Do We All Need to Read “Hatchet”?

I was attending a middle school book fair and was perusing the shelves for something to purchase. There were the usual Harry Potter series, multiple items from Rick Riordan, and lots of books that alarmingly have more pictures than print in them. There sitting on the shelf, was this book without the usual supernatural vampires who know magic and live in a dystopian future. It was simply what looked like the image of an ax. I was quickly corrected as I read the title to be “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen. This was a book that was very familiar to me, having seen it on the shelves in many classrooms over the 22 years of my teaching career or in the hands of many a middle school boy. I had even been at a conference the week before where one of the presenters was using “Hatchet” as an example of how to teach depth and complexity. I thought to myself,

Why have I never read this book before?

This was a bit perplexing. The book came out in 1987 when I would have just been entering high school. Even then I was an avid reader, often drowning out my chemistry or Geometry teachers as I read the latest Stephen King book at my desk. Not only that, it was the ultimate boy’s book. While the more popular books of that era were geared towards girls such as VC Andrews and Judy Blume, here was a book that every red-blooded boy should want to read, and yet I hadn’t. What had I been missing out on in life because I had not yet read this book? What advantages did those who had read it hold over me? What would I say if anyone ever asked me if I had read the book at a conference or dinner party? 

These pangs of guilt caused me to snatch it from the shelf and quickly buy it before anyone had figured out I was doing so because I had not read it before. In my continued shame, I would only read the book in private, not wanting anyone to find out the horrendous truth. The further and further I read, the less concerned I became. About a quarter of the way through the book I realized, I really didn’t need to have read “Hatchet.” Sure, it is a pretty well-written book, and I was enjoying it, but if I had never seen it that day at the book fair, would my life had been the less for it? 

I decided that no. I had survived my first 46 years of my life without having read the book and seemed to be doing just fine. I am positive I could have gone another 46 without reading it and have been great too. Well, as long as I don’t go down in a plane and crash in the woods in the wintertime. 

This got me thinking. How important is it for students to be learning all of the content they are learning? 

The challenge of going into the administration side of teaching is that there becomes this separation between theory and practice. While you are teaching in the classroom, it is all about practice, practice, practice. What worked today, what didn’t, what could I have done better, what will I never try again. You are living the practice. It is constant trial and error as you search for what you think works and once you find something that does, you usually hold onto it for dear life.

When you make a move to administration, you get to pull back a little and have the opportunity to look at the big picture since you no longer have to focus so much on the day-to-day activities. You are no longer in charge of a single classroom; you are responsible for a system. Because of this, you get into the theory side of things. Wouldn’t it be great if teaching looked like this, how would students be affected if we tried this innovative teaching strategy, why don’t teachers ever try this? You read a lot of books, you go to a lot of conferences, and you hear about all of these amazing educational theories that look great on paper. And you think to yourself, “If I were back in the classroom I would do things differently.”  

This mismatch of theory and practice is problematic because so many of the teaching experts and innovators, aren’t actually in the classroom anymore. The gap between theory and practice then becomes larger and larger each year you are out of the classroom. How do these people know their theory can actually be put into practice if they themselves are not practicing?

I have been reading a lot of educational theory books. Each one is better than the previous and my head is just bursting with great ideas as a result. The more I read, the more I think how I could have been running my classroom so much better. How my classroom, like most, was more about compliance than guiding students how to love to learn.

I got an opportunity then. We had a teacher call in sick at the last minute and we had no substitute coverage. I volunteered to take the class for the first half of the day until a sub could be procured…

The film First Man has recently come through theatres and tells the story of how Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon. Of course, this event is the very ending of the movie. Prior to this are all of the things that had to come before this great accomplishment could be achieved. The most eye-opening thing for me was in seeing all of the failures of the mission. There is failure by Armstrong when he is test-piloting a plane. Failure as the astronauts are subjected to a device where they are spun in all sorts of directions and have to make it stable before passing out, often times throwing up at the end (that would not be good in a space helmet).

The tragedy of the crew of Apollo 1 dying in a fire was certainly not a success. There was the time Armstrong was testing the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle and had to eject moments before it would have killed him. It seems like there are far more failures than there are successes. But then that’s the point of it all, isn’t it? Like Armstrong himself says in the movie, “We need to fail. We need to fail down here, so we don’t fail up there.” A failure up there results in lives being lost. A failure down here is a learning opportunity…

There is a myth that surrounds the gifted child. That they are super smart, that they can figure out anything, that they have all the answers. The problem with these representations is that that giftedness becomes like a gimmick, so when we are faced with a real gifted child, we expect them to do unrealistic, amazing things like some sort of parlor trick. 

There are many myths about gifted children but here are ten of the more common ones:

1.) Gifted children will succeed in life no matter what

This one can be problematic because if one believes this, as many do, the thinking becomes that gifted children do not need any specialized education aimed at their abilities. What then happens is the gifted child becomes bored because he is not being challenged and becomes turned off by school. 

2.) Gifted children love school and get high grades

What it should read is gifted children love to learn. The problem is that sometimes, what children want to learn and what school is offering can be two very different things. If a child is not willing to play the game of school, the grades might not reflect his ability.

I was having a conversation with a fellow educator the other day and she was commenting on how teaching has changed in the last fifteen years. I thought about it for a minute and asked her, “how has it changed?” Her response what the easy, go-to change that society, in general, has gone through in the last twenty years; the breakneck pace of new technology. Now instead of blackboards, we have SMART boards, instead of overheads we have LCD projectors, instead of going to the library or getting a set of encyclopedias, students can access the internet. These are indeed changes to teaching, but are they really? Each of those new pieces of technology basically do the same thing their predecessor did before them, it just might be faster, or more easy to manipulate, or cooler, but it is the same basic premise. 

I have been in education for over twenty years. In that time I have seen lots of reforms come along. The outcomes-based education, the inclusion movement, small schools, STEM, and a host of others, but when you wipe away the veneer from these shiny new initiatives, you are left with the same elements of school there has always been. Bell rings, kids move to a subject-specific classroom, bell rings again, they go to another one. In each of these classes, students are taught material that has been laid out for them and then they must show mastery of said material in some kind of assessment. This usually comes in the form of a grade. If a student receives an A, it indicates she is doing pretty well, a C would show she is having some struggles while an F would mean something is seriously amiss. 

This is how school was when my parents went, it is the same as when I attended, it is the way it is now that my children are going to school, and if we are not careful, it is how it will be for our next generation of children. The question is, why haven’t things changed that much? 

When it comes to challenging gifted students, there is that age old debate of which is better; acceleration or enrichment?  Both are used to challenge students that are capable of higher levels of learning, but is one more effective than the other?

Before we can begin the debate, it is important to understand what each of these terms entails. Acceleration, just like its namesake, means going faster. In the classroom that can take on a bunch of different forms. It could mean compacting the curriculum so that students are getting multiple years of content in a single year. It could mean grade skipping, where a student who is a 5th grader is moved up to the 6th grade because she shows the ability to handle this next level. Sometimes this acceleration can be a single subject. What this means is that 5th grader might take 5th grade ELA, Social Studies, and Science, but goes to the 6th-grade class for math. It could also be early entrance to kindergarten or graduating from high school early. No matter what the method, the essential idea of acceleration is to allow students to learn at the speed and level that best matches their academic abilities (Davis & Rimm, 2004). Sometimes this means skipping content, but the idea is that this student already understands the content enough and should not have to repeat it anyway.

Enrichment on the other hand “refers to richer and more varied educational experiences, a curriculum that is modified to provide greater depth and breadth than is generally provided” (Davis & Rimm, 2004, p.120). This means rather than going faster; you actually slow down a little.

A recent study commissioned by the non-profit Defending the Early Years, reached an alarming conclusion about kindergarten classes in Massachusetts. What they discovered is schools are scaling back on child centered activities such as free play, rest, recess, snacks, and lunch. There are a lot more activities where students are sitting passively in their seats while the teacher directs all of the learning, much of which is scripted, and students are being given instruction centered around test prep. 

This is troubling for a couple of reasons. First off, young children need to be active. Studies have shown that sitting for too long can have the same health effects as smoking. On average, a middle-aged adult sits for 12.3 out of 16 waking hours. Based on a study of 8000 adults, there is direct relationship between the amount of time spent sitting and your risk of early death. Why do we want to start them sitting still at such an early age?

Secondly, kids should be allowed to be kids. The more and more schools are around, the more and more we want kids to grow up faster. It used to be children were allowed to take their time learning, mastering the simple concepts at a natural pace. By the time a child reached kindergarten, they may have some basic understanding of things such as numbers, colors, and shapes, but if they did not, it would be taught to them. Now we expect children to come into kindergarten being able to have all of this already. In Finland, who frankly is kicking everyone’s butt in the education game, children do not start formal schooling until age 8. Before this, the focus of learning is either on playtime or social skills. 

In essence, schools are making kindergarten more like high school. I would make the strong argument that it ought to be the other way around; we should be making high schools more like kindergarten…

Many high schools across the country offer what they term to be honors courses. For example, a school might offer Algebra but also have an Honors Algebra course. As a gifted services coordinator, the idea of honors classes is one I’m completely on board with. Offering more challenging courses to students who are able to handle such rigor is just another form of differentiation and gives students who are gifted another option for meeting their needs. But much like communism and the balk rule, it looks good on paper, but actually successfully executing it is something else entirely. There are three fundamental questions many schools are not answering which makes it difficult to have an honorable honors class. 

1. How are students chosen for this honors course?

2. How is it determined who teaches the honors classes?

3. What is the difference between the honors class and the regular one?

The first question is how are students selected for this honors course? Some schools might have criteria such as you had to have a certain grade in the previous course, or it might be based on teacher recommendation. Unfortunately, many of these criteria can be subjective. Teachers might hold being compliant as a higher quality than having high-level thinking skills. If teachers are not well trained on what qualities high ability students have, they might misinterpret a natural curiosity as being a troublemaker. Grades are also subjective in that one teacher’s A might be a B in another teacher’s class. Because there is no uniformity to grading, there is a lot of gray areas.   

Many times, the students who are in the honors classes comes down to whoever signs up. Students who maybe want a little more of a challenge or who want to have their transcript look good to colleges might sign up for the honors…