"decaffeinated" vs. "knack"

Game on!  In Ed DeCaria's March Madness Poetry Tournament I am pitted in the first round against the delightful and skilled Laura Purdie Salas.  My randomly assigned word was "decaffeinated," a 14th seed word classed as possibly impossible, but I'm pretty pleased with what I managed. Prepare to enter the dusky world of the nightwalkers....


YA Vampire Novella
by Heidi Mordhorst

Bec LeCru rose at sundown as normal.
He dressed in black, as usual—formal.
He stopped at the all-night Starbucks for coffee.
He ordered espresso with two shots of toffee.
The barista’s mistake: serving decaffeinated.
Bec fell asleep with his face on the table;
Dawn found him dead, sadly decoffinated.


Laura's word was "knack," seeded 3, and she did a wonderful, timely, hopeful thing with it!

Natural Talent
by Laura Salas

Sky has a knack for
pounding out rain
Ground has a knack for
receiving

Spring has a knack for
bursting out blooms
Seed has a knack for
believing

*************************************
What a challenge is faced by all 64 participants, and what fun it is to see what folks are coming up with! To vote for your favorites, start here http://www.thinkkidthink.com/3-knack-vs-14-decaffeinated
and then spend some of your Poetry Friday bopping around Think Kid, Think! to see more!

Greg at GottaBook is hosting today. Go poets!

march madness & getting comfy in my bracket

Thanks to calculating upstart and hero-boy Ed DeCaria, 64 children's poets are going head to head in the first ever Think Kid, Think! Poetry Tournament.  I'm in the second flight of the first round and will shortly know which devilishly difficult 14th seed word I'm supposed to compose around.

The criteria for judging each poem are as follows:
"Voters can use whatever criteria they’d like when determining their preferred poem from each pair. As a random guideline, consider the criteria on which the contestants on the cooking show “Chopped” are evaluated: presentation, taste, and creativity. Translated roughly into poetry terms, presentation might include technical aspects such as meter, rhyme, form/shape, etc.; taste might be the net effect — did the poem move you to laugh, cry, think, kill, etc.; and creativity might include the poet’s approach toward a certain subject, image evocation, clever wordplay, etc."

Yes, folks, it's like American Idol:  YOU, the discerning public, get to pick which poem in each match-up cuts the mustard.  Go to the Live Scoreboard to see what the first flight of poets is feverishly working on even as I type.  Then go back to vote for your favorites.

Wishing the best to all competitors...

powerful fluff

I got up this morning with plans to post a poem in commemoration of International Women's Day and then, because I'm lately very interested in kids' varying ability to control impulse and delay gratification, I got distracted by looking to see what I might be able to do for a certain couple of characters in my class.  The resulting post is somewhat fluffier than planned.

I found my way to several new links about the familiar Marshmallow Experiment, the outcome of which 15-minute task is strongly predictive of a child's later academic and life success.  To summarize, a 4-year-old is offered one marshmallow to eat right now but two if she can wait 15 minutes before eating the first.  Children who can resist and delay gratification tend to have the kind of self-control and patience that will serve them well in life (independent of "hard" intelligence).  For me, today's new information is that kids who can wait are not so much resisting as successfully distracting themselves from the "hot stimulus" of the tasty marshmallow sitting on the plate in front of them.  The video is a delight (even if you don't aspire to raise CEO kids).

Funnily enough, today my kindergarteners will attempt to build 3D shapes out of toothpicks and minimarshmallows.  Only then can they eat the marshmallows. : )

Given all this, you will not be surprised to find three marshmallow poems below.  Enjoy!

*****************************

Marshmallows
Kristine O'Connell George

I am a careful marshmallow toaster,
a patient marshmallow roaster,
turning my stick oh-so-slowly,
taking my time, checking often.
This is art---
a time of serious reflection
as my pillowed confection
slowly reaches golden perfection....

Read the rest here.

***********
Ode to the Burning Marshmallow

Oh my marshmallow,
From the depths of the plastic bag
You came,
White as snow,
Poofy as a cloud.
Edges rounded,
Body smooth.
Oh sugar and air,
How wonderful they melt in my mouth.
My taste buds become joyous
When you pass my lips,
And the dentist becomes concerned.
I love you so well,
Oh my marshmallow.
On my skewer I pierce you,
(A shame to tarnish such a beautiful specimen)
But how good you will taste,
Golden and browned.
But alas, that is not your fate,
Oh my marshmallow.
The embers of the flaming fire
Glare fiercely
Upon your white flesh.
They catch you off guard,
You begin to burn,
Oh my marshmallow.
I snatch you as quickly
As a mother would if her child
Were in danger.
But I was not quick enough.
As a beacon you light up the sky.
My cheeks turn red
As I puff in vain.
As the fire dies down,
I see you as black as the raven's wing.
I shed a tear, oh my marshmallow.
You will never come back,
One less s'more to grace the world,
Alas, Oh my marshmallow.

Marie Freudenberg, age 12

*********************
Marshmallow?  What Marshmallow?

a sugary cloud
no, not sweet
an airy cloud
just a pillow for a doll
a snowman's head
a cotton ball in chrysalis
an igloo door

a grasshopper trampoline
vanilla tender bomb
a loaf of bread for lemurs--
slice and spread with fruit

a cloud again
a bouncy white cloud
and I'm a bouncy elf
an airy fairy
in a puffy sky
above a baby beluga
in the deep blue sea

white glob of sand
in an hourglass, stuck
how long? how long
is it not a
marshmallow?

Heidi Mordhorst 2012
all rights reserved

Today's roundup is at Gathering Books with Myra, who celebrates her birthday with all of us (an extra pleasure for me, since mine is Sunday.  Informal poll:  how many of us poets are Pisces?  Leave your answer in the comments!).

Also, don't forget to check back often over the next couple of weeks as I participate, along with 63 other lucky contestants, in the March Madness Poetry Tournament hosted by Ed DeCaria at Think Kid, Think!

OIK Tuesday: st. patrick's secret identity

On March 1 I presented the new month's calendar to my kindergarteners.  Although many in my school enjoy the undeniable convenience of a calendar stored on the computer and presented on the Promethean Board, I still make a grid on a big sheet of 1-inch graph paper and hang it at the front of the room.  The physical work of each day's Calendar Marker is then always visible, birthdays and other special days can be referred to at any time, and the months become concrete artifacts that line the top of the walls and create a timeline of our kindergarten experience.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think 5- and 6-year-olds need this concrete, omnipresent record of passing time in order for it to begin making sense.

So there was the blank calendar, with weekend numbers recorded and a small green shamrock in the number 17 box.  "What do you notice?" I asked the class.  Some of the responses were...

"What is that green leaf for?"
"I notice a clover for Leprechaun Day!"
"St. Patrick's Day is coming."

I acknowledged these varying levels of familiarity and began a short and challenging explanation of St. Patrick's Day for a widely diverse group of children--after all, how do you fit the gigantic concepts of Christianity/Catholicism, sainthood, Ireland, history, immigration, cultural traditions and leprechaun magic into two sentences?  After my first sentence about how many kinds of people have come to live in America, just like some families in our class, and have brought their celebrations with them, like Chinese New Year, I started to say, "St. Patrick was--" and then got interrupted by a visitor at the door.

Bryon filled the pause that followed:  "--a rock star?!"

****************************
Have you heard of the rock star called Patrick
Who pulled off a Catholic hat trick?
The shamrock he takes;
The Irish he makes
Into Christians with wakes,
Then banishes snakes.
I'd like to see Bono do that trick!


Heidi Mordhorst 2012
all rights reserved

****************************

Okay, I worked way too long on that terrible piece of nonsense.  I may have to come back and try again with a poem on the bigger idea of the rock stars of Kindergarten:  those personalities who loom large in the K curriculum and the way their contributions do or don't make sense in the egocentric, here-and-now minds of 5-year-olds.  Happy upcoming St. Patrick's Day, folks.

SPARK 15: artist/writer exchange

For the second time I signed up to participate in SPARK, a quarterly "inspiration exchange" in which artists and writers are paired up.  Each partner sends the other a piece of work, and then makes a new piece in response to the inspiration she received.  My partner for SPARK 15 is Linda M. Rhinehart Neas, and she sent me the intriguing photo below, entitled "Window Pains."

Yesterday was Day 10, the end of my time to respond to Linda's photo.  I hope my poem does it some kind of justice.

 

Window Pains

To ash the hands who built the frame
to dust the hands who hung the drape
which taking pains to hammer nails
and taking pains to stitch and so

Painstaking made a house and home
to hold the combs and loaves and soap
that fill and close all cracks and holes
but open doors just out of sight

Blew the weather in and out
wore the boards and warped the house
how time and climate tore it down
the cloth to rags uncovering

Glass the last to fall holds in
panes taking gray gone finger prints
pressing through as kisses did
a spirit of the hands intact


Heidi Mordhorst 2012
all rights reserved

slow-motion poetry reading

I don't know how I came across this poem a couple of weeks ago--maybe it was on another Kidlitosphere Poetry Friday blog!  In any case, it swept me off my feet.  Here it is, along with a little blow-by-blow of a peak poetry experience.

 

Astigmatism

by Amy Lowell

[To Ezra Pound: with Much Friendship and Admiration and Some Differences of Opinion]

The Poet took his walking-stick

Of fine and polished ebony.

Set in the close-grained wood

Were quaint devices;

Patterns in ambers,
And in the clouded green of jades.
The top was smooth, yellow ivory,
And a tassel of tarnished gold
Hung by a faded cord from a hole
Pierced in the hard wood,
Circled with silver.
For years the Poet had wrought upon this cane.
His wealth had gone to enrich it,
His experiences to pattern it,
His labour to fashion and burnish it.
To him it was perfect,
A work of art and a weapon,
A delight and a defence.
The Poet took his walking-stick
And walked abroad.

Peace be with you, Brother.

The Poet came to a meadow.
Sifted through the grass were daisies,
Open-mouthed, wondering, they gazed at the sun.
The Poet struck them with his cane.
The little heads flew off, and they lay
Dying, open-mouthed and wondering,
On the hard ground.
"They are useless. They are not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother. Go your ways.

The Poet came to a stream.
Purple and blue flags waded in the water;
In among them hopped the speckled frogs;
The wind slid through them, rustling.
The Poet lifted his cane,
And the iris heads fell into the water.
They floated away, torn and drowning.
"Wretched flowers," said the Poet,
"They are not roses."

Peace be with you, Brother. It is your affair.

The Poet came to a garden.
Dahlias ripened against a wall,
Gillyflowers stood up bravely for all their short stature,
And a trumpet-vine covered an arbour
With the red and gold of its blossoms.
Red and gold like the brass notes of trumpets.
The Poet knocked off the stiff heads of the dahlias,
And his cane lopped the gillyflowers at the ground.
Then he severed the trumpet-blossoms from their stems.
Red and gold they lay scattered,
Red and gold, as on a battle field;
Red and gold, prone and dying.
"They were not roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother.
But behind you is destruction, and waste places.

The Poet came home at evening,
And in the candle-light
He wiped and polished his cane.
The orange candle flame leaped in the yellow ambers,
And made the jades undulate like green pools.
It played along the bright ebony,
And glowed in the top of cream-coloured ivory.
But these things were dead,
Only the candle-light made them seem to move.
"It is a pity there were no roses," said the Poet.

Peace be with you, Brother. You have chosen your part.

**********************
Now, I know next to nothing of Ezra Pound or Amy herself, nor their relationship of "Friendship, Admiration and Some Differences of Opinion," but for once I am not off Googling to see what I can find out, because this poem tells it all and more, and I don't want to spoil it with Facts.  I am very happy with this critique/fable/song of wisdom just as it is.

The title leads me one way, and the dedication informs and inflects the title.  "Oh," I think, "did Ezra suffer vision problems that made his poet's work difficult, and did Amy console and encourage him although the world was pitiably distorted?"  But then the story starts and all that astigmatism talk fades as I widen my mind to picture that cane, to imagine "quaint devices;/Patterns in ambers,/And in the clouded green of jades" as richly as they are described.  And off he goes, the Poet, with his cane of delight and defence.

But now the story is paused.  The Poet is not just friend but "Brother," and there is some reason to wish him peace.  What is to come of "a work of art and a weapon"?
 

And now he sets off again, and we follow him on his fool's way through the loveliness of the "lesser" blossoms, and we are guided to know he is a fool by the kindly, the measured, the nearly neutral  observations of the chorus.  And finally, at the end, I can think again about astigmatism, what it means to look and not see, to close your eyes wide open, swinging before you a stick of dead beauty which is judgment.

 

Just bloody brilliant, this poem. 

Shoot, you could even read it in Kindergarten.  Can't you see it as a picture book?

 

Enjoy some more bloody brilliance at Check It Out with Jone.  Peace be with you, Sister, Brother.  Go your ways (and may they be wise).

 

rethinking pink

I've officially introduced the concept of writing con-ventions to my 5- and 6-year-olds, and it does surprise me how little most of them notice the patterns of capitalization and punctuation that they've been looking at since (at least) the beginning of the year--a reminder that however hard we strive to teach them to read in Kindergarten nowadays, they're only ready when they're ready.

I have a little jingle that I sing to make the basics stick (can I embed audio in Blogger?):

"Sentence starts with a capital letter;
Sentence ends with a punctuation mark!"

Last year, with some take-their-time first-graders, it finally got so that as I was observing them writing, all I had to do was lean close and hum the jingle and they'd check both ends of their sentences--but they still needed that reminder until the very end of the year.

For some of us, these conventions are not just conventions; they're an art form.  I freely manipulate these influential little marks to inflect and pace my written language, with the aim of helping my readers hear my voice.  I find it fascinating and baffling that so many adults seem to regard punctuation as optional or meaningless.

My student Talia will not be one of those.  She's a reader, a thinker, a noticer and--as I was at this age--a corrector of painful precision.  (Memorably, at three I informed my mother, who had asked me to put something in the trash can, "It's not a can, it's a basket.")  This week, as I was waxing rhapsodic about capitals and the three important ending punctuation marks, Talia interrupted to point out that I had just said "pinctuation," not "punctuation."  A teacher could get impatient about such a remark, or a teacher could write a poem.  A pink poem.

************

As it turns out, a teacher could start a poem, but not finish one.  I thought I was going to write a rosy little piece for 6-year-olds, but sometimes a poem gets uppity and starts acting like a character in a novel, bossing the poet about and refusing to come quietly.  So it is today.  I weigh the options:  post the poem-in-progress, with all the risk that entails, or delay until it's "finished," knowing that you, dear Poetry Friday visitor, may not return to see what pinctuation means to me.  Hmm.

As I get older, I get a little wiser, but see:  I'm impatient after all. 
*****************

Pinctuation Lessons

Pinctuation Lesson One:

Pinctuation is for everyone, boys and girls,
and all must find their precise shades of pink.
Winter, spring, summer and fall,
we can all dress our sentences
to fit the whether.
Correct pinctuation is required;
creative pinctuation is inspired.

Pinctuation Lesson Two:

Every sentence starts with a heart.
Pink is the capital of the United States of You.
[rest of stanza 2]

Pinctuation Lesson Three:

In the end, pinctuation marks the moment.
Beneath your telling statement beats
a feeling colored pink. Your brain believes
it's neutral gray, but heart trumps it.
When you ask a question, your
whowhatwherewhenwhy quivers pinkly
with uncertainty. Why try to hide it?
And if you exclaim satisfaction or delight,
shock, surprise, excitement,
your heart rises to your face, flushed with pink.
Your heart commands:  embrace it!


Heidi Mordhorst  [draft] 2012
all rights reserved


Pop on over to the wonderful Gathering Books blog with Myra Garces-Bacsal today for some Valentinian variety!

overheard in the staff meeting

I'll admit that I was surprised to walk into a staff development session on math teaching a few months ago to hear it suggested that we begin math lessons by asking "What do you notice?  What do you wonder?"  I've talked for years about how poetry grows out of noticing and wondering, and while I've applied the Noticing and Wondering formula (which is anything but formulaic, once you get past the initial questions) to every other piece of curriculum in the classroom, I realize that I've been leaving math out.

You can watch the video that I found mind-changing at that staff development meeting here:

Our staff has met twice more to consider and discuss (only very briefly; seven minutes isn't near enough time for in-depth conversations) this approach to math education and to try to link it--of course--to the new Common Core Standards and to the Five Strands of Mathematical Proficiency, UCARE.  (Yes, I care about math; it just doesn't come as naturally to me!)

Earlier this week one of my colleagues shared, valuably, her experience with a less-is-more inquiry approach which begins with a lot of TIME.  To start, she has been offering her students plenty of time to sit and look at a new math concept, such as a fraction and its reduced version, in order to notice and wonder about the two numbers and their possible relationships.  Perhaps they attempt to represent their ideas on paper or whiteboards.

Once they have begun to have some ideas about what might be going on (and my favorite feature of  the "What do you notice?" launch is that everyone can notice, whether or not they have an inkling of what the end point or "correct answer" might be), the children have seven whole minutes to talk through their thoughts with a partner, to express their notions of the problem in words.  This is wait time with a capital W. 

My colleague spoke about her strong tendency to feel that this might be a waste of time, compared to simply teaching the class the logarithm for reducing fractions straightaway, and how she has had to persevere in permitting herself to allow time for ambiguity, for process.  She described observing the children's initial delving into what the problem might be, and how understanding comes in fits and starts that often begin with "flashes of maybeness." 

This is a feeling I know well, having been a child who struggled with math although I had a fairly good sense of "reasonable."  Now I know that not understanding place value until I was offered base 10 blocks in a Math for Teachers course at age 22 makes me a more effective and sympathetic teacher for children (unlike my own!) who need substantial time to reach true comprehension of math concepts.  I'm grateful for the lead toward honoring all those flashes of maybeness.

*****************

there's a ticklish
lifting
in your eyebrows
or ribs
a lightness
that zaps through
your backbone and lungs

a pause
a breath and then
flashes of maybeness
bubble your brain:
"that might--
it could--
what if--
hey, look!"

the eye in your mind opens wide
starts to see
and any day now
your mouth will catch up

Heidi Mordhorst 2012
all rights reserved


Many thanks to my colleague Stephanie Cromwell for giving me this week's poem, and to Joelle Thompson, the staff development teacher who has been leading these meetings.  The round-up this Poetry Friday is with Laura Purdie Salas (and her guest David Harrison) at writing the world for kids. 

youland

Add to my all-time favorite books Mattland, by Hazel Hutchins and Gail Herbert (published in Canada).  I have long been a fan of Roxaboxen and its depiction of a kind of collaborative, creative, imaginative play that today's children sometimes need to be taught.  Mattland is the same kind of story, but a little more accessible and step-by-step than Roxaboxen, and with a dramatic crisis that the true story of Roxaboxen lacks.  (I have my little complaints about the design of Mattland and how the illustrations sometimes don't match the words in shape or placement, but these are surmounted by the powerfully satisfying overall effect.)

We read both these books as a way of coming to an understanding of the "physical features: landforms and bodies of water" that are in the Kindergarten curriculum.  We worked up to building modeling clay landscapes on lunch trays, with little toothpick flags to indicate mountains, lakes, deserts, rivers, grasslands, oceans and islands.  We called the project "Youland," since most children, like Matt in the book, named their place after themselves, and they were very proud of their lands indeed.  It took me way too long to realize what song we needed to learn:  Woody Guthrie's folk classic below.  Did you know all the verses?

This Land Is Your Land

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

by Woody Guthrie

And now, enjoy this Youtube version which links Woody's cultural/political message with our National Parks system...

Sing your way to the Poetry Friday Round-up at The Iris Chronicles with Karissa.

making sweet honey from old failures

This poem came to me as just an excerpt in the book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach.  I was so taken by the second, beehive stanza that I went to look up the rest and found that I had mistakenly thought that Antonio Machado was a New World poet, and also that this is a rather well-known poem since its inclusion in a collection called Ten Poems to Change Your Life, published in 2003.


Last Night As I Was Sleeping

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

~ Antonio Machado
tr. Robert Bly

I've been thinking on this poem for a couple of weeks and found myself a little put off by "--marvelous error!--".  It might not have bothered me, except that it's important enough to be repeated in four of five stanzas.  Apart from the odd technical quality of the word "error," which doesn't seem to fit here, I kept thinking that "marvelous mistake" would work so much better:  alliteration, of course, but also that dreams are full of images that we take to be one thing or another, mis-takenly.

So I thought I'd go and see if anyone else had tranlasted the poem in a different way.   And now--duh--I find that Antonio answers my concern himself, with his original version in Spanish (please join me now in trusting the internet).  The imaginations of the poem are neither errors nor mistakes; they are "illusions, " and I'm inclined to believe Google Translate when it suggests "blessed illusion!"

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una fontana fluía
dentro de mi corazón.
Dí: ¿por qué acequia escondida,
agua, vienes hasta mí,
manantial de nueva vida
en donde nunca bebí?

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que un ardiente sol lucía
dentro de mi corazón.
Era ardiente porque daba
calores de rojo hogar,
y era sol porque alumbraba
y porque hacía llorar.

Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que era Dios lo que tenía
dentro de mi corazón.

I'm so in awe of those who have the language comfort to translate poetry, that most language-bound of genres, or to write in two languages.  I'm so far from that, that I have to question my right to nitpick over the choice of a single word, and yet --marvelous, blessed illusion and mistake!--isn't it fun to be led somewhere by a single word?
    
The roundup today is with Jim at Hey, Jim Hill!, which for some reason I find to be just about the best blog title ever.  : )

teach like Ernest Hemingway

You bet I'm a charter member of Students First.  I agree generally with its whole platform and I admire the straight-talking leadership of Michelle Rhee (on this project at least), but the name of the organization does just say it all:  the needs of students--that's children and young people we're talking about--should come before the convenience of adults or the demands of a bureaucratic system.

I got an email from Students First yesterday with an intriguing subject line:  "Do you write like Hemingway?"  It read:

"It's said Ernest Hemingway once wrote a story using just six words: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.' He reportedly declared it his greatest work. Words are powerful tools — for learning, for inspiration, for transformation. When we choose our words with precision, we can say so much. It is with Hemingway as our inspiration that I write to you with a fun challenge: Describe what it means to be a great teacher in just six words."

Well, that's a straight-up poetry challenge, and my mind started percolating--but just like I spike my basic drip coffee with a layer of cinnamon, my current reading seeped in and flavored my six-word essay.  I'm reading Drive by Daniel H. Pink, which is all about what motivates humans of all ages, extrinsically and intrinsically.  He comes at the question of motivation mainly from a business/work perspective, but of course the research he cites and the new "operating system" he proposes--dubbed Motivation 3.0--are entirely applicable to education settings.  Here's the conclusion Pink reaches by the end of his exploration of the three elements of Motivation 3.0, which are autonomy, mastery and purpose.

"A CENTRAL IDEA of this book has been the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. The gap is wide. Its existence is alarming. And though closing it seems daunting, we have reasons to be optimistic.

The scientists who study human motivation, several of whom we’ve encountered in this book, offer us a sharper and more accurate account of both human performance and the human condition. The truths they’ve revealed are simple, yet powerful. The science shows that those typical twentieth-century carrot-and-stick motivators—which we consider somehow a “natural” part of human enterprise—can sometimes work. But they’re effective in only a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. The science shows that “if-then” rewards—the mainstays of the Motivation 2.0 operating system—not only are ineffective in many situations, but also can crush the high-level, creative, conceptual abilities that are central to current and future economic and social progress. The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.

Bringing our businesses in sync with these truths won’t be easy. Unlearning old ideas is difficult, undoing old habits even harder. And I’d be less sanguine about the prospects of closing the motivation gap anytime soon, if it weren’t for this: The science confirms what we already know in our hearts.

We know that human beings are not merely smaller, slower, bettersmelling donkeys trudging after that day’s carrot. We know—if we’ve spent time with young children or remember ourselves at our best—that we’re not destined to be passive and compliant. We’re designed to be active and engaged. And we know that the richest experiences in our lives aren’t when we’re clamoring for validation from others, but when we’re listening to our own voice—doing something that matters, doing it well, and doing it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

So, in the end, repairing the mismatch and bringing our understanding of motivation into the twenty-first century is more than an essential move for business. It’s an affirmation of our humanity."

Pink, Daniel H. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Chapter 6. 

That's certainly how things look to me.  So I submitted my six-word essay on what it means to be a great teacher, and I submitted it although I know it's probably a bit too "spiritual" to win the iPad prize, even for Students First. 

Love says, "Welcome."  Faith says, "Grow."


I wonder if I successfully captured what I mean.  If you're a teacher or a librarian, I invite you to respond with your own six-word essay.  The Poetry Friday round-up today is with Elaine at Wild Rose Reader.

OIK Tuesday: don't let the teacher drive the bus

Overheard in Kindergarten

There's a new girl in my class, Jasmine, who moved here from South Carolina and is still learning how things work at this school and in this community.

Today it was my turn to escort all the kindergarten bus riders --something like 45 kids--down to the APR to wait for buses (which is the recipe for an instant migraine once all the other bus riders in the school have arrived).   It was just one day this week rather than the usual five days in a row, thank goodness.

By the time Jasmine heard me announcing that I had "bus duty," I was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt, having shed my cardigan like a mealworm molts its exoskeleton--because even with the windows open it's like 85 degrees in my classroom.  Jasmine came right up to me, eyes wide, taking in what must have looked like a uniform.

"Teacher!  I didn't know you could drive the bus!"

*******************

I have dreams, you know.

At the end of the day, I'll lead the line,
singing,
all the way onto the bus,
climb into the driver's seat
and zoom away,
without even synching my Palm first.

I bet your mom would let me.

~Heidi Mordhorst 2012
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