Would You Want Your Grandchild Working Like This?

In honor of Labor Day, the Washington Post published an excellent feature on Lewis Hine, whose photography a century ago brought an end to ugly child labor practices.  The Post’s cover photo, a Hine classic of a young textile mill worker, was the inspiration for my play, “Stolen Childhoods.” 

If you’re unfamiliar with Hine’s work, be sure to read the Post article. In the late 1900’s, because there were no labor laws to prevent it or unions to defend against it, companies quit hiring adult men and instead hired children at a fraction of the cost. Both unemployment and illiteracy skyrocketed. Hine brought the practice “into the light” by surreptitiously gaining access to mines, factories, and farms and photographing children working long hours under deplorable conditions. He often convinced floor bosses that he was merely there to take pictures of the company’s “impressive” machinery. The children, he’d tell them, needed to be in the picture to provide a sense of scale. He was often threatened with violence, but his effort eventually paid off for the American worker, leading to labor laws that still exist today. Hine, however, died impoverished and with little fanfare.

My play, “Stolen Childhoods,” has been published in both Storyworks and Scope magazines. It follows Hine as he finagles his way into factories, and a trio of endangered siblings, whom he eventually photographs. Hine’s photographs are poignant and powerful; I’m hopeful I’ve captured a bit of that poignancy in my play. You can preview it or purchase it on my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers.

Allow me to conclude with a politically-charged statement: unions today have been vilified by politicians and corporate interests, but given their role defending the American worker, it seems more important than ever that young people know the history behind organized labor. The Post article, my play, and certainly the work of Lewis Hine go a long way in teaching that history.

Happy directing.

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Fun, Simple, and Sustainable!

Technology has it benefits, but sometimes I wish I could go back to teaching the way it was when there were blackboards, 35 mm film projectors, and life-threatening playground structures. Ah, simpler times! Wasn’t all this new-fangled technology supposed to make things simpler? You’re probably thinking that in many ways it has and in other ways it’s made thing massively over-complicated. Whatever the case, it reminds me that all the products I post on TpT, I’ve created out of a need for materials that are a.) kid-centric (I want my students to love being in my class); b.) easy-to-use (I don’t want to wade through a massive teacher’s edition to figure out how to do something); and c.) sustainable (I want regular routines that won’t keep me up at night). Simple. With all that in mind, here are a few items I think you’ll want for Back-to-School.

Fact Car Rally Race. Mastery of the math facts is the foundation of all things math, so a program that keeps kids focused on truly memorizing their tables is essential. In Fact Car Rally, students create their race cars during the first week of school and spend the year progressing around the race route as they pass fact quizzes—addition and subtraction for youngers, multiplication and division for olders. “Way better than Rocket Math,” say kids and teachers alike!

Super Sentences & Perfect Paragraphs. No need for expensive textbooks, software licenses, or complicated teacher editions! Everything you need for an entire year’s writing program is right here in one, easy-to-use and engaging package. Try out a free sample by clicking here, and if you like it, snag Volume 1 from Scholastic Teaching Resources (it’s cheap), or my new Vol. 2, which will be available on TpT soon.

EZSubPlans. Be prepared for that emergency absence by prepping your plans now, before you’re desperate. It’s easy with EZSubPlans—just click, print, and relax! There are sets for 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grades, but they’re largely interchangeable. In fact, I use all four sets at fifth grade, meaning I’m already covered for up to eight emergency absences. Eight!

Why Use Drama? My free reader’s theater primer outlines ways to make Read Aloud Plays work for you. Take a look, and then download a couple especially fun plays to break the back-to-school ice such as Peter Rabbit, Two Plays from The American Revolution, and Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth.

Have a great school year and—Happy Directing!

Burned Out?

Folks have been pestering me about why I haven’t released any new plays lately. Like you, I’m a practicing classroom teacher, and when the school year came to an end I wasn’t much more than a mass of vibrating pulp in the corner of my room. Think mealworm pupa. That’s how exhausted I was.

Don’t get me wrong. I had a wonderful class, exciting year-end activities, and a supportive admin. It was one of my best years ever! Yet there I lay for a full week, drooling. Was I burned out, or merely lightly chewed and regurgitated? Upon finally waking from my stupor I stumbled upon a nifty post about teacher stress. It appears on a UK blog called TeacherToolkit. It quotes Dr. Jenny Grant Rankin from her book First Aid for Teacher Burnout: How You Can Find Peace and Success. To paraphrase Dr. Rankin, there are six big factors that lead to burnout. In evaluating my own stress, I’ve assigned points from 0 to 5 for each.

1.) The overwhelming workload. The job is never-ending. There is always something more to be done and no matter how hard you work, something important gets left behind. Every day. Every week. Every year. I’m just hopeful I didn’t leave one of my fifth graders behind at outdoor ed. Stress points: 5, though I admit a lot of my work tasks were self-imposed. Because teachers tend to be highly motivated, I suspect that’s true for many of you.

2.) The unrelenting school day. Dr. Rankin mentions “poorly vetted resources” here. I take that to mean lousy textbook programs your school district paid thousands of dollars to shove at you. The backrooms and closets of my school building are crammed with them. My best advice comes from a veteran teacher way back in 1998. “Sure I’m using the adopted curriculum. It’s right there holding up that shelf.” These days I’m fortunate because I’m allowed—even encouraged—to use alternative resources such as Storyworks magazine, all my reader’s theater scripts, and programs such as Super Sentences & Perfect Paragraphs. For this last bit, I’ve recently re-acquired the rights from Scholastic and plan on offering a variety of revamped versions of it on TpT. But I think the unrelenting stress to which Dr. Rankin refers is really about being “on” all day, about the constant stimulation, about being pulled in too many directions, about not having enough time to go to the bathroom, let alone plan your next unit. I know I was feeling that stress as the year concluded. Stress points: 3.

3.) Oh the tedium! See item #2 and make a ditto of my snarky comments about textbooks, but add in a few more about commercial curricula, and then consider trying out some of my plays and programs. Stress points: 0. Academic freedom is bliss.

4.) Student behavior (or lack thereof). They’re calling it “Disrupted Learning,” or something like that, and it seems to be getting worse. Some experts are suggesting video game addiction is behind it, and if so, one wonders if schools contributing to it with all the additional screen time given to computer-based learning. Stress points: 3. I had a particularly lovely group this year, but behavior management is always a stress.

5.) The pointy-haired man (see Dilbert, Chapter 1). A bad administrator can destroy the school climate in a hurry. I’m fortunate to have one that facilitates a healthful culture. Stress points: 0. I’m lucky.

6.) Disrespect (from parents, the media, Betsy DeVos, et al.). In most years I’d give this a 5, but I feel like the pendulum is swinging back in our favor. From my distant view, it seemed like the public was largely supportive of educators during the strikes in Oklahoma, Arizona, and elsewhere. Although politicians continue to tout test scores and privatization, because the public is starting to acknowledge our stress, I’m only going to assign this 3 points.

So what’s my total: 14 (out of 30 possible). I guess I’m only 47% burned out. Not too shabby given the nature of the job, but I think I’m going to check out Dr. Rankin’s book anyway. If your score is up there, perhaps you should too. Until then, allow me to close with three push-backs against the stress:

X. Tell it like it is. When people make sometime-snarky comments about you being on “vacation,” boldly remind them that this is summer furlough, NOT summer vacation. Like most teachers, you’ve been laid off for a couple months. You’re not getting paid. You’re on a 200 day (+/-) contract and it ended. In fact, you probably only get one paid vacation day off per year, and unlike most professionals, you DON’T get to take it whenever you want. That’s why you’ve never seen the fall colors of New England, the Pendleton Round-up, or a decent price on a plane ticket. (I really don’t think saying this will help combat stress, but in the long run it might lower your stress score for item #6.)

Y. Get involved in your union. I’m not a fan of all my union’s policies and positions, but the NEA and AFT are the only organizations fighting against privatization of public schools. Your state-level union is probably the only organization protecting your retirement or working for adequate school funding. And your local association is probably the only thing standing between you and working conditions guaranteed to burn you out.

Z. Enjoy your summer furlough. Imagine how high your stress score would be if you didn’t have the summer months to recover! Me, I’d still be drooling in the corner. Instead, I’m busy working on some new reader’s theater products…which I hope you’ll come back and check out this fall.

Happy directing!

And the Oscar for Best Comedic Performance Goes to…

Yup, the last weeks of the school year can be rough. The end is near, and the kids (and teachers) all know it. What to do? Well, this time of year is a great time to let your students funnel all that extra energy and excitement into some dramatic roles. There’s no reason to assess anything. You can take your hands off the reins, let the kids direct, and just sit back and enjoy their giggles, forgotten lines, and silly grins.

Here are six play scripts that’ll keep your kids engaged until the very end (and there are dozens more at my TpT storefront):
Fly Me to the Moon re-enacts the Apollo moon landing including such famous lines as “The Eagle has landed” and “One small step….” The story is told from the perspective of a young girl who dreams of the stars while following the event via television—itself a feat of innovation. In my classroom, we made an old-fashioned television set out of a cardboard box (complete with tin foil rabbit ears) and stuck a kid inside it to play Walter Cronkite. It’s not a comedy—in fact, it’s a historically-accurate bit of drama—but it’ll have everyone laughing while simultaneously learning a bit of history.

It’s baseball season! Jackie Robinson’s contribution to the civil rights struggle is profound, but why read about it in a text book? In this play, vendor at a modern day Yankee’s game interact with the audience, telling Jackie’s story while hawking hot dogs and flinging bags of peanuts (I like to use real bags). It’s another important bit of history told in a fun way.

There’s a monster and kids get eaten. What could be better? Cyclops: The Monster in the Cave depicts Homer’s classic in all its vomitous glory. Your students will have a blast with this one.

Over the years, few plays have rivaled my Peter Rabbit adaption for gut busting guffaws. It’s not necessarily supposed to be that way, but fifth graders have a natural aptitude for slapstick. These days, thanks to the motion picture, your kids may want to make some adaptions of their own. Should be a kick!

The Newsies tells the story of a young immigrant girl who goes to work selling newspapers just before the 1899 New York City newsboy strike in which kids stood up to millionaire publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. In this play, kids get to talk in a heavy Bronx dialect, stage a protest, and throw newspapers over the side of the Brooklyn Bridge! Sounds jus’ like da end a da school year, don’t it?

Penelope Ann Poe’s Amazing Cell Phone is a modernized version of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In this version, the protagonist is driven to madness by her best friend’s annoying cell phone. After smashing it to smithereens, she hides it in the depths of her desks only to later be driven to confess by the phone’s perturbing and inexplicable ringtone. It’s my best-selling play, but not everyone has liked it. “Too Weird,” said one reviewer. Well of course it is, it’s Poe! And that makes it ideal for the chaos of late May and early June!

Happy directing!

Celebrate Our Unsung Heroes

In case you weren’t aware, March was Women’s History Month. Celebrating the contributions of women to history, though, needn’t be limited to a single month. Nor should it be limited to the same handful of heroines we’re all familiar with. In fact, given that the heroic actions of women often went unnoticed or unrecorded, one wonders how many sacrifices we’ve never heard about.

One heroine who was nearly forgotten by history is Sybil Ludington. Sixteen-year-old Sybil is credited with riding 40 miles on horseback to muster the militia when the British invaded Danbury, Connecticut, in 1777. Her story, which had been passed down within her family for nearly 100 years, wasn’t recorded until 1880. My play about Sybil gives students an impression of the perils of living in the American colonies at a time when neighbors–some Patriots and others Tories–might be violently opposed to one another. It speaks directly to issues of equality and gives students plenty to discuss in the way of character traits such as determination, independence, and work ethic.

The play was originally published in the Sept. 2015 issue of Scholastic’s Scope magazine. It was so well received that it was reprinted a year or so later in Storyworks. It’s now available for the first time on TpT, so I invite you to check it out. I also want to encourage you to pair it with my other plays from the Revolutionary War, including The Secret Soldier and Betsy Ross: Fact or Fiction, both which examine the contributions of women.

From Sheyann Webb to Christa McAuliffe, from Molly Pitcher to the recently deceased Linda Brown, the impact of heroic women on American history has been profound. Let’s celebrate that year ’round!

Happy directing.

See the Movie. Stage the Play!

Take advantage of high student interest in the Peter Rabbit movie by enacting my read aloud play script, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. It includes the play script, the original text in an easy-to-read short story format geared toward intermediate and middle-grade students, and several comprehension activities—seventeen pages in all.
Peter Rabbit was the first play I submitted to Storyworks. Though for various reasons it never made it into print, it led to my now twenty-year relationship with Scholastic. One reason it didn’t see the pages of the magazine is that the Peter Rabbit story tends to be “aged-down.” But I can attest, every fifth grade class I’ve ever had has loved enacting this play, and now that it’s hit mainstream movie screens, there’s no question your 3rd-6th grade students will love it too!
The reviews for the Peter Rabbit film are mixed—as if that’s anything to be surprised about. But elementary and early middle school students are attending and enjoying it. Grab their attention while it’s hot and download the Peter Rabbit play today!

Reader’s Theater for Presidents’ Day

Here are two plays in one package with which to celebrate and teach about Presidents’ Day. The first, President’s Day Dream, lets your actors portray several well-known presidents from history as a current “student” day dreams about becoming president herself. She, of course, sees only the glamour of the job, while presidents such as William Howard Taft tell her about the hard work, the constant criticism, and the tough decisions. The play gives students an intimate look at the personalities of each president while showing your kids “what it takes to be a good one.”

Argument at Mount Rushmore, meanwhile, imagines the four faces on the monument can actually talk. They celebrate their accomplishments while revealing their own distinct personalities: the stoic Washington, the underappreciated Jefferson, and the wise-cracking Lincoln contrast the bravado of a bullish Roosevelt. A great line in the play comes when Roosevelt says to Lincoln, “We’d have made a great tag team, Abe!” It’s a fun play to read and enact. Both plays provide students with some historical background about the presidency and democracy, and both come with standards-based comprehension activities and support material–a perfect fit for your Presidents’ Day instruction. Both plays originally appeared in my book, Read Aloud Plays: Symbols of America (2003, Scholastic). Visit my storefront at TeachersPayTeachers to preview or purchase.

Happy directing!