Picking the locks one-by-one

A few months ago a tradesman came to the door to fix something. Here in Singapore such people are often Muslim and therefore petrified of dogs. So my helper put the dog in a separate part of the house and closed the door, not knowing that it was one of those doors that lock themselves if the button is pressed in, which it was for some inexplicable reason. And although that part of the house has two doors leading to outside which are usually open all day every day, they'd been closed and locked due to a late afternoon rainstorm accompanied by a lot of wind.  Before calling the landlord's agent for a spare key, I did what every other independent woman would do, I googled "how to pick a lock". The instructions, video and otherwise all boiled down to the same simple steps.

Since I could access the garage and all the tools and assorted things like paperclips and hairclips (grateful for once for stuff lying around the house instead of being tidied up) - I set to work. In the process I discovered that the lock was "the wrong way round" to my sensibilities - do you notice that - doors and locks having to be turned "the other way" to what you're used to in your home country?

Needless to say, there is a good reason why I'm not a burglar, nor a locksmith and the spare key had to be called into action. If you want to find out more about locks and security - here's a great episode of 99% invisible.

After that huge digression to come to my point. As I wrote earlier, I have a large population of ELL students who come through the library and I'm always trying to find "that" book that will unlock their desire to read in English (actually I'm trying that for everyone, just this population seems to have the highest and most immediate needs.

Sometimes things happen quite by accident. 

My G4 classes have been doing a unit on poetry as part of "how we express ourselves" and besides some great activities with spine poetry (much to the horror of my library assistants who are not used to such free-wheeling attitudes to taking books off the shelf) one day I decided to promote verse novels.   

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert on any aspect of children's literature, but I'm a keen learner, so I looked for some lists of verse novels for elementary students and then tried to see how many I had on hand. I'd read "inside out and back again" which is a fabulous book, so I felt it may work.

For each of my next G4 classes I had a pile of verse novels and I picked out one page to read from each.  Since my darling dog had just been put down the previous night, it was with a chocked voice I read from "Love that Dog" and luckily I had a whole pile of those to dish out since one of my predecessors had the foresight to order them in duplicate.

After the lesson a few of the books were borrowed and I didn't think that much of it. Then a week later one of my Chinese students sidled up to me during lunch time and asked me for a book "like that dog" book, and I gave him "Hate that cat", and yesterday he came to me and said he'd finished it and wanted more books like that.  I said "more about animals, or more like poetry" and he affirmed more like poetry, and I passed on "Inside out and back again" and told him it was one of my personal favourite - he quickly scanned inside the book and happily said "yes". 

And yes of course it would work.  I've not studied this stuff and I'm feeling my way along, but sometimes our students just help us to discover what it is they want and need.  Coming back to it rationally - verse is short and beautiful and evocative and free. And now it's just one more tool in my arsenal of lock-picking equipment. 

Here are some resources:

• Australian verse novels from Sarah Tregay
• Goodreads novels in verse
• 14 chapter books written in verse

Haves or have nots?

Library at Kuma Cambodia - no borrowing only reading onsite

I've just spent 8 days in Cambodia on an extremely interesting services trip run by UWCSEA-East. During the time we were exposed to 5 of the Global Concerns that the school supports through its service program commencing in the infant school with Kuma Cambodia, Green Umbrella (grade 3), Epic Arts (grade 5) up to ISF (grade 6).

The focus of the trip was on exposing parents and students to the various organisations and to allow us to "get our hands dirty" - literally - we took part in a variety of activities ranging from playing football - where the most important attribute seemed to be a very muddy field, to arts and crafts, dancing, cycling, teaching English, making paper planes, and some back breaking work on building 2 houses for indigent families.

 Although the focus was not libraries, I couldn't help taking a keen interest in what, if any books and in what type of storage or lending format these were presented.

Unfortunately my camera died early in the proceedings, and so I only have some iphone shots from later in the tour, so I'll just have to describe.

The first organisation we visited, fresh off the plane after a 4am start was ISF and I was a little shocked to see a couple of shelves and a nice sign made of christmas tree glitter saying "library"  I admit to thinking "oh no, that's it?"  As the day progressed and we went to the squatter camps where the children lived and saw the extreme poverty and deprivation that they were coming from, the existence of even one shelf of books would have put those kids into the category of "haves" rather than "have nots".  Doubly so as they had books both in English and Khmer.

Books divided between English & Khmer

Donations are a double edged sword as many commentators have spoken of in the past.  In one sense, to have books, any books, is a wonderful thing.  There are caveats though.  One of these is that by bringing good into a country one stifles or overwhelms a local industry.  Another is the very important aspect of cultural relevancy - I had to laugh at the puzzled faces in an English class I was teaching as one of the kids in my team tried to explain "white" by reference to "snow".

33 consonants and 23 vowels to deal with

However, I think the most important thing is that children are allowed to learn literacy in their mother tongue and that this is supported by sufficient books in that language AT ALL LEVELS - starting with simple picture books, to the graded readers, chapter books, young adult novels etc.  And of course the absolutely critical "hi lo" books with high interest level at a low reading requirement for children who have slipped behind or have the possibility of education at a later age.  This site provides some fantastic strategies for struggling readers, aside from true disability, it is rather ironic that the "developed" world camps with "reluctant" readers, while the "developing" has children desperate to learn and enthusiastic learners without the resources that could take them where they need to be.

When I started researching this to write this blog post I found there is plenty happening in this area - it's probably more a question of gathering the information together, sifting through it and deciding what is the nice to have, need to have, affordable, practical and any other criteria that an organisation can use to judge where their literacy spend goes.
In no particular order, here are some of the things I found:

Bookshelf @ Green Umbrella

Worldreader: operates mainly in Africa and "Since we started our efforts to eradicate illiteracy, Worldreader has been committed to gauging our impact through extensive monitoring and evaluation activities, which measure the number of books read before and after deployment, students’ reading ability, as well as own ability to provide delivery and support. We’ve been research focused since day one and have a long term track record of examining what works and what doesn’t when it comes to eradicating illiteracy. - See more at: http://www.worldreader.org/what-we-do/#sthash.JXXgifyJ.dpuf"

Books treated with great respect

 Room to read, with their publishing arm: "One of the greatest challenges to early adoption of the habit of reading in developing countries is a lack of high-quality, age-appropriate children's books in the local language. Often, the few books that are available are either second-hand books in foreign languages or low-quality, black and white books for more mature readers. Room to Read responded to this need by going into the publishing business. Our Book Publishing program is committed to providing children with materials that will inspire them to read, expand their minds, and develop a lifelong love for reading and learning."

Sipar is a charity which "For over 20 years, has helped Cambodia fight illiteracy and develop school and public reading. An enrichment to this program has been the establishment of a publishing branch for books in khmer ten years ago.  What has been accomplished to date ?

• 230 school libraries opened containing 2000 books each.
• 2000 school librarians trained. 
• 8 mobile libraries set in service and circulate in the poorer areas of Phnom Penh in order to introduce book-based activities. 
• 26 public Reading Centers established as meeting places for exchange of ideas and knowledge for all ages.
• 10 projects of communal educational services development set up in 2 provinces.  
• 95 titles for children and young people published in the khmer language, adding up to a grand total of 1 001 500 copies, thus reviving reading and writing in Cambodia.
• 86 000 books donated to Teacher's Training College."

Richard Scarry a hit - pictures say it all

Lists are always good - here is one by Playing by the Book - of various literacy charities around the world. Most probably not completely relevant to this article, but good for borrowing and adaptation of ideas.

Children delighting in books -
even if some were upside down and being read back to front

 There is no harm in being critical, nor in asking for evidence of success in intervention.  This article by "GiveWell" provides some research on various aspects of developing-world education.  And I admit some bias as it quotes my favourite development economist - Esther Duflo.

 It is easy for me to maintain my book and library bias in all of this, but I guess there are hard questions to ask.  If I have a dollar, do I spend it on a book, on deworming a student, on a school uniform, on improving a teachers salary, on feeding a child?  Here's a great video from Esther Duflo giving a TED talk ...

Look carefully at the choice of word for this
alphabet poster - what were they thinking?
And no, it doesn't make sense in Khmer either,
I checked.

I guess my visit resulted in more questions than answers. And especially me questioning my "developed world" assumptions.