Excellence in
Pedagogical Knowledge.
So I have an English degree -- and that all the sudden means I can teach English (ahem, British literature) to high school students? One of the things I struggled with the most with MTC was that I never felt confident in teaching English, and I never felt that I got the instruction I really needed to make this happen. Instead, it was just a lot of trial and error (which is the essence of teaching, arguably). Somehow I needed to change my college-based knowledge into teachable, understandable, broken-down bits that the students could actually chew and swallow. The second challenge I faced was how to make traditional British literature relatable to my students. For this, somehow I would need to change my knowledge on topics that interest me (such as Victorian and post-Victorian British literature -- snooze, I know) into topics and texts that interest them and to which they can relate (topics about their culture, their family ties, their commitment to loyalty, their economic struggles) (see below lesson plan for weeks 1-2 of school, especially reflective journal entry questions).
To start off the year, the first unit we do is called "Seniorismness" -- not a real word, I'm aware. In this unit, we start off by trying to get seniors ready for their senior year. They'll need a resume (we do this), they'll need to know how to get teachers to write letters of recommendation for them (we do this), and they'll need to know that the world really doesn't revolve around them once they graduate (we especially try to do this). Then, we try to connect British texts and media to the students' personal lives and experiences. One of the short stories we read in this unit is "The Myth of the Latin Woman: Just Met a Girl Named Maria" by Judith Ortiz Cofer (see right). The story is about a modern, successful British female writer who experiences racial stereotypes because of her appearance and her name. Parts of the story were over my students' heads both years we read it, but when we got done, I got some thought-provoking responses from my students during an impromptu classroom discussion. "So those guys thought she was a waitress just because she was a Mexican?" "I don't even understand why people stereotype. She was just like them." "So she went through stuff like we go through being black?"
|
|
In the same unit, we read Neil Gaiman's poem "The Day the Saucers Came." I absolutely love reading this poem. It starts off with how all these crazy things are going on around you (zombies are coming and floodgates are breaking and ships built of dead-men's nails are carrying serpents and wolves, etc.) and YOU didn't notice because you were sitting at home, looking at your phone, waiting for "me" to call. We read it three times: once I read it aloud to the students, once we listened to it on audio (with Neil's voice), and the third time we watched this amazing video with images from a comic book while the poem is read aloud (see left). It's very suspenseful and curious and engaging and right at the end it blows the kids' minds. I have the kids stop talking (which is usually hard to control after watching the video) and write down what they think it means in ONE sentence (so they can practice being concise).
I got everything from "technology=bad, talking=good" to the amazing summative statement to the left. When we got done writing statements, we had a group discussion about the poem and the topic of technology in today's world. Someone stated, "But, I mean, no one sits at home anymore waiting for a home phone to ring." True. And I remember that statement being counter-balanced with something like this one, "Yeah, but I mean we do look at our phones during class like every three minutes, at least. You know you're waiting to hear back from someone or seeing if people are going to like your stuff." The discussions we had regarding the over-reliance of technology were a great way to start the year, albeit it did not seem to curb my students' use of cell phones in my class. |
When we got to reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, especially this year during the presidential campaign, I thought they were going to lose it. If I only had a dollar for every time I heard "illuminati" in relation to George Orwell's predictive text by the end of the book. With my students' reading level, Nineteen Eighty-Four was hard -- it's over a lot of my students' ability, but we trudged onward, hoping that the guided reading questions would help (and they definitely did something, even if it did stress the kids out a little) and so would listening to the book on audio (which is how we started reading the text together). We did several tests, a propaganda project, and a short essay for major assessments of the book. And this is what I got:
The propaganda projects were thought-provoking and represent the issues the students see every day. We discussed in a group discussion how we see these in the media every day, trying to persuade us into different thoughts and actions. I heard comments like "Man, this is wrong -- they're just messing with our minds."
|
The essays we did for Nineteen Eighty-Four weren't particularly long, but they definitely made the students think outside the box and relate the text to their own life through reflection. The prompts to pick from were three quotes from the book (see Equality for assignment specifics). The students could write about the quotes within the context of the book, within the context of their own lives, or a combination of the two. Here's a sample of what I got (please, please read) (used with permission from student):
Not every essay we write lends itself to such personal recollections and ideas as this one, but this essay prompt showed the students that something written in the past about the future (which is now in our past) can still be relevant to their own lives. They also learned how to make commentary about a critically-acclaimed book, and that they are smart enough to be a part of social and political commentary.
True enough, though, by the end of the book, they were worn out. It's long, it's complicated, and it requires so much political and historical background that I think their brains hurt. Not to mention the tests on each part of the book (three), and the reading questions that went along with each part. On the left and right of this excerpt are the reading questions for just Part One of the book as completed by one student. So take those, multiply by three, and then multiply by 150 -- that's a lot of grading.
Did I mention this was an independent study book? The students were given access to the book online, and I also shared with them the YouTube videos of the book being read aloud so my non-or-low-readers could also partake, and I know that they did. It was a long unit, but we made it to the promised land. They did it, and they felt proud of themselves for reading such a complicated book. |
To wrap it up, we read a recent article about how concepts from Nineteen Eighty-Four were used in advertisements back in the 1980s and in present day (see Google Classroom assignment below). I've now had students start looking for and recalling to me allusions to the book that they see in tv shows and commercials, and it does my heart so good to see the students make connections to a book they resisted from the very beginning. This was not an easy book for them to read (and I'm aware that as an independent study book, I dare say only half of them actually read it from cover to cover), but I know their knowledge increased after reading it.
My students also write one research paper at the end of second semester. This is a culmination of all the skills they have learned during the whole school year, and it's "challenging," "teaching," and "different," according to one student. The students pick an argumentative topic ("there's too much to pick from, Meh Ree!") and then research for scholarly articles using the Magnolia website to the right ("we can only use six?!"). I teach the students how to sift through the results to find scholarly texts that fit their purpose, and then I teach them how to incorporate the sources into their own work. It's oftentimes the first research paper they've ever written, and it is a real process, but they learn how to organize, search the web, draft, evaluate, re-draft, edit and review, and finalize, and this proves to me that they can write and that I did teach them something.
|
One of the very last things I do with the seniors is a big writing reflection on their senior year, English class, me as a teacher, them as a student, etc. They moan and groan over one more writing assignment, but I think a reflection over senior year is important and I know looking back this year over what my seniors last year wrote, I was humbled, horrified, and highly amused. If you read anything in my whole portfolio, please read this -- this is from a student who has a 3rd grade reading level and IEP, didn't graduate in May because he was arrested (and he failed my class and two others), but came back to graduate in the summer. And he hugged me (despite it all).
Overall, what I thought I knew after earning my English degree and what I thought I would need to teach my students British literature were not the same, and my notions of what they would learn and what they would want to learn would have to change. I taught my students that British literature can be relevant to them; I taught my students that difficult texts can be relevant to them; I taught my students that old texts can be relevant to them -- and they bought it all. Did I lower standards? Nope. Did I re-adjust expectations based on my students' abilities and needs? Yes. These are good changes.