Am I the REAL Agnes Pflumm?

These economic times are hitting us teachers and authors pretty hard. Schools don’t have monies for new curriculum or for professional development. Recently, I hired a fantastic publicist named Tyler Stilley of Alternative Marketing, LLC (http://www.alternativemarketingsite.com/index.html), to help me better get the word out about my work and what I am trying to do to improve the reading and science skills of our middle school students. Tyler created a very cool press kit for me, which you can now see on my website at http://www.agnespflumm.com/documents/agnespflumm_press_kit.pdf.


On the last page of the press kit are 15 questions which teachers and students frequently ask me. Just yesterday, I answered some of these FAQ’s during a videoconference with nearly 100 fifth graders and teachers from South Carolina’s Doby’s Mill Elementary School, where I am proud to be an honorary “dolphin”. The hands were still up well after an hour, when their next class was to begin. Teacher Angela McCall (who is phenomenal, by the way), asked if I might consider answering the remaining questions on my next blog.



“What a great idea!” I exclaimed. Every day I get letters from students like Aditi in Florida, who want to know stuff like Did that story of the electromagnetic crane happen to you? Aditi also wanted to know if I were the REAL Agnes Pflumm? Do I dare share my secrets with the world???? Hmmmm.



Well, okay, but nothing too personal (I LOVE pistachios! Oops, that slipped out.) Today’s FAQ will address whether the fictional character, Agnes Pflumm, is really my double, or alter ego. We both are slightly wacko science teachers, who love to sing, dance, write poetry, and rollerblade. We both love to walk on the beach, draw from nature, and write in our journals. We both talk to our pets. We both have bodies like Olive Oyl. That’s a lot of coincidences, isn’t it?

Wanted: A Quick Fix

In August, 2005, I read a newspaper headline that caused me to gasp in horror.

ARIZONA HIGH SCHOOL SWAPS TEXTBOOKS FOR LAPTOPS

It’s true. In the article, written by Arthur Rotstein of the Associated Press, 340 students at Empire High School in Arizona were to start fall classes with no textbooks. Instead, the Vail Unified School District (is there really such a thing?) outside Tuscon became the state’s first all wireless-all-laptop high school. For one year at least, these students would only use electronic and online articles as school reading material.

DOESN’T THAT JUST SENT SHIVERS DOWN TO THE LAST DENDRITES IN YOUR METATARSALS? George Orwell would have had a field day with this. Were he alive now, he would surely write Animal Farm:The Virtual Edition.

In a related Associated Press article, it was reported that Calvin Baker, Superintendent of the Vail Unified School District, rationalized their decision to remove textbooks from classrooms by claiming that “the move to electronic materials gets teachers away from the habit of simply marching through a textbook each year.”

Instantly, bloggers everywhere reacted: “So now teachers will just get into the habit of clicking through their lessons each year. That would be SO MUCH BETTER!” quipped the Ignatius Press Blog.

Superintendent Baker was quick to counter: “At schools with laptops, students are more engaged than at non-laptop schools.”

Well, DUHHHHH. For a kid, arriving on the first day of school with a new laptop computer on your desk would be like having Christmas in August. Even better, the laptops at Empire High School were on loan. Hmmmm. No wonder this school district was so UNIFIED in participating in this experiment. Who doesn’t want a free lunch?

As a teacher and a writer, I was so troubled by this headline and its implications that I literally couldn’t sleep. What was going on? Would technology really make these teachers’ lessons more engaging or themselves better educators? Ah, there was the rub, I realized.

What if we teachers were to step back just a moment and take a hard look at our selves – sans computers, sans gadgets of any kind. Are we really good at what we do?

In his book, The Art of Teaching, written in 1950, Gilbert Highet (who taught at both Columbia University and at Oxford), notes that the qualities of a good teacher include:
• Knowing the subject
• Knowing the pupils
• Liking the pupils
• And possessing certain qualities like memory, will-power, kindness, discipline, and good communication skills.

Of course, we teachers would like a quick fix. We’re only human. As the most underpaid workers in our nation (for the hours we put into our jobs), we often grouse that we’re not “given enough” in order to do our jobs.

For the record, Death-by-Powerpoint is not the answer. College professors all over the country are boring students to death with this technology. Talk about dis-engaging your students with a laptop! I would like to personally challenge these professors to use their powerpoint lecture notes for out of class review, and get back to the human art of teaching!

Do you feel you have been called to teach? Do you wake up each morning, glad for the opportunity to change a life – or do you whine in the faculty room? Hmmm…

Are you a good communicator? Do your students sense in you a passion for learning? Are your lessons relevant, memorable, and applicable to new situations? Do you really like your students? Be honest!

In my third science education novel, Pond Scum and Agnes Pflumm, I endeavor to drive home the fact that in the real world, perfectly designed solutions do not exist. There are always risks vs. benefits to consider when trying to solve a problem of any kind. Effecting science literacy is no exception.

The recommended methodologies for improving content literacy are many. Today’s teachers are being asked to provide something called linguistic scaffolding to enhance student understanding of subject matter content.

Regardless of the jargon you use to describe the task, the same is true today as it has been forever. It’s that old horse-to-water saying with an educational twist:

YOU CANNOT TEACH ANYBODY ANYTHING HE DOESN’T WANT TO LEARN.

And you can never ever make me eat brussel sprouts. Stay tuned….