A few months ago, I made this book talk video and posted it on YouTube. I confess, I did try to find out how to pronounce words correctly, but I still goofed up.
And yesterday I received an email correcting me on a few points:
I added the email text to the video, and kept the original video because I want to share this with students this next school year. This is how we learn. One of my plans for my own learning this summer is to read more and reflect on Indigenous peoples in North America. Monise Seward and I were going to do this. I feel behind in my progress, but will show myself a little grace–I put it on my calendar for this weekend, and will continue to grow.
In the meantime, I feel so much gratitude to this teacher for helping me.
What happens when we as reading teachers don’t want to read a book?
Deeply interesting and engaging thread in Betsy Potash’s Creative English high School Teachers page on Facebook today concerning American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. And while I’ll post links and resources, the big question I’m left with comes from the pushback I received from another teacher, to the point I should not be allowed to voice criticism unless I’ve read the book.
Is that accurate? Do we always have to read the book before we decide something, or what media to consume?
Have you ever tried to make a toddler eat? I know a few wonderful toddlers who don’t like macaroni and cheese, preferring broccoli and other vegetables. My own sons as toddlers has some quirky eating habits. The older one hated spaghetti and most pasta, including macaroni and cheese. He loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The younger one wasn’t picky, and his preference for junk food became a battle. But they did know their own minds, even if they didn’t have the words or vocabulary to articulate their discerning tastes. And over time, they did try new things and expand their palettes.
Our students don’t like to read. They don’t. Why? Many reasons. They struggle, it’s not entertaining for them, book culture seems odd and foreign to some, and oftentimes they don’t see themselves reflected in the novels many districts push. The texts are not ‘window, mirrors, or sliding glass doors’ (Rudine Sims Bishop).
But if you ask them about certain movies, stories, or their own interpersonal relationships and what keeps and breaks friendships, what keeps them faithful or what does betrayal look like and do, they will have plenty to say. And then we can work together on what they might like to read, on what burning questions they have that books and texts can help to inform and enlighten, and challenge, then you can have them try something they might not have before. And they might find that it’s like food they don’t like. (How many teachers have done ‘book tastings’ — did you get offended when a student chose one book over another? Of course not.)
Then why was it that the thought that a grown adult woman, (me), who listened to literary criticism of a novel and found it deeply resonating and informative, and chose not to spend my money on this book or read it, why was that so offending to some in that thread? (They hadn’t read it either.)
So many conclusions jumped to…
If you’re like me, your #TBR pile is miles deep. I’ve probably read over 700 books in my lifetime. Heck, even the scant posts on Goodreads tells me I’m at 396, and that hasn’t tracked my reading life. At what point do we allow students to make these choices for themselves? Rather, at what point as an adult am I allowed to read a critic or review and make up my own mind? Full disclosure: I hate to read movie reviews, and despise trailers that give away too much. But I still love movies, and get most of my recommendations from my sons. I guess I didn’t realize there was a number to being allowed to state clearly “I am not going to read this book.”
And when Esmeralda Bermudez said it reminded her of a novella I bust out laughing in the car. We (me and my students) put on novellas in class during Study Skills the other day, and of course I got my ‘teacher all over it’ because I am compelled to make connections to body language, facial expressions, etc., and themes of love, betrayal, despair, romance, etc. (We had just finished Romeo and Juliet.) And I don’t disparage the girls in my class and watching novellas. I spent countless hours with my mom and then into college watching All My Children and Guiding Light.
But what I am not going to do is read this book. Too many other things to read and watch. If that means I have a fixed mindset, okay. I’m good. In the meantime, I’m going to look for other, better books with authentic voices and perspectives about immigration.
We should allow our students to have their own tastes, too. All we need to do is tell them their tastebuds might change over time, and be flexible. After a few hundred books, I’m still flexible. But I want quality, not quantity, now. And Oprah’s recommendations don’t mean what they used to, either.
You’re 8 years old.
Your 3rd grade class orders chinese food & your father delivers it. You are so excited to see your pops in school. He’s your hero. But apparently other kids don’t think he’s so cool. They laugh at him and mimic his accent. You don’t want to be Chinese anymore. pic.twitter.com/6vW9DXZK6x
Yesterday in one sitting I read Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai: it’s a short verse novel, so saying I finished it quickly is a silly boast. The story, light in words but heavy with my response and reaction. This is a beautiful story.
For the first time in my teaching life, my new district has a prescripted curriculum. There are four modules and four novels, and though one of them is not my choice (Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand) I know I’ll jump in and give every novel my best. There is so much to dig through here, and I’m thrilled it’s the first novel we begin with: culture, fear, family, longing, sorrow, joy, bigotry, and kindness of such a magnitude it brought me to tears (when you read it you’ll know what part.)
I will share Kimberly Yam’s story and any others that my friends and family want to offer. I will share my own story of being new, confused and trying to fit in as quickly as possible. But mostly I will ask students to share. What an amazing beginning.
Is anyone else finding that social media/cell phones have completely altered their capacity to read books and concentrate on multi-page sequences? It’s become a major problem…
I am concerned about my #ProjectLIT project stalling out. I need these books. Don’t want: need. They aren’t some glib luxury for my incoming 8th students, they are a lifeline.
These books pulled me out of my own fractured, terrible attention span thinking. They brought back mental stamina– what my students lack, and desperately need if they’re going to move through high school with courage. Eighth grade is the worst of years, and it’s the best of years. Someday I’d love to teach Freshmen, but until a high school English team wants me, too, I am honored to continue to teach 8th-grade humans.
Why do we become fractured in our thinking? I am sure I can dig up the brain research about our current political and social climate combined with our devices, and the impact it has on our abilities to be in our own heads and dive deep into another’s narrative. But right now I have eleven tabs open, things on the to-do list, and a humble request: please help my students.
Yes, sometimes it is. It can be the junk food, candy display at the check-out counter, along with the pulp magazines and other impulse buys. Worksheets=bad. (Even when students beg for them: that’s a good sign you’re actually teaching.) Teaching authentically, making fresh, home-made lessons every day is tough; we can’t even write down all that we do because we’re busy doing it.
There was a time in your life when you had friends, enough time to read a book, and energy enough to stay awake past 7: 30 p.m. That time is not fall. In fall, we uncover the work of the rest of the year, we discover and ask questions we have little hope of answering.
Rademacher, Tom. It Won’t Be Easy: An Exceedingly Honest (and Slightly Unprofessional) Love Letter to Teaching (Kindle Locations 887-890). University of Minnesota Press. Kindle Edition.
Over the course of the summer, I’ve spent upwards of $700-$800 on teaching books, supplies, classroom necessities, trying to fund my ProjectLIT books for students, buying at least one copy for myself of each of the books, etc. I spent almost $40 on To Kill A Mockingbird resources from Laura Randazzo on TpT.
Why? Why would I sully my teaching reputation by buying (*ew*) resources off of Teachers Pay Teachers?
Well, Laura Randazzo has pretty great stuff. And I’m out of time. I take her resources as just that: resources. I look them over, tweak them as needed to supplement my own. This is the first year I will be required to teach a prescripted curriculum. I have four modules with accompanying novels. To Kill A Mockingbird is one of them. I loved it as an adolescent, but also see that it has many issues I am very much looking forward to discussing with my 8th-grade students. Oh, and did I mention I’m going to a new district, new school, and new culture? I’m thinking about how to best navigate those conditions, too. Knowing who I am there is no way I will not be as prepared as possible, leaving room for the unknowns that will inevitably come up.
In order to best use my professional time so I can have the energy and will to do my best with this novel for students, I now have time to free up and look into #disruptingtexts
This. Is. Really. Important.
Let me repeat: I now have the time and energy to delve deeper into what’s important:
Atticus has been and continues to be problematic and so many white people don’t want to admit it. His advocacy has limits. He’s not willing to question the very system that has allowed Tom to end up in this racist situation. In the face of pure racism and bigotry he doesn’t see the need to publicly disrupt the legal system. Yes, he defends Tom. Yes he questions Mayella. No, he doesn’t go beyond that. He doesn’t protest. He doesn’t say he’s going to take on the court system. He doesn’t say he’s going to make structural changes so this stops happening. He doesn’t use his privilege to bring about change. He lets Tom die. He is a part of the very system that let Tom die. I was encouraged by how many white folks in our chat mentioned it, though, so there’s hope in progress.
Exactly! Adding a chevron border doesn’t make it your property to sell. Someone even stole one of my docs and was selling it. I put it up for free because it upset me so much. Not a fan of TPT. https://t.co/BYZa04nS25
If you are a careful consumer, you can use TpT to your advantage as a resource, just as many of us use Twitter, Facebook groups, and teacher blogs as resources. Blaming TpT wholesale does a disservice; being nuanced about issues helps. Consider the bigger conversation about how we pull all of our resources together, how we can create our own curated content/playlists to better serve and support one another. Shaming teachers doesn’t work any better than shaming students.
I am getting stingy in my old age. I am trying to be careful about how I spend my professional money and time. If you want something from me, I’m here for you. But I’m not going to be lectured about my own time and money on what resources I find valuable. And which ones I don’t.
For what it’s worth, here are the teacher books I read recently:
These are amazing. Helpful. And I will definitely be using many of the ideas from these as resources.
I wish I had written this, but I am a woman, and probably couldn’t get away with all the cussing: (I am still pondering the question if women teachers can be funny, too.)
One of the most practical, well-written books I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time. Since I am required to teach whole-class novels, this is my just-in-time save:
Another godsend by Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle:
And my big question to students this year will be about how lying affects us:
Oh, last thought: please do not think for one minute I am not conflicted about asking for DonorsChoose donations. Jeff Bezos gets richer. My friends and family roll their eyes at me. Everyone is charity-fatigued. I get it. I really do. But dangit, I really want to have ten copies of Dread Nation to teach to my 8th grade ELA/SS students! I mean REALLY!? Civil War…Zombies…Girl Hero Who KICKS IT! Friendship! Just buy my students a book or two.
Planning and shaping students’ reading lives–I have some concerns. Selfish, muddy concerns.
Donalyn Miller’s tweet about ill-defined independent reading prompted my own wondering about the basics: what is are the differences and connections between instructional and independent reading? A while back I wrote this blog post challenging those notions, too: How to Survive a Bear Attack
Here is the concern: there are four modules in my new district that are required. We, teachers, have some leeway concerning how, but not the what. My goals are to embrace the curriculum with courage and creativity, so bear with me while I ask some tough questions this beautiful Sunday morning: what do we do when we’re faced with teaching books we don’t like? My plan is to read the books anyway and be honest with students about when we don’t have a choice, and how to navigate around it.
Four texts were chosen for my students. I have every confidence and assumption the texts are chosen by hardworking and mindful educators. I am wondering how I’m going to cooperate, comply and flourish with a scripted reading program, though, since for years I’ve had full choice over the texts I bring to the classroom. I have always looked for engaging, relevant, diverse, inclusive and popular texts: sometimes it worked, sometimes not. But what if I don’t want to read it? How do I sell it then?
The four books for the year are:
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
This one looks right up my alley: a short verse novel, accessible and easily paired with Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed and other novels/graphic novels.
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
Now this one I’m having trouble with. I get it, and I see and wholly understand why many love narratives such as these. (Think of The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown and others like these. Although for the life of me can’t really figure out how How the Light We Cannot See got in there.) There were a few books I could not finish in the book club I used to frequent (another casualty of time and politics, and my big mouth), and Boys was up on the list. I think I read five pages. I don’t know what it is that I don’t care about personal boy-to-manhood sagas with war as the backdrop. It feels like a failure of character on my part. I will force myself to read it, make notes, and come away with insight and knowledge I didn’t previously have. And that’s exactly what I’ll tell students.
But it still feels like badly cooked broccoli. Someone else put it on my plate and I must be polite.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This is one of my adolescent favorites, and am looking forward to pairing it with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and articles about how TKAM needs to be critiqued. That’s we can love a book and still grow out of it.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
This one also looks like something I wouldn’t normally read but can get a lot out of, and plan a PBL around it. As I’m thinking about PBLs for next year, and after talking with my friend Sharon, I had this epiphany that the best PBLs stem from the lowest rung of Maslow’s hierarchy. Hear me out: our food, shelter, water, air, and reproductions are the foundation for all problems and conflicts: we were talking about her weaving unit, and how the labor of clothing fell to women, and now how we have an overabundance of clothes in landfills, etc. I’m looking forward to reading this.
And in the meantime, donations are welcome and encouraged. I need support for students to disrupt the canon, to add representation and love of literature. Please consider a small donation: Mrs. Love’s Project Lit DonorsChoose Project
Back to the original question: independent reading is choice, but it also includes fostering those discussions and excitement about what we’re reading. Instructional reading is the near-invisible guiding hand that helps students take risks with their reading, and nurture their reading lives. While I process this, read 180 Days, and curate companion texts, my challenge will be to focus on the most important instruction, day by day, week by week. With required reading texts this will be a challenge for me, but one I’ll do my utmost to succeed.
There are veteran English teachers shuddering ‘tsk tsk’ at the title of this post, as if to suggest it’s a simple process, and doesn’t take years of practice, studying, and scholarly pursuits. And reading. A lot of reading. (And if you’re a middle school teacher, some dislike that age group of literature: I find it to be some of the most honest and terrifying. Really think about The Giver? Nightmare fuel.)
About two weeks ago, one of my colleagues, who ventured on a long time ago to do great things, asked me if I was still teaching the “Journey of the Hero” unit which I played an integral part in developing. When we worked together, he even gave me a gift that belonged to his grandfather, a copy of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth. I sighed and said no, that I had asked if I could update it to embed CCSS, since the Common Core seemed perfectly aligned to something as accessible as the journey of the hero –it is a unit that lends itself so beautifully to showing patterns of thought to develop thematic concepts. But, no matter. It’s not the only thematic game in town.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.9
Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.
But the move in our district seems to be choosing more stand-alone novels, without context or connection to other content areas, and that’s fine. It’s fine because it helps teachers focus on specific close reading skills, and not worry about how does it support other content areas. That may be a traditional approach to English/Language Arts, the ‘whole class novel’ as opposed to novel or text sets that are thematic and tied to multiple concepts and curriculum. I’m not really sure. It’s one of those tidbits I packed from reading Kelly Gallagher: things change, and change back, and be a critical thinker of what to keep, and what to throw away.
This is a long excerpt from How To Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. If you want “How to be an English Teacher” this is it. Fortunately, not only do I have engaging authors like Foster when I want to brush up on my subtext and genre themes, but I have my husband and sons, who love to talk about the big ideas, no English degree necessary.
OKAY, SO HERE’S THE DEAL: let’s say, purely hypothetically, you’re reading a book about an average sixteen-year-old kid in the summer of 1968. The kid— let’s call him Kip— who hopes his acne clears up before he gets drafted, is on his way to the A& P. His bike is a one-speed with a coaster brake and therefore deeply humiliating, and riding it to run an errand for his mother makes it even worse. Along the way he has a couple of disturbing experiences, including a minorly unpleasant encounter with a German shepherd, topped off in the supermarket parking lot where he sees the girl of his dreams, Karen, laughing and horsing around in Tony Vauxhall’s brand-new Barracuda. Now Kip hates Tony already because he has a name like Vauxhall and not like Smith, which Kip thinks is pretty lame as a name to follow Kip, and because the ’Cuda is bright green and goes approximately the speed of light, and also because Tony has never had to work a day in his life. So Karen, who is laughing and having a great time, turns and sees Kip, who has recently asked her out, and she keeps laughing. (She could stop laughing and it wouldn’t matter to us, since we’re considering this structurally. In the story we’re inventing here, though, she keeps laughing.) Kip goes on into the store to buy the loaf of Wonder Bread that his mother told him to pick up, and as he reaches for the bread, he decides right then and there to lie about his age to the Marine recruiter even though it means going to Vietnam, because nothing will ever happen for him in this one-horse burg where the only thing that matters is how much money your old man has. Either that or Kip has a vision of St. Abillard (any saint will do, but our imaginary author picked a comparatively obscure one), whose face appears on one of the red, yellow, or blue balloons. For our purposes, the nature of the decision doesn’t matter any more than whether Karen keeps laughing or which color balloon manifests the saint. What just happened here?
If you were an English professor, and not even a particularly weird English professor, you’d know that you’d just watched a knight have a not very suitable encounter with his nemesis.In other words, a quest just happened.But it just looked like a trip to the store for some white bread. True. But consider the quest. Of what does it consist? A knight, a dangerous road, a Holy Grail (whatever one of those may be), at least one dragon, one evil knight, one princess. Sound about right? That’s a list I can live with: a knight (named Kip), a dangerous road (nasty German shepherds), a Holy Grail (one form of which is a loaf of Wonder Bread), at least one dragon (trust me, a ’68 ’Cuda could definitely breathe fire), one evil knight (Tony), one princess (who can either keep laughing or stop). Seems like a bit of a stretch. On the surface, sure. But let’s think structurally. The quest consists of five things: (a) a quester, (b) a place to go, (c) a stated reason to go there, (d) challenges and trials en route, and (e) a real reason to go there. Item (a) is easy; a quester is just a person who goes on a quest, whether or not he knows it’s a quest. In fact, usually he doesn’t know. Items (b) and (c) should be considered together: someone tells our protagonist, our hero, who need not look very heroic, to go somewhere and do something. Go in search of the Holy Grail. Go to the store for bread. Go to Vegas and whack a guy. Tasks of varying nobility, to be sure, but structurally all the same. Go there, do that. Note that I said the stated reason for the quest. That’s because of item (e). The real reason for a quest never involves the stated reason. In fact, more often than not, the quester fails at the stated task. So why do they go and why do we care? They go because of the stated task, mistakenly believing that it is their real mission. We know, however, that their quest is educational. They don’t know enough about the only subject that really matters: themselves. The real reason for a quest is always self-knowledge. That’s why questers are so often young, inexperienced, immature, sheltered. Forty-five-year-old men either have self-knowledge or they’re never going to get it, while your average sixteen-to-seventeen-year-old kid is likely to have a long way to go in the self-knowledge department.
Foster, Thomas C. (2014-02-25). How to Read Literature Like a Professor Revised: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (pp. 2-3). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
The TL:DR version is there are patterns in genres. Don’t be fooled by surface topics. Dig deeper. Talk. Think.
Ultimately I tell students trust their instincts–take a risk. What do they think is going on? Spit-ball some ideas, and see what sticks. Metaphorical spit-balls, that is. Please. For teachers wanting to know more about how to teach a novel, I would say the same: trust your instincts, be willing to talk, and open to new ideas about the book. It’s acceptable and encouraged to see another’s view point, and not necessarily accept it as your own. I wouldn’t know half as much if I read in isolation and never talked about movies or books I watched–not that that has to happen all the time. Balance and connection – and willingness to learn something new.
Lenses:
Character
Pattern of plot/story
Symbols
Literary devices: what is the writer doing well, or what seems awkward?
Author’s voice: word choices are not arbitrary
Text Sets: Informational connections to literary texts
As I said in a previous post, Gluing the Wings Back On, all this analysis has somewhat disrupted my own reading life. For fun, I’m reading The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston. It’s a romance. Know how I know? The heroine conveniently can’t/won’t speak, and forces her new husband to communicate with gestures, glances, and inferences. Talk about forcing your partner to truly listen. Every paragraph is a volley of “does he love me, does he not?” and for some reason she can’t write him a note. Her lack of writing literacy hasn’t been addressed yet, and I’m not sure it will be. Sometimes I wish I could read this sort of stuff as a 12-year-old. Unlike The Witch’s Boy by Michael Gruber, which is truly a magical book–a retelling of a classic fairy tale with grit, and takes the patterns and practice of fairy tale into a realm of authenticity and surprise. (It takes a lot to surprise me about a fairy tale, and someday perhaps a romance will surprise me again, too. So far only The Princess Bride and just about anything by John Irving have taught me new narratives about romance. Okay…Jane Austen, too. And The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.) But I digress – perhaps this is a post for another time: what authors speak to our life’s themes?
(Note to self: ask Cult of Pedagogy if she makes any cash from her links to Amazon.)
This “Wish I Had Written That” is stretching a bit here — this novel is meant for grown-ups. This is not a recommendation for secondary students, although if seniors in high school, or even my own children, wanted to read this novel or anything by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, I’d be proud. (As it is, my older son is trying to get me to read Goncharov and my younger one understand the mastery of Dungeons & Dragons, and geological surveys–good luck with that, kids.) But it does need a little life experience under one’s belt. A little bit of context. And full disclosure: I couldn’t have written this. The protagonist has her own story, and for me to make even presumptions or connections about race, love, family, or hair would be disingenuous. (The protagonist is a blogger, but makes a living from it. I’m also not quite there yet!)
But I still think it should be required reading. Wait–scratch that. Read if you want to know about race, love, family, and hair. And surviving yourself through your twenties, and finding your way. Or, if you’re beyond your twenties, how you found your way, which you surely did.
Tomorrow night is night I look forward to–it’s Book Club night. This month’s selection was my choice–I chickened out and gave the ladies a choice, between this book and J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. When the book club members overwhelmingly chose Rowling’s book, at first I was a little disappointed because I really want to read Americanah. (That’s what I get for my chicken-ness.) However, I was not disappointed after reading Rowling’s first ‘grown up’ book. I loved it. She is a master of characters, connections, and layers of plots that are never ‘sub’ to anything, but partner plots that hold the whole story together. The only thing I may regret is that I will not have another grown-up to talk about Americanah with.
And what a concept: that I’m truly sorry I have no one in real time to discuss a great book and author. And that–that is what I want to ignite in my classroom. Not just “read it” –but read it so you can talk about it. A book shared is a gift from our inner lives, our inner thoughts: what others come to believe or interpret about literature is sublime and…it’s love.
Last night I was out to dinner with my husband, and telling him about my Renaissance with ‘The Raven‘ by Edgar Allan Poe and 7th grade students. I am not the same teacher I was so many years ago, and have learned over the past four to five years to let the students do most of the heavy mental lifting. Being in on their discussions as they grapple with stanzas and translate early 19th century gothic poetry is so fun. My husband brought up that Poe was not a favorite of his until he heard ‘Annabel Lee.’ Being the modern woman I am, found the poem on my phone, and he looked it over again, and offered new insight to the beauty of some of its lines…how beautiful a concept that angels, who are supposed to be so beatific and perfect, could be jealous of humans’ love…
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me—
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
By talking about a poem, I learned something new about my husband, even after 23 years.
Now I’m not sure how to tell students what this all means, how to show them what’s in front of them, and what beauty is around the corner for them, too. I’ll try to figure out a way though–look through my old scrolls and tomes of quaint and curious lore, of long forgotten lesson plans of book talks and sharing of tales, and see what they create. These experiences, too, add to their own stories.
