It Breaks My Heart Headline in Education Week October 1, 2014: “Pentagon Program Provides Surplus Weapons to Districts.” Two weeks ago I returned to the small, rural elementary school where I held my first job as principal to attend a ribbon cutting for a wonderful new addition allowing the school to expand its offerings across the board. Over 30 years ago the only surplus we received was office supplies and occasional special programs of paperback books or colored markers. Security at the school was the evening custodians remembering to lock the three entrances. Threats came in the form of a local bull who’d wandered onto the playground one morning during recess. (His owner, an eighth grade girl named Ann, calmly put her finger through his nose ring and led him home, but not until after some apparently entertaining, misguided heroics on my part.) Back then the only uniforms on our campus were for sports teams and the occasional volunteers during Fire Prevention Week. Since those days, I spent another 15 years intermittently in different districts into the first decade of this century, so I know the changes. I vividly recall the first time my life was threatened by an angry teenager, the one time a parent arrived in my office with a pistol in his shoulder holster (it remained there), the time we had the full state police bomb squad investigating an unusual package discovered at the main entrance, the early and unusually warm spring morning I spent watching our baseball teams practice after I’d seen the reports from Columbine. I’ve seen the changes, and that headline breaks my heart.

Banned Books I was delighted to realize that on a lengthy list of commonly banned books I have read all but two, and taught two during my years as an English teacher. What is there about that sense of pride, I wonder. I’ve never been what anyone would consider a rebel. For instance, thanks to Facebook I was reminded that I wore a blue/gray suit with a navy tie in my fourth grade class picture. Perhaps that outlandish choice was in some inverted way a device for stepping outside the fashion norms for nine-year-olds of 1963. Regardless, no one ever called me James Dean. Suits and ties notwithstanding, one aspect of my early years did influence my interest in a wide range of literature. My mother had books all over the house. My father’s contribution was having made the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in the living room. Mom’s Book-of-the-Month-Club membership brought a seemingly endless supply of new, hardcover treasures full of promising adventure, some years ahead of my own time, which I suppose made for even more adventure than the author’s might have imagined. Imagination, the intersection of the author’s and the reader’s, is the point of literature. Imagination can be frightening, whether or our own creation late at night reading to the accompaniment of a howling wind, or the deliberate manipulation of a writer deftly pushing largely untapped, little used buttons of deep-seated anxieties and fears commonly held and personally abraded. Maybe that’s it. Books are banned because of fear. Topics, beliefs, convictions that confront us, that rub us even further than the exposed nerve endings of personal experience can create fear. Too often fear of ideas can result in bonfires; just ask Guy Montag.

Raising a Strong Reader Ed Wilkens 3/5/14 Last night at our weekly dinner and chess rendezvous, my father handed me a scrap of yellowed vellum with the quote, Richer than I you can never be. I had a mother who read to me. ― Strickland Gillian, written in my great Aunt Josie’s hand. “Because you inherited Mom’s love of reading and have made it your life’s work,” he said. “First with your own girls and now with their children, books always have mattered so much.” I know “raising a strong reader” is much more than merely displaying and sharing a love of books, but I do believe that is how it begins. So, indulge me if you will, as I reflect on what that has meant to me. I’ll leave the technical and scientific accounts to those more knowledgeable and skilled than I, but I will claim both a love for reading and a mission to help others develop the same. I grew up in a house rich with print. Mom was the reader, though Dad made the bookshelves! I was exposed to a dizzying array of material both fiction and non- from an early age; perhaps in some case earlier than appropriate as I at least occasionally explored books beyond both my reading levels and social preparedness. As a young child I discovered libraries and roared through the entire Walter Farley “Black Stallion” series. As a young adult I took extra literature courses in high school and majored in English (literature) as an undergrad. My children grew up in a house rich with print. Both Jill and I are avid readers with, fortunately for the girls, very different appetites. We still have boxes of children’s books from the girls’ first days on this planet. My heart doesn’t require an album, scrapbook, or Snapfish to conjure cuddling with the girls to read and re-read those books. I made their bookshelves, and they helped fill them. On several of my birthdays part of the celebration was a family road trip to Barnes and Noble where each one of us bought a book. Many of those books are now with the girls for their own children; many are still with Jill and me, nesting in baskets scattered around the house for when the grandchildren arrive. Just last Saturday, Avery Ann, our first grandchild and only 15 months, toddled over to one basket, grabbed The Snowy Day, carried over to me and tried to maintain her grip on the book and her bunny while climbing into my lap. Her cousin, Roman, is only two weeks old but he has way more books than toys. “Raising a strong reader” begins with a house rich in print, is nurtured by Moms and Dads who read, and is promised by the love emerging from that combination. The science will come; start with a book and someone you love.

“Thank God for fish sticks!” I had coffee yesterday morning with Dr. Jack. He’d been my daughters’ pediatrician until they were nearly five and nearly two respectively. We hadn’t seen each other in nearly 30 years, and the primary purpose of our meeting was to discuss a book talk event that he had agreed to do as a fundraiser for the Stern Center. Jack’s book Life in a Jar is a compelling account of the work of Irena Sendler as she saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. He frames this with a secondary story of three teenage girls from a small high school in Kansas who created a play about Sendler for a history project and in the process have touched countless lives in Poland and around the globe. Our conversation focused largely on the book, his process in writing it, and planning for our event. But we also spoke of our children, my two whom he had known so long ago (I brought a photo of the three of them shortly before he left the little town we had shared) and his son. Among the memories was the fact that my older daughter and his son both went through an “eat only fish sticks” phase which Jack had encouraged us not to fret. Yesterday we celebrated how sophisticated our children’s palates have become! Perhaps it was the decades allowing Jack and me the special perspective of time, perhaps it was the power and profundity of his book, or perhaps it was merely the comfort of great coffee in a warm place on a cold day, but our hour together was rich, validating, and companionable. I had arrived looking to firm up logistics for an event and learn more about his book, and I left feeling like my life was better for the conversation.

Depending on family dynamics you might become aware of any academic difficulties your child is experiencing over family dinner, while driving to soccer practice, or in those quiet conversations just before bed. Or, you might be totally surprised to learn from your child’s teacher or through a formal written progress report that things are not going as well as you had assumed. Regardless of how you discover the challenges what you do next is crucial and it’s all about communication and relationships. The essential players include you, your child, and the teacher or teachers relevant to the challenge. Potential additional partners might include a counselor, coach, or administrator depending on the specifics of the challenges. Suggestions • Hold positive assumptions o Your child wants to do well. o Your child’s teachers care that he does well o Your child’s teachers have the skills to meet her needs. o When parents and teachers work together, anything is possible. • Talk with your child to try to understand his perspective and definition of the problem. • Convey caring, confidence, and commitment to make things better. • Do not wait for the school’s official system to kick into gear; contact your child’s teacher o Try to identify a primary contact person; often schools are organized as teams, or there might be a “teacher advisory” system of some sort o Request an initial conversation with that primary contact (best to avoid your having to sit down facing a group of personnel) and explain your concerns, simply but clearly and as specifically as possible o Include your child, depending her age and developmental readiness to participate • Prepare for the conversation by outlining your concerns, consider bringing a brief, clear written outline o Carry your positive assumptions into the conversation; avoid blame o If the teacher is the sole relevant professional begin working on possible action steps, keeping those clear, explicit and simple o If a group would better help achieve success, then request a meeting with that team (or a sufficient representation of the team; again, unless you are sure to be comfortable try to avoid sitting “across from” all seven of your child’s teachers. That can intimidate anyone.) o Take notes, and share those marked “copy” with the contact person. • Once a comfortable, focused, simple, clear set of strategies is identified, it should be committed to writing so there is a record of the plan. (Note: this kind of plan might well be formalized in the school’s “Education Support Team” structure, or even more so with what is known as a “504 Plan” and could, in the face of significant concerns, lead to your or their consideration of “Special Education evaluation.” For any such formal approaches you will want to inform yourself about how those work; such information is easily had online and from various parent advocacy groups.) o Be sure it includes efforts by parents as well as school personnel so there is deliberate mutual support; remember “all things are possible.” o Be clear about how you all will “measure” progress and success o Be sure to include a realistic mechanism for simple, regular communications about progress o If your child has not been an active participant in this planning, determine how you and school personnel will explain what everyone (including the child) is going to do so that together things will improve. Notes • If at any point you do not experience receptivity to your concerns, do not hesitate to turn to other school personnel including other teachers, counselors, principal, nurse, etc. the goal is to have a sense of welcome and readiness to work together • Keep notes at meetings and of other relevant conversations including email exchanges just to have access to key points, decisions, actions planned. We all need reminders occasionally. • It nearly goes without saying, but continue to use your “parent radar” to stay tuned in to how well your child is doing academically but also socially and emotionally. • Don’t wait long if your instinct suggests elements of the plan are backfiring or simply not working as intended. Return to the drawing board. • Do give folks, including your child, reasonable time to implement and respond to the plan. • Change what does not work, but celebrate what does. • Thank everyone playing a role in progress and success.