Still marching with my SOS brothers and sisters

The news media cameras are all gone.
The crowds all gone home.
The press is gone searching for the next popular thing.
Sounds like they are already playing the minstrel role for war just days after our nation honored our prince of peace Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Be not mistaken America the dreamer's legacy has not been put to bed for another year.
Look around,
Listen to the people sing,
Open your ears and eyes,
The people are still marching.
Our nation's Fast Food workers are marching for a living wage.
Trayon Martin is at peace, but not the injustice that put him to rest.
In Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York parents and teachers are still marching to stop the closing of their schools.
My United Opt Out brothers and sisters are still marching,
My BATs brothers and sisters are still marching,
My Defending Public Education K to 16 are still marching,
My SOS brothers and Sisters who marched boldly in DC, are considering heeding Rev Sharpton's call to take this fight for justice and jobs on the road.
SOS is planning to go the Selma Bloody Sunday Jubilee.
While these Ed Deformers wave their flags of power, money, and political clout, SOSers have not stopped marching for our public schools.
They have chosen the slogan of Public Education Is A Civil Right.
Dr. King sad:
Cowardice asks the question is it safe?
Expediency asks the question - is it politic?
Vanity asks the question - is it popular?
But conscience asks the question - is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right."
Ring every bell, shout it on every mountain top, call it out on every corner, SOSers ask only one question, is it right, and they have never stopped marching for what is Right.
Heed my words, Secretary Status Quo Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Paul Vallas, and every other Ed Deformer all roads lead to Selma.
Going to Selma,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

Public Education Is A civil Right, not a choice, not a lottery, and it is not for sale. For those interested in why Selma see the following link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cNnG8xfy20

If you are wondering what the Walking Man is listening to on his walk over the mountain today...it's the Roots version "Nobody gonna turn me around" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ6mhRZ8LjM 

See you in Selma people 

Have you heard about Crazy Common Core Groupies?

I saw this image at https://www.facebook.com/WomenHoldUpHalfTheSky with the caption A Girl with a book, and the following Oscar Wild quote "If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” 

It got me to thinking about these Common Core Groupies running around shouting Rigor, Rigor, Rigor. They certainly have no sense of vocabulary, or what a dictionary is. Any quick check of the meaning of rigor comes up with something like this:" 

Rigor 
Noun
hardship, harshness, severity, adversity; ordeal, misery, trial; discomfort, inconvenience, 

1 a mine operated under conditions of rigor: strictness, severity, stringency, toughness, harshness, rigidity, inflexibility, intransigence.

2 intellectual rigor: meticulousness, thoroughness, carefulness, diligence, scrupulousness, exactness, exactitude, precision, accuracy, correctness, strictness.

3 (rigors) the rigors of the journey: hardship, harshness, severity, adversity; ordeal, misery, trial; discomfort, inconvenience, privation.

If they did they might understand why early childhood experts think they are plain nuts. Actually early childhood experts viewed them as being absolutely, completely, totally crazy, wacko nuts! 

Early childhood experts can't see any parent saying bring on the 

Hardship,

Harshness, 

Severity,

Adversity; 

Misery, and 

Discomfort for my child. 

I hope this problem with the rigor thing is starting to make a little sense now. It certainly is not a word we should be using with young children. 

Now back to reading a book you enjoy over and over again. It appears these CC Groupies don't have time for anything, but this close reading thing. They are fanatical over it in fact. This close reading doesn't take into account any emotional connections to books. It's all objective for them. For example: when I finished reading Isabel Allende's "House of spirits" I was in between flights at O'Hara International Airport. I found myself crying uncontrollably so like any "too proud to cry" male I hid my tears under my jacket. It appears that was all wrong with them. They can't get past any type of enjoyment in reading. Now I did say enjoyment, but reading "Hosue of Spirits" made me sad enough to cry. How does that become enjoyment, well really sad books have a way of releasing happy tearful tears. Sort of like the blues, and I'm a big blues man. Now these CC Groupies can't take crying of any kind. Can't you hear them shouting: It's all about the information, the standards, and the test stupid.  Pleasing them would mean I should have focused on the factual information, and not get lost in the narrative of love, lost, and pain. They'll all objective about books; it's all about the information. Understand these are CEO types, they dream of a McEducation for every child. Every burger is the same size, every one cooked at the same temperature, and they all get flipped at the same time. McEducation is for everyone, but their children. Well that's me getting off the subject again. I do that when I write. I also do it when I read sometimes as well. Getting lost in books is equivalent to finding your soul. They'll never get that one. My apologies the subject is reading a book you enjoy over and over again. 

I have been working with struggling readers, their parents, and their teachers for over 30 years now. I can't remember one skill, one strategy, one phoneme, vowel, or vocabulary lesson that sparked a love of reading. That is not to say these things didn't help, but compared to discovering the right book these are grains of sand.

Now yes, the right book is important, but it's like a pebble really. That is when compared to the climate created by the right teacher/parent/friend/ that invites the reader into the right book. The right climate is a mountain compare to the right book. It's the Holy Grail of joining the literacy club. On the journey to becoming a reader who enjoys reading the sand becomes the pebbles, the pebble become the mountain. It all goes together. Remember reading is a complex process. Anyone telling you differently is nuts.   

Remember those CC Groupies they do get all up tight with enjoying reading anything. Heck if you expect to enjoy reading then you might expect to enjoy your job one day. Every teacher, knows that Common Core Heaven explicitly forbids it's groupies from enjoying anything about any one's future career. Everything about the future scares them. They live in constant fear of the 21st century despite living in it. Future careers are all about being college ready and globally competitive. I can't imagine inspiring young people by saying, "stay focused, or you won't be globally competitive" in the future. The future for me as a young kid was about being the heavy weight champion of the world, the next Elvis, and or the next Steve McQueen. This globally competitiveness thing would not have inspired me. Now I am doubly sure it wouldn't inspire today's young people.  

A quick review we have grains of sand, pebbles, and the mountain. Right?

Well together they become the magic that sparks reading for enjoyment. The magic is the invitation to join the literacy club. Oh, oh, I mentioned the Literacy Club again, this means I have to mention Frank Smith who happens to be a real literacy expert. These CC Groupies hate literacy experts. Actually CC Groupies hate just about any education expert. They hate researchers as well. They adore their CEO friends, Billionaires friends, and Ed Deformer friends. Now these Ed Deformers friends utterly hate "The Literacy Club." it's a Frank Smith metaphor describing the social nature of literacy learning. You see the problem don't you? You realize the word socialism has the word social in it. To these CC Groupies reading is a fierce competition, child against child, friend against friend, even family member against family member. Reading in the 21st century for CC Groupies is a survival of the fittest 

Everyone agrees reading is a complex process, and no one has a simple answer, but I have never met a reader who loves reading who never fell in love with at least one book. Now these Common Core groupies they don't have time for these things, they only have rigorous demands on students and teachers. Their mantra said over and over again a hundred times every hour is "We need rigorous standards and rigorous tests will save us". Sounds kind of corny to me actually. 
As for me well  I would go for the right book, right climate, even if the book is about Zombies. I wouldn't even mention the word zombies around these people. That's another story about their obsessive love of non-fiction books. I'll cover that, some other day people.  
Let me end by saying imagine a world where learning isn't a race, 
You know like in Finland. 
Oh, they are ranked number one in literacy.
  Emmmm, they might have something there. 

Still walking,

Jesse The Walking Man

If you are wondering what I am listening to today on my walk over the mountain it's all Barry Lane. 

http://barrylane.bandcamp.com/track/jesse-turner-the-walkin-man

  

Get on the bus America

Today I posted on my home page the above picture with the following comment and link to the Makana song "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiPgQV0YgWI
Get on the bus people, the middle class is shrinking, our pensions are sinking, and for the first time in our history our children are going to be less well off than their parents.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiPgQV0YgWI
Occupy America,
Jesse

The silence and apathy in America as we accept closing public schools in our poorest and most needy communities, leaving our university students with massive loan debts, and the constant union bashing is deafening. How can we accept this premise that our children should expect less. Is the American dream dead?
I was blessed to have Mrs. Stansfield. She was Black, and our Honor's English teacher. She taught everyday like everything in the world depended on her teaching, and years later I realize how much it really did. God rest your beautiful soul Mrs Stansfield, thank you, thank you, and thank you. She prepared me for the silence and the apathy of the masses with Langston Hughes's Let America be America again. It's worth returning to the poem and her lesson.

Let America Be America Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

We were young, urban, and of course responded as young people do...It's cool, and kind of like it is written for now Mrs. S, the hook was baited, and she had us on her line.
Ah, she never let us off easy, no we did not write a five paragraph essay, or any persuasive essay. We studied it, we dug into it, we compared and contrasted it to a dozen other poets, and we studied the historical context of slavery, immigration, poverty, racism, and the labor movement. I can't imagine any teacher taking the time to do that in this insane time of covering the Common Core. Although something deep in this soul tells me there are teachers still breaking the mold, and honoring our profession by doing just that. Thank you, thank you, thank you mold breakers! You know the crazy one we love!

Well back to the lesson. It went on well over a week, and we read numerous other poets from all around the world making universal connections. In the end we ended up with something like Langston's poem makes Americans, what most would rather be kept secret. That dark side of that elusive American dream. An America not so beautiful, not so promising, an America not discussed in the news. It is as relevant as that old gospel: "Let justice roll down as waters and rightness as an ever flowing stream!" And yes she brought her bible in, and yes she brought Dr. Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech in. She brought it all in, remember she taught like life itself depended on her teaching. We even read Marcus Garvey. I fell in love with Marcus Garvey in her class while she played Bob Marley's "Redemption song for us."  She taught us like we were her own children. We knew this from her actions in our classroom everyday.
Oh, I almost forgot I don't remember one single teacher being observed by any administrator in my entire schooling, or any newspaper believing printing our test scores worthy of print. Certainly no one evaluated Mrs Stansfield. Oh, and none of what she taught was on the curriculum. Why this beautiful Black Peal brought it all in, and I am the better for it. Her teaching core wasn't common, it was extraordinary.

Students are blessed not by the teachers who toe the line, but by the ones who break all lines. They certainly won't be blessed by those who toe the Common Core line
Hear's to you Mrs Stansfield with my deepest love and appreciation. It will be in your honor that I join the 50th Anniversary March on Poverty next week.
You are my hero,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4NS2zdrZc Here's to the crazy ones link