My Literacy Journey

Dear Community,

In June, 1974 I earned my master’s degree in Reading Instruction from Michigan State University.  In 1956 I was in third grade and hadn’t learned to read.  My friends learned to read in kindergarten, first or second grade.  Not me though. I was frustrated, disheartened, embarrassed and drowning in self-doubt. I began acting out in the classroom.  I felt dumb.  I was deeply stuck in reading failure.  

My parents wanted to help. They saw me as a smart kid except for not being able to read. I could do math; I could follow and understand conversations at home and in class; I was curious. My parents hired a tutor for me which didn’t help much. My dad ran for a seat on the school board and won. I was a PRIVILIDGED, middle class white boy with a father on the school board. My parents were determined I would get the help I needed.

In the coming months, teachers worked with me one on one. I was a great listener and could remember what was discussed in class.  Teachers would read test questions to me and I would answer aloud. I began to settle down. By the time I got to high school there were no more weekly spelling tests to fail. I got some high school credits by being a teacher’s aide in a classroom with kids with very low IQ’s.  I survived with the help of teachers, by getting credit for being a teacher’s aide, and by avoiding classes I would drown in.  The school and I “found a way around my impairment”.  I performed well enough to pass from grade to grade as a non-reader.

In my junior year of high school (my dad was still on the school board) the principal stopped me in the hall and said she had found a way for me to be accepted to MSU without taking a college entrance exam.  MSU was promoting an early enrollment program to ensure that the freshmen class of 1966 would be a big one.  A new residence hall was opening and MSU needed more incoming freshmen. I was all in on the plan.  With the help of caring educators, an application was submitted for me my junior year and I was accepted!

The summer after high school graduation I went to Freshmen Orientation at MSU and had to take a placement exam.  I failed.  I was assigned to a no-credit Preparatory English class and had one term to learn to read or go home. In the fall of 1966 I found myself with a teacher who loved books, loved to read and wanted her students to love reading too. I told her I had real trouble reading words and sentences, let alone read a book.  She said reading was more than just words and sentences – it was about meaning. The book she assigned was Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther, a memoir about the decline and death of Gunther’s son, Johnny.  She said she believed I and others in the class would want to know about this father’s journey.  I shut down for a few days but realized that closing-up meant I would fail out of MSU.

I opened-up to the instructor as she was my only hope.  I struggled on the journey of putting together meaning from a book.  She believed I could do it and was very supportive.  She also taught me SQ3R, a study technique to use in my classes.  I read that book and a couple more. She launched me into the university.

College was hard for me. I still relied heavily on auditory learning and did okay. I student taught in a Detroit preschool and graduated in 1970 with a degree in elementary education. After serving two years as a conscious objector, I returned to graduate school at MSU to study reading instruction.

The story does not end there. I learned to read because I was disciplined but never enjoyed it. Reading was hard for me.  In 1973 when my fiancé realized I never read for pleasure she asked if I would read a book she picked out for me – just because she asked.  Fueled by young love, I said yes.  She handed me Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn, an 853-page love story about an interracial couple on a collage campus. I gasped at the number of pages but began reading and discussing the book with my fiancé as I read it. I loved it.

I went on to teach third and first grades, ensuring that every child in my classroom learned to read!  

I earned my doctorate in Educational Leadership in 2002. I have been so fortunate to have been an elementary school teacher, principal, and superintendent in a 32-year public education career. I was an adjunct instructor at MSU for over three decades, teaching graduate courses in literacy and leadership development.  And now as a retiree, I enjoy spending time every day . . . reading. 

Jerry Jennings

A Summer of Silk Moths

I really enjoyed reading and thinking about Margaret Willey’s YA book: A Summer of Silk Moths.

Life is a complicated journey. This story reflects: loss, confusion, discord, family truths/untruths/unknowns as well as caring, focused energy and growth. Pete, and Nora, both in high school, are the main characters among many other equally authentically believable individuals covering three generations. Many, and certainly the teenagers, are finding their way – in developing an understanding about others and self as well as with the past.

With these engaged characters, Willey crafts thought provoking, realistic journeys. The story is influenced by the pace of nature. With specific focus on metamorphosis: Both with insects and humans. Moths and the potentially multiple metaphors they elicit, are woven into this literary work of art. I found the young people’s growing in their awareness and insights and thus, in part embracing, the natural energy of life’s many transitions – as metamorphic.

I appreciate that the tempo and structure of the story leads you to and through the characters’ lives with genuine frustrations, forgiveness, love, misunderstandings, riskiness, and acceptance. Not in a neatly wrapped package. More authentic – real world.

A Summer of Silk Moths by Margaret Willey, originally published in 2009 by Flux, A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide and republished by Reclamation Press, in 2018, it is a read rich in believable intriguing characters living out the entanglements of the past to create new possibilities for the future.

Other favorite books of mine that Willey authored include: The Bigger Book of Lydia (1983), Four Secrets (2012), The Melinda Zone (1993), and Saving Lenny (1990). All of these works legitimately present YA topics in an artful, accessible, richly human and memorable fashion. If you like A Summer of Silk Moths you may want to check out the above titles.

Transformative Conversations can lead to Adapting and Co-creation

People engaging in conversations where transformation has the potential of occurring are people who can help form adaptive interactions.  Adaptive responses to the status quo can help create futures focused on the common good.  Yes, the word “can” is used because there is no assurance that the common good will be the shared focus.

Ron Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky in their book: The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (2009) write about adaptive leadership.  Their definition: Adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive (page 14) sounds like the kind of leadership many of us might want to experience

Lipton and Wellman suggest ‘mobilizing people’ by focusing on developing “rich, meaningful collaboration (which) is both complex and challenging. Three compelling reasons for meeting these demands (of mobilizing people) include:

1. The lone genius is a myth. Significant studies are no longer produced by a lone genius like Einstein or Darwin. The group is the unit of work. Insight and innovation emerge from interdependent thinking.
2. The most interesting mysteries lie at the intersection of minds. Novel solutions are necessary to address increasingly complex problems. The collective imagination is more expansive than any individual vision.

3. Accountability grows out of co-creation. Collaborative construction of understanding around data, problems, and plans inspires commitment to action. A greater degree of participation in the genesis of decisions produces a greater likelihood of follow-through.

Each of us has to ask ourselves questions like the ones below to insure that we are will to engage across differences to attempt to further the common good. 

It is worth our effort to begin and continue a journey toward developing our abilities to work well (very well) with people who are different from us?

Is the challenge of being intentional about connecting mind-to-mind worth accepting or is the time invested in listening, learning about, and appreciating those who think differently just too big of an investment?  

Can we adapt and grow across differences or are the stakes so very high that we each should be focusing ourselves as individuals and like-minded- groups on being winners and let the losers loose and forget this “common good” focus?

Creating Communities of Thought by Laura Lipton and Brice Wellman in The Power of the Social Brain: Teaching, Learning and Interdependent Thinking by Arthur L. Costa and Pat Wilson O’Leary, 2013, Teacher’s College Press

You and I Cannot be Bystanders

White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo is not ‘light’ reading.  It is serious. It is important. It is provocative. It voices to an American reality.  It speaks to White Fragility.

Reading it and thinking about the many ways DiAngelo challenges the status quo of how white people, me included, walk through our society – is like signing up for an intense workshop on why it is so hard for white people to talk about racism and how white people can do the work (on ourselves) to breakout of our fragility.

I see this book as an invitation. It provides an opportunity for white people to embrace what will likely be, a long growth journey toward self-understanding and significant behavior change.  This book is not sugar coated.  It is not soft.  It presents a real American dilemma that may not be easy to either comprehend and/or act on.  Yet, for white Americans, there is work to be done to move toward the dream of a “more perfect union”.  DiAngelo presents the realities of all the racism and superiority we white people have internalized.

I recommend this book. I also recommend that you read, as much as is possible, with a non-argumentative mind.  We adults have to be prepared to be changed by the experiences of reading and thinking about stimuli that comes our way or that we seek out.  I am encouraging you to seek out this book.

This book might lead you to want to retreat and stop reading.  Readers might be challenged by emotions such as anger, fear and guilt and by wanting to argue with the author and/or abandon the learning opportunity that engaging with this content provides.  DiAngelo is attempting to provoke positive societal change.  In this book, she examines the forces that prevent white Americans from confronting racism.  I encourage the reader to remain in a ‘learner mode’ throughout the read.

I believe that to be impacted by this book you and I need to be willing to be generative in our understanding of ourselves.  We need to believe that each of us is a ‘work in progress’ and that our society is also a ‘work in progress’ – and that by engaging in the work we can make things better:  we can participate in non-defensive, meaningful and productive dialogue, we can genuinely become non-fragile, we can demonstrate our vulnerability, curiosity and humility, and we can interrupt privilege-protecting comfort and internalized superiority.

As a white person, I have internalized the messages of our society. DiAngelo asserts that white people have internalized fragility around race.  We know there is racial inequality in America.  We often don’t see any way we could be playing a role in perpetuating that problem.  We believe that since we are not racists nor do we intentionally use our whiteness as privilege – therefore, we are not benefiting from any white-norm-centered patterns in in our society.

DiAngelo is a white person.  She is presenting a case for how White Fragility keeps us from having meaningful cross-racial dialogue. She asserts that White Fragility keeps us from authentically facing racism.

To move society forward in confronting racism you and I cannot be bystanders.  We need to be prepared to be changed by conversations, reading, reflection, and other stimuli.  We need to consider ourselves as ‘not finished’ with our learning.

If you and I are truly open to that, then we may become a force of generative growth for confronting racism and white superiority in our culture.  This is going to be long, messy and challenging work for each of us.  I say, for the common good, it is worth doing.

Harbor Me

We all need “harboring”.

Jacqueline Woodson’s new book, Harbor Me, is about six very different middle school students and their teacher’s idea that they, the students, should have an hour a week to talk privately about what is important to them, in their lives and in their life’s journey.  I recommend this book for anyone.  It is a timely read.  This story sheds light on the value of community and the reality that each of us, of any age, is a work in progress.  Woodson is an expert at her craft.

The teacher is hoping that the students will listen and dialogue in ways that may be more authentic than might normally happen in school.  We, the reader, sense that the teacher sees this as a way for the kids to learn about themselves, about themselves with others and about each person’s own potential for growth.

I do not mean to trivialize the barriers between people, of any age, these days.  There are many.  And, those obstacles are difficult to encounter and work through.  I do see the value of people coming together, over time, across differences and having dialogue with sincere listening.

Listening to each other with the desire to gain an appreciation for and an informed awareness of others is, from my observation, uncommon.  The concept of growing our empathy, sensitivity and concern for others seems to be a series of ‘muscles’ we – all of us – could be much more intentional about growing.  Furthermore, such growth would be helpful to us to – learn about ourselves, about ourselves with others.  Reading Harbor Me might give us all a reminder of the positives that can come from linking with others.

 

 

Dreams Deferred and Dreams Being Actualized

I recommend this book.  I appreciate contemporary YA realistic fiction that tackles the complexities of our times.

With genuine voice Patrick Flores-Scott has woven together the story of Teodoro, his siblings, the challenges of a brother coming home from a war zone with post-traumatic stress disorder, a childhood friend becoming his first love, his ambivalence about school achievement reconsidered, family strength and strife, a road trip, and economic hardship.

This is a story of dreams deferred and dreams being actualized.  It is a story of the serious challenges that many families and individuals face.  Teodoro has to find the energy for forward movement when the status quo seems to have him locked in place.  His brother must also secure a healthy path into the future.  It is a hopeful story.  It is not a sugar coated tale.

American Road Trip is journey of falling in love, responding to PTSD, friendship and family energy.

As a person who worked in public schools for over 30 years, I find the way Flores-Scott presents issues around school and schooling to be on target.

It is fast moving and full of life.  Flores-Scott is storyteller.

American Road Trip by Patrick Flores-Scott, 2018, Henry Holt and Company

It Is Time To Read or Reread ‘The Other Side of the Mountain’

Alex Kotlowitz tells the story of a Benton Harbor teenager who died in 1991. The book is The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America’s   Dilemma. The two towns are St. Joseph and Benton Harbor, Michigan. The death is that of an African American 18 year old, Eric McGinnis.  The dilemma is the racial divide that was and is present in America.

The challenges of Benton Harbor were and are real to me, to our state and to our country.  I to read this book when it came out in 1998 and I have just read it again a couple of weeks ago.   Twenty years later this is still a reflection of the racial divide that is present.

Kotlowitz is a master of bringing reality into focus.  I felt that way the first and second I read The Other Side of the River.  The focus does not diminish the profound complexity of this American dilemma.  The reality of this being so contemporary as well as historical is stunning.  We have so very much work to do. There continue to be too many racial divides.

I highly recommend this book. It will get you thinking.  I hope it will also influence people to embrace our very real challenges as we work together to end this American Dilemma.

Fuel – As You Contribute to the Future

This book: Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds was written in 2017 by adrienne maree brown, a young (in my eyes, under 40 is young) activist who has much to say about contributing and building a brighter future for all.

This book was gifted to me.  Gifted is a special way – I had many options on a table of items that meant something to the person who put them on the table.  I too had placed something I valued on the table and waited for it to find its new owner.  I chose this book because I was attracted to its subtitle – Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.  I ‘signed on’   for the mission of ‘Change’ when I was a teenager during the civil rights movement. So, this subtitle spoke to me.

The book is a journey as opposed to a straight path to some very clear predetermined destination.  And this journey was one that I found to be very meaningful.  I have so much appreciation and respect for the components of the journey that brown took me on.

Her focus is rich.  She understands that adaptation has to be intentional when you’re working for change.  She is totally respectful of the necessity of interdependence among people and the decentralization of power/control in order for progress to be significant.  She gets it, that change is not an event!  It is a process and therefore – change agents must be resilient and essentially and deeply committed to focusing on and creating possibilities. Shaping change and changing the world is the work of bringing life to possibilities.

These are all concepts that many of the established leadership resources* focus on and they focus on them in a more formal, researched based manner.  I find brown’s presentation to be conversational, situational, inspirational, developmental, and ‘possibility’ oriented.  In addition, I see her approach to be authentic and potentially valuable to those wanting to grow their leadership.

I think this book is a good read for any and all people who wish to lead, are leading and/or ready to be a significant be part of forward looking change.  As an almost 70 year old white male who has benefited from all forms of privilege to gain both an education and positions of responsibility in my of life – I found this book to be enlightening, challenging and provocative as in causing discussion, thought, even argument).  We, all of us, need books like this. This book invites a thinking reader, who is willing to become active, to enter a journey to shape and bring about change.

Brown writes, “I will admit here that even some of my closest loved ones find me naïve for holding a vision of the humanity with no enemies.  I can imagine that though, and in fact, it seems like the only viable long-term solution.  We need to transform all of the energy we currently put into war and punishment – into creating solutions for how to continue on this planet.  The time, the energy, the money – we actually have all of that in abundance.  What we lack is will.”

What an important, bold challenge!

This challenge and several others from the book – speak to me loudly.  Brown invites new leaders and established leaders to tackle that which many people avoid because they consider the task impossible.  She encourages us to create more.  She says, “At the human scale, in order to create a world that works for more people, for more life, we have to collaborate on the process of dreaming and envisioning and implementing that world.  We have to recognize that a multitude of realities have, do, and will exist.”

She’s right, from my point of view.  She gets it that we have to think bigger than we are thinking and we have to act on our determination to arrive at a preferred the future rather than settle for not having all of us move forward into a preferred state.

I recommend this book to people who want to make a difference: People who do want to shape change,  people that want to change worlds.

There is no pretense that this book has all the answers.  In the introduction she clearly states that this “book is not one that will teach you all about hard science.”  It won’t, she is right AND it will present a tapestry of observations, learnings, understandings and sincere inquiry that potentially can fuel you as you contribute to the future.

I hope you enjoy Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds as much as I did.

 

*As examples – such as: Servant Leadership by Robert K. Greenleaf 2002, The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner 2017, Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, 2002, Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization by Diana Whitney, Amanda Trosten-Bloom and Kae Rader, 2010, Leading Change by John P. Kotter, 2012, or The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World by Heifetz, Grashow and Linsy, 2009

A Book About Becoming Literate: For Me It Has Been A long Journey

Hats Off! Lynda Mullaly Hunt for writing Fish in a Tree! It is engaging, serious, fun and may help others to focus on the possibilities of literacy for all.  And thank you Maria Montoya for bringing the book back into my life.

Fish in a Tree is a novel for young people. Moreover, it is a novel that would have real value for teachers and aspiring teachers. Plus, the parents of both children who learn differently and children who learn relatively normally could benefit from reading this story. The reason I think it has great value to be read by many audiences is because of the topic the author explores and the manner in which she presents it.

This is a story of a sixth-grade girl, Ally, who is not able to read in any functional manner. It is also the story of her peer relationships, family relationships and relationships to school and school people. Those human relationships and the authentic glimpse of the struggle of one nonreader are at the core of this book.

I was illiterate until I was eighteen. I learn differently than most. I am now sixty- nine and I have been a first and third grade teacher, an elementary principal, and a superintendent. I have earned a doctorate and have taught at the university level. I have some firsthand knowledge on this topic and my belief is that the ensuring that all students become literate cannot result from adopting a simple teaching method.

Helping someone to learn who learns differently requires teachers, parents and others to embrace complexity. This novel conveys the complexities of who Ally is and what makes her unique. Moreover, as this novel points out very well – helping others to learn who learn differently requires that teachers, parents, and others see possibilities and help the nonreaders to see possibilities as well. Each learner must be connected with as a unique individual and be appreciated and respected for their current strengths. It takes teachers, parents and others who can see the positive future in the learner even if the learner may not see it. Then, of course, our focus is to help the learner to see how their own, maybe highly unique, path to literacy can be built.

My path, like the paths of many others, to literacy has not been smooth. Learning to read at eighteen for me has meant that even today I am a slow, sometimes plodding reader that still stumbles as I strive for solid comprehension. Moreover, as an oral reader I am prone to skip and/or incorrectly pronounce words – my grandchildren have learned to gently correct me.

Overall, I have learned to stick with the text and reread when I am missing the message. At sixty-seven, I am still learning to write – oh my am I pleased that spell check was invented. I stick with my writing, too. Rewriting and reworking until I am comfortable sharing. Being literate did not come easy to me and it is not smooth sailing, even now. The turning point for me and Ally was seeing that it was ‘possible’!

Hats Off! Lynda’s book tells a story that can help others to see the possibilities of literacy for all.

Energizing, Appreciative and Affirmative . . . A Fulfilling Read!

The book: Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship by Gregory Boyle is rich in positive ripples of appreciative and affirmative framing. It is respectful, forward-looking, and abundant in love!  Gregory Boyle‘s ability to frame the life journey of the people he serves in the “positive” is beyond inspiring!

He works with ex-gang members. He is a Jesuit priest. He is not young and he has not old – he’s experienced. He is a positively piercing voice related to the goodness that can be achieved by “framing” any and all situations in a life affirming fashion.

Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries. He refers to the ex-gang members as “homies”.  This book is full of stories of his interactions with homies and the many gifts that he has received by working with ex-gang members over the last three decades.

Here are some short passages from the book.

“Knowing homies has changed my life forever, altered the course of my days, reshaped my heart, and returned me to myself. They have indeed been trustworthy guides. Together we have discovered that we all are diamonds covered with dust. They have taught me not that I am somebody but that I am everybody. And so are they.”

“I don’t empower anyone at Homeboy Industries.  But if one loves boundlessly, then folks on the margins become utterly convinced of their own goodness.”

“Homeboy Industries has always been the “already and not yet”. What this place announces to the world is aspirational and not declarative of a fully formed, complete thing.”

“When life throws a knife at us, we can either catch it by then blade or by the handle. We can stare right back at the terrifying darkness of what we’ve been through in our lives and grab it by the handle.”

“We always seem to be faced with this choice: to save the world or savor it.  I want to propose that savoring is better, and that when we seek to “save” and “contribute” and “give back” and “rescue” folks and EVEN “make a difference,” then it is all about you . . . . and the worlds stays stuck.  The homies are not waiting to be saved. They are ready are.”

“I met a man, an ex-homie, born –again and with the best of intentions, who was now working with gang members. He asked, ‘how do you reach them?’  My response was, ‘For starters, stop trying to reach them.’”

I love that Boyle embraces the complexity of life and living. I totally respect his absolute focus on building honest, caring relationships. This book and Boyle’s previous book, Tattoos on the Heart, are both excellent reads.  They celebrate humanity.  I find them to be energizing.  I recommend them highly.