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.

Singapore American School

Okay the jet lag is slowly wearing off like steam rising from a sidewalk as the remnants of a tropical cloud burst evaporates 137 miles north of the equator. The past month had been my and Sara’s third trip to Singapore in two years our second visit to Singapore American School in the same time. The little island nation macheted out of the jungle is becoming a second home to us.

It’s funny how sometimes folks back here in the States assume we are going to be holed up in grass huts and charging our iPads with a surplus diesel generator cantankerously poofing out black smoke rings. The easiest way for me to describe Singapore is imagine New York City – dip it in bleach – fix the entire infrastructure and update the architecture by a hundred years and you’d be getting close.

Speaking of sate of the art, our second stint at the Singapore American School (henceforth to be referred to as SAS) proved to be even better than our first – mainly because we knew our way around the school this time. Knowing and working with some of the same teachers as we did last year it felt more like stepping into the classroom after a long vacation. We all have those long distance friendships with folks that no matter how long the time intervals between meetings we just start right up again mid-sentence. That’s how we feel about SAS.

Thanks to the second invite from our friend Dr. Nancy Johnson, we have had the opportunity to really push ourselves as writers, teachers and education consultants. We are basically embedded into the 8^th grade classrooms for three weeks, working with each of the three duets of Reading and Language Arts teachers for a week. We begin each week with three hour and half assemblies for the entire eighth grade a hundred or so students in each session. We then would spend the rest of the week with one “side”. Each side has two teachers and a third of the students – A, B and C sides were respectively on the first, second and third floors. If you think this is a bit confusing – I won’t even go into the schedules which require a slide rule and a Home Depot paint chip chart to figure out.

All we had to do was stand in a room and wait for the kids to show up. It is such a luxury to have so much time with the classes. A lot of the time Sara and I get to see a class of kids once sometimes for less than an hour – here we worked with each group of kids twice apiece. Four hour and half sessions and an assembly to boot really gave us an opportunity to go deeper in our instruction and to build on what the other had worked on the day before.

It’s also easy to look good when working with such dedicated teachers – Nancy, Brian and Brian, Erin, Scott, Rebecca and Betsy all embraced and improved our classroom work encouraging us to go ahead and stretch our ideas. I know we leave SAS better teachers for the experience.

Mylan Park–West Virginia–turkeys welcome.

Sara and I have just returned from a two day visit to Mylan Park Elementary School on the outskirts of Morgantown, West Virginia.

We came at the behest and hard work of Sara’s college roommate Suzanne Smart whose last name is very apropos. She’s got to be a pretty sharp cookie – she brought us in didn't she?

We spent our first day conducting some teacher workshops in the library in the morning followed by a couple assemblies with the students in the afternoon. The second day we lead some writing workshops in the classroom. The students were some of the  most eager to learn that we have come across and we are hoping that this is just the first of multiple visits we make to this great community.

A cornerstone for families in this area is The Shack – a community center extraordinaire where Suzanne functions as one of the big wigs. It was through this organization that Suzanne was able to put together the logistics to get Sara and me into the school.

After our visit in the school we  had the pleasure of headlining a family literacy night which included a lasagna dinner and a gymnasium populated by free range toddlers. The day before when we swung by the center to get a lay of the land in anticipation of the literacy night we surprised some of the kids we had seen in the school as they played basketball. They were bug eyed excited to to see the visiting authors outside of the confines of school walls. One mohawked fourth grader exclaimed incredulously “What are YOU doing out here!.” as if the visiting authors are stored in the principles closet between appearances.

Well, thankfully we were allowed to roam free during our stay in the Morgantown area – not too unlike the flocks of turkey we saw wandering the hills on the way to school. I hope we manage to migrate back sometime soon.

Hong Kong International School - good things come to those who wait.

An eighth grade class at HKIS

The hills of Hong Kong would give San Francisco a run for their money. The cab drive from the Cosmopolitan Hotel up to Hong Kong International School  should come with a disclaimer for those with heart conditions as the drivers careen through the curves like a video of a waterside ride being played in reverse.

The view from the faculty lounge - not too hard to get used to.

I met Clare P. (a 7 and 8 teacher at HKIS) a couple years back while Sara and I were presenting at the EARCOS conference and we have been corresponding for the last three years conspiring a way for Sara and me to visit HKIS. Well with our trip to Kuala Lumpur everything fell into place for a quick two day stay. This was Sara and my second trip to the city but our first to this school, a couple years back we worked at the Canadian School of Hong Kong which was great and we had heard nothing but good reports on HKIS so we were so happy to finally be connecting.

Well we couldn't be more satisfied with finally getting our ducks in a row. The teachers and students couldn't have been more receptive. All the great reviews we had received about the school were well founded. We managed to see the whole middle school plus wedge in a couple teacher workshops and the enthusiasm and appreciation we felt were unparallelled. It's fun to work hard when one gets such positive reinforcement. (the goodies and coffee in the teachers lounge didn't hurt either.)

Even a broken leg didn't stop this customer from writing.

The only regret we had for this drive by visit was that it seemed too short. Well to our happy surprise that just may be remedied as well. Before we even finished our second day we were working with the curriculum specialists on getting us back THIS school year. I don't want to jinx those machinations - but it's looking pretty good for a February encore - cross your fingers and fasten your seat belt we may be climbing those hills again sooner than expected!

International School of Kuala Lumpur

Well, our first overseas adventure for this school year is in the books. Thanks to the International School of Kuala Lumpur and the Hong Kong International School - (more on HKIS later).

It's not very often we arrive at a school library our first day to survey damage done by a civet cat that dropped through the ceiling tiles and ran amok amongst the stacks of books - but that is how our week in the Malaysian capital started.

Now things certainly got better from there - of course that all depends on one's perspective the fact that a wild animal was running around the library before we got there is a positive in my book. Jason, the middle school librarian, told me during a fire drill, while we were hanging out in the parking lot waiting for the all clear, about the time a particularly heavy rain washed a twelve foot long python into the grounds from the forest adjacent to the school.

Well our visit didn't include any other run ins with wildlife excluding of course - middle and high schoolers - who were squeezed with the deft of a serpentine constrictor into our schedule by high school librarian extraordinaire, Nancy Woodward. Sara and I managed to see just about every student in the upper school during our visit. We ran some writing clinics - that's the new nomenclature we're using for our workshops. We work on specific skills  similar to the way one would work on a particular aspect of a sport in preparation for a real game. Just as one might spend an afternoon honing their putting  in preparation for playing golf or repeating corner kick after corner kick with the hope of scoring a world cup goal someday - we may be working on imagery, metaphor, summation, story structure, characterization etc.This way our lessons can be plugged into any writing curriculum that is already in place or provide some insight to students who may not be benefiting from a formal writing instruction. Sara and I believe that one can better decipher the strategies used in literature read once one has practiced these same strategies in their own writing.

Nancy scheduled an evening performance for students and parents which included interpretive dance to some of Sara's work - a chamber orchestra, an a capella choir, and a very talented singer songwriter from the 11th grade along with Sara and me performing some of our pieces.

And to top everything off - the school put us up in an absolutely luxurious hotel suite - in fact when we walked in Sara said, "Oh, this can't be for us!" it was that nice.

Thank you ISKL for helping us to start our year right!

Don’t mention it…

One of our thank you notes from the kids in Aiken SC. I especially like the part about writing a poem with her mom.

I also like the fact that she kept everything to the left of the red margin – even if it did mean truncating my name.

Canadian International School Hong Kong

Like everything in Hong Kong the Canadian International School reaches for the sky.  At ten stories tall the building is an apt metaphor for the high goals set by the students and staff. The campus clings to the edge of one of islands many hills resting atop pylons driven deep into the bedrock and affording quite a picturesque view of the harbor below.

Sara and I started our week off with an assembly and then did classroom workshops with grades five through ten. This school is wired. Every student has  laptop and digital literacy is practiced with a gusto. But, this did not stop the kids from producing some great work the old fashioned paper and pencil way when we got to work in our sessions.

We wrote definition poems, memoirs, worked on imagery, metaphor and editing. I especially liked the eighty minute periods which gave us a bit more time than usual to work a bit deep with the kids.

Deep thinking was definitely something the students here are used to. Primary grades curriculum doesn’t break out into subject areas until sixth grade. Before that all the content areas are taught within an all encompassing theme. I’m not really doing the idea justice here – but it sure looks like it works.

Suffice it to say – we had another wonderful international school experience – extra special thanks to Joanne, Tanya, Myrna, Matt and Stephanie for making us feel so welcomed during our stay. Seeya next time!

Measure twice – cut once…

Just back from Chicago where Sara and I spent three days visiting and working with the students at Deerpath Middle School. Our first day was the day after Halloween so I think there was a bit of a blood sugar spike that we were contending with during our assembly and subsequent workshops – but we still got some great work done and I think the kids came away with some ideas to improve their public speaking and to make their writing more concise and precise.

The teachers had our book Outspoken (which we learned upon arriving home has gone into its fourth printing) and we worked from this and our new one High Definition. Sara and I took the divide and conquer approach – here seeing students in a lecture hall and me seeing the other half for workshops in the library where we wrote definition poems.

Between sessions the technology teacher grabbed me and asked if I had any ideas on how he could incorporate poetry into his classes. How cool is that? Coming from a manufacturing and engineering background myself I was happy to talk to him about how to do just that, writing vocabulary poems, infomercials, obituaries and other text types to teach the terms behind the physics of making a two liter bottle powered rocket or a gravity powered Lego car.

While chatting with this teacher I learned that he once had taught woodshop. Now the community of Lake Forest is a more than fairly upscale suburb north of Chicago proper. It seems that the woodshop class was discontinued because as one parent had explained to this teacher, “We hire people to do work like this.”

This teacher wasn’t complaining to me – we were just shooting the breeze but I’m afraid that perhaps this parent had missed the point and coming from a family that has never been afraid to get their hands dirty, bends or cut metal, dig a ditch, or do their own brake jobs I was a bit worried by the inference.

Would this parent ever walk into a board, court-room or onto the trading floor without a plan, a blueprint perhaps? Would he or she not make sure she had all the tools necessary to complete whatever project they were working on readily at hand? Would they not measure twice and cut once? It seems one of alums of this school, a Mr. Dave Eggers, understands the lessons he learned back in the day when woodworking class was still offered. Returning recently for a classmate’s 40^th birthday party also attended by the tech teacher – he let said teacher know that the lessons of working from an outline, understanding the need to sequence steps to conserve materials and to work toward a finished project even when the end was still far off in the distance all lessons learned or made practical by the now defunct woodworking class had helped construct the writer/person into which Eggers had grown up .

Now I know there are no ovals on the standardized tests that ask the difference between a crosscut saw and a bastard file, just as there are no essay questions about how to make a reed for a bassoon. But aren’t these talents transferrable into the “real world” of finance and law? I’ve heard parents defend their schools athletic departments because of the life lessons learned by the participants – don’t hands on trade classes offer at least as many experience points as a lacrosse field?

By the way – one of the best woodworkers I have ever met, a hobbyist who made beautiful grandfather clocks, tables, chairs, and china hutches was a guy I used to house sit for. Of course his day job did require him to work with his hands so maybe he already had a proclivity for manual labor – he was the chief surgeon and head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic.

Lexington South Carolina

Just back from a trip to Lexington South Carolina – a town just outside of Columbia. This is an encore appearance for Sara and me. we were invited to speak to a kid’s writing day camp and a group  of teachers under the auspices of the Midlands Writing Project. The MWP is a branch of the National Writing Project.

Their mission is: The National Writing Project focuses the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation's educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners.

Sara and i have worked with this organization all over the United States and have always found the participants to be eagerly motivated. What makes this branch of the program a little different is that they include students along with the teachers involved. The two programs run side by side for a week – but then the teachers and students come together not as instructor and pupil but as fellow writers for a day of idea sharing and conferencing. This a really cool idea as is the whole Writing Project program.

Of course while we were there we managed to squeeze in a South Carolina style BBQ dinner. Even though the outside temps were in the high 90s with similar humidity, our visit was as refreshing as a tall glass of sweet tea. We look forward to working with our friends Janet and Vicki again in the future.

There’s no Bizness like Po-bizness.

“It’s dangerous writing a poem.”  So said Nick, at Sharon Elementary school.

The last two months have seen quite the whirlwind of activity here in the Salinger / Holbrook household. Trips to Morocco and Abu Dhabi followed by teacher workshops in Tempe Arizona at ASU after which Sara headed to Seattle and I came back to the Erie shores to visit some schools here in the Highland District of Medina (pronounced Me – Dye – Na as opposed to the Arabic Ma –Dee- Na) Hinckley and Sharon.

Next up we get on a plane at the rooster insulting hour of 6am – which means being at the airport @4am – to head to South Korea and then Shanghai, China to round out our overseas adventure for this winter.

In Tempe we keynoted at the 40th annual Language and Literacy Conference at Arizona State University. We had lunch with our good friend, ex wrestler, current professor and cowboy poet, Dr. Jim Blasingame at a joint called Mucho Gusto. There I partook in the Big Ass Burrito (actual menu item – Sara had the Half Ass portion) along with some of the best guacamole I have ever consumed! The teachers at the conference were receptive and enthusiastic - much more eager than I was to get up before 5am to catch a plane back to the frozen north coast the next morning.

Back in Ohio I flirted with snow days while completing a three day residency in the Highland Local Schools. Each morning I checked the scrolling lists of closed schools and each day – much to the chagrin of students and teachers alike - the school I was headed to was open. We spent three days writing definition poems which was a whole lot of fun and I was glad to get the sessions in sans any weather delays.

In the midst of all this I also drove to Ann Arbor Michigan twice, to drop off and then pick up our foo foo dog Suzi Creamcheese to get her freak on – hopefully resulting in some puppies this April.

So – writing poetry is some pretty dangerous business – who knows what will happen once you start? You might end up on a plane to Shanghai, driving a dog to Michigan, staring at a plate of kim chi or eating a burrito as big as your head. I’ll tell ya this, It sure beats working for a living!

NCTE Philly

“The security guard said these were the best cheese steaks in the city.”

 

This is what I overheard as I jostled and bobbed in the sea of humanity ebb and flowing in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market  – just across from the convention center where the National Council of Teachers of English were holding their annual convention.  Lucky for me as the first cheese steak joint I had stopped at ran out of sandwiches while I was in line and I wasn’t going to leave town without checking off one of these colloquial culinary concoctions from my local delicacy to do list. The market was reminiscent of Cleveland’s West Side market – only around fifteen times the size.

 

Sara and I were attending the NCTE conference and it was wonderful to have the market so near –crepes for breakfast are not always the fare at these things. The conference was pretty well attended this year estimates I heard ranged from six to nine thousand.  For a change we were not presenting a session even so we had trouble squeezing in all the appointments, book signings, dinners, and publisher meeting we scheduled ourselves. The absence of the stress instigated with presenting though, (technology worries, finding the room, having set up time, preparing the presentation etc. etc.) made the conference one of the most enjoyable AND productive ones I have attended.

 

This year poet and anthologist Lee Bennett Hopkins was honored as the recipient of the Excellence in Poetry award given by the council. Lee has edited about a kajillion anthologies of poetry for kids. It has been my pleasure to get to know him a little over the last few years and I’ll tell you – the guy is a hoot.  So there was no way I was going to miss seeing him get his well deserved comeuppance. During the award – toast – roast – ceremony, speakers gave him as much credit for his inside info gossip acumen as his prowess as a judge of poetic talent. Hopkins was the first to publish Langston Hughes’ children’s poetry and continues to produce several books year. The dais was littered with kid lit lyrical luminaries including Jane Yolen, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, Georgia Heard, and Ralph Fletcher to name just a couple.

 

I also got to see another poetic friend and VIP, Jimmy Santiago Baca – who has been contracted by my and Sara’s teacher text book publisher Heinemann to provide stories and poems for a new series of books. I met Jimmy years ago at a poetry conference in Ohio and he has been more than gracious each time we’ve run into each other since.  He has been doing some excellent work with youth and Heinemann was smart enough to grab hold of him.

 

We also had time to sit down and eat with friends including one really fantastic dinner with our editor Harvey Daniels and a crew of other authors and publishers in some swanky Italian joint’s comfortably catacombed  stone walled basement.  While perusing the menu Mr. Daniels questioned the provenance of the lobster served in Philadelphia.  I suspected that the shellfish may actually be irradiated crayfish kept in a galvanized washtub in a closet – “Here take this iodine pill and grab a lobster willya?” I had the veal.

After the conference we hopped into our little blue car and headed to Virginia where we are on babysitting duty while Sara’s daughters Kelly and Katie head up to NYC to work a Rosie Broadways Kids benefit. We took the boys to the Smithsonian to scope out some dinosaur bones but that’s another story now isn’t it?

BTW - the cheese steak WAS pretty great.

But that’s not all!

Spent two days at Pierce Middle School in Milton Massachusetts working with the eighth graders in Christine Charbenneau’s class doing vocabulary acquisition and helping Sara out with a couple school assemblies and a family literacy night.

I led the kids in writing some infomercials for vocabulary words ala Billy Mays (one of the exercises forthcoming in our new vocabulary book)  the first day and then participated in said family literacy event in the evening. We finished up the writing projects the second day and then Sara and I spent the rest of the weekend scoping out nearby Boston with Christine and her husband (this adventure will be expounded upon in detail in an upcoming post.)

The family Literacy night was a real cool event. Sara and I kicked the thing off with a keynote reading – performing some of our family oriented poems – then the English department lead a selection of half hour breakout sessions from which the parents could choose where they were treated to book talks and other good reading promoting positive propaganda. After the mini classes a book fair was set up in the library with the prerequisite PTO bake sale goods outside in the hallway and a good time was had by all!