Children and Books

I just had the oddest comment from a kindergarten teacher who had come to observe the preschool class that attended my infant storytime this morning.  This teacher and I had talked ahead of time about how it might be a bit interesting, having a group of preschoolers joining in with a storytime that’s intended for babies; we were wondering how well it would work out. 

And after it was all over, the teacher came up to me and said, “You know, that worked out incredibly well!  They were very attentive!  And, of course, it really helps that you have a lovely singing voice!”

Wait a second.  Did she just say that I have a “lovely singing voice”???

She did.

I’m in shock.

I’m feeling frustrated this morning.

Frustrated because we still have dial-up internet access, and AOL is beyond slow this morning.  I’ve logged on numerous times, and the connection is still slower than molasses.  More like the honey in the jar in our kitchen, which is almost solidified and sticks to a spoon like glue.

Frustrated because I didn’t set this blog up to be a political blog.

What a frustration that is.  Because, if I had set up this blog to be political, then I could talk about how frightened am about our country’s future.  If this blog were political, then I could talk about last night’s vice presidential debate, and about how terrified I am by the prospect of Sarah Palin being second in command.  If my focus here were political, I could talk about how scary it is that intelligence is viewed as a flaw in our country these days, whereas dropping your g’s and using colloquialisms like “doggone it” while spewing anti-facts are greeted with fondness.  If I were to discuss politics on this blog, I would talk about how fervently I hope that our country will choose the man for president who is intelligent, has a plan to bring our country back from the brink of financial ruin, and who can inspire us all to work together and rise from the ashes left behind by the current administration.

What a shame it is that my blog isn’t political.

It’s hard to be peppy and fun and sing with abandon when you’re exhausted.

The babies are arriving, and I’m trying really, really hard to get psyched up for their arrival.  Wake up, Abby, wake up.  Time to be perky!  Time to lead a group of babies in raucous fun!  Time to bang the drum and ring the bells and wave the scarves!

(and my little voice inside, underneath it all, says, “Time to take a nap.  zzzzzzz.”)

Five minutes before closing yesterday, a young man (4th grade) came up to me and asked, “Do you have any recommendations for me for realistic fiction that’s not depressing?  I really liked the last book you recommended to me, The Golly-Whopper Games [by Jody Feldman].”

I pulled the first Phineas MacGuire book for him, Phineas L. MacGuire Erupts!: The First Experiment by Frances O’Roark Dowell, told him that another boy his age had loved it, and sent him on his way.

And then this afternoon he came bouncing up to my desk, “You know that book you got for me?  I’m almost done with it - can you get me the next book in the series?”  And luckily we had the next two books on the shelf, and I sent him home with both.

Less than 24 hours, with a school day in the middle of those 24 hours, and he’s already almost finished the book and is ready for more.  That’s incredibly satisfying to me, the children’s librarian: I managed to put the right book in this child’s hand at the right time.  Really, truly, there’s no better feeling.

The cats and I observed the weirdest thing this morning:  a chipmunk was sitting happily on one of the semi-rotted fence posts by our living room, just minding his own business, cleaning his face, being generally chipmunk-mellow.

And then the chickadee came along.  This chickadee was enraged by the chipmunk’s presence, and kept dive-bombing the chipmunk, going directly for the head each time.

Finally the chipmunk had enough and ran away.  And the chickadee disappeared, too.  Weird.

Just when I’d gotten back into the blogging groove, I got slammed with a nasty cold that laid me out for a few days.

I’ll try to post an entry of substance tomorrow.  There’s certainly plenty to share!

Storytime went ok - not great, just ok.  The thing about being nervous is that it can wreak an otherwise great storytime:  I’m not having as much fun, I’m doubting myself…and then everyone else doesn’t have as much fun, and they start to look at me a bit funny, as if they’re thinking, “She’s not all that.  Hmmmm.”

And, there are the stupid errors.  At the end of the storytime, I said, “Ok, let’s sing our closing song now!!  The song we always sing at the end of storytime!  [I inserted the name of the song here, and I’m honestly not sure whether I said “The More We Get Together” or “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”]  Here we go!!”  And then I started to sing “The More We Get Together,” which is our opening song, not our closing song.  I caught myself halfway, finished the song, and admitted that it was the first storytime of the year and I’d made a mistake.  And then we sang the correct song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.”  Sigh.

Let’s hope I’m not nervous again tomorrow morning, for my first Mother Goose on the Loose program in a while.  Sigh.  (And hopefully I’ll sleep tonight, too.  That would be good.)

Storytimes start again today, and I’m ridiculously nervous.

I’ve done this particular storytime (Toddler ~ Babies) before; I know more than half of the kids and parents who will be attending; and I stayed a half hour late on Saturday and got to work a half hour early today (off the clock, of course) to do prep work.  And, as usual, I did prep work yesterday (Sunday), and when one of the books I’d planned on using was sub-par, Jim drove me to the library at Patriots half time to pick up a different book.

There is absolutely NO reason for me to be nervous.  But I am.  Wish me luck!

…I started tutoring again last night. 

It was great to see M. again (she’s my only student this year, with two lessons a week), and to have my ego pumped by finding out how much she disliked working with another tutor up at their summer home these past couple of months.  (Let’s face it: we all like to have our ego pumped up.  It’s part of being human.)  And I’m happy to report that tutoring on Monday and Wednesday nights feels much more manageable and sane than last year’s Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday schedule.  It’s a good feeling to do my tutoring gigs at the beginning of the week, when I’m fresh - or at least fresher.

The interesting side of my lesson with M. last night was discovering that her Wilson tutor for the summer didn’t faithfully adhere to the Wilson lesson plan and techniques.  A bit puzzling, considering that when I got certified in Wilson (in the summer of 2001), my trainer was extremely strict about following the structure of the Wilson Reading System to the letter (so to speak).  No deviations were allowed.  Period.  If we trainees didn’t follow the system, we wouldn’t get certified. 

And then I find out that M.’s summer tutor deviated in odd ways from the Wilson system.  For example, this tutor wouldn’t let M. see the sound cards in the decoding Quick Drill; M. told me that the tutor “hid the cards” from M. and simply asked her “What are the keywords for ‘a’?”  Wait a second - what about the sound/symbol connection, Ms. Summer Tutor?  Don’t you realize that is a hugely important part of teaching a child with dyslexia??

Ms. Summer Tutor also didn’t have M. write down any sounds on her dictation pages - once again demonstrating a clear lack of understanding of how the WRS works.  And Ms. Tutor didn’t have M. set up her own dictation pages, but instead used the pre-made dictation forms that can be downloaded from the Wilson website.  I feel the student’s setting up of her own dictation page is incredibly important, as it both builds a sense of being a partner in her own education, and also helps the student with transfering information from one page (the dictation template) to another (the actual dictation page) - a skill which comes into play when trying to copy information and assignments from the teacher’s whiteboard to the student’s notes. 

Another deviation that Ms. Summer Tutor made was to completely and totally skip the Step 10 Posttest.  This tutor simply moved M. on to Step 11 without confirming that M. had mastered the concepts of Step 10.  Wait a second.  The Wilson Reading System, as I was taught it, is all about achieving mastery and fluency.  There are firm guidelines for grading the posttests to ensure that the student has mastered all of the taught concepts and is fully fluent in decoding and encoding words with those concepts.  If the student fails the posttest, review of the step is required before moving on to the next step.  Skipping the posttest isn’t an option.  Most interestingly, Ms. Summer Tutor sent me an update saying that substep 10.5 had been introduced but not mastered, and that substep 11.1 also had been introduced.  So it was a conscious shirking of the mastery and fluency rules.  What’s up with that??

It’s disappointing to me that a parent looking for a Wilson tutor has to know how to ask all the right questions, and can’t simply depend upon the tutor having official Wilson certification.  I take my role as a Wilson certified tutor very, very seriously, and I don’t invent things or change things.  Barbara Wilson spent many years and much research developing this system, and it works.  Don’t mess with it.  In not messing with the WRS, I’ve had a great deal of success teaching students with dyslexia and other language based learning disabilities.  Other Wilson certified tutors should have respect for Barbara Wilson’ s work, and not mess around with what she spent years perfecting. 

Wow, I sound like some sort of cult member.  But seriously, my many successful students prove my point, and justify this soap box moment of mine.  And now I’ll step down from that soap box.  Thanks for listening!!

Now that I’m about to start back up with the Toddler Storytimes (a week to go and counting…), I’ve been going back to the first lesson plans that I created last year.  And, well, they’re substandard.  That is to say, by the end of last year I’d worked out a nice system for these storytimes, and I’d gotten rather picky about the quality of my felt pieces for the feltboard stories.  These early plans just don’t measure up to the standards that I had set once I got in the flow of the toddler storytimes.  And thinking back, I didn’t even have a feltboard on which to tell feltboard stories at the very beginning of last year.

So I’m kind of starting all over with these early plans.  Reselecting books to use and recommend (I’d made some lousy choices early last year), redoing felt pieces, rewriting the handouts that each child receives at the end of the storytime.  Granted, I’m much more experienced with the whole system now, and thus am able to speed through the preparation process much more quickly, but…I had sort of thought I was done with this when school finished last June. 

If I’m honest with myself, these toddler storytime lesson plans and handouts and materials will never really be finished.  The more I do the storytimes, the better I’ll get at them, and I’ll have to tweak my resources to reflect my increased knowledge and experience.  Which isn’t a bad thing: these storytimes will only be good if I’m truly engaged in them, and I won’t be engaged if I’m just regurgitating a plan I wrote two or five or ten years earlier.  Not to forget that there are great new books being published each year that should be considered for use either as the books that I read to the group or for the quiet time reading between parents and children. 

Just like any job, it’s tempting to get settled into a rut and not put forth the effort that one did at the very beginning.  But that type of work ethic doesn’t do anything for the quality of your job performance, nor does it bring much personal satisfaction for a job well done.  So I’ve come to peace with the reworking of these toddler storytimes.  Actually, I might be enjoying the planning process more this second time around.  And now I think it might be time to make those felt pieces for that first storytime of the year, the “Babies” storytime.