The Hurried Child by David Elkind

As a note before I start, I'd like to say that I really struggled writing this review. I had taken notes while reading, but didn't want to reread and compile them. Once I was through reading, I was ready to be done with this book. I kept putting off working on this review. The bulk of the review I wrote from my overall impression of the book, not referencing the text or my notes at all. It was later that I forced myself to go back through the notes to tidy up my ideas. But, then my inability to renew the book and mounting late fees further caused me to speed through the review. Overall, this one isn't my best work, but it was hard to put in the effort and time when I didn't love the book. A good teaching lesson right there.

The Hurried Child: 25th Anniversary Edition by David Elkind (2006)

David Elkind's overall premise is that our society forces children to grow up to fast in many, many different ways. He calls this hurrying. Basically, all hurrying leads to stress, and that stress has many different ways it can affect a child. The bulk of the book discusses how different aspects of family life and culture create these hurried situations and how children respond. Very little time is spend on how to work against hurrying in comparison to the length of the book.

I was disappointed by this book. Jim Trelease's book The Read-Aloud Handbook was the root of that disappointment. I came to trust Trelease's opinions, so his mentioning The Hurried Child equated a recommendation to me, but I found this book lacking. However, I can't be too hard on Trelease. I believe he mentions The Hurried Child in the third edition of his book, which was published in 1995, so its possible that the edition of Elkind's book he read was better than the one I read. See, one of my biggest problems with The Hurried Child was that it didn't seem fully revised. There was dated research (we're talking the 70's), but at least the information on research gave dates. In other places, it was unclear if I was reading a section that had been revised for the new edition published in 2006 or something originally drafted in 1981. Elkind would share rather old fashion practices such as nylon stockings and long pants as a rite of passage, but then discuss American Beauty and Dawson's Creek a few pages later. Another example is that just a few pages into the book, Elkind discusses Kindergarden in all states as if it were a new phenomenon, yet then mentions homework for these students in the same breathe. This lack of clarity was particularly troubling when he discussed broad societal institutions and practices, like education, sports, and day care. For example, when he discusses lengthening the school day and year, cutting recess, and increasing homework as current education trends to combat our poor standing internationally, it is unclear if these are trends from 2006 or years before.

Here are some other examples of dated material still in the 2006 edition:

• Elkind cites that one in three American women lack "the basic skills needed to earn a reasonable leaving." In 2006? No year was given for this statistic.
  
• One paragraph discusses singles, LPs, CDs and tapes and then downloading music in the next.
• The info about the internet is now like internet 101. Pretty much only those who have not kept up with new technology, such as some senior citizens, would not know what he is talking about already.
• NEA survey from 1979 about physical violence in schools.
  
• Students being diagnosed as retarded or disabled when they are ELL or hearing or vision impaired. Seriously? Does this still go on? I can't believe it. I had hearing and vision screening every year from like 1985 - 1995. And the fact that most schools, or at least districts, now employ an ELL teacher, I find it hard to believe that a language barrier would misplace many children

Early on, it was clear that Elkind's text was at least partly guided by his personal political and religious beliefs. After already denouncing modern fashion, Elkind then quotes another man stating that it is the removal of fear surrounding sex that has increased young women becoming sexual active. I find this offensive, since it suggests that we were better off when girls were left in the dark about their sexuality due to societal fears. Later on the same page, Elkind drives home his moral and political point of view by stating that the number of teen pregnancies in the last hundred years hasn't really changed, but the percentage of abortions and children born out of wedlock has increased. Only thirteen pages into the text, it was now extremely clear to me I was reading a book authored by someone who held much more conservative moral / religious and political views than myself. Especially in the first half of the book, I found Elkind's personal views on marriage and sex distracting to his larger topic of childhood stress. I found myself disagreeing with his points about sexual education course quite a bit. I felt he was just not being realistic about when sexual feelings start, let alone when sexual identity begins to form. He says that we should wait until 17 to talk about condoms, abortion, and sexual orientation even though it is just nature causing students much younger, say middle school, to need to think about some of these topics much earlier. In fact, he quotes one expert as saying that sex ed is bad because it teaches that sex is natural and pleasurable for most people, thus resulting in more teen sex. Again, I dislike the hiding of the truth about sex from young people, especailly how this comment hints that it is better if we pretend sex is wrong, sinful, and dirty.

When half way through the text he claims he isn't recommending that the only way to not stress children if for one parent to stay home with the children, I couldn't buy it. It was very obvious to me that he did feel that this return to a former family structure would reduce childhood stress. His statements clearly showed he felt we would all be better if mom and dad stayed married for the kids, even if they had married do to an unexpected teen pregnancy, and that mom should stay home with the kids to prevent the stress of various day care situations. I did find many of the ideas in his chapter on parents interesting (though I often questioned how universal), but I felt too much time was devoted to all possible negative aspects of divorce. In particular, I questioned how he constantly came back to divorced / single parents involving their children in important decisions. First of all, he made no age distinctions. Is he talking 5 year olds or 15 year olds? Secondly, while I don't think it is right for a parent to really confide about resentments about the other parent or their new sex lives, I don't think that it is wrong to talk to a child some about other issues affecting the parent and family. And to add insult to injury, he later claims that teachers expect children going through a divorce to have problems, which I never did. To be honest, at the high school level, most kids kept that information to themselves. In fact, this harping on divorce brings up thoroughness. In general, I like it when an author is thorough, but Elkind seemed to be thorough by discussing every possible negative outcome imaginable, rather than thoroughly backing up his ideas with relevant, recent research or rebutting counterarguments.

Another reason for my disappointment in The Hurried Child was that it didn't focus on the types of topics I thought it would. Elkind spends a lot of time discussing parents, particularly two income and / or divorced families. I admit that being a stay at home mom is a luxury these days and I am glad I am able to do it for at least a few years. In fact, I'll admit, that I often feel pride, sometimes to a sinful degree, that I am able to stay home and provide my daughter (and soon my son) with my personal care all day long. But, like I said, this is a luxury. After a while, I felt Elkind was coming down too hard on these families. While I believe some divorces are due to taking marriage too lightly or other immaturities and that some working families could survive quite comfortably with one income, that is not the case for many. In fact, I don't really know any two income families that have both parents working because both parents are dedicated to their career's or their high class lifestyle. All the families I know have both parent's working to be able to some day pay for college, braces, or teen car insurance if not to afford immediate cost of a mortgage.

As the text progressed, another problem I often had was telling how old the children Elkind was discussing were. This was particularly true in the parenting chapter when debunking group sports. I had come into this text expecting that hurrying by definition dealt with just children before school age. So, it was confusing for me at times. While I am not a huge fan of group sports, I was still surprised at the amount of time of spent on this topic and some of the reasons why parents feel they must enroll their children in such programs at a young age. The most ludicrous on to me was that there are no places that are safe to take your child to play outdoors. Maybe this is true in the inner city, but can't you just accompany your children to the park? True, I life in Maine, where the city isn't the quite the same, but I know of five parks all within ten minutes driving distance. All of them places I feel safe accompanying my child during normal playing hours. Is this really so rare that many parents feel they must enroll their children in sports programs as young as three? It was ideas like these that I wasn't sure were my naivety or Elkind's attempt at thoroughness gone array to over thinking the circumstances of a few and presenting them of the many.

Elkind's tone when discussing education was also hard to swallow. He started off completely on the wrong foot with me by equating teacher unions to standardized tests and textbooks. (I'll admit to my limited experience, but my union fought for over a year to get me fair pay, which otherwise would have meant my fifth year of teaching equal in pay to a first year teacher due to a state mandated minimum salary. My union fought to end such ridiculousness to keep good teachers in my district and I just can't see that as a negative to education). I can't recall a single positive idea about public American education. Instead, his comments were generalizations about all teachers and schools. I consistently found myself offended thinking, "I didn't do / feel that as a teacher." He particularly criticized two current education fads that I'm against: Over testing and moving curriculum to lower and lower elementary grades. In fact, it was my belief that Elkind and I would agree on many points such as these that inspired me to read his book. A list of bad practices made by teachers that increase stress included the ineffective class size for real learning, activities interrupted constantly claiming that teachers rarely do one thing for longer than two minutes, distractions such as behavior management and transitioning eat up all instructional time, and teachers ignore the majority of students labeling them early on as failures. He claims that school forces children into the same situation as a repetitious, boring, and meaningless job. One of the most insulting comments to me was "but soon the endless demands for learning in a non-supportive environment and the competition force the young person to call upon energy reserves that are no always replenished." He at least finished the chapter by saying that from what we've learned about stress in general, teachers under pressure to improve test scores can become egocentric and unappreciative of other people's needs, thus making it an unfavorable position for teaching. At least he gave teachers some slack for being human.

Even though I genearally was annoyed by his negative tone about American public education, he did have several interesting points. I did agree with some of his ideas on rotation and retention for early grades. I was glad that Elkind recognized that learning requires a certain amount of stress. Too often people forget that learning must be stressful or even painful. Many times, Elkind mentions "developmentally appropriate early childhood education programs," but he never defines one clearly. He states it is not hurrying if your child is enrolled in one of these, but doesn't clearly give parents guidelines on how to identify one. One thing intersting was his discussion of how students fear, and are thus stressed by, other students in their schools that they perceive as dangerous. One way off base comment in my mind was the idea that it is not beneficial for teachers in the early grades to be specialists in reading and math. Aren't these the early years when you want your child's teacher to be most knowledgeable to start reading and math off well? I thought it interesting that he mentions the physical symptoms of students always facing failure, but not those of children overwhelmed by parental (and peer) pressure to constantly preform.

Meanwhile, most of Elkind's points about inappropriate media, be it TV, print, movies, or music, really came down to parents monitoring what their children watch. Why would you let a child watch Roseanne or NYPD Blue? Seriously, that isn't the media; that's poor parenting. True, we don't watch many commercials these days, but I don't see kid's advertising during adult shows. Adult shows are marketed towards adults, and to allow a young child to watch one is the parent's fault. One point I agreed with was that children characters on TV are often unrealistic, which is why I think they are so often off screen. Given his seemingly straitlaced opinions, I found it funny that he defended raunchy MAD magazine, yet was rough on girl magazines. He was also rough on the low quality sci fi and romance series. In fact, he pretty much states that girl books are more shallow than boy books, saying that books like Lord of the Flies and A Separate Peace have become classics. One point I found particularly sobering was a quotation from Walter Dean Meyers stating that only 1 in a 100 children's books focus on the black experience. But, Elkind's discussion of music in general seemed dated and off base. He states that all rock is too sexual, but doesn't even mention rap music. In fact, Tiffany was one of his artist examples. The pressure of peers to listen to the right music is one of his points, but this seemed to contradict his ideas later about how important peer relationships are. In general, I think music is an escape for teens, as he mentions, but doesn't focus on.

The chapter on lapware, brain research and the internet seemed to put unrelated topics together, and he wasn't clear on how the internet in particular caused hurrying or related to the other two topics. I expected to agree with most of Elkind's thoughts on lapware, which was one of the reasons I was interested in this book in the first place. These types of programs did not sound very helpful and did seem to just prey on vulnerable parents who want the best for their children. I believe that a little computer exposure is fine for a baby or toddler. For Natalie, we've read books on line a few times and watched videos, but most of her time with the computer now that she is a toddler is imitating what we do - typing, clicking the mouse, and such. I see no issue with allowing a toddler to use a computer to view media you would otherwise see in print or on TV or in imitative play. I really agreed with the point that young children learn best through real objects and people, thus debunking the whole idea of using lapware (or videos) with babies and toddlers. Furthermore, he gives very interesting research about at what ages children acquire the ability to differentiate letters and phonic sounds, all of which is after two, which is far older than the children for whom these products are made.

I also disliked Elkind's tendency to jump to the worse case scenario. Here are a few examples:

• Divorced parents asking their young children who they love more.
• When young adults have inconsistent or discrepant information to help them form their personal identity, they can adopt a negative role, like a criminal or prostitute. Or they may loose their identity in a cult or religious organization.
• Discussing that a larger number of children are kidnapped by noncustodial parent and gives a detailed example in section on free floating anxiety caused by separation.
• Examples of Lilit GAmpel and Christian Kriens who were children prodigies in music who respectively fell of the music map and committed suicide.

Instead of discussing the trouble the average hurried child might encounter, he spends time on these extreme examples. I felt discussing hurrying in these terms was like scare tactics. Most children won't become hard core drug addicts or criminals, even with rough patches growing up.

Several pet peeves of mine about non-fiction texts Elkind commits. First, the formatting is inconsistent in places. There are headings that are italicized in some places, but not in others. It also appeared at least twice that their were inaccuracies in the text. Colette Dowling's book is entitled The Cinderella Complex, not syndrome. And he refers to a band as Destiny's Girls, which I'm pretty sure should be Destiny's Child. I felt that in a third edition, such issues should be ironed out, not created. Furthermore, Elkind block quotes long sections of text from other authors frequently. I would accept that in my freshmen research papers, so I don't respect it much in a professional's writing. I'd say at least half of these long quotations could have been summarized or paraphrased without hurting validity or creditability of the source.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy anything about this text. I did agree with many of Elkind's ideas about standardized testing. In particular, I agreed with his point that over testing or overemphasis on scores causes us to stop focusing on actual learning. He continues on to say that we focus too much on grades, de-emphasizing what the grade truly means about learning, which I also agree with. I also enjoyed his point about how parents hurry their children by pushing them into gifted and talented programs (or, I believe, even honors programs) when they are not right for them. I found some of the information about how humans deal with stress interesting as well as the review of Piaget's ideas about development. But, neither of these topics were why I read this book. I found a few points in the book enlightening. One that particularly sticks with me was about play. I agreed with the author that play is how young children learn and also how they work through emotions and social constructs. He mentions how adults interrupt play with educational questions because we don't realize which type of play is occurring. We see teachable moments and try to seize them, but sometimes a child just needs to play. This really made me think of how I interact with Natalie. I need to broaden the way I talk to her as she plays; we need to not only ask her factual questions about the world around her, but we need to just get engrossed in her play. I also found some of the information about hurrying true for students I've had in the past. Elkind discusses that when children hit adolescence, they tend start to realize the hurrying they were put through as children, and that this can result in all sorts of problems. I've seen many students who are very bright shut down academically, quite possibly in rebellion to parental pushing earlier in school. I've also seen students reacting poorly to the stress of hurrying, some of them struggling to attain perfection while not fully understanding the purpose reaching their goals.

Here are some other interesting points from throughout the text:

• "In sum, needing to support children financially and emotionally, without herself enjoying those kinds of support, is perhaps the most severe stress encountered by a female in our society."
• "Our problems in American education arise because we are not sufficiently American, not because we are insufficiently British or Japanese. Our classrooms are not as individualized, and our curriculums are not as flexible, as our values of individualism and self-reliance demand. True educational reform will only come about when we make our education truly democratic, appropriate to children's individual growth rates and levels of mental development."
• Learning to say thank you isn't about memory, but about reasoning.
• "Cognitive conceit," which is what causes kids to think they know everything. He actually says this is why kids favor stories that "put adults in a derogatory or stupid role," which explains all those Nickelodeon shows my brother and sister-in-law hate.
  
• A child needs to be in formal operation period to understand grammar, algebra, metaphor and meta-cognition. All too complex to teach directly before about age 11.
• Children learn about social contracts more through friendship, which are mutual, rather than unilateral relationships with parents. This is seen through learning rules to games as well as being on a team.
• The low class child is hurried by working parents because of material need, while the middle class two working parent child is hurried by the parents' emotional needs.
  
• The concept of children who are invulnerable to high stress situations.
  

Lastly, here are a few ideas Elkind left me hanging on. They were only mentioned briefly, and I wanted to know more.

• When he discusses women torn between career and staying at home with their children, it would have been nice to hear information about other countries where maternity leave is considerably longer.
  
• How does one identify a "developmentally appropriate early childhood education program"? Give us some criteria, a checklist or something.
• When discussing school burnout, I thought it would be interesting to hear more details about how the stress affects the different types of students he identified. For example, how is the stress of high school different for the valedictorian versus the student forced to stay there even though he wants to be a mechanic.
  

The Read-Aloud Handbook

Note: This still needs some editing, but with all the effort I've put into this post (four hours just today!), I really just wanted the satisfaction of publication. I'll be back to polish it up!

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
3rd and 6th editions

General Review:
Trelease's general premise: Read to your children 15 - 20 minutes a day from birth. He spends a whole chapter explaining why reading is important, why reading aloud to a child is important, and why reading now is so important. A sampling of his support includes:

• Since humans are pleasure centered and reading takes practice to be done well, reading must be pleasurable for us to want to put in the practice. Being read to from a good book is pleasurable right from birth. Babies enjoy the sound of your voice, toddlers are curious about everything, and the older we get the more we love the conflict, emotion, hope, and escape offered by fiction. Reading is pleasurable, unlike the 1,000 worksheets your child is likely to encounter annually in elementary school.
  
• Reading to your children (as well as traveling with them) builds background knowledge. A huge part of background knowledge is knowing our collective culture. We encounter such references as the Trojan Horse, Noah's Ark, Paul Revere, and countless others daily. Without this knowledge, we don't get the point, or often, the joke.
  
• Adults, parents in particular, are role models. If a child sees and hears adults reading daily, he will expect that reading is part of adult life. Reading aloud is the perfect advertising for the product of reading.
  
• The cost is very low: Some time, a library card, some second hand books, and a basket or shelf for the child to keep the books. A bed side reading lamp is a plus if you can swing it.
  
• Reading aloud to a child starting at young age prepares your child for school by exposing him to rich, formal language not used in every day conversation and by increasing his attention span.
  
• Experts believe that the amount of exercise the speech centers of the brain receive between 12 to 18 months directly affects the lifetime potential of that person in that area. Parents are therefore most important in providing that stimulation.
  

He uses all manner of statistics to support his premise as well. The rest of the book gives information on what to read, how to get it, and when to read it, as well as discussing some of the obstacles that get in the way of reading.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the stages of read-aloud, which discussed topics like bonding with your children over stories, why its good for toddlers to hear the same book a million times, how to move to chapter books, and more. (Though, the reader more intent on getting to the heart of the matter quickly, might want to skip right to the Do's and Don't chapter). The libraries and Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) chapters also contained a lot of interesting points.

Trelease discussed home, school, and public libraries. Of course, he mentioned that its been discovered that the number of books in the home is said to directly correlate with student success. But, I'm still left wondering why that is. I personally think it is not because of the books themselves, though wide access to print is important; I believe that it is the values and attidutes connected with reading in homes with many books that makes the difference. And what about those who are poor who use the library so well but own few books? Are they a rare minority and thus don't affect the numbers? Even still, with $1 books available at The Dollar Store and Target, and even cheaper or free books available through other charitable sourses, there isn't much reason for a child not to receive at least book or two a year. Even with the youngest children, Trelease states that ownership is important. Not only does the child get to mangle the book with love, but under the age of two it is important to build a relationship with the same few books versus the constant flood of different books one might get from a library.

For classroom libraries, there is also a connection between numbers of books and achievement. Most notably, classrooms with libraries report 50% more books read. Yet, sadly, the older students get, the less likely it is for them to have access to classroom library. But, as my personal experience can support, its not enough to just have the books. Teachers must advertise them. Book talks, reading aloud, and cover forward shelving are some of the methods presented. All these books aren't cheap though. In a time where school funds are cut in all areas, Trelease takes a strong stance I'm completely behind. He says to cut sports funding. A community will not allow its sports to be underfunded. But, if the library funding is cut, no one rallies enough to make a change. (As he states about the funding of public libraries later in the chapter, we don't miss what we don't use, and less than ten percent of Americans are regular library patrons. Thus, its not a huge leap that these same adults would allow a school library to be underfunded). I'd add that the school library benefits all students. Not only is the best opportunity for independent reading then present for all students, but all students use the school library in connection with their classes. Meanwhile, sports are not designed for all students, just based on the number of students. Furthermore, I was shocked by the statement that the higher a communities sports scores, the lower their reading scores.

While I have fond memories of teachers reading aloud to me, I don't have any postive memories of SSR. I don't believe I disliked it, but the power of aloud reading left more of a lasting impression. However, I agree with Trelease that SSR goes hand in hand with aloud reading, and I was very impressed with the results I saw implementing daily it in my high school level classes my last year of teaching. (Though I did disagree that reading in class should come before writing in class, because students are more likely to read at home than write at home and writing is a more social process needing the classroom environment to flourish. Ideally, it would all fit, but a secondary teacher can't lengthen the period). I would have loved for SSR to have been daily and school wide, but once students move to a schedule where they have many teachers, SSR starts to become more about policing the students, and only English language arts teachers are left on board. But, how can we expect students to spend time on something academic that we won't spend time on in school? The studies cited state that 90% of students spend only 1% of their free time on reading. Additionally, 90% of students read for less than four minutes a day. (And this is not even mentioning the summer loses children make. I was surprised to hear that it is the summers that widen the gaps in the highest and lowerst studnets).

When SSR is instated in a home or school, there is then a battle about what is acceptable reading. I love Trelease's stance that pretty much anything is allowed. Not only newspapers and magazines of all sorts allowed, but he strongly believes in the value of comic books, series, and even Where's Waldo. In discussing series like Babysitter's Club and The Hardy Boys, which are so often sneered at by many adults and teachers, he states that there is a time when "non-threatening, immediately accessibly reading" is needed. I couldn't agree more. There is a point in most reader's lives where what they need is to read a lot of text to gain fluency and improve on all sorts of basic reading skills. A lite youth series is perfect for this purpose because children and teens are engaged by the plot lines and plow through the texts with huge motivation. My only problem with series like Cirque de Freak and Clique are when a high school freshmen or sophomore still resists trying a book outside their comfort zone. Otherwise, I know their importance. For me it was The Babysitter's Club, closely followed by all of Judy Blume. Another important item in my reading at this important time was Calvin and Hobbes collections. Trelease fully supports comics and comic books, and even explains that their structure and vocabulary can be more complex than other texts. The type of text that Trelease is hard on is the classics. He points out that these books traditionally read in school are not only dated, but often weren't intended for child or teen audiences. He continues on to explain how the cirriculum of only reading the cannon of dead white guys has left generations increasingly more disengaged adult readers. Over the years, I've come to agree with Trelease that the classics aren't the best way to engage all students. But, I have an obligation as an English teacher to expose my students to these texts and teach them how to do my content of literary analysis. My compromise my last year of teaching was to let free choice reading reign most of the year, and then two or three times we read a classic together to practice close reading, thesis writing, and the other English class skills that used to bog down every text.

The information about television in both editions spurred the most conversation between my husband and I. While we both read for recreation, it is not in the same amounts. Recently, I only watch TV if its on for my daughter or if my husband and I are watching a specific show together in the evening; I almost never turn it on for myself anymore. In the past, I used to turn the TV on upon arriving home from school, and I would read and often grade with it on as background noise. My husband is involved in more weekly shows than I, as well as watching the news and sporting events. This means he in general watches more than I do now. But, do either of us feel that Trelease's discussion apply to our home? Are we addicted to television? Are we making a serious mistake by allowing our daughter, who is still under two, to watch about between 2 to 4 hours of TV a day?

At present, we don't feel we are the parents that Trelease reprimands. We do set viewing limits for our daughter. With the exception of a few Disney movies and old cartoons like the Smurfs, Natalie watches only shows directed at preschoolers, all of which have some educational value, even though we know that television only offers passive learning. (I did find the direct quotation implying TV addiction from the president of Nickelodeon shocking, no matter how much I love their subsequently created commercial-free, preschooler channel). Not only are shows monitored, but the times she can watched are set by us, and generally are an hour or so in the the morning and no more than three hours in the evening. However, we wouldn't feel comfortable with these time limits if our daughter just sat and stared the TV the whole time. She stares some, but usually only 10 or 15 minutes at a time before she interacts with us or starts playing with a toy. Additionally, she is still home all day. Even with four hours of a day devoted to TV, she has all the rest of her awake hours to play, socialize, and learn. I'd feel differently is she were away from us at day care for eight hours, or when she starts school. However, I don't claim to be an expert on children and television. The controls we have set in our family have thus far worked. Could she spend more time running and climbing? Yes, but at the time of writing this, we were exiting the winter with me half way through a pregnancy. We all do what we can. And what we've done thus far has given us a well rounded toddler who loves singing, letters, colors, and animals as well as splashing water, climbing stairs, running down ramps and is everywhere commented on about her outgoing personality and verbal abilities. At this point in time, I'm not going to let Trelease's experts scare me into changing our way of life. But ... Trelease expects this reaction from parents; he doesn't believe most parents would attempt or succeed in a TV turn-off project. So, he totes that setting limits, on content and quantity, and teaching critical viewing skills in school is very important, both points I agree with fully.

However, I find myself more educated than the average parent, especially in terms of reading. Some of that comes from teaching high school English for five years and having a Master's degree in Literacy Education, but, surprisingly, my undergrad degree contained absolutely no information on how children learn to read and my master's program, which certifies me K-12, only required one course. Even that one reading development course spent almost no time on babies. So, where did I gain my knowledge of how to develop my daughter's literacy? Two places: 1) my own childhood experiences and 2) doing my own research. Because of these factors, I didn't need Trelease telling me to read aloud to my child from birth or to not let her watch adult television for hours on end. I was excited to read to her the moment she was born and brought her to story time for the first time at 3 weeks old. But, this is not the case for every parent. And after reading this text, I'd say its not even the case for the average parent.

One of my most common wonders while reading this book was are parents uninformed, or do they just not care? More than once Trelease mentions that parents say there isn't time for reading aloud. He sites a study that shows stay-at-home mothers only spend a minute more on one-on-one conversation and educational interactions that working moms. This clearly shows that it isn't a matter of time. Later, Trelease asks parents to think about the amount of time they spend letting their child watch TV or running errands at the mall? The time is there, parents just seem to not know any better. Trelease addresses that a lot of it boils down to how we tend to parent the way we were parented. In my home, reading, books, and education as a whole were highly regarded; father read aloud to us frequently until I was an early teen, all kinds of reading materials were everywhere, and library trips were frequent. Thus, it was natural for my home and my parenting to reflect these values. But, this is not the experience of every child and family, especially those with roots in poverty. The differences in family attitudes on education and reading was the biggest culture shock for me when I began teaching. Thus, this book strives to be a force to educate parents, as well as teachers, librarians, and anyone else who works with parents and children, about the extreme benefits and low time and monetary costs.

Other than TV, father's reading is one of Trelease's big causes. I'm very glad that over the ten years we've been together, Mike has started to read for recreation. (I give Harry Potter full credit; more on the boy wizard below). When Natalie was a newborn, he didn't read to her much. But, within a few months we got into a bed routine that had him as the primary reader. As she got older and grew a strong bond with her Daddy, she now asks him to read to her as often as she asks me. Knowing we have a son on the way, I'm very glad for this positive male role model. Of course, there are many ways for a father to be a strong male influence, but Trelease's book outlines how rarely reading is within the father's arena. So many males aren't recreational readers (because their father's weren't and so on?), so they feel that either the mother's influence is enough, or that it is fine for their sons to not love reading either. The line of thinking "If it was good enough for me, then its good enough for my child," is often valid, but what if you could make things better for your child, and all it took was a library card and 15 minutes of your attention a day? If for so little time and no money you could: improve attention span, enrich language, build world knowledge, share values and morals, teach cultural background, and set the paving stones for independent reading, which is the most important school skill all the way through the grades, why wouldn't you? Again, it leads me to wonder if parents, both fathers and mothers, are ignorant or stubborn.

One of my favorite subjects that came up over and over in this book was Trelease's comments on how literature and reading are about more than the building blocks of academic education. Frequently in his discussions, he comment about how literature helps build our soul as well. For example, he discusses how fairy tales prepare children for the harsh realities of the world. Other times, he mentions how reading teaches us about our culture, both modern and ancient, and is a strong way to teach morality and humanity. Trelease explains how a Havard Business professor teaching ethics had a syllabus full of nothing but literature. Many a time I found myself commenting that these were the real reasons we read. These are the reasons one decides to teach high school English, not to improve test scores or prefect the nation's grammar.

What about all the other teachers? Trelease makes a very strong agreement for why ALL teachers, even the secondary math and science and art teachers, should read aloud in their classrooms. A love for reading affects a child's view of the whole curriculum, and all subject teachers should seize the opportunity to spread that enthusiasm by sharing good titles about their content. Reading aloud to the students gets them interested, and then they strive to read more to learn more, which then improves their vocabulary, spelling, and writing skills. (Yes, its true, reading is the best way to improve spelling and vocabulary, NOT looking words up in the dictionary!). Furthermore, people tend to love fiction; teaching content through story is a great way to hook students.

Differences between 3rd and 6th Editions:
First, I want to note that I read the bulk of the text out of the 3rd edition because it my library had this edition. But, after reading the chapter on television, I searched for a newer edition and got it through inter-library loan. There were big differences between the two editions, but the general message was still the same. The 6th edition had been completely reformatted. Not only was a new font employed and some photographs added to spice it up, but the headings were all turned into questions. I didn't like the heading change, or maybe it was that it seemed the text was generally parred back (about 60 pages shorter despite the room new photos and charts take up in the newer edition). I believe these changes were made to make the text more parent friendly, but as a teacher as well as a parent, I didn't need those changes. Having question headings like a What to Expect parenting book wasn't a plus for me. A change that I did enjoy was to the treasury of read aloud texts at the end. The slight formatting changes made it much easier to read the titles and ages at a glance.

As far as content changes, there were a few fields: technology, titles, and studies. Since I did not reread all of the 6th edition, I didn't see many of the newer references to studies, but I specifically sought out the new titles and technology info. The third edition was published in 1995, and the 6th in 2006. This is a huge difference in terms of new children's titles and technology changes. The treasury of read aloud texts was completely revamped to include many titles from the 10 years between the editions. But, the technology section's revisions were the most needed. In the 3rd edition, there is no mention of the internet and video games are only mentioned in passing. The technology chapter is about television almost exclusively, which makes sense for 1995. But, in 2011, television is not the lone detractor for reading time. Now, the games, social sites, and streaming video the internet offers pose a stronger threat, in my mind, than television alone. If Trelease is ever to publish a 7th edition, he needs to spend even more time on this topic. But, as it is now, the 6th edition does a much better job addressing the technology that interferes with reading. The 6th edition brings many new statistics about television viewing to the plate. (However, I'm not sure that I believe that there is a connection between young TV viewing and ADHD without some rational). Trelease also offers ideas on controlling TV that are more modern, but nothing as modern as the parental controls built into digital TV boxes.

The sixth edition had a chapter dedicated to three new phenomenon: Oprah's book club, Harry Potter, and the internet. I found the ideas about Oprah and Harry most interesting. He looked at both of these cultural reading rockets and explained why they were so successful, versus the interventions that are often forced in the classroom. The four lessons we've learned from Oprah's book club are:

1. To instill the love of reading, you must be an avid reader yourself. However, most teachers don't read any more than the rest of the population.
   
2. The idea of a book club works better than a class.
   
3. There should be more discussion of books, and less writing about them. Talks about books should be open (again, more like a club than a class).
   
4. Put these all together and you get the final lesson: A love of reading is more caught from others, than taught.
   

So, what did Harry Potter teach us? The six lessons we've learned from Pottermania are:

1. Not all series are created equal. Harry had children highly motivated to read books nine times as long as lite youth series like Goosebumps.
   
2. "Children want page turners, just like grown-ups do."
3. When meeting censorship in the name of religion, remember "Christ came to take away our sings, not our minds."
4. There is no reason to fear series books as trash. Even the ones with less quality than Harry Potter have their place.
   
5. Much research has shown that successful and avid readers enjoyed series books as children, too.
   
6. Use movies to promote sequels or other books by the same author. (It was the marketing for the first Harry Potter movie that got both my husband and I to start the series. After getting the last three books on publication day and reading most of the series aloud to our infant daughter, we are currently planning on celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary by seeing the last movie installment).

Lastly, five lessons from the internet:

1. Giving someone a computer doesn't make them more responsible. Kids will instant message in class and go to all manner of inappropriate cites. Who are we kidding? Adults do to on their jobs! I know for a fact that many of the teachers, myself included, I know would use their computers for non-work related purposes during meetings and master's courses. A computer doesn't make someone instantly engaged in the subject and thus immune to the fun allure of the internet.
   
2. The internet and a good library should work together. When you need an in-depth, reliable answer, you need more than Wikipedia.
   
3. Reading from a computer screen (at least in 2006) was slower than paper due to the quality of the image. Also, the embellishments possible on a computer can hide lack of content or creditability.
   
4. Email does not help writing skills.
   
5. Time on the computer isn't any better than time in front of the TV when that time is detracting from reading, socializing, or exercising.

Another interesting change between the 3rd and 6th editions had to due with commercial reading programs. The 3rd edition discusses Hooked on Phonics pretty exclusively. While reading the 3rd edition 2011, I suddenly realized I hadn't heard anything about Hooked on Phonics in a long time, and Trelease explains why, including information about lawsuits against the company. Trelease then gives the International Reading Associations recommended guidelines for choosing a commercial reading program. Paraphrased, these are: Does the product claim a quick fix?; Does the product profess to be self-teaching?; Does the product have little or no opportunity for reading whole texts?; and Does the product approach reading as isolated skills apart from meaningful text? I was hoping that the 6th edition would address 2011's current miracle reading program, Your Baby Can Read, but it does not address this type of program at all. (Instead, it does address computerized reading programs that quiz students on books and award points. Trelease is against how these programs wind up being used, and I can't agree more because my 6th grade reading experience mirrors his discussion). But, using my own judgment, it appears to me that Your Baby Can Read does not meet all of the IRA's criteria.

The Homework Myth

As mentioned in a previous post, I did not take notes while reading this book, so I expect this review to be less detailed than my review of Fires in the Bathroom.

While reading Alfie Kohn's The Homework Myth book, I got into debates about its content many times. Here is a compilation of my discussions:

Me: Why do we need homework?
Them: Homework reviews important skills.
Me: Why can't that be done at school? Wouldn't class time be better spent on that practice where the students could get help?
Them: But there isn't enough time to do all that practice and cover the content.
Me: If you understand how to do the work, you don't need to do a lot of practice. If you are lost, then you need instruction, not practice. Also, this would streamline your ability to get through content faster because you wouldn't have to back track when kids don't have homework done.
Them: Well, homework teaches you responsibility. It teaches you how to do work for when you are in high school or college.
Me: No studies actually show this. Aren't their better ways to teach responsibility that don't undermine a child's natural curiosity? Is all that practice really necessary when there isn't a large correlation between homework and high school student achievement either?
Them: Well, we did homework and turned out alright.
Me: Just because we did it doesn't make it good for students, especially since younger and younger students are being assigned more and more work.
Them: Other countries give lots of homework and we need to catch up to them.
Me: Actually, it isn't true that lots of other countries give a lot of homework. In fact, Japan has ended homework in some places. Instead, some places have more class time for instruction and support instead of encroaching upon the family.

It is usually at this point (if not sooner) that whoever I was talking with got frustrated with me and changed the subject.

What impressed me was how thoroughly Kohn presented his argument against homework. Every counterargument that someone mentioned in my conversations, Kohn addresses. Kohn's research on homework is extensive, which makes him very creditable. He cites many sources, as well as providing a list of those sources and about 40 pages of notes at the end of the text about the cited research. Also, Kohn's writing is very well organized. He breaks the content into many chunks making it very easy to follow his ideas. This style furthers the feeling of thoroughness. But, his writing is repetitive. He is constantly adding that research does not back up giving homework for academics, but actually shows it may be harmful. This gets old by half way through the book. I felt that anyone interested and intelligent enough to make it that far in the book had gotten the point by then.

Most interesting to me was the early discussion on the negative effect that homework has on children, particularly the family. Since when I was teaching, I didn't have a family per se, I didn't understand this. Furthermore, growing up my family didn't spend much time together, so homework didn't affect us much. I do remember my parents investing time into our homework though. I don't remember many of these exchanges being tense, but they were time consuming. So as a teacher, I didn't have a lot of personal experience of homework ruining family time and twisting family relationships. Reading this section gave me insight into how homework affects a wider range of families outside of my direct experience.

I was left at the end of this section feeling powerless. I am on board with Kohn that homework should be for older students, and then we should modify how we think about it (more on that in a minute). But, my feelings as a teacher will most likely not affect my child's experiences throughout her eduction. I was left feeling very sad about my poor little girl facing hours of mindless, yet frustrating homework that eats up her evening hours with her parents and her time to relax. I found myself actually thinking I would ask teachers how much homework counts towards final grades to determine if the percentage was worth us just not doing it in our home if we didn't feel it was necessary. I was also contemplating calling Natalie's future school and asking about the homework policy, even though Kindergarten is still about four years away for her.

What I did feel good about was the section where Kohn describes how we should rethink homework. First, he states that we should reset the default so that homework isn't a given. I know as a teacher I though of homework as a given when planning, but mostly so I could fit in as much as possible. When I switched to Nancy Atwell's reading and writing workshop, I didn't do that anymore. And that is the type of homework that Kohn recommends. He strongly recommends free reading. Also, continuing projects not finished in class when students choose not to use class time is another new form of homework that Kohn recommends that I used in my classroom with writing workshop. Choice is a large factor in Kohn's new vision of homework; his endorsement of choice also made me proud of that amount of choice I gave students in reading and writing.

While reading The Homework Myth, I was tempted to buy copies for the superintendents of the school districts I plan to be in contact with in the future. In my mind, that is a big endorsement for Kohn's ideas on homework.

Fires in the Bathroom

Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students mislead me. The title and premise conjured a picture of a superficial book that gave mostly obvious and angst filled ideas padded by some feel good support from the author. That was not the case at all.

Fires in the Bathroom is actually a level headed, thorough, and well organized text for new teachers. Cushman and her student collaborators spent countless hours working on the material for this book. In fact, there is even a chapter at the end of the book about how they made the book. All of the student insights were organized into ten chapters with focuses such as knowing students, teaching difficult material, classroom behavior, respect, motivation, and ELL. While the chapter formatting doesn't make a riveting read, subheadings, lists, charts, tons of student quotations, and bulleted chapter summaries make it extremely easy to follow. Also included are ready-to-use worksheets; some of them are for student use, but the authors designed most of these to aid teachers in reflecting on their practices. Some of these worksheets are helpful, but others are overkill. For example, anyone who would take the time to fill out "Am I Playing Favorites?" probably is reflective enough to already know the results.

This book is very obviously written for new teachers. Much of the student advice in the first chapters of the books can also be found in Wong's The First Days of Schools. Ideally, this text should be read during course work leading up to student teaching or before starting at one's first position, but as a teacher with five years under my belt, I still found many useful ideas. However, a large portion of the suggestions are painfully obvious. For example, the first chapter on knowing your students provided an opportunity to reflect on my relationships with students, but it also cautioned against drawing conclusions about students based on what I've seen in the media, which to me, is common sense. Obvious suggestions like these are found throughout the text.

I only noticed a couple problems with the text besides it stating many common sense ideas. First, early in the book, the author states that all the suggestions were presented for authenticity sake, but that veteran teachers would know that some of these ideas aren't practical or plausible. Thus, some advice could yield negative results with the best of intentions, such as suggestions to let students teach the class to see from the teacher's point of view or putting too much emphasis on getting to know students and individual progress, which could backfire by affecting fairness. While the student authors' ideas needed to be respected for this project, it seems a little counterproductive for a book for new teachers to not take advantage of what veteran teachers would know. The second problem with the text was much smaller. Some of the information is skewed by the fact that the students involved were from urban, diverse schools. For teachers like myself who work in a rural community, our population is far more homogeneous than those discussed in the text, which made some of the advice not fit my community.

Despite these problems, there were lots of valuable suggestions and ideas. One of the best sections was the behavior management chapter, including tips for subs. I also liked the emphasis on revision and positive feedback. The advice on assessment was very clear: spell out what you're looking for, give examples of product at different levels, use a rubric, and give opportunity to revise. Additionally, I enjoyed the section on motivating students. It included insightful student comments about the conformity of eduction and the right question inspiring them to learn. One of my favorite suggestions was to have a department test day so that students don't become overwhelmed with multiple tests and assignments on one day; however, all the other information on scheduling indicated that it is never a good time for pretty much anything. The homework section contained information that should be common sense: Only assign homework that is meaningful learning, don't over do it, and provide support. The reading and writing section was short, but a very good representation of the information I learned in my master's program.

The most shocking aspect of this book was the teacher behavior described by some of the students. Some behavior defied the common sense of how to deal with people while other behavior showed a complete lack of compassion and fairness that made me question how some of these teachers entered the profession. One of the most common comments in the book was that teachers won't call on a students who aren't the go-to student of the class. How can a teacher not call on the quite kid who finally raises his hand? Also mentioned were teachers who rudely blew off real questions about the subject, not because they were inappropriately timed, but because they weren't seen as valid questions.

For me, I walked away thinking about the following points:

• I need to get to know my students more. While at the beginning of the year I always collect information about my students, I often don't wind up using it because its just too hard to keep track of 100+ students and integrate it into lessons. But, I do need to learn more about them, especially in terms of their struggles and accomplishments. I want to know about more of the complicated issues in students' lives, but I don't see how to without being invasive. What sticks out to me the most are cases when I discovered at the end of the year that smart kids were struggling because of a divorce. I also learned through FB that a student was away for a year, then back because she had a child. This particularly bothers me because I was left to make the assumption that it was other issues in her life that I did know about that kept her from school. If I had taken a greater interest in this student, I could have had a clearer picture of why she was struggling.
  
• A trait that I have always admired in other teachers is how they can pull a student into the hall to talk about an incident that just occurred in class. I haven't been able to do that. In fact, I almost never talk to students about their behavior, whether its talking or not turning in work. This is something I need to work on when I return to teaching.
• I want to continue to give students both silent time and time to collaborate on all types of work. My experience matched the student comments.
  
• I need to evaluate how group work progresses. In the past, I wasn't very good at really seeing how groups were working. While there is no real excuse in my mind for cheating and plagiarism, poor group work conditions were the root the most frustrating cases I encountered. This would also includes time when students are informally collaborating, such during writing workshop time.
• I want to give more attention in my feedback to what and how students did well, so they can be repeated it next time. I've done alright with this at times with writing assignments, but could do better; I need to work on it for all the other areas in the classroom.
  
• I was glad to see the comments that grades should be advice for next time. The students involved in this project seemed most interested in learning and the feedback that would allow them to succeed at learning. The grading fiasco I had my last year teaching really had a lot to do with this idea.
  
• I need to remember that some kids won't turn in work if they don't think it is done right.
  
• I've always asked students to ask questions, but I've had trouble getting kids who really need help to ask. I need to continue to work on ways to get kids to feel safe enough to ask questions which make them feel vulnerable, especially questions dealing with understanding. I wonder what portion of my apathetic students behave that way because they don't understand and can't ask for help?
  
• I want to provide opportunities for students to do work they feel proud of. I feel that this happens for only a small fraction of my students and its those who don't feel proud of their work that continue to fail.
• More than once a comment was made about being the only student who every answered teachers' questions and that the whole class rides on that one student. I can't imagine being that student who is the only one who ever does the work or talks, but I've had that happen many times. I always force other students to participate by refusing to let that those few eager students continue to lead the class once they've contributed once or twice in a row. I'm surprised more teachers don't do this, but at the same time not surprised because sometimes the silence is very uncomfortable and it means halting the lesson and trying a totally new approach, like writing down question or comments for me to collect and share anonymously.
  
• The importance of choice and personal relevance were mentioned more than once. I've done a lot of work on choice that I would like to keep up, and I hope that those choices add personal relevance, but I don't think it always does. How do I help students choose meaningful topics when students know themselves the best? Sometimes kids make really bad choices, not so much with choosing books to read, but with writing and research topics.
  
• One comment that I found particularly interesting was that students find it hard and frustrating when they are given freedom and responsibility after having information forced on them for years. This goes along with my above comment about students being stumped by free choice.