Teach the books, touch the heart

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On Friday, the teacher’s association to which I belong hosted its  AGM and  subject council days. Last year we were treated to a keynote by Rick Wormeli and this year Los Angeles teacher Rafe Esquith spoke. Both last year and this I was inspired to do better in the classroom.

My personal feeling has always been that we should be exposing children to more literature, not less. That instead of having them read and then answer a bunch of comprehension questions designed to catch them up because they haven’t read, we should be giving them opportunities to talk and write about what they think. In real life, when faced with a problem, we’re not given multiple choices in order to make the best decisions. We must weigh the options and choose.

Mr. Esquith’s fifth graders do a full length Shakespearean production every year. Esquith himself loves Shakespeare and his passion for the Bard spills over into the lives of his students, mostly impoverished, mostly not native English speakers. You can’t tell me that an experience like that doesn’t make a difference in their lives, a difference far more important than a score on a multiple choice test.

Every year at about this time I start to think about how I can improve my teaching in the classroom. I don’t think about how I can improve my test results – I think about how I can do my job better; how to introduce kids to great books, turn them into life-long readers, get them to think about how they connect to the material we read, show them how to write.  It’s not PC to say – but I don’t care about the tests as much as I care about their engagement. I want them to discover themselves in what they read, to experience the feeling of kinship with a character, to understand themselves and this world a little bit better.

At least, that’s the goal.

Teacher Claire Needell Hollander’s  opinion piece in the April 20th edition of the New York Times, Teach the Books, Touch the Heart, talks about this focus on testing  and what is lost because of it.  Teaching to the test is not teaching.

Twenty years ago, when I began as a teacher, I had this romantic notion that the classroom – my classroom – would be this amazing space with books and conversation. Yes, we’d do books together as a group, but we’d also read independently. We’d write, not just essays, but lots of different things because unless you go off to do a degree in English, you’ll probably never write an academic essay about theme again in your life after high school. Kids still need to know how to write well, though.

I didn’t stay in teaching very long. I just never settled into it; I felt like I was always playing catch up. My ego kept bashing up against these kids who just didn’t seem to like me. (Probably because I clearly didn’t know what I was doing.) Fast forward 15 years and here I am, back in the classroom…and I love every single day with those kids. My notion of what my English class should be like hasn’t changed and I try every day to balance that notion with the prescribed curriculum. Some days are more successful than others.

I have the experts on my side though. My gurus, Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher, talk the talk and walk the walk. And every day I get a little bit closer, I think, to teaching the books and touching the hearts.

The library book sale

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I love the first weekend in May because it’s the weekend that our public library holds its annual book sale. Every year I go, empty bag at the ready, and cart home more books that I really don’t need. My excuse this year is that I am shopping for my classroom library. According to reading and writing expert, Kelly Gallagher, a classroom library should have 2500 books in it. I have a loooong way to go and the prospect of buying all those books fills me with great joy!

I was able to purchase 20 books today for the bargain price of $16.50. And I can’t wait to go back tomorrow.

Fifty Shades of Grey – E L James

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E L James’s novel Fifty Shades of Grey has caused something of a stir in the literary world. First published as fanfiction called “Master of the Universe” under James’s pseudonym Snowqueen’s Icedragon (and, really, fanfiction writers need to give their pen names a lot more consideration before they choose them!), the original story was set in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight universe. Yeah – there’s your first problem.

For those of you  unfamiliar with fanfiction, writers (of varying degrees of proficiency) pen stories based on characters and situations created by other writers.  Wikipedia has a competent explanation of its origins here. Really good fanfic writers can make their stories seem almost like canon. And really good fanfic is out there; but so is really, really bad fanfic. Back in the day I read (and wrote) a lot of it, so I can actually say this with some degree of authority.

Anyway, E L James publishes this wicked long Twilight-based fic – which I suspect is long gone from places where it was originally posted…although fans of the series can still be found gushing about it online. Someone (many someones, probably) suggested that she change the names of the characters and publish it — which James did, in eBook format and print on demand in June 2011 using  The Writers’ Coffee Shop. Word of mouth (ahem) fanned the flames and the rights to the book were purchased by Vintage. Suddenly, everyone was talking about Fifty Shades of Grey and weighing in on its subject matter. I talked a little bit about that here.

If you are a fic reader, I suspect that you’ll find Fifty Shades of Grey relatively tame.  Seriously. I’ve never read Twilight fic, but I’ve read the first two and a half books (and could barely manage that) and I’ve seen the movies (I have a 14- year-old daughter, although her literary tastes are, thankfully, more advanced than Twilight). Despite the name changes, there’s enough of Bella/Edward in Anastasia/Christian that even a casual reader will recognize them. They are, at the very least, completely derivative characters: she the winsome, beautiful-but-doesn’t-know-it, feisty yet innocent virgin and he is the over-the-top rich, fantastically beautiful (and like Meyer’s Edward, the reader has to be reminded of his beauty virtually every time he appears) control freak with a sad/complicated — or, as Christian himself says “fifty shades of fucked up”– past.

Bella Ana does her roommate a favour by going to interview the reclusive Christian for the university paper. She  literally falls into his office — she’s kinda klutzy — and we are to believe that Christian is instantly smitten. He tries to stay away– unsuccessfully. But does he really like her, or does he just recognize in her a submissive personality?  Because one of Edward’s Christian’s dark secrets is that he likes to tie women up. And other stuff. Stuff that requires a contract and a safe word.

If you’ve read fanfic, you’ve read this scenario a bazillion times. If you’re going to pay for it, it wants to be good. So, is Fifty Shades of Grey good? For me, it was okay. The writing is okay. The sex is okay. The characters are okay. It didn’t particularly shock me, nor did it, you know, rev my engine.

Ana is prone to saying: Holy fuck! and Holy shit! and Holy crap! a whole lot. A whole lot! She also channels her inner goddess in what I suspect is her way of trying to decide whether or not the amazingly mind-blowing orgasms make up for the occasional spanking. Ana and Christian say, “Laters, baby” to each other.  It’s weird. Noticing this stuff is always a sign that I am not really invested in the story. Oh come on, who reads a book like this for the story anyway?

I suspect that lots of people will find Fifty Shades of Grey shocking. I suspect a lot of the soccer moms who were reading it were clutching their pearls as they perspired daintily.  But, truly, it’s pretty tame. If you want the really good stuff, you can read it online. For free.

Nevermore – Linda Newbery

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This is the kind of book I would have loved as a young reader. Plucky heroine, manor house in the English countryside, an intriguing mystery. The problem for me, of course, was that I solved the mystery early on – but that doesn’t mean the book wasn’t fun to read.

Twelve-year-old Tizzie and her mother, Morag,  have moved to Roven Mere, where Morag has taken a job as a cook. The huge estate is a constant source of intrigue, especially for Tizzie, who hopes that for once Morag will give up the wanderlust that has driven them from town-to-town most of her life.

Owned by Sir Rupert Evershall, but run by the crusty Finnigan, Roven Mere is always at the ready for the return of Sir Rupert and his young daughter, Greta.

“Is he very grand, Lord Rupert?” Tizzie asks Mrs. Crump, the housekeeper.

“Oh, I’ve never actually met him,” said Mrs. Crump. None of us have. Only Finnigan. We’re expecting him home in a week or two. Him and his family. Very exciting it’ll be, meeting them at last.”

Tizzie spends her early days exploring the house – which does seem to be in a constant state of readiness for Sir Rupert and Greta’s homecoming – making friends with Davy, Mrs. Crump’s grandson, and trying to manage her mother’s moodiness.

The book is intended for younger readers whom I am sure would be charmed by Tizzie, the novel’s mystery and Roven Mere itself. I certainly was.

Raising a life-long reader

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I have been a reader for as long as I can remember.  Back in February, I talked a little bit about the books of my childhood. There were always books in my house. My mom read to us all the time and I still remember the excitement of the Scholastic book order. Truthfully, I still love the Scholastic flyer. I could have frequent flyer points at our library; I would have chosen a book over new bell bottoms any day of the week – still would. (Okay, perhaps I would no longer purchase bell bottoms under any circumstances!)

There was no question when my daughter was born that she would be surrounded by books. On Christmas and  at birthdays she received books: Dr. Seuss and fairy tales, Winnie the Pooh and Junie B. Jones. We read to her until she could read to herself. And then we still read to her. We did the same with her younger brother. Then they read to each other and to kids who were younger.  I never denied them a book. Never would. They love to read – and they are excellent readers. No surprise: they are excellent writers, too.  My daughter once remarked that she didn’t understand people who didn’t like to read. I once took her and a school friend to Indigo and bought them both a book. It was the first book the friend had ever read. She was 12.

Sara Ralph over at the Nerdy Book Club has some wonderful suggestions for raising a reader.

A love of reading is a gift that keeps on giving.