This week I listened to the audiobook of Allegiant, the third in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy. I also read a bunch of Twisty Little Passages a book about interactive fiction. I caught up on the last two issues of Brian K. Vaughn’s Saga. I finished reading the business book The Year Without Pants (despite the goofy title, I think there’s some awesome “stuff” here for educators to consider and it makes me want to consider how to use P2s in classrooms). I am planning on starting A True Novel and The New Jim Crow as I travel to the NCTE Annual Conference next week.
The above paragraph may come as a mean-spirited humblebrag about my use of time and my incredibly-amazing reading habits. However, I offer it to begin a reflection on a discussion we had in my “Teaching Reading” class on Thursday.
Preluding the prompt with a quote from Linda Christensen, I asked my class to respond to the following questions:
How will you decide what texts you should teach in your class? What books are you excited about teaching? What are you dreading? How will you know what your students need?
The discussion that followed turned primarily toward an up-and-coming writer you may have heard about: William Shakespeare. We English educators regularly get into a tizzy around the question: To teach or not to teach? As I told my class, Shakespeare’s words are personally meaningful for me and I know many of my students reinforced a passion for literature as a result of how we interacted with his texts in my classroom. However, the key word in that previous sentence is passion. We can just as easily quelch enthusiasm when we are not very excited about the books we teach in our classrooms.
And so, on my brain today is the question that extends beyond our conversation on Thursday. As was mentioned in the class, most schools are going to require students to read Shakespeare’s works in their English classes. For better or worse, English teachers have to be able to teach texts they may not be passionate about. Whether it be Shakespeare or Cisneros or Hemingway or whatever canonical-ish author you are expected to utilize in classrooms, how do you teach effectively, enthusiastically, passionately to texts you may not personally identify with? On the other hand, you could also refuse to teach that text. Even better, do it… in the name of “social justice, man.” (My friend Other Chris and I joke that every everything can sound sarcastic by adding “man” to the end of it.) By either teaching without passion or by refusing to teach a text you feel negatively toward, do our students miss out? What kinds of lessons about the value of students’ time laboring in classes do we demonstrate when we fumble?
These are the questions I’m left with on this sunny Saturday morning.
I think there is importance to this question and some of the things that I have thought about when dealing with this question are the different possibilities of involvement with each text. If it is a text that I am passionate about I might work with that text in much more detail and be passionate about the specifics of the actual text. However, on the other hand, if it is a text that I do not care for as much, I may focus on other aspects that are within the book, but not specifically from the text. I feel as if there are some aspects in a book that anyone could be passionate about and that is what should be focused on in school. I do believe that students will learn more from a passionate teacher who wants to be teaching the lessons as opposed to someone who is just going through the motions because they are required too. I think there are learning moments and things that can be taught out of pure hatred for a book, just as much as there are teaching moments for books that take a special space in our hearts. There is value in every book, required or not, and it is our job to find that value.
I think that students notice when we fumble, but I don’t know that it is always a negative thing. Acknowledging our fumbles could be that first step to creating trust in certain situations. I want my students to know that I struggle too, and that I am learning along with them. However I think that even if I don’t like a text I will try my hardest to be passionate for my students. I know as a student when a teacher admits that they are not excited about what we are learning but it is “required” or “important”. I often chose not to read those texts because if my teacher doesn’t care why should I? I agree with Tyler that every book has value that we need to find.
I like Tyler’s suggestion that every book has value and Kaitlyn’s that it is ok to fumble in a classroom. What students often forget is that teachers are people too with all the faults that come with it. I know that I am going to struggle with reading and other tasks which require tracking eyes across a page.
Having said that, I have had enthusiastic and not so enthusiastic teachers throughout a very lengthy school career. Yes, canonical texts are important as they are a cornerstone of interactions. Being able to understand references to canonical texts is one of those language of power issues where doors will either open or close. While it may never come up in conversation directly, references are everywhere to Shakespeare or even Lewis Carrol both of whom created a good number of words and expressions we use today without thinking. I strongly feel the best way to get students engaged in a text, canon or not, is to relate it to students’ everyday lives. When the text transcends time, and can address issues in the “now,” not only are students but the teacher is more interested in discussing and reading the text.
I would like to start by saying that omitting a text from your curriculum cannot have a profound effect, on way or the other, on the academic integrity of your students. I say this because the canon favors certain authors, while a vast amount of published, uncommon, canon-worthy literature falls through the cracks every year and every semester. Moving past this I believe that refusing to teach a certain text, because you are not passionate about it shows passion, in and of itself. If a teacher blatantly refuses to teach a text, this show civil disobedience, a trait that every one should develop at some point in their lives. The crux of the scenario is that you better have a good reason why you won’t teach a text, (I’m not sure if personal preference is legitimate enough) and secondly that you have a canon-worthy text to replace the refused text in your curriculum.
I think there is something we all have in common: a passion for language, reading, and writing. Maybe I’m making too broad of a generalization, like you said, maybe someone just threw a dart, and it landed in between English and engineering and engineering was too hard. But this concentration that we chose above all others implies a passion. Not only a passion for the content, but also a passion for teaching, a passion for civic improvement. It’s sure as hell not the pay that drew us here, although some of us may be doing teaching because it might be are only real chance at a job with an English degree. But this is important. I find myself looking back to my days in public schooling and I wonder about those teachers that seemed to hate their job. There is something that I noticed though: my teachers of English were probably some of the most passionate I ever had. It come with the territory. There’s something about that written word in my opinion, and if you’re drawn in enough to study it, then there you are. It becomes difficult in the classroom as a teacher though. As a student, if you’re not passionate about it, you just have to read it. But maybe even a teacher can change that. That’s why I think this needs to be an inherent quality in a teacher. Passion. I just wonder what happens when we are forced (does this even happen?) to teach a text. Can you give yourself a passion for something you’re just not passionate for? I’m not sure about that. I’m sure I’ll gravitate toward teaching those texts that I fell in love with and so I can transfer some of this passion to my students, but I’m not sure where I’ll be when I’m not crazy about a text or a lesson that is still important for my students to get. They’ll be able to know, I wear my heart and opinions and beliefs and dispositions on my sleeve unfortunately. This might be one of my biggest struggles. I’m a my way or the highway kinda girl. And so when it comes down to how I’ll teach something I’m not crazy about, well, I’m just not sure. Maybe I’ll just have to be crazy about EVERYTHING.
I think that Kaitlyn made an important point about fumbling, and I think that by using a personal struggle with a book, students may feel more inclined to help explain it or figure it out for themselves. One of my professors always reads out a quote and says, “I’m not really sure what the author was trying to do here, what do you all think?” By posing it as a question, it becomes a teachable moment for students, and as many of us know, often times teaching a subject makes us gain a much greater understanding than being taught.
I also think that if I am required to teach a text I am not interested in, I can pair it with passages from a more engaging text, or movie clips, poems, etc. By relating it to something contemporary, I would be showing its contemporary relevance as well as gaining student engagement. With my experience working with ELLs in 350, I have realized that it is more productive to focus on a few important elements to teach vs. trying to tackle the whole thing at one time. I plan to also extend this philosophy onto the way I present texts to my students, especially the ones I am not as comfortable with. For example, (to stay with the Shakespeare trend) if I was required to teach Julius Caesar, and I did not feel comfortable discussing the historical aspects of the text, I would focus specifically on the language of speeches, and have the other elements of the texts be part of mini-lessons.
That being said, I do think that it is important to go in-depth with texts, but if I truly feel uncomfortable with one, I plan to choose the element about it I find most valuable, and go from there. If my students wish to delve deeper into it, then I believe it is my duty to help them, and perhaps their passion or understandings will transfer onto mine. One thing I am sure of though, is that I do not want to lie to my students, and so I will teach them what I deem valuable, and hope and strive for them to find the value that I do.
I agree that every text probably has some sort of purpose or intent. It has meaning, and that meaning should be accessed willingly or begrudgingly. There are texts I’m not too fond of, but I know I will need to teach them at some point in my career. I’m not a giant shakespeare fan, but I recognize its worth in the classroom. I’m not sure whether or not I like Jane Austen (I need to give pride and prejudice another try), but I know that many, many adolescent girls relate to Austen’s characters. Her voice is powerful and moving and girls, even guys tend to relate to her books.
However, there are going to be books that I’m really excited to teach. I love Mark Twain, and Huck Finn is one of my favorite books. A Farewell to Arms is on the top of my list too. Even though these are canonical they are great adventure stories. I want to encourage my students to find what they like and what they don’t like, and if they don’t like something, then that is okay.
I’m going to jump on the Tyler bandwagon. If we can’t find anything of value in a text to teach our students, that’s our failure as teachers. Alternatively, if we don’t think a text works, we can examine with our students WHY it doesn’t work or WHY it fails. In the end, if your principal/school/district requires you to teach Shakespeare–that’s your job. You teach Shakespeare, whether you like it or not. I mean, you also have a professional obligation to not make your students hate life, and you shouldn’t punish them for your personal hang up. I can’t imagine that there’s a required text anywhere that would necessitate (on its own merits) any sort of moral stand. I understand we’re constantly struggling to incorporate more diverse voices into the canon, and I think this is a worthy struggle, but at the moment we have to do the best with what we’ve got. I don’t agree with the notion that “I don’t need to assign Shakespeare/Hemingway/Woolf to my students now because someone else will make them read it.” The notion that “someone else will do it” can be dangerous.
As teachers, we have the right to not be passionate about something. We can choose to use a text we hate or love, but regardless there should be value and reason to incorporating it into the classroom. However, I think it’s extremely negative to bring in a text to the classroom and actively hate teaching it, imposing your own distasteful opinions of it onto your students. The students are the focal point in your classroom, not you–the teacher is merely the guide. It is not our job to bring in a text solely to bash on it, to bring negative attitudes towards a certain text. When you teach something, hating or loving the text is up to the students to decide. You just merely TEACH it, free of judgment. That sounds depressingly emotionless, but I think it’s true. Shakespeare, for instance–if you hate Shakespeare, it’s not good teaching skills to stand there in every class of the unit to verbally and especially non-verbally give clues that you hate it. Then your students are guaranteed to hate it. There is a way to present a text in neutral ground, even if it is your least favorite novel in the world (*cough Moby Dick *cough). Of course we will have opinions about every text we teach, but I don’t think it’s our job exactly to impose our own opinions on our students. Voicing those opinions is one thing, as a beneficial discussion to the class. Beating “I hate this story” over the students’ heads is another.
I believe that teachers need to show they are interested in the book and make the book relatable and accessible to students, but teachers do not need to be passionate about every text they teach. Teachers should explain the importance of the text and why they are teaching it, then put all their energy into creating engaging lesson plans so students are inclined to read. I like the idea of teachers explaining what they struggle with in the text and why they might dislike it, but students still able to create their own opinions because the lesson plans were well thought out. I believe having enthusiasm about texts causes students to be more interested in the text but that doesn’t mean teachers have to actually be excited. Acting excited and enthusiastic about the text when introducing it will make students more excited to read it, but if that is too difficult being honest allows students to explore some of the problems with having a cannon. My biggest issue with the cannon is it doesn’t include enough multicultural texts but I am still willing to teach the cannon and believe it s worthwhile if I can make it relevant for my students.
Like many of my fellow pre-service educators, I think it’s important to teach some classical texts whether you like them or not. As Tyler said, every text has value. There are reasons why many of these texts are still either required or popular for classroom instruction. I do think that you have to bring some passion and a unique strategy to make the reading engaging. By making such texts relatable and more accessible, students are more likely to gain insight into the texts value. There are also a great deal of teachable moments with texts you and students don’t enjoy. You allow students to decide for themselves what the text has to offer. Teach the merits but take time to discuss limitations and setbacks. I have no problem teaching a selection of canonical texts, some Shakespeare, but I would also like to incorporate contemporary and multicultural literature that appeal to my students.
After reading my classmates comments above, I have faith that we will all succeed in teaching English. We will find passion one way or another regardless of what text we are teaching. The reason I want to be a teacher is because of not only the passion behind it but the creativity. If we can’t creatively think of ways to engage our students in a classroom and help them develop as students then why are we teaching? Take Shakespeare for example. Lets just say I wasn’t one of his biggest fans in high school. However, once I got to college I started to see Shakespeare in a new light. I started to see that his works contain more than a bunch of scrambled confusing words on a page. I looked at it from a teaching perspective and realized that their is something to teach in each of his plays. I feel that it is possible to structure a lesson plan around Shakespeare that you can feel personally passionate about. Just like Antero compared Hamlet to Tupac (I think) there is value in any one of Shakespeare’s plays. I’d love to teach The Tempest and focus on the racial elements and relation to the “new world” or as another student brought up in class, why not compare Romeo and Juliet to 8th graders dating experience? We can all find something valuable to teach with Shakespeare, just like any other text. If after a solid amount of planning, thinking creatively, and structuring a lesson plan you STILL can’t think of a reason why you’re teaching a tex then you can throw it out, but don’t give up before you’ve tried everything else. I feel that with thinking creatively about a text you will find passion to teach it.
I’ve had students see me fumble–at the college level! I was teaching a lesson for Pam’s class, and I tried to adapt an activity mid-lesson. It didn’t work and that is okay. I stuck with the “script” and everything worked out. Since I was teaching to an English Teacher audience, and since I admitted that I was trying something different, they were (hopefully) convinced that it is okay to mess up. If it were a high-school audience, I think it would be alright for them to see me fumble. If a relationship has been established, and a community formed, then students will be forgiving and likely encouraging. But I don’t have that background, I really don’t know.
We will never be able to show students everything. There will be thousands of meaningful moments in every life, but, in the context of Shakespeare, I got more meaning out of books and short stories with similar concepts than I did with the plays. What if three students gain a personal connection with Shakespeare? Great, right? Not if twenty-three students develop a personal connection to a short-story that presents similar thematic elements. I will teach Shakespeare if I am told. I will do it passionately. But I will also put spins on my lessons that may detract from the importance of Shakespeare, and I will certainly delute his influence.
I believe that every text we come across could have some element we find fault with. Truly, I never gave a thought to my prior Shakespeare experiences until this semester – having my first collegiate encounter with the man in the required Shakespeare 2. Six months ago I would have told you that I hate Shakespeare and see no need to teach him in the classroom; I feel exactly the opposite of that now. Why? Because of the word Antero used up their in his post – “Passion”. The session I’m taking is instructed by Anne Reid, and as far as I’m concerned she is one of the most passionate educators I’ve ever experienced. Her obvious love of Shakespeare and the excitement with which she teaches him have completely drawn me in to the material. So much so that I signed up for Shakespeare 1 next semester when I saw she was the professor. It’s so clear to me that whatever the text – even those we don’t necessarily love – if we approach the process of education with a true passion for the youth in front of us, we can and will inspire our students. I hope the passion to teach, whatever I’m required to teach, fills my classrooms year after year.
I agree with everyone, and Tyler, that we should find some value to the texts that we teach. I also liked Jeremy’s point that we could find a fault with every text if we looked hard enough. I think that in finding that piece of value that a text holds would help inspire some passion. Be passionate about getting that point of value across to your students, helping them find the reason that the text is important and how to find importance in other texts they will be required to read for the rest of their academic lives. If we teach them that just because we aren’t “passionate” about a certain text we can just throw it out, then that is what they will learn. They won’t know how to read things that they don’t like and they’ll never learn how to find any real meaning. I think there’s lots of ways to incorporate interesting things to boring texts, like showing a fun video or connecting the text to something more interesting.
I believe that a teacher has the right to teach or not teach a certain book as long as they have a legit reason to not teach the book. By legit reason I mean something like cultural issues within the book, not so much personal preference. But I think that teachers do need to be enthusiastic about what they teach, otherwise students will look and see a teacher who doesn’t care, and then the student wont care. Even if a book you are going to teach doesn’t relate to you directly, I am sure we have all had enough life experience/friends/family to find some sort of relevance in a book. And I think that is what we need to show students. They need to see that they can find a part of their lives in any book, even if it is just a single sentence or word. I find it that once I find something relevant to me in a book, I am immediately more interested and motivated to keep reading. As far as fumbling in front of the class, we are all human, and that means we aren’t perfect. Students will need to learn this at some point, and like others before me have said, it is a way to gain trust. Show students that fumbling is okay, you just have to pick up and keep moving, but maybe change directions.
The problem is: there is not enough time in the day. You ask about students missing out because of certain texts we don’t like or wont teach, but there are thousands of teachable works out there, but not enough time to teach them. I think that if you can give a passion to the students through your reading passion, and if you can come forth with knowledge that that students can build and elaborate on in the present and future, than you can teach what ever you want. Maybe that is just me though…
I think a lot of people are onto something with the whole idea of it being our faults as educators if we can’t find the value behind what it is we are teaching to our students. I think there is a lot of value in that statement, I also want to say that if we only teach what we want to and what we personally love in our lives, what does that tell our students? To me that is the worst thing we can do because it says we don’t think those things have value and therefore they don’t deserve our time. That might be a bit of stretch and it is only books, but at the same time that can be what is seen and if we are helping prepare students for lives as citizens, we can’t expect to truly help them if we are teaching things that we believe hold value only. I think there has to be some things we teach that we really have to dig to find meaning and really question it in our own lives for a few reasons: 1. it’s helps students to see that even though you sometimes have to do things you don’t want to there is value to be found and 2. it might have a significant impact on them and if that’s a possibility, who are we to take that slight chance from them?
I clearly remember the moment that I lost respect for my 10th grade language arts teacher: it was during the “Merchant of Venice” unit. We read the entire book in class with the aid of an audio recording, with the exception of one scene in which the two lovers were confessing their love for one another and planning to run away so that they could get married and be together forever. My teacher, a one Ms. Miller, decided that the scene was entirely too mushy and gushy and disgusting and, because she didn’t like the scene, decided that we didn’t need to listen to it and proceeded to fast forward to the next scene. While everyone is entitled to their opinion, and the scene was remarkably gushy, that’s not enough reason to skip over a scene that was romantic and sweet rather than gushy at the time of its publication! Had we been short on time and she decided to skip over a scene that was not particularly important to the overall plot or some other logical reason, I wouldn’t have had an issue. Also keep in mind that I love Billy the Bard.
With that being said, I am an advocate for only teaching what you’re passionate about or finding away to be passionate about what you’re teaching. There are a number (over half) of books that were taught to me in high school that I didn’t like and therefore didn’t read, and I do have a fear that I will one day be asked to teach them. Perhaps now that I’m older and more learned, I’ll understand why the book is being taught and will be able to find the beauty in it, but there will always be that one book that I cannot like.
I don’t think that students are missing out when a teacher decides to not teach a book that he or she is not passionate about; I actually believe that its a service. Students generally do not like the books that are assigned to them–or don’t like books in general–so it’s hard to do the readings and assignments. It’s even harder when the students can pick up that even their teacher doesn’t want to do the readings or assignments. If the teacher isn’t motivated, how can it be expected that the students will be?
Learning is a process that never stops and so as a future educator I never want to be viewed as an all knowing knowledge holder who makes no mistakes. I expect myself to make plenty of mistakes and I expect that my students do the same, how else will we learn and how else will I demonstrate that learning doesn’t stop at a certain age, subject, or career path but rather guides and fulfills us everyday. I am motivated by the moments where I will have to say ‘I am not sure on that” and so on, proving to myself that there is so much more to explore and to my students that it never stops whether you leave the classroom, are at the head of the class, etc. I believe that if I am able to show my humanity and honesty with students in things that we study, read or write that they will know, while I may dislike the strict adherence to Shakespeare, it does provide benefits and I myself have to make if engaging and fun to get through at times. Students don’t miss out because there are hundreds of books that I deem useful, more connected, influential, etc. that are not used in schools but because students haven’t had the opportunities to engage with them does not make what they have learned mean less. In my opinion if a teacher is still motivated to learn themselves, they will create lessons and book list and so on that motivate their students in the same ways.
I’ve recently made an epiphany that seems simple enough now: most of your students will be experiencing each book you teach in your class for the first time. For some reason this idea allows me to find some kind of passion for any book I might feel obligated to teach and allows me to see a book with the students eyes. In my teaching practice, I want to emulate the practice of allowing students to help build understanding of the book we are reading as a class. I want to take part in what educators like Peter Smagorinsky and others have noticed when they introduce a new book to each new class, as a new and refreshing exploration of a novel that unfolds new knowledge each year. I’m also a firm believer in allowing students choice in the books they reading, knowing that when I was a student I thoroughly enjoyed exploring new, unusual, and potentially difficult titles I’d never had a chance to read before. And with that, my question I am struck with: how do you provide recommendations for books that your students would want to read? Why should they trust the books you recommend will be interesting ones? Also, Antero, if you take out the comma, adding man becomes less sarcastic. Then you get the superhero, “Social Justice Man”.
I understand that we are going to have to teach things we don’t agree with when we are teaching. The question isn’t what we want or don’t want to do, but how will it help or hinder our students? If we do nothing to change whether students pledge or read Shakespeare then we should not complain and teach with passion. Our discussion on Shakespeare makes me think about the pledge of allegiance. Some people think that it is an important part of history, while others think that they should not have to lead this pledge, because of personal reasons. I feel like I am ranting. I just want people to change what they don’t like, or stop complaining and teach well. 🙂