There is the fable about The Lion and the Mouse, the story of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouseand the more recent The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear.
As a child, I enjoyed the song Windmill in Old Amsterdam. Perhaps you remember it too?
But I think my favourite mouse story is that of Possum Magic, the classic picture book by Mem Fox. I’m not referring to the picture book itself, but the story of how it came to be.
Mem shares some of the goss on her site. You see, Hush started life as an invisible mouse in an assignment Mem produced as part of a course in children’s literature. She was awarded a high distinction for the story and, over the next five years, sent it off to nine different publishers. Each time the story came back.
While Mem found the rejections disheartening, she was encouraged by family and friends who believed in her story. So, she sent it off again, and the tenth publisher asked her to “cut the story by two thirds, re-write it more lyrically, make it even more Australian and change the mice to a cuddly Australian animal. “
Mem did as requested, changed the mice to possums, and so Possum Magic was born. The book was published in 1983 and remains one of the most popular and best-selling picture books in Australia. (While not mentioned on the site, I seem to remember reading that the book had almost 30 rewrites!)
When I first heard this story of Possum Magic, I was younger than Mem was when the book was published. The story inspired me and encouraged me to hope. I loved Mem’s yet attitude (though I didn’t yet know it as that), her belief in her story, persistence in pursuing its publication and willingness to learn from others. Without those marvellous qualities, Possum Magic may never have seen the light of day. It may have languished in the bottom of a drawer somewhere with other forgotten manuscripts.
How many manuscripts do you need to take out, dust off, and send on their way?
Here’s my little story in response to Charli’s challenge this week. I hope you like it.
A Mouse Backfires
“Eek!“ shrieked Granny, toppling back on the chair, arms and legs flailing.
“Thwunk!” Her head struck the wall, silencing the children’s sniggers.
Granny slumped motionless, eyes closed, tongue lolling from her slack jaw.
Barney gaped. “D’ya, d’ya think she’s dead?”
“Don’t be silly,” admonished Eliza, older and wiser. “She couldn’t be. Could she?”
News from Charlottesville has flooded the media this week and it is difficult to not be gripped by despair at the hatred that exists and fear for the future.
I don’t usually express my political feelings publicly, other than the important role that education has in developing responsibility and compassion in all, and for all, travellers on our planet.
Well, I don’t know about healing America. I think any healing needs to start with the self. This situation implores us to look at ourselves and see where our own attitudes can be improved. Australia’s history of treating its indigenous peoples is no more admirable. Recognition as people in our constitution was granted a mere 50 years ago.
On the last Friday of each month many writers join in the We Are The World Blogfest which “seeks to promote positive news.” It says, “There are many an oasis of love and light out there, stories that show compassion and the resilience of the human spirit. Sharing these stories increases our awareness of hope in our increasingly dark world.” Follow the link if you wish to join in with their mission to “flood social media with peace and love.” Or contact this month’s co-hosts Simon Falk, Roshan Radhakrishnan, Inderpreet Uppal, Lynn Hallbrooks, Eric Lahti, and Mary J Giese.
Charli’s post reiterates the importance of creating connections through trust and friendship. With both these prompts in mind, I share with you some positive messages that shine a light in the darkness that sometimes seems overwhelming. (Apologies to #WATWB. I have broken the 500 word rule.)
On his Science and Education blog, Daniel Willingham, a psychologist who works at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, wrote about Nazis in Charlottesville. He discusses the reasons why people hold onto false beliefs and the importance of education in teaching truths, fighting fake news, and standing up for media sites that get it right. He says,
“Truth is our greatest weapon against senseless evil. Fight with it. Fight for it. And don’t be discouraged.”
“teaching tolerance and acceptance is not and should not be remotely political.”
After overhearing a homophobic remark made by an eight-year-old student, she embarked on a discussion of family, family composition, and what makes a family. The discussions continued throughout the school year and included other topics such as inequality and stereotypes.
At the end of the year she asked the children to write about the role of president and what they would do if they were the president. The boy who had made the “gay” remark earlier in the year, wrote:
“As the president of the United States, I would want to be kind, brave, and nice. I would want to try to end fighting. I can do this by trying to let them be friends instead of being enemies. I also want to stop people saying ‘gay’ offensively. And last I want to stop people saying stereotypes.”
What a wonderfully hopeful statement that supports the importance of education for the whole person, not just cramming them with a bunch of facts to pass a test. Surely the ability to live a life that honours and respects others is the most important test to pass.
On the theme of equality and diversity I wish to acknowledge two wonderful picture books by one of my favourite authors, Mem Fox:
While I’m Australian Too may be considered specific to the Australian multi-cultural situation, Whoever you are is suitable for reading to Little Ones, “whoever they are, wherever they are, all over the world.”
I was delighted to read that one of Mem’s books Possum Magichas been honoured by the Royal Australian Mint with its very own coin collection. Of course, I had to purchase a set or three, didn’t I? What a lovely celebration of a wonderful book by writer Mem Fox and illustrator Julie Vivas and the importance of children’s literature in general.
I watched an inspirational video on the blog of one of the most inspiring teachers I have met online. Her name is Jennie and she blogs at A Teacher’s Reflections. Pop on over and find out how she improves the lives of all in her care. Here is the video titled Change the World. It’s a perfect fit for this post. I hope you watch it.
I have combined some of these ideas into my childish flash. I hope you like it.
What’s the difference?
She dumped the toys on the floor, then proceeded to arrange and rearrange them in groups. The largest group was of bears, a smaller group of cats, a few lizards, two puppies and an assortment of singles. With a finger tapping her cheek, she surveyed them. First, she dismantled the group of bears muttering about bows, hats and vests. She hugged Tiger as she separated all the toys. Then Dad appeared with his briefcase.
“Ready?”
“Not yet.”
“What’re you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“Which one to take?”
“I can’t choose,” she said, scooping them up. “I love them all the same.”
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts.
P.S. I hope I earned bonus points for hugging a cat!
Have you ever been asked that question and simply answered, “Same ol’ same ol’” without making any attempt to elaborate or delve deeper into the day’s activities.
If so, did this mean that you didn’t enjoy your day and that there wasn’t anything interesting in it?
Sometimes much of what we do on a daily basis can become routine with activities seeming to flow from one to another without a great deal of change or significance worthy of a remark.
There are many reasons people don’t immediately share what has happened in their day, and the lack of a truly amazing outstanding event may be just one of them.
Similarly, in response to the question “What did you do today?” school children, often simply answer “Nothing” (as described by SHECANDO) without making any attempt to elaborate or delve deeper into the day’s activities.
Parents and others often jump to the conclusion that the child’s day has been uneventful and boring and, unless the child later volunteers some information, or the parent has a specific question to ask, that may be the end of the subject.
However, just as with adults, there may be a number of reasons the “Nothing,” response is given, including the generalised nature of the question.
Some reasons for this failure to elaborate, although unspoken and often unidentified, may be:
Courtesy of eLearningbrothers
‘I’ve just finished a hard day, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“So much happened today, I don’t know where to start.”
“I don’t think you’d be interested in anything that happened to me.”
“I can’t really think. What do you want to know: something bad, something funny or something amazing? I didn’t get into trouble.”
Additionally, if children are not already practiced in the art of sustaining conversation with an adult, then these discussions will rarely come easily or spontaneously.
Sometimes specific questioning, requiring more than a yes/no answer, may elicit a more detailed response that in turns leads to a more in-depth discussion of the day’s events, e.g.
“Who did you sit with at lunch today?”
“What games did you play at recess?”
“What story did your teacher read to you? What was it about?”
Knowing something of what occurred during the day helps parents formulate appropriate questions to elicit conversation.
In my role as a year one classroom teacher I believe in the importance of these conversations between children and parents for a number of reasons, including:
to keep parents informed of what is happening the classroom, which in turn encourages a positive attitude and participation;
to develop children’s language skills by engaging them in conversations which require them to describe, explain, respond and exchange ideas;
to develop children’s thinking skills and memory, “What did I do today?” “What did I learn?” “What happened before/after lunch?”
to provide a time for reflection and review e.g. “What can I do now that I couldn’t do before?” “When we were doing x, we had to y. Oh, now I get it. That means . . . “
to provide opportunities to sort out feelings and emotions experienced during the day, but not yet dealt with e.g. “I don’t know why that happened at lunch time. Tomorrow I will . . .”
to strengthen the child-parent relationship by sharing ideas, attitudes and events in their daily lives.
In addition to giving children reminders before they left for home in the afternoons, I developed a strategy that specifically targeted the need to provide parents with a window into the child’s day in order to arm them with sufficient information to instigate robust discussion.
I called this strategy
Class news
Each day I published class news which the children pasted into a book to take home and read with parents. These days many teachers, like Miss Hewes, use a blog to keep parents informed. However there were no blogs around when I began doing this in the 1980s!
The class news consisted of three main sections:
News of individual students
Class things we did today
Class reminders
News of individual students
Courtesy of eLearningbrothers
Each day 2 – 3 children told the class about an item of interest to them e.g. an activity, a recent purchase, a family event, or a wish.
After each child shared their news, the class and I cooperatively composed a brief summary (one or two sentences at first). I scribed and the children read. Later in the day I printed this out for the children to take home and read to their parents.
As well as being a very effective literacy learning strategy (which I will write about in a future post), it helped parents get to know the names of classmates and a little about each one; it provided a discussion starter about which their child could elaborate. It also affirmed the children by providing each a turn of “starring” about once a fortnight.
Things we did today
In this section I would tell parents briefly about a few things we did that day, e.g.
“Mrs Colvin read “Possum Magic”. We talked about what it would be like to be invisible and discussed what we thought would be good and not-so-good about being invisible. Then we wrote our very own stories about being invisible. We had some very interesting ideas!”
“We learned about odd and even numbers by finding out which number of different objects we could put into two even lines. Where can you find some odd or even numbers of objects at home?”
“In art we learned about lines: straight lines and wriggly lines; long lines and short lines; jagged lines and curved lines; thick lines and thin lines. What sort of lines can you see in your pictures?”
When parents are informed about things that have happened during the day, they have a firm basis for opening a meaningful discussion with their child. This in turn validates the child by giving importance to the child’s activities.
I often included a question to help parents realise that they could easily extend the child’s learning at home.
Class reminders
A reminder or two would be included if particular events were coming up, or payments needed e.g.
“Sports day tomorrow. Remember to wear your sport uniform and running shoes.”
“Friday is the final day that excursion payments will be accepted.”
These reminders helped to reduce the possibility of a child being upset by forgetting or missing out on a class activity. They also provided parents with another opportunity for discussion and the ability to enthuse their child with the anticipation of future events.
Publishing the class news like this every day did eat into my lunch time, but the advent of computers in the classroom helped as I was able to set up a template and print copies on the classroom printer. In the “olden” days of the spirit copiers, every day meant starting out again and having to go to another room to churn the copies out by hand.
I continued using this strategy throughout three decades of teaching because I believe in its power to develop readers and talkers, and to involve parents by keeping them informed of classroom learning and activities. Having already received a child’s answer of ‘nothing’ to the question “What did you do today?” I was determined that no child from my class would have a reason to answer in the same way.
What questions encourage you to open up and talk about your day?
What questions encourage you to keep your mouth shut?
What do you think of my daily class news?
What other strategies do you suggest to encourage communication between parents and children?
Norah Colvin 