Boys don't need your Common Core?

I woke up in the middle of the night. I was dreaming about trick or treating with my sister Maryellen on Halloween. She was still alive, and we were having so much fun, talking, laughing, and saying Boo to everyone we met. It was as clear as the back of my hand. I could feel my hand in hers. I could not go back to sleep. While the dream was beautiful waking to her not being here hurts deeply. I went online looking for news, but found none. I ended up on the CNN News webpage, and came across this "Readers sound off: Books that changed your lives."> http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/31/living/readers-favorite-ya-childhood-books/index.html?hpt=hp_t5 <
I started thinking about the books that make me who I am. I remember reading John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" with some trouble eight graders. It was the only all boys group I ever worked with. They were the greatest group of boys. I can't remember who cried more when Owen Meany died, them or me.

Death had come to almost every boy in that class that year, and me as well. We teachers know bad things happen to good people, but there is nothing in our training to help lessen that pain. Teachers live the pain of every child they teach. It is a rewarding job, but those rewards carry both joy and pain. It was a long year of funerals. No one stops the world. You pay your respects, you hug, and somehow you go on teaching. You question it all. You hold on for them. Sometimes, however one beautiful moment can melt all your hurt away.
Some say working with socially emotionally disturbed boys is a challenge, but to me they're just boys. What do you say to a young boy whose mother dies from an overdose? I'm sorry only carries you so far. You crumble inside everyday knowing his pain. You do everything possible to make school better. You go on with the show. You wrap all that hurt inside. You bury it deeply, and you go on teaching.

I remember the lines that taught us books can heal that year.   

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades away from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”  

I read it a hundred times before, but my sister died earlier that year after a life time of substance abuse.  Then seeing his tears roll down those cheeks, knowing he just lost his mother less than a month ago. Well nothing on earth was going to stop my tears while reading those lines. It's all silent, it's like church, and we're all crying. Then every boy walks over and hugs me. He comes over saying, "Please Sir, don't cry....it gets better, they never leave our heart".... Sometimes a room full of tears is a room of healing.

Who will read Owen Meany to our boys in this education reform rush to lessen narrative readings under the Common Core? Tell me again what the heck do Student Learning Objectives have to do with reading?

The power of narrative makes us human, and the more narratives we read the more human we become. Our students need narratives more than they need non-fiction.

"A Prayer for Owen Meany" taught me it's not the books, but the people that change our life. My life was changed by an older sister who took her baby brother trick or treating, and an eight grader who said "Please Sir don't cry.. it gets better...they never leave your heart".  

Boys don't need your Common Core, 

Jesse The Walking Man Turner 

If you want to know what song this walking man is listening to through his tears...it's Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPOozwYA8 <

Imagine a new lens

So much of our talk about our children in our public schools is based on deficit thinking. Our lens on public schools constantly zeros in on what is going wrong rather than on what is going right. Our first looks are almost always critical. Children in our public schools are constantly being measured, weighed, and sorted into little boxes.
The focus is always on what they can't do. In public school the talk is almost never about what children can do.
Have you ever heard our political leaders once say our children in our nation's private schools are failing? They just can't take their critical eyes off our public schools.
My thinking is we should challenge deficit thinking. That deficit paradigm is so deeply embedded in public schools our nation's leaders, mainstream media, and policy makers have become a chorus of our children, their teachers and public schools are failing. Really it never ends. Even when they highlight success on that rare occasion it gets put out there as why isn't everyone doing it this way. I am challenging America to change our deficit lens.
What if we did school Differently?
Looked at children through a lens that highlighted:
Their strengths,
Their creativity,
Their curiosity,
Their endless determination to succeed.
Carl Sagan, American astronomer and astrophysicist said: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”  Notice he did not say waiting for something already known. Deficit thinking chases the past not the future, and the past it chases is almost always measured within the constraints of those tiny bubbles on multiple choice tests. Children are born for the future, not the past, they are naturally curious, and they learn best through doing not testing. 

Suppose our mission was to find their strengths, their talents, and their hopes. What if we valued their possibilities not their limitations. What if we insisted our policy makers, our politicians, and our leaders in education focused not on the deficits, but the positive?
What if we insisted rather than measure failure, our leaders take responsibility for creating a public school system that supported our children rather than measure, weigh, and sort them?
Isn't it time we looked at our public schools through the eyes of a child?
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

If you want to know what the Walking Man listened to on his walk over the mountain this morning...it's Barry Lane's "More Than A Number"...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcjIftvIC3I 

Worn shoes and dog-eared pages

I have no time for any Education Deformer today. I will not rage against the machine this day. I'd rather write about shoes, and the pages of the lives we chose to live. I'd rather write about a man who was bigger than life, and never once passed a standardized test, but passed every test of love, honor, and dignity placed before him. 

Marcus Garvey, one of Jamaica's 7 national heroes, said, "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots." 
I love walking in the woods, love the sound of birds singing, seeing the seasons change on the leaves of trees. They feed my soul. Books to me are like trees, they remind me how small a man I really am in the tapestry of life. Both feed my soul.
My grandfather said he judged a person by the wear on their shoes and the books they carried. The more worn the shoes, and dog-eared the pages in their books, the more he thought of them. 
On his death bed he asked me to read William Butler Yeats to him.  He was a World War I war veteran, his schooling ended in grade 6, but his education never ended. No longer able to stand in his well worn shoes on his last morning, he handed me his worn and torn, dog-eared book of Yeats poems.
"I can't see the lines any more."
" I can't see the page numbers"
" Little Jess, read me that Yeats poem 'A terrible beauty is born.'
I want to hear you read it to me”
So through my tears I read it like a prayer. I put my heart, my soul, and a 100 memories of him reading it to me into that reading. I watched as he drew his last breath. His last breath both broke and made me.
My roots grew strong in his presence. Although I have a few academic degrees, I am not a man of degrees.
Like him, I am a man with worn shoes, and the dog-eared pages of books that tell my story. I am a boy who knew a man with worn shoes and books full of dog-eared pages. A boy who knew a gentle giant he misses dearly. A boy who sometimes, while walking among the tress hears a voice calling "little Jess read to me".
So friends, find some time to walk among the trees, and fold a few pages in those books you carry.
Peace,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

If you like to hear what I listened to on my walk over the mountain today….it Simon and Garfunkle’s “The sound of silence” http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=sounds+of+silence+utube&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz35