Our Violent Cases.

I had a blast teaching this book to the class and it seemed like most of the activities went over really well. I think my main problem was that at times I move to fast and I was reaching over the heads of some people, which can be frustrating. Our beginning exercise did a lot to show the other students how the images and pictures shown in a comic book can contribute to the meaning of it, and I think we managed to spur some really great conversations in our first half.

I think the main thing I tried to do was make sure I was actually helping and moderating during the times when we just had people working in groups, and that seemed to work well. Hopefully I can get better with that for my actual teaching. I thought Cassie's activity on having us all make comics was fantastic and I had a lot of fun doing it. It just goes to show how creative some people can be. I was also surprised by the numbers Cassie pulled out at the end, because I hadn't heard them before either. I know from my own experience that graphic novels can do a lot to help kids read, and I think that we were able to show our fellow students some of the magic of it.

I wanted to comment to the different students who were frustrated because the book didn't "go" anywhere. This may be a very sexist thing of me to say, I have no idea, but in my experience this is a reaction that in the classroom you're going to see from a lot of boys. It has to do with the way most of us are raised(I'm talking about the basic ways girls and boys are taught to behave differently), and boys are going to want there to be some greater purpose, some end or conclusion. What I'm saying is that there's a difference between works that are dialog and experience driven and works that are pro/antagonist and conflict driven. I think the point I'm trying to make here is that it's important for all of us, boys and girls, to break out of the different ideas or expectations we have for a book. Actually, I'm not sure I got across any of the point I was trying to make, but what the heck, I'll leave this bit in here just in case someone gets it.

The Bell Jar

I was actually surprised by how much I liked this book. After reading some other feminist literature I assumed it would be very dry and with not much happening, and I felt that the book actually moved along at a good pace and Sylvia Plath was very engaging as a writer.

It was a good idea for the group to spend a lot of time talking about the life of Sylvia Plath because of how obviously autobiographical the book was. I liked the timeline where we all had to read different things about her life in order and the place them up on the board. It gave a good point of reference for the rest of the lesson. I'm partial to the poem Daddy as well so I liked the part where we covered that poem.

I think one of the dangers for us as we go into our classrooms is the fact that there's a slight difference between "teaching" and "presenting", and sometimes it's hard to break away from the presenting we've been doing all our lives into something else. This group did a good job teaching, and a lot of the time I was really entertained by the discussions they brought to the table, but at times I felt as if I was just being presented material. And hey, that might be the point, because they are presenting to us how we ourselves can teach this book, it's just a thing to watch out for in the future when teaching actual students. Like I said, overall I really enjoyed this book and I really enjoyed the group teach based on it.

Webb Book

The Webb book was like the Appleman book except political and not quite as good. I enjoyed some of things he had to say about teaching things culturally, but I really didn't like the fact that most of the classes he focused on were college classrooms and that he wanted us to be teaching these kinds of things all semester. I just think it's too much, and I think there is a limit to how much you can put opinions into a classroom. Actually, now that I write that I realize that it's a really important point. It's fine and it's actually good to reveal your opinion to your classroom, but you can't be doing it all the time, and there is such a thing has learning just for the joy of learning something academic, without attaching a bunch of real world connotations to it.

I think the two cultural things I liked were using homelessness to talk about Marxism and using feminist literature in the classroom. It's entertaining to me that both of these different topics can make different parts of the class uncomfortable depending on who is the majority group in question, and it would be fun to draw connections between the two and how minority groups function as a whole.

Appleman Book

I've mentioned some of things I liked about Applemen already several times, so it shouldn't be to hard to go over them. The main thing I liked about Appleman was the fact that it gave me a very clear idea of some of the ways I could teach a more advanced class. It goes in a direction almost entirely opposite from Wilhelm's book and for that I'm grateful. It's like between these two books we were able to see bits of the entire spectrum of reading instruction, and that's just fantastic.

I think the main thing I'll be doing with Appleman in the classroom is using some of the critical theories she talks about to enhance the readings of certain books. I don't think I'm ever going to have a classroom where the entire class will be focused only on critical theories, and I really liked the fact that even Appleman said that you don't have to use them all the time, that it's ok to teach the critical theory in spurts, and her admission that not every critical theory works for every text. I think as a teacher, teaching literature, I'm going to have a great time using critical theory and my own passion for reading to get the students entertained and engaged in the reading material. I don't think there are any chapters in this book I would skip, but I think there should be some added reading material from someone who gives a better explanation of what deconstructionism is.

Wilhem Book

I thought when reading the different books for this semester that it was a great thing for us to have started with Wilhelm, because in a lot of ways it seems like a much more basic book than the other two, but it's not any less beneficial. For me Wilhelm was hugely helpful in seeing into exactly the kinds of problems students are having when they read, which is huge because it's not really something I've ever experienced. Not only was I able to read the different accounts Wilhelm gave about these struggling students, but I was also able to take those readings and use them to better understand the things my little brother is struggling with in his reading.
I think for using it in class I'm going to try and keep in mind all the different movement and picture oriented activities that Wilhelm laid out for us, and hopefully I'll actually get to use some of them next semester. It's just so damn fascinating to me that some of these students just didn't think reading was interesting because they couldn't bring the things they knew about the world into their reading. Also, I think out of the three books we read the student responses from this book were the most genuine, and that really helped in the enjoyment of reading it. Because of how much I liked reading the book I don't think it should really be taught any differently, and I hope it's used in future classrooms because I really think it helped me a lot.

Webb Chapter 7

While I still felt the parts talking about Deconstructionism were a little vague, I liked this chapter and I thought the discourse on Poststructuralism was very interesting. Once again I couldn't help feeling as though I should be dropping the book and picking up some of the ones he was talking about, but I know that when I do get around to reading them I'll have a good resource with Webb to work out of.

**Adding more to this later, classtime D:

Webb Chapter 4

Although I disagree that things have been worse with the youth of the country recently, it's true that it's important to address the violence that some students have to deal with, and important that your more privileged students know about that world and how privileged they really are. It did seem that the majority of the chapter was dedicated towards rationalizing why the subject is needed, but the books Webb suggest and the different lessons mentioned to interest me.

I think the first thing I'm going to need to do before I become an English teacher is to read some more of the books mentioned in these books, I mean, I've never even heard of Native Son and there are so many High School oriented books I've simply never read. From the description of it, I think it would be a good book to teach in a High School classroom. I'm also intrigued by the idea of teaching the works of Martin Luther King Jr. There are so many things that King wrote that simply aren't taught in schools, and most of his work actually isn't about race at all but is about war and how war functions mainly as a way to sabotage the upward mobility of the lowest and the poorest.

It's also interesting to note that Webb ties MultiCulturalism so closely into his chapter about gang violence, and it's no coincidence. Because of the ways that the government and people have screwed minorities in the past their Socio-Economic status' to this day are completely borked for the most part, and I think that's where books like Native Son come in to talk about those kinds of things.

Appleman 8

This is another chapter that I'm going to struggle saying a whole lot about, because well, there wasn't a lot to it. It's the end of the book, barring the appendices that's it, no more, done, finished.

I really liked the idea of the Critical Theory relay, and it and other things brought up in this book have really warmed me to the idea of using some critical theory in the classroom. I know I've said it a few times before but I feel much more excited about teaching now and I think part of that is because I have a much better idea now of the kinds of things I can teach, as well as the things I want to teach.

Deconstructing Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"

Daddy by: Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the beginning of this piece you know from the title that the poem has something to do with Plath's father figure, but from the outset it's impossible to tell what that connection is. In the first Stanza references a Black shoe and her being a foot inside that shoe. The weird part is where she talks about not being able to breath within the shoe, melding the comparison between the foot and herself, because obviously feet don't breathe but people don't go in shoes...which one is it Plath?
The first part of the second stanza has violent undertones, claiming Plath wanted to kill her father in some way, but the second part of the Stanza has nothing to do with that, coming back to the foot analogy, she's claiming her father died before she had the chance to kill him, but these lines about a giant statue make it seem as though she's claiming he's immortal, a stone-like presence.
In the next few stanzas we move out of the metaphorical a little bit, because it seems like Plath is literally talking about a trip to Germany and Poland, maybe her father was actually a Nazi or that's just how she felt about him but that's obviously the point she's trying to get across here.
Later she claims that every woman adores a fascist, but that doesn't make sense when it seems that she's been constantly claiming to this point that she hates the man and she wishes she had killed him. She claims that she tried to get back to him, so there's obviously some contradiction here between her hate for her father and her love for him, and she even goes so far as to contradict and rewrite some of the same things she was saying about him being like a Nazi to her, saying that the cleft wasn't actually in his boots, just in his chin.
She goes on once again to compare him to something immortal, a vampire, so that even though she claims for most of the poem that she's dismissing him even at the very end there's the claim that he will always be there.

Appleman Chapter 7

I really enjoyed this chapter about Martha, mainly because instead of taking one subject for many pages and using many quotes from students, we got to hear about a number of important subjects directly from a teacher who's been through it. It's really encouraging to hear about how things can change in the classroom, and I'm particularly struck by the quote at the end of the chapter:

"As Freire (1971) has suggested, [teachers] are "knowing subjects," constantly learning from the process of teaching. Here we take the more radical position that learning from teaching ought to be regarded as the primary task of teacher education across the professional life span. By "learning from teaching" we mean that inquiry ought to be regarded as an integral part of the activity of teaching and as a critical basis for decisions about practice."

I know for a fact that when I start my student teaching that I'm going to be lousy at it, I'll be struggling to move beyond simply doing the kinds of presentations that I've been doing for my classmates for the past 15 years or so, and I know it's going to be a rough trip. But there's proof out there that things improve, that as we teach we learn, and I think that's one of the most important things. I know I've mentioned this before, but I was also really worried about what kind of actual material I would be teaching in my classroom because I've had trouble actually coming up with things to say in my unit plans in the past, and I think this book has helped me with that more than anything else. Not only does it give you things to say, it gives you ways to say it, and I think I feel much more comfortable now about teaching literature in the classroom.

It's an unfortunate thing, but I am skeptical that the majority of teachers actually follow the same path of self-discovery that Martha and Appleman did, I'm sure that there are a great number out there that are still teaching the same things they taught their first year. It's an important point to make because one of the main things that I got from reading about Martha is that she must have been ridiculously busy, she had to work hard for this, and we'll have to work hard too. Change and improvement don't come easy, but I think it's worth it.

Appleman Chapter 6

Deconstructionism! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

That's basically the main thing this chapter presents to us. First of all, I'm almost positive now that these conversations with students aren't real at all, I mean, they seemed so contrived before but some of the ones in this chapter were just ridiculous. My other problem with the chapter is that Appleman basically uses the quotes from other people to try to cobble together a definition of deconstructionism, and even the "clear and lucid definition" is seriously lacking. Basically the best way to get an idea of what deconstructionism "is" is from the name itself. I realize that one of the main aspects of this theory is that it's a little vague, but it was really aggravating reading an entire chapter about a vague theory, and the reactions the students had to it and the warnings made about it didn't really make any sense. Claiming that deconstructionism takes apart everything it means to be a person and destroys the other theories is really darn melodramatic.

English Teacher Censorship Snafu

Just though this would be an interesting read for people considering our recent talks about censorship in the classroom and whatnot. It looks like this teacher let a seriously disturbing book slip by him and now he's in some hot water for it. I guess it's just one more reminder that we should always be reading everything we assign.


Here's the article


Here's an excerpt from the book "Child of God"

Webb Chapter 3

I've had a good amount of experience with Feminist text, and I have some well read Math major roommates (who I consider to be some of the smartest folks on this campus) who I can talk about these texts with as well, and the conclusion I came to is that a LOT of guys just plain hate Feminist literature. I'm not saying that the stances we take on it are decidedly chauvinistic, it's just that so many of us have a problem connecting with the literature on any level and I'm still not really sure how to solve that in the classroom.

Because it has to be solved right? We need to find some way to bridge the gap between the two worlds. Even in our classroom I noticed that almost without exception it was the girls clamoring for books such as "The Bell Jar" and "Tsotsi", while most of the men were interested in reading Catch-22 and Vonnegut. I think we should have a discussion in class based around the different books people have read, and whether they've read anything and really enjoyed it that they would consider a book "meant for the opposite sex". It would be useful to hear what kinds of things get people into novels that they would normally have a hard time connecting with because of gender differences. I might sound here like I'm drawing some unstoppable, infallible line between the tastes of the two sexes, and I'm not. I know that there is plenty of give and take and plenty of books that people just plain read, but from everything I've seen the solidarity of the differences in literary tastes between the two sexes is surprisingly strong.

Anyway, if anyone has something they want to say about it here, or in class, that would be great. What I want is insight from some of the girls who love books like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice on how they feel about books like Fahrenheit 451 or Vonnegut or Catch-22 etc.

Appleman Chapter 5

I'm starting to realize that these books, almost in their entirety, aren't really all that useful for teaching low level English classes(6-9th grade) and actually, I'm ok with that. We take so much time in our teaching courses learning about the basics and how to get students interested that it's really helpful to learn about how we should be teaching some of the more advanced classes. The reason I say this is that practically all the classroom environments that Webb and Appleman are talking about for their Theory teaching are 12th grade or AP or even College classes. I read A Room of One's Own for my 11th grade AP English class and for me that book was just brutal, it took everything I had to actually finish the damn thing, although it probably didn't help that it was summer reading. I find that some of Appleman's classroom examples seem a little bit contrived, the way his students respond so perfectly, but once again I find that I'm really drawn to this concept of teaching different literary theories. Feminist theory is important because there have been so many portrayals of women in literature over the years by both men and women and the comparison is amazing. I think a good focus would actually be to read two relatively similar works by a Male author and a Female author and compare both through a feminist lens.

Also, you could probably combine the whole unit of Feminist examination with a unit on Victorian Literature, heh.

Appleman Chapter 4

Thinking about this chapter is conflicted for me, because some of what Appleman was saying here is brilliant and some of it is terrible. I don't think Hamlet is a great choice for teaching the subject, but there are so many books out there that are. I know from growing up in Grosse Pointe, or as I like to call it "The place where all the white people ran", that there's a lot of guilt and anxiety when it comes to talking about status compared to other people, especially in schools like this, and I definitely think it needs to be talked about.
Some of the books that I think would be great for teaching this are the Distopic books, because the Marxist comments in some of these books are so striking that it's practically impossible to ignore. It might be interesting as well to look at some Russian literature, even pre-Communism, for class struggles(Some of the work by Gogol or Dostoyevsky would be particularly interesting). But I think a smart teacher can take some of this and work really well with it. Some of you would not believe the insane majority of people at a school like GPN who think anybody, no matter who you are, can just as easily make something of themselves as any other person, and those who don't are simply lazy/failures. I guess what I'm saying is I think the Marxist view is important, just make sure you have the right works for it.

Webb Chapter 6

I really enjoyed this chapter, and I think that's mainly because I'm desperate to find different things to incorporate into the teaching of Huckleberry Finn because, let's face it, we're all going to be teaching it at some point. When I read and learned about this book in American Lit, I hated it, and this was mainly because the teacher I had didn't really have any specific way of teaching the book and he didn't even really make logical literary conclusions based on the content of the book as far as I could tell.

He was more interesting in vague symbolism, like Tom and Jim and Huck being three people, LIKE A RELIGIOUS SIGN!!!!!1111, and that frankly just drove me nuts. I like the fact that you can take all of the symbolism and literary theory, mix in into your lessons when you're teaching Huck Finn, and still use the topic of Racism in literature to drive the class. I think it makes the whole experience more interesting and it has the students learning a lot of things they didn't know before. I didn't know anything about Twain and the Blackface acts he enjoyed until reading about it from Webb. It's encouraging to know that there's a handy dandy book printed with all the criticism of HF inside of it, and I definitely plan to get my hands on it.

Definitely the most enticing thing about Cultural Studies approaches is that you can keep doing what you've always been doing with teaching a work, but you can incorporate more to make sure you're reaching the maximum number of students. It's an interesting concept and I see it played out here more practically than in some of Webb's earlier chapters.

Webb Chapter 2

In Webb's second chapter he continues his explanation of cultural studies based learning with a chapter on Homelessness. Now, after our discussion on Monday, I'm very cognizant of the fact that once again Webb is talking about lessons that worked for him in a college setting, but I think that the lessons and the literature he teaches using homelessness are easily adaptable to a high school setting.

The greatest thing about teaching about homelessness, I think, is the great potential it has for promoting activism in the surrounding community, because once the students realize just how many people out there are in fact homeless more of them will likely be drive to help. It was interesting to see how Webb used texts that I normally hate(ugh Dickens) to drive classroom discussion, and I think it's a better use of some specific literary works.

It makes sense to me that an entire British lit course could be taught in this manner because of how big of an issue homelessness and the poor in general were in Britain and Ireland, and a unit could be easily comprised of works by Swift and Dickens and Orwell.

It's good that he mentions that he still puts a lot of focus on some of the literary themes and motifs behind these works because I think even with a unifying theme I wouldn't be able to handle not covering the basics.

Homelessness

Webb didn't mention it but this is one of my favorite pieces on Homelessness:

On Dumpster Diving
(It's a PDF)

Read it, it's fantastic, and for some reason it's stuck with me for about ten years or so since I first read it.

MCTE Conference.

The MCTE Conference was great, and I think it was as beneficial if not more so than when I went the first time, and when I was there I was already looking into what I needed to do to become a member when I become a real teacher.

First off, the Keynote speaker gave a great talk about technology in the classroom, and it was really interesting to hear her talk because I really got the impression that the people she was mainly walking to were people much older than me. The thing is, I've been around computers and other technology my whole life, I'm part of the new generation she was talking about, and most of the computer resources she was referencing were things I've already heard about or used myself. It was still incredibly interesting to see how the general conception of technology in the classroom is evolving and to see how the importance of it is still growing. I've been thinking about it a lot since she reference Pandora and I've really been wondering how easy it would be to make use of a system like Pandora for Literature. I mean, Amazon.com actually sort of already does this, when you purchase or check out a story from them they have the ability to suggest to you many other stories that are similar to the ones you looked at, and I think it would be amazing to refine this process and give people a suggestion engine for books that took an aggregate composite of the different characteristics of books that they enjoyed!

I myself have been looking quite a bit lately at different ways to involve video games in the classroom, or just simply using the structure of video games to help some students connect. I can still remember to this day having Civilization 2 installed on all the computers in my middle school and I know the ancient day wonders of the world, the Colossus, The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Oracle of Delphi, Sun Tzu's Art of War, all because of that game. There is so much potential in other forms of media and we as teachers are just beginning to scratch the surface.

One of the other interesting sessions I went to was one that was helpful to new teachers, a session dedicated to offering advice for surviving your first year. Most of it was common sense but it was helpful to hear about the different strategies starting teachers use to find a good mentor and the things they did to survive.

Probably my favorite session was one that was actually meant for teachers who had been teaching for a long while, and it focused on common assessment. The best thing about sitting in on this session was that normally, all I get to hear about are the things they tell new teachers, and the strategies I can use to get students interested, but it was SO HELPFUL to hear for once about the inner working of the school. These teachers were talking about the different things they do to successfully negotiate with their administrators different kinds of common assessment, and how they make use of the State guidelines and the school guidelines to do so. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, one of my biggest fears is getting into a classroom and not having a problem knowing how to teach, but having a big problem knowing what to teach, so it was nice hearing a lot on that subject.

Webb Chapter 5

It's strange that so many students and teachers reference Romeo and Juliet because I never read it at my school, and I don't really know anyone who did. I think what may have happened is it was offered in the basic English class, of which I was a part of for perhaps two weeks. This was the amount of time it took for me to read Of Mice and Men, decide it was a terrible book, and immediately transfer into honors. I think it's important to teach students Shakespeare, but I just don't think the Tempest (or Romeo and Juliet for that matter) is the way to go with it. The problem I see here is that for many students, and it depends on your school, Post-Colonialism is taught over and over and over and over again, it gets boring and it's hard for a teacher to get the sense of that because they're only there for their own class. I think instead of relating literature like Shakespeare to distant historical events it's much more advantageous to relate Shakespeare to current life events and situations. There are so many things that Shakespeare wrote about that can be tied to everyday life, and that's where the main focus should be, and I'm sure Webb talks about this in one of his other chapters. I like the fact that Webb gives so many examples and sources for reading because I know it's the kind of thing that will be really helpful for beginning teachers and I'm trying to keep a good mental list of all the books and suggestions he makes.

Webb Chapter 1

The Webb book from the beginning strikes me as being very similar to the book from Appleman, with the main focus being the challenge of striking a balance between relating class reading to the students (making it relevant) and actually teaching the students meaningful information about the text without boring them to death. I really like Webb's story about the Contemporary World Lit class that he taught because it's always helpful hearing about someone who didn't really know what they were doing and slogged through it successfully. For me, the biggest worry about my first teaching year is that the curriculum will be so open ended/non-existant that I won't have any idea what to teach, and it's encouraging to see that even in extreme situations where you simply don't have a curriculum set up it's still possible to figure things out as you go along.

A lot of what Webb says in the first chapter about cultural studies reminds me of my literacy class I took here at Western. The teacher I had for that was also a big proponent of teaching culturally relevant books and her favorite books were books just like Night, controversial depressing stories that could evoke something from the students emotionally, and in fact for that class the book I was set to read with my group was First They Killed My Father. I think there's something to this, because books that get the kinds involved emotionally also have the best chance of getting them involved intellectually, but the challenge here is finding books that not only involve the students emotionally and culturally by finding ways to take classic literature and have it fulfill the same purpose.

Read this with a Feminist Lense zomg

The Centaur
by May Swenson

The summer that I was ten --
Can it be there was only one
summer that I was ten? It must

have been a long one then --
each day I'd go out to choose
a fresh horse from my stable

which was a willow grove
down by the old canal.
I'd go on my two bare feet.

But when, with my brother's jack-knife,
I had cut me a long limber horse
with a good thick knob for a head,

and peeled him slick and clean
except a few leaves for the tail,
and cinched my brother's belt

around his head for a rein,
I'd straddle and canter him fast
up the grass bank to the path,

trot along in the lovely dust
that talcumed over his hoofs,
hiding my toes, and turning

his feet to swift half-moons.
The willow knob with the strap
jouncing between my thighs

was the pommel and yet the poll
of my nickering pony's head.
My head and my neck were mine,

yet they were shaped like a horse.
My hair flopped to the side
like the mane of a horse in the wind.

My forelock swung in my eyes,
my neck arched and I snorted.
I shied and skittered and reared,

stopped and raised my knees,
pawed at the ground and quivered.
My teeth bared as we wheeled

and swished through the dust again.
I was the horse and the rider,
and the leather I slapped to his rump

spanked my own behind.
Doubled, my two hoofs beat
a gallop along the bank,

the wind twanged in my mane,
my mouth squared to the bit.
And yet I sat on my steed

quiet, negligent riding,
my toes standing the stirrups,
my thighs hugging his ribs.

At a walk we drew up to the porch.
I tethered him to a paling.
Dismounting, I smoothed my skirt

and entered the dusky hall.
My feet on the clean linoleum
left ghostly toes in the hall.

Where have you been? said my mother.
Been riding, I said from the sink,
and filled me a glass of water.

What's that in your pocket? she said.
Just my knife. It weighted my pocket
and stretched my dress awry.

Go tie back your hair, said my mother,
and Why Is your mouth all green?
Rob Roy, he pulled some clover
as we crossed the field, I told her.

Appleman Chapter 3

Appleman starts the chapter with a fantastic anecdote of a student with whom reader response didn't really work, the student was too into responding and not enough into the reading. She talks about some of the things I was talking about with others in my response to Be the Book! Sometimes reader response isn't the best. Sometimes it' s more important to make sure that the students are in fact reading the classics and it's important that they're actually getting what they can out of it. The dangers of only using reader response are very real, and I think they make a better case for teaching other types of reading theory than the entire first chapter. Thinking about how helpful it would be for students to know the different ways of looking at something is really interesting and I think it's definitely something that's teachable at the high school level, but I still think the risk of alienating your students is high.

Appleman Chapter 2

Assuming that teaching literary theory is the right course for the majority of students, this chapter is really helpful and gives strategies for helping teachers teach literary theory. Out of the four primary strategies he gives, I think the most useful one is having the students write nursery rhymes from the perspective of different characters. My problem with some of these other strategies, and Applemen even brings this up herself, is that it's easy to confuse something like the Star Wars exercise with just a simple review of characters and archetypes. The big challenge is taking the students and making sure they're able to step out of that and see the bigger concept of theory. I also really like the fact that Appleman says that every now and then the best thing to do is to just not use any literary theory for a while, I like the fact that she suggests switching back and forth between using it and not using it.

Appleman Chapter 1

The book starts off similarly to the way that Be the Book started, a little repetitive and the focus of it was convincing the reader that the authors purpose is an important one. This book was a little more interesting because Appleman starts off by making some really interesting observations about how teaching has been working lately. I definitely agree that it's a little blind for teachers to only teach through reader response, because there's something to be said about teaching students how to really read the text and get meaning out of it. I'm still a bit skeptical at this point about how helpful actually explicitly teaching literary theories is to high school students.

Wilhelm Chapter 6

"As the word suggests, canon is a holy word, and there are many teachers and parents who think that there is a particular set of texts so culturally important thta every student needs to know them. This becomes the job of schools. I think, though, that we need to ask what our purposes are as teachers: to teach texts, or to develop readers who can and will want to engage with and know texts in personally powerful ways throughout their lives." -Wilhelm

I've been thinking a lot lately with the current teaching philosophy dogma that seems to be taking over the pedagogical community, and it sort of bothers me. The main focus of all teaching nowadays seems to be solely the education and entertainment of the students who aren't excelling and the main goal is to make sure all the students are motivated and educated so that we can all live in a better, more educated society. Sounds great. But I worry about the students that don't really get talked about anymore(or at least not to my knowledge), the incredibly bright that don't need to be motivated. Teachers like Wilhelm claim that it's better to be teaching everybody the same things and that even the brightest learn from the activities he teachers, but I really wonder if the majority of lessons taught by him and teachers like him are really the best for that level of student, or if we should be designing lessons that specifically target the group that will benefit from it the most.

The reason I put that quote at the top is this:"to teach texts, or to develop readers who can and will want to engage with and know texts in personally powerful ways throughout their lives."
If you have motivated, intelligent readers, why not teach the text? Why not teach canon if you have some students who will benefit immensely from it? I'm not saying that these students are being overlooked entirely, but it definitely seems that the new teaching strategies talked about by Wilhelm would have been the kinds of things that would have bored me to death in middle school.

Wilhelm Chapter 5

In chapter 5 Wilhelm talks mainly about the students that weren't responding well to the Drama exercises and how he planned on appealing to their artistic nature to get them to read better. As I read this chapter I realized that you could play on a thousand different likes and dislikes, not just artistic capability, to encourage students to read. I thought about my own younger brother and how he loves to play video games, and I thought about the millions of different activities that could be done like that. Something like "If this scene in the book, or this story, were translated into a video game, what kind of video game would it be? Who would you play as? Would there be "boss battles?" Or even something so much as having younger students make Pokemon cards or just playing cards in general that are based on the characters they read about in a book. There are so many different ways to relate to the students that it's hard to believe there are so many students out there who don't at least enjoy reading a little bit.

Mainly I found the story about the ESL student fascinating. After being in Japan I definitely recognize the fact that even having some scratch paper to draw on does wonders when trying to get something across to someone when you only half speak their language. I think this is something that could be used extensively for all ESL students regardless of their artistic abilities, and encouraging them to draw what they're saying to help them in class could help open whole new levels of expressiveness for them.

Wilhelm Chapter 4

At this point reading this book wasn't really something I was just doing for class, it was something I was doing because I actually enjoyed reading it!

The book gets infinitely more interesting once Wilhelm starts talking about the students in his class that are having a hard time getting interesting in reading. Chapter four mainly focuses on those students and how he helps them through the use of Drama and acting out scenes from the book. Probably the most helpful thing from this chapter is the large amount of information Wilhelm provides on the different activities he used with his students and the positive reactions he was able to get from some of the more stubborn students. The stories about the kids who "just didn't get it" when reading reminded me a lot of my younger brother, who is going into 5th grade this year. I can tell just from the books I've read with him that this is exactly how he reads, I can see now that he has a big problem visualizing what's going on in the story and for him it's basically just a bunch of words, and I look forward to going home sometime this month and working on some of these techniques with him.

Wilhelm Chapter 3

The third chapter of Wilhelm's book was fantastic. It was really interesting to see the different ways he was able to get into the heads of the students and the different results of his research. Mainly I thought it was hugely beneficial to hear about the amazingly complicated things his different students were doing to read, and at the same time the chapter had me thinking about my own reading styles. It strange because thinking about it now, I've always been an avid reader but I don't think I do nearly any at all of the kinds of things some of these kids do when they read. It did have me wondering how many students actually are like that. I realize he's mainly taking the things he found from some of his most helpful students but it still skews things because it's hard to keep in mind that there are probably plenty of students out there that don't have any of the same reactions at all when they read.
I'm amazed by the complexity of the SRI exercise and I've already been able to think of many ways to incorporate this method into my own kinds of teaching, and the different ways it can be used to help students improve their reading skills. His classifications are a bit technical, but the very specific anecdotes he gives from Ron, Cora and Joanne are fascinating.

Wilhelm Chapter 2

In chapter 2, Wilhelm raises some interesting questions about the nature of reading. I found it interesting that he does in fact value the concept of valid reading, and he recognizes the fact that even though it is very important to simply get the kids reading, the most important thing is that at some point they're actually reading for meaning. Wilhelm has started to present some of the interesting things he discovered through the conversations he had with his students. It's hard for me to believe that even in a large class there were even three kids that were so open and ready to talk about the reading experiences they had, reading experiences that they actually enjoyed! Of course it's no surprise that the biggest complaint the students have is that the reading they do at school isn't anything at all and isn't nearly as enjoyable as the reading they do by themselves at home. Wilhelm then goes on to cover the same ground that most other literature teachers are covering these days, mainly the fact that students need to have access to a very wide selection of reading material so that there is a lot of things for them to choose from and there for there's a higher chance that all of the students will find something interesting. Because after all, simply getting them to read is always step one.

Wilhelm Chapter One.

Well, I just finished chapter one of the Wilhelm book, and maybe I'm feeling more belligerent than usual today but this book is driving me crazy. Having read the full introduction and the first chapter the list of actual information I've gleaned so far is ridiculously short.
Mainly:

• Reading is good.

• Some students simply don't want to read, this is terrible.

• The reason these students don't want to read is because they've been encouraged to read only to look for meaning.
• Wilhelm's daughter Fiona is very cute.

It reminds me of one of those old Bill Nye episodes where Bill takes a simple scientific fact and expands that information into an hour of entertainment without really adding anything else. Of course I'm expecting the book to become more practical as I progress through it, but I really didn't think the first chapter had much to offer.

The main thing I did learn from the first chapter is that for a long time kids were turn to look at text in a very scientific way, searching just for meaning and not concentrating on the different emotions and ideas that the text elicits from them. It's easy to see why this was such a dominating way to teach because in many ways it's the easier path, and grading and lesson plan creation are likely simpler. It's also easy to see why a reading philosophy based on Efferent reading can let a lot of students slip through the cracks.