I'm a sucker for stories about triumphant teachers who overcome great odds and transform lives. An oldie but goodie is Rafe Esquith's "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire." For those of you who haven't yet read the book, Rafe teaches fifth grade in Los Angeles in a huge inner city school with remarkable results; his students routinely test in the top 5-10 percent while the average 3rd grader in his school tests in the bottom 20\ percent. Rafe claims the difference is simply lots of extra time doing hard work. He and his kids are in his classroom from 6:30 a.m. to dinner time every day, in a year round school, on weekends and during vacations. Everything they do, from performing Shakespeare, to class trips, to life in the classroom, is a teachable moment. Rafe's students are, for the most part, the children of immigrants, and his classroom is their escape route from poverty to the American dream.
If all teachers were as dedicated as Rafe Esquith, education in this country wouldn't be in trouble. If only there were a way to capture his essence, bottle it, and make it accessible to all teachers. But unfortunately, according to Rafe, there are no shortcuts. He can impact only about 30 students a year.
Like many other nonfiction authors, I started out as a teacher who wanted to share my enthusiasm for science with my students. As a young junior high science teacher, I had 150 students, 5 classes and 3 preparations a day. Teaching was a whirlwind job! There was never any time to stop and think how to present material so that my students would be blown away by the audacity of the ideas and concepts that scientists had labored so long and hard to produce. In fact, stopping and thinking doesn't seem to be a part of the job description for most active teachers, Rafe Esquith excepted. And that explains why I became a writer.
It is the creative nonfiction author's job to stop and think. We dwell on the big ideas to find ways of presenting them so that kids get it and get excited about them. Just as there are no shortcuts to good teaching, good writing takes insightfulness into one's subject, craft, knowledge of one's readers, and above all time. It always amazes me that even when I write in white heat, when the words pour forth effortlessly, cooler reflection the next day shows me how to restate things with more clarity and power. And when words come like blood from a stone, when I'm just going through the motions to get something, anything, down I'm just as amazed upon rereading my efforts the next day to find that my words don't seem labored. Over the years, by working day in, day out I have created a body of work.
Communication depends on shared humanity -- the single passionate voice -- of the dedicated teacher or the accomplished author. Who Rafe Esquith is as a human being is as important as the skills he teaches. The connection with students depends on a subtext of human emotion, where it's clear that the teacher/author cares about both the subject and the student/reader. No textbook written by a committee to fulfill specific curriculum objectives will excite students. In fact, I think textbooks kill two birds with one stone: the desire to read and the desire to learn.
Original nonfiction for kids showcases individual "takes" on the real world. An encyclopedia or textbook can recite the facts about a subject. Our books show how we experience a subject. It's the difference between a travelogue about southern France or Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence." By putting the facts in context, by creating a conceptual framework, by understanding how to speak to our audience, by our selection of what to include and what to exclude, our books are nothing less than good teaching already bottled and preserved, ready to be consumed.
To learn more, go to our blog Interesting Nonfiction for Kids (I.N.K.)
The word "author" means "source." Part of the job of an author is to be able to defend one's work. So if someone challenges, "How do you know?" it's the author's responsibility to provide an answer. For writings in history or language arts, for example, often how we know is that we read it somewhere or that it's common knowledge. So authors in scholarly disciplines cite the works of others to lend credence to their own work. Most people are not studious enough to follow a chain of footnotes in a history text back to an eyewitness account, which may not be all that accurate in the first place. And, as a nonfiction author for children, I know that there is nothing like first-hand experience to enliven my texts and add credibility to my voice. But for science, "hands-on" means something more.
"How do you know?" is a question that every scientist can answer by saying, "Don't take my word for it. This is what I did. If you do what I did, then you'll know what I know." In other words, scientists must be able to provide procedures so that others can replicate the behavior that produced their results, or not. When I wrote my Marie Curie biography, I was fascinated to learn how the scientists of that day eagerly performed each other's experiments, gaining new insights into phenomena about the structure of the atom from their varied perspectives, deepening and enriching their knowledge. Science advances because of a community of shared experiences (the ultimate wiki). Everyone who is interested can see for themselves, constantly vetting each other's procedures. Knowledge accumulated this way is not merely a collection of anecdotes or hearsay, but an overwhelming body of evidence.
How we know, in science, is central to what we know. Hands-on experience in observing nature and doing experiments teaches kids how to do science, just as giving kids art supplies lets them do art. (Just teaching science concepts without the hands-on component is like teaching art history.) You cannot truly understand science unless you know how it works. Watch the DVD from the History Channel called "The Link" about finding a 47 million-year-old fossil that may be a transitional species between the primates that became modern lemurs and the primates that became apes and humans. The program recounts the various ways scientists from several disciplines studied the fossil and came to their conclusions about its life and death. It ended with the famed Dr. Leakey saying that he didn't "believe" in evolution because evolution is like gravity. It is an indisputable fact, not something that may or may not exist so that you can choose whether or not to believe in it. When you see the nitty-gritty of how scientists studied this fossil, there is no way to make sense out of it without the fact of evolution.
The biggest problem I have with some hands-on science activities and activity books for kids is that there is little or no connection between an activity and the questions it illuminates and how it relates to a child's life. Sometimes I look at these books and shake my head wondering why a kid would even want to try something in the first place. So many science activity books just gratuitously give directions for things to do without giving the reader any reason to do them. That kind of "hands-on" is only fun if you're making an explosion or a volcano. That's why I write hands-on activities in context. A good example is in "I Face the Wind." Catching air in a plastic bag is a "So what!" unless the reader understands that this is proof that air is "real stuff" even if you can't see it, smell it or taste it. Air is real because you can feel it when it moves and you can push against it when it is trapped in a plastic bag. This most mundane activity takes on import and drama when presented in a context that makes the activity significant. I've watched very young kids "catch air" and get excited about the idea that something invisible, that you can't grab with your hand, is as real as stuff they can see.
So it is my job as an author who writes hands-on activities to create the context through language that makes these experiences meaningful (and memorable) for my readers. It is this integration of story and see-for-yourself activities that has become my voice.
I'm becoming a part of the movement to save education. I went to see "Waiting for Superman" two days after it opened. I go to educational webinars. I was invited to hear Geoffrey Canada (pictured) speak at a McGraw-Hill function last week, and I used my phone to take this picture and so you can see I was really there. What has become increasingly clear is that in spite of all the clamor about literacy and whether or not kids can read, there is no mention about the quality of WHAT kids are reading. In an online #edchat (# refers to a group on Twitter) last week, teachers were slamming textbooks right and left. Did you know each textbook costs $80+? That's not only a strain on school budgets; it's also a strain on kids' backs! So teachers were talking about putting together their own reading materials for their classes from free open source materials, both print and digital. The underlying premise: one source of information is interchangeable with another. I tweeted (peeped? piped up?) "I left teaching to write. No time to do both well." Don't think anyone heard me. I was not retweeted.
There is a consensus about what makes a great teacher -- it takes mentoring, experience, constant professional development, passion, commitment, discipline, sacrifice and TIME. Guess what, folks -- it takes the same thing to become a great writer. Our editors are our mentors, we write, write, write, we get feedback from our readers and critics. It's tough but we stay with it despite no union, no safety net, no regular paycheck. (And, let me tell you, there is attrition in the ranks.) The qualities that make a great teacher are evident in their personalities, in their intense interactions with their students, in their deeds. What reaches their students is WHO they are as human beings -- their humanity. Guess what folks -- the same thing is true of us writers. We all have learned how to put who we are as human beings behind the words on the page. It's called "voice." Literature has voice. Can you feel how hard I'm hitting these keys right now? I want you to HEAR me. I want my words to shout, not tweet.
The #edchat I participated in was my first. I was a little handicapped by my lack of experience with Twitter. Tweets flew by so fast I was breathless trying to read and type (and think) simultaneously. (So many tweets, so little time...) I was amazed at the way some tweets got answered directly by others. (How'd they do that?) And that there were so few typos!!! Finally I wrote a tweet that seemed to resonate with the group: "Where is it written that every kid has to read the same book on a subject? Why can't they read different books and discuss?" I used up all my 140 characters on that one, but it got me noticed. That tweet was retweeted by quite a few, and afterwards a lot of people tweeted me directly (it's like an e-mail, but very short) to thank me and invite me back next week. (I took a tutorial on TweetDeck to be better prepared.)
When I first posted this question on my other group blog, Interesting Nonfiction for Kids, I stated that the people who read this blog all get what we are saying: that we're preaching to the choir. It feels good to have that validation. But it's becoming increasingly clear to me that our task is to reach the people who aren't listening to us -- mainly educators. I don't think that they know or have even thought about the difference nonfiction literature can make in their jobs and in their students' lives. I got an interesting response from a teacher, who said:
"That may be true, but I have a slightly different take on it being a teacher. I think we get it. But the rush to push standardized test scores higher and higher has cornered us. Higher-ups in administration have been sold the idea that basal readers are the only way to make sure test scores are good. We've been commanded to eliminate all those fabulous interdisciplinary units where great nonfiction was the staple ... and elementary teachers are scripted in what strategies they are to teach. No longer is a district interested in building readers ... they have to have test scores."
My mission is to put the joy of learning back into the classroom. Forgive me if I appear to be a Johnny-One-Note. Administrators take note. Want to see the difference between the traditional expository writing you're feeding kids and literature on the same subject matter? I've asked my brilliant colleagues at INK to send me two paragraphs on the same subject: one written strictly for information and one written by them. I've posted them on our new wiki. On the left you'll see a hyperlinked page listed with the title "What's the difference between literature and traditional informational writing? See for yourself." At the top of this page you'll see a tab for "Discussion." Click on that and hit "New Post" to register a comment about the page that can become a conversation. It takes many voices to make a difference, and a chorus to be heard.
If you've seen the light, learn how to use Twitter and tweet the h... out of this blog!!
Every writer has two problems: something to say (content) and a way to say it (style). When it comes to expository text, traditionally there is plenty of content but not much style. Think of all the boring lectures you've sat through. Then compare them to a performance by an electrifying
speaker. Same content, big difference. A master professor is memorable. The same thing is true of writing. When the op-ed columnists of The New York Times write, people read. But that's just anecdotal evidence. I'm a scientist by training, and I recently tracked down a study that proves good writing is memorable. Instead of quoting the boringly written study, I'm going to let you in on the succinct remarks of Marjorie Scardino, a former editor of a Pulizer Prize-winning newspaper and the first female CEO of a Fortune 100 company, when she gave the keynote address at an award dinner in 1998 at the Columbia University School of Journalism. She said, in part:
Having looked for many years for a way to prove the obvious truth -- that journalists tell it better -- I finally have found, while rambling through the field of education, scientific proof:
About 10 years ago there was a study done -- documented in education journals, in fact, though with little publicity -- about how people best learn history. The study went like this: three pairs of writers, each representing different training, and therefore different styles, taught a history lesson to students in their own way, and the results were calculated.
The first pair was text linguists, people who are trained in linguistics and psychology and tend to take a structured, formal approach to writing and language. They think about writing, but they don't teach people how to write.
The second pair was college composition teachers. They were trained in English or education. They tended to focus on the process one goes through in writing rather than the product produced. They did teach people to write, using this process approach.
The third pair was magazine editors, from Time magazine, in fact. Their training ranged generally through a liberal arts education, and they learned much of their craft on the job. They wrote for a living, and their job was to get the story told memorably ... and quickly.
These three pairs were asked to rewrite two passages from a U.S. history book to make them more readable, understandable and, most of all, memorable: to aid learning. One of the passages dealt mainly with the end of the Korean War and problems over Formosa; the other dealt with early American involvement in the Vietnam War.
The pairs were then matched with groups of [300] 16- and 17-year-old students, who were asked to judge their work. For each pair, one group read the original passages, and the other read the revisions. They then immediately wrote down everything they remembered from the passages, and the number of ideas they had retained was scored. Although I'm simplifying, I'm assured the methodology was kosher.
Without going through the intricacies of how each revision team worked, the results were stark:
1) Students reading the text linguists' revision recalled 2 percent more than those reading the original versions, a trivial difference.
2) Students reading the composition instructors' revisions recalled 2 percent less than those reading the originals. Wrong direction, and also not significant.
3) Students reading the magazine editors' versions, however, recalled 40 percent more than those reading the originals.
Needless to say, the academics were dismayed, and they wanted another chance. So the study was run again, with the same methodology. The second time, with the benefit of learning what the successful versions had been, there was a little change for the academics, but not much. The basic results were exactly the same.
So while this could be an advertisement for the brilliance of journalists, it is probably better used as a reminder, to us as publishers as much as anyone, of the importance of presentation to substance -- the power of clarity and style.
The original study was done in 1988 by seven academics at five different universities. But science is science. Time doesn't change the significance of the work of Galileo or Darwin. This study seems quite relevant to me over 20 years later. What amazes me is that there are editors and educators out there who still don't get it. Good writing and high interest stories trump low reading levels and student apathy and enable higher performance on assessment tests. Duh!
I'm a sucker for stories about triumphant teachers who overcome great odds and transform lives. An oldie but goodie is Rafe Esquith's "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire." For those of you who haven't yet read the book, Rafe teaches fifth grade in Los Angeles in a huge inner city school with remarkable results; his students routinely test in the top 5-10 percent while the average 3rd grader in his school tests in the bottom 20\ percent. Rafe claims the difference is simply lots of extra time doing hard work. He and his kids are in his classroom from 6:30 a.m. to dinner time every day, in a year round school, on weekends and during vacations. Everything they do, from performing Shakespeare, to class trips, to life in the classroom, is a teachable moment. Rafe's students are, for the most part, the children of immigrants, and his classroom is their escape route from poverty to the American dream.
Communication depends on shared humanity -- the single passionate voice -- of the dedicated teacher or the accomplished author. Who Rafe Esquith is as a human being is as important as the skills he teaches. The connection with students depends on a subtext of human emotion, where it's clear that the teacher/author cares about both the subject and the student/reader. No textbook written by a committee to fulfill specific curriculum objectives will excite students. In fact, I think textbooks kill two birds with one stone: the desire to read and the desire to learn.
