“Why Do We Need To Read This Stuff?”
Articulating my working theory of practice first requires a vision of what good teaching might look like, which, in the spirit of backwards design, is dependent upon an objective of teaching English. My entire inquiry project is actually bound up in the question of the ultimate goal of high school English class. This question is very near to my heart; as should be the case when selecting a career, there are a lot of deeply personal reasons behind my decision to become an English teacher. Beneath all the theory I’ve read and field experience I’ve gained, my working theory of practice is ultimately most informed by the role that English class, and literature in general, has played in my life, so it feels appropriate to start there.
My path toward becoming an English teacher begins in a childhood very far removed from the study of literature. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the youngest of my siblings by 10 and 13 years. I had amazingly supportive parents who valued education and made clear their expectations that I would go to college, despite the fact that my mom never attended college, and my dad never finished high school. In spite of this expectation, I had little conception of what college really was, or what I wanted out of it because it was uncharted territory for my family. School was more or less a track I was placed on and told to do my best at--if I worked hard and did what was asked of me, I would someday achieve “success.” So that’s what I did, and these tenets remained unexamined for a long time.
I was always a reader. By virtue of being the youngest in the house by such a large margin and not having many kids my age within walking distance of my house, I spent a lot of time alone, and consequently read compulsively. Some of my earliest memories are of weekly trips to the library with my grandma, coming home with a stack of books. When I started school, I was considered a smart kid. As a substantial body of theory we’ve read this year asserts, my early success probably ties back to my reading habits.
Certainly, reading in early childhood is a huge determinant of future academic success. The comfort I built with the written word early on helped make school a place of interest and exploration where success was attainable, rather than a place of frustration and desperation, as it is for many children who start school with underdeveloped reading skills. But the role literature played in my high school experience was absolutely instrumental in my developing into the person I am today. When I was in 10th grade, a friend put The Sun Also Rises into my hands and changed my life forever. I had always read out of interest, and for the pleasure of seeing places and people beyond my small town, but with that book something clicked in me. I had never seen myself so vividly in the lives and voices of others. I had never had a book answer for me questions I didn’t know I was asking. It helped me see ideological understandings I didn’t realize I held, and challenged them. At a stage of a child’s cognitive development when they are reaching outward to find meaning, “Stories and myths may give meaning to the child or adolescent’s experience… [adolescents] attempt to ascertain symbols that define them” (Nakkula and Toshalis, 2013). Literary meaning-making can provide students entire worlds of meaning that adolescents, developmentally, are grasping for. This is what reading became for me: a self-refining process of ethical, ideological, political, and spiritual exploration and challenges.
This is why I believe the study of literature is imperative for young people. A successful English education should give students admission into the discourse and thought that has been unfolding and refining across the history of humanity. It should allow them to see themselves in the thoughts and experiences of others, so that they can live richer, more fulfilling, more examined lives. More than anything, this study sets them on a path of lifelong self-examination and encourages the discovery of “purpose:” of one’s engagement with and commitment to ideas, ideologies, and goals larger than our day-to-day life, no matter what they may be. Quoted in Burke, Jago asserts that English class must teach our students how “to make a living, make a life, and make a difference” (2013). English class should provide not only literacy skills essential to career success, but kindle in students a hunger to act and understand--to explore the world around them and become agents acting in accordance with their examined convictions. More than the voices of teachers, the voices of authors and poets have continually challenged and enriched my understandings and lived experiences, though it is through good teachers that we are exposed to these voices and can learn to listen to what they have to say.
But, I have learned time and time again--beginning with the blank stares of my peers as I gushed over something I read and continuing on to my students who dare put their heads down as I share the dire importance of a particular passage or poem--relatively few people achieve this connection with literature. I am not so self-centered to believe that everyone should share my personal passion--everyone learns and reflects differently--but very often people neglect literature because they have never had the opportunity to engage with it in an authentic way. For many students, their English education condemned reading to a static, academic realm, fatally abstracted from the “real world” of their lived experiences. This problem is exacerbated in urban schools, as students often see little of themselves and their experiences within the canon frequently taught in public schools (in addition to dozens of other problematic barriers).
In their section on “Increasing the Perceived Value of the Task” within Middle and Secondary Classroom Management, Weinstein and Novodvorsky cite “Relate Lessons to Students’ Own Lives” above all other methods (2011). I agree that this is essential, but our response as teachers must be deeper than the tokenizing suggestion of “[pairing] famous poems with rap songs” (2011). Embedding literary texts in a legitimate real-world context must be more intentional than merely placing the academic material alongside texts that students see as more relatable (according to the teacher).
Despite this difficulty, authentic engagement with literature is of the highest importance to the most at-risk public school students. As Deborah Appleman states in Critical Encounters in Secondary English, “when you give someone literacy, you give them power:” the ability to independently engage with literary text in an authentic way puts the power of education (education as a process of exploration, meaning-making, and self-development) into the hands of the student (2015).
My path toward becoming an English teacher begins in a childhood very far removed from the study of literature. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the youngest of my siblings by 10 and 13 years. I had amazingly supportive parents who valued education and made clear their expectations that I would go to college, despite the fact that my mom never attended college, and my dad never finished high school. In spite of this expectation, I had little conception of what college really was, or what I wanted out of it because it was uncharted territory for my family. School was more or less a track I was placed on and told to do my best at--if I worked hard and did what was asked of me, I would someday achieve “success.” So that’s what I did, and these tenets remained unexamined for a long time.
I was always a reader. By virtue of being the youngest in the house by such a large margin and not having many kids my age within walking distance of my house, I spent a lot of time alone, and consequently read compulsively. Some of my earliest memories are of weekly trips to the library with my grandma, coming home with a stack of books. When I started school, I was considered a smart kid. As a substantial body of theory we’ve read this year asserts, my early success probably ties back to my reading habits.
Certainly, reading in early childhood is a huge determinant of future academic success. The comfort I built with the written word early on helped make school a place of interest and exploration where success was attainable, rather than a place of frustration and desperation, as it is for many children who start school with underdeveloped reading skills. But the role literature played in my high school experience was absolutely instrumental in my developing into the person I am today. When I was in 10th grade, a friend put The Sun Also Rises into my hands and changed my life forever. I had always read out of interest, and for the pleasure of seeing places and people beyond my small town, but with that book something clicked in me. I had never seen myself so vividly in the lives and voices of others. I had never had a book answer for me questions I didn’t know I was asking. It helped me see ideological understandings I didn’t realize I held, and challenged them. At a stage of a child’s cognitive development when they are reaching outward to find meaning, “Stories and myths may give meaning to the child or adolescent’s experience… [adolescents] attempt to ascertain symbols that define them” (Nakkula and Toshalis, 2013). Literary meaning-making can provide students entire worlds of meaning that adolescents, developmentally, are grasping for. This is what reading became for me: a self-refining process of ethical, ideological, political, and spiritual exploration and challenges.
This is why I believe the study of literature is imperative for young people. A successful English education should give students admission into the discourse and thought that has been unfolding and refining across the history of humanity. It should allow them to see themselves in the thoughts and experiences of others, so that they can live richer, more fulfilling, more examined lives. More than anything, this study sets them on a path of lifelong self-examination and encourages the discovery of “purpose:” of one’s engagement with and commitment to ideas, ideologies, and goals larger than our day-to-day life, no matter what they may be. Quoted in Burke, Jago asserts that English class must teach our students how “to make a living, make a life, and make a difference” (2013). English class should provide not only literacy skills essential to career success, but kindle in students a hunger to act and understand--to explore the world around them and become agents acting in accordance with their examined convictions. More than the voices of teachers, the voices of authors and poets have continually challenged and enriched my understandings and lived experiences, though it is through good teachers that we are exposed to these voices and can learn to listen to what they have to say.
But, I have learned time and time again--beginning with the blank stares of my peers as I gushed over something I read and continuing on to my students who dare put their heads down as I share the dire importance of a particular passage or poem--relatively few people achieve this connection with literature. I am not so self-centered to believe that everyone should share my personal passion--everyone learns and reflects differently--but very often people neglect literature because they have never had the opportunity to engage with it in an authentic way. For many students, their English education condemned reading to a static, academic realm, fatally abstracted from the “real world” of their lived experiences. This problem is exacerbated in urban schools, as students often see little of themselves and their experiences within the canon frequently taught in public schools (in addition to dozens of other problematic barriers).
In their section on “Increasing the Perceived Value of the Task” within Middle and Secondary Classroom Management, Weinstein and Novodvorsky cite “Relate Lessons to Students’ Own Lives” above all other methods (2011). I agree that this is essential, but our response as teachers must be deeper than the tokenizing suggestion of “[pairing] famous poems with rap songs” (2011). Embedding literary texts in a legitimate real-world context must be more intentional than merely placing the academic material alongside texts that students see as more relatable (according to the teacher).
Despite this difficulty, authentic engagement with literature is of the highest importance to the most at-risk public school students. As Deborah Appleman states in Critical Encounters in Secondary English, “when you give someone literacy, you give them power:” the ability to independently engage with literary text in an authentic way puts the power of education (education as a process of exploration, meaning-making, and self-development) into the hands of the student (2015).
Applying This Ethic in the Field
The first novel I taught this year was Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, a young adult sci-fi novel about a young boy who is taken to an international starfleet boot camp where he is transformed into a commander who must save the world from an alien invasion. For the first part of the book, I found most students were so wrapped up in the story, they were not critically examining some of the controversial themes of the book. I decided to tease out critical responses by supplementing our discussion of the novel with an article about the contemporary issue of child soldiers around the world.
The incorporation of this short, supplementary text enriched student engagement dramatically. Class discussion debriefing the article in the context of the novel lead to some of the most lively student participation of the year (so far). Introducing this real-world comparison provided a new lens through which students could examine the novel. This proved to be an essential scaffold for student analytical thinking as they composed their essays on the novel. The most popular essay prompt asked students to argue whether the novel had pro-war or anti-war message. A surprising number of students arguing the pro-war side cited the novel’s use of child soldiers as evidence for their conclusion, many of whom even incorporated some of the real-world examples from the news article in their analysis. This demonstrated how intertextual connections led to richer literary analysis. Further, I hypothesize that by complicating students’ initial reading with a real-world example led to deeper, more authentic student engagement with the text.
Naturally, this piqued my interest. By simply complementing a literary text with a supplementary text that felt more “real world,” the novel became a little more real, and student engagement and participation flourished.
The incorporation of this short, supplementary text enriched student engagement dramatically. Class discussion debriefing the article in the context of the novel lead to some of the most lively student participation of the year (so far). Introducing this real-world comparison provided a new lens through which students could examine the novel. This proved to be an essential scaffold for student analytical thinking as they composed their essays on the novel. The most popular essay prompt asked students to argue whether the novel had pro-war or anti-war message. A surprising number of students arguing the pro-war side cited the novel’s use of child soldiers as evidence for their conclusion, many of whom even incorporated some of the real-world examples from the news article in their analysis. This demonstrated how intertextual connections led to richer literary analysis. Further, I hypothesize that by complicating students’ initial reading with a real-world example led to deeper, more authentic student engagement with the text.
Naturally, this piqued my interest. By simply complementing a literary text with a supplementary text that felt more “real world,” the novel became a little more real, and student engagement and participation flourished.
Contemporary Texts and Student Engagement
For my inquiry project, I intend to further explore the effect that complementary contemporary texts (news articles, images, critical and creative writing, and other forms of modern discourse) might have on student analysis of and relationship with literature. By pairing these texts in ways that tease out complications and highlight common themes, students will build analytical skills through intertextual connections (as seen in my class’s Ender’s Game essays). Further, rounding out my curriculum with a variety of “real-world” texts will build students’ global and historical literacy. I believe that rooting our analysis of literature in these real-world understandings will demonstrate that literary meaning and historical meaning are mutually reinforcing, and will lead to a richer student engagement with literary texts. In the same vein, I hope to find that these “intertextual” connections to the real-world will lead to greater empathetic engagement with the texts and a greater perceived relevance of the study of literature to students' lives.
I intend to test these hypotheses by continuing to incorporate supplementary texts to my English curricula. Although my experiments with this in the past have largely been based around news articles, I intend to explore the use of other kinds of supplementary media--images, video, music, and other varieties of writing--so long as they: 1) feel relevant and “real-world” to the students, and 2) complement, complicate, or provide new perspective on themes shared with the literary text.
Since this entire inquiry is informed by my working theory of practice, I would likely begin my inquiry with an anonymous survey or reflection activity that gives students the opportunity to articulate their understanding of “the point” of studying English, and their perceived relevance of literature to their lives.
For implementing the study of these supplementary texts, I would likely follow a model that uses this broad framework: I would first prime students to think about the shared theme between the texts through some discussion or writing on the theme as it exists in the literary text. I would then introduce the supplementary text, and structure a task around examining that text for the same theme. Students would then explicitly compare the two texts, examining how the new perspective complicated or reinforced their initial reading. Lastly, I would return to that theme later in the unit and try to see the extent to which the complementary text informed their current understanding. I could gauge student understanding and engagement through a combination of formal and informal assessments, including writing activities and tracking class participation in discussions.
Finally, I could assess student engagement and perceived relevance through a standard, end-of-unit reflection. This reflection might as questions like, “What part of this unit was most emotionally powerful for you? Why?” and “What is one main takeaway from this unit that will stick with you the longest?” These reflections would hopefully reflect the kind of authentic engagement I am striving for in my English class.
I intend to test these hypotheses by continuing to incorporate supplementary texts to my English curricula. Although my experiments with this in the past have largely been based around news articles, I intend to explore the use of other kinds of supplementary media--images, video, music, and other varieties of writing--so long as they: 1) feel relevant and “real-world” to the students, and 2) complement, complicate, or provide new perspective on themes shared with the literary text.
Since this entire inquiry is informed by my working theory of practice, I would likely begin my inquiry with an anonymous survey or reflection activity that gives students the opportunity to articulate their understanding of “the point” of studying English, and their perceived relevance of literature to their lives.
For implementing the study of these supplementary texts, I would likely follow a model that uses this broad framework: I would first prime students to think about the shared theme between the texts through some discussion or writing on the theme as it exists in the literary text. I would then introduce the supplementary text, and structure a task around examining that text for the same theme. Students would then explicitly compare the two texts, examining how the new perspective complicated or reinforced their initial reading. Lastly, I would return to that theme later in the unit and try to see the extent to which the complementary text informed their current understanding. I could gauge student understanding and engagement through a combination of formal and informal assessments, including writing activities and tracking class participation in discussions.
Finally, I could assess student engagement and perceived relevance through a standard, end-of-unit reflection. This reflection might as questions like, “What part of this unit was most emotionally powerful for you? Why?” and “What is one main takeaway from this unit that will stick with you the longest?” These reflections would hopefully reflect the kind of authentic engagement I am striving for in my English class.
Works Cited
Appleman, Deborah. (2015). Critical Encounters in Secondary English. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Burke, Jim. (2013). The English Teacher’s Companion. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Nakkula, Michael J., and Toshalis, Eric. (2013). Understanding Youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Weinstein, Carol Simon., and Ingrid Novodvorsky. (2011). Middle and Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from Research and Practice. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Burke, Jim. (2013). The English Teacher’s Companion. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Nakkula, Michael J., and Toshalis, Eric. (2013). Understanding Youth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.
Weinstein, Carol Simon., and Ingrid Novodvorsky. (2011). Middle and Secondary Classroom Management: Lessons from Research and Practice. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.