pt at large

Louisiana Flood of 2016: Follow Your Heart

August 31, 2016

Lafayette was hurting. Much of it and the smaller cities and towns all the way to Baton Rouge had been ravaged by a region wrecker named “The Flood of 2016.” I’ve spent some of the best days of my life in Lafayette. To think that the homes of some of the friendliest, most welcoming people I’ve ever met might have been ruined sickened me.  

These are the kinds of people who drop everything to pitch in when a friend, even a stranger, needs a hand. After efforts got underway to rescue and find shelter and food for tens of thousands whose homes were flooded, I spent several days trying to digest the extent of the damage. It was overwhelming.

Donating was an option. Showing up was better. This is the kind of thing that you don’t really think about, just a feeling in your gut that says, Get Down There.

Wednesday August 17.  After hours of scouring the internet, I find a link to a non-denominational church involved in flood recovery in Lafayette. I call, ask a young lady manning the phones if they can use a ‘skilled grunt laborer.”

“We started gutting houses last week. We meet Monday to Saturday every morning at 9 AM, break into work crews, each with a crew chief. After the meeting, crews head for job sites. We try to do two or three houses a day depending on how much damage they’ve had. We’ve got tools, protective masks, power vacs, wheelbarrows and plenty of water. Someone will bring the crew lunch every day. We work until about 3 PM. Some homes don’t have electricity so we want to have plenty of light to work with.  We’re making and delivering food every day to people who’ve lost everything, you can take a job that suits you. We’d love to have you join us.”

Thursday August 18. I call my AAA agent to rent a car.

Friday August 19, a call back from AAA. “Paul, all the cars down there are either underwater or unaccounted for or taken.”

The number for the Hertz counter at the Lafayette Regional Airport is in my phone. I call.

“Hello, I’m flying in tomorrow afternoon, I’ve volunteered to spend a week gutting houses with Our Savior’s Church. The woman I usually work with at Hertz is Della.”

“Well, guess who this is? Paul, I can’t promise you anything. Come to the counter when you arrive, I’ll see what we can do, no promises.” That's Della!

Saturday August 18,  6 PM at the Hertz counter in the airport. Good sign. I recognize Margaret, another woman I’ve worked with there.

“We’ve got a car for you!” Margaret says with a big smile on her face. “Della told me you were heading down here. Thank you for coming from Boston to help out.”

Margaret gives me a great rate for the VW Jetta and sends me off.

I’m two for two in small miracles. The first is finding a link (out of scores of possibilities online) to Our Savior’s Church, a perfect place for me to work.

The second, the rental car, without which, well, I don’t have to explain that one, do I?

By the time I was driving to my good friends’ home in Lafayette, I knew I was where I wanted to be.

Let’s just say that their offer to take me in for the next eight days was what the Cajuns in southwest Louisiana call lagniappe (an extra gift) that topped off the first two little miracles.

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A common scene all around Lafayette, LA after the flood.

Two blocks from my hosts' home in Lafayette: every house on the street was flooded. The homes were built close to a "coulee" ( a drainage canal dug to channel rain water to pumping stations). 

There are approximately 1,400 miles of City-Parish roadside open ditches (500 miles along side city streets and 900 miles along side parish roads) in Lafayette. All of them were overwhelmed and over-topped in the deluge.

Fortunately, my hosts' home is far enough away from a nearby coulee so it did not suffer flood damage. But they did lay sand bags in a susceptible area in their back yard and dug a French drain around the perimeter of the foundation. Both ideas prevented water from seeping over the foundation slab and into the house.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Beverly Cleary Turns 100

April 11, 2016

Beverly Cleary turns 100 today. The Oregon housewife wrote some of the most popular children’s books of the twentieth century. Amazingly, the books still have standing…and popularity today.

For years, books like “Ramona The Pest” and “The Mouse and the Motorcycle” were a feature of my reading/writing program at the John Pierce School in Brookline. Cleary’s books were great read-aloud stories. The author had a canny sense of how to portray children navigating bumps that are part of the process of growing up.

I often chose “Ramona The Pest” as a first class read-aloud. From my point of view, the lively discussions and writing responses were a first step in establishing a bond, a shared experience, that shaped a class identity that fostered empathy, cooperation, teamwork and a positive work ethic .

My fourth graders, at nine years old, were old enough to be able to look at Ramona Quimby’s questions and actions in the rear view mirror. They were several years older than Ramona in her first few months of kindergarten, could feel quite a bit more grown up and empathize with her behavior. They really got it when Ramona was told on her first day of kindergarten to "sit here for the present" and she does, waiting for her present.

Cleary kept it simple but Ramona’s questions and dilemmas were universal and her character indelibly drawn. Cleary’s cast of characters usually involved Ramona’s older sister Beezus (Beatrice), her parents, especially her mother, and her friend Henry Huggins, but Ramona was the axis around which the stories were told.

Beverly Cleary captured a child’s universe with a charming economy of style and keen observation. Ramona was no angel. She had trouble paying attention sometimes, and once was sent home for gently pulling the hair of the girl sitting in front of her because it looked so much like a spring and out of curiosity she wanted to see if it worked like one.  My fourth graders chuckled when Ramona called herself a “kindergarten drop out”. And they reveled in their blooming maturity when Ramona talked about singing the "Dawnser song" in her first days of kindergarten, her interpretation of "The Star Spangled Banner.

I liked Beverly Cleary’s books because, in a non-preachy format, her books offered a platform to talk about values, character, and issues like sibling rivalry, being picked on, a father losing his job, unfairness in life... described by the author with a forthright but tender touch. Some of the discussions we had about what made Ramona tick resurfaced later in the year as we read other books or dealt with real life situations.

Peel back the personas of many teachers and you’ll find an entertainer… that certainly applied to me from 1974 to 2004. Sitting in the chair next to my cluttered desk, with twenty nine-year-olds sitting on the carpet in front of me, adopting voices for each character, pausing for effect in dramatic moments, using a little body English to embellish, making eye contact with my audience, I wanted the stories to come alive. If it involved theatrics, all the better. And I loved it.

Cleary published her first book, “Henry Huggins,” in 1950. Between 1955 and 1999 Ramona was featured in eight books and published in 20 different languages. The fact that she still has adoring fans, and still has a wry sense of humor, is remarkable. Her response to the question about the secret of living to be 100 sounds like it could have come from the mouth of Ramona Quimby.

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Photo of Cleary and fans by VERN FISHER/MONTEREY HERALD VIA AP/ FILE

Day One

Today. two days after Labor Day, used to mark my annual rebirth as a teacher, the first day of the school year. With it dawned my first chance to meet a new cast of characters - my new fourth graders and their parents. The year would be an opportunity for me to refine teaching techniques and methods, to train student teachers, and to set in motion my own little plan to make the world a better place. Raising the tide in the little known ocean called “4T” intended to lift all the little boats upon it and affect all the ports they’d call upon.

In my second year of retirement, here’s a commemorative re-issue of an essay I wrote in September, 2000. The essay was published in the Brookline TAB and recorded to air on WBUR-FM.
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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.

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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If you dine with the devil, bring a long spoon: NPR commentary

Editorial:
Bring a long spoon
Paul Tamburello
Wednesday, April 7, 2003

This commentary was aired as a "Radio Diary" on NPR affiliate station WBUR FM on April 7, 2003

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2003/04/07/looming-humanitarian-crisis
at the 43:20 minute mark

The airwaves and print media are saturated with news of the war. It's not surprising that by now school age children have information and are forming opinions. The children in my fourth-grade classroom are no exception. But I can see that the weight of those opinions shares time and space with baseball season, learning the multiplication tables, and who they'll play with at recess.

When I was their age, America had just started what was called the Korean conflict. I knew that something important was going on in the world. Before walking to school, I tuned in to Martin Agronski on the radio for the latest news. One morning, I remember racing out of my room and breaking the news to my parents that Harry Truman had just fired General Douglas MacArthur. Once outside the house, though, I thought about playing baseball with my friends.

At school, no teacher so much as breathed a word about the war but I do remember our classes being herded down into the basement to practice air raid drills. It seemed like a clandestine affair; we kids loved the adventure, the time out of class, and had no real fear about our personal safety.

Now, a teacher myself, I don't conduct air raid drills, but I do ask my fourth graders "What do you think about the war?" And the hole in the ground in lower Manhattan reminds me that their personal safety is no longer a valid assumption.

Recently, I asked them where they got their information about the war. I scanned the room as I asked, TV...radio...the newspapers? They sensed that I was done with my little survey, and looked at me quizzically. "There's another source," they said. "Who?" I responded. "Our parents," several kids said, and most heads nodded.

The rest of my survey revealed that most of the children in front of me were opposed to the war. I told them that I was surprised, that much of the country was deeply divided about the question and they seemed to be uniformly against it. Then I did what any self-respecting teacher would do, I asked another question. "How many of you have mixed feelings about the war?" Nearly every hand shot into the air. Many were quoting their parents. "I feel half and half about it," one boy said. "I agree with what my dad said because we should stop Saddam Hussein now so there's less chance he can hurt us."

"And what's the other half?" I asked after he paused. "But I don't agree with the war because we will hurt innocent people in Iraq." I saw more heads nodding. The boy followed up to say that he'd heard a caller on a radio talk show insist that if he could sit down with Saddam Hussein, he could talk sense to him and make him a better person. The host cut him off and shouted "IF YOU DINE WITH THE DEVIL, BRING A LONG SPOON."

There was a pause in the room while 20 fourth graders tried to figure out what that meant. "My dad said that it means it will give you more time to think about what you're doing."

"Which would keep you a safer distance from something dangerous, a short spoon or a long spoon?" I asked. The verdict for a long spoon took only a few seconds this time.

By having these talks, one of my goals as a teacher is to acknowledge the gravity of the war and give my students a chance to make sense of it. With equal measure, I need to give them a long enough spoon so they have the distance to focus on being kids. Sure enough, minutes after our discussion, they're back to the times tables, baseball, and the games they want and need to play when school's dismissed. Now that I think of it, maybe I could use the long spoon myself.

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

Me and Mr. Rogers

Editorial: Teacher has come to see himself in Mr. Rogers
Commentary
Brookline TAB
Wednesday, March 5, 2003

This column originally appeared in the TAB in Sept. 2001. Fred Rogers passed away Feb. 27 after a short battle with stomach cancer.

I was sorry to hear that "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" taped its last TV episode recently. But I have to admit that when I was a young teacher, I couldn't relate to Fred Rogers. He was just too hokey. That set piece where he smiles reassuringly at the camera, dons his cardigan sweater, comfy shoes, and starts talking to kids in that soft voice was just too gooey. How could anyone be that uniformly cheery? Was he unfazed by a misplaced pair of glasses? A disagreement with the bank? A bad hair day? Was he impervious to life?

Now that I've entered the status of elder statesman in my school, it's dawned on me that Fred and I have a lot in common. For starters, we both believe deeply and unshakably that we make a difference in young people's lives.

But I must admit that sometimes I have my moments of disappointment and wonder whether I've been outpaced by pop culture. I wonder if Fred has some days when he just doesn't want to put on that lumpy sweater? But then for me, and I'll bet for Fred, the bedrock belief in the humanity of our missions, a common mantra that we preach every day, perhaps to ourselves as well as to our young charges, kicks in and returns us to our bearings. Toward the constant North Star of our belief, to make sure that kids know that "They matter."

Mr. Rogers's set piece of opening each day with the same reassuring routine is about consistency, providing something our young audience can count on, to signal them that they're back in our "neighborhood," a place where they fit in, and are important.

I don't have the cardigan sweater, but I do have my own morning routines to which kids become accustomed, and even begin to emulate. Like the time last spring when I was a couple of minutes late arriving to my classroom. I walked in to find a small line of students at my desk, and one of my ambitious students efficiently collecting homework by using the routine she'd seen me use for months. I smiled widely and pulled a chair up beside her as she completed the task.

Her initiative led other students to ask to perform that chore on subsequent mornings, laying claim to a big chunk of their "neighborhood" and showing me that my talks exhorting them to be responsible for their learning had taken hold. I'll bet Fred would have loved that. I know I did.

Like Mr. Rogers, I aim to have open discussions with my fourth graders using what I call "Life Talks," and Fred would call his "Conversations" for the day. Fred with the pre-kindergartners at the other end of the camera, me with my fourth graders sitting in front of me. Subjects such as death, divorce, cruelties and unfairnesses of life, mingle with light hearted, often very amusing talks about pet peeves, the joys and tribulations of having siblings, and our "faves" of just about everything.

Mr. Rogers and I both may be dismayed at seeing youngsters exposed to so much violence and fast paced entertainment. But that just adds fuel to our vision to provide them with slower paced activities, chances to reflect on who they are, how they fit in, and how we're interconnected with each other.

Every day Fred produced Mr. Roger's neighborhood, and every day I produce Mr. Tamburello's classroom. They are both places that value a sense of community, encourage asking questions, and recognize the emotions which are part of the landscape of growing up. We both love to invite guests into our "neighborhoods" to introduce our audiences to a broad variety of influences and interests.

Hmmm... maybe I'll go shopping this weekend. That cardigan sweater and comfy pair of shoes don't look as hokey as they used to.

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

September 11 First Anniversary

Editorial: Sept. 11 is still with us
By Paul Tamburello / Guest Commentary
Wednesday, September 4, 2002

The scab has hardened but the wound hasn't healed. How many times a day do you pass a faded American flag fluttering from a bridge overpass or a neighbor's porch and not have a momentary flash back to your own raw reaction to the first, stomach wrenching look at that fireball in lower Manhattan. Sept. 11 is history we can still see, hear, and smell.

The first anniversary is looming and every public place in America will be involved. Schools will certainly be high visibility sites of commemoration and teachers will have the responsibility to draw a lesson from history. As a fourth grade teacher, I want to do it right.

Like other elementary school teachers, I look for authentic ways to connect with my kids. During the 180 days of our collective existence, I'll weave a huge web of connections, enrolling my students as accomplices. I'll model ways to connect the dots between the books we read, narratives we write, or the funny, touching, or sad stories that happen to us along the way. I'll coax my 10 year olds to consider the shades of gray that line many of life's choices about friendship, trust, loyalty, telling the truth, what's fair and what isn't.

While there are rafts of ideas about how to commemorate the day, I want my small group to have input into the process and the product. The job for me as a teacher is to insure that whatever we choose to do has some root in my students' hearts and minds. My best tools for figuring this out are the same ones I've relied on for 33 years... asking questions and listening to the answers. These fourth graders sitting around me were only eight or nine years old when they witnessed this event. I want to listen very carefully to get their reality about it and respond to it. Last year, as a nation and as individual teachers, we responded reflexively. This year we can respond reflectively. We're on the front lines again.

Whose thoughts will my kids be talking about? Theirs, their parents, the recent headlines? What will we talk about? Patriotism, tolerance, loss, religion, revenge, reconciliation, stereotyping? What will I say ? How much will I "steer" the conversation? This isn't like other days of commemoration. This history is still unspooling from the reel, we're actors in the film, and we have a stake in the outcome. I'll be listening for ways to frame their thoughts in layers of country, community, classroom, and individuals. I want us to see ourselves as one of the small but significant threads that comprise the many-textured fabric of this nation.

Children haven't been on the planet all that long and they remember most of their lives with detail and conviction. Once they see that I use their collective memory as a way to connect with them, to assess and teach them, they jump right in when queried. Sometimes they even lead the discussion, either to cement their learning or reinforce their sense of "belonging" in the classroom. One of the joys and challenges for me is to be open to the unanticipated twists and turns my creative, sensitive thinkers will uncover as we hurtle down the road to consensus and a mutually rewarding destination.

Even though these kids will have been with me for only several days before the anniversary, they're already under my wing. The bonds we begin to forge in September will last through June, and in my mind, forever. That's history, too. They will be looking at those faded flags long after I've retired. When they do, I intend them to remember the lessons we began to build about the challenges of living in a global community and how we behave in it. We are not just citizens of this small and unique classroom but citizens of our town, of our country, and of our world. Our voices shall be heard.

Paul Tamburello is a teacher who has taught fourth grade in Brookline since 1970.

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

Shirl and the Bee Stick

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 would 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 drawing an accurate version of their Brassica plant's recently blossomed flowers, which would soon be the landing site for our Bee Sticks.

Shirl’s fascination, however, took on the weight of a holy mission. 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.

“You’ll have to make your own guess, or stay tuned ‘til Monday,” I said with a grin.

What had clicked with her? What is it with any of us when those tumblers in that continuously spinning mind of ours suddenly fall into place and open a door into a deeper place, one into which a beam of knowledge must shine? As with her Scottish soul mate, Shirl had to see that light.

“How many kinds of dictionaries do we have?” I heard over my shoulder a few minutes later while I was looking at another student’s drawing. As I looked back at her table, I noticed she’d already plucked one off the shelf and had been busy looking up Bee Sticks! Frustrated, she had wanted to find a dictionary good enough to contain the definition she was certain must exist.

Next, she began to prowl our science area, but found no clues. Like her famous Scottish predecessor, she was unperturbed by the apparent lack of evidence. Shirl eyeballed other shelves in the classroom. Nothing obvious. Then back to the science area for a deeper look, where she found the thin wooden stakes which 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.

“Sherlock Holmes has nothing on you!” I said as she turned on her heel and strode resolutely back to the science area.

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. Lesser detectives might have stopped here, but in true Holmesian fashion, Shirl needed certainty. 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 an 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 our 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's fuzzy thorax on the bee stick would be used to pollinate the flowers.

“This is what we’re doing on Monday!”, she crowed. Case closed.

Every day I’m reminded of the reasons I entered this profession thirty two years ago: to connect with children, 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 me. Shirl had been unperturbed by the difficulty of her mission - as exhilarated by the the search as by the prospect of finding an 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 proud that I can provide an environment in which students like Shirl can practice for the future.Paul Tamburello is a teacher and writer who lives in Watertown. He may be reached by email at [email protected]

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.