Gladly Would I Teach

Despite budget problems, my district next year will adopt new high school English textbooks. For the past five – six years, I have used The Norton Reader for AP English Language, and I love it. The book is filled with a variety of essays on different topics and with different writing styles. Since the textbook is a college textbook and only available in paperback, our poor books are heavily worn, and many of them are falling apart. I hoped that we would be able to adopt the new edition for next year. The new edition didn’t even make first cuts!  I don’t know why; we were never asked to contribute our opinions of the books we are now using.

I wanted the new Norton Reader, but since a brand new book designed specifically for AP English Language was available, I wasn’t worried because I knew the new book would be excellent, and I looked forward to taking a good look at it. Since this textbook is touted by AP English Language teachers for its thoroughness and its concentration on teaching AP English and also preparing students for college, I knew it would be a great book.

It isn’t The Norton Reader, but it is excellent, and I set it aside to read during the summer. I knew I would need to recreate many of my plans and assignments, but I was excited to implement the changes.

Yesterday I found out that the county textbook committee adopted a different textbook for AP English Language, a book that was not even available when I looked at the AP books. I flipped through it today and was so disappointed. Instead of a challenging college textbook, the book is a watered down college book that includes vocabulary sections and scores of reading comprehension questions that emphasize literal recall. Most of all, the book contains few of the rich essays that my classes enjoyed discussing in the past.

I’ll use the textbook because I have no choice, but at a time when everyone is encouraging teachers to increase the rigor of classes and to demand higher standards from our students and ourselves, I am perplexed that we would select a lower-level book. What a disappointment.

I’ll still spend part of my summer reading the new textbook. It certainly will not take nearly so much time since it is so simple, and I’ll use the new book in the fall.

Over in the corner of my room, however, I suspect I’ll find the room to store a class set of my beloved Norton Reader.

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Earlier today I read John Spencer’s interesting blog  about books that make students uncomfortable: books should make you feel uncomfortable

John mentioned that he disliked To Kill a Mockingbird, and many of us jumped in to defend the book. Atticus would have been proud! To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite childhood books. As an adult I still enjoy it because the novel gives a glimpse into Truman Capote’s childhood, and I love Capote.

One of John’s assertions is that English teachers often select “safe” literature, and I think most of us would agree that we frequently must assess what novels we want to teach, whether the books are appropriate for our students, and whether or not we have the strength, time, and perseverance to defend the book if a handful of parents complain.

We all have our horror stories.

Two decades ago I taught Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to two classes of ninth-grade honor students. Because I knew I might have a few parents complain about the profanity in the book, students had to have parental permission to read it, and I offered a substitute selection for parents and students who objected to the book. In the letter I explained that the book contained profanity in order to develop the characters.

I was happy to discover that all of the parents supported me and signed the permission forms. Several of them included notes thanking me for including Steinbeck’s little gem because it was one of their favorites.

A few days later, however, I was startled to discover that one child’s parents were unhappy and requested a parent conference. I was young, inexperienced, and uncomfortable when parents challenged anything I did. At the beginning of the conference the parents stated how upset they were that I assigned such “trash.” They then pulled out their copy of the book and showed me that they had highlighted all of the “dirty” words in the book. The book was awash in yellow highlights.

I listened calmly and never objected to anything they said even when they told me that such “trash” might be appropriate in some homes where parents do not emphasize high morals, but they would not tolerate the book in their home.

When they finished their tirade, I stated emphatically that I understood their concerns, and, although I thought the book was appropriate for students, I would never teach the book without parent permission. I then explained my process for obtaining parental permission and whipped out the permission form the student had turned in the previous week. “Here’s the form Mark gave me. As you can see, your signature is at the bottom of the page. Obviously, one of you gave your permission or your son forged the signature. I believe this is a problem you need to resolve in your own home not  in a conference with me.”

In the South, we would say that the parents came in on their “high horse,” intent on showing me the evil of my ways.

They limped away from the conference on a donkey!

End of conference!

I’m sure the parents would have liked to have berated me for assigning such an evil book, but they were so embarrassed by their son’s forgery that they didn’t say anything except a very weak “I’m sorry.”

I kept that highlighted book for years, but I must have tossed it aside one day when I no longer thought it was strange for a parent to spend so much time hunting and highlighting objectionable words.

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I was excited about class on Friday because we were going to discuss Wallace Stegner’s “Town Dump,” a beautiful essay about his Canadian childhood. Students generally like the essay because of Stegner’s vivid descriptions of the items he finds at the local dump. Since the essay is told through the eyes of a seven year old, it is easy for the reader to understand how fascinated the young boy is with a catfish who may be the devil, or the leeches that cling to his skin, or the mounted goat’s head that he takes home until his mother makes him return it since it is full of moths.

One of my favorite sections of the essay is when seven-year-old Stegner writes a letter to a company and receives a form letter as a reply. The “windowed envelope” from people who are “his truly” becomes a treasure that the boy carries around for days.

At the end of the essay, Stegner asserts, “The dump was our history and our poetry.” Usually, students enjoy discussing how a dump is our history because it holds everything we have ever used and how the dump is like poetry in that it holds items that are memorable but not useful. We then continue the discussion by telling about items that we own that other people would consider unimportant or useless but we keep them because they are important to us.

Usually!

Yesterday, when I asked students what they thought of the essay they had read for homework, most of them had not enjoyed it.

“Why?” I asked in disbelief. Although most of them could supply explanations such as it did not tell a story, or they couldn’t relate, or they didn’t enjoy his philosophical views, some students answered unemotionally , “It was boring.”

“It was boring!”

Nothing kills a teacher’s enthusiasm faster on a Friday afternoon than to hear a student reduce a marvelous work of literature as “boring.”

Some days teaching would be easier if I turned off the lights and showed a movie, even a boring movie!

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Our semester ended before Christmas, and I had to say good-bye to all of my students. Because my school operates on a block schedule with four 90-minute daily class periods, I am only allowed to  keep students one semester. (I hate block schedules, but that’s a different blog topic for the future.) Next week I will meet 75-85 new students.

Because my seniors have finished their English requirements, they will complete little reading and writing next semester. To encourage them to keep reading, however, I have started a voluntary reading group for AP English students. We will read one book each month and then meet before school to discuss it – no quizzes, no tests, no papers – just reading and discussion.

I invited all of my 84 first-semester students to participate, and so far 26 of them have joined the group, not bad for seniors in their final semester of high school!

I want the group and reading to be fun and profitable for students; therefore, I need to select books of high interest that will “speak” to 17 and 18 year olds a few months away from college.

In January, we are reading John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, a book that most teenagers enjoy and have fun discussing. For February, I’m considering Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, a poignant book about racism in South Africa.

I’m looking for suggestions for other books that I can introduce to these students. They are all excellent readers and good students. Because they have volunteered to participate in a book group, they also obviously enjoy reading.  I may suggest one book each month for the entire group or offer 3 suggestions and let them choose the book they want to read.

When you think back to your high school and college years, what books resonated powerfully with you?  Can you remember a book that you could not put down or a book that you considered powerful because it opened your eyes to a new world or situation that you had not considered previously?

I would appreciate any advice or suggestions.  Since I know senioritis will start nipping at these students in the next few weeks, I want to make our reading group as meaningful and engaging as possible.

Thanks!

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Edie Parrott

I received an email yesterday from a teacher who wanted to know if I would share my lesson plans for teaching In Cold Blood. I had to apologize to her for not sending anything because the plans that I have for teaching the book are all inside my book. I don’t type up plans for teaching; I just put everything I need inside the book itself. Until I received the email yesterday, I had never given this concept much thought.

Years ago, I created plans and typed everything to make it look pretty, but each time I made changes to the plans, and, after awhile, I realized that making plans and typing them up was just spinning my wheels because it wasn’t a valuable way for me to prepare to teach. Besides, since I’ve been teaching for decades, I also had to endure the conversion process: from typewriter to early computers; early computers to Windows based computers, and on and on and on. Those of you who are really young probably don’t understand this part, but in the first 10-15 years of personal computers, many files were not compatible from one machine to another.  It was painful!

Today, the only plans I have for teaching a book are located inside the book itself. I write/circle/underline/highlight/colorize and decorate my book with sticky notes of everything I need to teach. It’s a system that works really well for me.

First, I buy a popular HARDBACK edition of the book (one that students often also purchase). While paperbacks are fine, I prefer hardback books for teaching because I will indeed teach from that same book for decades. Paperbacks fall apart after four or five years of teaching, and I don’t want to have to transfer over my information.

What notes do I include?

• In the first pages of the book, I list  the items I want to go over with students before they begin reading, including any warnings about the book, information about the author, publication information, things I want students to pay attention to as they read. I always begin by emphasizing why the book is a classic or why it has become so popular.
• In the opening pages of the book, I also list the reading schedule I will use. For example, if we will spend three weeks on the book, I list which pages we will read the first night, second night, etc.  Then, each time I teach the book, I only need to supply dates.
• Before each block of text for nightly reading, I include notes about what I want students to pay attention to that night or the purpose for reading that night.
• On each page in the book, I highlight important information and terms or descriptions of people, etc. If there is something on the page that I definitely want to review with students in class, I circle the page number. (As I discuss the book, I always look for circled pages so I know what to go over in class.)
• On pages I will review with students, I write the corresponding page numbers for other editions of the book that students might use.
• I highlight or mark pages that I want to read aloud in class. These may be “Aha” moments or prose where music should play in the background.
• On each page or at the end of the block of reading, I write discussion questions that I will use in class.
• At the end of the book, I write the quizzes that I will give in class after each section of reading.

Each time I teach a book, I add more information to my book. After a decade of using the same book, the poor thing is covered with highlights and notes, but I have everything I need for teaching in the same place. As a result, when I prepare to teach the book for the umpteenth time, I don’t have to flip through file folders of information or computer files of handouts. All I have to do is take my book home with me. It contains everything I need to teach the book.

Except tests – I still keep them under lock and key!

I dream of the day when I will be able to assign reading homework, and all of my students will read it thoroughly and come prepared to
discuss the selection in class the following day without any extra incentive, prodding, or threats of quizzes.

I’m still dreaming.

While most of our students will indeed read assigned homework passages, a few students will only read if they absolutely have to, and too many students will skim a passage instead of reading carefully. For this reason, when I am teaching a book or long work, I usually give a quick daily quiz over the homework. If students know they will have to take a quiz, most of them will read the passage carefully.

Many teachers, however, balk at the idea of daily quizzes because they don’t want to have to make up quizzes over assigned reading; they don’t want to grade daily quizzes, and they don’t want to lose so much valuable class time. I use a simple process for making and grading quizzes that takes very little time away from class.

1. I duplicate one quiz sheet for each student. This sheet can be used for 6 daily quizzes. Download Reading Quizzes

2. For each homework selection I make up 5 words, terms, concepts, or names that anyone who read the passage would know. For example, if we read a selection where a family adopted a dog, I would add the word “dog” to my quiz. I make sure that my 5 words cover the entire reading passage and are not taken exclusively from the beginning of the passage or the end of the passage.
3. In class I distribute the blank quiz sheet and tell students that they will take a quiz each day. I then call out the five words for today’s quiz and instruct the students to write them on their sheet. You may prefer to write the five words on the board or overheard.

4. I then tell students that they are to define the word or identify it so I can tell they read the homework assignment. I instruct them to reply to each word in approximately 5 words and emphasize that they should not write in sentences. For example, for “dog,” students only need to reply “family adopts.”

5. The quiz should take no more than 10 minutes.

6. I then collect the quizzes and place them in a notebook to grade. I can flip through the quizzes quickly and grade 30 quizzes in roughly 10 minutes. As I grade quizzes, I always concentrate on whether or not I think the student read the assignment. If I think he did, I give him the benefit of the doubt on each word.

7. On the following day, I pass out the graded quizzes and tell students to move to the next block to take Quiz 2.

8. I vary the difficulty level of the quiz according to the grade level of students and the level of the reading material.

9. To give an incentive to students who are present each day and to allay student whining about the obscurity of some items on the quiz, I award 50 points to the final quiz of students who take all of the quizzes and who refrain from whining about the quizzes. It works! (Students always want to add the points to their lowest quiz grade, but it makes no difference mathematically which quiz receives the extra-credit points.)

10. I make sure that I give different words on the quiz for each class that I teach because we know that students from earlier in the day tell other students what is on the quiz.
    

Here’s an example of a quiz I give on The Glass Castle (pages 3-28)

1. dumpster (author sees mother in dumpster)
2. fire (burned while cooking hotdogs)
3. Blue Goose (family’s car)
4. chlorinated water (only for sissies)
5. seizures (Brian has seizures as child

For each of the selections above, I would accept alternate answers that show the student read the homework assignment.

In time, students realize they must read carefully each night. While daily quizzes often hurt a student’s average, with this quiz format, students read better and their grades actually improve because of so many excellent quiz grades.

My AP English classes just finished reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, a marvelous book about
the 1959 murder of four members of the Clutter family in Kansas. The students always enjoy the book,
and I look forward to teaching it because Capote develops the story more like a
novel instead of a nonfiction account. We have fascinating discussions about
the two murderers and the nature vs. nurture debate and how it plays out in
this book. Since AP English Language mainly focuses on nonfiction, I always
assign In Cold Blood early in the semester
when students think the works we will read will be boring. In Cold Blood is an outstanding book that sucks in the reader and
makes him feel that he is right there when the murders take place, and that’s
the problem.

Over the years I have encountered students who like the
book, but they are so afraid while they read it that they don’t want to sleep
alone or go outside after dark. One young man this semester awakened in the
middle of the night when he heard some noise in the den and ended up tackling
his mother who had come downstairs to check on something!

In a time when many books and movies are so graphic, it’s a
testament to Capote’s craft as a writer that he is able to create such a
haunting setting without being graphic. However, I often wonder what I should
do with students who really are afraid as they read.

Am I wrong to assign
the book when I know a handful of students will become spooked?

Through the years I have tried to accommodate students by
warning them when they will read scary parts for homework. If they are
extremely afraid, I even mark their books and tell them to skip pages that are
more graphic or disturbing. I rarely have to do this, but when I do, students always appreciate
it. Sometimes, however, I just feel guilty for making a few kids squirm. Yes, I
know that good literature is often unsettling, but I still feel guilty. In the
past I used to console students by telling them that the murder of a family by
strangers is such a rare event that they have a better chance of winning the
lottery and emphasized that it was much more common for family members to
murder other family members. “So, if you aren’t worried about someone in your
family killing you, you don’t need to be worried,” I often announced in a
joking manner.

I stopped making that statement last spring, however, when the
mother of one of my former students was killed by her ex-husband.

In the end, I know that In
Cold Blood works well with my students, and I shouldn’t worry so much about
one or two students who feel squeamish a few days during our reading, but I
still do.

Worrying about how students react to In Cold Blood always reminds me of a story I read a few years ago
in George Plimpton’s Truman Capote: In Which
Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent
Career (1997). Plimpton tells of a time when a Kansas teacher was teaching the book to a
group of high school seniors. During class one day, one of the young men became
visibly upset, threw his book in the floor, and ran to the guidance office. It
seems that while reading the book “he had got to putting two and two
together” and ascertained that Dick Hickock was his father (194)! The boy’s
mother had remarried when he was a baby and changed the boy’s name.  What a horrible experience for the young man.

 
I also worry about that teacher. I bet that was the last
time she taught In Cold Blood!

 
In the end, I guess we all do the best we can to put
excellent works of literature in the hands of our students and help them grapple
with the large themes of life

 
. . . even if they
have to sleep with the lights on!

via www.60secondrecap.com

Many English teachers who believe the classics are too esoteric, too boring, and too complex for today's students are leaving these time-honored books on the shelf to gather dust and selecting instead to teach only modern or adolescent literature. Just when I thought I might enter retirement as one of the few old-time English teachers who actually believe a life without Heathcliff, Hester, Ishmael, Pip, and even Scout and Boo is an unexamined and unfulfilled life, I stumbled across this new website by an energetic young teacher who is determined to motivate high school students to read classical literature. Thank you, Jenny Sawyer!