Sydney - Different Day, Same ****

St. Joseph's

Well, here I am in Sydney Australia.

I am staying in a retreat center that houses a convent

I am meeting wonderful tellers from all over the world

I am seeing friends from North Carolina, the industrious super studious David Novak is here.

I have had a wonderful time in the two short days I've been here.

I promise to blog about this experience as soon as I finish having it!

Until then, here is what is happening!!!!





At the Airport








My Sydney experience started with some confusion at the airport. The shuttle I was taking was delayed, my phone didn't work, and I was afraid I was stranded. Luckily, that sorted itself pretty quickly, and I was on my way to Baulkam Hills where the convent/retreat center is.





The van driver was pretty fascinated with my being an American despite the fact that I have no doubt she meets lots of Americans.

In the almost two hour car ride where we inched along in the traffic, she decided that I had to answer for everything that had happened in America in the last fifty years that she thought of as bad, undignified, or horrible. She relished in telling me how horrible my country was.

Our discussion was far ranging. Here were the things about which she demanded I answer.


- Mass Shootings
-America's extremely foolish gun laws. Why didn't they take a page out Australia's book on that one?
-America's crappy health care system. Why were we so determined to kill our citizens?
-Donald Trump....don't Americans realize the rest of the
world is laughing at them...or me in particular
-The poor turnout at voting time in America. Why isn't voting mandatory?
-the recent war in Iraq, which apparently I gave the orders for personally
-Americans are stupid and have short attention spans...why didn't I fix that?
-Americans are rude

-Americans are overridden with gangs and meth
-Americans are ignorant of history
-Americans don't even know how their own country works

-Americans are destructive and wasteful

-Americans are....name the thing that is really wrong with us, I got asked why as if all Americans are exactly the same and quite stupid in fact.


I resorted to pointing out that absolutely nobody in the world called me and asked my opinions about any of these topics except to add me to some anonymous poll. I don't have access to anyone who makes these decisions, and I am not responsible for them.

I mentioned the fact, ever so briefly that Australia has just adopted dumping policies that are threatening the coral reefs, and she shut that down immediately by announcing she knew nothing whatsoever about that. I had to smile. Apparently, Australian public policy was not on the docket.

I was very amused by this. Perhaps, if I were the sort of American who believes in the shining city on a hill, I would have been very annoyed by this and taken umbrage.

Some of you get the pic!

Perhaps if I were the sort of American who just moves along in a 'I am an American' happy place, this would have struck me as being some sort of personal attack.

Perhaps if I were the sort of American for whom life is quite privileged, and I never had to challenge my own thoughts in order to live in the world around me, I might have been shocked.



Luckily or unluckily, I'm not that type of American. I'm an African American.

What does that mean?

That means that other Americans have been trying to make me answer for every other African American most of my life. The types of questions I get are quite something else.

-Why do African Americans join gangs
-Why do African American women talk so loud
-Why do African American people need all of those other hair products
-Why do African American people have such high crime rates

-why do African American people name their kids such weird names
-Why do African American people have such different hair
-Why do African Americans all use food stamps
-Why do African Americans have such high unemployment

-Why do so few African Americans go to college
-Why do African Americans talk like that
-Why do African Americans....you name it, I've been asked as if being black means I have some kind of handbook about being black in America that all of us are supposed to consult as we move through the world.

People ask these questions as if the premise upon which they are asking them is completely reasonable, and I have to answer for them. Just like the Aussie shuttle bus driver.


My Aussie driver seemed somewhat annoyed that I wasn't in full throated defending things that frankly, are kind of indefensible. She got quite passionate, and I just pointed out that I wasn't responsible for most of the nonsense she hears about. I'm not taking meth, I'm not promoting Donald Trump, I don't own a fire arm though I grew up in a military family where we learned to respect them enough for me to know I didn't need one on my house. On, and on I simply answered her questions with my own personal opinion all the while telling her that I'm not responsible for American policy, and that often her view of what she was saying was skewed by wherever she was getting her information.

She asked about my family and said they sounded very intelligent and industrious. she asked about my job, and noted that it was unusual.

I tried to divert the conversation into pretty much any other topic, but she really wanted to talk about what was wrong with America.

She actually got to the point where she asked, a bit belligerently, "Do you vote?"

I replied, "Yes, in every election including the special ones, the midterms and the presidential elections. I always vote. I vote for bond referendums, when they have special votes for policies, and I read about the candidates and pick the ones I feel are best for my country and community."

Finally, she said to me, "You are not like most Americans. You sound very educated and well spoken. You really seem to know what you're talking about, and you've put lots of thought into these subjects."

It was sort of her way of letting me know that I was not conforming to her stereotypes, and therefore, my attitudes, answers, and thoughts not only didn't really count, she could ignore them and happily go about not reassessing her view of Americans because my presence meant pretty much nothing.

It reminded me of all of the times I've heard the phrase, "You're not like most black people."

So, I crossed America from DC to Los Angeles; flew fourteen hours over the ocean, and wouldn't you know it.....I got treated like a minority!

On the plus side, she didn't think of me as an African American...just a plain old regular American...so, there was that.

When the driver finally dropped me at the convent/retreat center I couldn't help but laugh.

Different day, same...well, you know.

Happy Traveling!

The Words 'I Don't Like To Read' Don't Mean What We Think They Mean

A Phrase I hear, especially from boys of a certain age, is 'I don't like to read'.

I always find that statement heartrendingly sad because I am a bibliophile, and I can't imagine life without books.

I can't imagine not having more books than book space. (I just bought a new bookcase yesterday. Picking it up today. I am soooo excited!!)

I can't imagine what it would be like to be in a room in my house that doesn't actually have books in it.

When I am looking for a book to read, I frequently just run my finger across the spines, reading the titles and reveling in the stories that flash through my head in their entirety at that simple glance.

If one title leaps out at me, I pull it off the shelf and lose myself. Sometimes I don't read any of them. Just remembering how much I love the stories is enough. I can get on with my life after that. How could someone not have this as part of their every day experience?

One of the things I sometimes do before I perform is ask kids if they like to read. Then, I ask if there is anyone who doesn't like to read.

For the kids who don't like to read, I ask them follow up questions.

How many of you like to read about sports? Monsters? Dragons? Cars? Horses?

What I soon discover is that when kids say 'they don't like to read' they often mean they just don't like to read the stuff they are forced to deal with in school. They read other things, but somehow, those things don't count.

Last week, while I was in Florida, several parents asked for my help with their kids. 'My kid doesn't like to read? What do I do?"

If the kid is standing there, I ask the kid, "What sorts of things do you like?"

One kid looked at me defiantly, "Math."

"Did you know that Pythagorus, who was a great mathematician, told his followers not to fart because he thought  that whenever they did, a piece of your soul came out of their bottom?"

He started laughing. His mother was a bit surprised. I said to the kid. "Have you ever read the book, the Return of Rumpelstiltskin?"



"No." He responded, but he wasn't so surly.

"Rumpelstiltskin comes back, and they have to use multiplication to stop him."

"Really?" He was grinning now.

I turned to his mother. "If he likes math, there are books out there that have fun aspects that are about math. Look for those. He can read a little, wallow in some math. It is the best of both worlds." His mother looked thoughtful, the kid looked hopeful.

I can't always find a connection with a kid, especially if they tell you they don't like anything, but with my new appreciation of graphic novels, my arsenal for suggestions just got huge.

Recently I recommended adding Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side to a third grade classroom when the teacher told me her students were interested in humor.

Last Wednesday, I was caught in a huge rainstorm in Florida while on my way to an after school program for a show.

These are the driving laws in Florida as far as I can tell:

1 - The state has the 'optional' turn signal law in place, and most people exercise it
2 - ⅓ of the population is not allowed to drive above thirty miles an hour regardless of whether they are on a throughway or the highway
3 - ⅓ of the population is not allowed to drive below ninety miles an hour regardless of whether they are on a throughway or the highway
4 - People driving black sports cars are often in stealth mode and refuse to turn on their lights during storms even though it is supposedly the law, and the sheeting rain makes it impossible to see them until they are right next to you

By the time I got to the library, I was shaken, furious, and annoyed. Perfect.

When I entered into the space, the organizer apologized because there were only six or seven kids there. The librarian rousted about two more out of the main library.

I didn't care about the numbers. My attitude about storytelling in libraries is whoever shows up gets stories, and as long as the audience outnumbers me, it's a show. If only one person shows up I'll still tell...but don't tell anybody.

Anyway, the kids sat near the front, and I asked the questions: Who likes to read? Is there anyone who doesn't like to read?"

The only person who didn't like to read was the eleven year old in the front of the room who proudly held up his hand. I was late getting to the library, and so didn't ask my follow up question.

I told several stories, one of which was, A Knock At The Door. It is one of those tales where a mother leaves her children home and they are tricked into opening the door to someone who wants to do them harm. The mother saves them at the end.

When the story was over, I book talked half of Heckedy Peg. I end my little book talk with the words, "If you want to find out how she gets her kids back, you'll have to go and find that book."

The librarian went to find the book before I was finished with the set, and he returned with the book as well as some of my books.

When the set was over, the kids went for Heckedy Peg, but the eleven year old beat them to it. They were all crowded around him silently. Some kids couldn't see, and they began to complain.

I smiled. "Why don't one of you read it aloud to the others?"

The eleven year old jumped up! "I want to read it to everyone! Can I?"

"Sure." I said without batting an eye.

He went to the front of the room. The organizer apologized and said that parents had come to get their kids. The eleven year old was crestfallen.

"You can read it to everyone tomorrow." I looked over at the organizer. She nodded The eleven year old grinned. The librarian said, "We'll hold it for you guys."

I went out and got in my car. The rain had stopped, the sun made a brief appearance, and the world was easier to navigate.

Honestly, if the world had still been drowning in rain, I wouldn't have cared. The smile on that kid's face at the prospect of reading that book to the other kids made my entire trip down to Florida worth it.

If they tell you they don't like to read, they might actually believe it...that doesn't mean they are right. Don't give up on them.


Happy Reading!

Other People's Children: Language? Literacy? Questions.

Momma Duch with a couple generations of ducklings in Florida

I have been avoiding this space.

Sometimes life gets foolish.

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be writing a blog on a regular basis, but I have been avoiding this space because I didn't think I had anything to say. My plan this morning was to just write a 'sorry about my absence' piece.  I also had a slate of excuses to explain why I haven't been blogging.

For example:


I've had working Thursdays for the last few weeks, and since that's the day I normally blog, if I'm working out of the house, I never seem to get around to blogging.

My daughter, my sweet little girl went to prom a couple of weeks ago. Yikes.

Sixteen caught me by surprise

I've been avoiding working on my nonfiction piece while I try to finish a completed draft of this really fun novel I'm working on, all the while doing research, getting ready for both of my children to finish for the year and come home for the summer. I've been preparing for travel, workshops, conferences, festivals, and all of that stuff that pays the bills but keeps me hopping. That's why I haven't been writing.

However, when I finally stopped avoiding this space and I sat down to write about how I don't have time to write, I discovered I actually did have something I wanted to say.

Thus, rendering all of my useless excuses foolish and irrelevant.



I'm in Florida for ten days. I performed at the 29th annual conference for children's literature which was themed: Beginning With Books: 'Back to Basics', and the 14th annual Ashley Bryan Art Series where I was featured with some amazing artists and authors. It was neat. I had a wonderful time.

I listened to a fascinating presentation by Charles R. Smith Jr. Who is an incredibly accomplished author, photographer and poet.

My People by Langston Hughes, photos by Charles R. Smith Jr.

Brick By Brick a story about building the White House in D.C.

I met a graphic novelist named Chris Schweizer who made me look at comics in a completely different way!

Chris Schweizer

One of Chris's graphic novels

I was there to tell stories, and to give my take on language, literacy, and storytelling...what else? I'd prepared my speech, got my talking points together, but when I stood up to speak something odd happened.

 I noticed how the words came out differently, and the points I was making were slightly altered. I cannot doubt that it was because of this amazing book I've been absorbing.

This book is about how Standard English, which is taught in American schools, is a different dialect of English that lots of children do not speak. Instead of educating kids with different dialects, the efforts educators make to teach Standard English actually make it hard for students who do not already speak Standard English to learn ANYTHING. You get me? School becomes a battlefield for learning ANYTHING.

 "How is that possible?" you might ask.

 'Other People's Children' by Lisa Delpit.




I started reading this book after having lunch with a friend of mine who is getting a PhD in classroom systems. I shared with him about my writing a book about language, literacy and storytelling, and he recommended this to me.

I've been reading it a quarter section at a time, and every time I get through four or five pages I put the book down, sit back and wait for my poor, blown mind to reassemble so I can make sense of what I've just read.

This book made me think about lots of things. It has made me make decisions that I wouldn't have made three weeks ago.

Let me give you one example of what is between the pages. There is a short narrative about a college professor who observed a second grade teacher working with a little boy who pronounces words in his dialect instead of
Standard English. The teacher kept interrupting the student to correct the mispronounced words as opposed to allowing the student to work on reading the text. It got to a point where the the kid didn't want to read, withdrew, and started making mistakes on words he did know. The teacher became more impatient as the child had more and more trouble with the text. At no point did the kid get all the way through the work. This kid would be considered a slow reader.



The professor noted all of this. He created a form of English he called Atlantian English, and introduced it to his linguistic grad students. He put together a paragraph, and had his students attempt to read it out loud. He used the same techniques to get them to pronounce the words properly that the second grade teacher was using on an eight year old, and to his surprise, he got the same results. At least one of the grad students broke out in tears, most of them got so frustrated they fidgeted, refused to read, or read so quietly you could barely hear them. They began to second guess even the words they knew. It was a disaster. None of the grad students in linguistics successfully completed the reading, and none of them knew what they'd read. So? Does this mean that they were slow readers?

Now imagine you are eight years old and that is your experience every time you pick up a book and try to read with your teacher. Tell me, what are the odds you will become a proficient reader? What are the odds that you will learn to love books or literature? What are the odds that you will come to 'hate' reading?

Atlantis

That half of a page sent me into deep thought for several days as I tried to come to grips with what this says about the forever educational gap between white children, rural children, poor children, and children of color, and what factors might be contributing to it. It made me wish every single person who went into education was forced to read this book.



Then, there was the situation that happened this morning. I was up on stage doing my thing.

Sitting in front were two little girls in the third grade. A white girl and black girl side by side and it was clear they were friends. Throughout the stories they couldn't stop poking and playing. I spoke to them the first time. The second time I was a little harsher, and the third time I announced that if they couldn't get it together, or I had to speak to them again, I was going to move them away from each other.

A well meaning teacher marched over to the girls, said something to the two of them and chose to move the black girl. Normally I would just shake my head at the injustice of choosing one girl to punish while leaving the other, but not today. Today I intervened.

"No." I said. "They're fine. They are going to work it out. Don't move either one." The teachers looked worried. I just smiled. "You guys are going to work it out, right?" I asked. They nodded. I insisted that the black girl go and sit back down. The two of them were very good throughout the rest of the show.

As the show ended, I noticed briefly that the white girl was now playing with the kid on the other side of her, and the black girl was sitting quietly.

I called them both up to the stage after the stories. I thanked them for working it out, and I shook their hands. Both girls were very proud that they'd managed to correct their own behavior. I went back to the teacher who'd attempted to move the black girl and I said, "It didn't seem fair to me for you to move one of them since they were both equally at fault." She shrugged and smiled, and the whole thing was forgotten.

Not by me. I thought about all of the studies I've read about how black children are more likely to be disciplined for the same behavior exhibited by their white peers. I thought about children of color, and how coming out of a community that uses a different form of English creates an uphill climb that is often made worse because of the way we teach reading in our schools. I thought about how much fun we have when we share stories.

Most days I only think I know what I'm talking about.

I've been thinking about these things a great deal over the last few weeks. Sadly, I have no answers. We'll see how I feel when I finally manage to get through this book.

Happy Learning -

Neighborhood Schools: The Good, The Bad, and The Frustrating

Did you go to a neighborhood school?

Did you go to school with all of the kids in your neighborhood?

Were your teachers also from that community?

Did you walk to school?


Did you take a bus?

Did you go to school with your next door neighbor?

What was the make up of the kids in your school?

I ask these questions because it seems to me that big sections of our country are de-segregating right before our wide open eyes.


My mother just turned seventy. She remembers being a kid in segregated Texas. She told me that she could not go to her neighborhood school in middle or high school.

Every morning she had to get up early so she could get on a bus. She would pass a number of schools before she got to the black middle school or high school in town. When desegregation came to Beaumont, TX and they started bussing white kids in order to integrate, parents were up in arms. 'Bussing' became a bad word, and it was fought tooth and nail.

My mom's amused reaction to this was, "We always had bussing. It only became a problem when it was promoting equality."

On the other hand, my mother went to a neighborhood school in elementary school. She attended school in a black neighborhood called The Bottoms. Every kid in the school lived in the same neighborhood, had the same experiences, knew the same basic things about the world, and reinforced the same ideas.

In March, I was in Delaware performing in the Red Clay school district. I went to a number of schools.

In one particular neighborhood school where the population was almost completely African American, the young man who was the proprietor of the 'technology center'-since they no longer lend out books to the children-and I had a long, interesting discussion.

He's starting his second year in this school. They are doing a program where they give the kids a free book every week instead of bringing them to library. The kids keep the books, and so build a library at home. The school does this because this neighborhood is poor, and they know most of the kids don't have books.

This young African American man and I shared stories of our backgrounds. His family travelled, and took him to museums, aquariums, camp outs and lots of other things. He went to a school that was not a neighborhood school.

He would return to school after spring break or the summer, and hear about his classmate's vacations. Some had gone to other countries, or experienced activities of which he knew nothing, and he learned a great deal from them. Their experiences opened up the world and exposed him to different ideas, and his experiences did the same for them. He learned about religious practices different from his own, family traditions that were interesting, and he had discussions with people who had different past experiences, and different life expectations. It changed his life in ways he could not even understand until he was older.

He lamented that the kids at this school never encountered anybody who didn't have the same background, experiences or even understanding of the world. They reinforced the worst elements of their neighborhood, and rejected anything that they didn't recognize because it was in a book or on a film and nobody they knew had any experience with it. For them, it was all fantasy, and did not reflect the real world. Up until he worked there, he hadn't really thought about how neighborhood schools could be a problem.

Our discussion reminded me of a school I visited in Florida. The school was near several really cool exhibits including a manatee center, some cool habitat tours, and lots of gorgeous hiking trails with marsh birds and nature tours.
The principal told me that they try very hard to get the district to give them funds to visit at least one of these easy to get to places once a year because none of these kids have parents who take them to things like that. Most of these kids don't leave the neighborhood. They are fascinated by the trips the school arranges. They never have any idea all of these things are within ten minutes of where they live.

Across this country I go into more and more schools where only one ethnicity is dominant.  These students may not learn how to deal with people who look, sound, behave, or expect different things from life. They will not hear about experiences outside of their understanding of the world, and they will not spark others by showing them something different.

Unless your neighborhood is diverse, which many are not based on the parameters that constitute a neighborhood, then kids are being educated in an environment that doesn't resemble the actual country in which they live.

In some places nothing can be done about it because there is zero diversity in the area and unless they leave their community, they aren't likely to encounter anyone of another ethnicity anyway.

I have personally performed in places like this, and the audiences come expecting I've got two heads, or I'm going to do something 'black' or speak a different language. I'm afraid I'm sort of disappointing to many of them.

I remember a tale a good friend of mine told me about something that happened after she moved to Kansas City after having lived in Olathe, KS. Her family went to the mall. Her three year old saw his first ever black person in the flesh, stopped, stared and said in a voice that was both too loud and too articulate.

"Look, mom! It's the Prince of Bel-Air!"




I'm happy to say Shaun met lots of different kinds of people at his new school!

All of this has been sitting in my body for a while. I've been noting how many schools look as if they are actually segregated.

It begs the question, "Does it really matter? Does meeting different kinds of people in your early years really make that much of a difference?"

In 2015, Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme court was listening to arguments about the necessity of making sure that our universities remain as diverse as we can make them. There were a number of things said during these proceedings that were pretty awful.

At one point Justice Scalia suggested that African American students should go to slower Universities because 'they' weren't up to any rigorous standard.

For Scalia, African Americans are a monolithic block of people who can mostly be classified the same way. This opinion, sadly, is accepted by far too many people.

That, of course, is distressing, but these two questions from Chief Justice Roberts brought home to me the true importance of having a diverse population at an early age.

"What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?" Followed by: “And I’m just wondering what the benefits of diversity are in that situation?”

The backlash to the above comments were swift and furious.

 We learn by being around people. We learn not just their names, or what they look like, but how they live, what motivates them, where they go, how they experience the world. Our understanding of who they are changes our perspective on the world, and opens our minds and eyes to a richer reality.

The more diverse our encounters at a younger age, the richer our understanding of ourselves, our culture, our neighbors, and some of the myriad of possibilities this world offers. Demystifying the unknown is a powerful tool towards making the society we live in work more cooperatively.

I understand the motivation behind neighborhood schools. Your kids will only go to school with kids they know. You usually have lots more control in neighborhood schools, and it reflects the tax base of your community, which might very well be why you bought that house in the first place. It is frustrating to buy a great house, in a great neighborhood and find out that your kid is going to be bussed to a less wonderful school than is in your lovely neighborhood. I get that frustration.

I'm not saying all neighborhood schools are terrible.

Some neighborhood schools are very diverse. Some are great at helping students learn about the world. I've been in some schools where you look out over the population and it is a melange of lots of different kinds of kids from all over the world. I've seen others that look like a casting call for one particular type of person.

Seoul American Where Everybody is From Somewhere Else

So, what's the answer?

I don't know.

I believe that there is a benefit to being around a diverse group of people.

Then again, I'm pretty biased. I went to elementary school on military bases in three different countries.


Hearing different people's stories, finding out how those stories interact with yours, and learning to respect their stories is a powerful tool in the learning arsenal.

That, just in case Justice Roberts wants to know, is the benefit of having a diverse group of people in a physics class...or any class for that matter.


Happy Mingling.

National Association of Black Storyteller's Annual Conference

Have you been thinking to yourself...

'Boy o howdy, I sure would like to go to the National ASSOCIATION OF BLACK STORYTELLERS (NABS) conference and festival in Philadelphia, PA – November 2-6, 2016.




I'll bet it will be amazing!

 I'll bet there will be great performers! I


'll bet there will be interesting sessions.

If you have been thinking these thoughts, well, you are correct!

It will be amazing!

There will be great performers!

There will be interesting sessions!

'Alas," you might think, 'I'm short of funds for such a trip.'

Well, worry not! Funds are available.

The National Association of Black Storytellers (NABS) is offering the second annual Cowtail Switch Scholarship to young adults interested in learning, developing, and using storytelling in their respective community. 




Winners of the scholarships will be mentored by others at the National Association of Black Storytellers Festival and Conference. Information about the conference may be found on the NABS website (http://www.nabsinc.org).



Terrific! But who can apply for these funds?

Who May Apply?
Adults ages 18-35 interested in using the oral tradition in various venues: libraries, day cares, schools, community centers, etc.


Okay, okay. But if I win, what will I get?

-Free registration to full conference, beginning Wednesday, November 2 through Sunday, November 6, 2016. 

-This will include workshops, Opening Gala, Circle of Elders, Zora Neale Hurston storytelling concerts and other storytelling programs within the Festival, and the closing Mama Linda Goss Spiritual Breakfast.

 -Three nights shared lodging at conference hotel – Wyndam Hotel Philadelphia 

So, a completely free ride? 

Well, not exactly.

Additional Requirements
Must provide own transportation to/from conference
Must pay own meals that are not included in registration
Must pay for all incidental expenses (parking, etc.)
Must be willing to work as a volunteer during the conference and meet with NABS Leadership. Winner(s) will be asked to complete an evaluation, to provide ideas for attracting future Cowtail Switch Scholarship recipients to the NABS festival, and to write a letter to thank scholarship contributors. 

How many people are going to be able to take advantage of this opportunity?

At least one scholarship will be awarded. If additional funding is received, an additional scholarship will be granted. Members of the Cowtail Scholarship Committee will judge applications and determine scholarship winners. Applications are due May 28, 2016 (postmark date). Winner(s) will be notified by June 30, 2016 and must register for the conference by July 15, 2016.

All right, so how do I apply? 

Glad you asked!

Application Process
Please provide the following information via email or U.S. mail: Name, Address, City, State, Zip
Telephone Numbers (home and cell)

Email Address
Employer/Job Title or School/Year
Date of Birth
Storytelling experience (either telling or listening)
Answer the following questions:
1. Why are you interested in attending the National Association of Black Storytellers Festival and Conference?
2. Have you ever attended a NABS festival? If so, what years?
3. What do you hope to gain by attending?
4. How can storytelling be used in your present or desired line of work?
Email your application letter to: sanwbush@gmail.com, or mail your application to: NABS Cowtail Switch Scholarship Committee, c/o Sandra Williams Bush, PO Box 452, Amherst, NY 14226.

APPLICATION DUE DATE: May 28, 2016 (postmark date)


Good Luck, and I'll see you PA!


Happy Conferencing!

In Residence at Stoneviille Elementary School: You Want Me To Work With What Age?

Stoneville, NC

This week I am in residence in Stoneville, NC. This means that I am teaching all week at Stoneville Elementary school.

This means I have four classes a day. In some residencies, I get a core class, or I work with a single grade level.

I've got some fun residencies in my toolkit for grades three through twelve

 I have one about humans needing to leave the earth because it is dying. The residency is designed to get students to study the solar system, consider alternative energy, visualize technologies that do not exist, work together in small groups, research current technologies that are being considered for space exploration, as well as lots of arts and creative drama work.

I went into the classroom, explained who I was and what I was doing there. When I started the creative drama element of the residency by telling the group of fourth graders they were the last, best defense against the destruction of the world, about three quarters of the kids thought I was undercover from NASA. Some of them were pretty freaked out about it. The next day I had to explain once more that it was a creative drama experience. Despite realizing I really was not sent from NASA, the kids took the activity very seriously. All of the classes had a great time.



Basically, each class was divided into small groups, and each group came up with plans to evacuate the earth. I was cool with any plan they could concoct, and we would create the technology to make it work no matter how far fetched.

The students spent three days planning our escape. I came in on the fourth day, told them that there was bad news. Time was shorter than we knew. Not everyone could get off of the planet. A representative from each group came up and drew a slip of paper out of a bag. The slips with nothing on them meant the group got to leave, but the ones with red lines across them had to stay on the planet. We didn't have the resources to evacuate them. The groups that were going to be left behind were extremely bummed. There were some tears. We bucked up, however, and began to consider how to proceed.

Four days into a five day residency,  one or two groups in each room had to scrap all of their plans and begin to see if they could figure out a way to stay on the planet, and survive. On the fifth day, we spent most of our time in the evacuation stage, except for the abandoned groups...they threw themselves into saving our planet with such energy and fervor, that their ideas were extremely cool. The students participated in guided visualizations, drew pictures, and described the systems they designed.

The teachers had pulled books about the solar system earlier in the year, but nobody looked at them twice. That week, the books made the rounds in the rooms as student groups tried to pick a planet on which to live, and create life support systems to deal with the various drawbacks of their orbits, atmospheres, and proximity to the sun. The kids had a blast, and if it encouraged even one of them to think seriously about physics, the universe, science of any kind or alternative fuel sources...then it was worth it. If not, then it was still a blast and we got all sorts of arts impact out of it.

Ellis Island

I also run an involved five day residency about Ellis Island. A version of that residency can be found in the wonderful book by Sherry Norfolk and Jane Stenson entitled Storytelling in the Social Studies Classroom.

I have one residency on the start of the revolutionary war. I also teach a variety of writing residencies that are designed to help students with descriptive writing, and I've taught fantasy writing residencies as well.

Still and all, it is not my favorite way to spend a week.

Stoneville Elementary

This week I am in residence in Stoneville, NC.  No matter how long I do this job, there is always something new!

I have never quite done a residency like this. I am visiting every single class in the school once, and then I have a show at the end of the week. I am not seeing any class more than once! How can you build anything? You can't. You just offer up a sampling. It is not very satisfying, but I get why they want to do it this way. It allows for more arts exposure for every kid in the school.

This means I have to work with Kindergarten and First Grade. There are few things that can make my heart stop beating as quickly as knowing I have to spend an hour in a Kindergarten or first grade class.

I have no idea what you are supposed to do with little bitty kids in a classroom! I can tell stories to them all day long, but teaching them?  Just kill me now.

I don't know what people did about this sort of conundrum before the internet, luckily, I don't have that challenge. I had some ideas about what I might try that seemed a bit out there, so I reached out to our storytelling community online and asked, "what do I do?"

Our very supportive storytelling community was happy to offer up some ideas and encouragement. I finished my final classes with K and 1 today, and they were great.

What did I do?

Well, I told a version of goldilocks where she is a really naughty person. We played it in drama space, acting out the story, and then we talked about story structure.



Luckily, this school has done a great deal of work helping students with story structure. This means they already know the beginning, middle, end organization of a tale. We looked at what images or ideas go in each part of the story. The part of the story they had the most trouble with was Resolution, but they got the hang of it.

With the Kindergarteners, I also played the Button Factory. This is how I learned it.

Hi! My name is Joe!
(The children repeat this line.)
And I work in a Button Factory!
(Repeat)
I have a house!
(Repeat)
And a dog!
(Repeat)
And a family!
(Repeat)
One Day, my boss came up to me.
(Repeat)
He said, "Joe are ya busy?"
(Repeat)
I said, "No."
(Repeat)
So he said, "Work with your right hand."

What happens here is I start making big circles with my right hand.

source

We go through the chorus again, and after Joe says 'no', the boss says, "Work With Your Left Hand"

The rest of the instructions are added onto the hand movements
Work with your right leg (Bring that leg up and down)
Work with your left leg (March)
Work with your bottom (wiggle while you march and move your hands)
Work with your nose! (Move your head back and forth or all around while you do the other movements)

At the end of this last chorus when the boss says, "Joe, are ya busy?" you say 'YES!"

Afterwards, we went through the button factory using our story structure chart, and focused on how that story broke down into characters, setting, a problem that vaults the character into action and then the resolution of the action.

The Monarch Butterfly

Two of my  kindergartens and one of my first grades were immersion classes, and so I broke out La Mariposa (the butterfly), a story I learned from Carrie Sue Ayvar.

Bilingual storytelling is fun! The kids who spoke Spanish enjoyed knowing what was happening a half step before their English speaking peers. All in all, it was a great time.

Tomorrow I am seeing all of the second graders at the same time, and then I have a show.

I'm in residence in Stoneville, NC. I'm learning so much about being in the classroom, managing kids, and gauging how they are doing.

I am recalling why I would be a terrible classroom teacher.

I am enjoying playing with the kids. I'm enjoying watching the kids focus on improving their concentration and visualization skills. I'm enjoying the teachers as they watch the process and make notes about follow up after I'm done.

It is good to do this every now and then as I write and think about brain function, but as much fun as I am having....I'm looking forward to being done tomorrow!


Happy Tell/Teaching!

The Art of Procrastination: How Do You Roll?

When I have a writing deadline, my house gets really, really clean.






When I have a writing project I should be doing, I watch a ton of Netflix.





When I have a writing project that is actually kind of important to me, but I know it is going to take me a while to finish it, and it is going to require outside sources, research, and learning tons of new stuff as I go through it, Facebook becomes a really important factor in my life.




When I have a writing project that is probably important to my career, I've given myself a personal deadline of May, I really should be working on it especially since I have this week off, I know it is going to take a while to finish, it requires outside sources, lots of research, learning tons of new stuff as I go, and I already know the style, structure, and outline of the project....



I really would like to talk more about this, but I have to do the floors; hang out the wash; I'm in the middle of binge watching Crossing Lines on Netflix; and I just heard that tell tale bing that says I got a new message from the really intense discussion I'm having with somebody about a politically fraught subject on Facebook.

Maybe I'll get to that book I'm writing about language and literacy building today...maybe I won't.

See you Next Week.

Happy Procrastinating.