12/4/17 - Final Blog Post for ENGL 493: The Learning Letter

1. Reflect on the work you’ve completed in the course (book talks, mini-lessons, unit plans)

For each of the major works I completed for ENGL 493 this quarter, I did not give myself enough time to complete them. All my ideas are there. They are all decently well developed and I had a good idea of where I was heading for each project. Yet the execution was rushed. See, I have trouble forcing myself to do anything until stress finally forces me to deal with it. I get a tremendous amount of anxiety whenever I get work like these projects, so I end up putting it off until I absolutely have to deal with it. While procrastinating my work, I tend to think about how I will complete them. This is why the execution of many of my ideas feels rushed, but the ideas themselves are developed enough to create a project from. Such a policy cannot continue forever! Though I think I will still wait on starting projects and allow myself to ponder how I will complete them, I need to start earlier so I can removed a lot of the stress from my life.

2. Reflect on the theories and concepts we explored in readings and discussions.

For the theories and concepts we covered in ENGL 493, most of them were useful in one way or another. Heck, I would say that all the theories had something I could use from them. But that’s just it, I do not have to ascribe to all these theories to get anything from them. Just because I disagree with Freire’s conclusion does not mean his points are not well thought out and useful. I do not have to agree with standards-based grading to take some of the principles to heart.

3. Reflect on how you think your participation in this course has influenced your thinking about yourself as a teacher.

For the course as a whole, I would say my participation has been extremely influential on my own thinking as a teacher. Out of all the classes I have taken at Eastern, I would say this class marks itself as one of the top three. This class was the most practical class I have ever taken at Eastern, influencing my thoughts and actions for much more than simple teaching. I truly think I have become more dedicated from this class, both in becoming a teacher and with my work as a whole.  I am extremely grateful for my time in ENGL 493 and would gladly do it again if it meant I could learn just as much. Granted, I would hope I could hop on top of my projects in a more timely manner, but other than that, I would do this all again.

“Ten minutes later, we stood in front of the warehouse. A German employee, a civilian, the Meister, came to meet us. He paid as much attention to us as would a shopkeeper receiving a delivery of old rags....
There were many Polish civilians here and a few French-women as well. The women silently greeted (some of the workers) with their eyes.”

Why did the Meister pay so little attention to them? What might he have been thinking?
Was there any sort of solidarity between the women and the Jews? Or did the women even care?


“There followed days and nights of traveling. Occasionally, we would pass through German towns. Usually, very early in the morning. German laborers were going to work. They would stop and look at us without surprise.
One day when we had come to a stop, a worker took a piece of bread out of his bag and threw it into a wagon. There was a stampede. Dozens of starving men fought desperately over a few crumbs. The worker watched the spectacle with great interest.”

How could German laborers not be surprised to see Jews stuck in trains? How could it be normal for them?
Why would the laborer toss bread into a wagon? Why take pleasure in others’ pain?

11/27/17 - Graphic Novels in the Classroom

Graphic novels are nothing new in literature. Something of the sort has always existed. What has changed, however, is how we interpret the medium in modern times. Most people view graphic novels like this only as comic books. That’s all graphic novels are to them and that’s all they will ever be. Yet something is happening as of late – that graphic novels are becoming more and more acceptable in the literature community. Take the graphic novel The Watchmen: it wasn’t just a comic meant to go on and sell as many copies as it could for as long as it could until the company could no longer drain any money out of it. Rather, it was a story about the nature of mankind and its tendencies toward depravity – that only lies ever united humanity and that’s just the way we were. Many graphic novels still fit the criteria of children’s comics, but some are legitimately fantastic stories now given new life through this medium.

Heck, sometimes the stories in these graphic novels aren’t original works, but recent adaptations of older ones. Over the last week, our class read the Frankenstein adaptation by Jason Cobley and Declan Shalvey. It was fantastic! As someone who has never read Frankenstein, this graphic novel is pushing me toward reading the original book, which is probably at least part its intention. This method of adapting older texts to graphic novel form gives the book a much wider audience. Our current generation of students are aware of classic novels, but don’t actually give them a chance because they are older texts. Like, students know the basic premise of Moby Dick, Lord of the Flies, Pride and Prejudice, and many other books simply because they are part of the cultural consciousness. Adapting them in part to a graphic novel would easily create interest in these classics.

11/13/17 - Poe, Dread, and Annabel Lee

I have never been a fan of Edgar Allen Poe’s work. He comes across as far too creepy, but a very specific type of creepy: he is extremely specific with creating a sense of dread in readers. Most details Poe includes in his stories are either directly used in the story or are brilliant cases of foreshadowing. So, I agree when others say Poe is a great writer – he certainly is – but the way he writes and the subjects he covers are usually too much for me. Out of the five pieces he wrote which we read this week (The Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher, Cask of Amontillado, Ligeia, and Annabel Lee), I can only get through Annabel Lee in a single sitting. This is probably because Annabel Lee is only a poem while the other four works are short stories.

Death is ever-present in Poe’s work, with a beautiful or mysterious woman dying in every story mentioned except the Cask of Amontillado (since there are only two men in the story, with one killing the other). In Annabel Lee, however, Poe is a bit more reserved. Annabel Lee herself dies tragically, but that’s the end of it. There’s no supernatural force like in Ligeia, no tragic death like in the Fall of the House of Usher, and no sinister reveal like at the end of The Black Cat. Annabel Lee dies and her lover can only like next to her in her tomb each and every night. It’s certainly creepy, but it never goes beyond that, which is extremely unlike Poe, in my opinion. Furthermore, Poe writes how the two of them will eventually be reunited, giving the promise of a happy ending. Since Poe wrote Annabel Lee close to the time of his death, perhaps he was writing about himself – the promise of seeing his wife again.

Whatever the case, Poe will always be remembered for his fascinating obsession with death. And if Annabel Lee really was about his wife, I certainly hope he was reunited with her in whatever life there is to come.

11/10/17 - Sherman Alexie & How to Write About Prejudice

Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Dairy of a Part Time Indian is a novel about the struggles of the fictitious Arnold “Junior” Spirits, a young Spokane Indian born with hydrocephalus. At only 14 years old, he struggles to adapt to his new white school, face discrimination from those on “the rez” and at school, and eventually find his place as a basketball player for his new school, leading to his acceptance.

What stuck out to me the most about this book was how Alexie goes in depth with how Arnold was treated and how he responds. For instance, Alexie does not shy away from having his characters use some very severe racial/homophobic slurs against Arnold. The slurs aren’t censored out, nor do they linger any longer than they need to; Alexie uses such powerful and awful words because that’s exactly what some entitled kids say to others they see as beneath them. I was honestly surprised to see an author use words like that in a young adult novel from 2007. Whether we like it or not, some kids use that kind of language with each other and it’s refreshing to see an author tackle the use of the word “nigger” in a respectful manner.

Discrimination like this in young adult novels often gets censored to the point of uselessness, touched upon briefly so it doesn’t leave an impact, or makes whoever the bigot is into such a caricature of a racist that it comes across as disingenuous. Very few young adult books have such a casual depiction of prejudice. The book doesn’t waste time trying to tell the reader how prejudice is wrong. Instead, the reader is shown how it is wrong through the reactions of the characters – the equivalent of “show, don’t tell” except for a book instead of film. Furthermore, Alexie is not afraid to show Arnold’s own racism. While told through the eyes of a young teen, Alexie gives a compelling analysis of a complex topic which is very rarely touched upon in such detail.

10/23/17 - On Gallagher's "Readicide"

In Kelly Gallagher’s “Readicide”, he writes about the many ways schools are inadvertently driving students away from reading. One of the most interesting points he makes is how write that schools are both increasing the number of standards they need to meet as well as taking traditional literature out of schools in favor of preparing for standardized tests. At first, I thought this couldn’t be the case. That is, until I read some of the standards sophomore history teachers were expected to hold their students to: understanding the underlying philosophies behind Western civilization, give detailed analyses of World War I and II as well as their aftermaths, and explain how most countries fit into the world’s economy.

Now, I will say that I could answer these questions in high school – although that is only because I avidly read through whatever history textbooks we got, so much so that I usually finished reading them sometime in the second month of the school year. I love learning about history; that’s the only reason I could answer the questions. To expect the entire student body to meet these standards, however, is absolutely ridiculous. Personally, I don’t think students could explain these things until they got into college, and most of the history classes I’ve had in college wouldn’t tackle these subjects until they got into the late 200 level.

Schools also have the inverse problem: while many traditionally-taught books are being removed from classrooms, those books which remain are taught to death. As Gallagher puts it, schools chop books up, add worksheets every few minutes during cooking, overcook all the flavor from the book, and serve in bite-sized chunks (never as a full meal, only as a snack). All this says to our students is that we don’t believe in them. We don’t trust them enough to get through a book all on their own and develop their own ideas and opinions on it; no, we must make sure they fully understand it and that no little tidbit is missed. Yes, the student now “knows” whatever book they are reading, but they despise it afterward. What modern America has developed is a sure-fire recipe for ensuring students can pass any test on whatever book we assign them, but ultimately are worse readers for it and lose out on any critical thinking skills they may have developed from reading and understanding the text themselves.

10/18/17 - Tovani and The Art of "Getting It"

In Tovani's book, I Read It, but I Don't Get It, she outlines many of the issues young students have when it comes to reading. Most of them come down to the simple task of getting them to care. Now, simple does not mean easy. It is by no means easy to get students to care about what they read, but it is straightforward. All you have to do is help them relate what they are reading about back to their everyday lives. One of the better examples Tovani gives is when she is asking a male student to read an article about Area 51. The student tries and fails to read the article well, so she tries a different approach. She says to “use outside information”; to add the student’s preexisting background knowledge to the article to make it more relatable for him. And you know what his initial response is? “I thought that would be cheating.” That’s right, cheating. Students have been so conditioned to treat each source of information as its own self-contained bubble that they cannot connect the dots of information even if they are right in front of them. This allows the student to write about things which they might personally disagree with, but then they discard the information whenever they are done using it or file it away under “use only for school”.

Another reason students don’t care about reading is that they are easily confused by the text. This is not to call them stupid, just to say that reading something without really trying to understand what is being said can lead to a lot of confusion. While not the main cause of causing students to not care about reading, it is, in fact, an issue which compounds their already muddied understanding of the text. To counter this, Tovani offers many strategies: make a connection (as discussed in the paragraph above), stop and think about you have read, paraphrase what you’ve just read, or perhaps just increasing or decreasing your speed of reading. Personally, I think it’s amazing to see an author write about confusion among readers, which is often lamented by education but seldom worked on or ever resolved.