To read or not to read

I’ve got a twelve-year-old struggling to read and a school that says they’re “done with reading,” meaning that they assume everyone has mastered the skill by now, and they are moving on to more in-depth uses of reading. Since this kid was in second grade, I’ve been told he had “symptoms of dyslexia,” but he was denied the diagnosis due to other disabilities, which meant he hasn’t gotten any particular help aside from what his blind Mama could give.

Now they’re saying that boat has sailed, and no help will be provided regardless. He also can’t get access to text-based accommodations, so he’s failing social studies and science, subjects where reading is now the primary access point.

And of course, this is hard on his self-esteem, the key component of the motivation to “work hard”—the school’s primary suggestion.

Teachers are likely to point fingers at parents in these situations, but some kids struggle, due to disability and the diagnosis of dyslexia is narrower than most people realize. I’ve read to my kids every day—stressed or not, exhausted or not—since before they could sit up. It wasn’t a chore for me. I love reading and I love kids’ books. I also started them on early phonics at age two and they’ve done practice reading every day. In short, it isn’t for lack of opportunity at home.

Image via Pixabay - A somber young man reading in a dim space

One of my kids was given a bit of school-based intervention for dyslexia, even without the formal diagnosis, and that one has now taken flight in reading, despite significant neuro-developmental disability, reading for fun and thus gaining the strength to also use reading for information gathering.

But the other one has been left behind, despite vigorous daily efforts at home. There have been many tears over it and plenty of pressure to “just let it go” from other adults who don’t want to deal with the hassle.

You’re reading a blog, so I’m betting you enjoy reading or at least don’t find it to be an odious chore. That actually makes this a hard topic to truly discuss because it may seem obvious that we all agree on it, at least here in this forum.

But the problem isn’t so much whether or not you personally read. It’s how important reading is, what we should do to help struggling readers, what resources should be devoted to making sure everyone has access, and last but not least, what you read.

Oddly enough, to explore these questions of reading, it helps to look at the numbers.

The separating gets serious by third grade. Third graders who can’t pass a basic reading proficiency test are 5 times less likely to graduate from high school. About a quarter don’t pass.

In sixth grade the divide sharpens. The vast majority (82 percent) of sixth graders who fail an English class never graduate from high school, even late or with a specialized diploma. And yet, the school tells me we have to “wait and see” for any help for my sixth grader.

By this age, 85 percent of the curriculum is taught through reading. Kids who struggle to read and don’t get the help they need have high rates of discipline and emotional problems because of the huge toll on their self esteem. They not only drop out at higher rates and don’t attend further education, but they have great difficulty in adult life, accessing information and employment. They become an easy mark for scam artists and debt sharks.

Now, I do know people who read well enough and function as adults, who even went to college but don’t particularly like to read. Despite the stereotype that bookish people are socially isolated, I observe that people who don’t read books are often noticeably more arrogant and unfriendly as well as less happy, something that large-scale research bares out.

A study by Kingston University found that people who read books (rather than watch TV or videos for entertainment) show significantly higher levels of empathy and cooperative social behavior, essentially the building blocks of civilization. The more a person reads fiction, the more empathy for others they gain, likely because one of the functions of fiction is to imagine oneself into a different person’s life, much more so than when watching a story on a screen, where we are still always on the outside looking in.

But so what? Isn’t it up to each individual to choose to read or not?

Pew research showed last year that 23 percent of American adults said they didn’t read an actual book (digital or otherwise) in the past year. On the surface, that doesn’t seem too bad. It’s less than a quarter and not everybody cultivates reading books as a hobby.

But if you break that number down, it becomes more troubling. A full 11 percent of college educated adults didn’t read a book in the past year. Given that they went to college, it seems likely that whatever field they’re in, it would make sense to read at least professional books or self-help or how-tos, but that 11 percent doesn’t.

It gets even more disturbing as you dig deeper into the data. While white adults (20 percent) and black adults (25 percent) reported not reading a book at similar levels to the average, Hispanic adults had a much higher rate of not reading (38 percent). And why is that so troubling?

Maybe Hispanics just don’t like to read. But that doesn’t make logical sense. As a minority, Hispanics still struggle in education, but not significantly more than African Americans or other minorities. Instead, it has to do with the fact that they speak a different language and yet live in a country with a very dominant, official language.

The very existence of the descrepancy between everybody else and Hispanics in America shows that it is NOT just that 23 percent of Americans are disinterested in reading (and by some people’s measure, just plain lazy). For a large part of them, it is a matter of access.

Yes, we can download digital books in Spanish, those of us with the money to have good phones and a subscription. But it’s harder to just go to your local library and find more than a handful of books to read in Spanish. It’s harder to get a Spanish-language book at a Scholastic Book Fair or a garage sale or even just from a friend.

Of course, if an individual Hispanic person focuses a huge amount of attention on obtaining Spanish-language books, they’ll likely get them. But it takes a lot more time and energy, so there are simply fewer people who end up going through it.

Similarly. the percent of people who haven’t read a book in the past year and household income shows an unfailing inverse relationship—with 30 percent of adults with a household income of less than $30,000 per year not reading and only 15 percent of adults with income greater than $75,000 per year not reading. In this case, both time and money may be issues, because people with lower incomes tend to work more hours and have less free time (one of those counter-intuitive facts of our economic system).

Of course, the causation does go the other way as well. People who can’t read well can’t get even trade education, can’t get jobs, can’t keep jobs, can’t navigate bureaucracies, and can’t pay bills, keep out of debt or avoid scams. They inevitably have far fewer opportunities in life, because of the society we live in.

Sometimes I’m frustrated with my sixth-grader who feels demotivated about reading, since he’s been struggling with it as long as he can remember with little help and no end in sight. At other times, I think of the life he might have had in a different era. Life was hard when people lived primarily by agriculture, but this kid is a hard worker, brawny and excellent with animals. He would likely have been fine. He’s agile, healthy as a horse and a good shot. He would have made a superior hunter-gatherer as well.

Just as with so many other disabilities, it is the society we live in that dictates which disabilities are the most limiting. Missing a hand, could have been meant hunger and even death in many ages past. Today, it isn’t considered much of a big deal. But a reading disability seriously exposes a person to our world’s worst dangers from health and safety to hunger and homelessness.

I see this kid with many other things that are important to him and the need for reading to get through the rest of school and to function in our society seriously cuts into the time and energy he has for other things. Struggling with reading often takes up the majority of our evening free time.

Even knowing the vast benefits of reading and my personal love of it, I do sometimes wish we could just focus on the things that this kid is good at and that matter to him. But how can I let it go as a parent, in good conscience, knowing the costs.

What I know is that reading is essential if one is to have choices and genuine freedom in today’s world. It is at least as valuable as a major sense like sight or hearing. If a child was blind and there was a sight-saving surgery available, it is hard to imagine that our society would just say “Tough luck.”

But this is essentially what our schools have told us for years. The expense and trouble it would take to do individualized work to help a struggling student to read is deemed unreachable. We’re either told it is too early for intervention or now suddenly it’s too late.

To read is the quintessential skill of the modern world. It makes a particularly enriching hobby. but it is also an absolute necessity even for those who don’t revel in it. To read or not to read. Now that truly is the question that matters today.

On teaching kids boring history... and a few free not-boring texts

While my kids are now provisionally back in school after COVID-19 lockdown, I have homeschooled them in English for years because we live in a non-English-speaking country and I also tutor other kids, I have a subscription to Education.com, a major site for teaching materials and lesson plans.

Most of the time, I’m pretty satisfied with Education.com, including their online math and typing games, which come in quite handy. This isn’t so much a rant about one site but rather a critical look at the way history is taught in elementary schools in general.

Creative Commons image by Odleywonderworks of Flickr.com

I can’t even say that the US is particularly bad in this regard. At least, in some American schools, they incorporate projects, plays, dioramas and historical reading into history. But the basic teaching materials, the textbooks and worksheets, which get used to fill in the gaps are still excruciatingly boring.

A lot of progress has been made in the US to teach more truthful and balanced history, since I was a child. When I was a kid, I remember being terribly frustrated by social studies and history classes, as well as horrendously bored. I could tell that just beyond the droning on about pilgrims and pompous founding fathers, there were amazing stories that I wanted to hear. Maybe I sensed this because of the things I heard at home, but at least it kept me from condemning the entire subject of history the way a lot of my friends did.

Today, the standard materials for American history classes are much more diverse and include a lot of famous women and people of color. There are still parts where the focus is heavily on the lives of the rich and powerful at the expense of the people I can relate to, but there has been progress.

Still, that isn’t even the crux of my problem with history teaching in schools and I see the same problem in a vastly different culture, where the focus is on their own history. In the briefest terms, the problem with the history materials is simply boredom.

Don’t get me wrong. Now I love history. When I was in high school, I joined a medieval history club. When I was a newspaper journalist, my history graphs inserted into news stories to give background always packed a particular punch. I devour historical fiction and non-fiction alike. But the stuff we give kids in lower elementary grades is just a mishmash of mediocre writing, disconnected facts and cumbersome official terminology, not to mention the dates, which most younger kids are not remotely prepared to comprehend.

Most early elementary students have a shaky grasp of time beyond a few months ago, let alone the span of human history. Inserting a beginning date to any event can start students along the path to understanding timelines. Constructing a visual timeline will eventually help. But overuse of dates that kids can’t relate to turns their brains off faster than anything I know of.

The other thing that turns them off and results in a lot of frustration for me as a parent is the use of unnecessarily difficult vocabulary and official terminology. Granted, my kids are bilingual and they have learning disabilities. They speak English conversationally, but it is their second language and their vocabulary isn’t up to grade level, despite all of the bedtime stories I’ve read to them over the years.

But even for native speakers., elementary history texts are overburdened with official phrases. While adults may be hung up on the importance of terms like “received an honorable discharge” or “considered to be historical treasures” and have good reasons for them, the fact is that most kids will actually understand and care a lot more if they read that someone “left the military” or that “many people feel that this building is very special because of its history.”

I am likely to get a lot of pushback here from educators who insist that “dumbing down” the texts or oversimplifying harms kids. I’m not asking for a dumbing down and the level of complexity is really up to how long the teacher wants to spend on the subject. The question is simply whether or not you use vocabulary and sentence structure that most of the kids have any experience with.

I have little patience with those who argue that this is a matter of slower kids holding back the high achievers. I was a bookworm and a voracious high achiever as a child and I too found the history texts boring and irrelevant. Even I didn’t understand all of the official terminology and the texts were unnecessarily focused on things that I couldn’t relate to. The difference was only that I could slog through them because I had a large vocabulary and a steady attention span. I still suffered and would have preferred well-written and kid-friendly history texts.

I am unfortunately not in the business of writing history textbooks for kids, but I did rewrite several short history texts for my kids during COVID homeschooling.

In the process I also noticed that the “reading comprehension” questions on many history worksheets actually reference facts not included in the text. So, I made sure that my questions do reference the actual text on the sheet to check for comprehension, rather than requiring previous knowledge to complete.

I offer these few here for parents who find themselves homeschooling, whether voluntarily or not. For native speakers, they will be useful reading material for second to fourth grade. For ESL students they will work well even up to sixth grade.

I will add more as I have time to write them, but even these few are proof that historical profiles can be made easy-to-read as well as interesting without sacrificing the most important facts.

Coaching kids in writing and story-telling

From the Lawrence University Writing Lab to ESL students, from talented teens to my own child with a learning disability, I’ve coached a wide variety of young students in writing. I was also once a child, experimenting in writing with a minimum of instruction and support.

My experience isn’t all-encompassing, but it has given me some tips I would like to share about how to coach children and young people in writing.

An old saying contends that you should not “teach” writing at all: “Teach children to read and they will write because they cannot help themselves.” And there is something to that.

If you assume writing is simply the paper equivalent of speaking, it makes perfect sense. Once a person has the building blocks, they will self express. But writing (and speaking for that matter) are to skilled story-telling, instruction or persuasion as a slouchy walk is to the skills of a professional athlete. Barring disability, everyone will learn to walk just by passively observing others walk. Almost no one will become a highly skilled athlete, if left on their own.

The actual writing mechanics are important, though there have been excellent authors and story-tellers who did not entirely master them. There are also skills beyond that must be developed and honed. A teacher or coach can be a help (or a hindrance) in this development. For some, a teacher may not be necessary at all, but for most some kind of coaching is helpful and development won’t progress as fast or as far without it.

Creative Commons image by odleywonderworks of Flickr.com

Writing can be taught.

Technical forms of writing can be taught in a fairly standard way, in which inner motivation and self-confidence is important but not all-encompassing. However, technical writing without the creative spark is only adequate, even in computer manuals. Skilled and versatile writing, which can be turned at will from concise, clear instruction to gripping, emotive narrative, can only be fostered and developed with practice and dedication.

Today’s media-saturated, hyper-verbal world needs endless numbers of skilled, versatile writers in every field from business to science, cottage industries to Hollywood. The ability to write clearly and with spirit, to direct written (or theoretically spoken) words with deft and precise intention and to employ style, voice and mood as easily as a pro basketball player pivots and shoots is among the most crucial skills for professional success in today’s world. It is also a source of intense personal satisfaction and happiness.

Yet this level of skill is unlikely to mature on its own. There have been cases of amazing, untaught writers, but they are rare and thus all rather famous people. For the most part, writing can and should be coached. But still the most important tips for any writing teacher, coach or parent hoping to foster the skill in a child are the pitfalls to avoid.

The main reason we question whether or not writing should be taught is that it is easy to botch the process and do more harm than good. Here is my list of DON’Ts:

1. Don’t look over a child’s shoulder while they are writing. Every stage of writing, from the first tracing of letter shapes, through the arduous decoding of plot and tension is a process. Teaching and appropriate materials help, but there is always an experimentation stage. That’s the part where teachers have a tendency to peek and stop the process on the inevitable mistakes. But the process is necessary. Self-correction is much more powerful than external correction. Wait for a result, before commenting and correcting. My most telling example of this comes from my own experience. When I was seventeen, a teacher looked over my shoulder while I was writing a short story in typing class after I had finished the regular assignment. The teacher, who I had a close relationship with, made a comment that was only mildly critical and no doubt was meant as respectful collegial advice. I don’t remember the content of the comment twenty-five years later, but I did not write another word of fiction for five years. I became highly proficient in non-fiction, but I harbored a deep-seated belief that I was not cut out for fiction. I have now published ten fiction books, but retrieving my confidence was a struggle. Silly? Yes. It was a silly teenage reaction. It was also a sadly typical example of the overreaction of young writers,, particularly to unexpected commentary in the midst of the process.

2. If you must look, don’t comment over their shoulder. I can hear my child’s teacher mutter, “Yes, but we have to watch in order to correct the way the child hold’s the pen. Letting them get away with a sloppy grip is setting them up for a lifetime of pain and frustration.” There may be medical reasons like this to observe. I suggest, either gently forming the child’s fingers on the pen or gently reminding the child from the other side of the room. The fact is that over-the-shoulder commenting is so destructive that it must be avoided at all cost.

3. Don’t insist on reading everything a child writes. Even a small child will do some experiments entirely on their own. I used to find little scraps of paper with notes to dolls and stuffed animals scribbled in atrocious handwriting and bizarre spelling by my bilingual, learning-disabled child scattered around the house. Older kids will write stories and journals that they will sometimes not want to share. Sometimes we do have to reinforce good spelling, but doing it wrong in a bit of private writing is not actually going to set them in bad habits for life. The language center of the brain is mercifully more flexible than most. Experimentation is crucial to the process and some of it must be done unobserved.

4. Don’t focus too much on mechanics. Writing mechanics are important—crucial even. This is the medium writers work in, but mastering mechanics can take a long time and it varies widely individual to individual. There are other crucial skills that need to be learned at the same time and too great a focus on mechanics can stunt development in other areas. Far too many children lose all interest in writing at a young age because the focus of instruction is exclusively on mechanics until they have been mastered. But I will never forget the day my dyslexic daughter with severe attention problems first sat at a table for 45 minutes writing without even being asked in third grade. I was shocked. She struggles in every aspect of school. But that day she wrote a story with a beginning, middle and end, including conflict and resolution, in some of the worst handwriting, grammar and spelling ever combined into coherent prose. Her classroom teacher agreed that few among her high-achieving classmates could structure a story like that, though they were far better at the mechanics. And I had never coached her on this. Had I stopped her over mechanics, we might never have discovered that she has this hidden strength.

5. Don’t criticize beyond the level achieved. By the same token, it is important to restrict criticism to the general level achieved by the student. Many of my students have English as a second language. If I were to criticize their descriptions or sentence structure on a professional level, there would never be anything positive to say. And even the most talented children rarely have a good grasp of plot structure or tension flow. Coaches and teachers must keep comments confined roughly to the level the child is at with a light push toward the next level.

6. Don’t over-praise. It is not just that over-praise is sickly sweet and children can smell it a mile away. Over-praise also cheapens the currency of praise, which is crucial to coaching. It is essential to find whatever is positive in every attempt, even if it is only effort and one well-chosen word. But comparing the writing to others or inflating the child’s expectations is rarely helpful.

7. Don’t make blanket statements. It should not need to be mentioned, but unfortunately over time some teachers become overconfident and believe they can make predictions about a child’s over all writing ability based on the work at hand and they feel a need to make broad statements of criticism, such as, “You have a poor grasp of story structure.” This is no doubt true of most students at various stages. However, the comment is unhelpful. It is not specific enough to give useful instruction and because of the sensitivity of young writers (and most adult writers), it can too easily be interpreted as an overall condemnation of their innate talent.

8. Don’t avoid comment altogether. All this warning about how easy it is to completely mess up the teaching of writing might make you shy about saying anything at all. While comments don’t need to be lengthy, some comment and especially highly specific comments are truly necessary. Simply not commenting at all can imply greater criticism than you might think, and even if you can only comment with your own personal reaction, be specific and as precise as possible.

Creative Commons image by Odleywonderworks of Flickr.com

Don’t let all the prohibitions get you down. There are useful things you can do as a writing teacher or coach. Keeping the DON’Ts in mind is simply a good safeguard. Now let’s get down to the DOs.

1. Do make sure the child is learning writing mechanics and reading, if not with you, than with someone else. While it is not the top priority at all stages of the process, a solid understanding of mechanics (if not necessarily perfect rendition of them) and copious amounts of absorbed verbiage (if not necessarily print to eyeball in reception) are indispensable for the mastery of writing. Reading is important not only because the child will learn by example the structures and possibilities of storytelling, but also because the more you read, the easier writing mechanics will be to learn. Children with text disabilities will struggle here. I was 90 percent blind as a child and have always read at about a tenth the speed of my peers. My dyslectic brother and I shared terrible handwriting and outrageous spelling—him because dyslexia plays havoc with the way the brain recalls and perceives letters in sequence and me because, although i absorbed vast numbers of books, I used an audio format and simply didn’t read enough words visually to drill the correct spellings into my memory. We both did learn mechanics eventually, but only after becoming pretty solid writers with the help of computer spellchecks.

2. Ensure quality and quantity of input. Do make sure the child has a lot of stories, non-fiction texts and other useful reading material in whatever format is appropriate. Regardless of the child’s ability to physically read, writing does share this with spoken language. The more a young child is exposed to diverse and skillful language, the more they will be able to express language flexibly and effectively. Read to the child, make sure there are audio books if the child is not physically reading with ease, and tell stories on the fly. Read letters, encyclopedia entries and anything else available. Not all of it needs to be high-quality and none of it needs to be in archaic, formal language, but a wide variety is desirable.

3. In the beginning, get the child forming sentences… any sentences. If you’re starting at the very beginning with a child or have an ESL student, the first major hurdle is forming sentences. This is NOT dependent on mastery of mechanics, although learning letters, handwriting, spelling and grammar is usually going on roughly in the same period. If forming sentences is a struggle, the surefire way to get it rolling is to provide a list of subjects (either as words—pronouns, names, etc.—or as pictures—a boy, a girl, a fairy, a cat, etc.), a list of verbs (again either as words or pictures), and a list of predicates (either objects in pictures or more complex sentence endings in words, depending on the student’s level). Then play with them together with your student. Mix them around on cards. Try different combinations. Point out how they have to go in a certain order and how that order changes if there is a question. Let the child draw lines connecting their choice of a subject to a verb and then to a predicate. Then gradually take away one list and then another to allow the child to choose freely. Emphasize that there are no wrong choices, as long as the correct type of word is used. Encourage silliness at this stage, e.g. “The elephant skates on the roof.”

4. Write out answers in other subjects only during the correct stage. When I was a kid in sixth grade science class I was irritated that my teachers always insisted that we write out answers in complete sentences, when a one- or two-word answer directly below the question would have sufficed for clarity. And at the same time, I could feel something very much like a muscle bulging and growing every time I was forced to write those sentences. Don’t give students useless busy work and if they are beyond the stage where good solid sentences are an issue, don’t require this, but for the vast majority of students through about 9th grade, this is good practice.

5. Write what is necessary. Get students writing letters to friends or family, shopping lists, notes to fellow students, calendars, logs of their hobbies, everything and anything. These things are not narrative writing and the mechanics don’t have to be perfect, but practice is still practice and the risks and emotional costs are lower in these tasks than if every time the child writes, it has to be laden with the significance of a creative writing project.

6. Do encourage independent attempts at writing. Some parents completely over- or under-react to their children’s writing experiments. Writing is much like drawing at this stage and the same reactions that encourage drawing will encourage writing. Comment warmly, make eye contact, smile and point out some well-executed detail. Praise effort and ask if you can display the child’s finished attempt without correcting it. Bad spelling here is the same as a drawing of a stick figure with only three fingers. Most of us know better than to criticize the drawing at this stage and the same goes for the writing. Instead say something like, “You put a lot of work into that. I see that robot really likes playing soccer. Is that right? Can we put it up on the refrigerator with your brother’s drawing?” Then you can lightly encourage other attempts when there is time and space. “I wonder if that robot from your story is having any other adventures that you could write about.”

7. Do encourage kids to keep journals, blogs and multi-media scrapbooks. I hesitate to make this a hard-and-fast requirement. Some students are reluctant writers and being forced to keep a journal may only demotivate them further. Others are already moving on to specific writing projects. There may also be structural reasons why journals don’t work in your coaching, such as irregular or infrequent meetings with your student. But if it is at all possible, journaling is a tried-and-true practice for the development of writing skills. Journals can be kept that simply record events, thoughts and feelings, or they can contain a series of writing prompts and reactions. Younger children may write one sentence per entry accompanied by a drawing. Even older children may use drawings, comic strips and artifacts pertaining to the text. These are all useful avenues. The world needs a wide variety of writers and writers of comics and ultra-short ad copy often make more money than long-form writers. If it is regular practice, it is almost guaranteed to be useful and skill-building.

8. Break stories down into basic parts. When you do get to the point of attempting a short story with a child, often in third or fourth grade, start by asking the child to identify the beginning, middle and end elements of a few short stories read aloud. Then introduce the idea that stories always involve a problem and someone who solves the problem. That “someone” is the main character. The problem and its solution form the “plot.” Whether or not you want to introduce those kinds of specialized terminology depends somewhat on the scope of your writing relationship.

9. Lead the child to story structure. Once the concepts are introduced, ask the child to try making up a story with you. Some will leap at the chance and want very little direction or involvement from you. That is your cue to withdraw and wait for a result the child is ready to show you. Many other children will be unsure and reticent at first. You can help by asking questions. “Who should solve the problem in the story?” Get a main character identified. Suggest a few ways to start by introducing the main character, such as “There once was a …. named …” Then ask, “Where is this character in the beginning?” Get another sentence worked out that introduces the setting. Then ask “What kind of problem does the character run into?” With some luck, your student will be able to form a few sentences more independently at this point. After one to three sentences about the problem have been recorded, ask the child. “How does the characters solve the problem?” And encourage him/her to wrap it up. This is a somewhat artificial starting point but after a few repetitions the child will be able to think of very short narratives. If the formation of sentences is still a problem, it may be necessary to continue with sentence-forming exercises of various types.

10. Decode non-fiction. The process for learning to write non-fiction differs mainly in the questions we ask. Ask the child to identify the main idea sentence in the beginning of short non-fiction texts for children, to list some details from the text and to identify a conclusion sentence. Then when a topic for non-fiction arises (a book report, a description of a nature scene, a log of a science project or similar), follow the same structure. Ask the child to start with a main idea sentence, list several details and conclude with a general statement again. These are building blocks a step beyond mechanics. They are also a frame on which the child will hang a variety. of other structures in the future.

11. Foster writing practice and discipline. Once the basics of mechanics and structure have been covered, if not perfectly mastered, you will find yourself in the tumultuous middle territory between beginnings and a basic skill level. Here the most important factor is practice, practice, practice. Make writing fun. Use creative writing prompts. Go interesting places to write. Set goals and make the sheer volume of words or pages a matter of pride and even competition.

12. Reward volume, rather than skill. This may seem counter intuitive but it is based on scientific evidence. You can set rewards but they should be focused on the completion of anything, rather than based on the merits of the writing. Studies have shown that rewards do not work well to motivate creativity or highly complex cognitive tasks. Praise primarily effort and the discipline of getting words onto paper. De-emphasize any sort of merit-based competition during this intermediate stage. Writing competitions are only helpful once older students start to demand them, and even then their usefulness can be questionable.

    (Note: This point is not supporting a soft-headed approach to writing that insists that all attempts are equal and students shouldn’t be steered toward excellence. It is simply strategic. While at very high levels of mastery, there may be subjective arguments about which author is better, there are also clear—even harsh—standards in writing as a craft. The goal is to teach kids real, versatile, skilled writing, and introducing creative competition to young writers too soon tends to stunt development, cause psychological stress and thus curtail the massive productivity that is crucial to practice.)

13. Discuss books, movies and stories in other forms that are important to their generation and culture. Dissect their plot, structure, characters, tension, mood, voice and style. Introducing these elements as something that can be discussed and decoded takes away a lot of the intimidating mystique they often carry. Even something as elusive as narrative voice can be discussed and understood.

14. Become a writing colleague. Once you have reached a level in which students are writing stories and/or non-fiction beyond a few pages, the teaching process resembles athletic coaching much more than academic instruction. Your role is that of mentor and role model as well as motivator. You provide direction, help to set goals and provide technical advice (i.e. correction and critique). However, there is a shift in the relationship to a less hierarchical teacher-student dynamic.

15. Present self doubt as normal and a long learning process as necessary to mastery. Some students may be impatient with their own progress at the intermediate and/or advanced stages and they are likely among the most promising writers for their age. They are self-critical and they absorb the false myth within the popular culture that writing, as well as acting and music, is mostly a matter of innate talent. Talent is helpful, but it is likely that students who are motivated enough to question it, have the prerequisites. The fact is, however, that writing, like any skilled craft requires huge amounts of practice, about ten thousand hours of practice in fact. This is a useful gauge that holds true for most creative and professional skills. Ten thousand hours roughly translates as ten years of working a full-time job. Below that limit of practice, even history’s most famous artists, writers and musicians were not skilled, even if they showed promise. Children and teenagers are pretty much guaranteed to be lacking in this area. Knowing that it is normal to need that level of practice can be both comforting and motivating to those who are committed to the craft.

16. Share struggles and frustrations. It may be helpful to share some of your own struggles along the path of writing. Students at this level find the fact that you had or may still have doubts or struggled with the discipline of writing to be encouraging and motivating. It is fine to admit that you don’t know everything and to show that there are things in writing, such as mechanics which are hard, cold laws, and there are things that are subjective matters of opinion. Eventually, you will even get to a point where you discuss the proposition that even those hard, cold laws should be broken by professionals at times, for specific reasons, such as using idiomatic grammar to portray dialect or general narrative voice.

17. Treat “writer’s block” as most likely rooted in anxiety. “Writer’s block” is a much discussed topic, but it is also largely perpetuated by myth. Many young writers may think they suffer from writer’s block. Certainly, a person’s mind can go blank from exhaustion, stress, anxiety or other problems, but it is not specific to writing. The most common issue behind complaints of “writer’s block” is anxiety and fear of failure. Part of a coach’s job is to instill an understanding that doubts and anxieties are normal, first drafts are easily edited and putting anything down is the first step on the road to writing success. If you have not had the teaching of this child from the beginning, there may be significant barriers of anxiety to work through. Creating sentences and even paragraphs according to prompts can be made into a game that results in a written narrative before the child realizes they have actually written something that works. This and other techniques can be used to crack open particularly hard cases of “writer’s block.”

18. Consider the possibility of exhaustion. With more advanced students who develop difficulties after a lot of writing, consider the possibility. of creative burn-out. Learning the discipline of taking breaks and returning to writing, incorporating exercise, food, water and proper breathing into the writing routine is every bit as important to developing writing skills as it is to a budding athlete. Writing saps a particular type of mental energy and either in the short-term—or worse over the long-term-this energy can be depleted. If a student was successful and highly motivated in the past, but is now flagging, this is a serious issue requiring significant breaks, physical activity and the development of healthy long-term habits.

19. Form a critique circle. Advanced coaching for teens can be done one-on-one and also in groups. A small group of two or three students at a roughly similar level may actually be preferable to individual coaching. Critiquing the work of others is excellent training and learning discernment while absorbing the criticisms of peers is crucial. That said, rules of critique need to be strictly enforced and shared by the coach or teacher. Criticism must be focused on a specific issue in a specific piece of writing. As mentioned earlier, it is not the place of a critique to make blanket statements about the abilities of the writer. At maximum, you may mention that a similar issue has come up before.

20. Question your own knowledge and assumptions. Coaches and teachers must also keep in mind that even on specific issues, we don’t always know better than our students, even if we have vastly more writing experience. For example, one of the best writing instructors I ever had was a professor at Lawrence University. I was consistently the student who produced the highest word count and other students were nervous about critiquing my work, so the professor was rightly a bit hard on me. My most advanced work at the university was a short story about Ukrainian border guards, using an experience I had while studying abroad in the former Soviet Union as research for the setting. The professor, who had never been in this strange and surreal locale, delivered harsh criticism of my use of setting and social norms. Fortunately for my shaky self-confidence as a writer, there was an Eastern European student in the class with the guts to tell the professor that he was wrong. I too have been wrong on topics my advanced students know more about than I do.

21. Require eventual sharing of some work. You may encounter students who appear to be writing, even writing large amounts of material, but never feel ready to share it. As you can see from other points, this is a tricky situation. Some solitary process is necessary and yet clearly there comes a point where not sharing one’s work becomes counterproductive to development. It is hard to know exactly where this line is with each individual student. But most of the time, a student who won’t share anything is suffering from extensive performance anxiety. Some students with significant ability will go so far as to fail writing courses that base the grade solely on pages filled, rather than turn in writing assignments. Try a variety of different methods to help students through this. Group critique sessions may be too intimidating at first, but a student may be open to sharing only with a teacher or only with a single peer. There are also peer, sharing websites today on the internet, where a student can choose an anonymous user name and share a sample of work to be critiqued by others. While this approach has it’s risks because some online critiques are intentionally harsh for sport, it can also alleviate anxiety as the student sees how reactions to his/her work compare to that of other beginning writers.

I hope these tips are helpful to teachers, coaches and interested parents. Writing, in the end, is a creative craft like all others. Practice is key and talent may manifest in unexpected ways.

What they need to grow: An interview with children's illustrator Julie Freel

Here is another interview with Children's Wheel of the Year illustrator, Julie Freel. This time I want to let you in on her other life, which is as an expert on the emotional development of children. Her input has also been very helpful on the writing side of the books, ensuring that the stories and dialogue are helpful to children, even as they entertain.

Welcome back to the blog, Julie.

How is the illustrating for this project going?

It's getting easier and more fun.

You work with children for your day job, right?

I am a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. I've provided services to children and families for 25 years.

We always say plants need soil, water and sunlight to grow. Can you sum up what children need to grow and flourish?

Kids need safety and security to survive. To thrive, children need a reliable someone paying attention, providing care and nurture. To flourish, kids need motivational opportunities such as new experiences and ideas as well as opportunities to develop skills and talents.

What role does self-confidence play?

At a certain age, kids need challenges. Shanna and the Goddess is a story about how challenges help to build confidence. Giving children an opportunity to meet challenges helps them develop a healthy sense of self, challenges that are genuinely meaningful within the context of their lives.

The opportunity to be needed and the feeling that your contribution is valuable can develop a sense of self, if it's not above your developmental level. A five-year-old without an available parent who has to figure out how to get food for his three-year-old sister isn't being provided with a helpful challenge because it’s beyond their developmental level, causing later emotional problems. But if it is a challenge that causes you to stretch and prove your abilities, where you get the opportunity to test your real limits, it builds confidence.

Self-confidence is what underlies motivation and the ability and willingness to try things, make mistakes, learn and grow. Many people have abilities and exceptional talents but are unable to find the motivation to express them. Some people say it's laziness but I would say it has more to do with lack of self-confidence. Self-confidence makes life more fun.

What is self-regulation and why is it important to children's development?

Self-regulation is the ability to manage our emotions and behavior within the context of the expectations in our situation. It includes emotional regulation; or the ability to manage emotions, to calm oneself when upset and to adjust to changes. These skills allow us to direct our behavior towards goals despite the unpredictability of the world and flux of our own feelings. Without adequate emotional regulation, children are less capable of succeeding socially and academically. Our abilities to self regulate are largely developed before the age of three, including prenatal development. With a safe environment and responsive caregivers, children develop the capacity to calm themselves under stress. Without a safe environment, our brains develop patterns of hormonal responses that last a lifetime and take a great deal of effort to manage, impacting our abilities to be fully present to our life experiences.

Do you think self-regulation is particularly important because of the emphasis of today's society on academic success in a sedentary structure?

Self regulation is important in any society. There is a difference between being able to regulate ones’ emotions and the ability to sustain attention. A societal emphasis on academic success within a sedentary structure is not conducive to sustained attention for many children. But being able to regulate emotions is essential to social connectedness and success with any endeavor that requires sustained effort. Our abilities to self regulate directly relate essential relationship skills: to our ability to be present to our own emotional experience and that of another person.

What are some ways to help kids who struggle with self-regulation in school?

It depends on the need. It is helpful to have a calm-down place where kids can self regulate. Children benefit from learning mindfulness skills such as body awareness and yoga. Emotional intelligence skills can be taught; for example, learning to identify and name your feelings and expressing them to others calmly. These skills can be integrated into social relationship skill building. Children need to be taught how to express themselves in ways that are sensitive to others and help in problem solving their daily challenges.

Help kids talk about important issues--such as bullying, social exclusion, difficulties keeping up
academically--with each other. Normalize the need for calming down and the need to help each other calm down. Teach children how to be there for each other when someone is having a hard time.

In addition, doing projects--just getting out and doing things--is a huge predictor of future success for children. That's one reason why too much time sitting in front of video games is such a problem for children. They aren't having opportunities for building the many skills that are necessary steps toward self regulation, confidence and competence.

The book Shanna and the Goddess has a lot about children gardening. Do kids gain more from gardening than just technical skills like other chores?

Gardening helps children connect to nature and the earth, offering a source of calm and connectedness to the environment as well as to one’s family. Nature is one of the greatest sources of internal peace and satisfaction.

With so many demands today--academics, sports, foreign languages, creative enrichment opportunities for kids and then those chores--do you have any advice for parents hoping to include some sort of spirituality in their children's lives?

If it is a part of your life, spirituality will naturally be a part of your children's lives. If you want spiritually based celebrations, you have to make that choice and put it into practice for yourself and your family. Living your spirituality has to be integrated into your daily life as well as your celebrations, in order to be meaningful.

Thank you so much for your perspective on this. And happy painting!

Summer is coming and the fourth Shanna book is here

The turning point of the new moon is just hours away. And that makes this a perfect moment to announce a new beginning.

The fourth book in the Children's Wheel of the Year has finally arrived. This is, of course, the long-awaited Summer Solstice story, the previous three having focused on Imbolc, the Spring Equinox and Beltane. 

The Summer Solstice is one of the nature-based holidays that gets the least attention and there are remarkably few books out there for kids on the subject. Of those that are available, most either teach about the traditions of various cultures in the past, such as The Longest Day, or mention the Summer Solstice with a host of other holidays such as Rupert's Tales or An Ordinary Girl - A Magical Child.

For many people who don't follow a major religion in our modern society, it is hard to feel connected to holidays that have lost much of their tradition and essential magic to commercialism. One alternative many people are now embracing is the celebration of naturally occurring transitions, such as the solstices and equinoxes. Some spiritual paths also hold these as holy days, but even for atheists and agnostics, these moments can fulfill the human need for bright gems of interest amid the routine of daily life. 

The summer solstice has been celebrated in cultures all over the world--from the equator to the poles--for thousands of years. It is the time of flourishing life in each hemisphere, a moment of fullness and a turning point in which seasons begin to swing back.

The summer solstice is the top of the pendulum, the height of a swing. And like a child's swing it gives us all that giddy feeling children get at the moment of weightlessness as the chains of the swing stop propelling them forward and hesitate before pulling them back. That is also the moment where the swing set is no longer visible and you feel most as if you were flying. The summer solstice is the cosmic equivalent of that giddy instant. Our faces are in the sun and for a moment it feels like everything is possible and we are far more capable than we knew.

The title of the fourth book in the Children's Wheel of the Year series is Shanna and the Goddess, and it is a story about the accelerated growth, confidence and courage that can result when we are challenged by adversity and we are capable and ready to meet that challenge.

In this book, eleven-year-old Shanna and her eight-year-old brother Rye take on grown-up responsibilities when their mother breaks her ankle at the beginning of the summer. Shanna is determined to save the newly planted garden from drought and neglect. Rye takes on cooking with some interesting and tasty results. Both gain confidence and skills, but their courage is tested when a massive hail storm threatens to flatten the garden. 

Instead of being primarily a teaching tool, like many other books about natural holidays, the Children's Wheel of the Year series offers adventure stories linked to the themes of earth-centered holidays that are fun to read and listen to. The Shanna books are not focused on teaching kids how the holidays were or are supposed to be celebrated. There are examples of traditions in the books because the family in the story celebrates the holidays. But the focus is on a kid-friendly story. 

Shanna and the Goddess is available in paperback and kindle formats here. 

Young activists, millions strong

One day in seventh grade is etched into my memory. I was sitting in the second row in a dimly lit science classroom, bored as usual. Our teacher was uninspiring. He was droning on again, something about a military program to train dolphins to attach bombs to the bottom of enemy ships.

I wasn't sure what the science point of the lecture was. Animal behavior maybe? The chemistry of explosions? You never knew with this guy. 

Illustration by Julie Freel from Shanna and the Water Fairy

But then this sentence got my attention: "So then these morons from Greenpeace came along and started blockading, so that they had to stop the program and put the lives of our troops at risk." 

I raised my hand. Most of the class was half asleep anyway. I wasn't even sure what I was going to say until he called on me. I tried to find words for the wrongness I felt in the lecture. I think I said something along the lines of, "So you think dolphins should have to do the humans' dirty work?" 

There were a few snickers around the class. The teacher leveled his gaze at me and paced a few steps closer. At least to me as a seventh grader, his voice was low and intimidating. "And you think a dolphin's life is more important than a human life?" 

More snickers and a few derogatory comments were flung my way by some of my classmates. I wasn't one of the popular kids who would get support for mouthing off to a teacher. And apparently mine wasn't a popular sentiment. 

Illustration by Julie Freel from Shanna and the Water Fairy

I had all kinds of arguments, all lined up. But I also knew this wasn't one of those times where reasoned argument would work. You don't argue with teachers in front of the whole class, not if you want to avoid trouble. How many times had I been told that? I knew that if I got one more sentence in I'd be lucky. 

And for once I had it. "If they are so concerned about human life, what are they doing blowing up ships in the first place?" 

The snickers stopped. Everyone was watching the teacher and waiting for his reaction. He stumbled a bit over his words, told me I was out of line and went on a rant about "patriotism." But I didn't care anymore. I knew when to quit. 

It was lonely being a wannabe activist in 1988 in rural Eastern Oregon. Today it may still not be the mainstream, especially environmental activism. but at least there are places to turn. If I was thirteen now, I could get on the internet and find like-minded others. In the last few weeks, I could see and join the amazing youth movement for gun regulations. 

We scarcely had books about nature and PBS documentaries. If you were interested in activism for social or environmental causes, it was a long, lonely and mostly silent road. Today there is more media and more connection across distance, especially for teenagers.

For younger kids, there are books like Shanna and the Water Fairy. I wrote this story with kids and parents on the activist road in mind. It's a gateway for kids ages six to twelve, for those who might feel like lonely voices against wrongness in hopes that they may add their voices to the rising tide of young activists for a better future.

This is the third book illustrated with emotive oil pastels by Julie Freel. It tells the story of a sister and brother, Shanna and Rye, who discover a hidden spring on dry waste land behind their school. The spring is a magical pocket of vibrant life in a drought-stricken land, a sanctuary for wildflowers, butterflies and a being they call a fairy. When the children discover that the spring is slated to be bulldozed to make way for another shopping mall, they look for ways to call attention to what would be lost and inspire local activism of their own. 

Shanna and the Water Fairy is the kind of book I longed for as a kid. It is a story that reaches out to every kid who has wanted to be heard and taken seriously for concerns many adults think kids aren't bothered with.

You aren't alone and your voice does matter. This is the time of the rise of young activists, millions strong.