I'm back!

As my few readers know, I have taken a hiatus from blogging.  I started graduate school and somehow, I just didn't really have the time. Well, I am now only 6 credit hours away from being the proud owner of my next graduate degree and it is time to start writing something besides papers for class!  I have recently done a lot of thinking about schools and school libraries and how we can do a better job helping students.  Most of this thinking was due to reading The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley.  Be sure to check out this video based on the book and the author's website here.  This book got me thinking about rigor--I know, this is not new.  It also made me think about the way people value their education.  And the big question for me coming away from the book is why do students in Poland and Finland value their education more than American students?  Why do they care more than our students?  Two comments from the book, one from a student and one from a teacher stood out to me.  A foreign student who had come to the US to study said that while school was easier here, there was one thing the US schools had over her school back home--the teachers cared about the students.  A Finnish teacher said something almost completely opposite.  He said he couldn't care too much about his students personally, because it would hamper his efforts to get the most from them, rigor wise.  He said--all students can succeed and all of them can learn.  If he knew they had a terrible home life, he would begin to take it easier on them and not have as high expectations as he should to keep them performing at a high level.  So, my next question is, how can we leverage the caring of American teachers into more rigorous expectations for student success?  High expectations were one of the major themes of the book as far as why students in other countries out perform US students when other factors are more or less equal.  We have to care enough about our students to make them work hard.  We have to care enough to expect a lot from them and not take less.  We have to care enough to be the adults and do what is good for students, even though it may keep us from being their favorite teacher right now in this moment.  We have to translate our caring into more helpful and positive outcomes for students.

Glad to be back!

Book Cover image from Amazon.com