When I began my college educational experience, the move toward advanced instructional technology was still in its birth stages. I remember walking to the library and physically checking out books at the University of Memphis. I remember having only dial-up access in the dorm room with which to complete assignments. The first time I learned to use online databases for research were during my graduate school days amidst the hills of the University of Tennessee. Those in charge of editing Modern Language Association (MLA) style struggled to keep abreast of new technological changes more than I did climbing up and down those hills going to my classes. Everything was new, and it evolved every single day, it seemed. New kinds of electronic sources were constantly available, warranting a new way to cite them.

               

Much, however, has changed since then. I couldn’t have imagined upon my entry into academe the sort of environment in which I would be teaching and learning now, a realm where students use laptops daily and the landscape is more often dominated by “cloud computing”: the ability to save and share documents between devices because the storage space for the information resides in that nebulous world of cyberspace. It is a era where I can stroll around the classroom with a tablet computer, known as an iPad (RIP, Steve Jobs, and many thanks), which is thinner than most books and allows me to interact with my students while they are blogging or posting responses to a given instructional prompt on a social learning site. Boy, these are days, and I’m elated to live in such an information-rich, connected era.

Why is it important to have technology in a classroom these days? Well, first, as any good educator will tell you, the technology should never be the focal point. It is only a vehicle—albeit a rather powerful one when coupled with an educator who is either savvy in using it to deliver instruction or is very willing to learn. The importance can be stated in a few choice words: digital literacy, collaboration, creativity, problem-solving, and real-world applicability. These ideals cannot be attained in the same way with standard paper, pencil, and textbook as they can with the appropriate technological tools.

Ultimately, I have been privileged throughout my teaching career to have access to technology in the classroom. Initially, my move to teaching secondary education in a small rural district after having taught for several years in a large, anonymous university environment where technology was readily available was a little disconcerting. It has taken me over three years to bring my classroom into the 21^st century. Some of it I have done through district funding, some through grants, and a good deal through my own personal funds.

In the spring of 2010, my English classroom was selected as a recipient of the 1:1 Laptop Initiative, meaning that each student would receive a laptop for daily classroom use. Managing such an environment is not an easy task. Weaving the technology into the instruction takes much training and planning. It is not a setup appropriate for the proverbial faint of heart. In addition to organization, the second most daunting aspect of efficiently managing a technology-oriented classroom is the on-the-spot troubleshooting that such technology requires. However, in the end, establishing a technology-based classroom does eliminate several hours of valuable future planning time once necessary materials are created and saved.

I now run a mostly paperless classroom. We still must rely on paper for some of our assignments because not all of my students have Internet access at home. My students use Edmodo.com, Writeboard.com, and Evernote.com as collaboration tools, submit assignments—which will be graded and returned electronically—on the course management site Rcampus.com, and complete work using various other sites that encourage higher order thinking skills.

I have not yet had the chance to witness an impact on test scores, since our End of Course examination was piloted last year during a semester I was teaching another course, but I am looking forward at the end of this semester to seeing how my students’ scores match up to other students in the school and statewide—and to gauge what factor I believe technology may or may not have played in that role. I have seen significantly more engagement in student learning since I moved from the traditional paper-pencil-textbook format to technology-based learning, and I saw positive results on last year’s writing examination after incorporating technology to teach students how to write persuasively.

As mentioned, technology is not the sole answer to education woes; of course, it takes a qualified teacher with adequate content knowledge and delivery skills, but with those factors in place, technology is crucial to students’ success in the 21st century. The ability to collaborate and to readily access valuable information, along with access to tools that allow for differentiated learning, have the potential, in the right hands, to revolutionize learning as we may have known it. It will most certainly be the new modus operandi of instruction, and we must, as a society, be ready for it.

When I go to Wal-Mart, I like using the self-checkout. I like the autonomy of scanning the items myself and paying, without relying on anyone else to do the job for me.

However, when it comes to education, I prefer a more traditional route. Self-service education holds some advantages, especially for college-level students, but it has several flaws. If I am a student, I prefer to have that one-on-one interaction with instructor and classmates. I have taken one graduate-level online class in education, but I am a purist when it comes to pedagogy. A student, especially one at the K-12 level, does not acquire as much learning in an online class as a class taken in solitary mode, absent of stimulating class discussion and probing questions.

For one thing, a younger student, who is still learning communication skills, lacks the opportunity to interact verbally with peers in a completely online educational setting. In high school English courses in the state of Tennessee, communication is one of the eight required standards. One of the course-level expectations requires that students know how to “gain the floor in orderly, respectful ways and listen to and respond with civility to the ideas of others.”

Apparently, Tennessee legislators and those in other states fail to see some of the great disadvantages of online classes, a new methodology of learning, known as “virtual public school,” that is quickly threatening the public education system.

This new structure of online free public education raises several questions and concerns: Who pays for this “free” education? What is the source of the funding? Who profits from this system? How does virtual public education compare with the structured classroom environment?

Here is the way the virtual public school system works: a local school district signs up with a company who offers such a service. The company supplies the laptop, textbook, lab supplies, and any other materials the student may need to learn the required subjects. The company receives a generous portion of the district’s funding, which means taxpayers foot the bill, and the outside company profits. 

To start, there is the significant expenditure. In Union County, Tenn., where the district has contracted with K-12, a virtual public school corporation out of Herndon, Virg., the cost per pupil is $5,367. The school retains a small portion, usually around 5 percent.

Consider one school in one district with 900 students. The cost for the state would be over $4 million for a single school at this size. Tennessee has already funneled over $13 million into virtual public schools after the legislation allowing them passed earlier this year. Of course, K-12, the chosen company, chaired by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett and backed by infamous junk-bond trading king / convicted felon Michael Milken, earned a profit of over $21 million in 2010 and projects a profit of $500 million in revenue in 2011. See how lucrative education is becoming?

At that rate, “virtual public education” has the great potential to bankrupt state coffers. How can such a costly endeavor amount to “cutting back” when, according to news reports, states are dealing with shortfalls? Any fiscal conservative who voted in the majority Republican Tennessee legislators, expecting them to make wise choices with the state’s money, ought to be up in arms. I’m rather liberal when it comes to some pecuniary measures, but even I know this one is way over the top.

Let’s not even consider the cost. What about the validity of the method? In essence, the setup works very much like homeschooling. The parent is dubbed the “parental coach.”  Is every parent in the public school system qualified to be a “parental coach”? I am not sure I would want that role if I had no background in education.

Some may argue that some students do better in paying attention in a virtual public school, in an environment where they are isolated from distraction and potential bullying. And K-12 says its students are making “impressive gains” in academics. (I would say the same, mind you, if I were the CEO of a corporation with $500 million at stake and no scruples about the education of our youth.) However, there is no empirical research that bears out the long-term success of this model because it hasn’t been around long enough to conduct research.

And, again, there is the lack of socialization. Diane Ravitch, an education scholar and former assistant U.S. Education Secretary, said of virtual public schools in an article for Bloomburg Business Week, "This isn't going to turn out to be good for education or good for kids. When you think about people in isolation, sitting in their basements at home, not having to learn how to deal with people, how to cope with cliques, how to work out problems with other children, how to function in a group, it strikes me this is a hugely dangerous direction for our society."

Every citizen of every state should hold their representatives accountable when it comes to public education and its funding. This money is coming out of our pockets as an investment in our youth. And while public education may not be perfect, this model is not the solution to its ills. If we do not take precautions against such an infeasible model, we will witness the demise of public education in America. We might as well go ahead and dig the hole.

My favorite memory of reading as a child involves snuggling beneath a mound of homemade patchwork quilts, nestled against cool, crisp sheets, while my grandmother read Monster Night at Grandma’s House to me. I was already afraid of the potential demons that lurked in my closet, especially in the dark night after the house settled into sleep, so I felt more comfortable knowing that someone else—Toby, the little boy who was the main character in the book—was also afraid of nighttime monsters.

Reading, even then, had its real-world applicability. It apparently taught me to empathize before I knew the definition of empathy. My father used to relish in relaying the story to others of me reading from one of Bill Keane’s Family Circus comic strip compilation books and crying. At two or three years of age, I shed tears because the older kids refused to allow P.J., the youngest of the clan, to play baseball with them. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let him join them.

My parents had read to me from the time I was very young. Reading, to me, pre-dates memory. I can’t recall a time I couldn’t read. I devoured books, memorized them, read them, and re-read them until their pages were tattered.

I was lucky in some ways. A sickly child, plagued by minor illnesses every few weeks, it seemed, I spent much time in bed with nothing to do but sleep or read. If I were very ill, I preferred sleep. When my condition made a turn for the better, I would vociferate my request for Mom, Dad, or Granny to come and read to me. They were always obliging. They left other tasks and diligently sat bedside to indulge me in my craving for narrative. I remember time after time my grandmother complaining of her eyes hurting from reading so much; nevertheless, she kept reading. Looking back, I must have had one of the best childhoods anyone could imagine.

At elementary school, my love for reading was fostered by some dedicated and passionate teachers who cherished the written word. One of the most memorable was a fifth grade teacher, Ms. Helen Summers, at Ramer School. The memory of her reading to us is so vivid even now, over 25 years later, that if I close my eyes, I can still imagine sitting in those small plastic classroom chairs listening eagerly as she read from Wilson Rawls’ Where the Red Fern Grows, E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan, or Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain. Her voice undulated with emotion and intensity as she made those stories come alive.

Certain times of year, I could purchase my own books when the Scholastic Book Fair made its visit to our school. I could hardly wait for that day to roll around, for my classmates to form an orderly line, and march to the library where the books were stacked neatly in cardboard display cases on library tables. I had pondered with great precision the books I might purchase when that moment finally arrived. I had circled and marked out and re-marked my potential purchases, trying to stay within the budget I knew my parents would set for me. Walking into that library and breathing the aroma of those pages, all those new book fibers, was almost more than a body could stand.

My initiation into the literate world not long after carried over into my desire to create my own tales. I recall sitting for hours pondering over Sears catalogs, devising stories about the clothing models contained therein. Sometimes I would wax even more creative, procure scissors and glue and poster board, and proceed to cut the models out and make my own story board in which to display my unique narrative.

It comes, therefore, as no surprise, that ultimately I chose the teaching of English as my vocation. I still love the element of story. I love language. In fact, I savor language—English or otherwise—whether it be sacred or profane, cacophonous or euphonious, narrow and skeletal, or latitudinous and vast.

In the university composition course I teach, last week I assigned my students the task of composing their own literacy narratives, the stories of how they, too, grew to become literate. I encouraged them to engage the reader through incorporation of the senses and compelling detail. I look forward to reading their tales of immersion into story and language. I wish to impart to them and to endow to them at least half, if not more, of the love of language I have harbored since childhood.

My grandmother, Mary Moore Jones, and me at age 3 1/2 (May 28, 1977)

The first time I got a glimpse of New York City, I was flying into the airport at Newark, New Jersey, on my way to board a connecting flight to Milan for an 8-day tour of Italy. If I had not been excited about getting to Europe, I might have paid better attention and would have easily seen the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. It was July 2001, months before the unforgettable terrorist acts of 9-11.

 I will, like so many others, never forget the morning of September 11, 2001. I was en route at 9:40 a.m. to teach my English composition class at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I was listening to a local radio station when I heard the news about a plane crash as I exited I-40 near campus. By the time I reached my parking lot, I understood that a plane had hit the NYC World Trade Center. I assumed it was a small plane that had perhaps grazed the structure. I taught my classes and then spent the rest of the day working in the Writing Center. When we weren't tutoring students who needed help writing papers, we watched the TV footage.

 I must be honest, even at the risk of sounding callous. At the time, I felt no special affinity toward those involved in 9-11. Yes, I knew it was heartbreaking for those who had lost family and friends. Yes, I couldn’t imagine how frightening it would have been to have been trapped on an upper floor of either of the Twin Towers that morning. However, we are accustomed to viewing so much violence and tragedy daily on the news that I felt desensitized. I think that desensitization was also partly due to having been a lifelong resident of the South with no direct connection to a northeastern city.

I initially visited New York City in the fall of 2009. I have to admit that stepping into the neon-lit, concrete-filled jungle for the first time required some acclimation. First, pavement is ubiquitous in the city—with the exception of the grassy oasis known as Central Park that runs vertically through Manhattan. Furthermore, learning to maneuver the sidewalks of NYC is akin to learning a new percussion rhythm, a rather frenetic sort of jazz riff.

New Yorkers move in herds, in sync, very rapidly along the city streets. Once you learn that pace, however, you’ll do fine getting around. Yet, again, frenetic is the key word. Linger a second too long boarding the subway, for example, and you’ll discover why. Everything in New York has a rhythm, and you must learn to move to that rhythm, with that rhythm, or you’ll be left behind.

After I became accustomed to the pace, it was an instant love affair with the city.

It is place for which I had already formed a taste stemming from myriad pop culture references. I recall enjoying The Cosby Show in the ‘80s and ‘90s not simply for the humor of Cosby’s eponymous sitcom, but for the show’s representation of metropolitan culture, including the Brooklyn brownstones, of New York. It was a city filled with jazz and art, replete with venues offering a culture in which one could absolutely become absorbed, without any nocturnal or seasonal termination. Any given episode might have the Cosby clan venturing to a venue to witness a performance by any number of jazz greats, including Ella Fitzgerald or Lena Horne. And it was difficult to ignore the spate of visual art, most notably contemporary African American art, which provided a scenic backdrop for the show. Cosby piqued my latent interest in jazz, art, and a city such as this one.

However, from the time I was a young child, every bit of metropolitan culture I witnessed on television, from PBS children’s programming to the aforementioned sitcom, had stoked my desire to visit a place such as New York City, with its accessibility and broad spectrum of offerings.

Watching the recent programming intended to commemorate the September 11^th attacks evoked a range of feeling in me. Exposure to images of the city stirred a craving for return. Seeing the images of the Twin Towers embroiled in smoke again and eventually succumbing to collapse—in a city I have visited twice since the event—made me imagine more concretely what it might have been like had I been there that horrible day, or if I had had a loved one caught in that hopeless tragedy.

I have not visited Ground Zero, nor do I have any immediate plan or desire to do so. For me, it is not important to return to the scene of a tragedy in order to commemorate it. Re-watching those events of that day helped me to re-acknowledge the tenuous nature of existence and to recall the price paid by those who sacrificed much for the sake of others.

After watching the 9-11 commemoration, however, I was inspired to consider a June visit next year to a city I love to attend an annual jazz festival held in Greenwich Village. My pulse quickened with a simple Internet search for travel deals. I can’t stay away too long from a place for which I harbor such a great affinity, one that continues to draw me back with its irresistible charms and makes me feel as if I am pining for a lost lover when I cannot be there. It is a city that offers one of the best representations of what America was meant to be in both its diversity and its oneness—a place aptly termed by David Letterman, as well as numerous others, as “the greatest city in the world.” It is a city full of culture, variety, hope, and rebirth.

 

For the past 40 years, over 40,000 rising high school seniors across America have had the opportunity to participate in the annual Electric Cooperative Youth Tour of Washington, D.C. Students compete for the opportunity by writing a creative piece that incorporates the history or future of cooperative power in their short stories.

This year I was fortunate enough to be selected as the teacher to accompany four students and two electric cooperative employees representing my county. I had never visited our nation’s capital before, so I was excited from the time I found out in the fall of 2010 that I would be going.

On Friday, June 6 at 6:30 in the morning, a bus full of eager but sleepy students, cooperative employees, and teachers departed Nashville, headed for Staunton, Virginia. The first two days would be the longest part of the trip. The coordinators of the trip, spearheaded by our fearless leader Joe Jackson, Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association Director of Youth and Member Relations, had arranged for some introductory activities along the way so that participants from across Tennessee could get to know each other better.

Saturday morning, we visited Monticello, home to our third president, considered at the time as “America’s greatest thinker.” Thomas Jefferson is one of my favorite presidents, particularly because of his cerebral qualities—as noted, his ideas concerning separation of church and state, and his overall complexity. He was a walking paradox, a man who wrote in the Declaration that “all men are created equal,” yet one who held slaves, even sired children by them, and struggled with the slavery question. Jefferson’s home, an Italian Renaissance beauty with its octagonal dome, is just as complex and interesting as the innovative maverick that designed it and lived there.

Saturday afternoon our group arrived in Alexandria, Virginia. After briefly settling into the hotel, we headed to the Capitol for a group photo and then on to some of the nation’s memorials, including the Presidential memorials for Jefferson and Lincoln, and the war memorials for Vietnam and Korea.

We soon learned that every day was packed to the hilt with activities, which was fortunate because a person could spend a month in Washington, D.C., exploring the city’s treasures and still not see everything there is to see.

The myriad highlights included a visit to Arlington Cemetery, where we saw the somber changing of the guard and two wreath-layings accompanied by a poignant pomp and circumstance; a comedic murder mystery at the Kennedy Center; a triple-decker boat cruise on the Potomac; a visit to the sobering Holocaust Museum; the Smithsonian—or the Smithsonians, I should say, as there are several separate museums in the group; and, near the end of the trip, President George Washington’s former home, Mt. Vernon.

Our last day in D.C., we visited the Capitol, where we met with our representatives and senators. It was exciting to stand on the Capitol steps and have our photographs taken with our nation’s lawmakers. I also had the opportunity to visit the office of my Congressman, Steve Cohen, who represents Tennessee’s ninth district in the U.S. House of Representatives and chat with him briefly.

Overall, the week was much more than I expected it to be. Even though I was exhausted from constant activity and lack of sleep, I was, like many of the students, not ready to return home. I had made new friends, and I felt as if I had tasted only a smattering of what D.C. had to offer.

Looking back, I cannot stress how important an educational opportunity this trip is to young people in our state and nation. If one pays attention, there is a chance to learn almost as much in one week as might be learned in an entire semester from a textbook in the classroom environment.

And, of course, the emotional impact of experiencing our nation’s history firsthand is something that cannot be obtained any other way. This year, this 4^th of July, as we celebrate the 235^th anniversary of our nation’s birth, I have a new perspective and new knowledge. It is an experience that I wish every American citizen could have at least one time in his or her life.

According to Kimani Ng'ang'a Maruge, “the power is in the pen.” Very few, if any, might recognize Maruge’s name, but he holds an important distinction in The Guinness Book of World Records. His accomplishment was featured in the recent movie The First Grader, produced by National Geographic.

To get a sense of Maruge’s history, one has to go back to Kenyan history. In the 1950s, the Kikiyu, an indigenous tribe in Kenya, revolted against British colonial rule. The anti-colonial nationalist fighters, known by some as Mau Mau, likely an anagram of the Kenyan phrase “get out get out,” fought to retain native owned Kenyan lands against the British, and, as a result, suffered terrible torture and punishment at the hands of the British.

The conflict was the precursor for Kenya’s independence, which came in 1963. The campaign for free public primary education accompanied this independence, but in the 1980s, the government adopted several cost-sharing measures, including fees for textbooks and extracurricular activities.

In 2003, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki re-introduced free primary education. President Bill Clinton commended Kibabi in an ABC News interview with Peter Jennings, naming him as the one living person he would most like to meet “because of the Kenyan government's decision to abolish school fees for primary education,” suggesting that Kibaki had taken on a challenge that would impact more citizens than any other president that year. 1.7 million additional students enrolled in school in Kenya that year, and in the summer of 2005, Clinton and Kibaki met.

One of those students was Kimani Ng'ang'a Maruge. However, Maruge was no ordinary six or seven year old. Maruge, a Kikiyu, was a veteran of the Mau Mau liberation. On January 12, 2004, Maruge, presumed to be 84 years old, set the record for oldest person to enroll in primary school. He had no papers to document his age but believed himself to have been born in 1920.

The film, based on Maruge’s quest, reveals both the Kenyan struggle and Maruge’s own personal struggle. At first, he has to convince the teacher to allow him to attend school. He must procure a uniform to fit him, and he has to walk to school each day, where he must sit near the front of the small classroom because he does not see well. Almost everyone in the movie is skeptical of such an old man’s attempts at education. His aged peers, who congregate to share beer and conversation, scoff at him as he treks to and from school each day.

Those in charge of the school administration are reluctant to allow Maruge to participate in the system, despite the initial newspaper advertisements that vaguely outlined “free public education for all.” The townspeople and parents are not certain about Maruge’s motives or place in the primary school classroom and ultimately begin to believe that both he and the young woman who plays his teacher in the film are being compensated by the press.

His classroom peers, however, accept him unequivocally and learn from him several times in the environment of their impoverished one-room school. When their teacher is forced to relocate to another school because she has allowed Maruge to remain in the classroom, the students revolt and throw objects at the group of administrators escorting their teacher’s replacement. Their beloved teacher is allowed to return. Although not depicted in the movie, Maruge, a model student, was elected by his classmates as “head boy” of his school in 2005, the same year he boarded a plane for the first time and came to the New York City to speak to the United Nations on the importance of free primary education.

The film is not perfect and can be melodramatic at times, but the schoolchildren are wonderfully portrayed by local village youngsters, and the most significant theme pertains to overcoming oppression and subjugation—both political and mental—through educational attainment. It conveys a message of value: as Maruge says at one point, based on an adage passed down to him, “I'll keep learning till I have soil in my ears.” After completing five years of primary education, Maruge died in 2009.

 

What an honor it would be to have the President of the United States speak at your high school graduation. Forget the politics; forget the partisanship; forget the polarization that has become characteristic of the age. The honor comes in the gravity of the occasion.

Booker T. Washington (BTW), a high school of 500 students in south Memphis that was recently awarded this honor, is part of a story that gives hope to all of those who strongly support public education. BTW, which has produced several well-known alumni, including former NAACP director Benjamin Hooks, beat out five other schools to win the honor.

If there were to be a documentary made on BTW, its title might pertain to the classic theme of overcoming adversity. Five years ago, in 2006, only 53% of students graduated from BTW, located at 715 S. Lauderdale in the impoverished 38126 zip code. In those five years, the number of students living in poverty has increased from 77 to 95 percent, as the median annual income in the area is only $11,000 in the nation’s seventh poorest major city, according the 2010 U.S. Census data. The area has the 14^th highest crime rate in the nation.

When the publicly-funded housing project Cleaborn Homes was demolished to create mixed-income communities in mid-April 2011, 20 percent of BTW’s students had to do what educators must do in the classroom every day when something does not go as planned: adjust. The poignant video that helped the school win the Race to the Top Commencement Challenge featured a BTW student named Christopher weeping as he watched his home being destroyed.

Under the direction of young but no-nonsense principal Alisha Kiner, who was promoted from assistant principal in 2004, the school has made a turnaround. Test scores have increased dramatically, and the school’s graduation rate is now 81.6 percent. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of graduates attending college increased from four percent to 70 percent. The school now offers more vocational and Advanced Placement classes than before, and has implemented freshman academies to intervene at the earliest stage of high school, before students get lost in the labyrinth of failure.

What a reward that must have been for those 150 graduates who sat arrayed in their gowns and mortarboards. The President, who overcame great adversity in order to reach success, spoke to them about the value of education: “I’m standing here as President because of the education that I received... Education made all the difference in my life.”

He reminded them that education is important for several reasons and for several outcomes: critical thinking, discipline, self-improvement, and collective national success. “I remember,” he said, “we used to ask our teachers, ‘Why am I going to need algebra?’ Well, you may not have to solve for x to get a good job or to be a good parent. But you will need to think through tough problems. You’ll need to think on your feet. You’ll need to know how to gather facts and evaluate information. So, math teachers, you can tell your students that the President says they need algebra.” President Obama encouraged graduates to keep pushing, not to allow setbacks to crush determination, and to make their own “mark on the world.”

As Booker T. Washington, the school’s eponymous hero, once said, featured in the contest video, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.” It is, as these graduates have demonstrated, not quite enough to push forward with a “No Child Left Behind” mentality. We must look toward the other end of the spectrum and do our best to help students strive for academic excellence, even against great odds, as the graduates of Booker T. Washington High School have certainly achieved.