The library rule rule (from Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

 58. The number of students in the library media center will always be in inverse proportion to the importance of anyone visiting. 

It never fails. There are a thousand kids in the library third hour. Fourth hour when the superintendent and board members drop by on a facilities inspection, the place is a ghost town. 

There is not one damn thing you can do to keep this from happening.  

There are good things you can do to counteract such mistaken perceptions, however: 

• Keep the library as full of kids as possible as many hours as possible. 
• Make communications and marketing a top priority. 
• Issue invitations to important people to visit during exciting times. 

There are enough things in life that cannot be anticipated or controlled. Work on the things you can.  

59. Life-long impressions of libraries are formed very young. 

I once had a superintendent brag to me that he obtained his college degrees without ever setting foot in a library. (And this was in pre-Internet days.)  

“ I thought there was something special about you,” I tactfully replied.  

There are people who don’t like libraries. My suspicion is that they were frightened by a librarian as children. 

The kids we bark at, ignore, or chase from our libraries today are our teachers, school board members, legislators and referendum voters of tomorrow. 

What comes around, goes around. 

60. The library rule rule.  

Never have more than three rules for your media center. These are mine: 

• Be doing something productive
• Be doing it in a way that allows others to be productive
• Be respectful of other people and their property.

That’s it.

The beauty of this is that nearly every behavior, both of commission and omission, can be judged according to these rules. 

If your library has a list of a dozen or more rules (Don’t eat the library books. Don’t poke others with sharp objects. Don’t sharpen your pencil more than 3 times within 45 minutes. Don’t moon the librarian.), rethink your strategy. 

Teaching kids to examine their own behaviors and apply simple codes of conduct to a variety of circumstances is not a bad thing to do.  

Integrate technology into your worst units (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

54. Children will be in genuine danger if certain skills are not taught.

Instructions on using dangerous technologies are accompanied by training on how to use such them safely. Such technologies include: 

• Scuba diving 
• Shooting a gun 
• Driving a car 

I am guessing that skydiving could be added to the list, but I am not about to find out. 

At what point does the use of information technologies fall into the dangerous category? Do kids: 

• Find pro-anorexia sites on the web? 
• Meet pedophiles in chat rooms? 
• Locate inaccurate information about STDs? 

The ability to evaluate information and navigate the Internet safely must be taught to all students. To do less is no more responsible than handing them a loaded gun. 

55. Integrate technology into your worst units. 

Every teacher I know has units that are weak. When I taught 7th grade English, I dreaded the poetry unit. Kids didn’t like it and I didn’t like it. It stunk. 

A big mistake many teachers make is plunking some technology-related project smack into their best units, the strong ones that have great activities, are supported by wonderful resources, and are loved by the students.  

This may come as a surprise, but technology-enhanced projects do not always go well the first time. And by placing them in a strong part of your curriculum, you run a high risk of screwing up a good thing. 

Plunk these projects in your worst area of the curriculum.  

Things can only get better. 

56. The franchise dilemma. 

Why do classroom projects work well for the originator and not when others try it. It’s because of what I call the "franchise dilemma." In the restaurant business, there are many great local restaurants, but when an attempt is made to franchise them, a very small percentage are successful. Why? Because it’s impossible to export the passion and artistry of the person who made the first restaurant successful. 

Teachers have stunningly successful projects because of their passion for the topic or method they used. One fellow each year has his kids research the history of a local building and turn the research into articles for the local paper. When others have tried this they don't seem to make it "go." 

The best we can do is offer examples of projects which have worked for others and then glean the kernel of pedagogy that made them so successful - relevance, leveraging the popularity of technology, group work, affective skill attainment, etc. 

We can’t "teacher-proof" teaching. Without genuine personal investment in what and how we teach, the job just becomes a mindless set of actions.  

57. Teach what you use. 

In 1982, the board of the district in which I was librarian and English teacher decided to buy an Apple II computer instead of library books. I was not happy. And instead of processing books with my three days of extended contract time, I taught myself the AppleWriter word processing program. At the end of those three days, I thought “Wow!” 

I was suddenly no longer captive of some of my own writing limitations: bad handwriting, crummy spelling, and poor keyboarding skills that made revision painful and time-consuming. My stuff looked professional. I was liberated. 

Ten seconds later I realized that everyday I taught about 75 kids who might also experience such liberation. Technology use in schools suddenly made sense. 

Teach with the technology that personally empowers you. 

If it works with third graders, it’ll fly with adults (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

 51. Law of Assessment: You'll only get what you want if you can describe what you want.

Speaker and consultant Debbie Silver has a perfect term for the kids who have the ability to read their teacher’s minds. She calls them little “bow-heads.” 

You know them. The little girls and boys who seem to instinctively know just what the teacher wants on any given assignment. The ones who always get their papers displayed on the bulletin board. The ones who get into the college of their choice.

Debbie and others are out to help level the playing field for those of us who lacked such intuition by advocating the use of good assessment tools that serve as a guide to the completion and quality of school work. These checklists and rubrics are given at the beginning of an assignment and used to check progress during it.

Speaking from experience, parents of less than academically over-achieving children appreciate such tools as well.

Don’t be surprised if you don’t get quality work if you can’t describe it.

 52. If you want creativity you have to ask for it.

My son once came home with the assignment:

“Write a paper about bats.”

I nearly suggested he copy the entry from an encyclopedia and tell his teacher that someone else had already done this job. Instead we worked on whether we should and how we could attract bats to our own backyard.

I have very little sympathy for teachers who complain about plagiarism but who continue to give assignments that don’t ask for any kind of originality.

Oh, for the record, it’s always been the teacher who drew the short straw who got my son as a student – through no fault of his own.

53. If it works with third graders, it’ll fly with adults.

I did not make it through Algebra II in high school and I remain math-phobic. But I aced my graduate statistics class. All thanks to the instructor.

My guess is that Bill understood that folks who take a statistics class on Saturday mornings in the spring are there to meet a program requirement, not to become statisticians. As a former junior high math teacher, Bill used the same techniques with us that he did with 12-year-olds:

• Lots of review
• Lots of relevant examples
• Lots of applied practice
• Lots of humor
• Lots more review
• Clear expectations of what would be on the test.

I can’t tell a T-score from a standard deviation from the norm today, but I can tell you that good teaching is good teaching whether it is with adults or kids.