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.