Rebecca Nolen's Blog

Not a Complaint, An Affirmation

23 Apr 2013 3 Comments

by Rebecca Nolen in about writing, baby, caretaker, Dogs, grandparents, parenting, The Aged P's

St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writing: Sandro Botticelli’s St. Augustine in His Cell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few years ago I was at a writing conference. One of the speakers, an esteemed and prominent agent on the West Coast asked this question: What do you have standing between you and a full commitment to writing?

He asked everyone in the audience to stand. Then he asked all who had ten things standing between them and a full-time daily or hourly commitment to writing, and would those please take their seat. A majority sat. He asked those who had five things standing between them and a full daily, hourly, moment-to-moment commitment to writing to take their seat. The majority of the people left standing sat. He asked who, of the few left, had two things that were more important than a writing career to sit. Many more people sat. And then he asked who had one thing that was more important than their writing career to sit. In the end, only one person was left standing out of two hundred. He pointed to that person and said, “That person will be a successful writer.”

Talk about guilt trip.

But let me talk just say something: Life is what it is. When both my children were in college my husband and I had time on our hands. No more sports events to attend, no more Saturdays coordinating the things that needed coordinating for the children to have a great life. We were free. We went for day trips around Texas. We spent our weekend mornings doing – you guessed it – nothing! After the initial shock of leaving the children in Lubbock (Texas Tech), which is nine hours drive away (Yes, still in Texas), we felt liberated. And I had time to write. I wrote. Lots.

It was fun.

Then, a year after my son graduated and came home from college with a good job, he was ensconced in his nice apartment. Things didn’t stay that way. Life is always about change, isn’t it? He decided it would be good to move back home to save money to buy his own home. He came home with his little Chiweiner dog.

Then my daughter sent me an email with pictures of her new puppy. WHAT? Not good. I told her she had to get rid of the puppy. After all, she couldn’t have a puppy while attending school and living in an apartment with other girls. She was sad.

A few days later her dad asked her (on the phone) why she was so sad. She said that I (the mom) had told her to get rid of her puppy. Her dad said, “I didn’t say you had to get rid of it. You can keep it.”

THAT didn’t go over so well with me and here’s why: The puppy that was supposed to be only 45 pounds according to the pound was already 45 pounds at six months. It’s all about the big feet – puppies with big feet grow to be big dogs. And guess what? By Easter, when the puppy was six months old, the roommates had decided they no longer wanted to live with the dog. So the dog came home to live with us. Now here is a run down of the animals we had in the house – a monster puppy, a chiweiner, an ancient chihuahua, and three cats.

Those of you who have puppies know how hard it is to write with a puppy who barks at nothing, needs to pee at weird times, and has a sensitive stomach, ie, throws up stuff for no reason. So in the middle of struggling over the search for just the right word for just the right sentence the dog throws up his breakfast under my computer. Yuck?

This was not such a disaster because I still had time to redirect my thoughts and get back into the “zone” for getting my writing right after I had dealt with the doggie. Besides, the dog adored me so he couldn’t be all bad, right? I soon decided that I had a good dog on my hands although no one else in our circle of friends thought so. They thought I had “lost it” in my desire to keep this mongrel. He was uncontrollable, was sick on the carpet daily, and he had a pee-holding problem. With a big dog these things are big.

About this time my daughter came home to go to college in our city. She moved back in with us also.

Then my father got sick. I spent considerable time at his bedside but it wasn’t much time in the long run. By the time he was diagnosed he was in the end stages of pancreatic cancer. I had twenty-one days between diagnosis and his death to deal with his confusion and with my mother who couldn’t take care of herself. We moved her in with us. Then we had to deal with their house, which they had taken out a loan for and then had nothing to pay back the loan. So it was going to the bank. But we had to clean it out before that. The house was packed with stuff. Lots of stuff. It took several of us, and several months with friends and family, to get it in order and get it emptied.

My mother lived with me for eight months until she was strong enough to live on her own in a senior apartment, which she loved. Now she is in a nursing home because she requires twenty-four-hour care. My parents-in-law we moved down from Arkansas because they were falling and getting sick and needed care. We moved them into an independent living situation very nearby. We spend time with them, helping them out.

My daughter lived with us and went to college nearby. About two weeks after she graduated she told us she was expecting. She got a good job out of college and has an even better job now. I take care of our precious grand girl.

The difference between our aged parents and our little grand girl isn’t very different. The sameness is scary. It brings it home as to what we might expect when we are in our dotage.

Listen folks. Some things are more important than that agent’s idea of what a REAL writer should be doing.

If nothing of mine is traditionally published I still WIN! I have a great family. I love my family and my family loves me. I don’t expect the world cares a burnt peanut about that but that isn’t important. What is important is that my family is healthy and happy.

And I have a great dog.

Help my Puppy is Driving Me Crazy…6 Tips to Avoid Puppy Stress (wagthedoguk.com)
How to Pamper Your Dog (apartmentguide.com)
welcoming back my words (carolineclunk.com)

A Little Something to Keep You Up At Night

11 Apr 2013 4 Comments

by Rebecca Nolen in good books Tags: Kate Atkinson, Sandra Brown, S. J. Watson, SJ Watson, Nicci French, Blue Monday, Before I Go To Sleep

English: Spooky in broad daylight This forlorn scene gives a sense of the classic horror story. It only needs a misty autumn night and a full moon! The graveyard is due south of Rosslare and north of Tagoat. Interestingly no habitation for a wide radius – well would you live near here? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve enjoyed some great page-turning authors in the last few years, Kate Atkinson, Sandra Brown, and Harlan Coben to name a few. But I’ve just read two good books this past week that will keep you up reading past your bedtime. I promise.

S.J. Watson‘s first published novel Before I Go To Sleep is amazing. If I tell you what it’s about you might think it sounds “predictable” but I can guarantee that there isn’t anything predictable about it.

A woman wakes up in bed with a complete stranger (predictable). She sneaks around looking for the clothes she went to sleep in and then, sees herself in the mirror. Who she sees isn’t the woman she thought of herself as, in fact, the woman she sees is much older (could this be a sci-fi?) Then she sees the photos taped to the mirror. They are of her and the stranger in the bed. Then the stranger wakes up and begins to tell her how she was in an accident and has lost her memory. It’s a weird memory loss because she can remember things as she goes about the day but as soon as she falls into a deep sleep she forgets everything again. (This sounds boring. Please tell me that isn’t all.)

As the story progresses the reader begins to sense a sort of “dread”. Nothing is as it seems. Soon the woman begins to get the same sense of dread. Why does the man who says he is her husband really seem like such a stranger? Why does she get the feeling each day as she wakes up that she should run away? Is it part of her condition? As she begins to write the events of every day in a hidden journal (You may be thinking how can she remember that? Answer: It’s because a doctor calls her every morning to remind her to find the journal and read it.) Now, things begin to make more sense to her. Though as time passes things begin to make less and less sense.

There is something very wrong with her life besides the obvious. Why does her husband lie to her every day? Why does he get violent when things don’t work as they should like when a dish falls to the floor? She records the violence in her journal and then the next day he tells her the bruises on her face are from when she hit her face with the door. Hmmm.

A most unusual book told from her perspective and read by her/you from her secret journal. This is a horror story made all the more scary by the fact that – it could happen.

The only problem I have with this – having been in an accident where I had memory loss for months, is that what I wrote during those times was gibberish. Just saying.

The second book is a debut novel by Nicci French called Blue Monday. It starts out with the disappearance of a little girl and how this event devastated not only the community but the detective assigned to solve the case. It was never solved.

Skip ahead twenty years and a little boy disappears much in the same way that the girl did so many years before.

The protagonist is a psychotherapist and insomniac who wanders the streets at night. She has a new patient who is fantasizing about having a little boy because he and his wife can’t get pregnant. He feels like he is living in two different worlds, one he knows is real and one he knows isn’t and suddenly the two worlds are getting confused.

That’s the set up. I’m not adding any spoilers. It is an amazing read. The point of view of the little kidnapped boy will break your heart. It will. The graveyard scene will have your heart thudding long after you put the book down. That’s all I’m giving you.

These are books that will keep you up all night. Betcha.

A Solution to the Lack of Education in American Public Schools

17 Mar 2013 1 Comment

by Rebecca Nolen in caretaker, Culture, education, grandparents, parenting Tags: Education, IEP, Individualized Education Program, School district, school volunteers, Teacher, the problem with the American public education system, volunteers in public school, volunteers in the classroom

Demonstrates Proprio-Kinesthetic language learning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When addressing the issue of social reforms and added programs that have little to do with education and the “educational” experiments made on our children I didn’t even mention “whole language“. When my son began learning to read the district used something called “whole language reading” instead of phonics. The idea is that language is a system and a child can learn to recognize concepts faster if they learn whole words as units instead of breaking the word up into parts and pronouncing each individual letter.

The problem is that it doesn’t work.

My son is a college graduate with a good job in the oil and gas industry but he doesn’t find reading enjoyable. He tested into the gifted and talented program in kindergarten with his strength in math and science but the whole language system threw him off reading for life.

I believe a good foundation in phonics would have changed that outcome.

Having worked with special needs children for so many years, dealing with every level of every kind of special needs, I can say with some authority that whole language doesn’t work for the average or below average child. How can a child who can not distinguish between a letter and a number “get” an entire word? Phew! The BEST program I used for teaching children with reading challenges was a program called “Scottish Rite”. (This is nothing to do with “Free Masonry”.) It used phonics and the whole body (kinesthetic) to get a grasp of what each letter is and what it does and from there how it can be used. By “using the whole body” I mean that you teach the child to fully extend their arm and trace the letter in the air. You would be surprised at how well this teaches the proper direction of writing and reading.

So, what did the school district do? It pulled the Scottish Rite program out because “it costs too much.” What? That’s right. They pulled the only program that worked, thank-you-very-much! There was no substitute for what the program did. It was a series of lessons on video that we used in a quiet spot or empty classroom for one or two kids at a time. (It wasn’t as if they were paying me extra for it, so that wasn’t the problem.) I could remember what each lesson had been, so with permission, was able to continue teaching phonics in that way with great success.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that there is a simple solution to many of the problems in our public school system.

Parental involvement.

I don’t mean that parents should go up to their child’s school and yell at administrators for the problems they see with their child’s learning programs. That kind of action only causes ill will between parties and solves nothing. What I mean by parental involvement is more parents and grandparents and legal guardians getting their hands and feet dirty and volunteering.

Yes, I said it – volunteering.

When I worked in the school system I saw quite a few parents who the teachers called the “rabble-rouzers”, the “pit-bull team”, and other not-so-nice-descriptors, come up to the school to yell at the principal, their child’s teacher, and otherwise name-call. Then, they would leave. I never saw those particular parents actually volunteering, helping their child’s teacher in the classroom, or helping make the tons of little paper things that kids in Elementary need. It is one thing to call for a meeting such as an IEP meeting. (“Individual Educational Program” meetings, or ARDs where the IEP is developed for the child), it is another to yell at supposed “wrongs.” In a formal meeting (usually video-taped or recorded) where all the teachers, speech pathologists, special-needs teacher, etc are called together, the idea is to help figure out an ever-improving path of education for a child. This is a good thing, although once again this is a serious interruption of the educational process that should be taking place in the classroom, not to mention the ton of paper-work that comes with the IEP that is then added to the teacher’s already over-loaded daily schedule. (A teacher must have a check list of modifications to implement on a daily basis for that individual child or two or more children. This takes special care to complete because it is a legal and binding contract under the child’s IEP.)

Parents and grandparents who came to the school on a regular basis rarely became angry at teachers, yelled at school principals, or declared that “my angel would NEVER do that!” when told of misbehavior. Parents who saw what went on in the classroom on a daily or even weekly basis were more likely to suggest improvements that were actually helpful, and to help teachers when real problems came up.

There is not enough good things I can say about parents and grandparents who take the time to volunteer.

But you can’t volunteer in your child’s school because you work full-time? For the majority of parents there is someone who they can trust to help them out. Even another parent of a child in the same class as your student could report back to you on a regular basis about the education (or lack of it) taking place. You can even take turns volunteering, just as you take turns with car-pooling your children.

How much better our educational system can become will not take more money thrown at it by a largely indifferent government. What it will take is more parents or caregivers getting involved in volunteering at their child’s school.

Volunteers make all the difference.

The Importance of Keeping the Special Needs Child in the Classroom (Or Not)

12 Mar 2013 1 Comment

by Rebecca Nolen in Culture, education, parenting, political commentary Tags: Charter school, Classroom, Education, K through 12, public education in America, the problem with public education in America

Calhan High School seniors in Colorado, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the time my son was in second grade, I was working as a special education assistant. I was an “inclusion” aide/a paraprofessional/etc. “Inclusion” is what happens when a special needs child is put into a regular classroom with his/her own peers. Different states and school district call it different things. It came into vogue in the late 1980′s when President Reagan passed some sweeping legislation regarding special needs people.

I must say that “inclusion” is an excellent idea with qualifications. IF the special needs child is willing and quiet and IF the school district provides the child with special needs with a trained assistant to facilitate the child’s participation in a regular classroom the program WILL work.

There are two reasons “inclusion” does not work. The first and most important reason is if the child is violent and unable to control impulses to scream, throw furniture, or sit in a classroom with other children. And when I say “sit in a classroom with other children” I mean if the child does not have the ability to stay in one place without outrageous outburst that result in chaos, that child is not able to “sit in the classroom with other children.” (I realize I’m repeating myself on various levels here.) The other reason “inclusion” does not work is when there is not a dedicated person to sit next to the child and quietly facilitate a level of learning so the child feels fully integrated into the classroom projects and curriculum with their peers.

I’ve seen it work and I’ve seen abject failure.

Another reason it does not work is perhaps outside what a school district has control of – the special needs child’s’ parent is unwilling or unable to recognize the limitations of their child in the public school setting.

I was a teaching assistant or a long-term substitute teacher in public school from grade K through 12th grade. My education degree left me a qualified teacher trainer for private school. Instead of pursuing that I got a degree in art and worked as a commercial artist. Then I had children. I spent nine years full-time with special education in public school before switching to the job as long-term sub where I would have to not only write curriculum but write the tests.

I’ve worked with teachers I wouldn’t want near my child and I’ve worked with teachers I adored. I’ve seen children taken from my classroom in handcuffs, kids who were too high to lift their heads from the desk, and I’ve seen children who desired to excel. On September 11, 2001 it was my first day as a long-term substitute in second grade. That morning when the planes hit the buildings in NYC the principal came on the loud-speaker and informed us that if parents came to pick up their children, we were to let them go. I didn’t understand what he was talking about. About five minutes later I did. I couldn’t believe it – teachers crying in the halls, frantic parents running toward classrooms. It all made sense later. Problem was I had just taken over from a teacher who had had a meltdown the day before. The next day the kids came to class crying. They thought that the planes had killed their teacher the day before and that was why I was there. I kept up with those kids for ten years. Every time they ever saw me it was a hugfest. Such sweethearts. What a dope their teacher was to leave them.

I’ve had the privilege to teach a child that everyone else had given up on. She learned to read, to write, and to add and subtract. That is the joy of teaching. Without “inclusion” that would never have happened.

But I’ve also seen children who have kept a teacher entirely focused on their needs to the exclusion of all the other children in the room. I’ve seen children in second grade throw desks, or have to be put into a “safe” hug and be carried out of the room kicking and screaming by two or more teachers. This stops the education process of 28 other children. There is no telling what kind of psychological aspects such doings have on a regular child’s mind.

With all the other distractions a regular classroom offers a child, to have such folly on a daily basis is nuts.

I have a friend who is a teacher at a charter school and her situation is even worse. The children in her school are booted forward every grade level but don’t actually acquire any skill level with any degree of accuracy as far as reading, writing and arithmetic. I don’t believe charter schools are the answer. They sound great, but they fall to the level of their counterparts. Water seeks its level and runs down.

Private schools are damn expensive.

Next blog: the solution isn’t so complicated.

Call to put cameras in special education classrooms gains volume (educationviews.org)
Homeschooling a Child with Special Challenges (education.com)

The Truth About Public Education in America

10 Mar 2013 1 Comment

by Rebecca Nolen in Culture, education Tags: Classroom, Education, Educators, English as a second or foreign language, K through 12, politics, public education in America, Teacher, The failing public education system in America, the faults of public education in America, the trouble with public education in America

Dutch schoolmaster and children, 1662 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When milk is mixed at the processing plant it is called homogenization. The mixing process is so thorough there is no separation of fat from the liquid. The cream no longer rises.

This process is similar to what happened in the public school system when my oldest child began kindergarten twenty-five years ago and this scheme continues to this day. Where there used to be “levels” between classrooms of children, meaning there were the high achievers/high intelligence children in a classroom, the average children in a classroom, and the lower/slower learners. The year my son started, they did away with this. The idea being that the lower/slower children left school with low self-esteem.

The result of this experiment was that there were no “upper-level” classes and “lower-level” classes any longer. However, if the child were to be tested and passed as “gifted and talented” there were classes available for that child.

In theory children mixed together encourage the low-ability children to catch up to the high-ability children. The teacher was to teach to the higher level children and the low-level children would simply work harder. They would learn to be equals.

A fine example of the “liberal” thinking of the board of education. Humanism at its finest.

As you might guess it didn’t and doesn’t work like that.

You can’t throw enough money at children to make them into something they can not be.

The teacher never was able to teach to the highest because the low-ability children were left so far behind that they were in a constant fog of inability. So here is what actually happened: teachers spent 10 minutes of classroom time in the mornings teaching a new concept in language (grammar, reading, writing) and ten minutes in the afternoon teaching a new concept in mathematics, science, or social studies. Then the teacher would give a pile of work to the smart-quick-able children to keep them busy. At that time the teacher would spend the rest of any time she/he had available to take the lower-level children aside and either test them (for ESL [English Second Language] and/or to place them into “pull-outs” involving remedial teachers) or to re-teach them in any concepts that the other children had completed. This would take up about fifty percent of the teacher’s time in both the mornings and in the afternoons. That is in fact if there were no extra outside-of-the-classroom activities such as a program in the cafetorium about diversity, being nice, or saving our planet. This also excludes the arts, PE, music, and library programs. (I wholly support the arts, music, PE, and the library programs and believe if these were deleted the children would suffer grievously.)

The homogenized classroom is full. This usually means between 23 and 25 kids in a classroom in grades k thru 3rd and in 4th and 5th grade there may be 30 kids in a classroom. I’ve seen a classroom of 22 fourth-grade kids split up and the teacher reassigned to a different school. This is to justify the numbers and the monies allowed per teacher and classroom per campus. I will explain how I know this first hand in another blog.

The average child can read and write by the second grade. In a classroom of 25 children there will average ten children who are far ahead of everyone else in ability and there will be ten children who are far below the other children’s ability. That leaves about five children who get it and are able to keep up with the upper ability kids. The children who are ahead are loaded down with busy work. While the teacher is re-teaching the other children, they must work on that busy work. By the second grade most of these kids have figured out that what they have been given is busy work. These smarties are likely to race ahead, finish everything and then proceed to disrupt the entire classroom. They are bored. Bored children are not well-behaved children. At this point they are not able to figure out on their own that there are other things to accomplish, other books to explore, other concepts to delve into. They are simply bored. This can carry on into middle school and high school. My experience has been that if a bright child in high school who is bored and who is not involved in sports will experiment with drugs, just saying.

This homogenization of children might have seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, we certainly don’t want any children with low self-esteem(!). But the problem is that the process only created more specialization teachers to be trained for pulling out the low-ability children, and do you not think these children KNOW that they are not the same as the other children. Of course they do. They may not be able to do the math or the language arts but they sure as heck know that they can’t keep up. And what about the self-esteem of the brighter children who now must get fussed at for bothering the rest of the class because they are finished with their busy work?

Don’t you just love that your children are the guinea pigs being used for all sorts of educational experiments?

After my children went through one of the country’s top-rated school districts (and the most culturally diverse) the only thing standing between them and a good college education was their lack of education and the ability of their mom and dad to write a check.

I will write more about gifted and talented and the special needs children in public education at a later date.

Gone Girl Good

01 Mar 2013 Leave a Comment

by Rebecca Nolen in good books

English: Barnes & Noble’s flagship store at 105 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I read Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. It won the Dagger Award and was an Edgar nominee for Best First Novel, a BookSense pick, and a Barnes & Noble Discover selection. I didn’t like it. It was a slow read and at the end I wondered what the point was. The author flirted around with the problem of sexual abuse and self-mutilation by cutting but nothing was specific.

I say if you’re going to write a book about something shocking do it. Don’t go all The-Sound-And-The-Fury on us.

So with trepidation I read her third novel gone “best seller” Gone Girl and I have to say I am very impressed. The novel uses its three-part structure well. The two main characters, Nick and Amy Dunne, take turns by chapter telling their stories in first person. Amy Dunne disappears on the fifth wedding anniversary. Nick Dunne is shocked. A few chapters later we can’t help but get suspicious of him. It looks as if his wife has been murdered and the crime scene staged to look like an abduction. I will not go any further into the plot because the reader needs to discover all the plot twists alone to really appreciate the book. In case you were wondering how we can share the wife’s perspective if she is dead – by reading her diary.

Gone Girl is an excellent study in human nature, and specifically the scary traits of the psychotic. That a female author wrote a man’s perspective so well is impressive. It is almost as if two writers are writing the book instead of two fictional characters.

I recommend the book. It is good.

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn (nothanksidratherread.wordpress.com)

Bad Decisions That I Paid Good Money For

31 Jan 2013 Leave a Comment

by Rebecca Nolen in about writing Tags: book reviews, books, literature

English: Used paper is collected for paper recycling in Ponte a Serraglio near Bagni di Lucca, Italy Deutsch: Altpapier auf einem Recyclinghof in Ponte a Serraglio bei Bagni di Lucca, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Like you I buy books that seem to be something I will enjoy. Unlike you I sometimes buy a book because I like the cover. On more than one occasion I have regretted that decision.

Case in point, the other day I picked up a book at the library sale and it had a cool picture of a woman with a knife walking toward a distant castle – Looked like a great mystery. Nothing from the inside flap told me I was mistaken. I was mistaken. It was a book about demons. One too many mentions of pentagrams and potions had me tossing the book at the recycle bin by page seven. The book would better serve as a recycled paper box.

Next on this incredible list of silly buying decisions is a book I bought (paid full price) because the cover was pretty. I love the color aqua. Better still aqua when it has a shimmer effect like in the peacock’s tail feathers, or like the sheen of oil on the water. I hate to see oil on the water but that is how I would now describe this book’s cover-color. Another reason I bought it – the author wrote a fantastic first book (The Time Traveler’s Wife). This was her second book. A third reason I bought the book is the description on the cover flap was intriguing. A ghost story. I sometimes like ghost stories – especially if the story is from the ghost’s point of view – like in the movie “The Others“. Well, the story in Her Fearful Symmetry isn’t awful, just awfully written. Audrey Niffenegger tells more than she shows whenever there is any mention of ‘feeling’. For example “She felt tired.” It would have been just as easy to show me what “tired” looked like instead of just being lazy about it and telling me she was tired. Blah! I did get as far as the end of the book because the story wasn’t horrible, there were some good unanswered questions about the ghost, etc. The end result was satisfactory but not wonderful. The read through was a slog though. (Is that telling enough?)

I buy books from authors I love. I love P.D. James. I love Jane Austin. So put the two together and you have a book by mystery writer P.D. James called Death Comes to Pemberly. Sounds wonderful. It wasn’t. I tried to love it. Couldn’t. The writing feels forced and stilted. I know she was trying for a voice that sounded like someone writing like Jane Austin. P.D. James is usually one of the easiest author’s to read and enjoy. I’ve read every book she’s written and have loved them all until this one. I hope she writes more mysteries with the wonderful Commander Adam Dalgliesh to solve them and that she writes no more historical mysteries with an attempt to sound historical.

Rebecca Nolen's Blog

Not a Complaint, An Affirmation

A Little Something to Keep You Up At Night

A Solution to the Lack of Education in American Public Schools

The Importance of Keeping the Special Needs Child in the Classroom (Or Not)

The Truth About Public Education in America

Gone Girl Good

Bad Decisions That I Paid Good Money For

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Ghost in Highgate Cemetery, or trick of light? (london24.com)

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