I just discovered eHow, a resource of tips and tricks to help people through the everyday situations that make you stop and think, “What do I do now?”

So far my favorite entries are these:

• How to act smart (even if you feel stupid)
• How to save energy with your computer
• How to win every time at Monopoly

(I could not find “how to make the neighbors’ dogs stop barking.”)

eHow encourages users to join its community and submit articles. Those who submit popular articles can earn some money with them.

These pieces are short, well written, excellent examples of process writing. Why couldn’t students write these? This is exactly what we want them to do: break down a process into its parts, anticipate mistakes or confusion, and explain the steps to someone else.

A teacher with a little tech savvy could publish the articles on a Web page or class blog. And students with a little entrepreneurial spirit could submit them to eHow. Sounds like win-win to me!

In the United States, ninth grade is often the year students are introduced to Shakespeare, and the play of choice is Romeo and Juliet. The unit is usually second only to the research paper in terms of difficulty; it’s just so hard to read the English Shakespeare crafted 400 years ago.

I tell my students that reading Shakespeare is like listening to a wonderful song on the radio as you are driving out of range of the station: you can tell it’s a great song, but the static makes it difficult to appreciate the music.

The Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project has developed The Interactive Folio for Romeo and Juliet. This wonderful resource really helps break through the static. On the left is Shakespeare’s text, hyperlinked. Click on a link, and to the right you will see support — a paraphrase, an explanation, a picture, audio, or video. Students can read straight through where they feel confident. When they need help, click! It’s there.

While the interactive folio is currently the “star” in my book, don’t stop there. There are links to several projects that bring Shakespeare to 21st-century students of all ethnic backgrounds. Don’t miss the Learning Commons for ready-to-use activities.

Somewhere there is a student who thought she was going to hate Shakespeare. She’ll use this site and think, “Wow, this is cool. Shakespeare is cool!”

I was reading about a literate employee of the New York City Transit Authority who is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame because he correctly used a semicolon. He had written a sign asking subway riders not to leave their newspapers behind when they exited the subway, adding,

“Please put it in a trash can; that’s good news for everyone.”

Correct usage of the semicolon is so rare that the sign became newsworthy. The writer of the article went on to say, “In literature and journalism, not to mention in advertising, the semicolon has been largely jettisoned as a pretentious anachronism.”

I set my tea down slowly. A pretentious anachronism?

Readers of this blog know that I use semicolons on a regular basis. I agree that they should be used sparingly, but “pretentious”? I live in a small town in a small state, and — aside from the color in my hair — there ain’t nuthin’ pretentious ’bout me.

And an anachronism? I open my semicolon lesson with an exhortation: “Correct use of the semicolon remains a mark of an educated writer.” I tell the kids it adds sophistication. I put little smilies in the margins of their papers when they use one correctly.

An anachronism? Well, I’m a boomer. I listen to NPR. I waited until last week to buy an iPod. I struggle with CSS and fall back on HTML far too often. I want to have my Vista laptop retrofitted with Windows XP.

Maybe it’s true.

As I wrapped my mind around that epiphany, I distinctly heard a 16-year-old who sounded surprisingly like me talking with her friends about how Mom and Dad “just don’t get it.”

A second epiphany: I’ve come full circle. The semicolon and I had just been dissed by youth. It’s OK; it’s a rite of passage.

I reached for my tea. I will continue to teach the semicolon. The kids will understand that only old people use them. And life will go on.

Usually I reserve Fridays for a joke, because by Friday most of us could use some humor. This week, however, I’d like to post a true story that illustrates why, in spite of all the, um, folderol, teachers have to put up with, why we continue to teach. This story comes from Nancy S. on the Talkies list.

Our youth group conducted our church service today. This is a high school group made up of all kids in the community, and ecumenical in nature. I know most of them and have had many in class. The young man who gave the sermon spoke about how communities should be uniting, not dividing, spoke about how the cliques that form in high school would be broken down if everyone worked toward the idea of embracing differences and sharing similarities instead of what makes them different. It was well-written and meaningful. They invoked a message that Mohammad makes that is very similar to the Golden Rule as a way of alerting us to the diversity that we find around us.

Following the service, I complimented the student about his meaningful sermon. His reply, “Well, actually, as I was writing it, I thought back to your class (10th grade Eng) and the lessons we learned there from you about how differences divide and similarities can bring us together, and I just wrote from that aspect. I wanted to tell you that,” he said.

Wow, that was so meaningful. I came away with my eyes overflowing. I thought back to the class I had with his group…and we did a lot of work with diversity, beginning with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

So … keep teaching these kids. They do listen, and they do absorb and sometimes, it’s the good stuff that comes out to impress you.

The United States Chamber of Commerce has released Leaders and Laggards: A State-by-State Report Card on Educational Effectiveness, stating, “Despite decades of reform efforts and many trillions of dollars in public investment, U.S. schools are not equipping our children with the skills and knowledge they-and the nation-so badly need.”

One feature of the report is a color-coded interactive map of the United States. The color of each state is based on its “grade” in one of nine areas:

• academic achievement
• academic achievement of low-income and minority students
• return on investment (The Chamber believes no one else has assessed using this criterion.)
• truth in advertising about student proficiency
• rigor of standards
• postsecondary and workforce readiness
• 21st century teaching force
• flexibility in management and policy
• data quality

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this report is its methodology. The Chamber of Commerce admits to grading on a curve, for example: “The top 10 states received As, the next 10 states received Bs, and so forth” in the area of academic achievement. This methodology requires 10 states to receive an F. A close look at the bar graph across the bottom shows there is often almost no difference between, say, the bottom C and the top D. (That is why I abandoned curves in my classroom years ago.) In a report of this nature, the distinction between a C and a D should be clear.

The Chamber of Commerce report relies heavily on the controversial NAEP scores and on the number of students taking Advanced Placement tests. It does not consider program alternatives to AP such as dual-credit/”early college” classes; it just buys into the name brand. Both of these choices are unfortunate, because they distort the data negatively.

Under the heading “21st Century Teaching Force,” the criteria are based on teacher candidates passing subject matter tests. They do not consider the candidate’s ability to make that subject engaging and lively for students. Almost everyone has seen a teacher who knew the material but couldn’t explain it to anyone but gifted students. Is the ability to pass a standardized test really the best measure of teacher quality?

The good people at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce mean well, and certainly they have a vested interest in quality education — we all do. The girl in the back row who never pays attention in class may work at my nursing home someday. You’d better believe I want her to be prepared.

So read this report carefully, recognizing both its strengths and limitations. Don’t let the (admittedly, very cool) graphics become the whole message. Don’t stop at the letter grade; find out how the letter grade was assigned.

A lot of good people are giving their all every day in the classrooms of states that this report labels “laggards.”

A group of fifth graders in California were caught recently trying to buy passwords so they could hack into their school’s student information system. Alix Peshette, Technology Training Specialist, reports that the classroom teacher and principal wanted to address not just the issue of violating the AUP, but also “the important issue of broken trust.”

Part of the consequence was for students to write a letter of apology. The document includes age-appropriate questions for students to consider as they compose the letter. It emphasizes that students are part of a community, and their actions affect not just themselves but others, too.

I had just read Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly separated from their families and raised in white Australian culture. I couldn’t help seeing the importance of an expression of regret when one has failed to respect others. The wrongdoing may have been on a national scale, as in Australia, or it may not even have succeeded, as with the fifth graders. The apology is still needed.

How might we teach students to write a formal letter of apology without requiring them to reveal personal information? Perhaps we could draw from their reading. Write the letter from Wilson to Gatsby, apologizing for shooting him. Write the letter from Circe to Odysseus, apologizing from keeping him on her island so long. Write the letter from Soaphead Church to Pecola, apologizing for abusing her trust in him. Write the letter from Lord Capulet or Lord Montague, apologizing to Prince Escalus, to the city of Verona, to their families, to Romeo and Juliet. Yes, I think we could draw from student reading to teach the craft of the apology.

Here is the student contract the California fifth graders worked with:

“Made a mistake? Own it, Fix it, Learn from it.” 2008

1. Write a sincere and beautifully written, edited letter of apology to your teacher. The bond of trust between teacher and student was damaged by your actions. Why do we have passwords? Why is it important to respect privacy? How can actions like these hurt other people? Tell her your plan for rebuilding trust so she knows she can count on you and that you really understand that what you did was wrong. Turn this in to your teacher on   (date)  .

2. With your parents, read the District Student Internet/Network Safe and Responsible Use Agreement. Sign it. Copy by hand Section D, letters a. and b. (or more at parent discretion). Turn this in to the school Principal on   (date)  .

3. Do five hours of community service at school, during recess times. This service must be completed by your parent-teacher conference time in March. Your teacher and your parents will review your community service record card at conference time.

4. All computer time at school will be suspended until   (date)  . During regular computer times, you will be required to work on math assignments that your teacher will provide for you to make up for misuse of math time.

5. Any future violation of the DJUSD Use Agreement will result in suspension.

Student signature ______________________

Parent signature _________________________________

Return one signed copy to school on   (date)  

(Reproduced with permission. Thanks, Alix!)

Recently this e-mail classic hit my inbox again:

Message from John Cleese - British comedian:

To the citizens of the United States of America:

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary.

2. Then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

3. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise’. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up ‘vocabulary’).

4. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be
adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of -ize.

5. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

The statement goes on, but you get the gist of it.

The text was too uneven to have been written by John Cleese, but parts of it were witty enough that I could hear his voice as I read it, especially the bit about Kansas. So I turned to one of my favorite resources in researching e-mail, Snopes.com.

Fortunately for me, a search using “John Cleese” came up with the right page as the first choice. What I found was great research on the origin and history of the piece:

It evidently originated on with one Alan Baxter of Rochester, U.K., who wrote and posted a much shorter, four-item version to an internal newsgroup hosted by his employer in November 2000, as a wry commentary on the recently concluded (but far from decided) U.S. presidential election:

London, 8th November 2000.
To the citizens of the United States of America,

Following your failure to elect either a half decent candidate or man-monkey as President of the USA to govern yourselves and, by extension, the free world, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume a monarch’s duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, please comply with1 the following acts:

1. Look up “revoke” in a dictionary
2. Learn at least the first 4 lines of “God save the Queen”
3. Start referring to “soccer” as football
4. Declare war on Quebec

Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your cooperation and…have a nice day!

From this first post, the piece grew to include 10 items, then 13, then more.

This would explain the unevenness I sensed as I read the version in my inbox. But it also gave me an idea — wouldn’t our students enjoy researching the history of Urban Legends and legendary e-mails like this one? And wouldn’t that kind of research go a long way toward establishing the information literacy skills they need so that they stop believing everything they find published online?

I’m sure this kind of information doesn’t turn up in a simple Google search. I have written to the Snopes people to find out what tools they use in their research. When I hear from them, I’ll let you know.