Jehovah's Witness Meltdown

The entire school district in LA slowed down on Tuesday to watch the Inauguration, which I believed was an obvious and reasonable thing for the schools to do. I would never, ever have questioned this activity as one that might possibly disrupt a child's world view in any way. Until N.

N is a boy that stands out the moment you meet him. His pants are pulled up very, very high. His eyebrows blend together in a fluffy, soft looking unibrow. There are often beads of persipiration on his upper lip. N is not tall, he is constantly in motion, and he rarely makes eye contact. He loves to read, loves to play computer games, and is often so deep in his own world that he doesn't hear his name being called over and over and over again by his patient, kind, friendly school librarian.

When Obama's speech was nearly over, I noticed that N was preoccupied. He was in and out of his backpack, knee bopping quickly up and down, looking for a pencil, looking everywhere but up at the screen. When I caught his attention, N shook his head back and forth, mouthing something that I couldn't understand. I crooked my finger at him (pleasantly) and he got up and stumbled over his pile of belongings to join me away from the crowd of kids watching the speech.

"What's up, N?" I asked.
Foot tapping, he replied, "I'm not comfortable with this. I'm a Jehovah's Witness."
Huh? So, I ask, "N, I don't understand. Is there something about watching a president speak that isn't ok with your religious beliefs?"

Does that sound harsh? I didn't think so, but that's when the waterworks began. From that moment on, it took thirty minutes, many tears, a call from N to his father, another teacher, and a lot of confusion on my part to finally come to these understandings about N and maybe about Jehovah's Witnesses (but I think N has got to be confused about some of this).

- N was made uncomfortable by the invocation. Ok. So was I.
- N was not able to make much of a distinction between the invocation and Obama's speech.
- According to N, the Jehovah's Witnesses do not recognize the president as a true authority figure, and so having the school stop to watch the inauguration was in some way a violation of the separation of church and state.
- According the N, he has no interest in voting (ever) because man's laws do not really matter, that people will do what they will do, and the consequences will be what they are.
- Because N was distracted, because he is often distracted, he is negatively representing the entirety of the Jehovah's Witness population. He commits "bad acts" and is ashamed. (In fact, N has ADHD and is 11, but apparantly that is beside the point).
- Boys in N's class make fun of him for his religion.
- N used to be bothered by the many religious activities in school, but he says he has mostly gotten used to it.

In the end, N elected to spent the remainder of the inauguration (what amounted to about 5 minutes at that point) sitting in the main office waiting area.

The questions this interaction brings up for me are ones that both surprise and infuriate me. My first reaction is simply HOW CAN ANYONE DO THIS TO THEIR CHILD? HOW CAN ANYONE CHOOSE TO CONFUSE A POOR KID INTO TEARS? The boy seems not to know exactly what is going on, and clearly his religion is being used to make him feel ashamed of his behavior. This makes me both angry and sad.

Upon further reflection, however, I think there are some issues here that I wouldn't have expected. First, of course, is that N has a point about the invocation and benediction. They don't really have a place in school, but I don't know how we would have easily worked around them to watch the speech.

Second, N and his family have the right (although I feel a little uncomfortable saying this) to reject the idea that any living person has authority over their lives. They have the right to stand away from politics and rely only on the ten commandments to rule their lives. Don't they? During our discussion, N mentioned that one of the commandments says that one should not worhip false idols. In N's mind, we were worshiping Barack Obama on Tuesday. He has a point, does he not? It may be as close to worship as I've come in, well, my whole life. So that fact that I do not see this worship as religious does not mean that someone else, like N, might be bothered by such an open display of reverence, sanctioned (even required) but the public school that he attends.

Now, I am going way out on a limb here. I do not actually believe that having kids watch the inauguration in school is anything like asking them to observe a religious celebration. But I can see how N would be confused. I can see that we blur these lines to such extremes on a regular basis (Halloween, Valentine's, certainly Christmas; all of these have religious and secular followings, and all of them are permitted in schools to a certain extent) that a child whose parents may not be clarifying things well would cry in frustration and fear of offending his god, or his mom, or his dad, or his whole congregation.

I am grateful that my parents never put me in this position. I am sorry that N is so confused, and that he was unable to see the greatness of what happened on Tuesday. I am sorry that I know nothing about his religion and therefore could not be a comfort to him. I am sorry that my immediate reaction was a biased, judgemental one that condemned his family's beliefs to the realm of kooky extremism. I hope he can one day reconcile his religious beliefs with his ADHD, with his responsibilties as a citizen of this (or any) country, with his peer group, with his parents' expectations. How will he manage it?

Lame-Ass teaching

One of the many frills that comes with working in the library is that I am the Goddess of Lamination and Photocopying. Meaning, a half-broken laminating machine and an ancient Duplo machine are located in one of my work rooms, and I get the pleasure of teaching people to use them, change ink, change laminating film (although I leave this pain in the neck to my assistant), fix paper jams, etc. I'm very handy when it comes to Duplo repair. I also get to look at all of the items that people leave in the Duplo machine after they've made their copies and walked away. Most of the time, teachers are copying informational letters to send home to parents, or quizzes, or reading material for their students. Every once in a while, though, I get a glimpse of some hand-drawn chart or worksheet that a rushed, under prepared teacher has thrown together at the last minute. Usually, this is not a good thing. Usually, these are sloppy and meaningless. Today's example is both. Let's take a look at what is wrong with this "learning" activity, shall we?

1. If the teacher was making copies of this, that means the teacher planned to pass one out to each student. That means that the students were going to be asked to write their answers out on a sheet of paper. What do you want to bet that this teacher will also ask the students to write the questions along with the answers on that sheet of paper, thus making the activity take longer so the teacher has to do less actual teaching and can focus on something more important like reading the newspaper, surfing online, or balancing his/her checkbook? I am willing to bet a lot on this one.

2. The students are instructed to "Use pages 137-140" to complete this activity. That means that they will be asked to sit quietly with a textbook, looking for answers that correlate exactly with the questions. The questions are probably listed in sequence to go along with the text. The students will be asked to do zero thinking. They are only hunting for recognizable words and phrases.

3. The questions are poorly written. So poorly written, in fact, that if I wasn't sure that the students wouldn't need to understand what was being asked, I would worry that the students wouldn't understand what was being asked. Let's look at each question one at a time.
- 1) Why were most kids taught to read? I assume the teacher wants to know what was the main purpose of education during the Great Awakening. This phrasing, however, fails to ask that. I would tell a student who wrote this question that it lacks clarity and that the reader wonders which kids, where, when, what the heck are we talking about?
- 2) How did poor kids learn? Well, look. This is a question that just cannot be answered, even by the best experts in the fields of psychology, education, child development, etc. How do people learn? How does anyone learn, and what does being poor have to do with it? Again, the teacher doesn't actually want to spark that discussion here. The teacher wants the students to locate a sentence in the textbook that reads something like "Children from poor families usually learned by _________".
- 3) How was literacy rate measured in the colonies? Way to model proper use of the word the, Teach!
- 4) (Please note that on the original document, this question is indeed number 4, but is listed before number three.) The Primer contained what 2 things? Hmmm, let's see. Two things. Two things one might find in a book. Paper and ink? Page numbers and letters? Chapters and a table of contents? Once again, the teacher doesn't really care what was in the Primer. The students are only supposed to look for a sentence that says "In most cases, students would read from a Primer containing _____ and _____."

I don't know if I can go on. It's too painful. Let's just skip to my favorite.

- 7) The Great Awakening was a _________ movement. I'm going to say bowel. Wait, that can't be right. I'd like to change my answer. Especially since the teacher has helpfully mentioned that I'm looking for a nine letter word. How will I ever figure it out? Can't you just picture a room full of kids counting how many letters are in the words on pages 137 - 140? It was a squirrels' movement. No, a squelched movement. A stevedore movement. I've got it! A kowtowing movement. That's gotta be it!

Apart from the many questions this worksheet discovery demands that I ask myself about how our current system has failed this teacher and his students, I must also ask a more practical question. What, if anything, should I do about it? Do I alert the Social Studies department chair that someone is a lame-ass teacher and should be identified and provided with some sort of intervention? Should I show my Assistant Principal? Should I tape the page to the wall by the copier, which would both expose the teacher and allow that person to claim his distinguished work? Probably I should just file it away in my scrapbook to be used later in my memoirs. Sigh. I think this one is going to get away with it. Beware your child's tired, frazzled, hasty teacher, just looking for a little peace and quiet. The next thing you know, these kids are going to be dimming the lights for a round of Heads Up Seven Up so the teacher can get a little shut-eye.

8th Grade Games

I'm standing here with an 8th grade class of students, many of whom like to play video/computer games.Three of them already played a game this morning before school. 14 of them played a game this weekend. Here are the games they play:
Mortal Kombat
Madden NFL '08
Smackdown vs. Raw 2008
Guitar Hero 1, 2, 3
NBA Live 2008
Dance Dance Revolution
Super Smash Brothers Melee
Mario Kart Double Dash
Mario Party 5,6,7
Flat Out
007 in Russia
FIFA 06, 07, 08
Grand Theft Auto
Thirteen
Frogger
Daxter
Zelda - Windwaker
True Crime
Gods of War
Def Jam Fight for NY
Def Jam Vendetta
Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Halo 2
Dragon Ball Z 1, 2, 3, 4
Naruto Ultimate Ninja 1, 2
Sonic Heroes

So, these are the games my middle schoolers are playing. Where to they do this? With whom?
- at home with cousin
- hospital lobbies with strangers (children's hospital)
- GameStop with other kids
- apartment lobbies with children
- in the car

8 own a PSP
9 own a Nintendo DS
10 own other portables - GameBoy, Sidekick, cell phone

16 out of 22 say they would want to be part of a library gaming event or tournament.
12 out of 22 would want to play games for school

Living Together in Perfect Harmony

The school year has officially begun, and I am grateful for the swarms of eager students and teachers who have inhabited the library this last week. If it wasn’t for them, I may have become the cranky, reclusive, hypersensitive shrew that surfaced here and there during our long and fruitless inventory. The children have worked as a tonic for me, reinvigorating my sense of purpose and inspiring me to, once again, crack a young adult novel and begin to read.

I find, however, that reading as many books as I can will no longer satisfy my current job requirements. In this second year of my life as a library media teacher, I am beginning to see why the word media is stuck there in the middle. Some of the projects I am currently developing are a library website, a murder mystery podcast, a school-wide wiki, a personal blog (duh), a library blog, and a library student worker wiki. I am actually going to give a workshop on using blogs and wikis in the classroom, which seems like a strange thing for anyone to expect me to do, except for the fact that I think I can actually do it.

When I was 23 and working in a used bookstore in Madison, I didn’t think I would ever even stoop to use a cell phone regularly. I imagined myself living a low-tech existence, because I believed (and strongly!) that books and technology do not mix. That was the foundation for my personal philosophy for almost a decade. If you love books, you couldn’t possibly care less about techno-babble. If you are a tech-dude, then you must not read much more than magazines or crap. I believed it. Not only that, I preached it.

I was a fool. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly (or to the 3 of you who read this) renounce my position as a tech-hating bookworm. It’s taken some time for me to get here, and I’m nowhere near finished, but I can now say that I am becoming friends with the wiki-wacky-web and all that it brings.

The Fine Art of Thievery

My library has a theft-protection system that works very well thanks to one basic assumption that the kids make that is entirely wrong. Most of our students believe that the book's bar code is what will set of the alarm. If the book is not scanned, the alarm will go off. It's actually a pretty good guess. But wrong.

Kids make attempts to steal books about twice a month. These are usually comic books or graphic novels, books about cars, pro-wrestling, or sex. Boys are usually the thieves, for whatever reason. Maybe the girls just don't get caught.

Today, a 6th-grade boy came in to return the book Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. He then browsed for ten minutes or so, setting off the alarm when he tried to leave. When I called him back in (they always come back; they never run), he emptied the contents of the large portion of his backpack onto the counter. No book in there.

"Hm. That's odd." I said, curiously. "May I look in this smaller pocket, just to be sure that there's nothing else that might set off the alarm?"

"That's my friend's book. He in my class," says the boy, a wild look of terror in his eyes. I haven't even opened the pocket yet, but I already know that there's something good in there for me.

"Ok." Unzip.

"That's my friends. He in my class."

"What's his name?" I am always willing to listen.

"Ummm." He's gazing at the ceiling, really trying to come up with this name. "He sits next to Arturo."

Oh! Right. The kid who sits next to Arturo in Ms. _______'s class this period. Of course. I know him well.

Needless to say, the book hadn't been checked out to anyone. The bar code hadn't been scanned, and the security device hadn't been deactivated. This was a case of attempted book theft. The young boy, who had fooled himself into thinking his plan would work. became belligerant. He changed his story several times, finally telling me quite severely"You'd better be quiet!" before storming out of the library, foul words on his tongue.

But as all hapless thieves are wont to do, the boy messed up again. He left his school ID on the counter. Ha!

I take great pleasure in busting the wayward student. The library is a place where student crime thrives. Theft, vandalism, ditching class, bullying, inappropriate Internet frolicking, littering, harrassment, extortion, gum-chewing and candy-eating, note passing, cussing, teacher-bashing, ... I see it all. Except for violence, I see every manifestation of school rule-breaking there is. And I love to expose it. I do. I love to realize that I am witnessing a crime in progress, observe carefully to confirm my suspicion, approach the perp with nonchalance, phrase my first question in a non-threatening manner, get a partial confession or piece of evidence due to luck or investigative skill, and then bring it all home. Get the ID, get the name, call the teacher, explain the situation, and see the student realize that the library is not a free zone. The library is a classroom where each offense counts.

I don't spend my day looking for students who are misbehaving; I'm too busy for that. They just appear before my eyes. They ditch class in the library, but sign in using their real names. They attract a throng of observers around the computer screen, only to close the application as soon as I walk up. If that isn't an invitation to check the Internet history, what is? They leave spilled, sugary candy all over the couch....and leave their textbooks right next to it.

I love my students, and this is one of the things I love most about them. Some of them are always calculating the odds of getting away with something, which means that their little minds are churning away in there. I love that. I love to point out to them where they went wrong, and most of all, I love the way their faces look as they consider how they will revise their plans for the next time.