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.

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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.