>Ridiculous/ Hilarious/ Terrible/ Cool; A Year in an American High School

Elisha Cooper spent a year tagging along with students at Walter Payton High School in Chicago, experiencing their senior year along with them. Grades, classes, sports, arts, and college applications are high on the list of most seniors, and these teens were no exception. Theirs was a typical high school in some ways, atypical in others. But these teenagers experienced the same academic challenges, emotional dilemmas and relationship woes as teens in other American secondary schools.

Cooper didn’t go for the standard cliques — the jocks, the cheerleaders, the geeks, the gangsters. Instead, he followed eight individual students through their everyday lives. Cooper’s book paints a picture of personalities against a backdrop of classes, sports, proms, sports, college applications, and more. The diversity in the eight students profiled reflects the diversity of Payton High School as a whole.

Daniel, the class president. Emily, the star athlete. Maya, the actress. Anais, the dancer. Diana, with family obligations that put enormous stress on her. Aisha, caught between two cultures. Anthony, who holds court in the cafeteria to the detriment of his classes. Zef, whose sleep disorder puts him at risk of failing. Each of these teens has his/her own strengths, weaknesses, plans, and outlook on life.

I enjoyed getting insight into each teen not just as a student, but as a unique individual. Emily, the star athlete, had a fear of failure that prevented her from scoring even though she was the best ball handler on the team. In her role as team captain, however, she guided her teammates to improve their game and led them to many victories. In a very different family, Diana found herself in tricky situations where she had to translate in court for her parents and her older brother while her other sisters sit back and refuse to help. She used this motivation to set personal goals, apply for colleges, and look for financial assistance to make her dream of attending college a reality.

Following these eight teens on their way to young adulthood was a fascinating journey. I enjoyed getting to know them and seeing high school life through their eyes. I questioned, however, why Cooper chose to write in such a choppy style, with short sentences that bordered on fragments. This style made the reading rough going at first. Even as I adjusted, I found myself wanting to revise some of the paragraphs to flow more smoothly. High school students, at least the ones that have spent time living and hanging out at my home, don’t speak in short sentences like this. Text or IM maybe, but that’s another genre altogether.

Dreams are a big part of high school. Those students with dreams and goals are more likely to succeed. I see that in the elementary school in which I teach, a diverse neighborhood not unlike that of Payton High. I wish for my students some of the same hopes and dreams and successes of these Chicago students. Fortunately, Cooper added an epilogue to let readers know what these kids were doing six months after graduation so we could follow their progress toward their dreams, too.

Mothertalk sent me a free copy of the book in order to review it. My teen, Amigo, loved the title; he hopes it will become available in audio book or in Braille so he can read it. I hope so, too; I think he’ll enjoy and identify with the stories. He might prefer a high school named Ray Nitschke or Don Hutson, though. Think about it.

>SSR. DEAR time. Drop Everything And Read. Silent Sustained Reading. Self-Selected Reading. As some kids say it (but not within earshot of the teacher) Sit down, Shut up, and Read.

Our normal computer lab time was cancelled due to the lab being used for state testing. I substituted time my students enjoy: extra silent reading. Normally they’d take a little time to find their books and magazines and then settle down to enjoy them. Today? Nope. But why? In typical teacher form, I analyzed the situation. Here’s the end data.

Kids who haven’t eaten well all weekend are too hungry to concentrate.

Good readers finished their books at home and have nothing to read.
NFL football fans who are still depressed after yesterday’s game might not want to read the Sports magazine for Kids they picked out last week.
The one who broke his glasses Saturday in Pop Warner football hasn’t had them replaced yet and can’t read a word.

>I was teaching a story in the school reading textbook. The teacher’s page, full of sidebars and notes, suggested teaching the time period of this historical fiction piece.

The Great Depression: Point out the date of the letter on page 25 (August 27, 1935). Explain that this story takes place during a period known as the Great Depression, when as many as one out of four working-age people were unemployed. Many families could not afford even basic necessities. The Great Depression lasted for more than ten years. It began in 1929 and ended in the early 1940s, during World War II.

The story follows a young girl sent to live with her uncle and aunt in a faraway city while her parents seek work. As I looked out on the class, I recognized an unfortunate level of understanding in their eyes.

“As many as one out of four working-age people were unemployed….” More than half my class qualifies for free or reduced price breakfast and lunch because their families have little or no income.

“Many families could not afford even basic necessities.” I’ve provided folders, crayons, pencils and more to at least one third of my class. Only half brought in the requested box of tissues to share with the class.

“The Great Depression lasted for more than ten years.” My students are nine and ten now. Will they struggle with their families throughout their education? Will they learn what they need to in order to make their lives better? Or will they end up working dead-end jobs right out of high school or, worse yet, drop out of school?

The idea of living with relatives isn’t a foreign concept to these kids. Several are doubled up with relatives because their parents couldn’t pay the rent on a place of their own. Some are barely making it and may be evicted. The list grows for our service club’s Adopt-a-Family project even as donations decline.

It’ll take a lot more than a few Box Tops to make things right for these kids. These are the very children who need more schooling, not less. More stability, not less. Yet they’re the ones suffering the most, and they’re the ones most likely to fall further and further behind.

>I still remember the day my principal asked to read the final project for my Masters program. She told me how impressed she was and how much she had loved reading it. I glanced around me to make sure no one was within earshot in the school hallway and then confided, “I enjoyed the research.” She laughed out loud and said, “I knew you would!”

When Mothertalk offered me a chance to read and review Mama PhD, I checked my mailbox eagerly for the advance copy. I knew I could share experiences with the professorial moms with essays in this collection, even though my “campus” is a fourth grade classroom.

Mama, PhD is not gender neutral, nor should it be. The women represented in this collection of essays have faced challenges because of their gender: because they were pregnant, because they were breastfeeding, because they were chief caregivers for their babies and children. The university teaching life is not designed for adaptations and accommodations. Its structure is strict, based on goals and requirements that in many cases were set up decades ago with men in mind.

Four sections sort the essays by focus and theme. “The Conversation” discusses a common dilemma: to have or not to have children. Essays in “That Mommy Thing” gather around balancing motherhood and work, specifically academic work. Part three, “Recovering Academic”, is the shortest of the four with stories of those who have left the fold, while “Momifesto” finishes the book.

The contributors to Mama, PhD write with clarity and passion. Essays are easy to follow, and despite (or perhaps due to) the advanced degrees of the writers, easy to understand. Emotions are never far below the surface; readers will feel the pain and the divisiveness the writers encounter.

The collection of essays relates the personal stories underlying the statistics: families affected by discrimination and bias. This makes reading Mama PhD both difficult and rewarding. I felt for the moms who couldn’t bend their families to meet academia’s rigidity, and I cheered for those who could bend academia to work for their families. I commiserated with those who struggled to find balance and ultimately gave up their careers for their families or decided not to have children in order to maintain their academic careers. Even as I identified with each writer, I found myself glad to be in K-12 public education rather than a higher level of teaching. Union representation helps avoid some of the pitfalls these mothers suffered. I get recognition when I publish, but the publish or perish pressure isn’t in my job description. Teaching effectively can be my focus and my sole accomplishment.

I hope that Mama, PhD will spread the word through the bastions of higher education: policies that marginalize women also marginalize our children, our future, and our present. The glass ceiling is cracking in the business world; the marble ceiling has shattered, but gender equity hasn’t cracked the ivory tower yet.

I received an advance copy of this book to review it for Mothertalk. I do not plan to keep it; I know it’ll make the rounds of my colleagues at school!

>Daniel has no last name. He has no family, either; he creates his own family and friends with his highly developed magical imagination. He has amazing powers, outrageous intelligence, and a mission to avenge his parents’ violent deaths.

It’s too bad all of this doesn’t lead to a better story.

Daniel X is disappointing. James Patterson is a well-known author for adults, a creator of best-selling novels, a regular on Top Ten Lists. What happened here? The dramatic opening sets up the motivation and Daniel’s uniqueness, but after that – well, not much. The pacing lacks flow, connections are choppy, the villian was predictable, and frankly, I found it dull.

That’s ironic because Patterson’s marketing (and oh, he is all about marketing) is based on boys supposedly having very little interest in reading because they find books boring and “can’t get into the stories.”

Patterson needs to meet some of the boys I’ve met while teaching fourth through sixth grade. He needs to meet the boy who checked out Eragon from the library – for me! “Mrs. Teacher, you need to read this now because the sequel is coming out soon and it’s awesome.” How about the boy who kept hiding books in his lap so he could keep reading through math class? No, his subterfuge didn’t work. He still had to learn long division, but I let him read as soon as his homework was done. Then there was the boy who was so wrapped up in Robinson Crusoe that he forgot to go to science class. Tell me he wasn’t into the story, and I’ll pop a quiz on you so fast your head will spin. Would you like to hear about the boys who eagerly read the later books in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s collection? They wanted to find out more about Almanzo from Farmer Boy and learn whether his older brother Royal moved west with him.

Patterson suggests something teachers and librarians already know: give them books they’ll love.

I suggest: Give them Gary Paulsen. Christopher Paul Curtis. Jerry Spinelli. Betsy Byars. Cornelia Funke. Gordon Korman. Robert Louis Stevenson. C. S. Lewis. Matt Christopher’s sports collections, including fiction and biographies. And continue to recommend J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. Boys and girls alike lose themselves in the complex and fascinating world of the boy wizard.

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X may attract a few readers who like slimey aliens and big guns and a weak, unstructured story. I don’t plan to recommend it.

I received a free copy of this book in order to review it for MotherTalk. I plan to donate it to the middle school library. Despite my dislike for the story, I do not believe in censorship. Some kids will like it; it’ll be on the shelf for them.