Learning while Teaching

Book Review: Ballet Cat: The Totally Secret Secret

Title: Ballet Cat: The Totally Secret Secret

Author: Bob Shea

Publisher: Disney Book Group (Hyperion)

Year: 2015

Pages: 56

[Disclaimer: I was provided an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for my fair review of this book. I was in no way compensated or asked to write a positive review. I was asked to write a minimum number of words and to be honest. Done. The copy I read and reviewed was prepared for NOOK via Adobe Digital Editions.]

This is a short book that is highly enjoyable both for it's delightful artwork and for it's whimsical storyline about two friends learning about compromise, friendship, and honesty. It's a simple enough book to read and understand from an author who has demonstrated an ability to write stories that make connections with young readers in a variety of situations (see Dinosaur vs. series).

I think it is a hard lesson to learn, as humans, that real friendship is a difficult water to navigate precisely because it entails things we'd rather not think about--things like compromise and honesty. Children seem to understand these things, but I think even children tend to get caught up in the mayhem of 'one-upism'. I see this a lot in special education where children often come from such environments where family or economic struggles obscure these things for one reason or another. I have no explanation for why it seems to be so, but in my experience working in special education I see a tendency among my students towards selfishness and an unwillingness to compromise even in the smallest areas of social interaction. It could be their particular diagnosis; it could be environmental. Others can tell us why, I'm concerned that it is so and that the classroom becomes a training ground where these things--not taught in other environments--are learned and perpetuated.

Ballet Cat has it all worked out and seems to push towards playing 'ballet' every day: "We play ballet every day, Ballet Cat," grumbles Sparkles the Sparkle Pony. Then Sparkle engages, less than enthusiastically in Ballet play until he simply can take it no more and slouches to the floor in despair. He is sad, frustrated, and defeated and has to muster up the courage to tell Ballet Cat the truth that 'Sometimes [he doesn't] want to play ballet!'  His other fear is that in telling the truth to Ballet Cat he might lose his friend. In the end, however, Ballet Cat is a gracious friend and reveals to Sparkle Pony that he is more important to her than playing Ballet every day. (I'm using 'he' and 'she' carefully since it could be that Ballet Cat and Sparkle Pony are not, in fact, 'she' and 'he'. I don't think the identity of their sex is of particular importance in the story.)

The author makes it clear that friendship involves two things: compromise and honesty. Ballet Cat must learn to compromise; Sparkle Pony must risk friendship by being perfectly honest. It's also important to learn that we can have differing opinions, differing likes, differing opinions and that in the end these differences, and our honesty about these differences, do not have to spoil a good friendship. This is a helpful book and I think it would serve its purpose well in the midst of a classroom and especially in a special education classroom such as mine.

The only problems I had with the book are 1) that I didn't particular care for the way it rendered on my NOOK reader. It read like a comic strip. It's supposed to be 56 pages, but rendered as 30 on my NOOK. 2) I'm not sure why Sparkle Pony is called Sparkle Pony. There's nothing about the Pony that sparkles. He is covered with three giant polka dots, but no sparkles. Perhaps this will change, but in my review copy it was kind of strange. Otherwise, I very much like the art work and I like how the dialogue is printed in call-out boxes--which may lend itself to a reader's theater type reading of the story. The artwork is happy and, I think, conveys the proper emotive feel at just the right times. The color palette is simple, but captivating.

Really I like this book very much, exceptions noted, and will most certainly purchase a copy for my classroom. It is designed for younger readers--the inside cover says ages 6-8, grades 1-3. That might be appropriate, but I think by the time a student is in third grade they are beginning to understand these things and this book may not be age appropriate. I might actually lower this to say Pre-K-K as it might be too 'babyish' for a second and/or third grade student. That's my opinion and it is not necessarily a statement of scientific accuracy. It's a statement of my experience working with boys that age and raising three of my own.

5/5 Stars

Teachers are Babysitters!? Really?

I recently posted at my blog that part of a solid education reform package would be keeping kids out of school until they are developmentally ready--say 6 or 7 (granted that some are developmentally ready at 5, but that none are ready at 3 or 4). I posted this to my LinkedIn account and got some feedback.

One wrote back:

"Should kids go to school at age 4, 5, 6. You mention family time would be better than going to school at younger ages but with many families trying to eke out a living they do not have the time to keep kids at home. The reality for many is that preschool and school are about child care not necessarily education. A well run program for young kids is certainly more beneficial than what many families could offer if the kids were at home" (Name withheld) 

I wrote in response:

The end of your statement is exactly the problem: "The reality for many is that preschool and school are about child care not necessarily education."

This is why parents then refuse to get involved in the academic success of their children, why teachers are expected to thus raise the children and teach them what they should be learning at home, and why there are so many discipline issues at schools.

Teachers are not in existence to raise other people's children or babysit them. We are there to educate the children. Children should be at home at young ages building forts, playing with trucks and dolls, and eating toasted cheese sandwiches made by mom or dad for lunch not dealing with the rigors of a 6-7 hour school day.

Sorry, I disagree with you entirely. School should not be be a place of social engineering which is what it becomes when children go to school at increasingly younger ages.

And when it falls upon teachers to be mere baby-sitters, education fails. I cannot concentrate on educating 15-20 kids in a classroom when there is 1 or more who require and demand my attention because of their misbehavior, or age appropriate behavior (for 3 or 4 or 5 year olds that is).

My point all along is that true education reform has to begin at the home. And what happens when children this young misbehave in the classroom? They are sent to the school psychologist who then runs a battery of tests and determines the child is ADHD.*** The parents then take the child, armed with new evidence, to a doctor who prescribes pills for the child.

The child then learns nothing because he/she does not learn to measure their own behavior or to self-regulate, but rather to suck down a pill. That is not education.

*Even the president thinks we need more pre-k services for children. But I ask why? What does it accomplish having children under 5 attending all day or every other day classes at a public school. The question remains: who benefits from children being in school at such a young age, getting burned out before they are in 2nd grade, missing their parents, and trying to learn what they are not ready to learn? Not the parents. Not the teachers. Not the children. (Hint: If you said the government, you are right.

**See also: Early-Education Advocates Welcome Fresh Federal Infusion. I am not advocating that early education needs more money, just pointing to the article as an example of how misguided this entire process is. Simply throwing more money at education 'problems' is not a solution. It is a washing of hands. I wonder how much suffering our culture could alleviate if parents kept their children at home until 6-7 years of age?

***And that is no knock on the school psychologist who is doing his/her job. My point is that if the child were developing at home under the aegis of the parent, some of these problems might just vanish befor the child is in school. Medication is not life; it is medicine. As an intervention specialist, I never recommend medication. Children can learn a lot from parents, and should.

 

Related articles

Thoughts on Education Reform, Pt 1: Athletics & Academics

Thoughts on Education Reform, Pt 2: Government Meddling in Education

Thoughts on Education Reform, pt 3: True Education Reform Starts at Home

Learning to Read Faces: A Sorting Task

Everyday, typically developing students and adults absorb and interpret thousands of pieces of data. Students in special education classes absorb these data too, but oftentimes have a great deal of difficulty interpreting their meaning. This, in turn, makes daily communication a chore for most students. Furthermore, not knowing how to interpret the data received often leads to awkward and/or embarassing social moments.

Students in my resource room, perhaps especially noticeable in students with and ASD, have deficits in communication, play, social skills and relating to others (Rao & Gagie, 2006 membership to Council for Exceptional Children may be required to access full text). A significant portion of my time is spent in developing ways to help these children communicate their needs, their feelings, their wants, their frustrations, and, in some cases, just to say something as fundamental as the ABCs or 123s. 

In response to the need to generalize an understanding of facial expressions among my students, I developed this sorting task. Originally, this task had four categories the student would sort, but in this latest iteration I chose to excise the 'shy' category given that it was too obscure. Then we went with only three categories: sad, happy, and angry as shown below. 

These three categories are at the top of the board and a line separates them. Down the columns, as you can see, are pieces of Velcro. The students attach pictures of faces to these. In the next picture, you see the faces. These faces have been cut from old magazines, shaped, and laminated in order to preserve them for many uses (we also have a bunch of extras we keep separate).

In the original design of this task, the faces were all cut to the same shape. What I found is that this was just a bit confusing at times and offered little in the way of self-correcting strategies. In this revised version of the task, we cut the faces into one of three shapes: triangle, circle, or square. These three shapes then correspond to one of the three emotional categories: sad, happy, angry. 

    

This is a very simple sorting task and costs virtually nothing to create. Any piece of cardboard will do; any face from a magazine or google search will do; and you can decide which categories you wish to use. Sometimes it is difficult to find more categories and the pictures can oftentimes be rather difficult for the students to interpret--due to their subtle nature. I work with elementary students so these three categories are easiest to find and the easiest with which to work. 

When the student is finished working with the task, simply fold it up and put it away! I use this task to help students learn the subtleties of facial expression and the varieties of ways people show happiness or anger or sadness. But I also hope that the students will learn to generalize these categories--so I'm kind of working backwards in a sense. 

It also seems important that the pictures we use are in a rotation too. So I have another bag of faces and we are always in the process of looking through magazines for more. Again, ask your librarian for magazines that are about to become garbage. It keeps them out of the landfill and they are useful for creating wonderful games. 

This is a very simple task to create, you get to recycle, and it is flexible enough that the categories can be altered or adjusted for age appropriateness.  Let me know what you think or what sort of alterations you make to improve this idea. Thanks. 

Edit: I came across an article at Psychology Today written by Lynne Soraya called Empathy, Mindblindedness, and Theogy of Mind that I found very helpful and pertinent to this blog post. From her conclusion:

In her article "Who cares? Or: The Truth about Empathy in Individuals of the Autism Spectrum," researcher Isabel Dziobek outlines her study on the subject of empathy.  Through the course of the study, more than 50 subjects on the spectrum were evaluated against neurotypical control subjects.  The results? To quote Ms. Dziobek - "More generally speaking, our data shows that people with Asperger syndrome have a reduced ability to read other peoples' social cues (such as facial expressions orbody language) but once aware of another's circumstances or feelings, they will have the same degree of compassion as anyone else."

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Sorting task

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