Learning Letter

                The various pieces of this course have been successful in providing what I felt was a cohesive effort to impart what it is to be an English Language Arts teacher in our current educational climate. Most useful for this purpose, of course, was the construction of the three week unit plan, allowing us the opportunity to consider how we would go about introduce and teaching a text on a very real level. The unit plans allowed us to look at the actual process of educating students from every angle of instruction. We were able to think about classroom management, assessment, adherence to standards and how to get our students engaged in the material.

                The mini-lessons gave as a taste of the real classroom experience. While this, of course, did not include actual high school students, it gave us the opportunity to see how we would perform as teachers in a classroom setting, and not as students. It was kind of our first opportunity to look at a classroom as teachers and not as students ourselves and see how exactly it was that we would organize and manage a classroom of our own. Furthermore, this provided us the chance to arrange some kind of activity for students and see how that activity would function in a real classroom and then get immediate feedback from our peers concerning our success as teachers and the places that we needed to improve. This was valuable information.

                The book talks were an informative and effective means of introducing those of us (like myself) who were not very familiar with many young adult texts to a large selection and a diverse range of books. With the brief synopses provided, I was able to determine which text I found interesting and might consider teaching myself and which texts I felt were either uninteresting, or perhaps inappropriate for a high school classroom.

                From a theoretical standpoint, I think I probably found those texts most focused on actual classroom practices most informative and valuable (specifically the Tovani text and the article on assessment). These provided me with ideas and direction that I will be able to use in my classroom and to enhance my own abilities as an educator, allowing me to link the more abstract theory with these more practical applications. From what we have learned in this class about educational theory I look forward to finally taking course that will focus even more on these educational strategies and allow me to increase my understanding of my chosen profession. Finally, with this theory as a backbone of my classroom management and approach, I know that I will better be able to assist my students in gaining the knowledge and education they will need to be successful in college and in the working world, as well as in the moral and cultural worlds in which they reside.

                With the foundation that this class has provided for me, and the hard work and effort that has gone into trying to be successful in all its various aspects, I believe that I have been set on a firm and directed course toward what should hopefully be a promising and fulfilling career.

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

                This piece, of course, is a classic and I don’t think that there is a high school student in the US who hasn’t had to read it at one point or another during their grade school education. Considering this, one is forced to look at the play in a way as to determine what it is about this particular text that so many school districts and educators find so important.

                I understand that as a work the language and structure of this classic piece is remarkable and any student would benefit from being introduced to writing such as this. I also understand that as the main characters are teenagers themselves and are struggling with something that virtually every teenager goes through (that of love and loss), this text is something that teenagers can relate to, and, as far as Shakespeare goes, it is fairly simply written. What I don’t really get, and have never really gotten about this work is that it has always struck me as a bit on the whiney side and full of over-reaction to what is a romance that spans the whole of 2 or 3 days.

                While I do realize that high school students (myself included) often over-react to everything in their lives, it seems that there are works by Shakespeare that I think students would benefit more from and that have just as good, if not better, language, structure and plot. I would personally prefer to use some of Shakespeare’s comedies in the high school classroom. These texts would introduce students to the same beauty of language and would allow them to experience the funny side of Shakespeare, a side that I think is often under-represented in the high school classroom.

In the Name of God by Paula Jolin

My response to this text has to be two-fold because, as a work of fiction itself I found it dull and I found the ending decidedly unbelievable and very rushed. However, my response to the subject matter and the tension and concern that I feel the book would have elicited were it better written are a different matter.

                I think if students are anything like myself they will find this book to be a very dry read and will struggle to finish it, just as I struggled to finish it (the only text this whole quarter that I had trouble finishing I might add). Now, I must admit that it is possible that I found this text difficult because I simply could not relate to Nadia because I found her character rather flat and uninteresting, and this could show some kind of lack of understanding of her perspective.

                The subject of the book, however, is one that I think most students would respond well to. I think they would find it interesting to try to understand the thought process of a potential religious radical and to see how they might be lead, based on their beliefs, to seek violent and suicidal means of making their opinions heard. I think this look into this kind of psyche would be very chilling and would elicit discussion that would really delve into issues that are facing our world today. With this in mind, I think we, as educators, would need to be prepared for the kind of emotional response that this kind of literature could engender in our students and help them control said feelings and concerns.

                All in all, I think that had this book been written in a different way it could have been effective in its efforts to help the reader understand the mindset of its main character, but the way that it is written seems ineffective and uninteresting to me.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

As a text I think that Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian would be remarkably effective for high school English instruction. The fact that it deals with things such as racism, cultural prejudice, socio-economic issues and many other aspects of modern life through an adolescent perspective and does so in a well written and composed manner is fantastic. My only concern with teaching the text personally is some of the language and sexually suggestive (and not so suggestive) material that is lightly peppered throughout the text. These things would not be overly difficult to deal with, however, and add sufficiently to the flavor of the narrative that I think arguments could be made for the inclusion and discussion of them in high school classrooms.

                The various drawings and comics contained within the pages further improve the application of this text with an adolescent audience and would provide a means whereby you can discuss the social issues represented from multiple different creative mediums, even allowing for the opportunity of students to create their own drawings or comics in relation to these issues. Arnold’s ability to express his emotions through these drawings can help students develop tools of their own to deal with issues that they are facing in an increasingly difficult, diverse and demanding world.

                Alexie’s ability to tap into the adolescent mind and deal with almost every difficult issue a teenager may face is truly amazing, his willingness to face things like death, sexual attraction, violence and alcoholism speaks volumes about this insight. I would hope that at some time in my career as an educator I would be able to teach this book to my students and get their take on Alexie’s perspective of these difficult issues. Plus, as Alexie is a local writer in Washington state, students would be able to relate to the locations and culture that much more readily than they might otherwise.

Ragtime by EL Doctorow Book Talk

Description: Ragtime is an historical fiction novel based at the turn of the 20^th Century and features many key historical figures of the time: Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini and Evelyn Nesbit to name a few. Each of these characters are tangential to the actual story, however, which features a family of characters who are known simply as Father, Mother, Mother’s Younger Brother and Little Boy. This family becomes embroiled in the circumstances surrounding an African-American Pianist named Coalhouse Walker Jr. whose automobile is destroyed and desecrated by a private fire-fighting company in New Rochelle, New York. Coalhouse demands justice for this act of racist violence and humiliation and is rejected by civil means of retribution and thus takes justice into his own hands, demanding the return and restoration of his car as well as the death of the fire chief responsible.

Rationale: I put forward this book as an ideal book for the classroom because it deals with an issue that is still very much a part of our society and still needs to be addressed. Furthermore, it provides a rare glimpse of racism occurring outside of the American South, helping students to understand that racism is not just a Southern issue. I also like the fact that it takes place in a period of American history that is often under-represented in our education system; introducing things like the Harry K. Thaw murder trial (also known as “The Trial of the Century”) and the blossoming of the movie industry. I would recommend this novel be taught in an 11-12^th grade classroom as it contains mature material that would be better handled by an older audience.

Teaching Ideas:

·         I think this book would work excellently in a dual-disciplined Social Studies/English classroom as a chance to work with the much ignored early part of the 20^th Century. It could further be used as a text to introduce the issue of racism in the U.S.

·         Teachers could also use this text to draw connections between interpretations of the same story in different media forms as Ragtime is also a movie (made in 1981) and a Broadway musical.

·         Educators could also approach Ragtime from a stylistic angle, accentuating Doctorow’s use of large block paragraphs and no separation of dialogue (including no use of quotation marks).

Obstacles: Parents and administrators would most likely object to the explicit sexual material that appears in the first fifty or so pages of the text. Specifically, these are related to the sexual abuse of Evelyn Nesbit (pictured above) by her husband Harry Kendall Thaw, and her lover, the famous architect and victim of murder, Stanford White. There is one scene related to Mother’s Younger Brother that deals with masturbation and is again linked to Evelyn Nesbit. All of these instances, however, are brief and mentioned primarily as a statement of historic fact (in the case of Evelyn’s sexual abuse) or character building/humor (in the case of MYB). Students’ primary concerns would likely stem from the daunting paragraph lengths.

Readicide

               Gallagher’s Readicide brings up a subject that I have struggled with concerning academic reading for years. In school, it irritated me that we would focus so much on why Harper Lee said what she said, or how symbolism works in Lord of the Flies, or any number of other nitpicky little details that seemed to detract from the enjoyment of the story. Consequently, until I got out of high school and had an opportunity to read To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies on my own, I detested them. By focusing so much on trying to wrench out every little bit of critique and literary device used in the books they introduced me to, my teachers effectively slaughtered any interest I had for them. I, however, am a lover of books and actually have a fondness for discussing them, imagine how those who don’t love books must have felt with this inundation of what they must have viewed as completely pointless information.

                The statistics that Gallagher presents in his book are fascinating to me. Seeing that allowing students to read simply for the fun of it does not negatively affect their ability to read and write well, and may, in fact, help nurture such ability more effectively than trying to cram literary device and critique down their throats is remarkable. Furthermore, his support for the practice of silent sustained reading seems to fly in the face of pedagogical practice that existed during my time in high school (nearly twenty years ago). At that time, SSR was just considered a practice of lazy teachers and was viewed as simply a chance for teachers to catch up on grading assignments and checking email that they couldn’t get to during their prep period. Gallagher helped me to understand that such a practice can help offset some of the damage that might be done by our efforts as teachers to help our students grasp the concepts that our curriculums and standards require us to teach.

I read it, but I don't get it.

Tovani’s book has a remarkable amount of information about how to help those students who struggle with reading, and the various ideas and reading strategies are very well constructed. Upon first reading the book I felt that much of what she was saying seemed to be aimed at an age group much younger than the High School students that I intend to teach, but if I were to tweak some of the work sheets and strategies a little it could easily be used for an older audience.

                I have always supported the idea of actively reading any text. By that I mean reading with a pen in your hand and having a real conversation with the text as you read. I recognized this as a habit of good readers, but for some reason had not made the connection that if readers who struggled were to use the same strategy it would help them to come to a better understanding of the intent of the author and the difficult or more confusing passages of the text. Using this strategy to tie what the reader already knows outside of the text to help them understand what is inside the text is common sense, but having the means within my hands to help students make that connection is invaluable.

                Most interesting of all, however, is this idea of fake reading. Even as a fairly accomplished reader, I have found myself committing the act of fake reading when I have to deal with difficult texts in my college courses as well as in my own reading at home. Surprisingly enough, even as an excellent reader, I often felt that if I could simply pronounce the words and go through the text with a certain mellifluousness I was accomplishing comprehension, even when, after completing a text, I couldn’t really explain to anyone what it was that I had just read.