Victory for Kids, Librarians and Authors, too.

Librarians Basic to Education

For the first time in history Teacher-Librarians will be included in "Basic Education" in Washington State. What? Haven't librarians always been basic to education? You would think so. Only now, it's written into state law.

That means the state must pay for a Teacher-Librarian in every school, instead of each district scrambling to pass levies and come up with the money on its own.

Of course, in this time of billion dollar state budget cuts, kids won’t see this change immediately. But progress is progress.

The rest of the good news—this boost for libraries sprang from the bottom up. Three moms started a petition drive 18-months ago and spurred a grassroots movement that resulted in this change. Details, plus photos have been written up in the current issue of School Library Journal.

Thank you, Lisa, Susan and Denette! Your hard work and dedication to our children’s education shows all of us how to step up and make a difference.

Scholastic Book 'n Toy Clubs?

An organization called Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has recently charged Scholastic, Inc with overpopulating its monthly book club fliers with toys instead of books. By the campaign's count, 14% of the book club's products are not books, and another 19% were books packaged with something else, like stickers.

While I respect the goal of CCFC, I feel that should they succeed in eliminating toy sales from the book clubs and fairs, they'll likely eliminate the book clubs and fairs themselves. My school has tried working with local bookstores to create books-only book fairs. The resulting events have been miserable failures. Further, Scholastic is able to offer huge amounts of book credits to schools providing much needed classroom and library books. Our school uses those book credits, in part, to give books away, helping kids who may not have been able to purchase any. No other book sale I've been involved with has the net result of putting so many books in the school.

The real problem here, is that schools are in a position to have to sell books in the first place. The only reason schools offer Scholastic clubs is to supplement their woefully underfunded book budgets. Washington State, where I live, provides schools $5 per student per year for library books, and about $40 per student per year for textbooks. That's absurd. Personally, I think the CCFC would do a great deal more good if they focused their efforts on lobbying congress for adequate basic education funding. Scholastic is a publisher that, despite all the furry pens and sparkly stickers, is doing a decent job getting books into kids' hands.

Cross-posted to Under the Covers

Who Needs 4-years of Science & Math?

I’ve been tipped-off to a great e-zine for teachers, by teachers, but of interest to anyone thoughtful about our young people’s education.
teachersnet Gazette
In the current issue Alfie Kohn asks the question: Are we all to enamored with teaching children self-discipline? Awe come on…read it before you make a judgment. Could it be we just want kids to take care of themselves so that we don’t have to be bothered? Does education that focuses too heavily on self-discipline train students to see studying as a means to an end rather than to help them enjoy learning. Secure, healthy people can be playful, flexible, open to new experiences and self-discovery, deriving satisfaction from the process rather than always focused on the product. An extremely self-disciplined student, by contrast, may see reading or problem-solving purely as a means to the end of a good test score or a high grade. I find this idea quite thought-provoking. What do you think?

Another article immediately grabbed my attention: Who Really Needs Four Years of Math and Science? by Steve A. Davidson. I started asking this question in about sophomore year of high school, when I decided: not me. And I’ve survived just fine thank you. I can’t help my kids with the algebra homework, but, hey, I read them lots of books when they were growing up. I’ve heard that counts for a lot. Check out what this guy says. He taught school for 32-years!