from zero to 30.

Genesereth has also organized the first International Logic Olympiad, which is open to high-school students around the world. Teams of students will compete in three rounds of online tests this spring – April 27, May 18, and June 1 – and the most successful teams will compete in the final round, in person at Stanford, on July 1, 2, and 3, 2024, with cash prizes for the winners. The deadline for applications is April 20, 2024. 

“Michael Genesereth Is on a Mission to Bring Logic Education to High Schools” by Alex Kekauoha in Stanford Report, April 1, 2024

 School Library Journal features the 2024 NCTE list of Notable Poetry and Verse Novels for Kids (click the link below to see cover images):

Poetry Books:

-   An American Story by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Dare Coulter

-   How to Write a Poem by Kwame Alexander and Deanna Nikaido, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

-   Robot, Unicorn, Queen: Poems for You and Me by Shannon Bramer, illustrated by Irene Luxbacher

-   At the Poles by David Elliott, illustrated by Ellen Rooney

-   All the Beating Hearts by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Cátia Chien

-   Remember by Joy Harjo, illustrated by Michaela Goade

-   Say My Name by Joanna Ho, illustrated by Khoa Le

-   Where I Live: Poems About My Home, My Street, and My Town edited by Paul Janeczko, illustrated by Hyewon Yum

-   Your One and Only Heart by Rajani Larocca, illustrated by Lauren Paige Conrad

-   The Museum on the Moon: The Curious Objects on the Lunar Surface by Irene Latham, illustrated by Miriam Wares

-   Watch Me Bloom: A Bouquet of Haiku Poems for Budding Naturalists by Krina Patel-Sage

-   A Whale of a Time: Funny Poems for Each Day of the Year by Lou Peacock, illustrated by Matt Hunt

-   The Dream Train: Poems for Bedtime by Sean Taylor, illustrated by Anuska Allepuz

-   When You Can Swim by Jack Wong

-   Nell Plants a Tree by Ann Wynter, illustrated by Daniel Miyares

Verse Novels:

-   Something Like Home by Andrea Beatriz Arango

-   Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself by Monica Edinger and Lesley Yonge

-   Call Me Adnan by Reem Faruqi

-   Ruptured by Joanne Rossmassler Fritz

-   The Song of Us by Kate Fussner

-   When Clouds Touch Us by Thanhhà Lai

-   Ariana del Mar Jumps In by Jasminne Mendez

“Prized Poetry” in School Library Journal, April 2024 (Vol. 70, #4, pp. 36-37), from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Excellence in Children’s Poetry Award Committee: Mary-Kate Sableski, Willeena Booker, Ryan Colwell, Deanna Day, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Joe Pizzo, and Junko Sakoi.