Tag: reading

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Teachers Keep Hope Alive – Happy World Teachers Day!

Teachers feed the hearts and minds of those beautiful, hungry children the world keeps trusting to us. Teachers help children develop socially, emotionally, and intellectually in ways that they, and we, find extraordinary. 
Teachers keep hope alive.
Teachers help students overcome doubts and find faith.
Teachers helps students rise from the ashes, over and over again.

Is there a struggle in teaching? Of course. Are there tears in teaching? Absolutely, and of a wide variety. Can we expect enlightenment? Every day, for sure. But mostly, as we move through each day, we reach deeper understanding of who we are and who students are, and that alone brings about a new kind of joy – a permanent joy — for student and teacher. We truly are all in this together.

Happy World Teachers Day to all Teachers!

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What do books and blizzards have in common?

Did you know that reading is related to snowflakes? I often ask children to think about how nice it is to see a snowflake. Softly it falls from the sky to the ground and as you watch it dance, a twinkle appears in your eye and a little smile creases your face. But then, if the snow begins to fall faster and develops into a blizzard, your smile might turn into an expression of concern – especially if you’re at school and didn’t remember to bring your hat, mittens, or boots.

A few snowflakes here and there are not dangerous. But a blizzard – that’s another story!

The same holds true with books. Having one book fall into our lives every now and then doesn’t change anything. But if we get a blizzard of books into our lives, then it’s going to make a huge difference. That’s what we want children to have and read – a blizzard’s worth of books.

Studies show that the more books children read and are exposed to the better readers they become.

The good news is that a blizzard of books doesn’t mean thousands of books at a time or even hundreds.

Did you know that a mere 20 books in a child’s home can make a huge difference? Twenty (20) books represents the snowfall that will one day turn into a blizzard – a happy blizzard of books.

Share in the comments your ideas for how to get 20 more books into your child’s or a student’s life, and I’ll share in the next blog my ideas.

Stay tuned for how to learn how easily it can be done — and why it’s a worthwhile goal!

 

 

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Art pops the cork on reluctant student’s brilliance

This is the first of my bi-weekly story series call Brilliant Minds, about children who have made quick and remarkable progress in reading and writing through the use of the Higher Way and the Happy Teacher methodologies (Please note the names have been changed)

Nayana was a student of mine at DC school.  She refused to write a word for the first two weeks after I returned to teach at the school from mid-March to mid-June. Instead, this third grader preferred to draw, color, cut paper, or, worse, run to hide in cabinets or under tables. In many ways, she was like a volcano – quiet and serene on the outside, but roiling with intense energy on the inside.

On April 4, the Monday after Spring Break, during a journal entry warm-up, Nayana found her voice. She made an entry for six days. Every weekday, except Friday, however, was misspelled. There were errors in most words. Verbs were missing or used incorrectly. Every sentence was incomplete. Yet, Nayana wrote for the first time. And she wrote more about Spring Break than any other student. I was thrilled and so was she. I had been searching and praying for the keys to ignite the learner in Nayana. After this surprising burst of productivity, I kept pushing.

The next day, I unpacked a bunch of art supplies that came in after my plea to friends for donations. I sought out art supplies with the specific idea that giving Nayana permission to draw, paint, and color in class could open her up to engage in other learning activities.

First thing that morning, before diving into traditional subject matter, I invited Nayana and three other students to sit in front of brand new easels with brand new paint, paintbrushes, and paper. They each received a new painter’s apron. They literally jumped for joy, and instantly fell in love with the freedom of expression through art in our classroom. These daily sessions typically lasted 30-40 minutes. That day forward, Nayana became a different student, and, much to my surprise, grew to enjoy writing.

Three days later, Nayana drafted her first story based on our science vocabulary words about climates. This story also contained multiple errors but made much more sense. Best of all, it boasted a strong, witty narrative. Titled, “The Bad Day,” it was about a boy victimized by every type of climate and climate-related element: an earthquake, the heat of the desert, water from a lake, and even the sun, which thought John “looked ugly.” But John’s bad luck changed to good when, fleeing a blizzard, he ran until he found himself in front of a volcano, jumped in, and survived!

Yes, it made me laugh out loud. It also later occurred to me that Nayana was kind of like John – she had survived the most adverse situations imaginable, and finally, when she owned her only option, her volcano, she fought like mad and survived.  Nayana’s story also helped me to see clearly what had been bottling her brilliance and stopping it up with a cork. I couldn’t wait to see what else was on its way out.

I look forward to your questions about how you can inspire such a revolution in the Nayanas in your lives.

 

 

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How to Keep Children from Plucking Your Last Nerve during #Covid-19 Times or Any Time

How to Keep Children from Plucking Your Last Nerve during #Covid-19
Home-Schooling, Distance Learning, & Literacy Engagement

Home-schooling and distance learning offer new opportunities to bond with our children and students – and also for us to snap on one another.

As an 18-year veteran of teaching and learning in classrooms, through literacy activism, and as an author, I have come to understand that the best way to succeed with children — at any time — is by adhering to The Higher Way.

The Higher Way means responding in a way that allows children to easily get back on track without feeling pressured, chastised, or humiliated. Importantly, it means responding in a way that gives them a say in how to proceed.

For instance, When Jared is not paying attention, drumming his fingers on the table, or tapping his feet; when Kayla is twisting her hair or making sucking sounds instead of focusing; this is the time to let your love and patience wrap around their sweet little souls like cotton candy on a paper stick.

Responses to nerve-plucking behavior could include: “How can I help you? You can do this. Would you like me to read today, and you just listen?  It seems as if something is bothering you. Would you like to talk about it?  Thank you for trusting me to help you. You’re doing great.”

Please understand how much power there is in your words and actions designed to open the door to a Higher Way.  Without preaching, condemning, and often without even mentioning the challenging behavior on display, I have stopped elementary, middle-school and high-school students from cursing like sailors, from fighting every day, and from throwing tantrums using The Higher Way. Using The Higher Way, I’ve seen children go from refusing to read or write to reading and writing, and declaring their love for it.

Working lovingly and patiently with children means that we seek, always, to understand the child. We put ourselves in the child’s shoes. Empathize. Learning to read or write for children who have not yet grasped how is often painful. Understand that they are suffering almost every moment they sit with you and the work before them. Your extraordinary display of love and patience will ease that suffering, bit by bit, and slowly turn it to joy – which is critical to children’s success, the development of confidence, and their trust in you and themselves.

If we create children or students who do work but are miserable,  we have failed. Because failure is not an option, we must stay on the love and patience track. Swallow our tongues. Sit on our hands. Breathe. And smile – smile a lot. Whatever it takes to let love and patience pour forth like the morning sun when inside we are a bit rattled, irritated, concerned, even annoyed.

We have everything to gain if, when they seem to go low, we go high.

 

 

 

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FREE BOOKS and Author Visit for a DC Public School

FREE BOOKS & Author Visit: Are you a teacher or librarian at a DC public school with students in grades 3-5?
Thanks to the generosity of some dear friends in D.C., I have 40 copies of Darius Daniels: Game On! to donate to a school, along with an author visit. I need you to work with your students to submit via email written, illustrated, audio or video responses to three questions:

Why would you like a set of Darius Daniels: Game On! books for your classroom or school library?
How have you used other classroom sets of books in your classroom or school library?
List three ways you would use a set of Darius Daniels: Game On! books in your classroom/school library.

Submit entries by midnight Thursday, March 12. I will select up to two classrooms and/or school libraries and we will arrange a visit for up to 300 students in your school. News media and photographers will be invited to help us celebrate your winning project.

I’m looking forward to interesting and creative ideas!
Listen to my interview with Gravity Bread to learn more about the book.
Learn more about activities you can do with the book here: https://carolinebrewerbooks.com/ddgo-activity-set/
Use the Contact Me page to submit your application or Email: caroline@carolinebrewerbooks.com

Have fun!

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Fort Wayne Born Author offers “Book Tastings” of Book She Calls a ‘Handheld Revolution’

Fort Wayne Born Author offers “Book Tastings” of Book She Calls a ‘Handheld Revolution’

Pontiac Library| 2215 S Hanna Street| Fort Wayne, IN 46803
Saturday, March 7, 2020 * 3:30 – 4:30 PM
REGISTER at this LINK

Wunderkammer Company| 3402 Fairfield Avenue| Fort Wayne, IN 46807
Wednesday, March 11, 2020 * 6:30 – 8:00 PM
REGISTER at this LINK

I love books like kids love candy.
I love books like beaches love sandy.
I love books like corn loves to pop.
I love books like hip loves to hop!

Fort Wayne, IN – On a cool winter afternoon March 7, and on an evening March 11, two institutions in Fort Wayne will come alive with the sounds of music and love for language.  Two women, bodies outfitted in black from head to toe, will lead the singing, rapping, and reciting of songs and texts from a new children’s novel, Darius Daniels: Game On! They will also talk about a revolution as part of the Let’s Talk About It!: Hueman Stories project initiated by Ketu and Rasamen Oladuwa.

The musical rendering of the new novel is part of what the author calls a “book tasting,” and it’s central to a growing movement they are pushing to help change the literacy game for children they call “hungry readers and writers.”

Fort Wayne native Caroline Brewer, author of Darius Daniels: Game On!, has been quietly leading the movement since becoming a children’s author in late 2001, after leaving her job as a newspaper columnist at The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey the previous summer.

The other woman and partner in word artistry, Karen Wilson-Ama’Echefu, is a Harlem-born singer, storyteller, and cultural historian who has studied the poetry flow of African Americans shaped by the language legacy of 400 years of living in the United States.

The book tastings (samplings of the story through readings, reciting of poetry and rhymes, raps and songs) are centered around Darius Daniels: Game On!, a 256-page verse novel about an 11-year-old boy who gets sucked into a video game and is told he can’t get out until he hurts somebody. While the premise is tantalizing to children – and adults — what makes the book especially compelling is that it’s chockful of rhythm, rhyme, rap, and more than 10 forms of poetry, plus history and cultural touchstones, which make it ripe for “tasting.” 

I Love Books is one of the featured raps. The story is set in a fictional town based on Fort Wayne and is meant to inspire a revolution that frees children from literacy failure, so they are more likely to escape the mass incarceration trap that the Hueman Stories project is determined to destroy.

Brewer says the fact that the book is “a handheld revolution,” is what inspired the gatherings, which are part of a book tour across the United States. “I challenge anyone to read this book and remain unchanged. It is within and of itself a revolution. I’m getting reports from teachers already that children are being changed because of this book,” says Brewer, the author of 11 other books, a literacy activist and former teacher. “Every child I’ve ever met has been hungry to be a more capable reader or writer. And yet, for more than 30 years, the majority of American children have entered and exited school reading below grade level. This tour will give children and adults the information, ideas, and inspiration they need to tap into cultural legacies that will allow them to feed their literary appetites and imaginations, overthrow decades of failure, and free them from the snare of incarceration.”

Wilson-Ama’Echefu, an inter-disciplinary scholar who has written on cultural and intellectual history in the 19th and 20th centuries, has just released her first solo book, Christmas Was Just Breakin’, a black Twas the Night Before Christmas.  She notes, “Esteemed scholars, such as Lorenzo Turner, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Geneva Smitherman, who wrote Talkin’ and Testifyin’ 40 years ago, long ago established that African American communities develop linguistic skills that are formidable in both style and substance. Their work and my scholarship document the fact that our people (African-descended people) are natural poets whose facility with language and depth of intellect make them some of the world’s finest thinkers and readers.”

The authors contend in a society where reading and young people are constantly under attack, there is, instead, much to celebrate. “We’re talking about paying homage to children’s brilliance,“ said Brewer. “Whether they come from low-income or no-income homes, whether they have one parent, or are forced to be their own parent, we’re saying pay homage to every child’s ability to thrive. Let that be the foundation for the ways in which we connect with them. Let’s be prepared to leverage their assets for their beautiful, productive, and fantastic futures.”

Brewer cited a few cases of revolutionary experiences with students and literacy:

  • A Virginia teacher said the rhymes in Darius Daniels: Game On! have given her new ways to assess students’ growth in real time; she said students designated for Special Education services, including a boy diagnosed with autism, are demonstrating – just from her readings of the one copy she has– the ability to analyze language in ways that she was told they didn’t possess.
  • A boy entered 3rd grade still learning the alphabet. By January, his school in Prince George’s County, MD had become the third he had attended that year. His teacher helped him learn the alphabet and also taught him and the entire class all the Language Arts state standards using a rhyming book written by Brewer as the textbook. In three months, the boy tested at 3rd grade level and the top of the class. A number of other students had moved up at least one grade level or more in just a few months.
  • Brewer’s 4th grade student in an independent school struggled to read on a first grade level. She preferred picture books and was reluctant to participate in class. She also regularly argued with other students and had difficulty staying in her seat. After Ms. Brewer introduced an early version of Darius Daniels: Game On! and offered exciting ways to engage with poetry and rhymes, the student began to open up, participate, and push herself to complete assignments. She took Darius Daniels home and, on her own, began reading deeper into the book. In a matter of weeks, she surprised Ms. Brewer one day and asked if she could read some of the book to her. She read Darius Daniels fluently, confidently, and with understanding. It was a huge triumph that underscores the truth about every student’s potential and hunger to achieve. The student also transitioned socially and emotionally and became a leading peacemaker in the class.

Excerpt and EARLY PRAISE for Darius Daniels: Game On!

“This is a masterpiece!”

  • Michelle Ajebon, Age 10, 4th grade

“I would tell other kids to read this book because, “Who wouldn’t love going into a video game?”

  • Joshua Ajebon, Age 11, 5th grade

“Darius Daniels: Game On! is a unique, beautiful blend of prose and poetry.

The book will not only entertain children, but educate them as well.”

  • Glenn Brewer, Teacher and Award-winning Artist, Illustrator,

  Author and Comic Book Publisher

“Caroline Brewer has written a book that provides the tools that our children need in the language that they can encompass now. Ms. Brewer’s work captures poetic language in all of its rich array of poetic possibilities…not only the rap, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning form. It celebrates haikus, limericks, sonnets, blues, and spirituals, the acrobatics of language rhythm and movement that we showcase in our communities every day. Darius Daniels: Game On! should be in every classroom. I look forward to that day.”

  • Karen Wilson-Ama’Echefu, PhD, Storyteller, Teaching Artist and Singer

“Caroline is a master storyteller; her voice and style are a breath of fresh air! You are going to love Darius and the rest of his crew (including his little sister, Ashanti!) and laugh out loud at all the fun, silly jokes here. Yay for Caroline! Game on, indeed!”

  • Amy Tipton, Former NYT Bestselling Agent, Editor of Feral Girl Books

“Caroline Brewer’s Darius Daniels: Game On! is definitely the power-up that re-energizes the idiom, ‘Life is a game.’ Which it is for Darius, who takes on the pixelated world of his imagination to battle monsters both on screen and internally. This easy-to-read series moves quick. The language is playful and sure to get young people excited about reading.”  – Alan King, author of POINT BLANK and DRIFT

“I don’t usually read books without pictures. But I wanna read this book! I think it’s gonna be very good.” – Zion, 1st grader, who confidently read a page of the 4th grade level book out loud.

“The book was really good and entertaining and I loved it!” – John, 8th grader, who said earlier in the day that he didn’t really like to read.

 

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D.C. Author Launches Musical Children’s Novel

D.C. Author Launches Musical Children’s Novel

Darius Daniels: Game On! promotes literacy through music and poetry

For Immediate Release – Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Washington, D.C. – Veteran Children’s Author and Literacy Activist Caroline Brewer will launch a musical children’s novel on Friday, November 1 at www.carolinebrewerbooks.com. Free downloads with activities, games, and chances to win free books will be featured. Book “tasting” parties are scheduled later this month and year. Ms. Brewer is open to media appearances and interviews that will showcase the musical, poetic, and instructional elements of the book.

Darius Daniels: Game On! is a 35,000-word middle grade adventure novel about an 11-year-old boy, a video game, and a great and scary adventure the boy cannot escape – until he hurts somebody. Travel to the game world Washington, D.C. is part of the game. The book also represents a new genre, the rhythmic novel, where the plot pulses with musical rhythms and songs.

“Based on national assessments, for more than 30 years, about two-thirds of American children have entered and exited school reading below grade level. This book was written to Change the Game for them. Every child I have ever met is hungry to learn to read, eager to improve as a reader, and ready to devour more books. This book will feed their appetites,” said Brewer, a D.C.-based author who has given reading and education presentations to more than 25,000 teachers, children, parents, and librarians across the U.S and in Ghana.

Darius Daniels: Game On! is a Wizard of Oz-like virtual urban fantasy sprinkled with rhythm, rhyme, rap, riddles, and more than 10 forms of poetry (which research and experience show accelerate reading progress and deepen engagement). It comes in a 256-page Complete Volume edition or as three individual books (Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3 for children who want to read the story in smaller chunks). Available at bookstores everywhere now!

Caroline Brewer is the author now of 12 books, editor of five books written by students, a former teacher, and wildly successful reading coach of children. She’s coached hundreds of children, personally and professionally, to bridge the literacy gap by as many as nine grade levels. She lives in Washington D.C. Click bar above to hear our featured demo of the rap WOKE, contact Caroline for excerpts from the book, a copy of the book, or additional information.

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Caroline and Four Amazing Children Celebrate International Literacy Day, Poem-Style

In celebration of #InternationalLiteracyDay 2019, I’m encouraging all adults to make a commitment to spend time feeding the hungry readers and writers in your life with your time and words – words from books, rhyming books, poetry books, comic books, magazines, newspapers, street signs, buildings, letters, cards, and words from their own mouths! Check out our new video reciting my poem, Why I Read, and use it to ignite a discussion about why reading is a good and useful thing, a discussion I’m betting will help them tap into their own power to excel as readers and writers. And, please, let us know how you like the video and how your new reading and writing experiences go.

Click here to read entire poem.WHY I READ POEM BY CAROLINE BREWER 090819