One of the biggest problems I have with writing that happens in schools is that it is not authentic. Students write because they have to, they write to a specific assignment, and the teacher is the only person who reads the writing. No wonder kids don't enjoy writing. One of my goals as a high school English teacher was for my students to think of themselves as writers by the end of the year. And to do that, they have to actually write, make decisions about their own writing, and share their writing with real people. As I read Randy Bomer's chapters on "People Who Make Things," I kept wanting to high-five him because he describes student writing that is real and purposeful.
Dr. Bomer addresses the need for a real audience; he mentions that students sometimes don't write well because they know that there is no real purpose behind the writing (p.200), and he stresses the need for publishing. I like the idea of having publishing "events" and the analogy of the teacher being like a director helping kids get ready for a play. During one personal writing unit each year, my classroom looked like what Dr. Bomer describes; students kept notebooks, met in writing groups, created and designed their own pieces, and created a class magazine at the end. The publishing day was one of my favorite of the year. But why did I not create that environment for all types of writing? Publishing really must be part of each piece of writing. Chapter 14, "Teaching Toward Participation in Digital Culture," made me think about publishing in ways I had not before. I tend to be a pen and paper kind of person, so I often forget all that we can do with our new literacies. (I am so inspired that I even tried creating links in this blog post!)
He also describes a shift in teacher thinking and purpose: "The key is to make students responsible for making decisions, but to teach actively what they need to know to make good decisions" (p.171). Rather than giving students assignments, we teach them to make their own decisions about writing. Last week in my Teaching Composition class, my writing group started talking about the difference between a prompt and an idea-generator. We thought that an idea-generator could be used anytime while a prompt could not; for example, thinking about a person (p.188) could help a writer get started writing anytime but eventually lead to their own topic while "write about the time you showed courage" could not.
When I taught more school-based forms of writing, I often gave students specific strategies, such as ways to generate ideas for a given assignment, ways to outline ideas, ways to organize different kinds of essays. One of my questions is if we teach students in a workshop model, what will be their experience when they go into a more teacher-directed classroom? Will they know how to sift through and respond to an assignment? I have been thinking quite a bit over my teaching life how to build curriculum around students, how to teach analysis in a meaningful way, and how to teach grammar in a way that doesn't make my students hate me. The kind of inquiry that I have read about in Katie Wood Ray's Study Driven and that Dr. Bomer describes in Ch. 13 has shown me a way to do each of those things.
One of the pieces of Dr. Bomer's book that I found most interesting was about language use. I wrote in an earlier post that we may need to call our subject Language Arts rather than English, and I thought that again while reading Building Adolescent Literacy. Students should use all of their languages while writing in their notebooks and for audiences. I think teachers and students do need to think about how they can use different languages to send different messages and serve different purposes. Then academic English becomes one of many possible languages, and our subject becomes less about English and more about language use.
Another favorite idea from Dr. Bomer: "Grading does not equal teaching. Furthermore, when a writer has finished a piece of writing, that's not the best moment to teach him what he needed to know to write it" (p.219). So logical but so often not the case.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms
I've been coming back to the the same question throughout this semester: what is the purpose of the study of English? I agree with Randy Bomer that is about more than preparing kids for college. We can't do school just to get students ready for more school. What about life after all that? What is the purpose of teaching reading and writing in school if students will not do those kinds of reading and writing in their real lives? If our purpose is to help students build independent literate lives, then the way we "do English" absolutely has to look different.
Starting with the whole-class novel. I have to admit that there are novels that I believe are so amazing and life-changing that I think all kids need to read them. But really? This question about what your reading life will be like once you are out of college struck me (p.71). I stopped reading outside of school once I got to high school and college. I stopped thinking of myself as a reader, and I didn't really have a reading life. My school reading certainly didn't support my own reading life outside of school or even ask me to think about such a life. But isn't that what we want--for kids to see themselves as readers and writers? We need "a curriculum that actually aims directly for these goals rather than hoping for them as a magical outcome of doing something completely different" (p.71). That makes so much sense, so why don't we teach that way?
Katherine Bomer often says that we must teach the writer, not the writing. I think that Randy Bomer is saying much the same thing about reading: teach the reader, not the reading. We have spent too much time in classroom teaching texts, teaching the reading of a certain text. But we have often neglected to teach the reader how to make his or her thinking explicit and how to take those mental actions from one text to the next. I like that these are not strategies that students "put on" their reading, but ways to recognize and refine what they already do when they interact with texts.
It makes so much sense that readers will not get better at reading by holding books in their hands that are too hard for them. It sounds like common sense, but schools subject students to this kind of reading instruction all the time. We absolutely have to cut out the experiences that are hurting kids. I'm not sure why some teachers feel like the more difficult the text, the better it is.
I like the idea of beginning the school year with listening to students talk about their literate lives and investigating their reading and writing lives. I also like the teaching of conversation (and think it's necessary, especially if talk is such a central part of the classroom).
My last post was about Appleman's Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading, and she has a similar argument that all readers struggle depending on the text and that readers need to have explicit instruction in reading in the context of literature instruction. I feel like Dr. Bomer fills in the pieces that seemed to be missing in Appleman's book, yet I think they had very different purposes and goals for their writing. One way that Dr. Bomer differs from Appleman is in his warning to teachers about including too many activities around reading, too many low-quality assignments. I think Dr. Bomer may feel that a text message conversation between Romeo and Juliet may be one such assignment.
I have also been guilty of being "activity-driven." It's hard to part with the "assignment mania" (p.123) when each lesson plan demands that students demonstrate the day's learning objective. My APs constantly asked us, "How do you know the kids got it?" We feel pressure to have students show what they learned, to produce tangible proof of their learning. But I agree that we need to reduce that clutter around reading. I am wondering, though, about assessment of reading aside from the notebook. I suppose the types of writing in chapter 9 could be assessed, but I would like a bit more on what to do with the unpleasant reality of grades and assessment.
Some favorite snippets:
"Banning literacy from the school day is a bad idea" (p.13). Ha, ha! yet, we do this all the time.
"I want students, through their literacy, to...be able to critique the world as it is, so that they can also imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities" (p.8).
Starting with the whole-class novel. I have to admit that there are novels that I believe are so amazing and life-changing that I think all kids need to read them. But really? This question about what your reading life will be like once you are out of college struck me (p.71). I stopped reading outside of school once I got to high school and college. I stopped thinking of myself as a reader, and I didn't really have a reading life. My school reading certainly didn't support my own reading life outside of school or even ask me to think about such a life. But isn't that what we want--for kids to see themselves as readers and writers? We need "a curriculum that actually aims directly for these goals rather than hoping for them as a magical outcome of doing something completely different" (p.71). That makes so much sense, so why don't we teach that way?
Katherine Bomer often says that we must teach the writer, not the writing. I think that Randy Bomer is saying much the same thing about reading: teach the reader, not the reading. We have spent too much time in classroom teaching texts, teaching the reading of a certain text. But we have often neglected to teach the reader how to make his or her thinking explicit and how to take those mental actions from one text to the next. I like that these are not strategies that students "put on" their reading, but ways to recognize and refine what they already do when they interact with texts.
It makes so much sense that readers will not get better at reading by holding books in their hands that are too hard for them. It sounds like common sense, but schools subject students to this kind of reading instruction all the time. We absolutely have to cut out the experiences that are hurting kids. I'm not sure why some teachers feel like the more difficult the text, the better it is.
I like the idea of beginning the school year with listening to students talk about their literate lives and investigating their reading and writing lives. I also like the teaching of conversation (and think it's necessary, especially if talk is such a central part of the classroom).
My last post was about Appleman's Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading, and she has a similar argument that all readers struggle depending on the text and that readers need to have explicit instruction in reading in the context of literature instruction. I feel like Dr. Bomer fills in the pieces that seemed to be missing in Appleman's book, yet I think they had very different purposes and goals for their writing. One way that Dr. Bomer differs from Appleman is in his warning to teachers about including too many activities around reading, too many low-quality assignments. I think Dr. Bomer may feel that a text message conversation between Romeo and Juliet may be one such assignment.
I have also been guilty of being "activity-driven." It's hard to part with the "assignment mania" (p.123) when each lesson plan demands that students demonstrate the day's learning objective. My APs constantly asked us, "How do you know the kids got it?" We feel pressure to have students show what they learned, to produce tangible proof of their learning. But I agree that we need to reduce that clutter around reading. I am wondering, though, about assessment of reading aside from the notebook. I suppose the types of writing in chapter 9 could be assessed, but I would like a bit more on what to do with the unpleasant reality of grades and assessment.
Some favorite snippets:
"Banning literacy from the school day is a bad idea" (p.13). Ha, ha! yet, we do this all the time.
"I want students, through their literacy, to...be able to critique the world as it is, so that they can also imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities" (p.8).
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Adolescent Literacy & the Teaching of Reading
Reading = a constellation of critical reasoning skills targeted toward knowledge construction; a way of encountering the world and making sense of it (p.38)
Deborah Appleman's opening argument in Adolescent Literacy and the Teaching of Reading is that literature teachers don't think of themselves as reading teachers. I absolutely agree and have had many moments in the classroom when I felt at a loss to teach reading skills. I learned how to analyze literature and how to help kids learn to analyze literature, but I never learned how to teach reading. I think it's hard too for lifelong readers (the English teacher types) to think about what happens as we read because it has become a natural process.
English teachers do tend to teach books rather than how to read them; the first time I had this revelation was when I read Kelly Gallagher's (2004) book Deeper Reading. He says, "If we simply assign writing instead of teaching students how to write, we'll get poor writing. If we simply assign reading instead of teaching students how to read, we'll get poor reading" (p.7). I have felt strongly about teaching writing to students rather than just assigning essays, yet I did not do the same with reading. I eventually realized that I expected students to be able to come to class ready to discuss symbolism, characterization, etc., but how were they supposed to do that after one reading of a difficult text? It really wasn't fair--I had read the book about 5 or more times to their one (probably quick) reading. I started giving students small sheets of paper to use as bookmarks but that also gave them a heads up as to what would be the focus of our discussion the next day. Then they did not have to attend to everything in the reading all at once on a first read through.
I rethought that strategy, however, as I was reading Adolescent Literacy because she finds that students need to engage in the transaction that Rosenblatt described and then name what they do naturally as readers. If I give my students a guide to reading, am I inhibiting them from noticing how they naturally read and work their way through a text?
I absolutely agree that what students can do with a text is more important than what they know about it. This stance would change many high school exams that test knowledge of novels with questions on quotation identification, plot details, and so on. The transfer of skills would be so much more possible; everyone forgets details about books, but if we know how to work through a difficult text, then we can use those skills with other books later on.
I like Appleman's claim that every reader is at some point proficient and at some point struggling. I agree that struggle really is not the issue--we will all find texts that we struggle with at one point or another. It is knowing what to do in those spots of difficulty that matters. Last semester I was with a group of students who told me from the beginning that they were not readers. They hated reading. I wanted them to see that they do read, just maybe in contexts that they hadn't thought about. I brought in a text message, a football play, and a baseball score box. Most of my students could easily read all three. I could read only the text message and had no idea how to interpret the other two. If we can open up what "text" means in our classrooms, I think students will see that they are readers and that all readers struggle with different kinds of texts.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
How English Teachers Get Taught
I really enjoyed reading How English Teachers Get Taught: Methods of Teaching the Methods Class by Smagorinsky & Whiting (1995). It is interesting to think about how teachers learn to teach but at this point for me, even more interesting to think about how methods course professors learn to teach teachers.
I strongly agree with Smagorinsky & Whiting that the methods class needs to be theoretically informed. Coming out of college, I did not feel like I had this theoretical background; I knew of quite a few activities to use in the classroom, but it was not until grad school that I started reading about the theories behind those approaches. I have always liked to know the why behind things, so I wanted to know why certain classroom strategies were better than others--I wanted to see the big picture. I do think that too many teachers go into teaching with a "bag of tricks," while they need to have an "understanding of teaching and leaning that can inform their decisions" (p.18) and not know only how to use the "tricks" in their bags, but also why and when. I agree as well that students need to read the theorists themselves rather than other authors' summaries (p.109). Teachers need to have this professional knowledge to be informed practitioners who are engaged in inquiry and everyday learning and research.
I also like the idea of including conflicting theories in the methods class but making those contradictions clear and explicit.
Another piece of the methods class that I believe is essential is the synthesis of knowledge. Planning individual lessons is a helpful skill, but students must learn how to organize larger instructional units. I think that students even need to plan semesters or years so that they learn how to see an overarching plan, a big picture, a larger purpose for each unit and day of instruction. Teachers need to know where they are headed and know their own big goals for themselves and their students (these should also be informed by theory and teaching philosophy).
A piece of teaching that I think may sometimes be left out of methods classes is assessment. I know that my classes focused on setting up instruction and carrying out those plans but did not spend time on how to assess student learning. Assessment is such a tricky topic that I can see why it might be avoided; however, it is for that reason that pre-service teachers should read and talk about it.
One question I have is how much do we prepare students for the system that is and how much do we prepare them to change or subvert that system? If we take on a Piagetian approach that works from the assumption that the teacher is not a diagnostician and remedialist, what will happen when our students go into our standards-based schools in which they are expected to diagnose and remediate?
I strongly agree with Smagorinsky & Whiting that the methods class needs to be theoretically informed. Coming out of college, I did not feel like I had this theoretical background; I knew of quite a few activities to use in the classroom, but it was not until grad school that I started reading about the theories behind those approaches. I have always liked to know the why behind things, so I wanted to know why certain classroom strategies were better than others--I wanted to see the big picture. I do think that too many teachers go into teaching with a "bag of tricks," while they need to have an "understanding of teaching and leaning that can inform their decisions" (p.18) and not know only how to use the "tricks" in their bags, but also why and when. I agree as well that students need to read the theorists themselves rather than other authors' summaries (p.109). Teachers need to have this professional knowledge to be informed practitioners who are engaged in inquiry and everyday learning and research.
I also like the idea of including conflicting theories in the methods class but making those contradictions clear and explicit.
Another piece of the methods class that I believe is essential is the synthesis of knowledge. Planning individual lessons is a helpful skill, but students must learn how to organize larger instructional units. I think that students even need to plan semesters or years so that they learn how to see an overarching plan, a big picture, a larger purpose for each unit and day of instruction. Teachers need to know where they are headed and know their own big goals for themselves and their students (these should also be informed by theory and teaching philosophy).
A piece of teaching that I think may sometimes be left out of methods classes is assessment. I know that my classes focused on setting up instruction and carrying out those plans but did not spend time on how to assess student learning. Assessment is such a tricky topic that I can see why it might be avoided; however, it is for that reason that pre-service teachers should read and talk about it.
One question I have is how much do we prepare students for the system that is and how much do we prepare them to change or subvert that system? If we take on a Piagetian approach that works from the assumption that the teacher is not a diagnostician and remedialist, what will happen when our students go into our standards-based schools in which they are expected to diagnose and remediate?
More Thoughts on Culture, Literacy, and Learning
I have been thinking about Lee's book since last week's class discussion. I have recently read Winn & Johnson's (2011) Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom, and I have found what I was looking for in Lee's text. Winn and Johnson state, "Culturally relevant pedagogy is not merely an invitation for students to explore their lived experiences, ideas, and communities, but it can provide ways to map these individual experences onto a global platform" (p.27). They further explain that culturally relevant pedagogy "seeks to allow students to examine and question sociocultural and sociopolitical realities that affect their lives" (p.22). This is the piece that I feel is missing in Lee's cultural data sets. She brings student's prior knowledge and cultures into the classroom, but once the students move to the analysis of "academic" texts, the process stops. It seems like the process needs to move back into students' lives for the learning to be relevant. The students now know how to perform close readings of literature--so what? How will that enable students to look more critically at their lives, their world, and work to change their world? I feel like there needs to be a larger purpose than just analyzing literature.
I am also becoming more and more wary of using a New Critical framework for teaching literature. (And this is coming from someone who used that very framework for years.) I do think that close reading is a skill that will aid students in high school and college work, but I do not think that is the best overall approach.
After our class discussion last week, I started thinking about how culturally relevant pedagogy is used primarily with African American and/or Latino populations. But I think that white students need this type of pedagogy as well. Why are there no articles or books about how white students need exposure to diverse texts and "cultural data sets"? For another class last week I read "There is No 'Race' in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School" by Amanda E. Lewis (2001). She explains how the white teachers, students, and parents claim that race does not matter in their school, yet she sees interactions that prove those beliefs to be false. Lewis state that "it is often Whites’ lack of understanding of their own roles as racial actors that stands as a roadblock to further progress toward racial justice” (p.782) and goes on to argue that "education that is critical, multicultural, and focused on racial justice cannot be reserved only for students of color....In this way, it is crucial that Whites learn more not only about the reality of racial inequality, but also about their own role in its reproduction" (p.804). I absolutely agree and want to think more about this topic.
I am also becoming more and more wary of using a New Critical framework for teaching literature. (And this is coming from someone who used that very framework for years.) I do think that close reading is a skill that will aid students in high school and college work, but I do not think that is the best overall approach.
After our class discussion last week, I started thinking about how culturally relevant pedagogy is used primarily with African American and/or Latino populations. But I think that white students need this type of pedagogy as well. Why are there no articles or books about how white students need exposure to diverse texts and "cultural data sets"? For another class last week I read "There is No 'Race' in the Schoolyard: Color-Blind Ideology in an (Almost) All-White School" by Amanda E. Lewis (2001). She explains how the white teachers, students, and parents claim that race does not matter in their school, yet she sees interactions that prove those beliefs to be false. Lewis state that "it is often Whites’ lack of understanding of their own roles as racial actors that stands as a roadblock to further progress toward racial justice” (p.782) and goes on to argue that "education that is critical, multicultural, and focused on racial justice cannot be reserved only for students of color....In this way, it is crucial that Whites learn more not only about the reality of racial inequality, but also about their own role in its reproduction" (p.804). I absolutely agree and want to think more about this topic.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Culture, Literacy, & Learning
I like the title of Carol Lee's book Culture, Literacy, and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind. Schools do often feel like whirlwinds with little time for one-on-one interactions or meaningful classroom practices in a culture of high-stakes testing. I appreciate Lee's honesty about the often overwhelming culture of schools, negative attitudes of teachers and policy-makers, and difficulties in students' lives. She offers, however, pictures of engaged students and caring teachers involved in what she calls "Cultural Modeling."
I do have a few concerns about using cultural data sets. Teachers must recognize diversity within cultural groups and must avoid essentializing those groups, as Lee asserts. She acknowledges that she mistakenly assumed that her students would respond to an R&B song. We cannot assume that because our students are African American that they will necessarily enjoy a rap or R&B song. I wonder about classrooms that involve multiple cultural groups--how can a teacher use cultural data sets with students with diverse backgrounds and interests? I'm also thinking about how Lee uses the data sets to lead to canonical texts. The students practice problem-solving with more familiar texts, but the purpose is to use those skills with more "academic texts." Does this set up the cultural texts as merely introductory, as having less inherent or "serious" value than "school texts"? In using cultural data sets, the teacher would have to be careful to not "use" students' home culture or position the data sets as gimmicks to get students interested and involved. Similarly, how do we move students from an "everyday explanation" (usually oral) to a more "formal explanation" (usually written) without devaluing the students' language. Again, we start with the students' practices but then move them to school-based practices. It seems like no matter how hard we try to value what students know and do, we always end up privileging academic practices/language/knowledge.
As I read about the use of cultural data sets, I kept thinking about the position of the teacher and the cultural knowledge that the teacher must have. I kept asking myself, "What about my position as a white teacher?" Would my use of cultural data sets seem authentic to students?
Lee focused much of her explanations on how to connect students' lives and knowledge to school-based problem solving, but what about the reverse? How does literary reasoning and close reading transfer to students' real lives outside of school? How do the students see the discussions of literature as valuable and meaningful?
I like Lee's idea of focusing on "flexible conceptual understandings" rather than merely giving students procedural knowledge (p.38) and explaining to students how the concepts are related to each other (p.115). The knowledge of how rather than what is important in helping students problem solve across different contexts. What I'm struggling with is that the teacher is the one who "revoice[s] contextualized claims as general propositions that can be applied across similar problems" (p.76). If the teacher translates the students' words and labels what students have accomplished, do the students understand what they are doing or have done? Do they fully recognize what the teacher is labeling?
Lee says that she works from a New Criticism orientation (p.62) that focuses on close reading of texts. Is this the best place to start? Lee mentions Appleman once in her book, and I think that I would start with a critical framework and then work toward close reading.
Several of Lee's strategies reminded me of Rosenblatt: "rules of notice," metacognitive reflection, making sense while reading, rules of configuration, connecting details into patterns.
In a couple of post-conferences with interns, I have talked about how they feel about noise in the classroom. One intern spoke of her concern with students being quiet. Many pre-service and new teachers equate quiet with student attention and learning, when this may actually not be the case at all. Lee found that the students were most engaged when they were involved in mutiparty overlapping talk (p.101). Noise in the classroom can be productive and on-task. I have also seen the interns rely on the IRE pattern of talk; they feel the need to control the questioning so that they "cover" what they intend for students to know by the end of the lesson. Lee found also that student reasoning was highest when the teacher did not dominate discussion. How can we encourage new teachers and help them build confidence so that they feel comfortable stepping back and letting students take the lead?
I do have a few concerns about using cultural data sets. Teachers must recognize diversity within cultural groups and must avoid essentializing those groups, as Lee asserts. She acknowledges that she mistakenly assumed that her students would respond to an R&B song. We cannot assume that because our students are African American that they will necessarily enjoy a rap or R&B song. I wonder about classrooms that involve multiple cultural groups--how can a teacher use cultural data sets with students with diverse backgrounds and interests? I'm also thinking about how Lee uses the data sets to lead to canonical texts. The students practice problem-solving with more familiar texts, but the purpose is to use those skills with more "academic texts." Does this set up the cultural texts as merely introductory, as having less inherent or "serious" value than "school texts"? In using cultural data sets, the teacher would have to be careful to not "use" students' home culture or position the data sets as gimmicks to get students interested and involved. Similarly, how do we move students from an "everyday explanation" (usually oral) to a more "formal explanation" (usually written) without devaluing the students' language. Again, we start with the students' practices but then move them to school-based practices. It seems like no matter how hard we try to value what students know and do, we always end up privileging academic practices/language/knowledge.
As I read about the use of cultural data sets, I kept thinking about the position of the teacher and the cultural knowledge that the teacher must have. I kept asking myself, "What about my position as a white teacher?" Would my use of cultural data sets seem authentic to students?
Lee focused much of her explanations on how to connect students' lives and knowledge to school-based problem solving, but what about the reverse? How does literary reasoning and close reading transfer to students' real lives outside of school? How do the students see the discussions of literature as valuable and meaningful?
I like Lee's idea of focusing on "flexible conceptual understandings" rather than merely giving students procedural knowledge (p.38) and explaining to students how the concepts are related to each other (p.115). The knowledge of how rather than what is important in helping students problem solve across different contexts. What I'm struggling with is that the teacher is the one who "revoice[s] contextualized claims as general propositions that can be applied across similar problems" (p.76). If the teacher translates the students' words and labels what students have accomplished, do the students understand what they are doing or have done? Do they fully recognize what the teacher is labeling?
Lee says that she works from a New Criticism orientation (p.62) that focuses on close reading of texts. Is this the best place to start? Lee mentions Appleman once in her book, and I think that I would start with a critical framework and then work toward close reading.
Several of Lee's strategies reminded me of Rosenblatt: "rules of notice," metacognitive reflection, making sense while reading, rules of configuration, connecting details into patterns.
In a couple of post-conferences with interns, I have talked about how they feel about noise in the classroom. One intern spoke of her concern with students being quiet. Many pre-service and new teachers equate quiet with student attention and learning, when this may actually not be the case at all. Lee found that the students were most engaged when they were involved in mutiparty overlapping talk (p.101). Noise in the classroom can be productive and on-task. I have also seen the interns rely on the IRE pattern of talk; they feel the need to control the questioning so that they "cover" what they intend for students to know by the end of the lesson. Lee found also that student reasoning was highest when the teacher did not dominate discussion. How can we encourage new teachers and help them build confidence so that they feel comfortable stepping back and letting students take the lead?
Monday, March 5, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Short Stories
Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/
Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas"
http://www.miafarrow.org/omelas.html
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"
http://www.has.vcu.edu/eng/webtext/hills/hills.htm
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/
Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas"
http://www.miafarrow.org/omelas.html
Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"
http://www.has.vcu.edu/eng/webtext/hills/hills.htm
From English to Cultural Studies
I've been thinking about how we name the subject we teach. Rosenblatt called it "the arts of language," which I like. But Deborah Appleman in Critical Encounters in High School English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents suggests the name "cultural studies," which I think I like even better. Calling the subject English is limiting in the languages and types of literature that the name suggests. Cultural Studies, on the other hand, opens up the subject to all types of texts, many aspects of culture, and multiple cultures.
I've also been thinking about why we study literature; isn't it about exploring the cultures in which we live? Appleman uses literary theory to give purpose to reading and studying literature:
- read from a multiplicity of perspectives and recognize the limitations in our current perspcetives
- read the cultural texts that surround us
- use the skill of reading to understand the world around us (read the world)
- recognize ideologies that exist in texts and in our world
- recognize what factors have shaped our worldviews
- move beyond dualistic thinking
- discern how power and privilege are inscribed all around us
Appleman says, "We are no longer transmitting knowledge, offering literature as content, as an aesthetic experience, or as neutral artifacts of our collective cultural heritage" (p.11). These reasons for teaching literature have seemed insufficient to me in the past. The use of literary theory, as Appleman describes it, gives purposes to studying literature that I believe are worthwhile and relevant in that we can connects what students do in school to the real world outside of school.
Studying literature becomes much more than learning and refining skills; it becomes "a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it, by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read" (p.81).
While I find much value in Rosenblatt's theories of reader response, I find that approach a bit limiting. I enjoyed reading Appleman's response to a reader-centered study of literature, and I like the idea of teaching reader reponse as one lens of many, one tool that students can use. I also think it is important for students to be able to name what they are doing in school. I often used different literary theories with my studednts, but I kept them "behind the curtain" rather than explicitly telling students what they were doing. There is power in naming and in knowing what the theories are so that we can call upon them later.
Ideas from Critical Encounters that I would like to try:
- have students critique the lenses that they have used
- create questions about a text based on the lenses
- look at one piece through multiple lenses
- examine cultural artifacts using multiple theories
I've also been thinking about why we study literature; isn't it about exploring the cultures in which we live? Appleman uses literary theory to give purpose to reading and studying literature:
- read from a multiplicity of perspectives and recognize the limitations in our current perspcetives
- read the cultural texts that surround us
- use the skill of reading to understand the world around us (read the world)
- recognize ideologies that exist in texts and in our world
- recognize what factors have shaped our worldviews
- move beyond dualistic thinking
- discern how power and privilege are inscribed all around us
Appleman says, "We are no longer transmitting knowledge, offering literature as content, as an aesthetic experience, or as neutral artifacts of our collective cultural heritage" (p.11). These reasons for teaching literature have seemed insufficient to me in the past. The use of literary theory, as Appleman describes it, gives purposes to studying literature that I believe are worthwhile and relevant in that we can connects what students do in school to the real world outside of school.
Studying literature becomes much more than learning and refining skills; it becomes "a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it, by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read" (p.81).
While I find much value in Rosenblatt's theories of reader response, I find that approach a bit limiting. I enjoyed reading Appleman's response to a reader-centered study of literature, and I like the idea of teaching reader reponse as one lens of many, one tool that students can use. I also think it is important for students to be able to name what they are doing in school. I often used different literary theories with my studednts, but I kept them "behind the curtain" rather than explicitly telling students what they were doing. There is power in naming and in knowing what the theories are so that we can call upon them later.
Ideas from Critical Encounters that I would like to try:
- have students critique the lenses that they have used
- create questions about a text based on the lenses
- look at one piece through multiple lenses
- examine cultural artifacts using multiple theories
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Another favorite poem
| War Photograph | ||
| by Kate Daniels | ||
A naked child is running along the path toward us, her arms stretched out, her mouth open, the world turned to trash behind her. She is running from the smoke and the soldiers, from the bodies of her mother and little sister thrown down into a ditch, from the blown-up bamboo hut from the melted pots and pans. And she is also running from the gods who have changed the sky to fire and puddled the earth with skin and blood. She is running--my god--to us, 10,000 miles away, reading the caption beneath her picture in a weekly magazine. All over the country we're feeling sorry for her and being appalled at the war being fought in the other world. She keeps on running, you know, after the shutter of the camera clicks. She's running to us. For how can she know, her feet beating a path on another continent? How can she know what we really are? From the distance, we look so terribly human. | ||
Hamlet, Act I, scene 2 - one of my favorites
O, that this
too too sullied flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month--
Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she--
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
Rosenblatt's The Reader, the Text, and the Poem
As I was reading the first three chapters of Rosenblatt's The Reader, the Text, and the Poem, I had the idea that transactional theory was more about an emotional response by the reader to the text. However, Rosenblatt corrected my idea at the beginning of chapter 4: "Even as we are generating the work of art, we are reacting to it" (p.48). As we react emotionally to a text, we also recognize patterns and look for unity. I like the idea of "contextual ambiance" (p.85) that is created by various elements in the text and that affects the way we feel while reading a text. Recognizing literary or poetic devices is a way to name and organize the emotional responses we have to a text, and this practice does connect the cognitive to the affective (p.92-94).
Rosenblatt says that the "analyst is not reading the text in order to create a work of art; he is reading efferently in order to make a systematic classification of elements" (p.89). Do we sometimes train students to read that way? When we do, we take away the experience of encountering a work of art.
I have had trouble the past few years with teaching formal analysis while still recognizing the text as a work of art, as Rosenblatt says. I wrote last week about how in my teaching, I sometimes separated the readers' responses from the "more serious" analysis. Rosenblatt has made me think about how the recognition of various aspects of the text should grow out of the reader's response and the way the reader shapes the text and organizes the text through the reading process. Rather than a formal anlysis, it becomes a "heightened awareness" or "admiring recognition" (p.69).
I have thought much in my teaching and writing lives of writing as a craft, yet I have not thought much about reading as the same. I am interested in Rosenblatt's comparison of how the writer crafts the text to the "reader's own unique form of literary creativity" (p.50) as he or she puts the text together again through reading. I have not thought of reading as an act of creativity, but it absolutely does require imagination and crafting, just as writing does. Revision is also present in both activities, something else I have not thought much about (p.61). I don't think we talk with students much about revision in the reading process; does that give students the idea that they must have a "right" or "perfect" reading the first time through?
As I was reading about the components of aesthetic reading, I thought of some questions to ask students about their reading processes (as well as questions I could ask myself as a reader):
- Are you experiencing fulfillment or frustration of your expectations? (p.54)
- Have you read a text like this one before? How is this one similar or different? (p.57)
- What clues do you see in the text that are affecting the way you are reading it? (p.57)
- What memories, present preoccupations, sense of values, and aspirations of your own are entering into relationship with the text? (p.81)
**This question is a good reminder of how much experience, personal and literary, that we all bring to texts (p.86).
- How is the author directing your attention? (p.86) (not to be confused with author's intention from chapter 6)
Two of my favorites snippets from Rosenblatt:
"We are living in the world of the work which we have created under guidance of the text and are entering into new potentialities of our own natures" (p.68).
"The reader feels himself in communication with another mind, another world" (p.86).
Rosenblatt says that the "analyst is not reading the text in order to create a work of art; he is reading efferently in order to make a systematic classification of elements" (p.89). Do we sometimes train students to read that way? When we do, we take away the experience of encountering a work of art.
I have had trouble the past few years with teaching formal analysis while still recognizing the text as a work of art, as Rosenblatt says. I wrote last week about how in my teaching, I sometimes separated the readers' responses from the "more serious" analysis. Rosenblatt has made me think about how the recognition of various aspects of the text should grow out of the reader's response and the way the reader shapes the text and organizes the text through the reading process. Rather than a formal anlysis, it becomes a "heightened awareness" or "admiring recognition" (p.69).
I have thought much in my teaching and writing lives of writing as a craft, yet I have not thought much about reading as the same. I am interested in Rosenblatt's comparison of how the writer crafts the text to the "reader's own unique form of literary creativity" (p.50) as he or she puts the text together again through reading. I have not thought of reading as an act of creativity, but it absolutely does require imagination and crafting, just as writing does. Revision is also present in both activities, something else I have not thought much about (p.61). I don't think we talk with students much about revision in the reading process; does that give students the idea that they must have a "right" or "perfect" reading the first time through?
As I was reading about the components of aesthetic reading, I thought of some questions to ask students about their reading processes (as well as questions I could ask myself as a reader):
- Are you experiencing fulfillment or frustration of your expectations? (p.54)
- Have you read a text like this one before? How is this one similar or different? (p.57)
- What clues do you see in the text that are affecting the way you are reading it? (p.57)
- What memories, present preoccupations, sense of values, and aspirations of your own are entering into relationship with the text? (p.81)
**This question is a good reminder of how much experience, personal and literary, that we all bring to texts (p.86).
- How is the author directing your attention? (p.86) (not to be confused with author's intention from chapter 6)
Two of my favorites snippets from Rosenblatt:
"We are living in the world of the work which we have created under guidance of the text and are entering into new potentialities of our own natures" (p.68).
"The reader feels himself in communication with another mind, another world" (p.86).
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Louise Rosenblatt's The Reader, The Text, The Poem (Ch. 1-3)
I am always looking for reasons to teach literature; I believe that reading and responding to literature is a valuable part of education (both formal and informal), but I am still formulating my ideas about the purposes for reading. Rosenblatt gives one excellent reason or purpose: "The boundary between inner and outer world breaks down and the literary work of art, as so often remarked, leads us into a new world" (p.21). First, literature is an art. A few weeks ago I was talking with classmates about the idea that "English" may be a misnomer for the subject we teach. Instead, we should probably call our subject "Language Arts" since we engage in much more than the English language. Rosenblatt speaks of "the arts of language" (p.xiii). I think the way we approach the teaching of English would be different, more flexible, if we thought of it as the arts of language. Second, literature is both individual and social. It seems that often we forget the social aspect of reading, the social aspect of creating meaning from the text. I like that Rosenblatt looks at literature as communication; it is an event rather than an object (p.12). That would also change the way we teach--if a text is not a fixed object, then the reader has an active role in the event and in the communication. Finally, literature leads us into a new world. That is my favorite part of reading and teaching. The way we see the world can expand and change; we can learn more about ourselves and others. As Rosenblatt says, "the human element cannot be abstracted out" (p.41).
I think, though, that sometimes we do just that in school. We make kids read efferently when they want to read aesthetically. We "push the richly infused cognitive-affective matrix into the fringes of consciousness" (p.40). How do we not separate the emotional response from the "message" of the text? I am afraid I have done just that in my teaching--there's the reader response and then the "more serious" study of the literature. How do we fuse those two together? I also like her take on studying literary devices and formal traits as elements of the text that make the literary experience more "complex, nuanced, or intense" (p.34). If we look at stylistic devices through this lens, then there is a purpose to studying formal traits of literature, one that combines the affective and cognitive.
The idea of the invisible reader struck me. When we place the text as more valuable than the reader, what does that do to students? How often do students feel invisible in their reading experiences in school? I have been concerned about students' declining interest in reading in secondary school, and perhaps feeling like they are separate from the text and often irrelevant to the study is literature are reasons for that decline.
I think, though, that sometimes we do just that in school. We make kids read efferently when they want to read aesthetically. We "push the richly infused cognitive-affective matrix into the fringes of consciousness" (p.40). How do we not separate the emotional response from the "message" of the text? I am afraid I have done just that in my teaching--there's the reader response and then the "more serious" study of the literature. How do we fuse those two together? I also like her take on studying literary devices and formal traits as elements of the text that make the literary experience more "complex, nuanced, or intense" (p.34). If we look at stylistic devices through this lens, then there is a purpose to studying formal traits of literature, one that combines the affective and cognitive.
The idea of the invisible reader struck me. When we place the text as more valuable than the reader, what does that do to students? How often do students feel invisible in their reading experiences in school? I have been concerned about students' declining interest in reading in secondary school, and perhaps feeling like they are separate from the text and often irrelevant to the study is literature are reasons for that decline.
Monday, February 13, 2012
What Really Happens in the ELA CLassroom
After reading Leila Christenbury's Retracing the Journey and the articles for this week's class, I have bee thinking about the differences between what people (teachers, students, administrators, policy makers, etc.) think should happen in the ELA classroom and what actually occurs. Franzak's article "On the Margins" discusses the discrepancies between inscribed policies and the policies-in-action as well as the teacher-created phantom policies. Policy is enacted through people, so different ideologies and beliefs affect the way that the policy becomes realized in the classroom. The teacher is a kind of filter between the policy itself and the students and classroom practice. Teachers can sometimes even take on subversive roles as they refuse to comply with certain policies. These teacher reactions can be both good and bad: teachers can use their experience and knowledge of good teaching practices to integrate policies in ways that are most beneficial to the students; on the other hand, teachers sometimes do not know about district policies and may feel resistant without knowing how to implement a policy. Also, as Franzak has shown, sometimes the phantom policies trump the inscribed policies when they do not actually benefit the students. I saw similar phantom policies in my school, especially concerning the reading of "required" texts and the way that literature should be taught. The school also had phantom policies about the type of work that should be required at each level of academic tracking. These policies came from tradition and influential teachers' beliefs rather than from actual policies or any sort of research.
The teaching of reading is interesting to me because I have seen the attitudes (including my own) of English teachers who say that that they don't know how to teach reading. So we end up teaching texts rather than reading skills and strategies, which ends up being less beneficial for students. It is true that not a lot of actual reading goes on in secondary ELA classes because teachers may have different priorities based on those phantom policies (such as cultural knowledge, the value of the canon, etc.)
I'm also interested in students' identities as readers, especially how policy and school practices can put certain identities on kids (like "struggling reader" or "honors student"). How can we, though, give students what they need (additional help with reading skills) without giving them a certain identity?
"What We Know About ELA Teachers" by Scherff and Hahs-Vaughn also discusses the "mismatch" between teachers' expectations and the realities of the classroom. The university is a place of collaboration and support, while the workplace in a high school may not be. The university stresses "constructivist" approaches (Newell, Tallman, and Letcher), but colleagues in an English department may have different approaches and beliefs. Scherff and Hahs-Vaughn argue for preparing new teachers for the reality of the school, but how large a dose of reality should we give? We do not want to scare undergrads away from the profession, and I think a complete picture of teaching might do just that.
The application of activity theory to the early career of a teacher is interesting because new teachers are involved in so many, and often conflicting, contexts and settings. I felt like the context of the school and department started "taking over," and I had to purposely seek out professional development and communities of teachers to encourage the type of teaching that I believed to be best for kids (but that was different from what my colleagues believed to be best). It became a struggle for me to balance the competing contexts.
The teaching of reading is interesting to me because I have seen the attitudes (including my own) of English teachers who say that that they don't know how to teach reading. So we end up teaching texts rather than reading skills and strategies, which ends up being less beneficial for students. It is true that not a lot of actual reading goes on in secondary ELA classes because teachers may have different priorities based on those phantom policies (such as cultural knowledge, the value of the canon, etc.)
I'm also interested in students' identities as readers, especially how policy and school practices can put certain identities on kids (like "struggling reader" or "honors student"). How can we, though, give students what they need (additional help with reading skills) without giving them a certain identity?
"What We Know About ELA Teachers" by Scherff and Hahs-Vaughn also discusses the "mismatch" between teachers' expectations and the realities of the classroom. The university is a place of collaboration and support, while the workplace in a high school may not be. The university stresses "constructivist" approaches (Newell, Tallman, and Letcher), but colleagues in an English department may have different approaches and beliefs. Scherff and Hahs-Vaughn argue for preparing new teachers for the reality of the school, but how large a dose of reality should we give? We do not want to scare undergrads away from the profession, and I think a complete picture of teaching might do just that.
The application of activity theory to the early career of a teacher is interesting because new teachers are involved in so many, and often conflicting, contexts and settings. I felt like the context of the school and department started "taking over," and I had to purposely seek out professional development and communities of teachers to encourage the type of teaching that I believed to be best for kids (but that was different from what my colleagues believed to be best). It became a struggle for me to balance the competing contexts.
Monday, February 6, 2012
Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English (Part 2)
As I was reading the second half of Arthur Applebee's Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English, I was again struck by the fact that the tensions and issues we (English teachers) think about and grapple with today are the same issues that spurred debate in the 1920s. One of those tensions is between different types of preparation for students. Do we prepare students for life or for college? Is it possible to prepare students for both at once? Should students have to decide between the two?
That brings me to another debate...ability tracking. I was surprised to read that individual differences were considered in schools and pedagogy during the 1920s and 1930s. In the school district where I worked the past six years, "differentiated instruction" were buzz words used in nearly every faculty meeting and teacher in-service. Applebee states that ability grouping was one way that schools tried to differentiate (p.91). He explains that "teachers thought it would be easier to provide individualized instruction if their classes were homogeneous" (p.91). I completely understand that mentality; when a teacher has 30-35 students at a time for only 50 minutes a day, it can seem overwhelming to differentiate instruction, especially when the students are so vastly different. I do sympathize with wanting a way to make it easier. However, I also know what happens when students are tracked according to ability, and Applebee acknowledges the situation when he describes the simplification of texts and methods for the "lower" tracks (p.161) and more "creative" and "out of the ordinary" approaches for the "talented students" (p.191). Shouldn't all students receive the very best of what schools have to offer? I have found that tracking stems from and creates deficit thinking that is harmful to both students and teachers.
Applebee mentioned an outcome of the Basic Issues conferences (1958) that I had not thought about before: the methods used for the "best" students should be used for all students but should be modified or adapted for the "lower" students. Applebee raises an interesting point, though: "When it came time to modify the curriculum for the less able...it would take radical reform rather than simple modification to produce a viable structure" (194). Do the same methods and courses of study not work for all students? Why would "lower" tracks of students need a completely different curriculum?
The high school / college debate has been ongoing since the universities felt that the Progressive movement lacked "intellectual rigor and historical perspective" (p.185). Should high schools base their methods, texts, and courses on college English classes or require certain assignments because "the colleges require it" (p.131)? I know I often used that very phrase in explaining to my students why we were doing certain assignments. Does high school need to be like college? High schools serve all students whereas colleges are selective about whom they admit. High schools serve teenagers while colleges consist of young adults. I'm not sure that high schools should always look to college as the model. The tension between focusing on the subject matter and focusing on the child also seems to play out here: historically, high schools have focused more on the child while colleges have kept the subject matter central. Another interesting tension is between the English departments and the Colleges of Education. In the backlash against Progressivism in the 1940s and 1950s, English departments began influencing high school teaching methods and texts (such as the New Critics and Great Books).
I'm still thinking about the role of analysis in the study of literature. Must we conduct a close study of the language of a piece before we can appreciate it? I actually love analyzing texts, pulling apart the language to see how each piece affects the whole. I used to have a poster in my classroom that said "The purpose of analysis is not to destroy beauty but to identify its sources." But now I am wondering if students need to analyze literature. Does it benefit them, or is it something we do because "the colleges require it"? Or because the AP exam requires it, which is about the same thing.
I am very interested in using students' interests to drive curriculum and in making education more about authentic experiences than about learning isolated skills or facts. The "life adjustment" movement (p.144) focused on problems in students' lives, and the "human relations" movement focused on social problems and action projects (p.148), which almost sound a bit like Freire's culture circles. Both of these movements were criticized because they are not systematic and cannot be standardized. If the curriculum comes from the interests of the individual students in that particular place and time, then that type of teaching and learning cannot fit with an efficiency model. And that is most likely why we don't see anything like that in schools today. Bruner also called for a discovery approach to learning (p.195), but how can we "do" English? If children learn physics by doing the kinds of things a physicist does, then how do children learn English? By reading and writing? This is one of my big questions: How can we apply a discovery approach to English, and how can we use students' interests in a way that works?
That brings me to another debate...ability tracking. I was surprised to read that individual differences were considered in schools and pedagogy during the 1920s and 1930s. In the school district where I worked the past six years, "differentiated instruction" were buzz words used in nearly every faculty meeting and teacher in-service. Applebee states that ability grouping was one way that schools tried to differentiate (p.91). He explains that "teachers thought it would be easier to provide individualized instruction if their classes were homogeneous" (p.91). I completely understand that mentality; when a teacher has 30-35 students at a time for only 50 minutes a day, it can seem overwhelming to differentiate instruction, especially when the students are so vastly different. I do sympathize with wanting a way to make it easier. However, I also know what happens when students are tracked according to ability, and Applebee acknowledges the situation when he describes the simplification of texts and methods for the "lower" tracks (p.161) and more "creative" and "out of the ordinary" approaches for the "talented students" (p.191). Shouldn't all students receive the very best of what schools have to offer? I have found that tracking stems from and creates deficit thinking that is harmful to both students and teachers.
Applebee mentioned an outcome of the Basic Issues conferences (1958) that I had not thought about before: the methods used for the "best" students should be used for all students but should be modified or adapted for the "lower" students. Applebee raises an interesting point, though: "When it came time to modify the curriculum for the less able...it would take radical reform rather than simple modification to produce a viable structure" (194). Do the same methods and courses of study not work for all students? Why would "lower" tracks of students need a completely different curriculum?
The high school / college debate has been ongoing since the universities felt that the Progressive movement lacked "intellectual rigor and historical perspective" (p.185). Should high schools base their methods, texts, and courses on college English classes or require certain assignments because "the colleges require it" (p.131)? I know I often used that very phrase in explaining to my students why we were doing certain assignments. Does high school need to be like college? High schools serve all students whereas colleges are selective about whom they admit. High schools serve teenagers while colleges consist of young adults. I'm not sure that high schools should always look to college as the model. The tension between focusing on the subject matter and focusing on the child also seems to play out here: historically, high schools have focused more on the child while colleges have kept the subject matter central. Another interesting tension is between the English departments and the Colleges of Education. In the backlash against Progressivism in the 1940s and 1950s, English departments began influencing high school teaching methods and texts (such as the New Critics and Great Books).
I'm still thinking about the role of analysis in the study of literature. Must we conduct a close study of the language of a piece before we can appreciate it? I actually love analyzing texts, pulling apart the language to see how each piece affects the whole. I used to have a poster in my classroom that said "The purpose of analysis is not to destroy beauty but to identify its sources." But now I am wondering if students need to analyze literature. Does it benefit them, or is it something we do because "the colleges require it"? Or because the AP exam requires it, which is about the same thing.
I am very interested in using students' interests to drive curriculum and in making education more about authentic experiences than about learning isolated skills or facts. The "life adjustment" movement (p.144) focused on problems in students' lives, and the "human relations" movement focused on social problems and action projects (p.148), which almost sound a bit like Freire's culture circles. Both of these movements were criticized because they are not systematic and cannot be standardized. If the curriculum comes from the interests of the individual students in that particular place and time, then that type of teaching and learning cannot fit with an efficiency model. And that is most likely why we don't see anything like that in schools today. Bruner also called for a discovery approach to learning (p.195), but how can we "do" English? If children learn physics by doing the kinds of things a physicist does, then how do children learn English? By reading and writing? This is one of my big questions: How can we apply a discovery approach to English, and how can we use students' interests in a way that works?
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Arthur Applebee's Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English
While reading the first half of Arthur Applebee's history, I had several questions about why we (English teachers) do what we do and why tensions and issues have not changed much throughout the last century and a half.
How do we decide which texts are of "literary value" or "literary merit"? Applebee explains that in the American colonies and after the Revolution, literary value meant morality--texts should teach students to be moral or even religious. Or he mentions that pieces of literature were valued if they were part of the culture of the country and helped create a national unity and identity. The uniform requirements for college entrance exams produced the beginnings of a literary canon, but what I find interesting and ironic is that the texts were pieces of contemporary literature at that time (p.32). These pieces are still on many high school reading lists; why are our lists not comprised of contemporary works? Why are these works still taught with such fervor and conviction, as they were chosen at the time to represent the best works at that time? Perhaps we still have a bit of that notion that certain texts are necessary to give us a cultural knowledge.
English curriculum moved from a study of grammar and rhetoric to a study of literature in its own right. Are we now reversing that shift? It seems that we may now again be placing rhetorical studies, perhaps not above, but on the same level as the study of literature. As the state standards have changed, expository writing as well as literary analysis are now part of the yearly exams, and nonfiction texts must comprise a large part of the reading requirements. The AP Language and Composition course focuses solely on nonfiction texts, rhetorical analysis, and argument writing.
Applebee explains that the Classical Model led to prescriptive methods of teaching grammar and writing and "exhaustive line-by-line analysis" (p.9). Some of these methods still exist today, unfortunately. It seems that we still have a problem trying to encompass within the English curriculum "rote learning of rules and memorization of isolated facts" (p.29) and application of English skills to everyday life.
I am especially interested in the tension between English as a "mental discipline" and English as "appreciation." Applebee states that in the nineteenth century the "purpose of education was to exercise and train the mental faculties, in particular the faculties of 'memory' and 'reason'" (p. 6). I admit that I have used that theory to justify text analysis to my students. When they ask if they will ever do literary analysis later in life, I have to admit that they will not; however, I tell them that they are learning to think, and critical thinking is a necessary tool for life. We continue to have the debate over skill vs. content. The state standards emphasize skills, yet the high school reading lists and the teaching of novels focuses on content.
How do we decide which texts are of "literary value" or "literary merit"? Applebee explains that in the American colonies and after the Revolution, literary value meant morality--texts should teach students to be moral or even religious. Or he mentions that pieces of literature were valued if they were part of the culture of the country and helped create a national unity and identity. The uniform requirements for college entrance exams produced the beginnings of a literary canon, but what I find interesting and ironic is that the texts were pieces of contemporary literature at that time (p.32). These pieces are still on many high school reading lists; why are our lists not comprised of contemporary works? Why are these works still taught with such fervor and conviction, as they were chosen at the time to represent the best works at that time? Perhaps we still have a bit of that notion that certain texts are necessary to give us a cultural knowledge.
English curriculum moved from a study of grammar and rhetoric to a study of literature in its own right. Are we now reversing that shift? It seems that we may now again be placing rhetorical studies, perhaps not above, but on the same level as the study of literature. As the state standards have changed, expository writing as well as literary analysis are now part of the yearly exams, and nonfiction texts must comprise a large part of the reading requirements. The AP Language and Composition course focuses solely on nonfiction texts, rhetorical analysis, and argument writing.
Applebee explains that the Classical Model led to prescriptive methods of teaching grammar and writing and "exhaustive line-by-line analysis" (p.9). Some of these methods still exist today, unfortunately. It seems that we still have a problem trying to encompass within the English curriculum "rote learning of rules and memorization of isolated facts" (p.29) and application of English skills to everyday life.
I am especially interested in the tension between English as a "mental discipline" and English as "appreciation." Applebee states that in the nineteenth century the "purpose of education was to exercise and train the mental faculties, in particular the faculties of 'memory' and 'reason'" (p. 6). I admit that I have used that theory to justify text analysis to my students. When they ask if they will ever do literary analysis later in life, I have to admit that they will not; however, I tell them that they are learning to think, and critical thinking is a necessary tool for life. We continue to have the debate over skill vs. content. The state standards emphasize skills, yet the high school reading lists and the teaching of novels focuses on content.
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