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.  

edTPA Guidelines and Making Good Choices

Having done several lesson plans for other education courses, the “edTPA Lesson Plan Guidelines” document was fairly straightforward. I did find the section on learning tasks and strategies informational. In most of my lessons, I just put the list of learning tasks in this box. I hadn’t often thought about showing explicitly what the students will learn and how that form of teaching is beneficial for them. I also don’t often explain how I will use guided practice in my lessons. Guided practice is a great tool to use with students because it gives them the freedom to make mistakes while they are still forming their knowledge base without the fear of failing. I can show the students how to complete the assignment correctly by modeling for them on the projector.

In the edTPA Making Good Choices handbook, I found that the most informative section was Assessing Student Learning. Specifically providing feedback to students. While comments like “Good job” or “well done” can be reassuring to a student, it doesn’t actually explain what they did well on or what they still need to work on. If your student has written a paper, comments should be directed at exactly what the student has done well. Comments can look like “great word choice”, “you have stated your argument very clearly here”, or “effective conclusion”. While positive feedback is something that all students love seeing, giving feedback is also a time to help students grow. Your feedback should easily target the areas that need improvement. Simply marking errors in students work isn’t enough. Feedback should specifically show students what they need to work on and how you can help them get better. In the essay example, your feedback could look like “you need to use MLA format when using parenthetical citations. Check out Purdue OWL online” or “your thesis statement should be more refined. See me for help with this”. These types of feedback allow students to acknowledge that they need to improve while giving them an idea of where to start.

Social Justice in the Classroom

The article I read through was “Creating Classrooms for Social Justice” by Tabitha Dell'Angelo (available on Edutopia, link at the bottom). The main idea behind this article is that the classroom should be a place that encourages students to make a positive change in the world. This is done through the discussion of real-world issues and looking at multiple perspectives. The article says that educators need to “make what you are teaching relevant to what is going on in the world”. It goes on to say that the classroom door should not be a magical barrier to the world outside. You should try to link relevant content to what is going on outside your classroom in order to get the students to care about the content. It also allows students to practice high-level thinking skills like discerning fact from fiction, deciding the point of view, and interpreting information and deciding their own “truth”. 

This shouldn’t be a time for teachers to impose their own beliefs upon their students but just to show them alternative opinions that they can judge for themselves.

Creating a social justice orientation in the classroom is also a time for students for students to voice their opinions. In order to do this, you must create a classroom community that values different opinions. Dell’Angelo believes that students should be taught to view each other as “academic siblings”. Siblings will argue from time to time, but your students should always feel that they can trust their siblings to have their back, be honest, and support them, even if they have a difference in opinion. 

Article Link: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-classrooms-for-social-justice-tabitha-dellangelo 

Critical Pedagogy

Jeff Duncan-Andrade and Ernest Morrell in their article “Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom” discuss some of the same issues that Freire gets into in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. They too believe that education should be focused on dialogue between learners and teachers rather than just “a one-way transmission of knowledge” (1) and that dialogue should be used to empower our students to be agents of change. They also believe that canonical literature such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, and Shakespeare should be complemented with pop culture media such as films, music, and sports (4). This allows our students to have their personal experiences in education honored while still working towards building their academic literacies. Using pop culture along with literature gives students a connection point to something that they make more of a connection with than centuries-old literature that they may not otherwise understand or relate to.

They also discuss how it is important to allow students to “take ownership of the knowledge production process” (10). What this means to me is that students should be able to show you how they understand the literature rather than the teacher quizzing them to make sure they understand what we are teaching. This connects with standards-based grading because it allows students to build their understanding of a unit and make sure they understand it by the end, rather than punishing them when they don’t understand it yet.