Literacy Now

Two fellow Nerdy Book Club members encouraged me to use this forum to share some thoughts about how to incorporate historical fiction in the classroom. I resisted the suggestion—what could I possibly tell the readers of this blog about teaching? Then it hit me: maybe simply sharing what I know about researching historical fiction would help you create new classroom connections. Shall we give it a go?

True confession: I haven’t always loved historical fiction. In fact, I avoided it. Until my then-preteen daughter got me hooked by bringing home Jennifer Armstrong’s THE DREAMS OF MAIRHE MEHAN and MARY MEHAN AWAKE. These stunning Civil War-era novels opened my eyes to how deeply compelling this genre can be.

Shortly afterward, I discovered Karen Cushman’s CATHERINE, CALLED BIRDY, with its delicious opening lines: “I am commanded to write an account of my days. I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say.” I was gobsmacked, as Birdy might say. If that’s historical fiction, I’m in! I became a voracious reader of the genre and then, thanks to a snippet of a family story about my great-grandmother, I became a passionate writer of the genre, as well.

In addition to my Nerdy Book Club friends, I also sought advice from writing colleagues Barb Kerley and Mary Nethery. Mary’s a former educator and Barb’s done extensive work to tie her author presentations to the Common Core State Standards. Their input led me to one CCS standard that can readily be supported by donning the historical fiction writer’s hat: “Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using . . . relevant descriptive details . . .” (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.3).

A writer of historical fiction lives for relevant descriptive details. The trick is, of course, finding them. How do I do it? By relying on primary resources. I scour second hand stores and eBay and etsy and everywhere else I can think of for old diaries, letters and postcards, maps and atlases. I am the woman who buys all of those self-published memoirs at library sales, national park gift shops and roadside attractions. I dig through box after box in musty museum archives, as if searching for the big prize in a Cracker Jack box. I NEED the first-hand stories of ordinary people. Without them, I’m nowhere as a writer of historical fiction.

While researching HATTIE BIG SKY, I discovered the diary of young homesteader Vanity L. Stout Irving. She had written about her beau giving her a ruby ring for a wedding present “…which I made him take back. I said I would rather have a cow and three pigs.” Vanity knew what it would take to survive on the Montana prairie, way back when: Forget the bling; bring on the bacon! As a life-long city girl, I couldn’t make up a detail like that. Another diary I read included a ledger listing the diarist’s purchases during the year. From her records, I learned the price of a new pair of leather gloves in 1918 (85 cents).

A sensible wedding present. The price of a pair of gloves. These are relevant descriptive details. And it is just such specifics that bring past times and places to life.

Great news: many such details are to be had at the click of a mouse. Old newspapers provide insights into attitudes, daily life, and entertainments, fashions, costs, place names, etc. and are increasingly easy to access. Our county library system allows me to read historical newspapers from the comfort of my home office. I’m guessing you would have similar access, too, through your local library.

It was while reading through issues of the Seattle DAILY TIMES, circa 1920, that I learned about opera great, Luisa Tetrazzini, and her plans to take an aerial tour of Seattle. Shortly before take-off, her manager deemed the chilly air too risky for the diva’s voice, and an enterprising young woman reporter jumped at the chance to take Tetrazzini’s place. I borrowed these details (switching out San Francisco for Seattle) to give Hattie her first big chance at a byline in HATTIE EVER AFTER.

The Internet is a gateway to other resources. I’ve used the Densho Project, dedicated to preserving the stories of the Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII; USGenWeb.com, a free, volunteer-run historical site; the Library of Congress American Memory Project; the Montana Memory Project, where I found an accounting of a 1916 road trip from Seattle to Boston; the Ames, Iowa Historical Society, which has scanned fabulous WWII resources, including ration books; the National Parks Service; the This Day in History feature at History.org; and, of course, the Oxford English Dictionary (via the Seattle Public Library—where would we be without libraries?!), which helps me ensure that the words I’m putting in my characters’ mouths fit with their time period. This is a small sampling of sites that can put primary sources at your students’ fingertips.

After you’ve introduced your students to these stores of relevant descriptive details, give them the opportunity to put their new research knowledge to work. Collect a handful of old postcards and then ask your students to write a narrative based on/inspired by one of them. In order to create historically accurate narratives, students would need to do some sleuthing about manners of speaking, food, dress, names and places during the time period of their postcard. There’s a wonderful collection of short stories for adults by Robert Olen Butler, HAD A GOOD TIME: STORIES IN AMERICAN POSTCARDS, that might give you additional ideas.

This school year, I have made a commitment to interview teachers and librarians each Tuesday on my blog; in October, I interviewed Brian Wilhorn about how he provides context for the books his students read through a classroom blog. For instance, for THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM—1963, Brian posted historical photos of the 16th Street Baptist Church after the bombing, links to articles about that tragic event, and a current photo of the church. Through this blog, he’s doing two things I admire: giving his students a richer grasp of the literature they’re reading, and modeling curiosity. His digging to find more information can’t help but lead his students to do the same.

I would love to hear about a particularly powerful strategy you’ve used in your classroom to help incorporate historical fiction and would be honored to include such ideas in future Teacher Tuesday postings. Drop me a line—Kirby@kirbylarson.com.

Come see Kirby at IRA’s 58th Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas! Kirby will be speaking at IRA’s Teachers' Choices Committee session, “Making a Difference for Readers, Writers, and Artists by Connecting them with Authors and Illustrators who Create Books that Inspire, Motivate, and Delight” on Monday, April 22, 2013.

After Kirby Larson heard a snippet of a story about her great-grandmother homesteading in eastern Montana, she went on to write HATTIE BIG SKY, winner of a 2007 Newbery Honor Award. This sequel was written in part to answer many questions readers posed about the irrepressible Hattie. Connect with the author on her blog (www.kirbyslane.blogspot.com) or via Twitter (@kirbylarson).



The Common Core: Showing Nonfiction the Love

Bringing the 'Story' Back into 'History'

photo: Andrea Cipriani Mecchi

About 25 years ago, on a cold January day not too different from today, I handed my completed Tragedy Paper to my high school senior English teacher Mr. Arthur Naething. It was the longest, hardest research paper I had ever completed—we had all been dreading and fretting over it since September. And now it was done—twenty-nine typed pages, plus a seven-page bibliography.

As the paper moved from my young, inexperienced hand to his sturdy, slightly wrinkled one, I wondered, had I defined a literary tragedy properly? Did I use enough examples of Aristotle and Shakespeare? Was my use of secondary sources strong enough? Had I made my point, and backed it up, when I declared that I did not believe tragedy could still be written in our time?

Then the paper was gone, whisked away with the rest of them, and I had to wait weeks to learn my fate.

I knew even then that this paper was slightly different from others I had written. After all, how often was I actually excited to turn in a big school assignment? When, before, had I not minded sitting down with books and notes and ideas, trying to make sense of it all? With all my other assignments, it had been a relief to turn them in and be rid of them. With this one, though, I found myself thinking about it, and wondering what Mr. Naething might think of this or that choice I made. Still, did I even begin to know how much—dare I use the word? —magnitude the paper was going to hold for me?

I definitely did not.

There was a lot going on for me that year. It was my second year at the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York. I traveled by bus every morning to get there, across Westchester County from my home in Mamaroneck. Nothing terrible had happened to force my parents to make the change away from the school closer to my house, but it did seem like the last chance for something—the last chance to enjoy high school, the last chance to move from being a mediocre student to a better one, the last chance to figure out that learning could be more than just something I had to do. In the same way that Tim Macbeth, one of the main characters in my new young adult novel, THE TRAGEDY PAPER, finds himself at the Irving School grasping for that last opportunity to squeeze the joy out of high school, I found myself on that quad and in those classrooms in a similar situation.

By the time my senior year and my Tragedy Paper rolled around, I was in the groove. I had friends I loved, I was doing better than ever in school, and, for the first time, I felt like I belonged someplace that I could already see was special. Like the characters in my book, I walked under a stone sign that read, “Enter Here To Be and Find A Friend,” and I was dismissed from my English class each day with the words, “Go forth and spread beauty and light.”

I remember the day the papers were returned to us. They were spread out on a wooden table in the school’s main office. We ran to find our masterpieces. I had to thumb through the pages along with everyone else looking for my grade. And there, written in pencil, was a capital A with the sentence, “Your argument is valid and convincing.”

I had done it, and the strangest part to me at the time was how much I cared! I had completed the assignment and done the best job I could do. I had a huge sense of accomplishment, but no idea that it was really just the beginning of how often that paper would creep back into my thoughts.

Because of it, I was never afraid of a research paper in college; when I studied tragedy in a playwriting class, I was more prepared than anyone else. With some distance, I credit the paper for leading me to my first career as a journalist. That excited feeling I had for the first time when I sat on my yellow-carpeted bedroom floor as a teenager surrounded by books analyzing tragedy, I continued to have every time I returned to the newsroom with a full reporter’s notebook and a blank computer screen. And even now, as I sit down to write fiction.

When my agent suggested I try to write a young adult novel, I loved the idea. As the story formed in my head, the world of the Irving School unfolded and Mr. Naething’s words came back to me. And then there is was—that amazing Tragedy Paper that was going to take Tim and Duncan through their senior years, the Tragedy Paper that had gotten me through mine and so far beyond. It was like a magic gift that surfaced so many years later after having burrowed into my subconscious.

The words came tumbling out—magnitude first, of course, and then hubris, order and chaos, reversal of fortune—all the things that make a story great. It took more than a quarter of a century to finally see the full value of that assignment.

I recently wrote another blog post in which I talked about trying to worry less as an adult, something I was able to do as a teen. But my husband joked last night that I should have warned my teen self to take great care with my Tragedy Paper, knowing now how important it was, and continues to be, to my life. Echoing Tim’s words to Duncan at the beginning of my book, that paper would become the “meat” of my future novel.

Elizabeth LaBan worked at NBC News, taught at a community college, and has written for several magazines and newspapers. THE TRAGEDY PAPER is her first young adult novel. She lives in Philadelphia with her family.



Putting Yourself in Your Character’s Shoes (Sneakers, Ballet Flats or Boots!)

In Other Words: On a Writer's Journey, Finding a Fellow Traveler

Growing up the only daughter in a patriarchal, male-dominated home, I am, perhaps, too sensitive about gender inequities. I was told that my daily dishwashing and ironing chores were less difficult than my brothers’ infrequent lawn-mowing task, but I never believed it. Neither did my brothers, who were too sly to speak on my behalf and disturb the happy imbalance of credit for labor. Unfairness? What unfairness? I don’t see any unfairness?

So it never surprises me when work by men is automatically assumed to be more important, difficult, and the male perspective on the world is the more valuable perspective. Last year, women illustrators spoke up about the complete shut-out of women from children’s books most precious award, the Caldecott, and book critic Janice Harayda wrote, “Consciously or not, the Caldecott judges may be favoring visual images of boys as much as male artists.”

LadyBusiness compiled stats of major award winners for children’s and young adult books since 2000 and found that 49% featured male protagonists, 36% featured female protagonists, and 15% featured both male and female protagonists. Contributor Ana wrote, “If stories by and about boys and men are so rare in the world of YA and yet show up in the proportion we've seen above in lists of award winners, then we're disproportionately privileging these stories when we select the best YA has to offer. In a world where anything masculine is still valued to a much greater extent than anything feminine, this possibility worries me.”

I was not surprised when VIDA (Women in Literary Arts) and the Women’s Media Center compiled stats and charts to prove that respected publications disproportionately assign male contributors to review books and interview authors, who also happen to be male in disproportionate numbers.

NEW YORK TIMES best-selling authors Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult have called out publications like the NYT BOOK REVIEW for the lavish coverage given to certain men authors, while ignoring women authors of equal caliber. (Read Weiner’s 2012 update on the topic.) Weiner and Picoult, who were not advocating for themselves, noted that critical recognition leads to financial rewards: the slight is both to the ego and the bank account. The general response from men was that Weiner and Picoult should stop “bellyaching” about gender disparities since: (1) they write commercial fiction, (2) they’re successful, (3) men are far more serious about literature, and (4) men have given worthy women authors day passes to the club. Some publications presented chicken-before-egg analyses: the majority of novels published by major houses are written by men—probably because they’re far more serious—so it follows that most reviews would be about men’s books.

Unfairness? What unfairness? I don’t see any unfairness.

I do not begrudge men their preferences for all things dude-ish. Let men be men in their myriad glory. Let them be way serious and be taken seriously as they write about, I don’t know, educated middle-class men who are consumed by an ineffable mood of existential angst from cosseted and racially-specific perspectives. However, I am at a loss to understand why men writing about family life are judged to be serious writers, while women writing about the same topics are automatically “small” writers.

One could get angry and rail about the disingenuous claims by men that the disparity of critical recognition is due to women’s lack of skill and also how very yucky girls are. I love a good tirade and have a special fondness for spitting-mad outrage and bickering, particularly when it includes irrelevant personal swipes. (Is it really a coincidence that kerfuffle rhymes with truffle?) As much fun as that is, fuming about the literary glass ceiling distracts us from one of the marvels happening now in the world of books.

Because girls and women are not powerless victims of some male-dominated literary conspiracy which takes place within the offices of a few publications and journals. Women buy and read many more books than men. If you search outside the major publishing houses, women also publish more books than men.

While journals drone on about the decline of boys reading, I see very little celebration of the fantastic numbers of girls and young women reading, book blogging, and writing their own novels. Teen girls eagerly adopted social media to connect with other readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers. They’re active on Goodreads, Facebook, and Twitter.

They don’t limit their book love to online participation. This summer, I visited libraries like the Warren-Newport Public Library in Gurnee, IL, and saw terrific annexes set up just for teens. I was astounded by the Must Be 14 group of teen reviewers who can fill a meeting room at Book Passages in Corte Madera, CA, and discuss fiction for hours. Bookstores like Books Inc. in San Francisco regularly have standing-room-only crowds of teenage girls and young women for author talks in their Not Your Mother’s Book Club series. They travel to American Library Association conferences and book festivals and talk to publishers and authors.

These girls are smart, informed, creative, and passionate about books. It’s not uncommon for them to devour dozens of novels every month. They don’t blink when they commit to the 100 Book Challenge. They can catapult a novel to best-seller status and they don’t especially care if a man or woman wrote it. Neither do they care whether it’s received critical acclaim, although they’re happy to nominate books for their own awards. While other fiction categories struggle to hold on, Young Adult books have steadily increased in sales, and some of Hollywood’s biggest hits have been movies based on girl-centric stories, like THE HUNGER GAMES and the Twilight series.

photo: ucumari via photopin cc

These teen girls grew up witnessing the massive success of women authors like J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer, and they have seen women working outside traditional routes to become successful. E.L. James, whose erotic fanfic was so popular that she was able to sell it to a small print-on-demand and ebook publisher; since then 50 SHADES OF GREY has sold over 65 million copies. Amanda Hocking, now published by St. Martin’s, became a millionaire while still in her 20s with her self-published My Blood Approves books and the Trylle Trilogy.

I’m not interested in debating the quality of these books, because that’s not the point. The point is that young women are having a different experience of women’s place in the book world—as victorious, loved, and influential. The point is that I had to wash dishes, but as the only girl I got my own bedroom, where I could read novels to my heart’s content.

Girls are the gorillas in the library. Beat your chests and roar.

Marta Acosta is the author of DARK COMPANION (2012) , a Young Adult gothic, the award-winning Casa Dracula series, and NANCY'S THEORY OF STYLE. She's a graduate of Stanford University and was a frequent contributor of commentary and features to the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. Her next novel, a comedy, will be released in June 2013.

5 Questions With... Marta Acosta (DARK COMPANION)

ALA: Caldecott Medal Homepage

As children we often have aspirations for what we want to be when we grow up. For me, I knew I was going to be an actress and live in New York City—I was born with greasepaint running through my veins. Then, as I got older (16 to be exact), I told my mom I was going to medical school and find the cure for cancer. Many years of formal education later, and none of them spent studying drama or medicine, I am finally doing what I was meant to do—teach.

I had many careers prior to becoming a classroom teacher. I worked in Hollywood for a major production company, rubbing shoulders with celebrities. Life was good but something was missing. I moved to San Diego where I met my husband, got married, and studied for my paralegal certificate at the University of San Diego.

The day after graduation we moved to Seattle. For twelve years I worked as a paralegal in major law firms. I enjoyed the work and the people I worked with but still, something was missing. At the end of the day, a big question hovered over my head: what had I truly accomplished in the big scheme of the world? Had I provided the escape of entertainment from the worries of the world? No. Had I provided a cure for anything more serious than the common cold? Not even close.

It was time for me to move on and actually do something. This required that I figure out what I truly needed in my next career.

First and foremost was passion. A close second was meaning. Lastly, but equally important as the first two, was flexibility. I have my husband to credit for the brilliant idea that I consider being a teacher. That profession had never crossed my mind, but once it did, it seemed so obvious. Immediately I thought of my paternal grandmother, who taught in a one-room classroom in the middle of the farm lands of North Dakota. My mind was set and as with everything I do, once I set my mind to it, I run with it!

I started by conducting informational interviews and researching programs at the universities in Seattle. Eventually, I made the plunge. I chose Seattle Pacific University for their rigorous curriculum, certification, small student to professor ratios, and the caliber of their professors.

Five semesters later, I finished the baccalaureate program and was ready to begin my master’s degree in language and literacy with an emphasis as a teacher of reading. I had been discouraged by most of my professors from going on to graduate school. I was told I would price myself out of a job, it would be a waste of my time and money if I planned to only teach elementary students, and the debt would far outweigh the paychecks. My response was, “Why shouldn’t young students have the benefit of a teacher with a higher degree and specialty?” After all, one of the items on my career changing list was “meaning.” I chose to attend Wheelock College in Boston for their intense literacy program, credibility in the teaching field, and their dedication to children, not to mention the opportunity to live on the East Coast for a year.

The process of interviewing for a teaching job began well before I completed my master’s degree. I interviewed in Seattle during spring break and via conference calls. By the time I graduated, I had a job teaching fourth grade.

I worked for five years in a socioeconomically challenged school district. The majority of the students were on free or reduced breakfasts and lunches, spoke English as their second language, and were well behind the state standards in all subjects. Yes, I had my work cut out for me. But I also had excellent training in similar demographics. I felt prepared and ready to put all my hard work to work for my students.

By now I felt I had accomplished the first two items on my new career list—passion and meaning. But one was not quite at 100%—flexibility. As a writer working towards getting my novels and picture books published, I needed more than summers to write. My evenings and weekends were still devoted to my classroom teachings. It was time to make another plunge off another high dive.

I decided to retire from teaching in the classroom, and started my own business of tutoring from my home office.

Once again, I ran with my new career direction. I had all my teaching resources gathered over the years. I also had an awesome classroom library of books that I accumulated over the years. And my practicum in graduate school gave me the resources I needed to perform my own student assessments in literacy. I had everything at my fingertips that I would need to teach—except for the students.

I designed my brochure and started a marketing and advertising blitz. Most elementary schools allowed me to leave brochures in the front office. The local independent bookstores and coffee shops have community boards that are perfect for free advertising, and I was able to advertise on our local township website as well.

I also turned to my teacher colleagues for student referrals, which is how I acquired my first student. He was a fifth grader struggling with the writing process. I worked with him for two years—first on writing, then on reading and math and other special projects. It was very rewarding to be a part of his academic progress. Recently, I received an email from his mother letting me know how much she appreciated my work with her son. He is now a freshman in high school and doing quite well.

Over time one student led to another and another and another. Most of my referrals have been from word of mouth and I have been able to maintain a workload that allows me to have all three items on my list checked-off: Passion. Meaning. Flexibility.

Three years have passed since I made the plunge to go out on my own and I have loved every minute. My students have ranged in age from Pre-K to middle school, both boys and girls. Sometimes they come to me with a specific goal in mind and other times I am their weekly academic booster, supplementing the classroom teachings, filling the gaps made ever wider by budget cuts and changes in the traditional home dynamic.

However, working from home as a private tutor is not for everyone. To be successful you need to be very organized, disciplined with your time, and be able to take the lean times along with the flush times. Not to mention that marketing your services is a constant endeavor.

But if you think you have what it takes or would at least like to give it a try, here are some tips:

• Contact your homeowners or renters insurance to confirm you have the coverage necessary to have clients in and out of your home. You will probably want to increase your liability coverage.
• Have a professional brochure designed that outlines your education, expertise, teaching philosophy, and lists memberships in pertinent organizations (such as International Reading Association or NCTE). In your absence, your brochure will be your one and only marketing tool that will make or break the first impression upon prospective clients.
• Purchase professional business cards. Don’t let the age of your students direct the look of your cards. Avoid a card that is laden with cutesy graphics, that’s too glossy, or that’s printed on flimsy stock. Remember, your audience first and foremost is parents.
• I highly recommend you have formal policies and “house rules” written up that you give to each family upon initial communication about tutoring. Having these in place will help avoid awkward situations later regarding public and private parameters of your home, payment policies, and scheduling, just to name a few.

photo: donovanbeeson via photopin cc

• Create a spreadsheet on Excel or similar program to track payments and sessions by students.
• Prepare file folders for each student that includes the assessments you prepare, lesson notes, and student work.
• Purchase or create lending library cards. I am very old-school about books. I love the actual books and I love to share them with my students. I use library cards to list each book a student borrows, the date they borrow the book and the date it is returned. I also supplement my inventory with books from the public library. (Have a policy about charging for books borrowed if they are not returned within a designated number of days or lost).
• Research the various online teaching resources for additional materials and resources to have at your fingertips. I use the practice pages, booklets, and online manipulatives depending on the student. I have chosen to use ReadWriteThink.org, Scholastic.com, edHelper.com, and Sadlier-Oxford.com. (Some sites require a nominal annual fee.)
• Have a professional website, a professional Facebook page, and a Twitter account that you actually use on a regular basis. I stress the professionalism of all of these social media platforms. One picture says a thousand words and you don’t want those words to portray you in a negative light.

My journey to working as a private tutor was long and by no means direct. Although I have not worked as a professional actress, lived in New York City, or found the cure for cancer, what I have done with my career has and continues to be very rewarding. I have found my passion, with meaning and flexibility.

Going out on one’s own is not for everyone. It takes guts and a certain amount of financial security already in place. However, if you are even slightly considering the big dive I highly encourage you to start with some informational interviews and see where they lead you.

Happy Teaching!

Kathleen A. Hunter, MS is a literacy tutor and aspiring children's book author. You can visit her online at www.KathleenHunterWrites.com.



Using Music to Inspire Young Writers

Teaching Tips: Bringing Children, Dogs, and Books Together

My first job in teaching began in January, after the previous teacher abruptly decided—sometime in mid-December—that the time was right to retire. After my first week on the job, I understood, deep in my heart, why retirement had seemed so attractive for my predecessor.

My classes were a blend of chaos, flagrant insubordination, and pure noise. The warning from my favorite college professor had been proven true—“Who controls the sound in a classroom controls the class.” My classes were not being run by me, but by a small set of loud, rude, squirrely, out-of-control adolescents.

Desperate to establish at least some semblance of control, I was ready to resort to punishment, threats, pay-offs, anything. However, I had nothing to leverage. So, I rummaged around in the teacher storage room and discovered two old “listening stations” that had been discarded years earlier by the Spanish department. Each listening station had 10 sets of headphones linked together by a single cord. I brought my music player to school, plugged in the two listening stations, and instantly was able to pipe in music to all twenty sets of headphones simultaneously.

The next week, I established ground rules for what I hoped would be a successful inducement: Students who did their work in class and who were not marked down for egregious misconduct could listen to music at the listening stations for the last twenty minutes of class on Fridays. To my great surprise, the ruse actually worked. The lure of listening to music, free from my teacherly witticisms for a brief period of time, was sufficiently compelling to change students’ patterns of behavior. The noise level in my classroom declined and students began to tone down the frequency and intensity of disruptions.

photo: bjdawes via photopin cc

Unfortunately, the transformation in my classes had little to do with better teaching; instead, the improvement was the result of a brazen struggle for control over sound. My experience made me think Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he noted that “without music, life would be a mistake.”

After doing a little research, I discovered a plethora of scientific studies on the effects of sound on the brain. One group of medical researchers seemed particularly interested in using music to help speed healing after a traumatic illness or surgery. Indeed, music appears to promote recovery after a stroke (Särkämö et al., 2010), to reduce time spent in rehabilitation (Karagozoglu & Yilmaz, 2012), and to aid in the treatment of patients with schizophrenia and severe personality disorders (Hannibal, Pedersen, Hestbaek, Sorensen, & Munk-Jorgensen, 2012).

According to Julian Treasure, who has several talks on the auditory sense available on the TED website (this one is my favorite), there are four possible outcomes of sound:

Physiological—Sound can affect breathing, brain waves, and the heart. For example, the piercing sound of an ambulance’s siren instantly increases the heart rate and alters brain waves.

Psychological—Sound can affect attitude and the sense of well-being. The sound of a bird chirping may offer an aura of security and serenity, while the sound of a rattlesnake’s rattle can provoke fear.

Cognitive—Sound can enhance or undermine the quality of your thinking. According to Treasure, productivity in a noisy, open office can be as much as 66% lower than in a quiet environment.

Behavioral—Sound can influence behavior. For example, the sound of a concrete drill can make people want to run away, while the sound of ocean waves might make people want to relax and stick around.

The literature on sound has major implications for teaching. For example, if noisy, disorganized environments really do decrease efficiency dramatically, then the effectiveness of my lessons in those first few days of January was probably nil. In retrospect, the unruly and boorish behavior of a few students in my poorly supervised classroom likely caused panic and dread among other students who might have actually wanted to learn something. The anarchy must have been almost as much of a living hell for them as me.

On the bright side, with the right tools and appropriate know-how, sound’s power can be harnessed to achieve dramatic, positive results. Using a music- and singing-based program to teach reading, researcher Susan Homan increased the reading skills of struggling readers (including many incarcerated youth with very low reading levels) by 27 to 214%.

Similarly, the potential for having reluctant writers learn to write more effectively by listening and speaking is quite exciting. By using voice-to-text technologies, students might be able to avoid short-circuits that sometimes occur between the formulation of an idea and getting down words on paper.

I have been trying out some new voice-to-text strategies with struggling adolescent writers over the past year. I’ll be presenting preliminary results this April, at the International Reading Association’s 58th Annual Convention, in a session titled “Learning by Ear: Sound Principles for Teaching Reading and Writing.” (Susan Homan is one of my co-presenters.)

References

Hannibal, N., Pedersen, I., Hestbaek, T., Sorensen, T., & Munk-Jorgensen, P. (2012). Schizophrenia and personality disorder patients’ adherence to music therapy. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry 66(6), 376-379.

Karagozoglu, F., & Yilmaz, F. (2012). Effects of music therapy and guided visual imagery on chemotherapy-induced anxiety and nausea-vomiting. Journal of Clinical Nursing 22, 39-50.

Särkämö, T., Pihko, E., Laitinen, S., Forsblom, A., Soinila, S., Mikkonen, M., Autti, T., Silvennoinen, H., Erkkilä, J., Laine, M., Peretz, I., Hietanen, M. & Tervaniemi, M. (2010). Music and speech listening enhance the recovery of early sensory processing after stroke. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22, 2716-2727.

Lawrence Baines is a professor of English Education at The University of Oklahoma who has worked in over 350 schools. Baines is obsessed with the peculiar art of teaching writing to adolescents, and co-wrote the book GOING BOHEMIAN: HOW TO TEACH WRITING LIKE YOU MEAN IT (published by IRA) with his buddy, Anthony Kunkel. Visit him on the web at www.lawrencebaines.com.



Lawrence Baines on Romancing the Topic

Study: Musical training tones the mind, enhances learning