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May 10, 2014 - Issue #382 |
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Benny
The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
Henry Ward Beecher
When I was 16 years old my passion
was playing my clarinet in the high school band, and my hero was Benny Goodman.
Yep, in the mid 1970s while all the other 16-year-olds were listening to
Deep Purple, I was bopping to "Sing Sing Sing with a Swing." That's some high
level of geekitude in my teenage years.
In the fall of 1976 I discovered
Goodman was going to do a concert in downtown Buffalo, not far from where we
lived. By the time I heard about the concert it was only a few days away. (This
was before everyone was on the Internet, so Benny wasn't tweeting and I couldn't friend him on
Facebook to learn about these things in advance.) There were only a few
standing-room-only tickets left. And that was all my family would have
been able to afford anyway, because my dad had just started a new business and
my parents had sunk their life savings into it. We'd never had a more frugal
time in our family, but when I asked my mom if we could go she didn't hesitate,
especially when she heard the seats were so inexpensive.
We went to the will-call window to pick
up the tickets an hour before the concert began and the clerk said, "We
just discovered we can add two rows of chairs to the orchestra pit. If you'd
like to pay for an upgrade, we can give you two of those seats."
I felt terrible for my mom because I
knew we couldn't afford the upgrade, and I opened my mouth to tell her it was
okay, I was just so happy to be there. At the same moment my mom said to the
clerk, "Sure, I'll pay for the orchestra seats." It was incredible --
we were so close, we could see the sweat fly off his brow as he played. Benny
Goodman quit touring not long after that, so it turned out to be my one chance
to see him live.
I always tear up a bit when I think of
that concert, especially around Mother's Day.
The moments in a child's life when their passion is acknowledged and
supported by an adult, especially when a sacrifice is involved, are the moments
they carry with them forever.
It's probably appropriate that the last
days of school are sandwiched between Mother's and Father's Days, even
if these
are only made-up holidays that were invented by greeting card companies.
End-of-year school rituals -- creating keepsakes and taking field trips
and
celebrations -- are all time-consuming, sometimes exhausting, and
involve no small
sacrifice on the part of teachers. Why do we do it? Because kids will
see the
sweat on our brows, and they will know how much they mattered to us.
This week we look at student work ethic late in the school year. Plus more as always -- enjoy!
Brenda Power
Founder, Choice Literacy
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Free for All
[For sneak peeks at our upcoming features, quotes and extra links, follow Choice Literacy on Twitter: @ChoiceLiteracy or Facebook:
Here are two features from the Choice Literacy archives to help you think about effort in fresh ways.
What does it mean to "challenge" skilled students? Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan consider the issue in Challenging Advanced Young Readers: Harder Texts Aren't Always the Answer:
"You can't expect any work from seventh graders after 2 p.m. -- it's a scientific fact." Erin Ocon hears these words from her student Aaron, and realizes she needs some new strategies for dealing with this resistant writer:
Katherine Sokolowski reflects on her blog about times when adults and children choose not to give their best effort:
Franki Sibberson leads the online three-week course Becoming a Tech-Savvy Literacy Teacher June 5 - 16. This interactive course includes three webinars, Franki's newest book, a professional development DVD, and an introduction to scores of resources on the web. For more details and to register online, visit this link:
Will you join us July 16-17 in Wrentham, Massachusetts for the Coaching the Common Core Workshop? The two-day event includes presentations by Jennifer Allen, Clare Landrigan, Tammy Mulligan, and Jason DiCarlo. For details and to download an informational brochure, click on this link:
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