Sweet Medicine

Sweet Medicine

From the moment the policeman directed me, “First to your right, second on your left, sharp right again and you’re there,” I was. My grandmother’s voice led me down past the park and cherry trees to Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane.  I had come to Nana’s summer bungalow planning frolics in the waves, but now I was strolling along the streets of London with Jane and Michael and the incredible Mary Poppins. 

I had always been what you might call a ‘deep reader.’ I didn’t just read a book, I inhabited it. When the wind changed and Mary Poppins blew into the life of Jane and Michael, she blew into mine too. I watched her slide up the banister into the nursery and unpack her incredible carpet bag.  

“What’s a carpet bag?” I asked Nana. 

“Let’s find out,” she answered. Nana was never one to give a story away. We had shared many reading adventures. I was nine and sick in bed yet again. I had lived a vagabond life, moving often with my family and sometimes without them. Nana and books were home to me. 

Together, we jumped into the sidewalk painting with Bert and Mary and rode the carousel, Nana astride a black stallion and me on a spotted pony. Raspberry jam-cakes sounded delicious. We found out that tea meant more than a hot drink to soothe my sore throat, and that a good laugh could raise your spirits to the ceiling. When Nana tipped a teaspoonful of yucky medicine down my throat, I imagined strawberry ice and lime-juice cordial. Nana, like Mary, might have been thinking more of rum punch.  

We both loved the bird-woman. Nana’s neighbor kept pigeons and we pictured them sitting on our shoulders and pecking at our toes. We imagined it tickled. We didn’t know what a tuppence was, but we thought we might have enough to buy a bag or two of seeds.

When the wind changed, and Mary left, Nana and I waved farewell; we knew we could meet Mary again just by opening her book and jumping in.   

Books have always been sweet medicine for me. When I am troubled or stressed, I often think about how characters in my favorite books solved problems with wit, pluck, or humor and wonder whether I might do the same. When I am sad, a happy book cheers me up. When I am angry, a restful story soothes me. Some books take me a thirty-minute vacation – just enough to invigorate my tired soul.  

Every year, teachers read aloud to their students just for the joy of it. Oh yes, we spend many hours teaching phonics, comprehension, and literacy, but our real goal is to build a love of reading into each child. When you love reading, you read, and when you read, you learn phonics, comprehension, and become literate.   

Think back to your school days. Do you remember a special novel that your teacher shared that sticks with you today?  My daughter still remembers her second-grade teacher reading James and the Giant Peach. Thera went on to read all of the Roald Dahl books just because her teacher showed so much joy when she read it. 

How many times has your child held up a book and stated, “My teacher read this!” and then decided to read it again? How many times have you fallen into a book with your child and entered a wonderland together?   

Nana left us when I was fifteen, but her love of stories has continued to feed and comfort me. When I read the books we shared or when I read aloud to children, I feel her holding my hand and warming my spirit and I sip the sweet medicine only love can give.

Melting Down

Melting Down

I was born with a clock ticking in my head. I must be on time — or early. As the minutes tick closer to my self-imposed deadline, my blood pressure rises. One of the first things that endeared my husband to me was that he was always twenty minutes early for our dates. Somehow, I am sandwiched between a mother and daughter who have only a passing acquaintance with time. I’ve  had more meltdowns about time than Salvador Dali’s famous dripping clock.

All of us have personal areas of stress. Many of these are self-imposed. We are very hard on ourselves — no outside grading needed. Small children melt down when their plans are thwarted by parents or circumstances. School-age children tear up papers when their handwriting or drawing does not meet their high standards. Middle school students collapse when they don’t make the team, the band, the squad, or the honor roll. High school seniors think their lives are over when they can’t wear the latest fashion or don't get into the college of their choice.

Our hardest critics are often ourselves. The world imposes many stressors that press us down. Adding our self-imposed stressors can squash us flat. Flattened people do not function well.

Outside pressures are often beyond our control, so if we want to pump our flattened selves up, we must realize the hard pressures we are putting on ourselves and soften them. Here are some softening strategies to consider.

The first step is to make a list of the pressures you can control. Self-imposed rules should not come before relationships. Being a little late is not as bad as fracturing a family. 

Prioritize your pressures. Are there any pressures which can be easily subtracted? I ask myself: Are there times when I can relax about time? When must I be on time and when can I be a few minutes late?

Note connecting issues. How do I contribute to the pressure? Is my family intentionally later or are there legitimate reasons for their tardiness? How can I help?

Choose an issue to address. Make a plan for managing this one stressor. If my family is not as concerned about time, could we travel separately What calming activity can I do while waiting for slower family members?

Is it possible to step away from the stressor? Maybe take a walk, read a book, or engage in a hobby while waiting? Getting a few more steps, enjoying a good book, or practicing a skill is more profitable than blowing up or melting down.

Look for good examples to follow. My mother put people before the clock. She lent a listening ear or soothed an agitated spirit without glancing at her watch. My daughter misses a lot of buses but never misses a precious moment with her children.

Turn off your inner critic. Go easy on yourself. Don’t melt down — calm down and enjoy every minute of life. 

KWL

KWL

My class was filling out a KWL chart, an organizing strategy to help students learn. K stands for “What I Know,” W for “What I Want to Learn,” and L stands for “What I Learned” after studying. Our subject was frogs and toads. My students knew a lot. Frogs live in water; toads live on land. Frogs and toads eggs become tadpoles. Both eat insects. Some hibernate. 

One student raised her hand. Confidently she stated, “Toads give you warts.” Gently, I told her that this wasn’t true. She held firm. I added her statement to our chart hoping that she would later change her opinion. She was stuck in the “What I Know” step of learning. Would she ever get to the “What I Learned” step?

Today, many of us seem to be stuck in the same place as my student. We know what we know and we won’t budge no matter what evidence is presented. We refuse to consider any new information which challenges our position or opinion. This is especially true when we choose political positions or candidates or evaluate new scientific information. We stake out our position and stick to it. 

Obstinacy can be dangerous. In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis observed that women who were assisted in giving birth by a doctor died from a puerperal infection at three times the rate than women assisted by midwives. He deduced that doctors, who performed autopsies while midwives did not, were bringing infection into the ward. He suggested hand-washing before attending new mothers. His ideas were rejected and he lost his job. Mothers continued to die.

In 1869, Joseph Lister, postulating that infection was carried from patient to patient, was mocked when he proposed sterilizing hands and instruments before surgery. Thousands died including an American president whose physician refused to wash his hands before probing the bullet wound James Garfield suffered in an assassination attempt. Garfield died from an infection, not the bullet wound.

The obstinacy of physicians stuck in the “What I Know” step of learning caused thousands to die unnecessarily. Today, Semmelweis is known as the “savior of mothers.” Lister is called the “father of modern surgery.” After doctors adopted antiseptic practices infection rates dropped dramatically. 

My student eventually changed her mind about toads and warts. After we did some research, she became fascinated by frogs and toads. No more worries about warts. After seeing the positive effects of hand-washing, nineteenth-century doctors became more open to research which reinvigorated the study of medicine. New treatments save thousands every year. 

Entrenched beliefs keep us from learning. Only when we are willing to ask questions, do some research, listen to the opinions of others, investigate new ideas, and reconsider our own opinions can we learn. What great things might happen when we all “Want to Know”? 

All three parts of a KWL chart are important. To move from “What I Know” to “What I Learned” one must “Want to Know.”

On Beyond ABC

On Beyond ABC

Read the following words aloud: cough, tough, through, though, great, meat, threat, dear, bear, goose, choose, dose, and rose. Inconsistencies galore! To read English successfully, students must learn the relationship between 44 speech sounds and more than the 100 spellings used to represent them. Decoding words using phonics cues and the ability to apply these cues to known and unknown words is one of the most complicated skills for reading. After mastering basic sounds, the student must then learn how the sequencing of these letters creates words. 

To accomplish this daunting task, new readers must master phonemic awareness (the ability to identify small units of sound and manipulate them), print awareness (the rules of written language), and alphabetic knowledge (recognizing letters as symbols for sound). Decoding involves combining these skills and connecting them to what students know of the world. 

Reading is an incredibly difficult task that we expect young children and English-learners to master in a short number of years. Teachers work hard to help students learn. What can parents do to help children master phonics skills at home?

1. Go to the library! Your librarian can suggest books to help children learn to read. Ask for decodable texts which follow phonics patterns consistently. Early readers need success. Choose books that follow the patterns your child already knows. Also, match books to the interests of your child without regard to reading level. Wanting to know will push them to wanting to read. Applaud good trying. 
2. Mix and Match: Find words that use recognizable patterns and sort them into groups by pattern. Write some on paper squares. Hop, pop, pot, hot, hog, jog, cob, job. Which go together? Why? Which stick out? Why? Make it a matching game. 
3. Make Word Smoothies! Get out the letter tiles and blend letter combinations together. S with H makes /sh/ as in quiet! C with H makes /ch/  as in choo, choo train which starts with T and R. Challenge your child to make new combinations. 
4. Rhyme Time: While reading with your child, find rhyming words in the text. Note spelling patterns — even irregular ones like choose and goose. Keep a visual list on a whiteboard or poster. Encourage your child to add words to the list while reading independently.
5. Be Word Detective: Encourage your child to find known words in your environment.  Cover your house with words children might already know. Label the bed, the lamp,  the dog, etc. Find words out in the world. Stop at the stop sign. Locate the exit. Follow signs to find hidden treasures.

The encouragement of parents is the most important asset new readers have. Read to them, with them, and in front of them. Consistency in the English language may be elusive but consistency in the love of a parent is constant and sure. Having fun with reading leads to reading success.

(This is the third in a series about reading success.)

Actual People

Actual People

Teachers and parents generally get along. Both share the goal of supporting children. But once in a while, disagreements or misunderstandings arise. Once in a while, tempers flare.

When I began teaching, we had only one phone in the office for teacher-parent calls. Picture this: A parent, miffed about some issue concerning their child, sends a questioning note. The teacher, busy with several children, interprets the note as a personal criticism. Said teacher waits until her lunch break, charges down the hall to the office with steam pouring out of her ears, jabs the phone number into the phone, and waits as the phone rings. Boy, is she going to give this parent a piece of her mind!

Then the parent answers.

“Hello, Mrs. M? This is Mrs. C. How are you? First, let me tell you how much I enjoy having Tommy in my class. He is such a curious learner and has such good manners. I got your note. How we can work together to solve the issue you mentioned.” 

After a pleasant conversation, the parent and teacher hang up with a much better opinion of one another from which Tommy benefits most. What happened to the steam? It disappeared the minute Mom answered the phone. Why? Because the teacher realized that she was talking to an actual person. A person who loved her child. A parent who wanted the best from his teacher. A parent who was the greatest ally a child and teacher can have.

Actual people share the same qualities, worries, hopes, and fears that you do. Actual people are behind every note, email message, Instagram, and Facebook post. Actual people write the books and articles you love or hate. Politicians from your party and opposing parties are actual people. Reporters on all the news services are actual people. Children and senior citizens are actual people. Celebrities are actual people. Service workers who patrol, clean, or cook are actual people. Immigrants are actual people. Incarcerated persons are actual people. People in other countries are actual people. People with physical and mental challenges are actual people. People with differing racial, gender, religious, or national identities are actual people. People who disagree with you, work against you, or are disrespectful to you are actual people. Actual people are worthy of respect.

One of the first lessons taught in every classroom is to treat others the way you want to be treated. This golden rule is part of almost every social and religious tradition. When did it go out of style? Why do we today feel that our anger, our fears, and our righteous indignation supersedes this most primary of lessons? Why do we feel that others need to treat us right but that we can treat others any way we want? Have we forgotten that others are actual people?

Parents and teachers share many things. Both want children to succeed. Both want children to feel secure and loved. Both want children to act responsibly and kindly. They share the responsibilities of caring adults towards growing children. They know that they must work together. Children need to see actual people getting along.

We are all actual people who share many things. We want to succeed. We want to feel secure and loved. We want to act responsibly and kindly. We need to get along. We must work together. Actual people need other actual people. Before steaming up and charging in, remember to look at the other as an actual person worthy of respect. 

Just like you.

Open Your Ears

Open Their Ears to Reading

Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify the small units of sound (phonemes) which make up words and how these can be segmented (pulled apart), blended (put together), and manipulated (added, deleted, and substituted). Phonemic skills include rhyming, alliteration, and counting syllables. Hearing the sounds of language is important in learning to read.

When learning to speak, children accumulate thousands of sounds. In order to read, children must recognize these sounds as individual units which are used to make up written words. Teachers and parents can help with explicit instruction (teaching children to connect sound with the letters of the alphabet) but playing games with sounds is a lot more fun.

Even the youngest children love to play with sounds. Here are a few examples of some “sound games” for parents and children to share. 

1. Sound Rounds! Model sounds with exaggerated pronunciation. “I Love Pickles!” YuM, PoPCorN! Add movement. “Jump when you hear a /p/ sound.”

2. Mix Them Up! Combine sounds to make nonsense words: Brush-em-be-too-tee-boos! Doo-da-diddy-cums! Dr. Seuss’s books are full of nonsense words. 

3. Break Them Up! Pull words apart: Say, cowbell. Now say it without /bell/. Start with compound words and move on to syllables: Say platter. Now say it without /ter/.

4. Rhyme Time! Read rhyming books. Add new rhymes to those in the book. Ask your child to add some more. Rhymes don’t have to be actual words: Pop, stop, hop, mop, vop, yop etc.

5. Rhyming Riddles! These answers rhyme with /bat/. I sit on your head. Who am I? (a hat). I sit on your lap and purr. Who am I? (a cat). Kids can make up rhyming riddles too.

5. Clap, Clap! Clap if these words start the same: (cup, cow); rhyme: (neigh, bray); have the same beginning (or ending) sound (pool, cool) etc.

6. Strange Change! Start with a word (hop). Change the beginning (or ending) sound. (top, stop, hog, hot, etc. ) Challenge your child to do the same.  

7. Stretch and Blend! Stretch words into their individual sounds or blend them together. Stretch, cheep, (/ch/-/ee/-/p/); clack, (/k/-/l/-/a/-/k/); blend /s/-/p/-/i/-/n/, (spin); /b/-/u/-/k/,, (buck). Demonstrate stretching or blending with large arm movements.

8. Sing!  Learn some silly songs and belt them out with your kids.

As children become more aware of phonemes, games can be made more challenging. Sound games, which be done anywhere, keep children occupied and happy. Help your child become a great reader!

(This is the second in a series on reading success)

Mona Lisa's Smile

Mona Lisa’s Smile

When you think of a beautiful smile, who comes to mind? Someone famous, like Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise? Someone closer to home, your mother or father, your spouse or your child? One of the most famous smiles in history is that of Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo Di Vinci. 

Leo (as a fellow Italian I feel free to be familiar) started painting Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of a Florentine merchant in 1503 and continued to refine his painting until his death sixteen years later. Leo was a slow worker and often didn’t finish projects he started, but this one painting held his attention. Leo was more than a painter, he studied anatomy, engineering, mathematics, optics, warfare, literature, poetry and whatever struck him as interesting. His investigations into human anatomy helped him create Mona’s haunting smile.

Walter Isaacson, in his book, Leonardo Di Vinci, details Leo’s interest in bones, nerves, organs, muscles, and skin. Leo dissected animals and cadavers to unravel their mysteries. He was especially interested in lips: “The muscles which move the lips are more numerous in man than in any other animal.” In his journals, he includes detailed diagrams showing the many positions the lips can take “One will always find as many muscles as there are positions of the lips” he writes. He concludes that the positions of the lips convey the emotions behind them. 

This is what makes Mona’s smile so memorable. Leo shows us the inner emotion behind the smile but with a veil, a mystery, because Leo realized that, as Isaacson writes, “we can never fully know another person’s true emotions.” 

The lips do more than smile. They frown, they pout, they purse, they pucker. Each position of the lips is a signal for the emotion behind it. Our lips telegraph our thoughts and feelings, yet our signal readings may be off. Some mystery lurks — hidden in the minds and hearts behind the smile. 

Mona Lisa’s smile reveals little of her inner self. Is she happy, amused, pensive, reflecting, or planning? Does she think of someone special or of the artist painting her into immortality? We will never know. But we remember her and her smile. Isaacson writes that the painting, “became more than a portrait of an individual. It became universal, a distillation of Leonardo’s accumulated wisdom about the outward manifestations of our inner lives and about our connections between ourselves and our world.” Mona’s smile connects her world with ours. Our smiles connect us with others. 

Smiles may mask our true inner-selves, but as with Da Vinci’s masterpiece, it is the observer who benefits. Every beautiful smile adds light to the world. Mona Lisa’s smile inspired centuries of artists and poets. Your beautiful smile inspires also. Use it often. Make your smile as lovely a memory as Mona Lisa’s. 

(All quotations from Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson, 2017)