Saturday, October 31, 2009

"The Odyssey" vs "Holes"

This week in seminar there seemed to be quite a bit of discussion around the subject of what texts are being read in our classrooms and how our students were interacting with those texts. I was surprised that three,including myself, of five student teachers were all experiencing something similar in their concerns about how texts are selected and presented to students. For myself, I was not wrestling with something as weighty as "The Odyssey" but I was still dealing with students who were not engaged in the reading. In fact, from what I could tell by show of hands, half the class had determined that they were "could not understand the story". The book, "The Once and Future King", is written with a more modern and younger audience in mind, yet there was not much connection to the story. This gave me a real "aha moment" when Lisa explained how she had achieved a breakthrough. This also connected me to what Wilhelm and Neito are talking about when they discuss how and why students read.

Wihelm asks the question, "So,what is Literature?". This was a point that was touched on in our seminar class and I think it speaks to half of what I see as the problem with my students disinterest in reading. It seems that in many schools there is still a perceived need to have students read "the classics", or in lieu of that, stick to the curriculum derived reading list. In both cases I see that students are left out of the process of determining what texts might interest them.Wilhelm states that he would have teachers as agents who "...put students in touch with a wide variety of books and ideas...". If this is true, and I believe strongly that it is, how would this be accomplished? I think that Lisa gave a very insightful way of approaching this when she found a text,"Holes", that supported the same type of story structure as the "Odyssey" and was accepted by her students as useful in understanding what she was trying to teach. What I heard Lisa say was that she asked them what they had read that had similar characteristics to the plot of "The Odyssey" and they were able to tell her. So, here is the first part of what I would want to try in my classroom. The idea of a student driven literature curriculum . I believe that students could provide me with an understanding of what they enjoy and want to read. Now, I am still in agreement with what Whilhelm describes as "valid reading", but given enough material I am confident that a reading list could be developed that would support my curriculum objectives. Perhaps I could do something like use short sections of texts that may not work in their entirety to engage students connected with texts that they choose and which still conform to curriculum objectives.

The other problem that might be solved is a need that Nieto argues for,that of providing textual material that is valid to more than one culture. Most of my classrooms are multicultural. As I stand before these classes and read poetry by Tennyson, I cringe at the looks of incomprehension. If I could have these students provide me with a direction to take for literature,instead of forcing one on them, how much more could we do together to open up new texts and viewpoints? Again, Lisa's class was able to direct her towards the type of story that fulfilled this concept by stating what they felt was valid in their social context. What kinds of text would my ESL and ELL students lead me to if they could provide the reading list?

I have no doubt that my students really do want to learn. They really do want to show me and their peers that they "get it".Giving my students a choice about texts is something that I will implement in my classroom. I see that over a period of time this could become a rich resource that would provide not only depth,but relevancy. I see this as concept that I can develop to give them a way to succeed. In turn they can help me succeed.

1 comment:

Karen Gourd said...

Relevancy is an exceptionally important consideration when selecting literature. As teachers, however, we can have a good starting place before asking students for input. Without a good starting place, I worry that students would only keep reading what they already know because as teachers we are obligated to take them to new places. There are ways to help even establish the starting place. WE have talked about collecting information at the beginning about who they are and their interest in general. This kind of information can help us introduce even a required curriculum in ways that increase its chances of being relevant to them.