Response #11: Sherman Alexie

Alexie’s writing style feels intimate and raw, as you are reading along it feels more like he is talking with you instead of writing for you. I think he has a very important story and perspective to tell, and the geographical references make it more personal for me. My daughter was born in the same hospital as he was, and I have been inside his high school in Reardan. His writing is colorful, witty, full of analogies, and OH! the doodles! While he doesn’t pretend to be tender about some serious issues, he manages to keep the novel light-hearted.

I was reading this on a slow night at work, and apparently Alexie used to date a girl that lived next door to one of my regulars! My customer thought Alexie was a pretty decent guy, but doesn’t care much for his writing (lol). In one of my previous English classes at EWU with Flinn, we read all or part of Alexie’s Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Woodstock. This was my first exposure to Alexie, and to the clip of Jimi Hendrix playing the anthem. We also watched an interview with Alexie on the Colbert Report, and it was one of the few times one of Steven’s guests got the upper hand of the conversation.

This will definitely make the shelf in my future classroom, and maybe I will be able to use at least excerpts in my curriculum. It could be the gateway to topics such as social justice, racism, or coming of age. I am always interested in people who have not only survived insurmountable obstacles, but also managed to shine afterwards. Students need to know about the inspiring Alexie’s and the Beah’s (my book talk author) in this world.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

Response 10: Readicide

I am relieved to hear Gallagher support state standards while remaining critical of them; I like how he does not point out a critique without offering solutions to fix it. His main point on the subject of state standards are that there are too many of them; and teachers sometimes ruin valuable texts by beating them to death with every possible standard available. I like how he explains the taboo phrase “teaching to the test” as a positive teaching method: that is what all good teachers should do, provided the test is a good one. This speaks to the alignment we talked about in class, between what is being taught and what is being assessed.

Reading the section on the Paige Paradox, I am reminded of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Why would schools with low test scores be monetarily punished when it is those schools that need the most help, financially and otherwise? While I value the use of well-designed standards, I am totally against high-stakes testing, both for the students and the districts. The section on the Texas Miracle/Mirage is interesting...wasn’t George W. Bush, founder of No Child Left Behind, FROM Texas? Weird. Another text I read this quarter (cannot remember which one) pointed out how after the implementation of NCLB over 10 years ago, college applicants have shown no improvement on placement exams.

The word poverty concept reminded me of when my sister got my son a joke book for his birthday. It was at or just above his reading level, and I thought it would be a fun way to get him to read more. However, as I thumbed through it, I was grossly disappointed to realize most of the jokes would go right over his head. Being able to pronounce them was not enough, he also needed to understand the vocab and the contextual relationships.

Reading Response 9: Tovani

I agree that one of the first steps in  helping students become better readers is by redefining reading. By the time I get them in secondary school, they may be operating on an oversimplified and inadequate definition of what effective reading really is. I will be sure my students know that good reading does not magically happen on it’s own, but rather developed very intentionally.  Tovani’s book will be an excellent resource for instances when I think my students need a reading comprehension boost.

I like what Tovani said about her experience in her book club: “these readers had not come to book club knowing all the answers. They were depending on one another to construct meaning” (8). When I encourage my future students to model what good readers do, I want them to understand good readers do NOT equal people who know everything. Good readers read with a purpose, make connections between the text and their own lives, draw inferences, and ask questions. She expands on this idea later, pointing out that good readers do not remember every single thing they read, but they “use tools to hold onto their thinking so they can return to it later” (34). If I can get my students to realize reading is a process requiring tools and strategies, they will see how accessible effective reading is to everyone. Giving each student better access to strong reading skills will break down their negative pre-conceived notions of reading. Breaking down that barrier and following it up with practical lessons from this book will help me produce classrooms full of successful readers.

My son is a very reluctant reader, and I am always trying to show him examples of why reading is important. When he first began playing video games, he would not read any of the tips and prompts and would get lost or stuck and frustrated. I would help him out and he would say “how did YOU know that?!” and I would answer “because I took the time to read it”. He did not like being helpless while playing his games so he started forcing himself to stop and read when necessary. Around the same time he started noticing words he recognized around the grocery store or on road signs, and I tried to show how impressed and proud I was when he did. This worked wonders for his reading confidence, which was a huge roadblock for him.

RESPONSE #8 SOCIAL JUSTICE

Social justice is anything that affects human welfare, advocating for fairness and equality for every person. Many topics fall under the social justice umbrella: gay rights, human trafficking, pollution, homelessness, genocide, access to education or clean water, just to name a few.

It is important for secondary students to become aware of social injustices on a small and large scale, and various points in between. Students may be outraged over a closed campus during the lunch break or a double standard for teachers checking their cell phones during class. Students may know about gay marriage getting approved in some states and not others. Students may not know the disturbing statistics about child slavery on a global scale. Before a student enters the world as a young adult, they should know what’s really out there, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

However, I do not think students should be frightened or fanatical by the time they graduate high school. Great care should be taken to expose students to the exciting new possibilities in discovery, invention, technology, and extraordinary volunteer and human relief efforts happening locally and abroad. Sheltering students from blatant and subtle injustices is not protecting them, it’s disarming them. Very cliché, but knowledge is power. Teachers should be careful to support concepts of social injustices with strategies for battling them. Students should be informed about how the world works, which includes both the injustices and avenues for thwarting them; balance the heartbreaking realities with some hope.

Students make excellent activists because they still feel invincible, do not have children or careers demanding the majority of their energy, and are anxious to be taken seriously. Using social injustice in a classroom widens the student’s scopes to the world, and challenges them think bigger than who they are trying to avoid in the hallway. I can see doing either an informative or persuasive essay unit for my future classroom themed around social injustices. I could let the students pick social injustice topics that they feel passionate about and maybe their conclusion or reflection could be something specific they plan to do towards alleviating their particular social injustice topic.

Response #7: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY IN AN URBAN HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH CLASSROOM

I love the idea of making the classic texts meaningful for the students. The authors of this article list several methods towards the goal of complimenting canonical literature with elements of pop culture, all of which I plan to utilize at some point in my teaching career. We can justify the importance of classic literature by linking them to timeless concepts present in modern devices (music, film, etc.). Educators cannot ignore pop culture, so why not use it? Capitalize on it! For example, when I studied Beowulf and Harry Potter at EWU, we addressed gender roles and possible sexism issues present in the text. An effective teacher will be able to help the students draw upon their personal experiences with gender roles (maybe by tapping into social media) to make meaningful connections with ancient and modern texts. This would also require teachers who value what students can bring to the academic table, building upon the concepts from last week’s article: chapter two of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire is expanding upon John Dewey’s theories about the backwards educational structure, advocating “that the school curriculum draws from the lived experiences of the child to expand into broader horizons”.

It is important for students to learn about people who are different from themselves, and realize those people lead lives that are equally as meaningful as their own. This concept from the article reminds me In the Name of God by Paula Jolin that I am reading for class. Halfway through the book I am convinced that every American teenager needs to be exposed to this perspective.

I agree with the authors of this article that when we expose students to harsh realities of injustice, we need to support them with opportunities and tools to change and rise above those circumstances. Students will only feel more helpless and demoralized if they are made aware of oppression without the power to change it. That power begins with critical pedagogy.