Write to Learn Conference–Missouri

Getting close and closer to catching up with real time here.

After getting back from our latest overseas jaunt Sara and I took a day and a half to try and screw our heads back on straight and face forward in our home time zone. Then we hopped a plane – rented a car and presented a couple sessions at a wonderful literacy conference near Columbia Missouri. The Write to Learn conference is put on by the alliteratively named Willy Wood.

This Lake of the Ozarks resort gathering mixed us with  top educator development folks and  stellar teachers as well. While we were signing our books for some of the conference attendees I eavesdropped on a conversation a teacher was having with Cris Tovani author of I Read It, but I Don't Get It and Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?

Well this teacher was going on and on about all the work she was doing in the classroom – then about the extra things she was doing after school – she was asking deep questions about comprehension and reading and writing across the curriculum. Of course all of this is on top of the fact that she was here at the conference spending her weekend to get more ideas for her students instruction.

I finally got up and walked over to the pair and said how I wished all those folks who malign teachers – who spout the same old BS about teachers only working seven hours a day – getting the whole summer off – that they are coddled by unions etc. etc. – could witness how seriously and deeply this woman took her pupils education. This teacher is not an aberration by a long shot – the vast majority of educators I work with are dedicated professionals.

So why this need to malign the profession? Well, as a wiser man than me once said – follow the money. How are you gong to funnel public money into private institutions like charter schools or pre-packaged education programs touted by software gurus and politicians (folks with no education experience) unless you can tear down the real professionals already doing the work?

What would happen if we treated medicine in the same way. In fact we did at one time and snake oil salesmen and quacks travelled from town to town selling their magic pills and potions to hopeful but ill informed citizens.  A whole bunch of these “treatments” actually did more harm than they did good. Patients would have been in better shape if they had done nothing rather than jumping at the promise of a miracle cure.

Maybe this is the real answer to the great education problem that is being hawked by business interests. Maybe we just need to get out of the way and let teachers teach.

Hong Kong International School

I continue to play catch up with the blog.

After Sara and I presented at the literacy conference on Saturday and Sunday – we stayed over a couple days to work with the middle-schoolers who we had met back in September.

We test drove a couple of our lessons from our new resource coming out with Corwin this Fall and are happy to report they went down like  fresh Dim Sum. The teachers ate it up. plus we found some places where things could be tightened up and even a typo in one of the slides. (Nothing like a 7th grader as copy editor.)

The groups we worked with were fairly large – three classes at a time so we were not as nimble as we could have been. I explained it to the students as we being a cruise ship instead of a speed boat and that taking the twists and turns during the lesson we need to really concentrate or else we will lose precious time just moving about in the lesson.

Well the kids performed heroically and we got a whole bunch of work done – writing and practicing our public speaking skills. Sure every now and then we’d have a participant rowing in the wrong direction – but this was rare and easily corrected.

Kudos to the teachers and students at HKIS and special thanks to Clare – the 7th and 8th grade LA teacher who first suggested we visit to the powers that be.

Hope to see you guys and gals soon.

The Art of Teaching Literacy – Hong Kong International School

After a bit of respite in Bali Sara and I were back at work. This time we were making a return visit to Hong Kong International School.Back in September Sara and I swung through for a quick visit after which – Professional Development guru Karen Rohrs invited us back to speak at a literacy conference and to work with some of the middle school students.

One of the many great things about accepting this assignment was the opportunity to share the bill (as well as a taxi and dinner table) with one of our favorite educators, Stephanie Harvey. We like to think that our work augments hers by providing practical classroom lessons that are rooted in the inquiry based learning model that Stephanie champions.

We squeezed a whole lot of PD into a couple days and the teachers attending, from schools all over Asia,  performed like champions themselves. They plugged away and managed to stay bright eyed throughout a an 8am to 5pm day. My only regret of the conference was that we didn’t get the opportunity to sit in on many sessions ourselves – they kept us pretty busy. I would have really liked to get a chance to listen to Matt Glover’s presentations but we were presenting opposite him throughout.

Of course our time at the conference was not all work and no play – we had a wonderful dinner at some swanky joint overlooking the harbor where we celebrated Matt’s son’s 18th birthday while watching the light shows being played out on the skyscraper backdrop.

Many thanks to Karen, Jacqui and all the crew who made the conference the success it was and here’s to hoping we see you again soon!

Bali 2013

Sara and I have managed to finagle our way to a Bali visit the last couple years as part of our working with International Schools in SE Asia. Here are a smattering of photos from this years trip which we shared with our good friend Larry and Rai who live there a couple months every year.

I should really devote a lot more time and space to this visit – it was one of our best – but deadlines and more travel are squeezing time through a funnel here – so please enjoy these photos.

Jakarta International School–home away from home

Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional religion Bokonism holds a tenet known as a Karrass.  A Karrass is a grouping of folks sort of like a tribe although the members may not be aware of each others existence.

Sara and I have had the opportunity to run into members of our Karrass all over the world. These are the folks that you just form an immediate connection with –people who just by happenstance you have met and immediately became friends. That’s how it goes with us and the Hodgsons – Kate and Murray.

Kate is the middle school librarian at the Jakarta International School and Murray is her husband and soon to be vice principle of the elementary there. Whenever we are in the neighborhood we drop Kate a line and always manages to find a way for us to drop in on JIS.

This trip was no different we did a quick two day drive by visit, our fourth trip to the school in the last seven years or so – so this really was like a homecoming. we worked with seventh grade classes and teachers. This gave us not only the opportunity to run some of the lessons from our book (coming out with Corwin this fall) but also to reconnect with the Kate and Murray.

Well, everything went great. The lessons with the kids couldn’t have gone better and the sessions we had with the teachers turned into a mutual learning session. I think we convinced them that poetry can be used across all grade levels as a writing tool and they showed us a well run team approach to teaching and assessment works.

In our off hours we had new glasses made, enjoyed the best massage ever, sat for hours in the clotted and coagulated traffic that is – as I was informed by a taxi driver – traditional to Jakarta, went to the hairdresser and had several tasty meals.  Not bad for two and a half days.

Mud Sweat and Gears

The mountain biking in Duri may not have included as many climbs as the riding in Balikpapan – but it made up for it in mud.

I had a much easier go of it keeping up with the pack here in Duri. The ride was more cross country than climbing and better suited for a rider of my experience. That’s definitely not to say it didn’t raise it own challenges.

We biked through palm plantations, two foot deep puddles, carried our bikes over fallen trees, forged across rushing ditches and crossed dubious bridges.

Thanks to my biking hosts Brian and Brenda I got my share of Sumatran mud treatment. I figure I fell a half dozen times during our two rides. The first led by Brenda included the ditch crossing and tree scaling the second fronted by Brian included the extra deep mud hole action.

During the second ride one of my compatriots was the camp's doctor – a South African guy who sounded a lot like Eddie Izzard and had a similar sardonic sense of humor, “ Having a bit of a laydown in the mud are we Michael? Yes that can be quite therapeutic – but, I’d consider unclipping that foot from the pedal – you may be cutting off circulation there.”

Mud baths aside, I really enjoyed the jaunt through the jungles of Sumatra and am indebted to those Duri mountain bikers.

It’s only scary when you open your eyes

We were warned about the bus ride.

The trip from Rumbai to Duri is around 75 miles – so on an interstate in the States it might take one a smidge over an hour to travel – on the autobahn in Germany – 45 minutes or so. In Sumatra – as the saying goes, pack a lunch. The trip is three and a half hours on a good day.

The students at the Rumbai campus warned us of what was ahead – bumpy roads anaconda winding up and down hills – oncoming traffic of palm oil and lumber trucks swerving at the very last moment before we become that single line in the New York Times, “Two Americans die in Sumatran bus crash…”

The pack your lunch bit would have been good advice as well. We were also warned by the students not to eat the food at the rest stop half way there (a place called Kandis which the kids called Kansas) they promised us our digestive system would unfriend us if we did.

This proved to be a bit of a problem as we had lunch at school at noon and then climbed on the bus at four with no provisions before or for the journey. In the end, considering the excitement of the ride – it might have been a good thing we were traveling on empty stomachs.

So, after all the bad press given our journey before we embarked one might wonder what could possibly make it seem more harrowing. How about an extended cloudburst version of a torrential downpour from the heavens? Check – delivered exactly five minutes before we had to drag our bags across the parking lot to the bus terminal.

Well our travel advisors may have exaggerated a little. The ride was somewhat exhilarating – but I think maybe they overplayed the whole terror aspect of it. In fact there was only one time when the whole bus collectively gasped as an looming logging truck cleared us by the width of a gecko’s eyelid (you know you’ve experienced something good when even the locals get pie eyed).What was scarier than the ride was the miles upon miles of jungle that had been shaven from the countryside in order to be replaced by row after row of palm oil plantations.

In the end, obviously, we survived and on the trip back we knew enough to pack snacks. Live and learn to ride another day.

International School Duri

Some places just exude a sense of welcome. This is what greeted Sara and me when we disembarked from the exciting three and a half hour cross country Sumatra bus ride from the Chevron Rumbai camp to the Duri camp (more about the bus ride later). What this place lacked in monkeys it made up in hospitality.

We were met at the station by school principle Jeff Crawford and whisked to our guest bungalow and then walked to his place for dinner with his 1st and 2nd grade teacher/wife Susan.

What followed was three days of classroom workshops and a couple assemblies. The schedule was perfect – that opening assembly makes so much difference in that it allows the students to learn a little bit about us before we come into their classrooms.

The Duri organizers split our assembly between the little guys and the middle school. The elementary were scheduled for our first day and the older kids for the last. This was a good plan but Sara and I worried that the older kids wouldn’t have had a chance to meet us before we came into their classroom the first two days of work.  So – true to any great educator they improvised – the older kids joined the first assembly for the first 15 minutes or so and then split off. We continued on with material specific for the younger crowd and then were able to present another show aimed for the older guys later I the week.

Again, this was a little school with big ideas. We got to see each class three times and really got some good work done. I even got some poetry out of the 3 year old pre-K class by taking them out on an image gathering expedition armed with iPads. people that know me should get a good chuckle out of the image of my working with these tiny folk. One of my favorite memories is a kindergarten student asking me if I was angry with them.  My voice was too loud and deep and sounded scary. I assured the guy that no way was I even slightly upset and he chilled out.

Dinners were had in teacher’s homes and we laughed and marveled at what a small world it is as we shared stories of our mutual travels and of the friends we had in common all over the globe. Sara even had a glitch repaired on her computer that had been previously worked on in Kuala Lumpur. Turns out the guy who looked at it here (who you will meet in a later mountain biking post) had worked with the guy who worked on it in KL and had inside info on the custom configuration that was causing the dilemma. Like I said – small world.

Sara and I also got to test drive several of our projectable lessons and we were happy to see them perform satisfactory – but we are going to add some tweaks once we get back.

What doesn’t need tweaking though, is the atmosphere that permeates the Duri campus like the aroma of orchids. Thanks for a great visit!