Recommended Books on Native American History

            In this Literary Hub article, Kathleen DuVal (University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill), author of Native Nations: A Millenium in North America, recommends five books on Native American history, all written by Native authors (click the link below for cover images and brief synopses): 

- The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer 

- The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk 

- Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community by Brenda Child 

- Indians in Unexpected Places by Philip Deloria 

- Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz 

“Five Essential Books for Understanding Native American History” by Kathleen DuVal in Literary Hub, October 17, 2024

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1059 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Free Online Resources for the U.S. Election...and Beyond

            As November 5th approaches, says Kara Yorio in this School Library Journal article, “Students are likely seeing a mix of mainstream media stories, influencer takes, memes, clips from speeches, and more. There is no way to avoid it.” An important contribution librarians and other educators can make is to build the skill of discerning where information is on a continuum from reliable to unreliable – and think about the motives of those who spread bogus information, “the motivation and methods of political messaging.” Some helpful websites: 

        • The Living Room Candidate – Political commercials from 1952 to 2024, with lesson plans comparing and contrasting approaches to political persuasion over the years. 

        • National Association for Media Literacy Education – Includes downloads of core principles and key questions about media literacy, including “Meet the Media Monsters,” a lesson plan for grades 3-5 on consuming and sharing media. 

        • News Literacy Project Misinformation Dashboard – Tracks 2024 election misinformation, helping students see the tactics and narratives that influence public opinion. 

        • PBS NewsHour Classroom: Media Literacy – Lessons on debates, political polarization, and violence, and specific topics, including the Kendrick Lamar-Drake feud. 

        • Project Look Sharp – Ithaca College provides elementary, middle-, and high-school lessons on media analysis and decoding. 

        • Teaching Elections – Inquiry-based lesson plans, curriculum links, an election map, election news updates, and fact-checking sites. 

 “More Than Just the Facts” by Kar Yorio in School Library Journal, October 2024 (Vol. 70, #10, pp. 12-14)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1058 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Fostering Healthy Conflict

(Originally titled “Coaching Through Conflict”) 

            “If educators are to have the kinds of conversations necessary to meet the needs of every child,” says Elena Aguilar (Bright Morning) in Educational Leadership, “then we’re going to have to learn how to navigate conflict.” Not angry, personalized, win/lose conflict, but healthy exchanges where colleagues wrestle with ideas, ask questions, demonstrate curiosity, change their minds, and keep students at the center. 

    How can we build the skills necessary for productive conflict? One way, says Aguilar, is using sentence stems that lead the conversation in the right direction. Some examples: 

• Can you elaborate on your thinking, because I’m not sure I understand? 
• I have some concerns about that suggestion. Could you explain it more? 
• I want to push back on that idea. I’ve noticed ___ and would like to suggest ___. 
• I hear what you’re saying, but have you considered ___? 
• Can you help me understand why you believe that? My experience has led me to a different conclusion, but I want to understand your perspective. 
• I disagree with you about that, but I want to hear your thoughts. 
• It would help me get behind that idea if I could hear more about ___. 
• I agree with several points you made, but I want to challenge you on this idea. 
• I have a request to make. Are you open to hearing it? 

“Coaching Through Conflict” by Elena Aguilar in Educational Leadership, October 2024 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 66-67); Aguilar can be reached at elena@brightmorningteam.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1056 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Dealing with Pushback on Minimum Grades

(Originally titled “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades”) 

            In this Educational Leadership article, Thomas Guskey (University of Kentucky) and Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University) say grading reform has been a “lightning rod for controversy,” especially the idea of minimum grades – giving a student a 50 or 60 instead of a zero for work not turned in. The rationale: preventing a single grade from drastically pulling down overall performance and undermining students’ incentive to keep trying. 

            The pushback: minimum grades “offer unfair and unearned assistance to low-performing students,” say the authors, giving students credit for incomplete or failing work and not teaching them responsibility. This criticism has led some districts to reverse course on minimum grading. 

            But the real problem isn’t zeroes, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. It’s the 100-point grading scale and the time-honored practice of averaging grades. On the first: 

• A percentage scale has 101 possible levels of performance, allowing teachers to assess student work in a super-precise manner. 
• But tests and assignments are not exact measures, and subjectivity and other variables introduce distortions. 
• The wide range of possible grades compounds those distortions (even with minimum grading, teachers must discern 51 levels), which increases unreliability. 
• Errors and distortions have been especially harmful to students of color. 

            The solution? Using a five-level integer grading scale (4 3 2 1 0 or A B C D E) like most colleges and universities, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. This approach aligns with the four-point scale used by most state tests (Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic) and the classroom rubrics used by many teachers. Zeroes can still be given, but they have much less sting: students must improve only one level to pass, compared with moving from zero to 50 or 60 on a percentage scale. And grades can be converted to GPAs with several decimal points. 

            Integer grading systems, say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey, “make grading much more consistent and reliable. Teachers with comparable knowledge and experience find it easier to agree on distinctions between an A level versus a B level of performance than when asked to distinguish a 90 from an 89 using a percentage grading scale. Clear and well-defined scoring criteria, coupled with a limited number of grading categories, are essential in implementing grading reforms that prioritize fairness, accuracy, and equity.” 

    The second design flaw in traditional grading, say the authors, is averaging all scores across a grading period. The problems: 

• Averaging accentuates the devasting influence of zeroes. 
• Averaging says that everything students do counts equally. 
• Averaging makes students less likely to take risks and try new approaches. 
• Averaging doesn’t show student growth – the final grade may indicate mastery. 
• If effort and behavior are averaged in, feedback on academic learning is diluted. 

“The primary purpose of grading is to effectively communicate student achievement toward specified standards, at this point in time,” says the American School of Paris’s purpose statement. Well said! say Guskey, Fisher, and Frey. 

 “The Unwinnable Battle Over Minimum Grades” by Thomas Guskey, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey in Educational Leadership, October 2024 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 68-72); the authors can be reached at guskey@uky.edu, dfisher@mail.sdsu.edu, and nfrey@mail.sdsu.edu.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1056 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Recommended Books on Middle School Relationships

        In this School Library Journal feature, Laura Dooley-Taylor recommends books about tween relationships, in all their drama and complexity: 

• The Science of Friendship by Tanita Davis, grade 3-7 
• Honey and Me by Meira Drazin, grade 5-8 
• Maya Plays the Part by Calyssa Erb, grade 3-7 
• Other Side of Perfect by Melanie Florence and Richard Scrimger, grade 4-8 
• Match Point! by Maddie Gallegos, grade 4-7 
• Table Titans Club by Scott Kurtz, grade 5-8 
• Walkin’ the Dog by Chris Lynch, grade 5-8 
• Blue to the Sky by Sylvia McNicoll, grade 5-7 
• Running in Flip-Flops from the End of the World by Justin Reynolds, grade 3-7 
• Grounded by Aisha Saeed, Huda Al-Marashi, & Jamila Thompkins-Bigelow, grade 5-8 
• Eli Over Easy by Phil Stamper, grade 5-8 
• Free Period by Ali Terese, grade 4-7 
• The Braid Girls by Sherri Winston, grade 3-7 
• Summer At Squee by Andrea Wang, grade 3-7 

 “Break-Ups and Make-Ups: 14 Books That Tackle Tween Friendships” by Laura Dooley-Taylor in School Library Journal, August 2024 (Vol. 70, #8, pp. 48-51)

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1049 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.

Spotting Fake News Stories

•  Check the URL of the story: abcnews.com is a legitimate news source. abcnews.com.co is not. Anything that ends with something other than .com is likely to be a spoof.

• If someone important is quoted, google the quote. It can be tracked back to an event or a statement if it is legit.

• Reverse search the questionable image on google. Right click the image and copy the URL.  Go to images.google.com and paste the URL to find out where it came from.

Check with these tools:

• Politics - Factcheck.org and Politifact.com
• General Scams - Snopes.com 
• Email and Facebook Hoaxes - Truthorfiction.com and Hoaxslayer.com

David Brooks on the Unique Qualities of Late Bloomers

         In this article in The Atlantic, David Brooks lists people who flourished late in their lives, among them Paul Cézanne, Charles Darwin, Julia Child, Morgan Freeman, Isak Dinesen, Morris Chang, Alfred Hitchcock, and Copernicus. Why didn’t these people (and many others) excel earlier? What traits or skills enabled them to achieve great things well past what was supposedly their prime? “It turns out that late bloomers are not simply early bloomers on a delayed timetable,” says Brooks. “Late bloomers tend to be qualitatively different, possessing a different set of abilities that are mostly invisible to, or discouraged by, our current education system.” He suggests some traits that parents and educators might watch for and encourage with kids who seem to be off to a slow start: 

• Intrinsic motivation – Late bloomers often don’t care about the kinds of extrinsic rewards built into schools and the workplace – grades, prizes, money, and other goodies designed to get people to adopt a “merit-badge mentality” and keep working on inherently unpleasant tasks, complying with other people’s methods and goals. Winston Churchill was a bad student because he needed something that his schools rarely offered. “Where my reason, imagination, or interest were not engaged,” he said, “I would not or could not learn.” 
• Early screw-ups – Brooks names several later-famous people who in their 20s and 30s were fired, got in fistfights, or couldn’t get along with colleagues. They weren’t good at following rules and adhering to the conventional rules of success, but they survived and eventually got their act together. 
• Wide-ranging curiosity – “Many late bloomers endure a brutal wandering period,” says Brooks, “as they cast about for a vocation. Julia Child made hats, worked for U.S. intelligence… and thought about trying to become a novelist before enrolling in a French cooking school at 37.” Diverse interests and years of exploration finally led to a true avocation. 
• The ability to self-teach – “Late bloomers don’t find their calling until they are too old for traditional education systems,” says Brooks, so they figure out other ways of acquiring the knowledge and skills they need. 
• An explorer’s mind – After years of false starts and mistakes, when late bloomers come into their own, they are freer of the ties and associations of early bloomers and more able to change their minds and update what they’re working on. 
• Wisdom – “After a lifetime of experimentation,” says Brooks, “some late bloomers transcend their craft or career and achieve a kind of comprehensive wisdom… the ability to see things from multiple points of view, the ability to aggregate perspectives and rest in the tensions between them.” 
• Unstoppable energy – “I’ve noticed this pattern again and again,” says Brooks describing two mentors who were driven and productive at the very end of their lives: “Slow at the start, late bloomers are still sprinting during that final lap – they do not slow down as age brings its decay. They are seeking. They are striving. They are in it with all their heart.” 

“You Might Be a Late Bloomer” by David Brooks in The Atlantic, June 26, 2024

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #1047 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.