Bud the Teacher

   It’s going to be a pretty big New Year’s party over at Worldbridges — what with everyone from Will Richardson to Madge Weinstein on the guest list to discuss the coming year.  (How crazy is that?)  I’ll definitely be listening as I can sneak away from other work, as it should be quite the conversation. 

Ani, now 1 year old, pauses recently for some light reading before dinner.

Just Readin’ 
  Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher.

    Here’s a little Christmas present for any of you into reading, writing, and conversations about either.  Denver’s Tattered Cover Bookstore is now podcasting.
    According to New West Network (via Neil Gaiman’s blog:

Thanks to a new partnership between the legendary independent and a
local firm called BurstMarketing, podcasts are now being prepared with
Colorado readings from these and other big-name authors. The
collaboration, called Authors On Tour — Live!, will generate
free weekly weekly downloads featuring recently published authors
reading from and discussing their works while at the Tattered Cover.
The first of these 30-45 minute shows, with J.R. Moehringer, author of
the acclaimed memoir "The Tender Bar," an introduction by store owner Joyce Meskis, and thoughts by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, is available now.

In coming weeks, the program will be expanded to include podcasts with
(Al) Franken, Didion, Susanna Clarke, Robert Hicks, Neil Gaiman, Lemony
Snicket, Clive Barker, Andrew Weil, Monty Roberts, Nicholas Sparks, Dan
Savage, Zadie Smith, Michael Connelly, and others.

I’m subscribed.  Sounds exciting.

    It’s the day before Christmas in my neck of the woods, which means that tonight is the night before Christmas.  Thanks, Lisa and Rowan, for the reading.
    Merry Christmas, y’all.

    A couple of weeks ago, I submitted my final newspaper column for the time being.  The newspaper is going to replace me with student writers, which is quite fine with me.  I’m a writing teacher — I love it when kids have something to say AND a place to say it.  The local newspaper is a great forum for students.  That said, though — if you need a weekly newspaper columnist, let me know.  I work cheap.
    Anyway, here’s the last piece.  Hope you enjoy it.
_________________

When I was
in high school, my father wrote me a letter out of the blue.

It was a short piece, a one-page
note about the excitement of the “adventure” that I was on (I was on a church
mission trip at the time, and was not told where we would be going or what we
would be doing until we arrived.). My
mother also wrote a letter, making for quite a special moment when I opened the
“care package” from home.

I still
have the letters in a box of treasures that I’ve kept from my childhood. I’ll always have them, because the words are
permanent, forever there on the paper for me to read and reread whenever I need
a reminder of that special time. I also
keep a collection of the letters and cards my wife has written for me. They are in a special place where I can reach
them whenever I want a reminder of special moments.

Writing is
a way to make a mark on the world and on the people and issues that we care
about. We write to share our
experiences, our questions, and ourselves. At school, we teach students the conventions of writing so that they can
communicate their thoughts, ideas, questions and experiences with whomever they
choose to share them.

December being
a month of gifts and giving, there is no better time to share your writing with
the people who are important to you. Here are a few prompts that you might use to complete a writing project for
someone special this holiday. Sit down
and try to get some writing done. You
might choose a night as a family to sit down together and write presents for
each other this year, or for family members in faraway places that can’t be
with you. Remember to use all of your
senses in your writing – each sense of taste, touch, smell, hearing and sight
can bring something special and memorable to your essays, stories, letters and
poems.

1. Write about how your family spends the holidays. Who or what makes that time together special? What unique family traditions do you have? Ask someone who knows how they might have gotten started and write down what they tell you.
2. Think about the places that you travel during this time of year. Who do you travel with? Where do you go? How do you get there? Have any crazy things happened during your travels? 
3. In many families, holidays involve some pretty important shared meals. Write about a family meal that you remember as being exceptionally good or special or downright unusual. Was it the quality of the food? A special family dish or treat? Smells or tastes? Who was there to share the meal with you? What made it such a special or strange occasion?
4. Put all of the names of your family members into a hat. Ask each family member to draw one name. Write about the family member that you’ve picked. What makes them unique or special in your family? What would you like to tell them that you’ve never had the time to say or share? Is there a special memory that you have that you would like to get down on paper? Take an hour as a family to write about each other.

Whatever topic you choose to write about, make sure that you
share your writing with your family. You
can publish in a variety of ways:

• Send out the best family writing in a holiday letter or card.
• Box  and wrap special pieces and give them as gifts.
• Post all the writing on a family website. Share the website with friends and family all over the world.
• Type up the good stuff, frame it, and hang it somewhere around the house where
        you will see it regularly.
• Set  aside a corner of the fridge for your writing. Take turns being the “featured author” at home.

Take the time to write with your family. You will truly treasure the stories and
experiences that you have to share with one another.

Bud Hunt is on the board of the
Colorado State University Writing Project, teaches at
Olde Columbine High School in Longmont, Colorado,   and blogs at www.budtheteacher.com. Send e-mail to budtheteacher@gmail.com

    Dana posted recently, asking folks who their dream bloggers might be:

Who would you like to see start blogging?

I would love to see Jim Burke and Carol Jago
start blogging. Both have contributed so much interesting dialogue to
the field of English Education that I can’t see how they can fail to be
excellent bloggers. Of course, there is that sticky problem of how much
time they already devote to their careers…

    I followed the question into the comments and saw that someone had suggested Stephen King.  I pondered who I might like to see blogging and one name popped into my head almost immediately:  Robert Fulghum.
    Robert Fulghum was the writer that taught me that writers write because they’d like to have a conversation with you.  Writers write because they want to come into your home, sit with you, share a story, and then leave to think about what you talked about.  I love to read the man because I’ve always thought he seemed to so honestly tackle the topics he writes about.
    I could be dead wrong, but let me have my moment, okay?
    To get back to the matter at hand — I thought that I’d love to read a blog by Fulghum, so I did a quick search to see if he had one.
    He kind of does — albeit one without RSS.  But he’s worth visiting every now and again, just to check in.  The discovery was a nice surprise.
    Who else is worth checking in on from time to time?

    Lots of responses to yesterday’s post.   Kipling asks:

.  .  . why is the teaching and testing of dates so highly prized in schools?

It’s a good question.  My hunch, and it’s only a hunch, is that dates, like other right or wrong factoids, are much easier to test and assess.  Implications, context, hypotheses, and lines of thinking are really hard to put into a box that you can use a computer to score.
    Also, how do you put a point measure on a student’s thinking?  That’s a question that’s bigger than a blog post, and I’m not sure if I’m really asking it here (I have some provisional answers, as I must in order to do my job, but I don’t know if we want to have that conversation so close to the holidays.  But, hey, it’s out there.  Go for it, if you feel like responding.).
    It’s much easier for a school to tell you that your son is failing because he doesn’t know his facts, which are objectively markable, than it is then to tell you that your son is failing because his thinking is poor.  That’s subjective and tricky.  Might even require a professional. 

Eric joined the brainstormers on EdTechTalk’s last brainstorm of the year, and, boy, did he stir up some trouble.  I think Eric’s a pretty smart guy, and I enjoyed hearing him in the conversation.  He was talking about how students knowing a specific date is less important to him than knowing the sequence of historical events and how they influence each other and future events.  (That’s not quite right — listen to the podcast.  I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think that’s the gist of his position.)  He writes:

I hope many of you have used the link on my blog roll to visit Ed Tech Talk - if not please check it out - great discussions going on by people all over the world about education and technology. This past Saturday I joined their show via conference call and at some point during our conversation the question can up about how much a history teacher should stress that students know the specific date of major history events and how it compares with the importance of knowing the context of the event. I mentioned that I was not as concerned about my students knowing if the Boston Massacre happened in 1770 or 1771 as much as I was concerned that they understood the event and its importance in relationship to other events. Others listening to the show entered the discussion and it became quite a debate.

Some of the others in the conversation were pretty, um, unhappy with the idea that dates were given second position.  I really, really, wish I’d have been able to join that discussion — I was talking back to the podcast today in the car — always a good sign of engaging stuff.  To be fair, I haven’t quite finished listening to the podcast — the brainstorms regularly run two hours or so now — but I did want to chime in.  Nobody asked me, but, hey — I’ve got this blog — might as well use it. 

    I think that the events, the sequence, and a general understanding of the date is good enough for students in most settings.  Eric works with 8th graders — I’d be ecstatic if my high school students could discuss the implications of an event like the Boston Massacre.  I don’t need them to provide the date, though, to have a meaningful discussion with them about the event.  However, I would mark a student down on an assignment if they cited an incorrect date.  I think we should push students and teachers to be as accurate as possible with the information they use. 

    If a student doesn’t know a particular date, they should respond with a time range, instead of  making up a wrong date and "citing" that as fact.  Wrong is wrong, even on minor points.  That said, I wouldn’t even ask a question that required a specific date as an answer, because I’d be much more interested in implications or context than I would be in recitation.  Students (and teachers) have a multitude of reference materials available to them whenever they need to access specific information like dates. 

   As Dave said in the podcast, memorizing information has its place.  I think people should know and remember their times tables.  It’s handy to know how many feet are in a mile if you’re an engineer. 

  I like to memorize really good poems — although I’m not very good at it.  I can always look up a poem if I want to share it with someone.  Here’s a good poem.  Carl Sandburg wrote "Grass" about war.  He references specific battle sites — and makes a bold statement about war and its implications.  It’s short, simple and to the point.

   Should he lose points for not referencing specific dates?

    I was doing some house cleaning tonight, and wanted something non-too heavy for listening.  I discovered that They Might Be Giants are now podcasting.  Well worth a listen — their first podcast features several songs, including a re-visioning of "Particle Man" that sounds very Beatles-esque.
    Man, that sounded way cooler in my head than it does in print, but, if you’re a fan of TMBG, then it’ll make sense.
    If you’re not, you’ll get a real flavor of the band in the podcast.

    Typepad went down earlier this week.  It’s all better now, but I was without the ability to publish for a while.  In addition, an older version of my blog was what visitors saw if they stopped by recently. 
    For all intents and purposes, I was unable to tell anyone.  I lost my voice, and that didn’t feel very good.   What a weird feeling. 
    It’s all better now, but how weird to feel like a broken computer had taken away my ability to speak.  Have I been spoiled by how easy blogging can be, how easy it is to "talk" to everybody?