I Do So Like Green Eggs and Ham


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Shari Frost

I really should know better. As a mother and a teacher, I have always encouraged children to try things before they reject them. I don't insist that they have to fall in love with the new food, game, book or idea; as a matter of fact, I give them permission to absolutely hate it, but only after they have given it a fair chance. Yet, like the character in Green Eggs and Ham, I decided that I didn't like the Kindle (a digital reader) before I had even tried it. Then one day, a Kindle arrived in the mail. It came with a note that said, "Keep an open mind."

The timing couldn't have been better; you might even call it "a perfect storm." First of all, there was a stack of about ten books sitting on my dining room table because all five of my six-foot bookcases were full - again. Then I was scheduled to leave for a cross-country trip that meant 12 hours in airports and on planes; I'd need at least three books to fill the time. Finally, I was trying out contact lenses for the first time, and the bifocal feature of the contact lenses wasn't working as expected. The Kindle addressed all three of these problems. It can store up to 1500 books; that's like instantly acquiring ten more six-foot bookcases! Since I could now go on a book buying spree without worrying about shelf space, I purchased and downloaded five books to bring with me on my trip. The Kindle easily fit in my purse, weighing only 10.2 ounces. It also has a feature that allowed me to increase the font size of the print on the page, which made it possible for me to read without any optometric assistance at all. By the time I returned from my trip, I was in love.

Keeping an Open Mind about Teaching Methods

Keep an open mind . . . I have been guilty of being closed-minded in the past, too. I remember working with a second grader in a clinical setting. The child had not learned to read, and second grade was about half over. Understandably, his teacher and his parents were very concerned. I assessed him and developed a plan to work with him.

We did language experience stories, word sorts, read predictable books, and did echo reading. Though he was having a great time and loved coming to see me, he wasn't making any noticeable progress. So we tried interactive writing and shared reading. No improvement. I tried sending home audio recordings of the books we had read during our sessions along with his cut-up sentences and LEA stories. Nothing happened. Then I tried neurological impress. No progress. I was getting really nervous because the school year was coming to an end, and I hated the idea of sending him to third grade as a non-reader. The only reason that the school did not have him slated for retention in second grade was that he was enrolled in the clinic.

One of my colleagues suggested that I try one of those horrible, bottom-up, synthetic, code-emphasis programs. It sat on a back shelf of the resource closet covered with dust, and I didn't remember ever having seen anyone use it. I hate that kind of program; it has no colorful illustrations or engaging stories. I was sure that he'd hate it, too, and I dreaded the idea of spending 45 minutes dragging him through those stilted lessons. I like reading authentic literature, doing interactive word study, and writing. After another few sessions of virtually standing still - no progress whatsoever - I pulled the binder down from the shelf and dusted it off. Of course, it worked. It wasn't the kind of teaching that I liked to do, but it was exactly what he needed. He quickly caught on. By the time he started third grade, he was reading the Goosebumps books that were all the rage at that time.

Keeping an Open Mind about Teachers

I didn't have an open mind about Lena either. She was a kindergarten teacher in our project. She had the most orderly kindergarten classrooms that I had ever seen; everything was in place, and the children were all so well behaved. Lena believed in memorization and recitation. I clearly remember watching her teach for the first time. Her children marched around the classroom with miniature pointers chanting the alphabet chart, the 100 chart, the nursery rhyme of the week, the name chart, etc.; they looked like little robots. I worried that these kids weren't going to learn very much that year and would probably hate school.

Lena was a good graduate student. She came to every class well-prepared and actively participated in discussions and class activities. Whenever I assigned an instructional strategy for the teachers to try out in their own classrooms, she would try it and execute it well. She would bring incredible samples of children's work to share in class. I would ask if I could come to her classroom and observe her use of the new strategy; she would agree, and the lesson would be fantastic. However, whenever I visited her classroom on a day when there was no assignment due, her students were marching around the room with the pointers. I didn't understand why she wasn't adopting all of those wonderful strategies that she had learned in class.

Soon it was spring. I was in Lena's classroom to help with the year-end assessments. When I entered the room, I noticed that the children were all busy, happily reading and writing. The first child I tested got a very high score. So did the second one and the third one. I talked with my colleague who had come along to help, and she was getting similar results with the children that she was testing. Lena's students had outperformed all of the other kindergarten classes in our project. Lena wasn't using our recommended practices. I couldn't endorse her practices, yet I couldn't deny that they had worked.

An Invitation

Keeping an open mind is a tall order. I have met with coaches who just knew that they were going to have a hard time with a certain teacher whom they hadn't even approached yet. I've talked to teachers who had decided that they were not going to like a certain reading or writing instructional strategy without trying a single lesson. I've also spent time chatting with kids who had rejected a book without even reading the first sentence.

Look back on something that you rejected this past school year and consider giving it a chance. Maybe you could try: