Tag Archives: bronte

Evernote

Arches / BinderI registered for Evernote and have had the app on my iPhone for a long time now, but I admit I really didn’t know what to do with it. It seemed perfect for students who needed to organize their notebooks. I was excited that Curio had Evernote support, but again, I wasn’t sure how that might help me. It was a case of being excited about the potential of a product but not really knowing how it can benefit me.

Until Jillian Ratti gave me an idea. When Jim Burke described his new organizational method, and I posted my own response, Jillian commented on my Facebook profile that she wondered if one could use Evernote to make a digital version of the notebooks (which I’m sure take up a lot of storage). Ding! I have a use for Evernote. I can organize my unit plans with all the resources and documents I might need for the unit. What’s more, I can access the notebooks anywhere.

I’m sure other resources exist that will do essentially the same thing, but I’m going to try this out and see how it goes. Thanks Jim, and thanks Jillian!

I have begun creating my Wuthering Heights notebook. You can check it out here.

Creative Commons License photo credit: t0omuchfun

The Perils of Teaching the Books We Love

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.

An Experience with Wuthering Heights

OK, I didn’t plan very well, and I ran out of time at the end of the school year. I really wanted my students to experience Wuthering Heights, but I knew there was no way we had a enough time to read this layered, complex, richly woven tapestry of a novel. So I kind of cheated. We watched what many fans and critics believe to be the film version that most resembles the book, a 1998 Masterpiece Theater production (purchase here) that stars Robert Cavanah and Orla Brady as Heathcliff and Catherine. I have to say after watching it that I agree. The story of Linton, Cathy, and Hareton is intact—the most famous film version ends shortly after Catherine’s death.

My students certainly didn’t complain about viewing the film. I am not sure they necessarily expected to like it, but as we continued to watch, I noticed that many of the students were slowly becoming transfixed by the story. They were making interesting connections (Heathcliff to Frankenstein’s monster—one student said she wanted to feel empathy for both characters, but then they would do something horrible to an innocent person, and she couldn’t feel bad for them anymore). Every once in a while, I saw them pull their genealogy charts out of their notebooks to consult. Three students said they really want to read the book now. When Heathcliff began digging up Catherine, some of my students said, “Mrs. Huff! What is he doing?” I replied, “Exactly what it looks like.” They were horrified. They were rapt. When it ended, two girls in the back applauded.

I am not so foolish as to believe every student in the class liked it, but we did have an excellent discussion about it. I discussed the ingenious structure of the novel and the doubled characters. The students genuinely seemed to enjoy the film, and the only complaint any of them lodged was that the actors seemed a bit too old for their parts (true, but they also agreed that perhaps younger actors might not have had the range to deliver the performances, either).

Showing the film before (or instead of) reading the novel was something of an accident on my part this year, but I am wondering if it might not be a bad idea to show the film before reading the book next year. Students can learn the story through film, and enjoy the technique and craft of the novel perhaps more for knowing and understanding what’s happening. I certainly teach Shakespeare in that way sometimes. I’m just glad my students have had a good experience with Wuthering Heights. At the end of class today, I mentioned to some straggling students that I was glad they’d enjoyed it because I found at least two Facebook groups organized around hatred for Wuthering Heights. One student responded, a completely puzzled look on his face. “Really?  Why?” His tone seemed to say he just couldn’t imagine why anyone would hate that story. YES!