Category Archives: Teaching Literature

Issues, Teaching Literature

Choice and Reading

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I showed my students this video and asked them to journal their reactions to it. Here are some selections from their journals:

I think every high school student relates to these students in some sort of way. As time goes on, and hew and more entertaining technology is invented, reading becomes more tedious than entertaining. If I am forced to read a book that I can’t relate to or understand, of course I will get bored and most likely give up on it. Now on the other hand, I read books on programming and starting businesses all the time, and really enjoy reading them. Just like these students, I would have to say, if teachers gave students the option to choose what they read, kids would enjoy reading a lot more and become better readers. Because of school, reading has gotten a bad name to kids and even some adults. If it wasn’t for my father introducing me to my first book on programming and first book on how to start a business, I don’t think I’d ever pick up a book in my life.

A great example of finding a niche you enjoy, I think.

I think the reason that teenagers around the world do not read as much as teenagers used to read in the past is because of the new and advanced technology. Teenagers go on Facebook or watch TV on their free time instead of reading and it definitely takes a big amount of time (and doesn’t have time for reading). Personally, I wish I could read more because I love it and I think it helps me to widen my knowledge and think of aspects in life in a different way.

Personal note of pride: that last student came into my English class two years ago in February of her 9th grade year with no English. None.

I agree with the fact that it is more enjoyable to read something you’re interested in or chose yourself. Another point I would add is that reading on your own is nicer because you can read at your own pace and when there is no pressure I tend to read more.

As I slow reader myself (I often really did want to finish books assigned in school and couldn’t), I can relate to this student. What do we do about that problem in light of the limited time we have in school?

I stopped reading in 8th grade, too. Then I picked books I was interested in (10th, 11th grade) and books were an amazing source because if you forget a part you can go back to it which is just the opposite of what you can do when listening to someone talk. I completely agree with the students in the video. I think what stops people to read is that they are filling a cup they do not have. That cup is the interest and without it your energy is used for something you think is pointless. I started out reading Frankenstein [a recent required read in my Brit. Lit. classes] with apathy and then I started thinking, why not enjoy this? So I took the info. and used it to gain knowledge and expand my thinking.

This student’s cup analogy is interesting in light of the image of futility it provides.

The message in this video was that forcing people to read books that they do not like then they will not read them.

  • Teens need to read.
  • People read more if they like the book.
  • People use SparkNotes if they do not want to read or use what their peers say.
  • More important to read than read classics.
  • People who like the books will read more of them.
  • Classics are okay but what you like to read is better to read.

This student really summed up the video’s main points well because I think he agreed with them though he didn’t say so explicitly.

I believe that the video was very true. I never read for fun. I think if the teacher would let the kids read what they would choose to read, more kids would read. I read all 3 summer reading books for the first time ever, the books were all boring but I still read them. I usually read 1 or 1.5 summer reading books just because they are so boring & I have better things to do.

I do pick up on a feeling of accomplishment regarding completing freshmen year summer reading.

The video is very true. I read books quicker when I like it. The Things They Carried [a summer reading selection] took me forever. Even though I was at camp, I could never get into it. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time took me not even one night & Saturday morning to read. Though it was shorter, I enjoyed reading it more and it made me enjoy reading. It doesn’t matter what we read because reading in general stimulates our brain cells and benefits our writing and the way we think. Classics might help teach morals & provide philosophical ways of thinking, but they are overrated.

The first thought that leaps to mind is that if this poor student of mine has been convinced somehow that classics should be read so that we can learn morals and widen our philosophy, it’s really no wonder he doesn’t like them.

I also have some students who were more critical of the video:

I do not trust the credibility of this video for the following reasons:

  • The data gathered for this video was taken from only one high school.
  • Never showed an interview where a child actually read the assigned books.
  • In the video the person who didn’t read the book talks about how they understood what happened by gathering information from what people in said in class discussions. This means that someone in that class read the book and understood it enough to discuss it.

Even though the credibility of this video is in question, I do believe that they are trying to get across a valid point. If someone likes what they are reading then they will most likely read the entire thing. Also if you let them choose what they are going to read they would likely read it.

I love the way that student really thought carefully about the validity of the message, even though he agreed with it.

In my opinion, these students are whiners. I honestly think that classics are important as they reflect the time in which they were made. You don’t want to do math, but you do it anyway. Reading is made out to be such a chore these days. Reading is television for the mind. What is wrong with that? Come on, people. Grow up and just read the darn book! I mean, my God! Complain! Complain! Complain! Now how do I, who is not a genius, manage to read books for skill and books for fun at the same time?

While I admire this student’s sentiments and have shared them from time to time, is it me, or does reading sound like medicine you need to take, so it’s better to just man up and take it?

Our school is examining ways to bring more student choice into the curriculum. We have no plans to eliminate required reading as a class, but more independent reading reflecting student choice and literature circles are options we are exploring. What is your school doing to encourage more reading and foster lifelong reading habits?

Teaching Literature

The Journey

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SeekI think one of the reasons the hero’s journey is so popular in our culture, and arguably in most cultures, is that we inherently recognize that in our lives, it’s all about the journey, not the destination. Once the hero reaches his destination, the story ends.

When I was in my English Education program at UGA, one of my classmates introduced me to Joseph Campbell. I can’t remember the particulars anymore, only that Greg mentioned Campbell’s interview with Bill Moyers, which became The Power of Myth.

Greg was one of most well-read people I’d met up until that point, and I respected his intellect. Out of curiosity, I purchased a copy of The Power of Myth. As a fan of Star Wars and Tolkien, I was drawn to Campbell’s ideas.

Many years later, my department chair asked us to dream up possible English electives, and my first idea was to create a course based on the monomyth and the work of Joseph Campbell. My department chair and principal approved the course based on the description I wrote. I titled the course “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” after Campbell’s seminal work.

Regular readers of this blog know that backward design informs my teaching and planning. Therefore, I created essential questions not just for each text, but also for the course:

  • How is the pattern of the monomyth demonstrated by various cultures around the world in various time periods?
  • How do archetypes inform our understanding of literature and the world?
  • How are the Hero, his/her quest, and his/her ideals still valid and useful in today’s world?
  • How has the monomyth been influential in shaping subsequent literature and film?

I begin the course with a WebQuest to help acquaint students with Campbell and his work. Next, I divide students into three groups, and each group reads a section of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Because I don’t have the option of assigning summer reading, and we need to hit the ground running so we can study several texts over the course of a semester, I have found that simply dividing the section of that book that discusses the hero’s journey into thirds—the Separation, the Initiation, and the Return—the work of learning about the hero’s journey can be accomplished more quickly. Each group reads the section of Campbell’s book dealing with their assignment and teaches the information to the class. Last semester’s Return group made great use of video to teach their section.

After students understand the basics, we move on to the texts. Campbell’s two books The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth serve as foundation texts. We also study the original Star Wars trilogy. No other modern work, with the exception of Harry Potter or possibly The Matrix, is mentioned so often in conjunction with Campbell’s work. George Lucas has said that he wanted to create a monomyth after reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the idea seems to have caught fire in Hollywood since then. Campbell’s famous interview with Bill Moyers took place on Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch. Another work I felt important to include is The Hobbit. I felt that The Lord of the Rings in either book or movie form would be a bit too long for a one semester course, but obviously that work is a great choice. The Hobbit contains the hero’s journey in a more abbreviated form. Aside from these works, I have also taught The Iliad. In future iterations of the course, we will instead read shorter Greek/Roman/Norse/Celtic myths that conform more closely to the hero’s journey. Achilles, after all, spends most of The Iliad stuck in the “Refusal of the Call” phase of the journey. One could argue Hector is much more heroic, and certainly medieval scholars must have agreed—he was chosen as one of the Nine Worthies, whereas Achilles was not. I have purchased a set of The Ramayana, but never managed to get to it. It is a one semester class, and the Jewish holidays often hit us pretty hard in September/October. I have to seriously curtail reading homework during that time period, which makes it hard to get through texts (also an excellent time for film study of Star Wars).

The course has proven fairly popular. The first year, eight brave students signed up. A few of them really enjoyed the course. One of them recently visited me to tell me he had been accepted to college (he took a year off after graduation), and to tell me he was watching Star Wars with his brother the other day, and kept talking about what part of the hero’s journey Luke was currently experiencing as they watched. As he said, “Oh, now they’re in the Belly of the Whale.” I am delighted that he will not be able to watch a movie again without seeing this additional layer of meaning. Before he left, he thanked me “for a great class.”

This year, the class was full, and I understand quite a few interested students were turned away, as the class was capped at 15 students. A student in my class last semester drew a Venn diagram to help his fellow students understand the prominence of the Hero’s Journey. The diagram has only one circle instead of two. The diagram is titled “Stories that follow the Hero’s Journey.” Inside the circle are the words “All Stories Ever.” I really like the idea that as a result of taking this course, students see this common story in a new light.

My friend Greg, the one who introduced me to Joseph Campbell, was killed in action in Iraq in April 2004 when his truck convoy was ambushed outside Abu Ghraib. Greg was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Meritorious Medal, and the Army Commendation Medal for his bravery—he saved the lives of ten other soldiers before being killed. I know Greg had a deep understanding, perhaps better than most, of the sacrifices a hero must sometimes make for his people. He would have been pleased, had he lived, to learn about this course. He told me once he thought every English teacher should teach Campbell. I teach Campbell because I think his work is important and helps students put so much of their culture into perspective, but it’s a fitting tribute to Greg’s memory, too.

Here you can find a list of links I use in teaching this course or that I just find helpful and have shared with students (or just use for myself):

“For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.”—Joseph Campbell

*For more discussion of this essay, see this previous post.

Update: This post used to contain documents I use with the course. I will post the documents again on a future post. A plugin I used to use made them unavailable to users.

Creative Commons License photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Teaching Literature

April Poetry Madness

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Magnetic PoetryMarch Madness is upon us. Folks on Twitter are complaining about how lousy their brackets are. It hit me that creating a poetry tournament could be a fun way to celebrate National Poetry Month in April.

I came up with the idea for four brackets: American classics, British/World classics, faculty favorites, and student favorites; however, you could create whatever brackets you want.

Step-by-step directions:

  1. Collect favorites from students and faculty (if you plan to use student and faculty brackets).
  2. English department discussion or teacher determination of quintessential classics of American and British/World brackets (or whatever brackets you have chosen). Alternatively, you could determine which poems should go in the classics brackets through research.
  3. Create your chart. I found downloadable 32- and 64-team blank charts in Excel at this website, but you could create your own if you wish. Google Docs also has several bracket templates you could alter for a poetry tournament. I plan to create a large chart to post outside my classroom using craft paper.
  4. Determine the poems for the first round based on submissions or other criteria.
  5. Pick your favorite way to match the poems up. You can have poetry slams and use an applause meter to determine the winner. You can post the poems and have people check their favorites, then score them. Students can advocate for a poem and determine how to try to convince their peers to vote for their poem. The possibilities are probably endless.

This is the kind of thing you can fill a bulletin board with if you like, but I have already decided to put the National Poetry Month poster from English Journal and all my students’ favorite poems on my bulletin board. Besides, I want to be able to share this project with people walking by the classroom.

Do you have any ideas to add? Please share in the comments.

Update: Well, there is clearly nothing new under the sun; I did, however, have some slightly different ideas as to execution (via Making Curriculum Pop Ning).

Teaching Literature

Tales of the Jazz Age

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Tales of the Jazz AgeAmerican literature teachers (and lovers)! Tales of the Jazz Age: 11 Classic Short Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald is available on Amazon for $4.99. I don’t usually do this kind of thing, but it sounded like a great value to me, so I’m passing it on. The collection includes “The Jelly Bean,” “The Camel’s Back,” “May Day,” “Porcelain and Pink,” “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Tarquin of Cheapside,” “O Russet Witch,” “The Lees of Happiness,” “Mr. Icky,” and “Jemina.” I’m not sure how long this price is effective, but I decided it would make a nice addition to my classroom library, and I thought I’d pass it on to anyone else who might be interested.

Teaching Literature

The Perils of Teaching the Books We Love

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Several years ago, I read an opinion piece in English Journal by Rebecca Hayden entitled “Teaching Works We Love: Hazards of the English Classroom.” (You will need to be an NCTE member and possibly an EJ subscriber to access that article, I think.) This piece really resonated with me because I think all teachers, at some point, teach a book they absolutely love only to be crushed by the lukewarm or even hostile reactions of our students. Hayden discusses such an experience with Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Back when I taught American literature, sometimes I would read Hayden’s article to students and explain that the way she felt about Tess was how I felt about The Great Gatsby, and if they could find it in their hearts, I pleaded, I would appreciate it if they could be gentle with me if they didn’t like it.

Now as I prepare to teach Wuthering Heights later this year, I admit I’m worried. I am well aware this book has a certain polarizing effect. My own mother hates it; she tried to read it based on my recommendation, and she could not get into it. I read a post somewhere recently, and I regret I can’t recall where, in which the poster argued that he/she could understand the appeal of the other classics, but not Wuthering Heights. The poster wondered why on earth this book was considered classic and didn’t just die a natural death over time, like so many other forgotten books that are never read and go out of print. And I felt a little bit sick.

I came to Wuthering Heights really late. In fact, I didn’t read it in its entirety until the summer of 2008. I tried to read it when assigned in high school, but I couldn’t keep up with the reading schedule set by my teacher (I am a slow reader), so I gave up. The book sucked me in when Catherine Linton disturbed Mr. Lockwood’s sleep that awful night at Wuthering Heights. It was like Catherine grabbed me and didn’t let go. Over the last year and half, I have developed a sort of unhealthy obsession with the book. I can’t figure it out at all. I don’t like the characters, really. Like is a word one can’t use to describe them. In many cases, they’re horrible people, and it’s hard to dredge up any sympathy for them at all. No, I don’t like them at all. I love them, though. I told my husband that I couldn’t explain how I felt about this book in the same terms: I don’t like it at all, but I love it. In a very real way, I feel like I am presenting my heart to my students with even chances that it will be stepped on. The easy thing to do would be not to teach it, I suppose. Instead, I am going to put myself out there, and before we begin reading, I will say this:

Before we read this book, I need to share a secret with you. I love this book with an unhealthy passion. Harry Potter might be jealous. I’m not sure. The fact is that I think about this book a lot. I Google the title a lot and look at the pictures and articles that result. I watch the movie. And I just can’t tell you why. The characters are horrible people with few redeeming qualities. The book has beautiful descriptions, but I usually respond most to books with characters I like. This book is the lone exception. When you have a work of literature like this that you just love so much, it can be scary to teach it because you might not like it. This book is one of those books that people seem to either really love or really hate. I know that if you don’t like it, it’s not like you’re being personal about it anymore than you are being personal about it when you read an assigned book that you do like. It’s the book you respond to rather than the teacher, although it is my hope that a good teacher makes a book more bearable if you dislike it and even better if you like it. I quote another English teacher when I say, “Like many English teachers, I feel that favorite books are part of my soul, and the question arises, To what degree am I willing to bare that soul to hundreds of adolescents, who may be harboring their own quirks, prejudices, and lightning-quick dismissive judgments?”

You have my permission not to like Wuthering Heights, but I ask you to please be gentle with me, dear readers, because I am handing you my soul when I hand you this novel. Please don’t trample it to death. All I ask is that you keep an open mind. This book might just change your life the way it changed mine.*

*Well expressed portions of this plea were lovingly cribbed from Rebecca Hayden’s article. I just don’t know how to say it better than she did.

Teaching Literature

J. D. Salinger, 1909-2010

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A Perfect Day for Bananafish
Creative Commons License photo credit: Annie Ominous

Rest in Peace, J. D. Salinger. I have fond memories of teaching your work.

Teaching Literature

Sonnets

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My British Literature and Compositions are going to study the sonnet next week, and my department chair and I collaborated on a SMARTBoard Notebook file. I do not think she would mind if I shared our work here, and a couple of people have expressed interested after I sent messages to Twitter and Facebook about it. So, here is the file. If someone could download it and let me know if the embedded videos are all intact, that would be great. I love YouTube, but our connection at school is shaky when so many people are logged on to our network, so I have taken to embedding these videos in the Notebook files. It’s also nice not to have to switch programs to show different media.

Download the Sonnet Notebook file.

Our goal is to ask students to memorize and perform a sonnet. I like Matthew Macfadyen’s interpretation of Sonnet 29 by Shakespeare that’s embedded in the file.

Teaching Literature

Shakespearean Insults

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Shakespearean InsultsOne of my favorite stand-by fun lessons is to allow students to create Shakespearean insults. The Folger Library’s Shakespeare Set Free series volume with lessons on Romeo and Juliet has a handout I’ve used since 1997, when I first taught the play, to create insults. Though I consider myself fairly technologically savvy, I found out today the handout may almost be obsolete.

Within moments of my introducing the assignment, my students were happily mixing and matching words to create insults and hurling them at each other (without my prompting, even). I have only two copies of C.T. Onion’s glossary left (I used to have five; what happened to them?), so we were trying to share, when I remembered the Shakespeare Pro app on my iPhone has a glossary based on David and Ben Crystal’s Shakespeare’s Words, so we added my iPhone into the mix, and before long, I was telling students about the app and suggesting that if they had iPod Touches or iPhones, they might like to talk their parents into letting them purchase the app. Within moments, one of my students with an iPod Touch found a Shakespearean Insult generator (iTunes link) app and had downloaded it. He showed me some more apps, including this one (iTunes link), which looks similar to what I was asking students to do today. Several students had their iPods and iPhones out, checking out Shakespeare, and one of my quieter students pointed out to her classmates that they could download the text of Romeo and Juliet (iTunes link) as an app. One student asked excitedly if they downloaded the app, could they ditch their heavy books? I said sure, as long as they wouldn’t have trouble finding their place, and I pointed out that in fact, one of my eleventh graders did just that last semester when his class studied Macbeth.

All of this might sound really obvious in schools where technology is wholeheartedly embraced, but it was interesting for me to watch the students using these tools to study a text I studied in high school. I remarked to my department chair the other day that I wished we could forego books if we wanted and allow students to download their books, including those fat, expensive anthologies, onto a Kindle or iPhone/iPod Touch using a Kindle app. Think about how much less it would weigh, not to mention texts can be more interactive, and students can annotate them and keep them.

Movies in English Class, Teaching Literature

Evaluating Materials

49/365 - summer reading.I have been lying in bed all weekend, trying to get over a bout of the flu. I decided to preview a video I asked our media specialist to buy for our library: Great Books: Wuthering Heights. If you are unfamiliar with the Great Books series, they are actually fairly good documentaries about books produced by Discovery Schools. Back in the day when TLC used to be an acronym for “The Learning Channel,” and as such, actually produced educational content, the Great Books series could sometimes be caught on broadcast on that channel.

I disagree with a few conclusions drawn in the Great Books episode on Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë is known to have been an intensely private person. She was furious when her sister Charlotte read poetry Emily had written. When Anne and Charlotte went to London to reveal their identities to their publishers, Emily refused to go and insisted upon remaining anonymous. She was again angry with Charlotte when Charlotte revealed that “Ellis Bell” was her sister. However, the DVD conflates this desire for privacy or perhaps even shyness (although I admit I don’t know enough about Emily to determine if she was shy) with “madness.” At one point, the video points out, rather boldly and without explanation or foundation, that because Emily enjoyed writing about her fantasy world of Gondal, she was “in danger of losing her mind.” Later, the video concludes that she based her character Heathcliff on herself, again without presenting evidence or explanation.

My first thought was that if I were a student watching this video, which seemed authoritative and informative, I might take these statements at face value rather than question them. After all, they are produced by Discovery School, so one can infer they are accurate, reliable, and educationally sound. I suppose if I’m going anywhere with this thinking-aloud exercise, it is here: it’s critical for teachers to evaluate materials they are thinking of presenting to their students, but more importantly, it’s critical to do your own research as well. If I had seen this video ten years ago as a relatively new teacher, I might not have questioned some of the conclusions drawn by the video’s producers because I myself didn’t have the slightest knowledge about Emily Brontë’s life, and while I’m far from an expert now, I have at least learned enough both in content and as a critical thinker to discern the accuracy of materials I’m previewing. Instead, I came away from the video feeling that the producers had not given Emily Brontë much credit for possessing an imagination that allowed her to write fantasy stories without necessarily living in a fantasy world or to create a character purely out of a talented gift as a writer. Of course, not wanting to give Emily Brontë much credit for her imagination is not new, but one would hope educational materials produced in 2005 would be more enlightened in their view. If I were to use this video with my students, I would challenge them to locate evidence regarding the conclusions drawn in the video. It might be a good critical thinking exercise for them. However, my instinct says not to show it. With no abundance of time and no shortage of materials, it is not the best course of action, in my mind, to use class time for materials I find misleading at best, erroneous at worst.

Creative Commons License photo credit: Elemeno_Pea

Teaching Literature, Technology

Romeo and Juliet with Emoticons

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OK, the inspiration for this post can be found here, but I loved the idea so much that I wanted to try it with a work of literature I know well.

Act I, Scene 1

[Enter Sampson and Gregory]

Sampson: 

Gregory:

[Enter Abram]

Sampson:

Abram:

[Enter Benvolio]

Benvolio:

[Enter Tybalt]

Tybalt:

Citizens of Verona:

[Enter Montague and Capulet and their Ladies]

Capulet:

Montague:

Lady Montague:

[Enter Prince]

Prince:

Lady Montague:

Montague:

[Enter Romeo]

Benvolio:

Romeo:

Benvolio:

Romeo:

Benvolio:

Act I, Scene 2

[Enter Paris and Capulet]

Paris:

Capulet:

Paris:

[Elsewhere]

Romeo:

Benvolio:

Servant:

Benvolio:

Romeo:

Act I, Scene 3

[Enter Lady Capulet, Juliet, and Nurse]

Lady Capulet:

Nurse:

Juliet:

Nurse:

Juliet:

Lady Capulet:

Nurse:

Lady Capulet:

Juliet:

Nurse:

Lady Capulet:

Juliet:

Act I, Scene 4

[Enter Mercutio, Benvolio, Romeo, and torchbearers]

Romeo:

Mercutio:

Benvolio:

Romeo:

Act I, Scene 5

[Enter almost everyone. It’s a party! Woo!]

Capulet:

Romeo:

Tybalt:

Capulet:

Tybalt:

Romeo:

Juliet:

Nurse:

Romeo:

Nurse:

Romeo:

Capulet:

Romeo:

Juliet:

Nurse:

Juliet:

Stay tuned for Act II…

By the way, this exercise reminds of something Jim Burke said recently about teacher brains. Wouldn’t this be a great activity for students in order to summarize information? It’s time consuming, but I think I might try it. I can already hear them asking me how many emoticons they’ll need to use. Chorus with me: “As many as it takes.” Sheesh.