pt at large

Making the Grade: His own 'Field of Dreams'

Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
A monthly column in the Brookline TAB

His own 'Field of Dreams'
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

On June 21, I'll be passing away. Yep, slipping into a dimension called "retired." I'm not sure whether time will become compressed, extended or stand still for a while. But it's going to march on in some form and I'll be in step in a new parade. I keep thinking of baseball analogies when I reflect on the change. Perhaps it's the unique combination of individual and team effort, tactical and strategic planning, patience and assertiveness, that are inherent in both teaching and in baseball.

For the past year, one image persistently floats into my imagination, a baseball analogy lifted from the movie "Field of Dreams." Following his own dream, the main character builds an improbable baseball field beside a corn field in the middle of America. "If you build it, they will come," he's been told in his dream. He builds, and they do come. Three years ago, before I walked into the personnel office and handed Maureen Flynn my retirement papers, I heard a message to start building toward my own future.

One of the film's sequence keeps playing in my mind like an instant replay on the Jumbotron. Ballplayers of the past, veterans in full uniform, magically enter the playing field, play a game, then return into the high-as-an-elephant's-eye corn fields surrounding the outfield of the country ballpark. Their images disappear as they pass into another dimension, destination unknown. Memories of them in their heydays kick up dust on the diamond from time to time as the contemporary players, taking a breather in the dugout or playing cards on the team bus, recount a memorable play or an antic deed they remember.

I've always been on this side of the diamond, watching in awe as my veteran colleagues retired and wondering how their next innings would play out. In my mind's eye, I can still see them in their prime, creative, funny, occasionally irreverent, ready to deliver ideas to me in the clutch, and coach me whether to be patient or swing away for the fences.

After this September, I'll know where they went.

The game's changed since my first year. In 1970, the only machine in the teacher's room was a mimeograph machine. I'm surprised more teachers didn't die of blood poisoning from all the blue ink that stained our hands after one faulty attempt at filling the machine with spirit alcohol. If someone said eBay in the '70s, it might be taken as a place you'd visit in the Virgin Islands on a February vacation. If you mentioned Google, the only thing a teacher thought about was a large number trailed by a significant amount of zeros. A Dick Tracy wrist watch two-way walkie talkie was a fantasy. Cell phones, computers and satellite dishes were more likely to show up in a Robert Heinlein science fiction tale than your local store. Let's just say that in 1970, zeros and ones were just that, zeros and ones.

Teaching is one of the hardest things I've ever done. When I was a beginner, I struggled to figure it out. I eavesdropped on the veterans when they talked shop, and was relieved when my rookie questions weren't brushed away, but answered with a smile for the "kid." The curve balls I needed to learn how to hit included how to manage a class of kids, how to report to parents and how to know the difference between following my gut and following the instruction manual. In those early seasons, all I knew was that I was doing something really hard. When I wasn't holding on for dear life, I was enjoying it immensely because I knew I was doing something really important.

For the past 10 years, history has repeated itself as I've coached young teachers how to negotiate the curve balls of the trade. And for the past year, I've been busy learning new skills from the editor of a small newspaper in southeastern Massachusetts so I can become a "cub" newspaper reporter. I'm a rookie again.

In June, I'm going to shake hands with my teammates and pass away into the corn fields and on to a new field of dreams. I'm certain I'll be the oldest rookie on the new team of writers, and I know that I'll have to prove myself before I can write with the first stringers.

But, if I could learn how to become a good teacher, I can learn how to do anything.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade: How children create their own boundaries

Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
A monthly column in the Brookline TAB

How children create their own boundaries
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Yessss. Finally. Someone has drawn a line in the sand. The FCC, awakened by a costume failure in the middle of a football stadium, has stirred in its den, responded to public outcry and begun setting limits on what it calls the boundaries of good taste.

Based on what is increasingly seen and heard in the media, isn't it a wonder that school-age children don't sound like little Tony Sopranos, juvenile candidates for the old-fashioned "wash out your mouth with soap" interdiction?

Some days a school teacher feels like the Lone Ranger, trying to maintain boundaries of civility, truth, justice and the American way, when there's ample evidence to the contrary all over the place. I realize that censorship is a slippery slope. As much as I'm in favor of some restraint, there's part of the adolescent left in me that still wears the "Question Authority" T-shirt under my shirt and tie. All I want is a little balance in the world of popular culture.

When I read that Howard Stern is getting the heave-ho from certain radio markets, I didn't run to the barricades to join the "Free Speech for Howard" fan club. The man's humor is demeaning. And it seems pervasive. Ironically, I am the same guy who laughed at George Carlin's classic monologue "The Seven Words You Can't Say On TV." I laughed partly because at the time a performer truly couldn't say them on TV. If s/he did, someone in the studio would simply pull the plug, the screen would fade to black and the national audience would be raiding the refrigerator until the top of the hour. Since the advent of cable, those seven words don't raise an eyebrow. But they do raise an eyebrow - and a consequence - if an elementary school kid tries them out on the playground.

What continues to amaze me is that somehow, somewhere, in the midst of all this, kids do learn socially acceptable behavior.

Most parents and teachers don't need the FCC to know where to draw the lines. They set their own boundaries on free speech and behavior so that learning can take place without the distractions of foul language, bathroom jokes and degrading remarks about others. Which brings me to the richest verity at play here. One of the great dualities of being a teacher or parent is that we get to squeeze through one of the true portals of adulthood - having experience on both sides of the great divide - the "testing the limits" side and the "upholding the limits" side. In the midst of the latter, epiphanies strike like lightning on a sunny day. Many of us realize that, to our utter amazement, we're turning into our parents.

So how do adults shape a civil environment? We can use the airwaves of life to produce our own reality shows. Kids do heartwarming things right under our noses every day. At different times in the past two weeks, students in my class huddled to give solace a classmate in tears who lost a favorite pencil, and another who was dismayed with a lousy score on a science test. They cheered a classmate who powerfully shinnied to the top of the ceiling-high climbing rope in the gym and were in accord that "She's awesome!" And I cheered them for cheering her. On other occasions, they were upset, and let me know it, when they saw a student abuse the honor system while correcting his math test. They told me when a student at recess used one of Carlin's seven words. In both cases, they watched and listened carefully to see what kind of consequence I would assign to the breach.

As I walk around my open space school, I see colleagues engaged in the daily work of delivering acknowledgement and consequence. Acts of honesty, persistence, teamwork or negotiating skills are grist for the highlight films of our day and we acknowledge the heck out of the kids who played a part in them. I've talked to enough like-minded parents to know that there are lots of us rangers on patrol for examples of a positive reality that matters to us and that have an affirming cumulative effect on a classroom or family unit.

Good behavior is as catchy as poor behavior. We just need to keep cheering the behaviors we value. The FCC can use all the help it can get.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade: Walking a careful line

Walking a careful line
Making The Grade/Paul Tamburello
Wednesday, March 24, 2004

A teacher's professional portfolio is slim. Our prospectuses are built on our reputations, with the table of contents including our subject knowledge and our motivational, managerial and interpersonal skills. When that reputation is unfairly called into question, some teachers can't take the blow. Given the choice between life with an unfairly sullied reputation and death, one teacher chose death. Suicide.

I never met Ron Mayfield Jr. I do know that he threw himself from a bridge span 200 feet over the Blue River in Virginia, distraught over an unsubstantiated accusation of assaulting a student. The fact that news hadn't reached him that he had been exonerated doesn't make this story any easier to write. A teacher's reputation, our standing with children, the faith given us as protectors as well as educators, cannot be called into question without emotional fallout.

We touch kids. This is not a trade secret. In elementary school, we pat kids on the head or on the shoulders to show acknowledgement for a good deed or signal that something's going to be OK ... a lunch left at home, a low test score, a falling out with a best friend. We may even put the same hands on shoulders to emphasize our displeasure with an unsocial act, a bullying act or to forestall a self-destructive act. Certainly there needs to be clear understanding of appropriate and inappropriate touching. We teachers also tell kids to speak out if they get an unwanted touch, even if it's our touch on their shoulders or heads.

Not every teacher successfully manages the boundaries of touch. Mayfield, though, knew he was innocent of an assault charge after he touched a disruptive male student on the chest to make a point about the student's poor behavior. But he'd watched enough television to believe that no matter what, he would soon be front-page news, his reputation called into question, his family life deprivatized. He envisioned a tabloid future, the whispers of his innocence outshouted by the accusatory headlines he imagined would follow. He couldn't cope. He killed himself. He stilled a voice that ironically for 11 years had been teaching non-native youngsters how to speak English.

What is your reputation worth to you? How long would it take for the wounds of an unfair accusation heal? Would your attitude toward your job ever be the same? I doubt it.

We live in a world defined by scandal, and no institution or individual is exempt ... the mighty Fidelity Investments, the Roman Catholic Church, Martha Stewart, George Bush, John Kerry ... and down-to-earth regulars like Ron Mayfield Jr. The news of exoneration, when and if due, is never printed in font as large as the charge of accusation.

Listen to our interactions with our students any day of the week, and, woven between the lessons about decimals and fractions, you'll hear teachers talk about what really matters to us: pride in the work effort and its product; and respect and tolerance for classmates of different color, shape, sex and orientation. No name calling, no bullying, no belittling, by either children or adults. The great majority of us practice what we preach.

Much of that work goes unnoticed. We can't slide it into a portfolio to show parents, it's not measured on standardized tests and it's probably not as universally valued in classrooms as it should be. But most teachers believe that's part of our job, that's why we got into the business. Whether we articulate it or not, most teachers are political with a lower case p. We believe that from our launching site in our 30-by-30-foot squares of desk-dotted turf, we can influence the ultimate outcome: the quality of life in America, and civility in the democratic process and the national dialogue. It's that simple.

So, when one of us is unfairly accused of touching or of assault, it stings all of us. It makes us all feel more vulnerable to unfair attack. It makes us think about the prospect of conducting an elementary school classroom without touch of any sort. That would be a loss.

Our touch is to comfort, to acknowledge and to affirm. And it is not inappropriate. Our reputations depend on that.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade: Young word-slingers source of inspiration for teachers

Young word-slingers source of inspiration for teachers
Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Being a writer is alarmingly like being a gunslinger. No matter how good you are, there's always someone better. Fortunately, when a writer comes across that someone, a riddled body is not the outcome. Psychic damage, however, can be humbling when one of those superior word-slingers happens to be a fourth-grader you are teaching how to write.

Look, I don't mind getting gunned down once a week by my hero, columnist Sam Allis, author of The Observer in The Boston Sunday Globe. Sam writes with more "voice" than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He's my Wild Bill Hickok, a man who can put words on notice that they'd better march into his column with verve or have to do a little dancin' as he fires some metaphors at their feet, making 'em tap dance a bit in the street.

For the past two years, I've been sharpening my own writer's "voice" so I won't have to do that embarrassing dance. With practice and chutzpah, I've even landed this monthly column. Each month, I read drafts of my prospective columns to my students with the authority of a bona fide writer. When the columns appear in print, I dash out to the corner news stand so I can read them the final versions, with a dubious mixture of pride and self-importance, not long after the ink on the newsprint has dried.

With evangelical zeal, I teach my students to notice the way their favorite authors write, encourage them to use similes and metaphors, and to listen to their classmates' writing for a source of inspiration.

During our frequent writer's workshops, sessions held when I ask my writers to read their work to the class, kids come up with novel ways to solve what we call "juicy writer problems:" how to "show and not tell" as they elaborate, how to find a good lead for their stories, brainstorm for just the right word that captures the feel of their subject.

As it turns out, I have a few Wild Bills in my own classroom every year. These little word-slingers seem right in tune with their inner writing voices. With the cool swagger of the sheriff, they can draw a bead on those images they see on the "Wanted" posters in their imaginations and have them incarcerated between the lines before a crowd forms to witness the heroics.

The Latin root of the word education is educare, which means "to lead out." The most ironic aspect of educating is that occasionally teachers find themselves leading out young people who have a raw talent or native ability in a particular subject that exceeds our own. That's when the job gets interesting in a different way.

How do we best serve these sharpshooters? One way is to join the posse. With a nod to Miss Conlon, my 10th-grade Latin teacher, posse is derived from the word meaning "to be able." Teachers become enablers in the best sense. We get curious, we ask these students questions about their thinking and give them space to ponder. We challenge their assumptions, applaud their efforts, and then ask more questions. In sweet irony, giving them a context in which to flex their intellectual or artistic muscles shapes our own approach, expands our horizons and deepens our practice.

Successful teachers consciously create environments in which this can happen routinely. Rather than get powder burns when our students are quicker on the draw, we use the heat from the spontaneous combustion of their intellectual energy to stoke our own engines.

Case in point: Jeff Lowenstein. Jeff was firing out powerful writing in 1974, when he graduated from my fourth grade. Even as a young teacher, I could see that he had a born knack for connecting with others. Now a freelance writer, his article, "King's Chicago harvest," was featured on page 1 of Chicago Tribune's Jan. 25 "Perspectives" section. Reading Jeff's work, and listening to his encouragement as I strapped on a keyboard myself, has been one of the most rewarding parts of my 34-year career.

For the past 10 years, one of our running jokes has been, "When I grow up, I want to write like you, Jeff!"

And Sam Allis, if you're reading this, I'm available if you ever need a sidekick.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher. He has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade: Failing better

Making the Grade: Failing better
Paul Tamburello
January 21, 2004

Noise makers, funny hats, and confetti should greet each day in an elementary school classroom. After all, commencing in September, elementary school classrooms celebrate a version of New Year’s Day 180 times a year. You’d think children would be certifiable party animals by the time January rolled around. For them,the sense of a new beginning happens every weekday morning at 8 A.M.

Now that it’s January, resolutions have been flying around like snow flakes in a blizzard. I can anticipate seeing some of the same ones on my student’s lists every year: learn the times tables faster, remember to indent when beginning a new paragraph, ask a question when you don't understand something, get better at kickball.

Speaking of repeat performances, getting to work ten minutes earlier, writing every single day, reading more fiction, and being on time for meetings are resolutions which have been on my list for more years than my fourth graders have been on the planet.

Have you ever made a resolution that hasn’t been a competition between you and your will power or ability? By definition, we resolve to do something we haven’t mastered yet. Samuel Beckett’s quote could be a perfect resolution for my fourth graders and me. “Try. Fail. Try again. Fail better.”

Classrooms are the first place we learn to manage failure on a regular basis. For any but the geniuses among us, failing is an inherent part of learning. Once a student succeeds at a task, what’s the reward? Harder books, harder questions, and inevitable failures small and large as a kid struggles to get some traction on the slippery slope of learning.

I remember sitting in one of six rows of fixed wooden desks, with a hole for an inkwell in the right hand corner, learning my times tables, and thinking I’d never remember the difference between 7x9 and 8x7. That was after I’d struggled to learn how to “borrow” in subtraction.
On and on it went, long division, fractions, algebra, trigonometry, physics. Each time I successfully grasped one skill, I was introduced to another one that seemed intractable.

There were many days where I felt like Sisyphus, the legendary Greek doomed for eternity to push a block of stone up a steep hill only to have it perpetually roll down to the base just as he reaches the top. I remember my teacher’s mysterious faith and optimism that sooner or later I’d succeed in perching my long division rock on the summit, where I could see that I was accumulating enough of them to make a reasonable foundation for my castle of knowledge. With the notable exception of the unmovable rock of physics, being persistent, ignoring the voice of my inner pessimist, and listening to the cheers from some of my teachers kept me from wanting to run away and join the circus, where kids probably wouldn’t have to write compositions or answer questions about velocity and mass.

Failing, trying again, and failing better are all in abundant evidence these days as my students push long division up the hill. Every day in December, we began at the bottom of the hill. For days, few even got above the tree line. I wouldn’t be surprised if their grunts and groans could be heard every morning a few blocks away in Brookline Village. During the climb, they were using some of the rocks they’d already firmly laid on top of their hills, subtraction and multiplication. But division was so elusive. At the chalk board, then hovering around their work tables, I was a one-man cheering section, expedition director, and fact checker. Yodels of “Is this what I do now?” “What do I do next?” “ This is soooooo hard!” echoed through the classroom valley. But each day, the trekkers got a little closer to the cloud shrouded peak, slowly realizing that each failure got them a step further up the hill. One by one, they planted their little flags beside their rocks at their summits and admired the view of the trail below.

Before I asked my students to compile their New Year’s resolutions for school, I had them list the academic and social skills they’d already pushed to the tops of their own mountains. For every one of those successes, I asked them to recall the failure or uncertainty that preceded it. The lists revealed that they’d scaled some pretty impressive peaks. You can bet that I’m going to remind them of this list when we enter the valley of fractions next month. By the time June rolls around (no pun intended) we’ll all have added another story to our castles on the hill. And the knowledge that we learned to “fail better”.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade:Harry Potter offers 'gateway' books for young readers

Harry Potter offers 'gateway' books for young readers
Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
Wednesday, December 17, 2003

Yale University professor Harold Bloom thinks J.K. Rowling is a lousy writer. He got wound up on the subject when he learned that the National Book Foundation was about to award its annual "distinguished contribution" award to Stephen King.

"Stephen King is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis," he huffed. "By awarding it to King, they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat." Well, give Bloom credit for not being ambivalent in his taste for literature. He's as direct as a haymaker by Rocky Marciano.

His next punch was aimed at J.K. Rowling. "If this is going to be the criterion in the future," he continued, "then perhaps the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steele, and surely the Nobel Prize for Literature should go to J.K. Rowling."

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I remained comfortably in a neutral corner until Bloom theorized, "If Rowling was what it took to get children to pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing? It is not."

What is pushing me to risk climbing into the ring with the heavyweight Bloom was this final uppercut to Rowling. "Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down...." and that Rowling, as a poor writer, is one of the causes.

In general, disagreeing with an internationally known literary critic isn't a good idea for survival in the writing community, especially if you're a lightweight jabbing at a heavyweight. But hey, I've been in the ring for years. As a veteran elementary school teacher, I've watched kids get hooked by contenders in all the divisions. And even I've been heard to weigh in on the questionable literary value of some children's "commercial" authors, R.L. Stine (Goosebumps) and Ann Martin (Babysitters Club), to name two.

Bloom contends that reading Harry Potter won't lead a reader to children's classics like the "Just So Stories" or "Alice in Wonderland."

I don't agree. Avid readers of all ages go on romps through all kinds of authors. Every year, I survey the Boston Globe's adult summer reading list. Trust me, many books touted are guilty pleasures books recommended to readers with one eye on the page and another on the waves lapping onto the beach. I'm sure many of those authors wouldn't appear on Bloom's recommended list of first-rate adult authors, and aren't logical jump off points to the likes of Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon or Don DeLillo, Bloom's modern heroes.

What is it about Harry Potter books that Bloom may be missing? Massive hype fitting for a prize fight aside, there are redeeming features in Potter books. Harry's quests put him in the ring with classic themes: survival in a hostile environment; controlling one's destiny by using one's own resources; the struggle between good and evil. Not just kid stuff. Other Potter themes, the value of friendship, loyalty, being true to one's beliefs, are found in both classic and contemporary literature and themes that I believe would resonate with other Bloom favorites Lewis Carroll, James Thurber, Rudyard Kipling and Kenneth Grahame.

I grant that Rowling's books don't meet Bloom's standard for style, and may or may not lead children to Bloom's favorite choices, but children have other needs besides exposure to stylistic accomplishment. Children Harry Potter's age are trying to figure out their place in a moral universe, and Harry can be as good a "corner man" as a kid can find for advice between the rounds.

As a teacher, I'd rather have students spending their time reading than not reading. I can just imagine what adults thought as my friends and I devoured the formulaic stories about the Hardy Boys, comic books about Archie and Veronica and GI Joe, and ultimately MAD Magazine. That's a long way from "Just So Stories" or "Alice in Wonderland." But the fact is that reading those low-brow collections engaged my imagination, kept me reading and helped me to rise from the lightweight reader ranks.

Potter books are gateway books. I've witnessed students with very shaky reading habits and abilities struggle but sustain their attention through a Harry Potter book. Despite my efforts to direct them into more "appropriate" books for their reading level, Harry Potter is the one who helped them break into an arena of challenging books and see themselves as "readers."

Far from dumbing down literature, I think J.K. Rowling's layered story lines move the Potter books into at least the middleweight division. And I'm sure that some of my fourth-graders would say that Harry's in the ring with the big boys.

By the way, don't imagine for a New York minute that Brookline's Pierce School would have chosen a fanciful classic like Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows" to be its grade 2-6 play this year if Harry Potter not been in the air. And don't be surprised if scores of kids end up reading that classic book before the year is over.

Now, isn't that a good thing, Mr. Bloom?

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade: Through children's eyes, anticipation runs high

Through children's eyes, anticipation runs high
Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
Wednesday, November 19, 2003

"My birthday is next month!" The speaker, eyes aglow, smile a mile wide, is elementary school-aged. Excitement oozes from every pore and threatens to levitate the child. Birthdays may not trump major holidays, but they certainly seem to turn an ignition key that revs up the motor of anticipation.

October ushered in a delicious season of anticipation for schoolchildren. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, loom large on a child's calendar. Children get more mileage out of special days than a Volkswagen gets from a gallon of gasoline. And they get excited about these occasions miles ahead of their parents and teachers. Kids began planning for Halloween not long after they ran out of their September supply of pencils and the aroma of their new notebooks and backpacks had faded. They could already tell you what they were going to wear, where they would trick or treat, and who they would be with.

I've witnessed entire cafeteria conversations, fueled by high-octane anticipation and peanut butter and jelly, get generated after one child's comment about an upcoming trip to Six Flags New England. Every kid around the table listened intently and then shared their own upcoming trips like the Fruit Roll-Ups they were eating for dessert.

That dreamy sense of anticipation is a force that buoys them up even if their school life has veered off the rails a bit. As child psychologist Dr. Sharon Gordetsky explains, "For all children, the role of imagination is a healthy coping skill. Anticipation is a force that kids use to propel themselves forward." Gordetsky, whose son is a Brookline High School student, adds "Anticipation can also help them get through the inevitable days whose outcome disappoints them."

They might be having a "my dog ate my homework" day, or it might be an indoor recess day, or they may have forgotten their sneakers for gym class, but just a few synapses away is the thought of that special day, and before you know it, they are in the "birthday zone" or the "going to Six Flags" zone. Immediate personal problems take a back seat to the imagined excitement on the highway ahead.

A satisfying mantle of perfection cloaks their anticipation. The event, yet to unfold, plays out flawlessly. It never rains; best friends are always in attendance; gifts are always just right; the lines for the roller coaster are always short. Love rules. The future trumps the past.

Boy, do I ever envy those kids. Somewhere along the road I think my suitcase with the anticipation tags tied to the handle got misplaced in the trunk. I can't think of a time I've slowed down to anticipate the joy of an upcoming holiday, birthday or special event that's a whole month away. I scribble the date in my calendar where, wedged in alongside the meetings with colleagues or parents, or assemblies to plan for, it takes on the same emotional weight as picking up my clothes at the dry cleaners.

Somehow a joyous sense of anticipation is overshadowed by all the "jobs" I have to do to prepare for the event: the shopping required; or the travel arrangements; or the gifts to buy and wrap; or the cards to select and write. It's work!

As I start planning for Thanksgiving, I'm going to take a page from my fourth-graders' playbook. Instead of thinking of the occasion in terms of the logistics involved, I'm going to highlight the date in yellow, signaling me to savor the thought of the good time I'll have when I do it.

Next, I'm going to start one of those high-octane cafeteria conversations myself. Instead of commenting how I dread driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike to the Berkshires with what seems like a million other cars at a parking lot speed the day before Thanksgiving, I'm going to tell my kids how excited I am to be celebrating that special day with some of the same relatives who welcomed me to my first Thanksgiving decades ago. Pass the Fruit Roll-Ups, please.

Paul Tamburello is a new regular TAB columnist. He is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

Making the Grade: Nation building on a small scale

Making the Grade:by Paul Tamburello
Nation building on a small scale

A monthly column in the Brookline TAB
Wednesday, October 8, 2003

Please, thank you. You're welcome. I want to hear those words ringing in my ears all day long in my fourth grade classroom. That's one way I'm constructing bridges, delivering utilities, and establishing communication systems in my little nation in the "village" at Pierce School. And I'll bet that's how scores of other little "nations" across town are being built in the first month of school. Iraq isn't the only place where nation building and infrastructure are critical.

Help each other out, share when you can, accept people for who they are, not what they look like. These guidelines are the hot and cold running water of our classroom. Yes, I know we're living in a "high stakes" school environment and that we need academic rigor but we need social rigor as well. The social protocols that teachers model and expect are the medium in which learning takes place. We just pour them like cement into the foundation forms of our little classroom nations.

Listen to what others want, know what you want, be prepared to give a little, get a little. The late speaker of the house Tip O'Neill famously observed, "All politics are local." He'd probably agree that nation building starts in classrooms, too, and would puff heartily on his cigar as he considered ways to get this 'bridge building bill' through Congress.

You don't have to have a seat in the United Nations to help build a nation, even though there are enough languages represented in most Brookline schools to qualify for immediate entry there. Where did United Nations President Kofi Annan learn about consensus and about sharing wealth, whether of knowledge or of know-how? Who taught him? Likely it was a teacher in the schools he attended. We've heard that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, I suppose that teachers are equivalent of village elders. We're raising children so they can in turn manage their own villages. One goal of education is to mold responsible, informed citizens... nation building by any other name.

Think about the point of view of the classmate sitting next to you; when you disagree, learn to negotiate. Classrooms, and the alliances and small work groups inside of them, are the budding public utilities of our little infrastructures. Include others in activities. Don't follow the crowd if they are doing something they shouldn't be doing. Teachers don't just preach these concepts. They show students the strategies to solve social problems as well as math problems. More cement poured into the foundation.

Learn to accept correction. Correction helps you whether it's with your work or with your behavior. One of a teacher's roles is to set limits of acceptable behavior and apply consequences for not acting within the limits. There are limits and laws in a democracy, too. Children feel secure within a defined structure. It varies from class to class, teacher to teacher, but it's there. Structure provides the net for kids to get up the nerve to leap off the academic high dive for the first time. It helps kids take learning risks. It prepares us for citizenship in a nation.

Do the right thing. Like countries, many classrooms have mottoes. Walk around any school in Brookline and look for them posted on classroom walls. In our little fourth grade country at Pierce School, the class motto "Working Hard Feels Good" has been a permanent fixture for more than 20 years. By working hard, I promise my students (and remind myself) they'll discover how much they can really accomplish. I remind them that failure often precedes success. All of us can relate to how it feels to plug away at something until we 'get it.'

You are part of many communities in your life. Your family is a community, your neighbor hood is a community, our classroom is a community, our school is a community, Brookline is a community, our whole country is one vast community. We're all connected in some way, either by culture, customs, language, or government. We need citizens to engage civilly in community discourse. True, working for the common good is sometimes messy and nuanced but so is a democracy (and even a town meeting!).

Community is the metaphor for the larger world, into which teachers want their social and academic lessons transferred. To successfully build a nation in another part of the world, we need to recognize how we do it in our own country, one classroom nation at a time. We're incubating the future right here.

Paul Tamburello is a new regular TAB columnist.

http://www.townonline.com/brookline/news/opinion/bt_colbrpault10082003.htm
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Making the Grade: One last go around

Making the Grade: Paul Tamburello
A monthly column in Brookline TAB

One last go around

Wednesday, September 3, 2003

This commentary was taped for the "Radio Diary" section of Tom Ashbrook's On Point program on WBUR. To hear it click http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2003/09/20030903_a_main.asp and click on "A Teacher Bids Farewell" - Listen

This is my last go round. On Opening Day this September, I'll be poised on the dugout steps to start my final season, my thirty fourth in the major leagues of education. The sound of the school bell at eight o'clock will be my national anthem, the potent ritual moment of tradition and expectation announcing the beginning of the action. And my last innings as an elementary school teacher.

How did the years go by so swiftly, how much have I accomplished, what's my place in the pantheon of my school's history? More importantly what's my place in the personal pantheons of the hundreds of fourth graders whom I've taught, advised, disciplined, and eaten lunch with for the past 33 years.

During the next 10 months, I anticipate the bittersweet experience of watching the doors of a lifetime's career at the same school slowly swing closed. I can see myself grinning with a mysterious Buddha grin at the preposterousness that I'm old enough to retire.

Every school day a little voice in my head is going to be whispering, "Hey, Paul, this is the last time in your career that you'll be doing this routine."

It will begin the first week of school when I have my students put materials in the time capsule that they'll open in June. During the days in between, I wonder how many times Ill have to stop myself from writing suggestions in the margins of my teaching materials for how I can improve my delivery next year.

It will be an ongoing one hundred and eighty day out-of-body experience, looking from above at myself as I perform the usual and the unusual, the mundane and the miraculous...every day staples of a teacher's life.

As in years past, I'll revel in the miracle of "Ohh, I get it now...," reap the reward of watching kids plug away tenaciously at something they cannot yet do, and trust I'll have the experience as a teacher to know when to intervene and when to just get out of the way.

I know that what I do in the classroom makes a difference in kids' lives, and by now I'm comfortable with the fact that I don't always know precisely what that difference is. Visits by former students from their 20s to their 40s, an impressive sight to the ten year olds in the room, reinforces my belief.

I'm ending my career with what most eluded me in the beginning: wisdom and perspective. In my rookie years, I envied the grasp my older colleagues seemed to have on their game. They knew how to play the questions off The Wall as well as any left fielder in Fenway Park, and they never seemed to be in a day to day survival mode, wondering what the manager, other players, and even the fans, thought about their stats. I've taught in the shadows of giants and been astonished to learn that even the best of them battled spells of self doubt. I've gone from promising rookie to dependable veteran. I survived then thrived. But I also aged.

It's time to go.

I know that I'm one of hundreds of gray haired teachers across the nation who are fading into the Field of Dreams. In the coming days before school officially opens, I'll survey this year's teaching team, the veterans, the rookies, and the administrator managers. One of those promising rookies in my shadow is me a lifetime ago.

When I pack up my bag at the end of this year, I won't look back. I don't have any illusions about how much I'll be missed. After 34 years, I know the game is more important than the players. I know I made a contribution to the people and to the culture of the school when I was there and that I will not be in the lineup next year.

It's time to go.

There is still time to swing open another door, be a rookie again, and learn from veterans.

It's time to begin again.

Paul Tamburello is a writer and teacher who has taught in Brookline since 1970.

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McCord sings the blues at Pierce

February 20, 2002

McCord sings the blues at Pierce

With an air of grace, showmanship and stage presence one would expect at the Regattabar, vocalist Semenya McCord wowed audiences of fourth- through eighth-graders and their teachers at recent morning concerts at the Pierce School. Many eyes lit up in recognition as they saw tuxedo-attired Lenny Bradford, father of two Pierce students, playing bass in McCord’s talented trio, which included piano and percussion.

McCord, performing under the auspices of the Young Audiences of Massachusetts, set the stage by defining the blues as a " way to talk through your troubles. " After asking the fourth- and fifth-graders, who attended the first show, to give examples of their " troubles, " she improvised a highly appreciated version of " I’ve got the Pierce School homework blues " to the delight of giggling students.

Within minutes, McCord had won over the audience, who attentively and enthusiastically interacted with her during the first of two 40-minute performances. The connection was mutual. " In my years of presenting these Journey into Jazz concerts, this is one of the most receptive audiences I’ve performed for, " she said after the shows.

Between songs, with the trio quietly playing musical statements to reinforce her words, she traced the " variety of musical styles that evolved from the day-to-day experiences of African slaves and their descendants to present day jazz " in America. When McCord introduced the " Banana Song, " it took her only one try to get the whole audience to vigorously sing the refrain, " Day Oh, Daaaaay Oh. " Students learned that, since education for slaves was forbidden, slaves figured out ways to use " talking drums " and lyrics to work songs to send messages to one another. For example, the lyrics to " Follow the Drinking Gourd " (Big Dipper), not understood by the slaves’ owners, offered a road map of how to escape slavery by using the Underground Railroad.

As talented a teacher as singer, McCord noted that inventiveness in jazz involved language as well as instruments and introduced the style of " scat " singing. She surely must have realized, when about 150 10- and 11-year-olds energetically sang, on her cue, the " Doo waa " chorus to Duke Ellington’s " It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing, " that she had taught a memorable history lesson.

" Can we learn scat singing? " asked fourth-grader Keyana Michel as we hummed our way back to class.

And when McCord and her trio were asked for their autographs at the end of the set, it was clear to all that McCord has struck a chord for music as an educational tool.

Paul Tamburello

Bee Sticks and the quest for knowledge

Bee Sticks and the quest for knowledge
Thursday, December 20, 2001
Commentary
By Paul Tamburello

Let’s call her Shirl, short for Sherlock, of Scotland Yard fame. The case began one morning as I was checking the science work being done by several of my fourth graders during a botany lesson. I let slip, consciously, I must admit (a standard tool
in a teacher’s repertoire), a remark about the " bee sticks we will be making on
Monday."

Ears at the table immediately perked up, none so high as Shirl’s.
" Bee Stick? Beeee Stick? What’s that? " came the choruses. " Is it going to be dead or alive? " " Can they sting us? " " Do we touch them? "

Their fascination with the idea subsided after a few minutes and the others drifted
back to measuring their plants, writing observations and drawing an accurate version
of their Brassica plant's recently bloomed flowers, which would soon be the landing
site for our Bee Sticks.

Shirl’s fascination, however, took on the weight of a holy mission. In a matter of
seconds she had transformed from a productive kid completing a regular science
assignment into a total zealot, whose immediate life goal became finding the truth
about Bee Sticks. She grilled me for information. I sure wasn’t going to tell her. Not
after noticing how absolutely transfixed she’d become. I knew enough about Shirl to
sense that I was in for a treat. Like Holmes’s Watson, I was going to watch.

I grinned and told her that she would find out soon enough and would have to make
her own best guess until then. What clicked with her? What is it with any of us when
those tumblers in that continuously spinning mind of ours suddenly all fall into place
and open a door into a deeper place, one into which a beam of knowledge must
shine? Shirl had to see that ray of light.

" How many kinds of dictionaries do we have? " I heard over my shoulder a few
minutes later. I walked over to the bookcase, showed her the two kinds we had, and
unearthed a third. As I looked back at her table, I noticed she’d already plucked the
first one off the shelf and had been busy looking up Bee Sticks. Frustrated, she had
wanted another one which would contain the definition she was certain must exist if
only she could find a good enough dictionary.

Next, she began to prowl the science area just outside the perimeter of the room,
digging for clues to the mystery of the Bee Stick. No obvious clues found on her first
round. Like her famous British predecessor, she was unperturbed by the apparent
lack of clues. Shirl returned and eyeballed the shelves in the classroom. Nothing
obvious. Then back to the science area for a deeper look, where she found the thin
wooden stakes that would soon be used to hold our Brassica plants upright as they grew to maturity.

"The Stick! " she announced to me, holding aloft the stake with the conviction she’d
uncovered part of the mystery.

Minutes later, a tap on my shoulder. " I found the bee! " A wide satisfied smile played
across her face as she held aloft the honeybee, a relic, stored from last year’s
science class, which had been concealed in a small plastic container in the recesses
of the science cabinet.

There were about half-dozen times within the 50-minute class when Shirl came up to
me to recite one of her findings, each time looking at me to determine by my response whether she was getting " warm " or not. She never pestered me for information outright, and seemed highly content to continue her quest independently, against the odds that she’d ever be able to figure it out given the paucity of information available to her.

She had found a stick and then a bee. Lesser detectives might have stopped here,
but in true Holmesian fashion, Shirl needed to make a hypotheses. The case was not closed....yet

On her next inspection of the classroom, she found a teacher’s manual near my desk.
On the cover, she spotted a small illustration of a bee mounted on a small stick (a
toothpick), triumphantly held it up to me and said, " There it is, a Bee Stick! " Eyes
bright, she was fairly jumping out of her sneakers. Not settling for that victory, she
looked at the other small illustrations on the manual, including one of a flowering
plant, and began deducing how the bee stick would be used to pollinate the flower. Case closed.

One of the things that struck me as I later recalled this series of events is the way
Shirl never for a minute took failure as a reason to stop her search. I don’t know if
she even considered failure an option. What is it in us that is powerful enough to
make us ignore the difficulty of a mission, to ignore overwhelming odds against us,
and to ignite the ambition to find truth or the " answer? "

As a teacher, there are events in every day that remind me of the reason I entered
this profession in the first place — to connect with kids, and in an extended sense,
have an impact on the rest of us. The elementary school classroom is a theater of
human behavior. When I look carefully enough, I can see it being played out every
day right in front of my eyes. Shirl had been unperturbed by failure, as exhilarated by
the search as with the prospect of the answer.

I know there are thousands of problem solvers like Shirl in classrooms across America.
As a teacher and a citizen, I can’t wait to unleash these change agents into the
workplace to do battle with the medical, environmental, and political issues of our time.
And I'm downright proud that I can provide an environment in which students like Shirl can practice for the future.

Day One

I taped this essay for airing on WBUR's Morning Edition on September 7, 2000, the 31st "Day One" of teaching career.
The essay was published in the Brookline TAB on September 6, 2001 and in the August, 2003 issue of Instructor Magazine

Paul Tamburello

They are mine. They arrive in all sizes, shapes, colors, temperaments, and dispositions. And in these first tentative minutes of the new school year, something happens between me, a veteran elementary school teacher, and the children who will become my new charges, my new fourth graders.

It makes me think of the process called imprinting in which certain birds, after pecking their way out of their shells, assign the first living thing they see the role of parent and care-taker, the force that will rear them and then send them off into the big world. For me, these first minutes launch the process in reverse. At first sight, I'm the one bonding with my young students, taking them under my wing to nurture them, lead them, and create a unique community with them. Total commitment.

They are mine. Their excitement ripples to the classroom walls and returns to wash over us again. How will it turn out this year, for friendships, for accomplishments in this grade which they’ve heard features probing questions, longer books, and lots more writing. And in fact it's the same with me. I, too, am hopeful and excited about how it will turn out for us.

They are mine. When I assemble them in our first class meeting, I am at once looking at who they are now and who they will be in June. I know our destination, and I know that we must map the route and build the road there together. On the way, the lessons I teach will have as much to do with how to live life as with the fourth grade curriculum, and be useful to them beyond the horizon of this June. They’ll have me with them only that far. After that, they will have only my compass. They’ll fly away on their own.

They are mine. And here’s the irony. In fact, there are several fourth grades in our school. As I walk by those other classes of ten-year-olds, they pale in comparison with mine! My own students always seem to have more personality, to be more creative, more energetic, more sociable ... yes, more lovable. I’ve been challenged at times to do it but I can find something to love about every single one of my students. The irony is that if on this first day, one of those other classes of children had pecked their way out of their summer shell and into my care, I would have forged the same connection with them! A blind but potent force of nature is at work here.

They are mine. They will win me over with their accomplishments, delight me with their bravery as they take on the challenges I set before them, and they will warm me with the pride they feel as they experience their own growth..

They are mine yes, ... and I am theirs.