I am moving the diary blog: http://susancorcoran.tumblr.com/

Links don't work here anymore. (See post below.) I can not create my own line length -- for poems etc. Everything runs together. Videos and music can't be posted, although sound clips could never be posted. I'm not sure what happened with the other bits. I was going to use Tumblr for finished pieces but I have to move for the diary blog. Hope it's not a hassle. Thanks.

Slush

It's the first day of Spring. I hope things are more Spring-like in New York. I'll be very close to the place where I was born next week: Rhinebeck. I keep imagining going somewhere else for Fiona's high school years. But I was picturing India more than Rhinebeck. She wants to return to her homeland of California for high school. Could I live in Los Angeles again? What about my parents? And Charlie? And Maine? What about the traffic in L.A.? And what about the million dollar houses and property taxes? What if Watershed would be a fine school? What if the sunshine and warm weather would be great for Fiona? What if she wilts and wanes in the Northeast like Josh used to? What if she wants to work in that world out there, like her dad?

Blue

Blue/ the blind boy runs through high corn/ hands outstretched/ salt water holiday in July/ dunes roll down his back, broken/ eyes salty, ocean waves filling, retreating/ eating the corn/ listen/ while we watch the sparks in the sky.

neti neti

He drowned the baby squirrels in a bucket out behind the shed. French songs on the radio. He got whacked in the head. A Tibetan monk living in his chest and eyes. The Sanskrit songs of the Bhagavad Gita ring all night long, keeping him company, making him remember home . Blue and green waters, black silky seal dives through the icy harbor tucked into a pocket of the Atlantic. His home, for now.

Sunday

Charlie is building a bench. Crimea is voting to secede. Who knows where that airplane is? Django somehow got a tick in his nose. My mother is roasting a chicken and baking potatoes for my dad. Everyone in town, minus about five of us, are at the mountain enjoying the wind and the very last day of the t-bar. The wind is roaring. The dogs are sleeping in sunny spots on the floor. Yesterday Charlie and I each got haircuts. We watched Nebraska with Norm in the evening, after they ate lasagna which I made. Brownies too. I was thanking Norm for saving me from what I was seeing as imminent disaster in my cellar on Friday. It was a very nice, peaceful evening -- even if the boys got a little carried away with talk of Central Asia. Where is that plane?

anapest

For the spoon never gleams/ without stinging my dreams/ in a dutiful saucer of tea.

The Not-Quite-A-Sonnet-Sonnet

Over hill, over my wail/ Through fog, and dale,/ Over pink, comes the night,/ Through verdant exhale,/ Willow bends and whispers,/ Swallows powder on the moon,/ Swerve in light shadows,/ Give the soul up and swoon,/ The bite of the wind can not be seen:/ Through blue borage in water her heart is born,/ Its petals and wings we deeply mourn,/ Those emeralds winking, woodsy ferns/ Her freckles dance tonight from here,/ And land upon the blossom’s ear,/ Goodnight, soft clouds, you make no sound,/ Our girl, her dust and voice now sleep underground.

tiny houses

There was hot water dripping rapidly in the cellar this morning. A small stream runs through the stone floor down there in the Spring and Fall. The clapboards need more paint. The foundation needs work. Everyone says the house is in good shape, but they say that keeping in mind it's going on 150 years old. I have another building out back to manage too. The french doors to the studio need to be rehung. It's not a big deal. But still, I dream about a tiny, efficient house where everything works. (All of these images came from Googling "tiny houses." Sorry not cited correctly.)

heen-ee-us

She grabbed J's face and he thought she was going to kiss him, but instead his brother's wife looked deep into his eyes and put a gypsy curse on him for a lot of reasons having to do with money and spite. Then she danced for grandpa in a dress made of twine and pink yarn, but it didn't work; she never got a penny. She called herself a genius, but pronounced it like "heen-ee-us," because she was from Spain. For a year she wore pajamas and worked in the tomato gardens in her village. There was one black tooth in the front of her mouth. She had a baby with a man who tricked her while she thought she was tricking him. She is raising that baby by herself in Madrid (she left the tomato village), while her (penniless) husband lives in Colorado with an Inuit girl who won't eat, but likes to sew.

Not a Sonnet

Dazed Spring/ with quiet eyes/ my brain is shrunk/ wild carrot naked/ what’s a girl to do/ when lights begin to show/ purplish/ forked/ going blind when I speak/ my heart/ hardly a whisper/ reddish/ upstanding/ the stiff curl: clarity/ touch a hundred flowers/ because danger is crawling from the wood/ mouth wet/ cold/ leafless/ lifeless/ on the road to the contagious hospital/ one by one/ objects rise/ and bow down/ my voice the gladdest thing/ will mark which must be mine/ under the northeast sun/ and familiar wind/ clouds of/ blue/ green/ I enter a new world/ my belly caving in/ I’m going out to play School was dismissed at 11 a.m. because of snow. I'm working on a poetry project to do with kids ... and others, maybe even really old people. Before the day is done I'll get to that sonnet.

Sonnet (I will be cutting up some papers to make sonnets later in a snow storm)

The sonnet came from Italy. It's name comes from sonnetto which means "little song." It's short -- just fourteen lines, and it's written in iambic pentameter, plus it has a rhyme scheme. There are three choices for rhyme schemes: Petrarchan: The fourteen lines are divided into an octet (eight line stanza) and sestet (six line stanza) rhymed a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a and c-d-e-c-d-e (the sestet is sometimes varied). Shakespearean: a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g (Yay! The easiest) Spenserian: a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c-d-c-d-e-e (The least common)

Dirt Road Rabbits

dirt road rabbits/ spying raspberries with wings/ messages from home/ beware/ waxy red poison ivy on the cape/ hot tempers too/ half-moon mask of vacation/ ankles swelling/ sharp words at breakfast/ take the shoe box of letters and postcards/ from old aunts/ into the July night/ and leave/ ask me/ again yes/ to go/ cliffs and clouds/ will go/ one white winter night/ in the midst of our Independence Day/ forgive me/ I burned my toes on Eastham sand/ when you said I ought to have been wearing shoes/ song of a poet/ on a towel/ dipping pens in red ink/ mind-flailing/ all the way from here to Provincetown/ mothy gloom/ in blazing sun/ miasma of seaweed and week-old crab/ legs/ going home now/ stars to lead my way/ nocturnal blackness/ moss on northern sides of trees/ coyotes wailing on ocean breezes/ dirt road rabbits dark/ eyes flashing/ as I disappear from vacation/ vacations/ and return home

70

My Dad turns 70 tomorrow ... but he looks like 97. Here's a picture of him standing, watching Pulp Fiction, smirking. Last year he was in the hospital in West Roxbury -- thinking he would die on Good Friday just like his mother did.

He used to carry a pile of envelopes around which contained ideas for a play he was writing called The Perpendiculars. His father was a dentist. I'm going to make a cake for his party in the morning: vanilla with chocolate frosting.

Vincent

I just started rereading Savage Beauty, by Nancy Milford. The opening section of the book reminded me that this is a beautiful place where I live: Camden, with its ring of mountains rising behind the white clapboard houses facing Penobscot Bay, made the most of its view. Nowhere else on the coast of Maine was there such dramatic natural beauty. The houses were like weathered faces turned to watch the sea. The upland meadows of ox-eyed daisies, timothy, and sweet fern, the dark green woods of balsam and fir swept to the gentle summit of Mount Megunticook, and the rock face of Mount Battie rose from the edge of the sea as if to hold it. And then she goes on about the death of shipbuilding ... and the scant wages and long hours for workers in the woolen mills. Edna St. Vincent Millay lived in the Millville section of Camden, which is where Charlie lives. I live in one of the mill houses near the harbor. I can see Mount Battie, including the tower on top of it, from my bedroom where I'm sitting. I see church steeples and the top of the Elm Street School, where Edna St. Vincent Millay went ... and also where I went. She was such a bold girl. And brave to send her writing to magazines. Her mother left her alone with her two sisters while she went away to work. The girls took care of themselves. When their mother was a girl, her own mother left her. She fell in love with a man and left her husband. She loved her children, made a living as a hairdresser and loved this other man. And then her horse got spooked one day and she was thrown and hit her head on a rock. And that was the end of that, at age 37, calling out, "I don't want to leave my babies...." At least that's the way the story goes. I am searching through poetry of all kinds lately. It's all I want to do ... and I'm hoping I can write my way out of a few things I'd rather not do. Will keep you posted. I can not write letters to the editor or anything like that. I can't even write stories, for fear people will get fiercely angry with me for writing about a Vietnam Vet killing my asparagus and peaches, kids snorting Ritalin, or how certain people read the comic book version of Great Expectations and others do not. This is the reason I have spent the last ten years drawing and painting. I think the photo above is from First Fig, by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Sorry. Nancy Milford wrote another book which I love: Zelda, about Zelda Fitzgerald. I have a decent copy of the book out in my studio but I used to keep a tattered to pieces copy of it by my bed in the early years of being back in Maine, newly single, newly a parent, and definitely not sleeping very much. Zelda used to get eczema whenever Scott would visit her in her Swiss mountain top retreats. She suffered badly. (I had eczema too.) Eventually, she was put in a home by Scott back in the United States; she wasn't well. The home caught fire and everyone died, including Zelda. There is a very good story about W.H. Auden in the current issue of The New York Review of Books. We all have evil in us. Victims might be innocent in one capacity but not in all. He heard that a woman from his church was having night terrors so he took a blanket and slept outside her apartment door until she felt safe. He fell in love; it didn't work out ... and he said he nearly became a murderer because of it. No more dilly-dallying. Better get back to work.

Belle

Middlemarch audio book on iTunes, crabby guys in composite pants, kid set up with a full spectrum light, monkey hair sticking up and laughing at the barrettes, cereal bowls clanging with spoons and song, it's like saying you like eating a peach but don't like the taste of peaches.

The fawn

I had a dream that a spotted fawn got into my house, pooped in the bathtub, then died (spread eagle) on Fiona's bed. I was late to catch a flight to Los Angeles, where I did not want to go, but felt stressed to make it to the airport on time nonetheless, and was worried I would not have time to finish cleaning the tub before I'd have to run out the door, half-packed.

Fresh Air

Charlie and I went for a hike up Beech Hill -- wearing creepers because it's so icy, then we went to the boat shop to get wood for a fire out on the ice at Hosmer Pond. Charlie will build the fire, and fish and I will be at home trying to get ahead on work so I can take a trip with Fiona's Independent Study Science class to New York in a few weeks and not feel distracted the whole time by half-finished projects. I was up at three this morning, organizing things for the trip. Three is a little early for me. Since we were at the shop, I got the tour of new things happening with boats. I picked out a boat I'd like to live aboard. I'd have to sell about 10 of my houses to afford it though. No property taxes, if you're floating -- so I'll keep shopping around.

Poland and Us

If we want our kids to be educated we need to change the system.

Our standards need to be higher for all students; they can learn.  If we expect them to learn, and if they have well-trained, highly educated teachers, they will learn.  Just look at Finland.  Better yet, look at Poland; they struggle with deprivation, crime and pathology of all kinds.   “In a United Nations comparison of children’s material well-being, Poland ranked dead last in the developed world.”  (Loc. 1823)  If Poland can significantly improve their schools, so can we.

In Finland, there are only eight prestigious teacher training universities, and you need high test scores and good grades to get into them.  Let’s say you want to teach high school Finnish — you need to send in your graduation-exam scores, plus read four books selected by the university and sit for a special Finnish literature exam.  Today, Finland’s education programs are very selective — on the same scale of selectivity as M.I.T. here in the United States.  Getting into a teacher-training program is as prestigious as getting into medical school.  A student training to teach Finnish will spend the first three years studying Finnish literature.  She will read intensely and write many long papers.  The student will analyze novels, poems and short stories.  There are required classes, such as statistics, in the six years of study.  In the fourth year, students begin the teacher-training program.  All Finnish teachers are required to get a master’s degree, and during this time they spend one full year in one of the best public schools in the country.  There are usually three teacher mentors; trainees watch their mentors’ classes closely.  They also teach while the mentors take notes.  Trainees learn key lessons, like how important it is to motivate students at the start of each lesson.  (Loc.1222)  Teachers in training also collaborate with fellow students to design lesson plans so they can integrate material from all their subjects, including history and art.  All Finnish teachers in training have to do original research; a student, for example, may write a two-hundred page thesis on the ways that teenagers’ spoken Finnish shapes their written Finnish. (Loc.1227)

In Finland, teachers are not also football coaches. 
The top schools in the world do not mix school and sports.  Many kids play sports outside of school and find ways to be active, but the message schools send is clear— that school is for academic work.

When we label kids “disadvantaged” we often begin to expect less of them.  The rich and the poor are capable of being educated.  If we expect less of certain students because they have a tough life at home, then they will live up to our low expectations; they will underachieve.  If a student shows signs of a learning disability, we need to provide that student with a great deal of extra help from a highly qualified teacher.  Many places in the world, including Finland, see learning disabilities as temporary situations.  Most of these situations arise during the elementary years, they are dealt with, and the students move on.  They are not trapped in an endless cycle of special education.  As a parent of a child labeled severely dyslexic, I can say first hand that a huge amount of attention in the early years has paid off in that my daughter reads much faster than I do now and has no trouble writing essays as a thirteen year old.

Children who arrive at school speaking a language other than English should receive intensive language lessons to get them caught up.  Kids should not be exempt from certain material or entire classes because they have special circumstances.  It does not serve them well in the long run. 

Tracking should be delayed until age sixteen.  Everyone should take literature, history, science and math classes.  There should not be a single student taking something called “English in the Workplace” or anything else like that until after age sixteen.  Technical schools need to be top notch.  Not everyone is going to college, but everyone needs a real skill.

Math teachers should major in math. 

Schools should offer parents a much more productive way to get involved: read.  Don’t bring apple slices or cupcakes to school, don’t coach soccer, or join the PTA, don’t worry about how many class trips you’ve chaperoned, but read to your kids every single day when they’re young.  Talk to your kids about books.  Read books; kids will see that reading is an important part of life.  As kids get older, have serious conversations with them about books, movies, current events and what they’re learning in history class.  These are the things that matter, that improve a student’s ability to think critically. 

The superpowers in education believe that schools exist to help students master complex academic material.  Other things matter but nothings else matters as much.  (Loc. 1685)  The education Finland provides for its children is at the top of the world.  Many American teachers view Finland as an educator’s heaven on earth; teachers are admired and children are cared for.  It is often pointed out that Finland has a very low rate of child poverty, while the United States has a high rate of child poverty.  Many argue that we can not fix our schools until the problem of poverty is rectified.  (Loc. 136)  The child poverty rate in the United States is around twenty percent; kids are living under stress at home and are needing more help at school.  Norway spends as much as the United States on education, which is a lot compared to what the rest of the world spends.  Norwegian kids did as unimpressively as our own kids on an international test of scientific literacy in 2009. (Loc. 143)  Low child poverty rates certainly do help, but in Norway’s case, they weren’t leading to the kind of success found in Finland. Rich parents did not necessarily predict high scores, and poor parents, did not always predict low scores.  (Loc. 249)  Other factors must be at play.

“Most successful or improving countries seemed to fit into three basic categories: 1) The utopia model of Finland, a system built on trust in which kids achieved higher-order thinking without excessive competition or parental meddling; 2) the pressure-cooker model of South Korea, where kids studied so compulsively that the government had to institute a study curfew; and 3) the metamorphosis model of Poland, a country on the ascent, with about as much child poverty as the United States, but recent and dramatic gains in what kids knew.” (Loc. 349) 
Yes, Finland is a small country full of white people but we have some pretty small, pretty white states here, like New Hampshire, which is 96 percent white, has the highest median income in the nation and one of the lowest child poverty rates.  New Hampshire doesn’t do what Finland does — which is to provide all children with a decent education no matter how much money their parents make.  (Loc. 568)  Some defenders of our education system blame poverty and dysfunction for our problems.  Poland has poverty and hardship, yet they have turned their schools around.

After the fall of communism in 1989, Poland experienced hyperinflation; their grocery stores were empty.  Parents couldn’t find food for their children.  The country was in a chaotic situation, perhaps headed toward civil war.  Poland went through a transformation and emerged as a free-market democracy.  Still, one in six Polish children live in poverty. 
Poland is a big country, like the United States, and one where its people distrust the centralized government, again, like us.  Despite this, between 2000 and 2006 the average reading score of Polish fifteen year olds rose 29 points on the PISA exam.  “In less than a decade, they had gone from below average for the developed world to above.  Over the same period, U.S. scores had remained flat.” (Loc. 1830)
In 1997, Poland got a new minister of education, Miroslaw Handke.  He implemented dramatic reform, cutting to the core, changing the  structure and substance of education in Poland.  Adults in Poland didn’t have the skills to compete in the modern world.  Only half of rural adults finished primary school.  They would have no choice but to do the low-skilled, low-wage jobs that no other Europeans wanted.  Handke came up with four major areas of reform that he felt would “give students a chance.” (Loc. 1898) 
1) A new curriculum: No longer would teachers have to cover too many topics too briefly.  The new curriculum set fundamental goals but left the details to the schools.  At the same time a quarter of teachers were required to go back to school to improve their own education. 
2) Accountability: To ensure students were learning they would start taking standardized tests at the end of elementary, junior high, and high school.  The tests would be the same all over the country.  Test scores of younger children helped to identify which students, teachers and schools needed more help.  “For the first time, all students would take the university entrance exam at the end of high school.”  (Loc. 1898)
3) Delay Tracking: This was the most important reform, because it raised the expectations for what kids could accomplish.  It forced all kids to stay together in the same academic setting for an extra full year (through the equivalent of freshman year in high school).  They could not be streamed into vocational or academic programs until after the extra year together.  This meant Poland had to build four thousand new junior high schools. 
4) Autonomy: Teachers could choose their own textbooks and their own specific curriculum from over one hundred approved options, plus they could choose their own professional development courses.  They would also start earning bonuses based in part on how much professional development they did.  (Loc. 1917)

On September 1, 1999, four thousand new junior high schools opened across Poland.  It was a chaotic day; many teachers and principals were not ready, plus there were parents, teachers, and principals who complained and criticized the changes.  While this was happening, Handke was deciding if Poland should participate in the first ever PISA test.  He decided to do it, because he didn’t want Poland to be “left behind.”  (Loc. 1944) 

“The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international survey which aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students. To date, students representing more than 70 economies have participated in the assessment. PISA is unique because it develops tests which are not directly linked to the school curriculum. The tests are designed to assess to what extent students at the end of compulsory education, can apply their knowledge to real-life situations and be equipped for full participation in society. The information collected through background questionnaires also provides context which can help analysts interpret the results.”  (http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/)


In 2000, Polish fifteen year olds took the PISA.  These first kids who took PISA had grown up under the old system.  They ranked twenty-first in reading and twentieth in math, below the United States and below average for the developed world.    Three years later, in 2003, another group of Polish fifteen year olds took PISA, ones who had gone to elementary school in the old system but were attending the new gymnasia schools; they were not yet tracked.   This group ranked thirteenth in reading and eighteenth in math, just above the United States in both subjects.  By 2009, Poland was outperforming the United States in math and science, even though they spent less than half as much money per student.  “Poland’s poorest kids outscored the poorest kids in the United States.  That was a remarkable feat, given that they were worse off, socioeconomically, than the poorest American kids.” (Loc. 1957)

The rest of the world can look to Poland.  Education is possible, even for the poor kids.  Every single kid in this country deserves the very best education.  Nobody is a lost cause.  Our system needs reform.  In 2009, 85 percent of Polish students graduated from high school, compared to 76 percent in the United States.  We can do better.
Poland still needs more rigorous standards and improved teaching quality if they want to reach Finland’s success rates, but they have proven that even troubled countries can do better for their children. 
Let Poland be our guide.
We can change.

Sources:
1. Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids In The World And How They Got That Way (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).  Kindle Edition
2. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/aboutpisa/