Within the Scope

In Saturday's mail was a large mailing envelope from Scholastic Press. I was hoping it was a fat royalty check for my 1997 YA book, Jack London: A Biography.

Nah.

That book's now out of print, but I can still say--with a straight, honest face--that J. K. Rowling and I share a publisher! (Scholastic did the US printings of the Harry Potter books, which, by the way, my younger grandson, Carson, about to turn 10, is now reading.)

No, instead the envelope held the most recent edition of Scope, one of Scholastic's classroom magazines. And when I saw what it was, I have to utter a cliche: Memories flooded back.

You see, I used to use Scope in various ways when I was teaching middle-school English classes (I retired in January 1997). Sometimes I had the kids subscribe; sometimes I merely shared with my classes some things that had appeared in it. Short stories, one-act plays, interesting news articles and features--these Scope features sometimes composed my lesson plan for a day.

So ... let's take a look at the February 2019 issue ... what's there? What (if anything) would I have used? And what's changed?

• The first thing is a very colorful piece on the Chinese New Year--lots of graphics, few words.
• Next is an nonfiction piece--"The Children's Blizzard"--about a "monstrous storm" in January 1888 in America's Northern Plains. It's several pages long--and also has lots of illustrations. It also features some highlighted vocabulary words--mobilized, encrusted, etc.
• Next--an ecological piece about the lionfish, a critter doing lots of damage in the Atlantic Ocean.
• It's followed by a short companion piece, "The Invasion of the Giant Goldfish: How a Little Pet Became a Big Problem." It seems the cute, not-so-little things "can take over a body of water, destroying the habitat of native species" (13).
• Next--a nod to Black History Month, I would guess--is "The Girl Who Dared,” a script about some school-aged youngsters who were activists during the Civil Rights Movement. Included is a portion of a speech given by one of the girls, Barbara Posey, 17, on June 24, 1960--and a link to the entire text.
• Next is a story, "The Perfects," a tale about an apparently perfect family that includes highlighted clues about how to write a story--e.g., figurative language, text structure, setting.
• Next--a two-page piece, "My Life as a Military Kid," by a young woman--looks to be high-school age.
• Text--pro and con pieces about whether the school week should be four or five days--pieces written by two middle school students.
• The final piece is about how waffles changed the design of sneakers.
• The back cover features some graphics and information about spicy food.

So ... what would I have used in this issue? Not much, probably. I might have had the kids read aloud the dramatization of the Civil Rights story ... maybe write a fiction story about destructive fish? (That kind of sounds like fun, actually.)

So ... what's different about Scope these days? (I'm relying entirely on memory now--and that can be a problem!)

• Lots more graphics.
• More patently instructional material--vocab words, suggestions for writers, etc.
• Nothing--at least in this issue--by any celebrated writers. I remember using Scope-adapted versions of famous stories and plays.

One surprise: Except for a suggested link to a site, the social-media, computer worlds are mostly darkened here. Pale sunlight on them, at best. I like that. The magazine--at least in this issue--has not caved, surrendered. It shows students there is another world out there--a world of words and ideas, a world that has its own ways of being exciting.

And that, my friends, is, I believe, profoundly important.