Learning Letter

1. I felt that the book talks were very helpful as a future teacher. I had to look beyond thinking a book was good or not. I had to actually rationalize its use in a classroom and whether or not my students could learn from it. It was also beneficial to hear such a wide variety of books that can be taught. I will definitely use a few of them as teaching tools. The unit plan was very difficult. By the end of it I never wanted to write another EdTPA lesson plan again. However it was very important for me to see how to plan a unit around a book. The book should be used as a tool to teach the critical thinking skills you want your students to acquire. The unit plan definitely helped me to think in this way more often.

2. The most important theories I learned in class were those of critical pedagogy and social justice learning. Both theories encourage teachers to not just teach about literature but to use literature to teach their students about the world. This is the way that my most influential teachers taught me and it seems too have worked. Literature should not be taught in a vacuum, but rather used as a window to access ideas that are applicable to the lives of our students.

3. I look at literature differently now because of this class. I still believe that classic literature is important for students to read and understand, but it should be supplemented with pop culture to give students a reference point to connect with. It is important for our students to feel comfortable in our classrooms. A great way to do this is to connect with them by using pop culture references to help bridge the gap between students and "classic" literature. This is definitely a practice that I will adopt in my classroom.

Night

Night is the story of a Hungarian boy name Eliezer during the Holocaust. He is first moved from his home into the ghettos of his town before finally being taken to the concentration camp, Auschwitz. While there, Eliezer is separated from his family, beaten by other inmates, and subjected to the horrors that were the Nazi party. Eliezer loses his faith, his family, and his humanity before finally being rescued. Eliezer is widely accepted as a stand-in for the author of the book, Elie Wiesel. While the book appears to be fiction, in actuality it is a recounting of Elie’s life and stories during the Holocaust.

When I was in 8^th grade, we read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas as our Holocaust book. That story was historical fiction and was a fairly easy read for me then. In my practicum, I found that the 8^th graders I work with are starting Night next week and I am surprised. The main obstacles I see are how much more graphic and intense the scenes are than those in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Even though the obstacles are large, I believe that this is a worthwhile read for students as it presents a more real and emotional experience for students. 

Graphic Novels/ Comic Books in the Classroom

My dad is what could be classified as a comic book geek, and because of this, I’ve grown up around comics and graphic novels. I’m not going to say that I learned how to read with graphic novels, but I definitely spent more time reading comics and graphic novels growing up than typical chapter books. They kept me interested and helped build my visual literacy skills that are so important in today’s world.

For today I read an article from Scholastic about the benefits of comic book and graphic novels for students (Raising Super Readers: The Benefits of Comic Books and Graphic Novels). Comics and graphic novels are often looked down upon because they are viewed as juvenile or not real books, even though they often keep readers more interested than some traditional texts. A lot of parents may not realize that many “classic” stories have been recreated in a graphic novel form including Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and many of Shakespeare’s plays.

The article points out several benefits that students gain from reading graphic novels and comic books including “motivating reluctant readers, inference, memory, sequencing, understanding succinct language, and reading comprehension”. They also point out that graphic novels and comics help students better understand plot development because they can’t speed read through it like a regular book. They have to slow down to look at the images to get a greater sense of what is going on in the story.

Comics and graphic novels are also great tools for children with learning disabilities. Children with Autism can learn how to better identify emotions through the images in graphic novels. Dyslexic students often find it hard to finish a page in a traditional text-only book, but they can feel a sense of accomplishment when they finish a page of a graphic novel which helps to keep them reading.  

Graphic novels and comic books should not be the only form of literature in the classroom, but they shouldn’t be ignored either. They are great tools and can be used in a variety of ways to help students become better readers.

Article Link: http://www.scholastic.com/parents/blogs/scholastic-parents-raise-reader/raising-super-readers-benefits-comic-books-and-graphic-novels

The Masque of the Red Death

Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” is the story of a prince, Prospero. A disease, the “Red Death” has plagued his land and killed nearly half of his people. To avoid the disease, he invites 1000 of his friends that are not infected to join him in one of his castles. He then barricades the castle so that no others may enter. He secludes himself from the disease-stricken world. After a while, he throws a masquerade ball and everyone is having a good time. Then enters a man who is dressed in a mask that depicts the effects of the red death. Prospero orders him removed but the people are too scared, including Prospero. Prospero then follows him through the rooms of the house and is presumably killed by the masked intruder. When more people arrive, they find Prospero dead and the masked invader gone.

I think that this would be an excellent story to help teach what symbolism is to young readers. The imagery that Poe uses is so vivid that they could easily see the world he tries to create. It could also be used as an exercise to look at the word choice that Poe uses to create the tone and the mood that he wants.

Obviously, because the plot of the story involves a plague that kills half of the population of the land, some students could be frightened by the content of the story. When I helped teach it in my 7^th grade practicum class, it wasn’t much of a problem. 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

Sherman Alexie’s, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, is a wonderful coming of age story written semi-autobiographically. Alexie suffered from Hydrocephalus just as his main character, Arnold (or Junior) does. This story follows Arnold as he leaves his home reservation school (Wellpinit HS) in favor of a small town, predominantly white school (Reardan HS) miles from his home. As he continues his freshman year at Reardan, Arnold finds love, new friends, and a new outlook on life. He also struggles in his new “tribe”. He loses his best friend, family members, and has to deal with the guilt and shame that his reservation heaps on him as being a “white lover”. Ultimately, he finds himself, outside of the reservation and his physical limitations.

This story is told through the mind of Arnold, and in that way, I feel that a lot of people that might read it (high school students) could very easily connect with Arnold and Alexie. Arnold suffers from fears of inadequacy and makes the decision to transfer schools as a means to escape the chain of poverty that has struck his family and neighbors for generations. Arnold's desires are not different from those of any other adolescent, regardless of race; to feel wanted, validated, loved, and to make a mark in society. The struggles that Arnold faces are also common, although may be seen differently because of his native heritage. He has to face death, broken relationships, and that ever-present danger of “not fitting in”.

Some of the obstacles that this book presents are because of how the story is told. Because it is told in Arnold’s mind, we get to know him very well. In some ways that perhaps we would rather not. We have to hear about uncomfortable topics like lust and masturbation, topics that most adolescent males think about, but never want to speak about. On his reservation, there are also incidents of alcohol abuse and alcohol-related violence. Arnold grandmother is hit by a drunk driver and dies. His father’s best friend is shot in the face during a drunken altercation. His best friend, Rowdy, is the son of an alcoholic who hits him and his mother. Ultimately these are all obstacles that make the book real, but could obviously be a problem for students, parents, and administrators alike.

Because this book was written by a local writer, students could map out the settings that this book takes place in. They could also keep track of Arnold’s choices and experiences in the form of a journal and compare them to similar experiences that they’ve had.

I believe that this book is definitely worth the read especially for high school students. However, because of its abrasive nature at times, could be a hard sell for administrators and parents. I think it is definitely something worth investing in as a tool for student engagement, but I’m not sure I would teach it as its own unit in my classroom. 

The Education of Margot Sanchez

The main character (Margot Sanchez) is a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican girl living in the Bronx. She struggles to fit in at her prep school and in order to do so, charges $600 to her Papi’s credit card for a shopping spree to fit in with the popular girls that she sees as her friends. As punishment, she is forced to work off her debt in her father’s grocery store over the summer. Margot deals with issues involving her brother’s drug addiction and her father’s infidelity. She begins to see how life actually is for those outside of Somerset Prep.

As a college reader, I found Margot’s character annoying as she complains about all of the punishment that she goes through. At the same time though, I feel that this would be very relatable to students in a secondary classroom. Margot wears a mask in order to make friends at her school even though that’s not who she truly is. This is a struggle that many students (and even some adults) face on a daily basis. A character who deals with the same issues that they face, even in a very different setting like the Bronx, is something that students could easily relate to.

Students could connect this book to their lives and compare their experiences to Margot’s. The only problem with having them do this is that because they are still in high school, they may not have had enough time to truly reflect and grow from those experiences yet. This could also be used as a summer reading assignment that would allow students to compare how they spend their summers to how Margot spends hers and how she changes over the course of the story.

There are obstacles including drug abuse, sex, underage drinking, and overall adolescent rebellion. Some parents may say that Margot could set a bad example for their children because of her lack of judgment.

While this book is a unique coming of age story that uses aspects of race, poverty, and love, I’m not sold on using it as part of my literature curriculum. While it would be relatable to some students, I’m just not sure it’s better than other classic coming of age stories such as To Kill a Mockingbird or The Catcher in the Rye. I would definitely recommend it though for students that are looking for a coming of age story that is told from a different point of view.

Tovani I Read it But I don't Get It

First off, I love that Tovani uses real quotes from her students about their frustrations with reading. Many of them are comments that I made when I was a high school student, and they are complaints that I hear now almost daily in my practicum.

I believe that one of the most integral concepts that we as teachers need to understand is the difference between our students being “Resistive Readers” or “Word Callers”. Tovani explains the difference as a matter of reluctance vs comprehension. While resistive readers know how to read, their struggle is that they simply don’t want to. Word callers read the words but can’t truly understand or remember what they read. Resistive readers will find ways to fake their way through class by allowing other students to answer the questions that the teacher poses. Often times these readers don’t feel as if they have a purpose for their reading other than to complete the assignment. Giving students an access point to read the texts helps students find this purpose. These can be double entry diaries that help students connect the text to their thoughts and background information.

Word callers may need more attention because they don’t think of reading as something that requires critical thinking. They can pronounce the words but they stop there. They never look for a deeper understanding of the text.