The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

With the amount of academic reading that I am asked to complete for school, I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and read a light, enjoyable book in a while. However, I found that much-needed fun, easy read in Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I sat down to start this book, only expecting to read a few chapters. Two hours later, I found myself on the last few pages. I was hooked! His narrator is so genuine and relatable, I didn't want to stop reading. I would love to teach this book in a classroom setting. Not only would it engage readers through humor and relatable characters, it discusses many social and cultural experiences that our students have likely seen or experienced, such as racism, alcoholism, poverty, ostracism, bullying, etc. Better yet, these events are told through a narrator who is would be so relatable to the students. I'm sure that all students at one time or another could connect to the feelings of loss, of being different, of not belonging that the narrator describes. I also love the use of drawings throughout the book. With the pictures, the book appeals to a wider range of students -- both auditory and visual learners. Like the writing, the pictures are often humorous and very well represent what Alexie describes in the chapters. I love the inclusion of the awkward, often hormonal love story, and the narrators rise to fame and popularity. Between the pictures and the humor, Alexie manages to include many useful and timeless lessons that could benefit students of all ages. He displays the importance of friendship, tolerance, and understanding, as well as perseverance, encouragement, and the power of expectations. He shows his readers that it is okay to create one's own path, even if it's one that nobody has been down before. If taught in the classroom, this book would captivate the students while teaching them important lessons that would last a lifetime. If not taught, in the very least, it's an essential book to keep as part of a classroom library.

Readicide

While reading Kelly Gallagher's book Readicide, the only thought running through my mind was this: how did we get here? Why are there so many people pretending like our current education system is working? Why are we stooping to their level? It seems that it all boils down to one thing -- money. How sad that we've prioritized money before the wellbeing of our students. I became a teacher so that I could help students experience the same joy that I found in reading. How did we lose sight of that? I am pleased to know that the answer is simple. Our students need to read more. They don't need to be reading more academic texts, informative texts, novels, or anything in particular -- simply, more. We need to encourage them to find a place where reading is enjoyable again. In my classroom, it's very important to me that my students see how much I enjoy reading. We need to be reading alongside them, being the model of a good reader. More importantly, we need to provide them with opportunities to read not just academic texts, but recreational ones, too. I didn't realize the impact that SSR can have on students engagement and success. The school where I am placed requires that all English teachers require ten minutes of silent, sustained reading at the beginning of class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. However, I don't think it's being effectively implemented. Students who have forgotten to bring an SSR book are allowed to work on homework quietly. This has greatly increased the number of students who do not participate in the reading every day. There are a handful -- probably two handfuls -- of students who conveniently forget their SSR books every single class period. While the teacher will occasionally require those students to go retrieve their book from their locker, the students will simply spend enough time in the process of getting the book to once again miss the ten minutes. SSR needs to be taken much more seriously, and it certainly will be in my classroom. I really want to start my library of books that will fill my classroom so that students may just grab a book when they have conveniently forgotten theirs. Many of the books in Gallagher's selections were ones that I grew up reading and loving. I just want my students to experience that feeling, too. I am looking forward to implementing Gallagher's 50/50 approach with my students. They seem to have forgotten that they can read books without a 50 page study guide and a packet full of response questions. We need to remind them once again why we read. It is certainly not only about their scores on a multiple choice test.

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

Our reading selection of Cris Tovani's I Read It, But I Don't Get It could not have come at a more opportune time. Last Friday, I was teaching a lesson on the first act of Macbeth to a sophomore English class. While we read the first act aloud, with each part assigned to a different student, I could sense that the students were only reading the words on the page, not interacting with the text, forming any inferences, or following the plot. While I had guessed that this gap in student comprehension was due to the students' inability to form connections with the text, I wasn't at all aware of how to remedy the situation and get the students to a place of understanding. I kept finding myself simply feeding the students the information that they needed to know, and left at the end of the day feeling defeated and disconnected from my students. After reading Tovani's book, I realized that my class consisted of mostly Word Callers, who "have altered decoding and, as a bonus, also choose to read. However, they don't understand that reading involves thinking" (15). The students weren't thinking about what they were reading. I think the students are overwhelmed by the language in Shakespeare's works, not bothering to read closely and interactively, so they go on autopilot and wait for the explanation. I really enjoyed all of Tovani's strategies to not only monitor one's own reading, but also remedy the issue independently if possible. I certainly plan to use many of the worksheets included in the appendix in order to show the students how they can start making connections to the text. Rather than bombarding them with a whole act at a time, I also plan to break up the text so as to not overwhelm them with vocabulary. I will give them a few quotations at a time and prompt them to identify a connection they share with that text. Tovani's book allowed me to think methodically about how to best help a class of word callers who have grown up in a generation often uninterested in reading.

Introduction: Creating Classrooms for Equity and Social Justice

For this week's reading, I've chosen the introduction to Rethinking Our Classrooms Vol. 1, which I believe very well sums up the definition of social justice, its place in the class, and why it needs to be there. As the selection states, "too many schools fail to confront the racial, class, and gender inequities woven into our social fabric." Social justice is, then, the incorporation and acknowledgement of the diversities that exist within our cultures. In order to attain social justice within the classroom, we much have relationships with the students in which we are familiar with their backgrounds. We must be able to incorporate areas of each student's life and culture into the classroom. The classroom should also encourage students to critique their society and see areas of inequality and injustice. Students should be encouraged to ask "why." As I've mentioned before, classrooms must be accepting of all cultures. To do this, many different cultures and perspectives must be analyzed in order to help the students create connections. Finally, students need to be challenged and affirmed. They need to be challenged in the work that they encounter every day, giving them opportunities to participate in hands-on activities that help them to experience the content being studied. They need to be affirmed by teachers in a way that shows them that they are able to make a change, and thus makes them hopeful to do so. The students should learn to identify problems, ask why the problem is in place, experience (whether vicariously or truly) the problems, then know that they are capable of doing something about them. This classroom experience aims to develop pro-justice, worldly, hopeful individuals and prepare those individuals for a life outside of school that often encounters injustices. In an environment like this, a mutual respect exists between the teachers and the students in which the students recognize that the teacher does not really know everything and the teacher recognizes that the students are respectable, individual thinkers. 

My text selection can be found at the following link:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/publication/roc1/roc1_intro.shtml

Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School English Classroom

Duncan-Andrade and Morrell's selection "Critical Pedagogy in an Urban High School Classroom" very closely describes the English classroom that I've always imagined having and will always hope to have. In my opinion, the students shouldn't have to inquire about the relevance of material and content. Rather, I hope that I can constantly be showing its importance to them and the connections that it bears to their own lives. In order to do this, it is imperative that we bring the culture of the students into the classroom to show them how to form those connections. Soon, the students will begin making those connections on their own. By incorporating student backgrounds into the classroom, we are giving them reason to care, reason to try, and a reason to succeed. While we are  preparing them for life after school in areas such as language skills, literature analysis, and critical thinking, we are also providing them a window to the world with the various perspectives that are displayed through a wide range of multicultural texts. As stated, "we are encouraging the creation of meaningful links between the worlds of the students and the worlds of canonical texts." With their time in the classroom, we should be showing them many different perspectives from many different cultures, which will give them opportunities to make connections and experience empathy. This approach will help students develop into adulthood with respect and acceptance for the world around them. I think Duncan-Andrade and Morrell made an important point by saying that simply offering students a variety of texts written by people of color is not enough. Students need to comprehend and connect with many different situations and perspectives of life. The materials covered in class should provide this opportunity for them. It is our responsibility as teachers to broaden the horizons of our students and help them make connections that they may not have seen on their own.