Disconnect to Connect/Feed

Seems like my week to forget things and to be forgotten.  The chaos of this semester and life in general is getting to me.  And so I'll do my final blog post on Feed .  Last week in our presentation I ended our class by discussing how we as teachers, in many ways, are the "feed" to our students... an awesome responsibility really.  Some days I wonder if I'm truly up to the task: am I patient enough? knowledgeable enough? hard-working enough? smart enough? unbiased enough? am I good enough?  do I care enough?  I just don't know.  I guess we'll see.  Through this class, I mean it when I say that I've become much more fully aware of the responsibility we have as teachers to be passionate about learning yet we/I need to learn to allow students to discover their own thinking.  I know that I'll need to work on tweaking my approach to engage the students fully to make decisions on their own.  I fully expect to learn from my colleagues and hope I get placed in the fall with teachers who are beyond excellent at showing me the way. 

As for the book Feed I find that I refer to it a lot.  I actually recommended it to several people lately: my soon-to-be-ex-husband who is obsessed with his social networking business and several people at the MAWCA conference I recently attended.  Although it's not a book that inspired me by its writing or fulfilled me through its characters, this book's message certainly resonates and strikes a chord with me personally.  My marriage became the world of Feed in many ways in its last 2 years.  As my husband aggressively pursued his world of creating his social networking software company and basically worked non-stop to "achieve" his life-long dream to make a lot of money, I retreated into myself and my young children and certainly out of the fast-paced career I had been in for almost 15 years.  Feed's dystopic world with its almost total reliance on technology and focus on consumerism, a world where human thoughts were controlled by the Feednet connection in brains, was fast-paced, exciting, savvy.  Yet, there was little connection amongst humans, little concern for the world around, and there was a void of unplanned time.  I didn't love the characters in Feed.  Titus was uncaring.  Violet was too intense.  The friends of Titus were superficial and lacked any depth.  As I said in class, I guess all of this is the point of the book.  To me the book is a warning that we all need to "disconnect" from the feeds of media, of social networking, of the Internet, of consumerism... and we need to remember what it means to think before we communicate, to make decisions alone, to truly connect, to truly care.  Time "disconnected" to "connect" is definitely time well-spent.  This allows us to see what is really happening in our lives and in the world around us. 

Do I dare disturb the universe? Onwards armed with new strategies

Do I dare disturb the universe?First of all, I’d like to thank all the students in the class.  You make me realize that, indeed, I am making the right choice by returning to teaching after such a long, long time away.  I am very impressed with all of you and have really enjoyed exploring the amazing books and articles we read this semester.  It has been a dynamic learning experience for me, one housed in a comfortable, safe, and supportive environment.   It’s hard for me to believe a few of you are freshmen.  It really gives me hope for our future (and I am not always an openly hopeful person).  Thanks especially to my team members on the group project.  It has been a real creative endeavor!  Even though we haven’t gone yet, I feel like I’ve learned a ton in the process already.

I do believe this class could transform my teaching approach.  Importantly, this class taught me strategies which could save me.  I’m not quite there yet in my study of teaching and strategy implementation, but I have certainly been armed with a bevy full of approaches I can utilize in my teaching.  I plan to at least try to take more of a guide-on-the side approach to teaching.  I and the students (I underline because I won’t be in the driver’s seat all the time) will explore literature and cultural and historical influences on thinking.  I mentioned before that what I’ve learned could save me:  I have a tendency to take on a lot and really have to watch burnout.  Through this class I’ve learned strategies to direct and support learning in such a way that gets students more engaged as they explore learning themselves. YET, did mention that I still have to monitor myself for burnout?  Quite frankly, I’m at a tipping point this semester with all the schoolwork, family life, part-time job, and other things.  So I know, burnout is something I need to sidestep.  At any rate, the real question is, “Do I dare disturb the universe.”   It’s funny that one of the first readings we did this semester asked Prufrock’s question?  Do I dare?  I’m still worried that when push comes to shove that I go back to my old, probably more lucrative career.  I hope I stay strong.

Strategies:

·         Literature circles:  I love this and really enjoyed the class we had focused on this.  This is a great way to keep students engaged in the material.  By giving them choice of books and flexibility with roles, you really give students strong teasers to get them into the reading.

·         Gallery:  What a great idea!  I can see this applied in many different ways.  I was surprised by how much I took in looking at other people’s write-ups.  It is a great, fun idea for many projects.

·         Very targeted supplemental reading:  The additional articles we had to read to accompany each of the books really enhanced the overall experience of the main book.  I realize that this is a key to furthering student understanding.

·         Graphic novels:  Use them: taps into a multi-modal reading experience.  I loved American-Born Chinese.  I’m on the fence with Manga Shakespeare but am much more open-minded then I was.

·         Ask and Answer:  good strategy to get students thinking about the literature and coming up with questions on their own.

·         Visuals:  I liked how we used pictures, drawings, videos, etc. to learn more about the content.  Seeing this really makes me realize what can be used in lessons to build access-ways to learning.

·         Perspectives:  give students different perspectives, e.g. study the Book Thief about a German girl and then Night about a Jewish man: both during WWII.

·         Drama:  I hope to create opportunities for using drama in lesson plans.  Clearly, in our class alone there are many budding actors on the verge of a breakthrough.  I loved when students had to vote for/against teaching books in the classroom.  Very funny.  Erin and Nate were so hilarious (oh wait, isn’t that Heidi’s word?).  Also enjoyed when we translated excerpts from Early Modern English into language used today.  Cassie encouraging me to use creative language;)  Also loved the stereotyping exercise we ran through Group 1’s presentation.  Fun.

·         Music:  I really enjoyed the narrating Shakespeare with music.  Great idea!

·         Blogging:  Didn’t think I’d be a fan.  I also wasn’t sure if folks would engage/read as much without more formal assignments.  I  was surprised at how effective it was.

·         Tweets:  Okay, so I haven’t been a fan of tweeting to date.  But, I was really glad to get an opportunity to try it out with a pseudonym.  The assignment was fun.

·         Creating own vignette:  Creative writing on vignettes really was a great way to get into the thinking of the writer and/or the time.

Other tips:

·         Be sure to use WAIT time.  Dr. Mortimore gave me a key piece of advice: when I ask a question and first don’t get a response… count to 5 in my head before continuing to see if students respond.  I need to do this!

·         Be careful with the homework you assign:  be sure it is directly related to the lesson’s objectives; make sure instructions are clear.

·         Use a website to keep assignments and reading materials in a single repository.  I have/have had other classes in which it can get confusing because assignments keep changing and/or materials are passed out.  Planning up front will help avoid this.

·         As YGBB mentioned, “learning is social.”  I need to ensure I engage students in meaningful social activity in the classroom.  Group work can be fun and extremely informative.

In teaching as in life, my motto is to play the ball where it lies.  In life there are many things I don’t have control over and the best I can do is develop a strategy to move forward.  In teaching literature I’ll have heterogeneous classrooms: students will have different needs, strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and supports at their disposal.  I will choose various methods, many of which I learned more about in this class.  I hope to inspire students to search for knowledge, be open to new ideas, and learn how to live in the modern ever-changing world.   Yes, it’s a world of “feeds.”  Sometimes it is a world in which it’s hard to know who is controlling my thoughts or whether I am thinking or am capable of thinking freely.  And I admit, I sometimes like to remember The Growing Tree without thinking, “Why is the tree a woman?”  And yes, I like to just sit and watch The Lion King without thinking Nala, you should have “stepped up.“  Undoubtedly, there’s so much about life I can learn from the study literature.  So onwards I hope to go…  Round 2 or 3 or 4 career-wise?  Who’s counting?

Feelings -- to -- No One is to Blame -- to -- Beat It... Oh my! Cheaper than therapy...

So, I need to choose 3 songs that at one point in my life I connected to.... so here goes.  Can't write too much 'cause I"m OVERLOADED by end-of-semester.

Ironically, the first song I'm going to choose is a super-cheesy song.  I'm only choosing it because I think the story is kind of ironic and funny really as to why I connected to it in one point in my life.  It's the cheesy song from the 70s?  called "Feelings."  I was living in Hong Kong at the time and had one of my first real jobs: teaching English in Hong Kong.  My boyfriend and I went to dinner at a revolving restaurant which at the time was super-posh for our shoestring budget.  I was wearing this horrible brown dress that I wore all the time in my classrooms...  my intern's budget didn't handle name brands.  At any rate, at one point my boyfriend waved over a Filipino band and then he got down on one knee and pulled out a ring.  The people at tables around us looked over... smiles abound.  And then the band started playing..... a romantic love song??  Nope.  They started playing, "You've lost that loving feeling."  My soon-to-be-husband started waving his hands and saying NOOOO not that song... something else.  So then they started playing the cheesy love song called "Feelings."  Not the most romantic choice for a marriage proposal.  But hey, sometimes you gotta roll with it:

Feelings lyrics
Feelings
Nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my feelings of love

Teardrops,
Rolling down on, my face
Trying to forget my, feelings of love

Feelings,
For all my life I'll feel it
I’ll wish I've never met you, girl
You'll never come again

Feelings,
Wo-o-o feelings
Wo-o-o feelings
Again in my heart

Okay, second song.  I'm choosing this just because I really used to love Howard Jones.  He actually came to Dickinson College in Carlisle and may have been one of my first real concerts?  I can't remember.  It may have been INXS.  At any rate, I love this song....  It's called "No One is to Blame."

No One Is To Blame lyrics
You can look at the menu
but you just can't eat
You can feel the cushion
but you can't have a seat
You can dip your foot in the pool
but you can't have a swim
You can feel the punishment
but you can't commit the sin

(chorus)
And you want her
And she wants you
We want everyone
And you want her
And she wants you
No one, no one
No one ever is to blame

You can build a mansion
but you just can't live in it
You're the fastest runner
but you're not allowed to win
Some break the rules
and live to count the cost
[- From :http://www.elyrics.net/read/h/howard-jones-lyrics/no-one-is-to-blame-lyrics.html -]
The insecurity is the
thing that won't get lost

(chorus)

You can see the summit
but you can't reach it
It's the last piece of the puzzle
but you just can't make it fit
Doctor says you're cured
but you still feel the pain
Aspirations in the clouds
but your hopes go down the drain

And you want her
And she wants you (wants you)
We want everyone
And you want her
And she wants you (wants you)
No one, no one
No one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame

Finally, I guess I have to put a song from the Thriller album.  I think that was the first record (yes "record"... not download and not CD) I purchased.  I must have been in 6th grade?  Again, not sure.  I do remember that my older brother had purchased it and wanted to be the ONLY one in the family who owned it.  So I had to hide the record between my mattress for fear that he might discover it.  I played it on my record player with my friends only when he wasn't home.

Beat It lyrics
Michael Jackson Cover

They told him don't you ever come around here
Don't wanna see your face, you better disappear
The fire's in their eyes and their words are really clear
So beat it, just beat it

You better run, you better do what you can
Don't wanna see no blood, don't be a macho man
You wanna be tough, better do what you can
So beat it, but you wanna be bad

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right
Just beat it, beat it
Just beat it, beat it
Just beat it, beat it
Just beat it, beat it

They're out to get you, better leave while you can
Don't wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man
You wanna stay alive, better do what you can
So beat it, just beat it

You have to show them that you're really not scared
You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare
They'll kick you, then they beat you,
Then they'll tell you it's fair
So beat it, but you wanna be bad

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right
{ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/a/anoop-desai-lyrics/beat-it-lyrics.html }

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right
Just beat it, beat it
Beat it, beat it, beat it

Beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or who's right

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right
Just beat it, beat it
Beat it, beat it, beat it

Beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or who's right

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Showin' how funky and strong is your fight
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right

Just beat it, beat it, beat it, beat it
No one wants to be defeated
Just beat it, beat it
Beat it, beat it, beat it

 

 

So I wrote this pretty quickly but does it tell me something that I go from "Feelings," to "No one is to Blame," to "Beat It."  Maybe that's the true story!

Has anyone else in class even heard of the TV show "Moonlighting" ???

Really, am I the only one in class that actually watched a show called "Moonlighting" that was mentioned in the article I read, "Shakespeare and the At-Risk Student"?  Just wondering.

All of this talk about Shakespeare reminds me of my first (and really only) experience teaching Shakespeare.  I taught in a Chinese college in Hong Kong for a year and a half in the mid-90s.  I’ll never forget when the student group assigned to cover Romeo and Juliet absolutely BLEW me away with their lively, memorized, engaging, full-on dramatic rendition of the play.  They had rewritten the play to key scenes and designed it all to run about 30 minutes.  Students memorized and delivered their lines in a virtually flawless performance.  All students wore full costume.  Juliet even perched on a desk as she called out to Romeo.  They may have even kissed?   I can’t remember. The Chinese students used some of the most precise enunciation they had used all semester.  The students wrote to me later in their journals that the project was one of the most inspiring they had ever done.  Admittedly, it was their creativity and their drive that produced the good work they did.  I only facilitated and acted as the guide-on-the-side.  It was a real lesson to me on the importance of letting students free so they can create freely. 

Gleaves, Slagle, and Twaryonas supply inspiration and ideas I’ll definitely use in their article on “Shakespeare and the At-Risk Student.”  As a future special education teacher, I expect to sometimes question whether I should be using multiple modalities and alternative/modified texts for teaching harder texts.  I like that these authors embrace the idea that “at-risk students could not only present and perform, but be appropriate audience members.”  The teachers espoused the belief that “all… students can understand and appreciate the works of William Shakespeare.”   I found it interesting that Patti introduced her sophomore students to the text by first watching a film, e.g. she introduced The Taming of the Shrew by first having students view Zeffirelli’s film of the play, starting Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  They ended the class by viewing the Moonlighting spoof (strangely enough I vaguely recall when this came out).  Patti used Zeffirelli’s Hamlet to  help students connect to the drama.  She also used scene-by-scene summaries, character poems, improvisation, and journal writing (and the Moonlighting spoof again).    All of this emphasizes that the multi-modal approach is critical to engaging students, particularly at-risk students.  This all comes back to the importance of creating multiple access points to text and learning.  With at-risk students, there is a likelihood that a text-only approach would not engage and would not appeal to all students’ strengths.  The multi-pronged approach of video, writing, reading, speaking will appeal to a wider variety of the student strengths in order to encourage learning.

Clearly, a key part of teaching Shakespeare is ensuring students can connect to the text.  I particularly liked Patti’s point that having students present complete scenes is unwieldy and perhaps too daunting for students who are at-risk.  She instead had students choose single incidents and improvise the scenes using their own language and dialects.  Patti found these improvised incidents “increased success” and further engaged students.  David suggests that students need to become familiar with Shakespeare, audiences of the time, and “Elizabethan customs, belief, and family life.”  Through studying this, students compare and contrast their own lives with life in Shakespeare’s time.  He used Papp and Kirkland’s Shakespeare Alive! (1988) to guide students in this study.  I definitely need to check out this book!  I liked how he assigned small groups a chapter; students had to select five things from their chapter and present the information back to the class.

 The teachers’ descriptions of their efforts to engage these at-risk students in the Shakespeare Celebration inspires me to provide similar opportunities for my future students to participate and “own” such an event by choosing and planning the medium for contribution.  Students could provide art or projects for display, present text from Shakespeare through dramatizations, skits, videos, reenactments,  or choral reading, be a master of ceremony or stage manager.  Each student chose a project for the event.  The teachers noted that the key elements to the event were that the study and performance should be fun and that the effort should focus on collaboration in the classroom.  The results were that  students improved their attitudes toward their responsibilities, gained renewed or new found confidence as learners, and enhanced their self esteem.  I hope I’m creative enough to get this going in my own classrooms!!

I finished the Manga Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, but I’m just not sure I love reading it over the original Romeo and Juliet.  I need to think on this a little more.   At this point, I’d prefer to stick to the original.  I might, however, give students an opportunity to read this in a group project.  Or maybe, I’d take a scene from the original and compare it to this.  I guess I’m still getting used to the idea of the graphic novel.  I feel like there’s so much we can do with the original, and like the teachers in “Shakespeare and the At-Risk Student,” I do feel that all students can appreciate the work of Shakespeare in some way.  At any rate, I am very interested in hearing the responses and ideas of my classmates to this debate.

Thank goodness our class isn't held in Dauphin Room 101...

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

I'm not going to make much sense tonight.  There are some days when novels like 1984  may not be quite the novel you need for life and inspiration.  Today is one of those days.  Lighter fare would be welcomed but that's me... that's me right now at least.  I did, however, choose to read this book; it's something I've wanted to delve into for awhile.  Yes, there are days that I prefer to not think and worry about what I could and should be thinking about... the freedoms I should appreciate. This week maybe not ideal, but I proceed.

More pause is required for serious daring within.  Some thoughts I've contemplated through the reading:

1.  The power of literacy.  The unpower of ignorance.  The unpower of literacy.  The power of ignorance.  In 1984 we read the slogans of the Party.  I'd be wiped out in an instant: challenged on discretion;  physical pain unacceptable.  Yet, the theme of literacy and its effects, the focus on words/language/vocabulary/nuance and access to it streams throughout many of the books we've read recently:  The Book Thief, Night, Feed, 1984, Anne Frank.  Elie Wiesel's efforts to capture his experiences through words as a way forward into the future.  Liesel's efforts in The Book Thief to gain access to words and books.  Nazi efforts to discourage non-Party reading.  Feed's view of the future and the negative impact of non-free-thinking, non-influenced decision making, and little contemplative thinking at all.  In the world of 1984 the destruction of words is seen by many as a beautiful thing, yet Winston recognizes this as just part of the effort to make "thought-crime" impossible. No longer do we need 50 words for "good" and 50 words for "bad:" now good/ungood all based on one single word.

All of these works focus on literacy, the power of words, the power of creativity; it's all contrasted by the efforts to crush this power to support totalitarianism.  1984 presents a dim view of humanity's future through its presentation of the almost-Nazi-like effort by Big Brother to eliminate words.  1984 takes it even further so that the effort to achieve acquiescence, docility comes not just from burning books and eliminating access but by eliminating actual words and any nuances in language.    All history becomes rewriting; history essentially is eliminated.  It's a dismal view of the capacity within humanity. 

2.  Are we really capable of love?  Are we not really just in survival mode all the time? The views of human nature are startling in 1984  as in Night.  We saw real-life son stealing food from a father in Night.  We saw Winston turning in his lover because he couldn't stand the torture in 1984.  Winston is reborn, recommitted to life through his love affair but in the end just ends up fending for himself.  His belief in friendship through O'Brien faulty.  Humans who cope well in love with no serious roadblocks end up giving in.  Is there truly a brotherhood or family unit?  Maybe abuse of power simply pervades. 

As I said, the book presents a dismal view.

Did I mention I may need some lighter fare in terms of reading right now?  More discussion to come in class.

Sleeping or deluded? Lights to action

And again, I am stunned by our reading.  This week I was fortunate enough to read Night by Elie Wiesel: an account of Elie Wiesel’s memories as he is taken from his home and struggles to survive in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald at the end of WWII.  We see yet another perspective of lives in WWII.  The Book Thief gave us a view into some of the experiences of Jews in WWII through Max and other glimpses of Jews during the holocaust: being marked with yellow stars, being thrown out of homes, marching to camps.  We see all this through the eyes of Liesel, a German child.  With Night, we encounter an intensity of experience through the eyes of Elie, who was a Jewish child during the holocaust; his experience is hard to even fathom.  We get an understanding of the horrors and horrific acts committed against Jews in World War II.  We see a startling view of the depths of evil in humanity. This view of our base degradation and capabilities will penetrate any reader and is horrific.  This book does not leave me.

After I finished reading the book, I wrote in my journal “what are we doing to help the world and those in it?  What am I doing?”  Not enough.  Not enough.  I hear calls for movement. 

In Wiesel’s Nobel Price Acceptance Speech in 1986, he reminds us that we must take action for “action is the only remedy to indifference, the most insidious danger of all.”  He reminds us that “one person of integrity can make a difference, a difference of life and death.”    Wiesel’s writing is a call to take sides for humanity.  Wiesel talks about how his boyhood self, before he discovered the “Kingdom of Night” – “The ghetto.  The Deportation.  The sealed cattle car.  The fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed” – turns to his older self and says, “Tell me… what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?”   Wiesel reminds us that “[W]herever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views” that we must “take sides.” 

There’s so much running through my head after reading this book.  Wiesel understandably questions, “Where is God?”  How does mankind inflict this suffering on others?  How do we?  What are we made of?  What really constitutes our souls?  Who are we at our base?   What are we doing to bring change? to save lives?

I’ve sat in inaction for awhile now doing very little.  I thought I would know more about life and God and people and myself by this point in life.  I look to my children and my family and my friends as guides towards answers or resolution or peace.  We’ll see if there’s real action.  “We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering; not to share them would mean to betray them.  Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately.” 

It’s nighttime now.   “To sleep.  To dream.”  Maybe the answers and action will come.

More on ideas for teaching this powerful book Wednesday….

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

[Hamlet]

"I am haunted by..." The Book Thief

* * * RENEWSTEW DICTIONARY MEANING #1 * * *

haunted--

preoccupied, as with an emotion, memory, or idea; obsessed OR disturbed; distressed; worried

 

The last note from our omniscient narrator, Death:  "I am haunted by humans" (550).  When I finished the other books we read this semester, I was able to immediately put my thoughts into words.  But with this book, I sit and wait for the words to come.  Ironically, words are such a key symbol throughout the book.  And so I'll struggle in my blog.  I cannot do this book justice in any of my writing, so I'll just simply state:  this... book.. was... so... goooooooood.  I am haunted.  Maybe I'll try to rewrite my submission tomorrow as I'm in that state of silence, regret, and sorrow when you finish reading a good book; it's hard to write.

In The Book Thief, Death narrates the story of Liesel Meminger as she navigates through desolating and devastating sorrows that occur in her young life in WWII Nazi Germany: the death of her brother, the absence of her real mother.  She finds love and friendship again through her foster parents, her friend Rudy, and the Jewish "fighter" Max hidden by her new family in their basement.  Yet, she again moves on to desolation and devastation with the events in the end of the book and the total decimation of most of the love in her life.  The book--character, plot, symbolism--provides moving insight into a perspective of Nazi Germany that is painful, startling yet passionately brave.  "The sun stirs the earth.  Around and around, it stirs us, like stew" (519).  As Liesel watches the Jews march down the road to Dachau, “to concentrate” (388), she notes that "The world is an ugly stew,...so ugly I can't stand it" (520). 

It was very, very hard to put the book down, and I loved that.

At nine years of age Liesel arrives in Molching Germany on the train with The Grave Digger's Handbook, a book she stole from the burial site of her brother.  As we progress through Liesel's story as she adjusts to her new life in her foster home, we track life in WWII and the rise of Hitler.  We also see Liesel's struggle to learn to read; we journey with her in her pursuit to steal books.  She even steals from the mayor's library.  She steals a dictionary and begins tracking words:  happiness, forgiveness, fear, word, opportunity, misery, silence, and regret.  As she progresses in her literacy, in her knowledge of atrocities, and in her pain--Liesel frames her world with these words: "I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right" (528).  She manages to escape and live but her words are also used to poignantly experience the enduring losses that weave through her life.  Yet she lives and experiences joy through her new “sight” in living and literacy.

There's really so much you could write about and explore with students in this book:  Death as the narrator/use of foreshadowing? Liesel as a character of hope?  The power/symbol of words?  Characters?  The title of the book and Liesel's pursuit of books?  themes? 

It's a long book and yes, it covers some violent/difficult themes.  It's probably more appropriate for later years of high school.  But, it's an intriguing, gripping read, and I think students will become engaged in the writing and in the history surrounding the period of the text.  With this book students will want to immerse themselves in the thievery (book thief), analyze the dreams and failed dreams it addresses (dream carrier), and “shake out” their own words as they write on key themes it explores (word shaker). 
I can really see class discussion taking off.  Thanks for putting this book on our syllabus!

Check out interesting video of Markus Zusak talking about the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Book-Thief-Markus-Zusak/dp/0375842209 

No more "tourist" readers

Multiculturalism... what is it?  Is it something you teach?  No not really.  Do you study it?  No.  According to Hade, we need to think of multiculturalism as a perspective, a stance, an awareness as we interpret stories and also, as we choose what stories we will teach our students.  The point of a multiculturalistic approach is not to just "fill a gap," a gap in knowledge or experience because of lack of association because of knowledge and experience and differences...  Instead, it is a perspective and awareness in reading that enables us to learn about justice and expose injustice (according to Hade).  Hade's article further informs me of the importance of choosing texts and encouraging dialogue about texts that enable us to yes, suspend disbelief as we are encouraged to do by Tolkein/Coleridge, etc, but it also highlights that all readers weave in knowledge, experience, "baggage" that informs their creation of meaning.  The interactions that take place in the classroom which enable students to identify race, gender, class issues and discuss them facilitate a much more elevated function, as Hade highlights, of "critiquing the world."  This is why teachers have such awesome responsibility and why the "canons" must exist in flux if they exist at all.  At times I admit, I am conflicted in this pursuit as I read books and watch movies.  Can't I just relax and enjoy The Lion King as it is and not worry about assumptions about gender?  I guess the point is that I can, really, and students can too...and will... but, according to Hade, that's "tourist" mode and/or is exists because of different perpectives on what constitutes symbols of gender, race, and class.  As teachers we need to try and elevate students' reading and interest in reading to "a pedagogy of critique, change, and justice."  Freakin' heavy duty stuff and responsibility for us all.  And so I delve further into the world of Mango Street and Maycomb County for Wednesday...

Graphic Novels... Engaging, Nuanced, Multifaceted

Let’s just say I’m very pleasantly surprised at the complexity and richness of graphic novels.  Yesterday I finished American Born Chinese which was an interesting experience for me.  I haven’t really read graphic novels, and I admit I’ve been glancing at the book on my bookshelf trying to get myself to get it started.  Overall, the book was an easy read, something I appreciate on my weekends of reading.  But what surprised me was how the graphics really captured so many character and story nuances and added so much to the overall story.  I didn’t think I would be drawn in, engaged so much.  I don’t know why I was so surprised by this – I guess it has been awhile since I’ve read much in this medium.  My immersion to stories is generally through print-only books --  or movies.  So this was very refreshing. 

The story was rich, poignant, and relevant to young adults today.  We struggle with Jin-Wang as he maneuvers through school.  We experience his drive to fit in, his encounters with stereotypes, and his budding interest in girls.   Jin Wang, Danny, and the Monkey King struggle to find an identity; they struggle to accept themselves… no shoes and all (in the case of the Monkey King).  We learn about tolerance (and intolerance) of other cultures, stereotyping, racism.  Jin Wang…the Chinese-American boy who just wants to fit in.  Danny…the boy Jin Wang wants to be.  And the Monkey King who struggles and struggles to fit in as one of the immortal gods in heaven by mastering the twelve disciplines of kung fu – all to transcend his form as a monkey.

In the end, the characters only come around when they embrace what’s different and unique in themselves.  The monkey is freed from his imprisonment of rock when he realizes “how good it is to be a monkey.”  Jin-Yang finally finds the true friendship he seeks.

I particularly enjoyed reading about the conventions of comics: the importance of the gutter, reading between the panels, closure.  As you poignantly say, “Reader and medium are enjoined in a complicated (yet pleasurable) interplay to unpack the images that unfold before them.”  The gutter encourages the imagination of the reader.  Shading, color, the shape of word balloons knit complex, personal experiences for each reader and make stories accessible through multiple mediums, the multimodality that “The Conventions of Comics” discusses. 

I am drawn to your discussion regarding the New London Group which highlights that “what students [need] to learn [is] changing” and “there is not a singular, canonical English that could or should be taught more.  Rather, educators must begin to shift their understanding of literacy and literacy education to recognize both cultural difference and the rise of communication media—forms of literacy that challenge traditional notions of what it means to be “literate” in society today.”  Just the other day in another class, we watched a presentation intended us to inspire us as teachers.  It compared the amount of information available at our fingertips today versus 15 years ago and talked about the rapid changes in terms of wealth and demographics.  It also compared US educational standards and success compared to other nations such as India and China.  I definitely agree with the point of the presentation; however, I sometimes wonder if enough is being done with teacher education programs to make us better prepared to handle ourselves in the classrooms and keep up.  In every single class we should be leveraging technology, search engines, web sites in creative ways to keep us informed...

What is apparent to me through our blogging experience and through reading the articles you presented, is that technology and/or embracing multiple literacies certainly is a pedagogy that must consider “the multicultural and diverse society that we all live in and broadens our understanding of “literature” to include multimedia and visual forms of literacy.”  I bring up my special education studies because they truly emphasize finding the student access point to learning and building upon strengths.    The Frey and Fisher article demonstrates how they “used popular culture and the media to invite students into school literacy.”  This article really excited me because this presented a real-life example of how two teachers successfully used graphic novels and popular culture to improve students’ writing skills.  The graphic novels and activities engaged the students…acted as “the hook,” and the teachers were able to weave in writing instruction into the creative activities.  I plan to look up more information on these strategies mentioned:

·     Said is Dead lesson to help students use more creative ways to indicate speech versus using the word “said” (21)

·     Triple Sentence Sessions to teach students how to convey several ideas in one or two sentences (21)

·     Language Experience Approach (23)

Some of the ideas I’d explore for lesson plans:

--Have students discuss stereotypes and write about an instance where they tried to fit in and compare to how Jin tries to fit in.

--Explore why graphic novel was a good choice for this book and the story

--Write an autobiographical outline from an episode in the student’s life or a family member and having the student create a storyboard

I googled various lesson plans and liked these ideas:

--http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/teachers/abcLesson.html

--Recommends a good approach with students would be to have students read the book and then have the assignment of looking at portrayals of Asian Americans in several genres of comics back through the 1950s.

--Students could review this site and find more information about the legend of the monkey king:

http://www.humblecomics.com/monkey/

My thinking is a little scattered tonight as I take in all this information (and kids home from school now… Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin interrupting my thinking).  At any rate, I am looking forward to class discussion. 

Engagement

Today I read about reading and learned about Jeffrey Wilhelm and his efforts to document how "highly engaged adolescent readers produce meaning" and "what can be done in the classroom to help reluctant readers reconceive of reading as a creative and personally meaningful pursuit" (11).  Is it ironic that as I was trying to engage myself in reading this book about how to engage readers, I fell asleep in the process?  Lights on, books and notebooks strewn, mechanical pencils in the covers.  I disengaged.  I'm rusty in my own reading efforts I guess.  At least I wasn’t in the library. So maybe it was the text or perhaps my prior knowledge of reading texts on this topic or the textual meaning I’d gained that triggered my snooze.  Perhaps, I was just overwhelmed in efferent reading, my stance solely focused on what information I need to take away (27) through my note taking.  Clearly, I need to focus on my aesthetic stance and becoming an expert reader.  Who knows.  Maybe I’m just tired in life. 

At any rate, more from my notes on Chapters 1-3 and more blogging tomorrow. 

Day 2: I'm back and blogging. 

Wilhelm's You Gotta Be the Book is Wilhelm's account of his researcher-teacher investigations into "Why do some kids love reading?  Why do other kids hate reading?" (8)  He encourages us to look at what's working for some students and use this to find ways to motivate less engaged readers (109).  He starts by describing student responses to attitude inventories in which half of his students reported that they didn't read on their own" (10).  He then takes on his path in which he set out to investigate: "what can we discover about how highly engaged adolescent readers produce meaning?" and what "can be done in the classroom to help reluctant readers reconceive of reading as a creative and personally meaningful pursuit?" (11).  He talks about the human factor to teaching: how teachers's relating to students in a meaningful way is key (13), and the cultural factor: how teachers need to teach in an environment that encourages risk-taking and innovation and experimentation (16-17).  He instructs on how to "move toward a reader-centered classroom" (18) and walks us through the most common of current practices, i.e. bottom-up approach to reading instruction, teaching students by: "moving from small units such as letters to bigger units such as words phrases, and sentences" (20) and then use of these skills in decoding... the "page is greater than the reader" (20).  He describes his views on New Criticism approach / whole language approach to reading which pays so much attention to literary form and literary conventions (irony, symbols, metaphors, etc.) and the "whole text" (21).  It effectively dismisses history and the reader's response as important elements to the meaning of the text.  Wilhem espouses an alternative approach, a compromise in which reading is top-down and bottom-up and "readers search for global meaning" and "use decoding skills on a local level" (25).  He describes Rosenblatt's criticism of literary instruction today that focuses on students getting "correct answers" about reading (27).  She draws a distinction between "efferent" and "aesthetic" reading; efferent when readers "are concerned with what information they can take away from the reading" (27) versus the "aesthetic" stance in which readers live through "an experience that is enjoyed while reading" (27).  And so Wilhelm takes on his role as reader-researcher in an effort to find out what strategies can be employed to change readers into aesthetic readers.  Unlike Rosenblatt who doesn't specifically identify strategies teachers can leverage to encourage this change in student reading, Wilhelm sets out to study his students to, as he notes Margaret Meek and colleagues remind us, to "make public 'those secret things' that expert readers know and do" (31).

Chapters 2 describes Wilhelm's study of the three highly engaged readers in his study.  Wilhelm employs various strategies to understand these three students and what makes reading more meaningful for them.  As he does this, he firms up his beliefs and expands upon his educational philosophy to us.  He takes more of a transactional view of how children construct meaning from books by relating to their own background knowledge and experiences.  It is through this that the students build an intensity of engagement.  Does it mean students can veer from the the text and/or from the "canon"?  Yes.  But it also means the students engage, often suspend, and pursue more meaning in their reading.  I like Wilhelm's point that readers "need to have books that understand them as they are and help them to consider and perhaps outgrow their current points of view.  Then they will have the desire to deepen and expand their experience" (49).  Initial experiences of reading should be "meaningful, safe, and engaging" (49).  Students should read from traditional literary mainstreams and outside of these mainstreams.  Exposure to multicultural literature is key as a way for students to broaden their perspectives and extend from their locale (49). 

I found Chapter 3 to be the most useful Chapter for me as I prepare to become a teacher.  I agree with much of Wilhelm's philosophy but I often get frustrated in my teacher prep because I read about what's right and wrong "in theory" but I don't get enough information on what works in practice.  In Chapter 3 Wilhelm gives more detail as to teaching strategies he used to engage students in their reading.  In my studies of Special Education, we learn how to modify lesson plans to create a breadth of access points to learning.  We learn to create differentiated instruction to appeal to student strengths and create multiple avenues to acquiring learning and content.  For example, we learn the importance of creating lessons which can be accessed via student strengths whether in auditory, visual, tactile channels to accessing learning.  What interested me most about Wilhelm's writing was the ideas he presented for methods to employ to engage students.  I particularly liked his use of symbolic story representation where students create cutouts of objects to embody what they read and/or how they are reading (64).  He gives other very useful ideas: use of interviews, literary letters, pairing students as they read for discussion, artistic aids, drawings, collages, flipping through a magazine to choose images of characters.  I really enjoyed reading Wilhelm's epilogue to this chapter.  He reiterates the importance of the following:

• studying how students read,
• reflecting as a teacher - journaling is his key medium,
• providing varied activities to evoke and appeal to what he terms as the ten different dimensions of response that his students used as they "created, experienced, and responded to literary worlds" (67),
• encouraging readers to learn from each other,
• creating an open environment so students can learn from each other,
• developing activities that promote visual connection to text,
• being student centered: listening more and telling less,
• and studying educational theory to inform teaching.

Again, it's all about engaging the student and being the best you can be as a teacher.  I'm daunted by Wilhelm's experience and creativity.  It's also disturbs me that he apparently left teaching because of some criticism?  Overall, I enjoyed reading this book (once I got some rest!!) and have taken away some great ideas.  I hope I can flex my approach as Wilhelm did and not fall into the trap of the veteran teacher Wilhelm mentioned in his commentary on Chapter 1... the veteran teacher who didn't teach thirty years but taught one year thirty times.  

My Literacy Journey and My Current State of Pause...

Here’s the unfortunate thing.  As I grew older and moved away from my life in academia, I dawdled in my pursuit to open my eyes through books.  My reading in my corporate life became manuals, quick reference guides, help sections, email alerts, tickers and market data.  My writing became phrases, bolded words, simple sentences; emails, guides, 1-pagers, and notices.   I think I actually dreamed in bullet points: short vignettes and snippets rather than novels and dramas.  In my personal life, I was busy stabilizing and then acquiring...  always rushing to the next thing in my career, in my travels, in my purchase of “stuff.”  Technology’s fast pace, my job working in “the market,” titles, and the acquisition of things became the focus of my life and my husband’s life.  Life was on the fast track, and I had little time for sitting without sleeping and admittedly forgot about the enlightenment I progressed towards through reading.  These fourteen years in technology and business after a two-year stint in academia changed the landscape of what I really saw when I opened these aging eyes.  But, I’m in Round 2 of my career and personal life now, and I’m once again looking to literature and education for some direction and peace.

In my youth I was an avid, motivated, inspired reader.  If a book engaged me, I would read it almost in a hunger, staying up to early morning hours.  As a child, I can remember tearing through book after book and spending hours in the Bosler Library in Carlisle just reading for pleasure (with a break for Space Invaders and pizza at Backdoor Pizza occasionally).  Today my adolescence seems a very long way away so my memory of my curriculum in school is blurry.  I do remember reading Tom Sawyer, Heidi, Huck Finn, Anne of Green Gables, the Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, the Judy Blume series (what young girl born in the early 70s didn’t read these).   I did my undergraduate degree in English with a minor in Black Studies at Boston College and again tore through book after book.  I remember almost living the books.  When we studied Dionysius, my friends and I would hold Dionysian fests with cheap wine and ludicrous behavior.  I surrounded myself with my English major friends and made sarcastic  jabs to my Econ/Finance friends about how they weren’t really able to live a fully realized life through number crunching.  I remember being swept away when my Romantics professor, John Mahoney, bellowed out Tintern Abbey… I swore I could hear and see the “sounding cataract,”   I could almost feel the words.  I sometimes attempted to sit and look at nature to find that something, that depth to living found in the beauty of nature. I wrote a paper on the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Freshman year about daring and peaches?  and related it to my internal daring yet my freeze in living.   I would secretly “email,” if you can call it that: using the new PINE internal email system (Outlook didn't exist), to my workstudy friends across campus in Accounts and sass up my emails with Ignatius Reillyisms, his A Confederacy of Dunces perversions and discussions about making cheese dip.   After graduation, I decided to attend the Southern Studies Master’s program at University of Missisippi.   My roommates and I had a Halloween party, and my friends and I dressed up as Addie’s buzzards in As I Lay Dying.  After a student in one of my classes did a project on dirt eating and brought in baked dirt for us to eat, I decided the program wasn’t for me.  I then moved to Hong Kong and taught Chinese students grammar and literature for a year and a half.  I was absolutely blown away when my literature students reenacted a scene from Romeo and Juliet and memorized every single word for their flawless performance.  Did I seem on a good path towards literacy and doing good in and through education?   Perhaps Addie’s buzzards were a harsh symbol, an early prophesy of my next steps in my path in literacy…

It was at this point that I left this world to work in technology, business… and the pursuit of money.  For some reason in my head right now, I hear Mr. Potatohead in Toy Story 3 saying “Money, money, money.”   I worked in London for four years in technology and then took a job in New York City on a trading floor and then a research department at a major investment bank in New York City.  My reading became focused on quick reference guides, technology memos, trash mags, travel mags, the signs on the subway…  I read few to no novels.  For a little while I joined a book club, read the Reader and other short novels.  I became a bullet point freak.  Every single one of my technology guides and presentations was cut down.  Less is more.  I used words/phrases like “uptick,” “IPO,” “ping,” “bandwidth,” “iterative,” “gui,” “dist it,” “ETA,” “headcount,” “key takeaway,” “converge,” “diverge,” “disintermediation,” “deliverable,” “QA,” “RDP,” “synergetic,” “defcon,” “mandate,” “wordsmith,” “crumb trail,” “stickiness,” “benchmark,” “low-hanging fruit,” “UI,” “caveat,” “leverage,” “win-win,” “gauge,” “wonderbar,” “verbage,” “metacontextual,” “fungible,” GIGO” (garbage in garbage out),” “LIFO” (last in last out), “FIFO” (first in first out).  My “literary pursuits” were  broker exams, and, as such, took a hiatus from the books I loved so much to focus on my career.  For years my reading was replaced by technology manuals, study for MCSE tests, Series 7 exams, and reading about new technology.  I’d arrive at home late at night with only enough energy to flip the channels.  In the meantime, my husband became obsessed, and I mean truly obsessed with the Internet and social networking and had a tunnel-vision focus on making a lot of money.   As a tech guru, he focused on all things technology and lost himself in social networking.  He launched a social networking company and saw his success gauge in life as whether or not he could make a million.  Sometimes I would get IM’ed from him when he was in his office in the next room.  We had two kids and managing their drop-offs became a battle.  Our conversations started to center around all things social networking, and as all this happened, I retreated.  I retreated into my children.  I retreated away from the fast pace of Manhattan.  I wanted something different.  And I moved back to my hometown of Carlisle.

So there’s more but this is supposed to be a blog which means I can stop when I want to.  The miraculous thing is through leaving my job, separating from my husband, losing A LOT of money, and focusing on my children more, I am slowly but painfully regaining my sense of self, the self that was stronger in some ways in my early days.   Books are again becoming a focal point in my life.  I took a two-year relative hiatus from technology to take care of my two young children, to prepare for a new career, to study, to pause, to renew. 

So what do I hope to impart on my future students? I've learned a lot through all of my crazy experiences and I've tried to go with the flow.  I hope to keep students motivated on stepping forward through experience, whether life allows a baby step, a giant leap, a step back followed by two forward, or just sitting for a time.  I want to encourage reading as a way to inform, to settle restless souls, and to keep dreams alive.  These days life is so immediate: texting, email, Skyping, IMing, googling.  Responses are expected to be quick, abbreviated, timely.  The focus is on ETA, turnaround time, and wireless access.  But connection sometimes is not connecting.  You can be wired but not seeing, observing, thinking.  Books trigger reflection.  Books take time.  Literature teaches lessons.  Life will give lessons whether you want them or not.  But the answers to challenges don’t always come as fast as google search results.  The application of what you learn is not as lightning fast as texts.  The “pause” is real important in reading and writing and in life.  And so I pause...