BFTP: The power of the handwritten thank you

While I have never made a secret of the fact that I never missed classroom teaching, preferring to work with adults, it was fun to get back in the classroom now and again.

During I Love to Read month one year when schools asked guest readers to share books with elementary students, I read Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk to second grade students. As both a librarian and a writer, I deeply identified with Sam and was happy to share the book with a class of very interested and engaged kids. The cards in the photo above (and more) came in the interschool mail a week after.

While the reward of doing these sorts of things was actually in the doing - it was just plain fun - I was tickled to receive the handwritten cards as well.

Written thank yous are sort of a big deal in my family. (I am not saying you'd never get another gift if one does not send thanks for the previous gift, but I wouldn't take a chance with a couple relatives.) Anyway, my children and now grandchildren seem to be thank you card writers, and I am pleased.

My job as a technology director was to promote and help people use digital tools. I, personally, find it more convenient to send an email or text than a letter or make a phone call. And yet, I also understand the power of seeing a handwritten message, of hearing a human voice, of having a face-to-face conversation.

Call me old fashioned, call me sentimental, but I still like people better than things. And handwritten notes better than texts.

Original post 3/19/15

BFTP: Writing FOR understanding

As the pandemic keeps me inside this spring, I've been finding myself with more time to write, but less inspiration and ideas for new topics. So I have been going back over old posts and doing a bit of a refresh on them and reposting as BFTP (Blast From The Past) entries, allowing me to reflect on my "writing life." This old post sums up the "why I write" professionally. _____________________________________________

The most popular explanation is that opaque prose is a deliberate choice. Bureaucrats insist on gibberish to cover their anatomy. Plaid-clad tech writers get their revenge on the jocks who kicked sand in their faces and the girls who turned them down for dates. Pseudo-intellectuals spout obscure verbiage to hide the fact that they have nothing to say, hoping to bamboozle their audiences with highfalutin gobbledygook.

But the bamboozlement theory makes it too easy to demonize other people while letting ourselves off the hook. In explaining any human shortcoming, the first tool I reach for is Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The kind of stupidity I have in mind has nothing to do with ignorance or low IQ; in fact, it's often the brightest and best informed who suffer the most from it. Steven Pinker, The Source of Bad Writing, Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2014

I read Pinker's essay with great interest. He explains "The Curse of Knowledge":

The curse of knowledge is the single best explanation of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn't occur to the writer that her readers don't know what she knows—that they haven't mastered the argot of her guild, can't divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualize a scene that to her is as clear as day. And so the writer doesn't bother to explain the jargon, or spell out the logic, or supply the necessary detail.

Much of the professional writing I did was explanatory, not visionary, in nature. I tried to translate tech terms and systems into prose that administrators, librarians, and teachers could understand - in the hope they would find it important and useful. My Head for the Edge columns in Library Media Connection and Power Up! columns in ASCD's Educational Leadership required this ability to explain technology in relevant and understandable ways to people for whom technology is not their first love - or their hundredth. 

My practice, I hoped, was the opposite of Pinker's (and Calvin's) explanation of bad writing practices.

I found that my own mediocre intelligence aided me in this effort. If I could find the analogies, the simple words, the vivid examples that helped me understand a complex topic, I could then use the same to help others who had the intellect but perhaps not the patience to understand it. (I've investigated this a bit before: Shallow wit vs deep intellect.)

Too many technical people suffer from what I call the alpha wolf syndrome: I am the baddest animal in the pack if I know more technical terms than anyone else. If I discover the latest app or educational theory. If I can embarrass someone else by discovering a gap in his/her knowledge. I somehow think this tendency goes beyond Pinker's guess that it revenge on jocks by nerds. But it does smell like a power trip.

For me, perhaps, the best path to clear writing is to reflect on the reason one does it in the first place. Is it an ego boost? Is it stun the world? Is it to gain fame and fortune? Is it to show just how much I know (and you don't)?

Or is it explore one's field, to help others, and perhaps improve the world in some small way? And to have a little fun in the process.

Original post 3/12/15

BFTP: Reading is good for you

As the Corona virus keeps me at home, I find myself reading more and more. The baroness's findings below are probably more accurate now than ever. Find new things to read, my readers, and share the good ones. Oh, I obviously wrote this when the local YMCA was still open for business. The good old days...

Image source

I own a t-shirt decorated with the Edward Gorey cartoon shown above. It is black and I wear it to the YMCA as part of my exercise togs. It engenders more comments than either of the other two black t-shirts I wear - one with a University of Iowa Hawkeyes logo and the other with a New Orleans's aquarium poison frogs design.

"What do you read?" is the most common question asked (and usually by other old farts like me) and discussion ensues. I always found this curious. Why does a shirt about men reading deserve comment? Men do read. A lot of them. Me included.

Reading has always been so much a part of my life that I've never really stopped to think about the benefits. Like fresh air, clean water, and good health, an engaging book has always just been present. Lucky me. In Why we all need books: The benefits of reading for pleasure, Baroness Gail Rebuck, reports (and if you can't believe a baroness, just who can you believe?) that: 

Adults who spend just 30 minutes a week reading are 20 per cent more likely to be satisfied with their lives.

Amongst the many benefits experienced by regular readers were higher self-esteem and greater self-acceptance.

... reading, although paradoxically a solitary activity, actually helps us feel less isolated.

One in four readers say that a book has helped them realise that other people have shared their life experiences.

Readers also find it easier to make decisions and are 10 per cent more capable of planning and prioritising. ...

With just 30 minutes of reading a week, two thirds of readers report a better understanding of other people’s feelings.

Readers were also found to have a stronger and more engaged awareness of social issues and of cultural diversity than non-readers.

Regular readers reported 57 per cent greater cultural awareness and 21 per cent more general knowledge.

...  readers reported higher levels of creativity than non-readers

...readers were more comfortable with strangers, reporting not only that they find it easier to start conversations but also find greater enjoyment in these interactions.

I would like every child to be a real reader. Not just a proficient reader. Not just a student who has passed a reading test. But as a person who reads - for pleasure, for enlightenment, for greater satisfaction with life.

I am not sure public schools are producing readers, at least not in the sense of people who voluntarily read on a regular basis because it satisfies them.

If there is anything we as educators should be ashamed of and should cause us to lose sleep at night, it is because in the pursuit of getting kids to pass a reading test, we are killing the joy of reading.

All children should be given the opportunity to learn to love to read.

Original post 3/3/15