Habits

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about routines. Partly because it's my last day of summer school, and the giant list of giant projects I'd intended to get done is still pretty much not done, partly because I know my time will be much more constrained when school gets started and I want to keep this blog and my professional growth going, and partly because my son will be leaving for college and now I am faced with having to do unpleasant but necessary household chores myself instead of having him do them.

A post over at Vicki Davis's blog not too long ago posed the following questions when thinking about routines:

• What are the most important things if I do them every day, that will make the biggest difference in my life?
• What are the things I need to make sure that I do every week in my job that will make the biggest difference?
• What are the things I need to make sure that I do every week at home that will make the biggest difference?
• What are the 20% of my problems that cause 80% of my headaches?
• What is the one habit that is most important to start in my life right now? (Set an appointment with yourself every day this week to do that one thing.)

I was especially curious about the 80/20 split she mentioned, so I spent some time reading up on the Pareto Efficiency, including some neat mathematical equations. The gist was this: in general, 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of the factors involved. To put it more specifically, 80 percent of my time is sucked up by only 20 percent of the things I do or need to do.  Or 20 percent of the housework is pretty much guaranteed to take up 80 percent of the time I spend doing it. Doesn't this ring true for you in the classroom? Think of those six kids in that one aggravating just-after-lunch class and how my attention you have to devote to managing them so you can do your actual job and teach the other thirty.

I don't think this one blog post is going to clear everything up for me just yet, but I do all my best thinking out loud, so here goes.

Things I need to do every day to make the biggest difference, at work and at home. Exercise. Eat right. Pick up after myself. Prioritize tasks, especially at work.

Things to do every week at work. Check in with student aides and provide feedback on their work. Personal PD time, a couple of times a week, to catch up on stuff like this. Program planning and development, once or twice a week.

Things I need to do every week at home. Make time for family. Clean. Plan groceries and check financials.

Most important things to start right now.  On the home front, I have roller derby tryouts at the end of September. That makes gym and food especially important, followed closely by being sure to make up the practices I'm going to miss for work and vacation during the next few weeks. For work, I think probably taking some time to think about ways to get student aides proficient at their jobs and what to do about my unfunded plans for a computer lab in the library.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it's nice to see the relative shortness of each one. I guess the lesson is this: focus on the most important 20 percent, and let that consume the majority of my time.

Top Ten Tuesday -- Top Ten Books I Still Need to Read Before the End of Summer Vacation

(I realize it's Monday, but I'm out of the library tomorrow.)

With not quite a month of summer left to go, here are ten books I've been meaning to read and must do so before school starts up again.

1. Habibi by Craig Thompson. Gorgeous, intricate, exceptionally well-reviewed graphic novel from the author of Blankets.
2. Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt. Recommended as "another Carter Finally Gets It," funny middle-school-boy humor.
3. Trafficked by Kim Purcell. Story of a Moldovan teen brought to the US as a domestic worker. Compared favorably with Patricia McCormick's Sold.
4. Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta. The second book in this series came out not too long ago, and my husband's been hassling me to read Jellicoe Road for I don't know how long. But a fantasy series written by an acclaimed author of teen realistic fiction? I don't know how I missed this one in the first place.
5. Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony. I've flipped through this one a half-dozen times, and I love the storytelling style.  
6. Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. This book is regarded as gospel by our environmental science teacher.
7. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. Okay, so this one is for my librarians' book club. Tonight. So I should read it eventually. I will probably be much more motivated after tonight's discussion. Not that I'm not excited about it, or it doesn't sound amazing, it just kind of got relegated to my "need to read" list rather than my "want to read" list.
8. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee. Another book club selection, this one for the Level Up Book Club. I've been feeling left out of the online discussion but haven't been able to place a library order until very recently. Also, in my typical style, I have been terrified about actually participating in the online discussion with people I avidly follow on Twitter, so not having read the book has been a handy excuse for not sucking it up and just joining in, already.
9. Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. I LOVED her first graphic novel, Fun Home. I'm not expecting an easy read, but so looking forward to getting my hands on this one!
10. Steal Like an Artist: Ten Things Nobody Told You about Being Creative by Austin Kleon. After an exciting discussion at ISTE this June, I'm trying to look at creativity as a series of habits, not just an innate ability.

What about you, readers? What's in that stack of books on your bedside table you've been meaning to get to?

Cartoon of the Week -- Spock

I found this image a bunch of different places, but can't seem to find the original. Anybody know where this comes from so I can credit him or her?

Top Ten Tuesday -- My Top Ten Books this Year

Top ten books I read during the 2011-2012 school year:

1. The Fault in our Stars by John Green. It's John Green. Do I really need to elaborate? Beautiful story about teen relationships and cancer.
2. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver. This book takes a lot of flak for its main character who at the beginning of the book is completely unlikable.  Really, she and the high school social scheme she represents are reprehensible. But the book is lovely and redeeming and makes me trust that teen popularity is a phase my students will eventually grow out of.
3. My Family for the War by Anna Voorhoeve. WWII historical fiction centering on a ethnically-Jewish  German girl placed in foster care with an Orthodox family in London. I love the questions this book raises about what makes a family.
4. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. One of only two fantasy pieces on this list, primarily because the story is so great and the fantasy universe is revealed so gradually that it feels like a great novel set in a fantasy universe, not a fantasy novel. In other words, Twilight is a "book about vampires," this is anything but a "book about angels."
5. The Less-Dead by April Lurie. This LBGTQ novel centers not just on acceptance of a gay teen, but religious tolerance of gays, without being saccharine or preachy. This gives me faith in people changing their minds when they're faced with other real, live people.
6. How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely. Funny and irreverent. A failed author working at a company that writes others' academic papers for money decides to write a bestselling novel based entirely on market trends--and succeeds. It makes me smile a little smile whenever someone brings yet another James Patterson or Nicholas Sparks novel up to the checkout desk.
7. How to Save a Life by Sarah Zarr. I really identified with the main character Jill as she tried to sort out her relationships with her boyfriend, family, and friends after her father's death, using her anger and sadness to keep everyone at arm's distance. 
8. REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. Intricate and kind of amazing. Complete with CIA and KGB agents, terrorists, computer hackers, and grizzly bears.
9. Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King. A really touching book about a teen boy coping with depression--his own, his parents', and his extended family's. 
10. Tyger, Tyger by Kersten Hamilton. Fantasy novel with a very accurate basis in Irish mythology and folklore. It's dark, and rich, and awesome.

Cartoon of the Week -- Self-Improvement

 Yep, pretty much.

If crazy is a contest, the Texas GOP wins!

The progressive news organization truthout reported Saturday that the revised Texas GOP official platform calls for schools to stop teaching critical thinking and other skills that would cause children to rethink, well, anything. Yes, I have been following the state of education in Texas since I left in 2000, but I still thought that maybe the article was a bit alarmist and maybe had their facts a little off.

Alas, no.

Let's review some of the highlights of the platform document, shall we?

In the section entitled "American Identity Patriotism and Loyalty," the document decries the current multicultural curriculum as "divisive." I'm a product of Texas public schools, and I can say I spent a great deal of time learning about dead white men, with a little "Hey, it's Black History Month!" thrown in. We learned some about Mexico, because it's kind of hard to skip in history class, seeing as Texas WAS Mexico for a while there. I just don't see how learning that there are other ways of doing things out there is "divisive."

My favorite part, though, is this one: "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

I can't even begin to describe what a terrible idea this is. First, why the dismissal of mastery learning? Encouraging students to understand a subject completely and then demonstrate their knowledge of it is bad? It sounds like the GOP is looking for a generation of high school graduates who know just enough reading and writing to show up at work on time every day and do what they're told.

Is that really such a good idea in today's economy? Turning out students with no critical thinking skills, no creativity, no real growth potential? How are they going to be "job creators" if all they know how to do is absorb and regurgitate information?

The document also calls for "objective teaching and equal treatment of all sides of scientific theories," where these theories should be taught as "challengeable scientific theories subject to change as new data is produced."  Okay, it doesn't sound so bad since that is, in fact, pretty much what something being a theory means--that it's just about the best way we have so far of describing how things work but by all means if your science says something different let's figure out why--but the "all sides" part means that scientific explanations get put on equal footing with religious ones, and the elimination of higher-order thinking skills from the curriculum virtually guarantees kids won't be able to tell the difference between the two.

Besides these educational reforms called for, other prime examples of crazy include:

• Eliminating Congressional representation for the District of Columbia
• "Protection from Extreme Environmentalists," repeal of the Endangered Species Act, and an end to the EPA
• Freedom for religious organizations to openly endorse political candidates without losing their tax-exempt status. Religious organizations who contribute to political campaigns should not have to disclose information about the individual contributors.
• Opposition to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which "coerces" business owners to hire fairly
• The US Flag Code should be made into law.
• Opposition to hate crimes laws or "any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality"
• "Unequivocal" opposition to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• Withdrawal from the United Nations and relocation of UN headquarters elsewhere
• Abolition of the federal Department of Education
• Abstinence-only sex and drug awareness education, and no provision of reproductive health care services, including counseling or referrals, to public school students
• Emphasis on faith-based drug rehabilitation programs
• Elimination of capital gains, estate, and property taxes
• Repeal of Minimum Wage legislation
• Worker's Compensation coverage should be optional for employers, not mandatory

And, finally, Israel. Full support of Israel, "based on God's biblical promise to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel and we further invite other nations and organizations to enjoy the benefits of that promise." I just don't know what you can even say to that, except wow.

That kind of makes me wonder what's in my state's platform documents. What examples of crazy can you find in your state?

Top Ten Tuesday -- Top Ten New Releases I Will Knock Students Down to Get to First

(in ascending order relative to the desperation with which I will elbow said children out of the way)

1. Tilt by Ellen Hopkins
2. The Diviners by Libba Bray
3. Son (conclusion to the Giver) by Lois Lowry
4. The Archived by Victoria Schwab
5. Prodigy (sequel to Legend) by Marie Lu
6. Crown of Embers (sequel to The Girl of Fire and Thorns) by Rae Carson
7. whatever John Green’s next book is going to be
8. Sapphire Blue (sequel to Ruby Red) by Kerstin Gier
9. Requiem (third in Delirium series) by Lauren Oliver
10. Days of Blood and Starlight (sequel to Daughter of Smoke and Bone) by Laini Taylor

Readers: What book are you seriously considering staking out a publishing house to get an ARC for?