Signs of Improvement

This weeks ranks as the best one I have had thus far; I attribute this to the changes I have made over the past two weeks. I have tried to have a little more engaging lessons, while also being a little more engaging as a teacher. I learned the most on Monday, just because it was a lesson plan that involved adaptation literally every class period; second period was nothing like the first, third was nothing like second, and so forth. Adjustments were made left and right, and for one of the first times, I think the week was pretty successful in spite of its shortcomings. I created a review game, Jeopardy-style, which was apparently something to which the students were not accustomed and gave them some broad short answer questions to make sure they understood some of the main concepts, such as assimilation, something which I have tried to drive home since the beginning of the lesson. A few of the students still had no clue, but I was impressed by a large number of the answers, especially since some of them used examples that I had never even discussed, leading me to believe they truly were able to synthesize the information.

We completed A Raisin in the Sun, much to the delight of many students and to the disappointment of others, and are now about to begin our summative performance. In addition to the post-test, I have asked them to write and act out a scene set some time after the play ends. I followed your advice, as well as my host teachers’ and wrote out scenarios for them to get them going. Giving them only two work days makes me a bit uneasy, so giving them something off of which to go will make a huge difference. I also used the idea of having them pull from a hat and giving them the option of switching only if they do so blindly; it turned out really well. For example, in one scene, Travis is being bullied at school, in another Ruth has her baby, and in the most popular one, Walter gets a call from Bobo saying that someone spotted Willy in town, causing Walter to evaluate his options. Today’s work session went way better than I expected; it was nice to see some more reluctant students jump into the project and to overhear them throwing suggestions out to the group. I do not know why I am surprised; I saw this exact thing happen in my ninth grade placement, and that was only an informal tableau-type setting. I have booked the auditorium for Monday and Tuesday, so that they can practice and perform on stage.

Once again, I have taken away the lesson that all schools are places where wrenches get thrown into the plans of teachers on a daily basis. I had already planned for two work days and a presentation day, with the last two days spent watching the film; my host teacher got an e-mail today from a counselor saying that all 10th grade English teachers have to administer some pilot writing test in preparation for the ACT. There is not much that can be done about it, since all of the teachers’ hands are tied, but that at the very least prevents the full viewing of the movie, which is a shame because it is such a great film and one I believe the students deserve to see. I could still show it to them, but it would either be truncated or would continue over after Spring Break, which probably would be be doing the students a disservice. The tenth grade teachers are upset and are looking for alternatives. We will see what happens.

Confession of a Readicidal Maniac

After reading Readicide, I now know just how frustrating it can be to structure a lesson/class period in a way that helps students become more enthusiastic readers, rather than stifling them. For example, Gallagher writes about how you should neither overteacher or underteach the texts, and should provide them the opportunity to examine lengthy chunks of texts in depth, rather than small chunks broken up. We have officially covered the first half of Raisin in the Sun and I feel like it is going incredibly well; we are getting a great deal of discussion out of it and the kids are enthusiastic about reading out loud (I really expected a few students to take the reins, but students actually bicker about who is going to read what. It's cool. One student, in his interest inventory, indicated that he wants to go to Julliard to pursue acting after high school. The guy nails Sidney Poitier's Walter Younger. Holy smokes.)

But anyways, I feel like I am backed into a corner when I am planning lessons right now because this is the unit I am using for my teacher work sample. In fifty minute classes, I usually devote the first five, maybe ten, minutes to some sort of frontloading activity and going over what we had read the previous day, then roughly thirty minutes to actual reading, breaking it up with "Say Something" (Beers), or a think-aloud. I feel like, in terms of my lesson plans that I am submitting to be graded, that this is way too much time to devote to actual reading, and that I should be doing more activities, and that you should not focus on "covering" material so much, but this is a 130 page play. You have to cover the material at some point. I have been given my parameters: we do not have class sets of books and we have to read the play aloud. If I cut back on the reading and say "we will only read for 15 minutes", we end up covering like four pages and I feel like I run the risk of committing readicide by breaking up the reading into little bits too much and overteaching the stuff. On the other hand, my lesson plans looks incredibly boring to someone grading them: I don't know if I am giving my field supervisor what she wants from me. I think everything is going well. Journals, quizzes, questions, and discussions lead me to believe the students get it. So how do I find the balance?

...and Finally We Read Something

Finally, after three weeks of placement, my classes were able to read something. After finishing a unit on persuasive writing, we are jumping into a drama unit, which I will be running and implementing using my own lesson plans. We finished up the play Trifles over the course of two days and we are about to begin Raisin in the Sun, on which I am going to do my TWS. I am dreading it like the plague, just because of its length. Correction: I am dreading it because of my students' reactions to its length. Trifles, a play which is less than ten pages, was like pulling teeth to read aloud, with far more than its share of whining coming from the students. I can only imagine how a 120 page play is going to go over with students.

I am still entirely conflicted on how I feel about the way things are done in the classroom; I know the value of reading aloud, but I hate that circumstances such as a lack of classroom books leads to a decision to read an entire work aloud. In some of the inclusion classes, it makes sense, but even then, it is frustrating that I can't assign ten pages and then have some room for discussion. Granted, I want to break up the reading and have time for things that are actually engaging to students, but it is frustrating when there is so much to "cover". How do I cover an important work in a limited time without sacrificing the stuff students can actually tolerate? Multiply this anxiety by 50x when we start reading To Kill a Mockingbird aloud in its entirety; a 300+ page book (that I personally despise more than any other book.)

This past week, I incorporated a tableau at the end of Trifles to what I feel are sub-par results. THIS was what I expected to happen when I with the ninth graders; the students found it to be "lame" or (insert homophobic slur of your choice here). Very few students actually wanted to participate (although it varied from class to class.) I was surprised that it was actually in the class full of good readers where the extended alternate ending went off the best. The lower-level courses were the ones from which the most opposition came.

In other news, I also did a guided imagery with the classes that went very well and did a good job making the students infer; it set up Trifles perfectly, with students noting that "the women look unhappy", "there is a man with a notebook, so he's probably a detective", "everyone is bundled up, so it is cold", and "the mood is serious". It is not all complaints but this week was definitely one of the bumps I have hit in the road. I am hoping to learn from the mistakes of the past week and try to have a smoother week with Raisin in the Sun, which might be possible since it is a much more contemporary and engaging play. Here goes.

"I don't know, I don't read books"

The first week of placement was a week of extremes; I came in with a vision of what I thought the classes would be like, only to experience a great deal of frustration when these expectations were torn down. Over the course of the week, however, things improved and I am now a bit more hopeful about what the next nine weeks has in store. This placement is far different from my other two placements, although in many ways, it is the same; the similarities between the two placements lie mainly in the phenomenon we read about time in time again. Kids are reading little and are often struggling, even in the “regular” classroom.

I am in placement that spans the spectrum of the tracking system. There is one advanced class, one “regular” college prep class, three inclusion classes, and one “resource” (special education) class with students who have mild intellectual disabilities and/or specific learning disabilities. My first day was spent sitting and watching students take something similar to a benchmark for their reading and their math scores, which spanned as high as a perfect score and as low as 6 out of 40 reading questions.

In terms of literacy, I was lucky to have a host teacher who had oddly enough created a journal topic that essentially asked students to write about their favorite book, although not entirely. She asked “If you could preserve one book for the future, what would it be and why?” I was shocked and sort of disappointed to hear a SUBSTANTIAL group of students in all of the classes (even the advanced class) say “I don’t know any books. I don’t read.” Others put the book Night by Elie Wiesel, which I think is a fantastic book, but many of them put “It’s a good book” as the single reason they would save the book. I found out later that they had read the book in class. It troubles me that they had so much trouble coming up with any other books from outside of class, and that they could not decipher the significance of a perfectly acceptable book they discussed in-depth during their class. I will be doing my unit on Raisin in the Sun, followed by To Kill a Mockingbird. All of these will be read aloud in all of the classes; I am not sure how I feel about this, because on one hand, I think reading aloud is highly important, but on another, it is going to take an incredibly long time to even cover the material without discussion.

he resource class is reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone aloud. Most read on a first or second grade level and have IEPs that require reading aloud. I spent a lot of time teaching vocabulary one-on-one with a student who could not read the vocabulary words or the definitions. I did this every day this week, using sentences off the top of my head and examples I could find in the classroom. Not going to lie: when he took his quiz today and got all of them right, I felt great, especially when I read out the word “rigid” and he repeated my example of “the book is more rigid than the paper.” Feels good. I hope I can have more involvement in the resource class; we are about to start reading Rumble Fish.

I made an effort to engage all students I saw reading independently about what they were reading. Those students who were reading were more than happy to talk to me about it. I questioned one girl about what she was reading and found that she was reading a manga book. When I told her I knew very little about manga/anime but that I wanted to learn more about them, as well as graphic novels, because I want my students to be able to have the option to read them, she lit up. We spent (probably too much) time discussing it and the next day, she came in with the first five volumes and asked me if I wanted to borrow them. She seemed legitimately happy that someone was asking her about what she liked, which just goes back to the readings we have on student choice and motivation. Another kid was reading Paradise Lost; when I expressed how impressed I was that he was reading such a difficult and heavy text, he talked about his love of The Divine Comedy. Another student was reading a John Green book that I had just finished reading; she seemed completely shocked that I had read the book and was so eager to talk about the book that I had to promise her an audience later, but that she had to finish her essay in the meantime.

The students who enjoyed reading were eager to read and to talk about their reading. It’s encouraging to see those few students and to think about the possibilities of converting a few more students along the course of this placement. I am ready to accept the challenge head-on.

The Timeline

My literary history is hazy, to say the least. I do not remember going to bed and being read to, although I know it happened. I do not remember what book gave me the “eureka” moment as a child, although things get a little clearer somewhere around second grade, when I became engrossed in the AR program and read everything under the sun. In this sob story, a boy with a mullet and no friends reads Boxcar Children books at recess. Other books included any fiction book about baseball and the Fudge series. I read lots of books by Matt Christopher and R.L. Stine.

We’re blurry in middle school. Somewhere those years got lost in the shuffle. I read what was assigned to me and nothing more. The Giver. That’s all that’s coming to mind.

High school rolls around and I start to come into my own in terms of worldview, political view, sense of humor, all that jazz. I remember reading Breakfast of Champions and Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut multiple times over, as well as the rest of his work. I was blown away by the fact that an author spoke to me, wrote the exact things I was thinking at the time, and more importantly, did so in a way that never stopped being funny and never stopped being intelligent. If you read those books, Vonnegut is making some pretty scathing critiques of institutions: social, political, religious, etc. But he does so in a way that is amused, clever, witty. As someone who tends to worry about things, those books are a pleasant reminder to sort of live the best way you can and not to stress about things that can’t be helped. Other books at the time included One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Catch-22. All funny books, all very observant and critical. I got into Hemingway and Faulkner a great bit during this time, as well as Camus’ works The Stranger and The Plague.

In college, I majored in political science and read those textbooks and little else. After I finished my major early, I tacked on an English minor; it was the best decision I have ever made, just because it got me back into reading heavily. I took a class on Cormac McCarthy, Larry Brown, and Wendell Berry, which to date is my favorite class ever. It was a great deal of reading, but well worth it. Wendell Berry should be taught in every classroom, although he gets very little recognition outside of being a poet. He is a brilliant essayist and despite coming from a different perspective than myself, his works on community, food, the environment, and politics resonate with me. “Praise ignorance / for what man has not encountered / he cannot destroy.” You just shivered, didn't you? Likewise, with Cormac McCarthy, you've got this incredible, vivid prose describing these horrific situations and deeply flawed people. Basically, every time I have read one of his books (Child of God and Outer Dark are at like four times apiece at this point), I have had the same sick feeling in my stomach when I reach certain parts. That's when you've succeeded as a writer.

It was during this time when I also began writing creatively again; for a while, it was all I did and I still would give anything to sit and write without having to do anything else. I wrote many short stories over the year I was out of school, as well as a longer piece that I am still working on, thanks to the writer workshop we did earlier in another class. I have sort of reached a point now where I don’t immediately hate what I write, and I generally get good feedback from people with whom I share, but I still get really nervous when people read anything I’ve written. On the bright side, I no longer play in a band, so people aren’t listening to me sing what I’ve written---that, my friend, is abysmal stuff. (Side note: I'm pretty sure that movie "War Horse" got its general premise from a song by my old band RankResistance called "Horseshoes and Hand Grenades". I mean, I haven't seen the movie, but still, Mr. Spielberg...)

I am constantly trying to expand my literary territories (hooray for buzzwords). I want to be able to relate with as many of my students as possible, as well as make suggestions that may help them find things they enjoy. It really only takes one book to resonate with someone to hook a lifelong reader, and I hope to be the facilitator of that. I intend to have a book suggestion wall (like the one that was in my last placement) and start out the year with some sort of questionnaire to find what type of books (if any) my students like, as well as films/music/etc. As a nerd of all media, I could talk endlessly about any of that, and themes translate across different forms (i.e. If you are a fan of this movie, you should read this book.) I never really bought into the whole concept of a book changing one’s life, but in the past couple of years or so, I’ve become a believer.

OK, I’m going to close up shop here (sorry for the length), but before I do, I will put up my short list of books that have “shaped” me into the person I…true or not, it still sounds cheesy. I can provide explanations later.

Breakfast of Champions/Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (see above.)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (Just like Vonnegut in the sense that it shows you can be critical and even angry, but still keep your wits about yourself and still sit back and marvel at the absurdity of behavior from time to time. Sometimes life gets rough---it's best if you can find a way to laugh to keep from crying.)

1984 by George Orwell (Was great for me to have when I was getting politically socialized. Lit a fire under me.)

The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (This book didn't do anything for me when I read it at first. It didn't appeal to my teenage angst. But reading it a couple of years ago, I was surprised to find that it is one of the saddest books I've ever read. We can all relate to wanting to say something and having no one---not even cab drivers or prostitutes---willing to listen to you.)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (Hands down my favorite book of all time. I can't even write about it. Let's just have coffee and discuss it.)

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell (I read this as a companion piece to As I Lay Dying. Like if you want the visceral reaction, but want to be able to understand it on the first go-around.)

Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community by Wendell Berry (a pretty well-rounded collection of essays comprising Wendell Berry's thoughts about everything except the Oxford comma)

Billy Budd, Sailor by Herman Melville

Child of God/Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy (See above. I get sick when I read both of these books. But I can't look away.)

The Plague by Albert Camus (The importance of this book to me probably has more to do with the timing of when I read it more than the book itself. That's all I've got)

Gorgias by Plato (Everyone should be taught Gorgias. Took it in a political rhetoric class and it is by far the most important lesson you can teach a student: the power of words to inform and to deceive. It is the most important text I can think of, at least.)

OK, seriously, that's all.