Pierce Reads -- View Night of the Radishes Slide Show and Pictures of Julian Huston
By Joan Hamilton, Pierce School Librarian

One hundred and one Pierce students, parents and staff members came together as a community of readers to the Pierce School Library on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 to participate in PIERCE READS, an evening book discussion program for 5th – 8th graders.
The theme of this year’s Pierce Reads and Teachers as Readers is “Between Two Worlds.”

Fifth and sixth graders read and discussed Becoming Naomi Leon by Pamela Munoz Ryan, the story of a bi-racial family living in Southern California. Toward the end, there is a dramatic car ride to Oaxaca, Mexico where Naomi finds her father and participates in the Night of the Radishes, a festival held annually in Oaxaca on December 23rd. As you will see from this slide show, the radish carvings are magnificently intricate and beyond anything we might have imagined.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/planeta/sets/1401300/show

Seventh and eighth graders read and discussed New Boy by Julian Houston, the story of a young man from Virginia who is the first African American to attend a prestigious boys' boarding school in Connecticut during the late 1950’s. The book presents not only the complexities of the civil rights movement but also the courage of those who were the first of their generation to break racial barriers and those who organized and carried out sit-ins at lunch counters all over the South. Pierce Reads particpants were aided in their understanding and appreciation of this important era by the presence of the author of New Boy, Julian Houston, a retired justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts and a former community organizer in Harlem during the civil rights movement. He answered our questions and told the stories that inspired his writing. This was Mr. Houston’s second visit to Pierce School in less than a week. On Wednesday, November 12th, he participated in Pierce’s Teachers as Readers, also discussing New Boy. As Mr. Houston said in a recent New York Times interview, “Most young people today, even those in the South, have only a superficial knowledge of the civil rights movement and segregation.” He further explained that one of the reasons he wrote New Boy was to give young people a detailed picture of what it was like to live in a segregated community in the late 1950’s and an appreciation for what the civil rights movement accomplished.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/12houston-interview.html
Several attendees commented that in light of last week’s historic presidential election, Mr. Houston’s remarks were especially poignant.

Language Arts Test Scores and Online Literacy
by Joan Hamilton, Pierce School Librarian

Two recent articles provide food for thought about current literacy practices. The first is an article released by the Massachusetts Department of Education stating that for the 2008 MCAS,
English language arts results in the elementary grades declined and the middle schools were flat.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.asp?printscreen=yes&id=4287

The second article is from the September 19, 2008 Chronicle of Higher Education and is entitled "Online Literacy is a Lesser Kind" by Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University and author of a book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Tarcher/Penguin, 2008).
http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i04/04b01001.htm
Bauerlein describes the style of literacy used for screen reading (web sites, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) as "racing across the surface, dicing language and ideas into bullets and graphics, seeking what they already want and shunning the rest." He argues that when reading a long narrative, a long political tract, a dense argument, a modern poem, a complicated narrtive or academic texts, this style of reading breaks down. He concludes by advocating "slow reading" and a plea that educators keep at least some of our students' educations "unplugged and logged off."

At Pierce School, "slow reading" is built into the culture of learning -- from read alouds in the early grades designed to grip children in the thrill of narrative, to literature circles, book discussions, summer reading, book fairs, and required independent reading projects in all grades. It blossoms as parents choose to regularly read aloud at home to their children. It is a habit of mind that will grow and bear fruit as our students go forward into a speeded-up digital world.