Salk Staff Book Club

A big thank you to Cherith, Kathleen, Marcel, Jake and Rhonda for taking time out of their busy schedules last week to discuss Life in a Crowded Place by Ralph Peterson.  Those of us who had read Choice Words , How to Talk... and Beyond Discipline last year noted that this book fits well with the ideas put forth by those authors.  We had an interesting discussion about the tension between what we want school to be about (an environment where children feel welcome and supported) and the pressures of outside influences (testing, the need to give grades, etc.).  Some people talked about instances when they made time to build community in class and then felt somehow "guilty" about using time this way, even when they could see the positive effects in their classroom!  We bemoaned the fact that community-building is a given in early grades but then often loses ground to a more academic focus in the older grades, and wondered about ways to continue to build community with our students in middle school.  We also talked about how schools (such as Salk) create advisory programs to fill this need, but wondered if advisory would become redundant (and possibly obselete) if everyone felt able to make space for community building in their own classrooms.  Finally, since we had several eighth grade teachers present, they started brainstorming ways to play around with the advisory format -- Cherith, Marcel, Kathleen and Jake, please keep us posted about what you try and how it goes!!

 

In terms of next time -- we are going to take advantage of the fact that we have an author in our midst!!  Please join us on Friday, Nov. 30 to join in the unique opportunity to discuss Jake's Y.A. book with him!!  Here are the details:

 

The book is, of course, Spanking Shakespeare by our very own Jake Wizner.

The date is: Friday, Nov. 30th at 3:15 PM

Note the earlier time -- we'll meet at school, in Jake's room -- coffee and dessert will be provided.  (You can either view this as its own event or think of it as the precursor to the regular Friday-afternoon outing...) 

 

If you haven't read Jake's book yet, I suggest you run, don't walk, and get yourself a copy.  (This is not a paid promotion -- just a strong suggestion from a fan!)  As others who have read it can also attest, it's a really fun read -- the perfect antidote to the stresses of report cards, etc.  And, for those of you who have read it, I'm sure you can imagine how enjoyable it will be to gather together with Jake to get a chance to discuss the book.

 

Looking forward to seeing you all there!!

 

Pauline

Our tenth meeting is coming up!!

Reminder:

Salk Staff Book Club meets next week -- Wednesday, 10/24 at 4 PM -- to discuss Life in a Crowded Place by Ralph Peterson. Let's meet at Push Cafe (3rd Ave. between 22nd and 23rd St.).

Hope you can make it!! As always, remember that you don't need to have finished reading the entire book to join in the discussion. Everyone is welcome!

Gossip Girls....

Those who were part of the book club last spring when we discussed The Clique might find this article about the TV show based on the Gossip Girls series interesting.


Also, just a reminder that our next meeting will be on Oct. 24, and we will be discussing Life in a Crowded Place by Ralph Peterson. Hope to see you there!

I hope everyone has been having a great start to the school year.

It was wonderful to have so many people gather last week (doesn't it feel like it was ages ago??) to discuss The Lightning Thief. Marcel, Mike, Shaun, Rhonda, Kathleen, Keisha, Jenna, Jake, Patti, Sonia, Clover, Cherith, Betsy, Ling and I gathered at Petite Abeille to talk about what we thought of the book and why we thought it was so popular with our students. Thanks to everyone who attended!! If you liked The Lightning Thief, we have copies of the next two books in the series at school... just ask a Humanities teacher. (You might have to elbow students out of the way as you go to grab a copy!)

At the end of the session, we talked about what to read next. Since it is the beginning of the school year, our next book is one about establishing a sense of community in schools and classrooms. The book is Life in a Crowded Place by Ralph Peterson. It's only about 160 pages, so hopefully you'll be able to fit it in during the hectic days of fall!

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 24 at 4 PM. Depending on how many people we have, we might want to choose another space besides Petite, since it was hard to talk when we were seated at a long, rectangular table. Suggestions for another location are welcome.

Hope to see you on October 24 --

Pauline

Teaser....

Don't worry, it's not quite time to trade your flip-flops for file folders or your beach towels for binders. You still have a few more precious weeks of summer ahead. But it *is* time to ask yourself how you will use each remaining minute of your summer vacation wisely, and what better way than to build in time to read the summer selection for the Salk staff book club?

For those of you who are new to Salk, or who may still be new to the book club, the staff book club is an opportunity to get together once a month to discuss provocative professional literature and engage in invigorating conversation with some of your fabulous colleagues while also eating piles of Belgian fries and drinking half-price bottles of wine (or eating cheap, yummy falafel sandwiches and drinking mugs of hot chocolate, depending on how the mood strikes that month).

However, for the summer, in the spirit of tapping into young adult literature and getting to know the books many of our students love, we have decided to read a YA book, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. (This is the first in what is currently a trilogy, so be sure and check out The Sea of Monsters and The Titan's Curse if you get really hooked.) We're going to meet at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 29th, probably at Petite Abeille on 1st Ave. and 20th Street (that's the Belgian fries & wine place, for the as-yet-uninitiated). It'll be a chance not only to discuss a popular YA book but also to bond a day early with your fellow Salkies before we officially return on the 30th.

A good YA book, good people, good fries... what's not to like? So, mark your calendar and get a copy of the book -- and have a great rest of your summer.

Hoping to see you on August 29th,

Pauline
(lit. coach)

What happened at the eighth book club meeting?

It's that time of year again... time to shake last year's stray grains of sand from your beach bag and stuff in a good book...

So, why not take a popular Y.A. book to the beach with you this summer?

After our successful meeting discussing The Clique, we decided to choose another Y.A. book to read this summer. Several teachers suggested reading The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan because of its popularity among our students. So grab a copy and mark your calendar!

>The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan

We'll meet 2 PM on Wednesday, August 29th, at Petite -- that's the day before all staff report back to school, so this is a great way to ease back into things and reunite after the summer break.

Hope to see you then, and enjoy your summer!

Pauline

Michelle, Patti, Sheila, Katherine, Cherith, Sonia, Jake, Betsy and I had a great discussion on Tuesday about Mel Levine's book. People seemed to really enjoy the book and we all appreciated his insights regarding different kinds of minds.

We decided to change course slightly as we approach summer. For both our June and July/August meetings, we decided to read and discuss some young adult literature. For our next meeting, we decided we wanted to read one of the "Clique" series and figure out just why our middle school girls seem to like this type of book, and what we, as adults, think of it. After that, we are thinking of reading Eragon together to see why it is a favorite of so many of our middle school fantasy readers.

Next meeting: Tuesday, June 12th
Book: The Clique (Clique Series #1) by Lisi Harrison

I have ordered ten copies of the book to be delivered to Salk sometime next week. Copies are $10. I'll let people know when they arrive.

Hope to see you on the 12th,

Pauline

What happened at the seventh book club meeting?

Dear all,

We had a great book group meeting this past week to discuss Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn -- so great, in fact, that it has taken me several days to process all my notes and try to synthesize everything we covered. Patti, Sonia, Michelle, Jake, Katherine, Cherith, Sheila, Betsy and I had a passionate and wide-ranging conversation. Here are some of the highlights:

* We noticed that one of the great things about reading this book was seeing how naturally it fit with some of our previous books, namely How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Choice Words. All three books ask us as educators to think about the ways in which we speak to and interact with children, and to consider the ways that what we say and what we do reflects certain beliefs about children. All three books, but this one in particular, push us to reflect upon whether those beliefs are the ones we truly hold and want to project, or whether we need to work on making our words and actions more consistent with how we view children.

* The most commonly repeated comment during our book club discussion was that many of us feel "paralyzed" by the ideas in this book – we agree with a lot of what Kohn says, but we don't know where to start. One thing we talked about at book club was giving ourselves permission to take on some of his ideas without necessarily committing to going full steam ahead – this would make it more manageable. In particular, the one underlying concept we felt we could take on was that of asking ourselves about the subtext of what we do in our classrooms. When we set policies in our classrooms or set up structures, we can ask ourselves, "What is this for?" and make sure that our reasons go beyond the desire to set ourselves up as authority figures in the classroom.

* We also spent a lot of time talking about Kohn's emphasis on community. We talked about that in terms of classroom community and school-wide community. In terms of the classroom community, we generally liked what he was saying but had some questions about the implementation as he describes it. Again, we gave ourselves permission to be influenced by Kohn's ideas without necessarily having to take on all of them! In terms of school-wide community, we talked about the importance of having a shared and articulated philosophy among all staff members so that students were getting a consistent message. This might mean setting aside time as a staff to talk about our philosophies.

* We noticed that many members of the eighth grade team had now read all three of our last books and have been (both individually and collectively) experimenting with some of the ideas from them. One proposal was that they could perhaps present what they've tried and how it's worked either at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year.

These notes don't even begin to do justice to the thoughtful, passionate discussion we had, and I apologize to people who were there for all the things I'm sure I inadvertantly left out.

In terms of a new book & date: many people had to leave by the time we started this discussion. For that reason, if you have any suggestions for a different and/or date, please do a "reply all" and say so, but do it by this Wednesday. Otherwise, if there are no objections, here's the info for next time:

Date: Tuesday, May 1st
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: TBD
Book: A Mind at a Time by Mel Levine

(This book came out of the suggestion to focus mainly on children, not teachers, in our next book. Thank you to Leslie for suggesting Mel Levine.)

So, mark your calendars and start reading! Hope to see you next time!

Pauline

What happened at the sixth book club meeting?

It's just not 2007 without the Salk staff book club...

After an unfortunate report-card-related postponement, we were back in full swing again today. Cherith, Katherine, Sheila, Sonia and I met to discuss Choice Words by Peter Johnston. Overall, people seemed to enjoy the book, which focuses on the power of the specific language teachers use with their students and the subtexts of that language. We had an interesting conversation about the language and methodology of workshop model versus the language and methodology of inquiry-based teaching. Our major criticism of the book was that it lacked non-ELA examples, which led us into a fascinating discussion about the ways in which powerful teaching looks different in different disciplines (and also how it might change within a discipline as the content becomes more challenging or sophisticated). We also talked about the tension/interplay between teaching students the "basics" they need and teaching students to be independent thinkers.

And now, as customary, a plug for our next book. Hold onto your hats, because this next one is sure to spark some heated conversation. Time magazine has called him "perhaps the country's most outspoken critic of education's fixation on grades [and] test scores." He doesn't believe in homework, standardized tests, or saying "Good job!" to students. Yes, folks, we're taking about the one and only Alfie Kohn. Listen, people, if reading Alfie Kohn doesn't put several dozen bees in your bonnet and make you rush over to Push Cafe & chow down on falafel sandwiches to fuel up for a big ol' debate, then nothing will. So mark your calendars and order yourself a book.

Date: Tuesday, March 13th
Time: 4:30 PM
Place: Push Cafe (3rd Ave. & 22nd)
Book: Beyond Discipline by Alfie Kohn


Happy reading,
Pauline

What happened at the fifth book club meeting?

Book club update:

Jake, Katherine, Sonia, Josie, Cherith, Patti, Rhonda, Sheila and I met today to discuss The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander by Barbara Coloroso. We had a very interesting discussion about bullying and meanness and the degree to which we think it's an issue among our students. We talked about the importance (and difficulty) of getting students out of the "bystander" role and of generally promoting among students the kind of behavior we want to see. One really great idea that emerged from the discussion (courtesy of Patti) was the idea of setting up a "big sibling" program where volunteers in the 7th and 8th grade would sign up to be a "big sib" to sixth graders -- perhaps starting as early as in the spring, when current 6th and 7th graders would go to meet their future "little sibs" at the Welcome Tea. Patti will share more ideas about this and hopefully we'll organize a meeting for any staff members who are interested in seeing this program start.

One really great thing that happened today at book club was that several people commented on how the various books we've been reading naturally complement each other. Hopefully this next book will continue to push our discussions even further. For next time, the book we'll be reading is >Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children's Learning by Peter H. Johnston:


We'll be meeting Wednesday, January 10 at 4:30 PM at Push Cafe. Please consider coming!

Also, looking ahead: we're hoping in future months to read some books about how different races experience school, and about homophobia-related issues. If you have any suggestions for good books on these topics, or would like to suggest other future topics, please speak up. Thanks!

What happened at the fourth book club meeting?

Once again, falafel sandwiches and lemonade were consumed, big ideas were discussed, and a good time was had by all...!

Sarah, Sheila, Sonia, Katherine, Emily, Jake, Rhonda, Patti and I met up at Push Cafe this afternoon to discuss the Faber and Mazlish book, How to Talk So Kids Can Learn (At Home and in School). We discussed the ways we talk to kids and the subtext of those comments. People shared examples of interactions they had with students where they tried out some of the strategies in the book, as well as interactions where they did not use the strategies and now wondered what might have happened if they had done so. We also discussed the relationship between how we interact with students in school and how they interact with their families at home, and the ways in which parents often need or want support in how to talk to their children. Overall, people seemed to find the strategies in the book helpful. A lot of us mentioned that reading the book had already made us more conscious of what we say to kids and how we say it (we're all working on our descriptive praise these days!). Thank you to Jake for suggesting this book. (Feel free to borrow a copy from someone who attended this month's book club if you're interested in checking it out!)

For our next book, we'll be reading The Bully, the Bullied, and the Bystander: From Preschool to High School--How Parents and Teachers Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence by Barbara Coloroso.

We'll be meeting on Tuesday, November 21st at 4:30 PM at Push Cafe (just in time for Thanksgiving -- you can give thanks that you work with such interesting, smart colleagues!). Grab a copy of the book, mark your calendar, and make plans to join in!

What happened at the third book club meeting?

I'm happy to report that we had a fantastic meeting of the Salk Staff Book Club today. Harriet, Patti, Michelle, Sarah, Jake, Katherine, Sheila, Cherith, Rhonda, Sonia and I met to discuss "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" by Beverly Tatum. We had a great discussion that touched on many of the issues raised by the book, such as the way kids form their racial identity and affirmative action. Thank you so much to everyone who came!

For our next book, Jake has suggested How To Talk So Kids Can Learn by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.

This book is a teacher-specific version of their well-known book, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. The authors provide a lot of concrete suggestions that will hopefully both spark interesting conversation and also give us lots of ideas to use with our students.

Article about boys...

What Boy Crisis?
by Judith Warner
NYT op-ed
July 3, 2006

It's been muttered for some time now in feminist academic circles that the "boy crisis" — the near-ubiquitous belief that our nation's boys are being academically neglected and emotionally persecuted by teachers whose training, style and temperament favor girls — is little more than a myth.

Now a major study has confirmed it. According to "The Truth About Boys and Girls," a report from the nonpartisan group Education Sector, most boys aren't just not failing; they're doing better than ever on most measures of academic performance. The only boys who aren't — the boys who skew the scores because they're doing really, really badly — are Hispanic and black boys and those from low-income homes.

"But the predominant issues for them," wrote Sara Mead, who based her conclusions in the study on decades of government statistics, "are race and class, not gender." Mead's conclusions echo those of Prof. Caryl Rivers of Boston University and Prof. Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis.

"White suburban boys," they wrote in The Washington Post earlier this year, "are not dropping out of school, avoiding college or lacking in verbal skills ... among whites, the gender composition of colleges is pretty balanced. ... In Ivy League colleges, men still outnumber women."

Given these facts — which, when you think of it, were always pretty obvious — why is it that the notion that their sons are "in crisis" has persisted among affluent, educated (mostly) white parents and the similarly privileged journalists, experts and politicians who shape their opinions?

Blame anti-girl "backlash." Blame media navel gazing. I think, though, that there's more to it than that.

The notion that boys are in crisis rings true to many middle- and upper- middle-class parents because it feels true to them. And that's because these parents are sick of being told that their preschool sons need occupational therapy because they can't apply stickers with the right fine-motor finesse. These parents are sick of seeing their kindergarten boys referred to reading specialists. They're sick of suggestions that their 9-year-olds have A.D.H.D. if they can't sit still through school days from which recess has been cut, gym has been eliminated and even lunch, sometimes, has been all but eradicated to cram in more hours of test prep.

Many dads recall that when they were in school, they were restless, sometimes turbulent, sometimes aggressive, sometimes disruptive in class. When they channeled their energy into the workplace, they thrived — and they don't want their sons pathologized, or girlified, for the sake of big-size classroom control.

I sympathize with much of this. But what I don't see happening among parents who complain that their boys are being disserved by educators is a calling into question of their own complicity with high-pressure schools that demand way too much of their sons.

Talk of the boy crisis is a diversion. It draws attention from the real reasons so many white suburban parents sense that their sons are in trouble. Those reasons aren't academic; they're behavioral and emotional. Researchers have found in recent years that anxiety, depression and self-medicating through drugs and alcohol are disproportionately on the rise in rich communities, as kids seek escape from excessive pressures to succeed.

This isn't unique to boys. Girls in these communities are showing an increased incidence of eating disorders (female athletes are in particular trouble on that score), and also a disturbing rise in escapist behaviors like binge drinking and cutting. Experts say girls are showing crisis signs for the same reasons as boys: because they're stressed out, overextended and pushed beyond the limits of normal human endurance. But since girls' forms of acting out tend to be self-destructive rather than disruptive and often coexist with excellent academic performance, they often pass under the radar.

The notion that there's a universal boy crisis is expedient for well-off parents in other ways as well. Talk — about anti-boy discrimination, about boy-only learning styles — is cheap. Doing the things necessary to address the real crisis among black, Latino and rural and poor city boys isn't: it requires money for smaller classes, better-trained teachers and more support. I'm not sure that white suburban taxpayers are eager to pay the price. But I do know that if we can get past gender turf battles, we might be able to address what's really going wrong with our nation's kids.

Judith Warner, the author of "Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" and a contributing columnist for TimesSelect, will be a guest columnist through the end of July.

What happened at the second book club meeting?

Just wanted to give you a quick update about the goings-on of the Salk staff book club...

Patti, Cherith, Katherine, Jake, Sheila, Sonia and I had a great meeting this past week to discuss Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. We discussed the book in terms of our own lives, the lives of people close to us, and -- of course -- the lives of our students. The funniest part of the book club was when our waitress said she was ending her shift, so we asked her if she wanted to join our discussion. "What are you talking about?" she asked. "Boys," we said, gesturing to the book. She looked at the cover, which features a young boy of perhaps nine or ten years. "That's not really my kind of boy," she said, and walked away.

On a more serious note, we had some interesting discussions about how we could apply some of the ideas we got from the book. We talked about ways to be more proactive, rather than reactive, with our male students. This might entail finding more opportunities to interact with students in the halls in positive ways as they make their way up the stairs and to classes, taking time in grade team meetings to cycle through discussing all students and their needs (not just the same ones who always make it to the top of the list), and identifying staff members who can form bonds with particular students to help meet their social-emotional needs (several teachers commented on the positive change they noticed this year in one particular eighth grade boy thanks to the connection that boy forged with Jim regarding computers). We also discussed ways to learn alternate "scripts" for dealing with difficult student behavior. Both Jake and I suggested the books by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish ( How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk, How to Talk So Kids Will Learn) as great resources for this, and the eighth grade teachers in attendance came up with the idea of possibly using one of those books next year as a grade team resource. So, yet again, our book club session was both enjoyable and highly productive!

Which brings me to the next order of business: inviting all of you to take part in the next meeting of the Salk staff book club. On Monday, August 28th (time TBD), we will meet to discuss Beverly Tatum's book, "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity. Please consider putting the book on your summer reading list and marking your calendar for the 28th. (This time you have two months to read the book -- although, as always, there's no homework involved, and you're more than welcome to come to the discussion even if you don't have time to read the entire book.)

What happened at the first book club meeting?

We had a great meeting today (Thursday, May 18th, 2006) at Push. Patti, Katherine, Sheila, Cherith, Michelle, Sheila, Jake, Sonia Glazer and I met to discuss Odd Girl Out -- our conversation was thoughtful and wide-ranging. We talked about everything from our own experiences with childhood friends to our adult relationships to what we've observed with students. Jake did his part bringing in the male point of view (and confirming what the book said about the different ways boys and girls deal with conflict in friendships), and Sonia really shed light as a parent of a former student. We spent quite some time discussing how we could use what we had learned from the book to inform our work with students, especially in terms of advisory. One idea we had was partnering up advisories in groups of two or three so that at different times during the year we could break kids up into same-gender groups to have some important conversations with girls about how they treat each other. This of course led us to wonder what we'd talk to the boys about! Which brings us to the next point...

...announcing the second meeting of the Salk Staff Book Club!
There was a great deal of interest in now reading a "boy" book -- so our next book will be Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys by Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson. We will meet Wednesday, June 21st, again at 4:30 PM at Push (3rd Ave. between 22nd and 23rd St.). Please keep in mind that you do NOT have to finish reading the book to join -- some people today had only read parts of the book, and we found that we were still able to have a really rich discussion. So please mark your calendar, get yourself a copy of the book, and plan on joining us on June 21st!!

The crazy idea

The crazy idea for a Salk staff book club arose over many lunchtime conversations. The founder of our book club is the radiantly intelligent and inspiring Pauline David.

The first book we read was Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.

The first meeting was Thursday, May 18th, 2006.

Providing moral support for the founding of the book club were Katherine Brown, Sheila Sundar and Cherith Velez (then Bailey :)).