Learning Letter

This has been a fascinating course. The pedagogical texts we read in class were interesting in their variety and subjects. I particularly enjoyed reading Readicide and I Read It, But I Don't Get It. Those kinds of texts will be very helpful to remind us of what it's like for students who we may not immediately understand. The complexity behind reading is something that I often take for granted, but I should remember that it's been a well-honed skill that I can pick up a text cold, speed-read through it, and get general ideas without really knowing many details.
The unit plan was an extremely difficult, but also a very rewarding project. The time we spent meticulously going over each section of the TPA lesson plan was crucial to aiding my knowledge about it, though there are still a few things I'm not quite sure of, and that even teachers don't seem to completely agree on. I still consider the TPA a terribly unnecessary workload, and its specifications can be very frustrating. But while I've done these lesson plans, the most significant thing I've learned form it is that the whole point is not necessarily to train us to fill out this form (though this is the main focus), but instead the purpose is really to force us to put in serious time thinking about each lesson we're going to present. It would be easy for any teacher to take only fifteen minutes preparing a lesson, consider the job done, and move on to the next thing, but we've all had this kind of teacher before, where lessons were not well thought-out or helpful. It takes careful consideration for a lesson to be refined to its most edifying form, even though after this there will almost always still be revisions to be made. Anything less than spending two hours to design a one-hour lesson would be laziness, especially for a new and inexperienced teacher.
Projects such as this have been so helpful, that I almost wish the entire class had consisted of it, or that other classes had provided this kind of assignment. So much of what we go over in many education-required classes does not really seem very applicable to teaching in real life.
The mini-lesson also was helpful, to be able to teach among peers and receive constructive criticism. I even enjoyed talking about the texts we read in class, and on the blog I thoroughly enjoyed being able to freely express how I felt about them, though sometimes I was maybe a little too free.
I'll seriously consider having my own class use blogs, because I think this is something many students will enjoy, because of the freedom it provides. To get them writing and then sharing their writing at home might even spur them on to writing more independently, away from the blog, which is really the ultimate goal, I think. No matter what happens in the classroom, I believe the ultimate success for any English teacher should be when a student starts willingly reading and writing away from the classroom.

Graphic Canon

The graphic canon does fascinate me, as it must any experienced reader who also has an eye for the aesthetics of art. It could be very helpful to maintain the attention of students who are overwhelmed by viewing a page of text, of students who love to draw and express their ideas in unconventional ways.
However, I would not see this as a silver bullet necessarily, because it still only will present itself as engaging to a certain niche of students. In fact, even for the students who might benefit well from it, I think would be tempted to look at the pictures alone and not bother looking at the text to see if they can get the gist of the story without bothering with it. This tendency, I think, is increased by the fact that the text is sometimes difficult to read, even for me. Since most students are not even being taught how to write in cursive anymore (though I wish that this were not the case, personally), I've seen that many will not even attempt to read anything written in it. This is problematic especially for "The Hill." Also, in the selections where the text is lifted in its original form and put into the text word-for-word, I think students will still struggle to grasp meaning when they're presented with words like "fortnight" in "Pride and Prejudice."
If it were in my power, I would keep the powerful illustrations while maintaining the text in regular line-form below. The text could still be effectively abridged, and it would be almost a compromise between conventional text and this comic-book style, though the setback to this solution is that it might appear to students more like children's books.
I appreciate the diversity of texts that are incorporated here, and I look forward to more variations on this method, as I fully believe that these will inspire many more to take the same approach with their own favorite texts. The creation of something like this by the student would be a perfect way to assess his or her comprehension of the book, however it would of course only be appropriate for students who are talented already at illustrating.
The Graphic Canon would be well-loved by strong readers, and perhaps preferred by weaker-readers, and would be an effective way to share some knowledge of classical literature with the students without having them read the works in full, though no teacher should expect a very deep understanding of the stories from these alone. What it may aid in is the understanding of allusions in other books, and if the situation calls for it, this would be ideal.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Before actually beginning the book, I have to admit that it was one book I was not particularly looking forward to. Having been among Spokane English teachers for some time now, I've heard a fair bit about Sherman Alexie, mainly about how wonderful and brilliant they consider his writings. In my typical cynicism, I assumed that the lavish praise was academic hype for the home-town boy, being that Alexie is seen by many as representing the modern Spokane area, similar to the way Crosby represented old Spokane.
So I'm grateful that I was compelled to read the book for class. It may have been something I would have worked my way around to eventually, out of a desire to find texts that are relevant to students in this area, but it would certainly have taken a backseat to the stack of books in my room that I'm slowly grinding through.
Based on the political tendencies of those who advocated so strongly for the book, I assumed that it would take the tone of popular social justice warriors, of those who suggest giving rioters room to destroy, or who refuse to listen to any voice issuing from a different skin-color than their own. I was wonderfully amazed that this was not the case at all. Alexie speaks with the honesty of life experience that would likely have him derogatorily labeled an Uncle Tom by those political actors.
I know a little bit about the Res. My dad's first teaching job was on a reservation in Inchelium, and we visited back there a few years ago. A passing visitor like myself might consider it quaint. But Alexie's description of the community is sadly spot-on.
And by no means does Alexie spare the world outside of the reservation. The balance he strikes is admirably honest. His humor about all those situations allowed me to put down my guard and enjoy the book without analyzing its policy agenda (having found there isn't any).
The development of Junior's character is thoroughly interesting and enjoyable as he retrospectively simultaneously jokes and grieves about his own misfortunes. The characters he interacts with are believable without coming close to being caricatures of their "kinds." This book demonstrates well what it looks like to be color-aware, and yet to intentionally treat all fellow-beings with an attitude of colorblindness.
I would like to possibly use this book in the classroom, but I intend on reading at least one of Alexie's more autobiographical works to see if it might be just as suitable. While the events of his real life may not be so gripping, I am a strong believer that there is a special power in true stories that isn't in fiction. There is a different kind of power in fiction, but I'm not sure if Alexie's material is as well suited to it.
Also, if I ever do use the book in a classroom, I'll certainly take care not to use the part about masturbation. Some will call me a puritan, but my rationale in these matters is not that I think it will mentally traumatize students, but that a degree of professionalism should be maintained and practiced, as something that students will have to take into the real working world. If we insist that "all teachers teach reading," then it should be an equally high, if not far higher, expectation that all teachers teach decorum and professionalism. Some subjects should be taboo, and subjects approaching that line should at least not be treated with flippancy, as Alexie does with almost everything in Diary. This is mere decency to the students. Alexie may be able to broach the subject without expressing personal shame, but it is utterly selfish and tyrannical (as well as unrealistic) for a teacher to insist that all students respond the same way.

Night by Elie Wiesel

The first thing I will say for this book is how relieved I was to read Wiesel's Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech at the end. The book itself paints such a bleak and barren picture, not only of the concentration camps, but of life as a whole, that I feared the worst for the author even after having been rescued, even after having written about those horrors. While cringing from the hideous events and sympathizing with the man whose boyhood was suddenly ripped away from him, I still could not help engaging the text with what I know many others would consider "victim-blaming." I was angry with the author, if I am brutally honest about it. First angry, of course, with the inhumanity of the situation, but I've spent a lot of time in my life already being angry with the Nazis, and, even with the specificity that Wiesel brings, that hatred has settled into a steady foundation, rather than burning like a fire. What I have not been often exposed to is Wiesel himself, as he portrays himself in the book. I've seen the situation primarily through the eyes of Anne Frank (of course) and Corrie ten Boom. Especially with Corrie ten Boom, a lot of the same events were experienced, yet her book, The Hiding Place, never dwells for long on the horrific darkness that pervades Night. Instead, she never fails to bring the reader back into the light of God's Goodness. While I sympathized wholly with the boy in Night, I found myself unable to do so with with the adult author, whose tone was still that of a captive to Auschwitz. Throughout the book this disturbed me, to think that the author may have gone to his death in uncompromising rage for the God he had rejected, the God who had allowed such things to happen. So I was mercifully relieved that this edition included the speech from 1986, in which the softer and meeker tone reveals the beautiful and humble perspective that Wiesel attained in later years.

The second thing I will expound upon is my dislike for prefaces and forewords that contain significant parts of the story in them. With a fictional story, I'd call them plot-spoilers, but it does seem flippant for me to treat those events as such. But it would have been better in hindsight if I had skipped those parts, as I normally do. I convinced myself to read them this time because they were short enough that I didn't mind. They did have undeniable value, but most of it was not ideal for reading prior to the book itself. The exception to this statement is the very end of the foreword by Mauriac, whose response to Wiesel's dark perspective was a perfect model of Christlike love. My anger at Wiesel's seemingly godless and hopeless attitude was certainly tempered by the conviction that Mauriac's response should have consistently been mine as well, if I had been a better man. There is a time when there have been quite enough words, and the only appropriate response is quiet.

While I do not mind being overt, here at the university, that Mauriac's religious propensities are my own as well, I know full well that the expression of such in a public classroom could be highly problematic. If I were to assign Night in a high-school classroom, I would condense the foreword, purging it of its "plot-spoilers," and make it available to the students, because that image of non-preaching religion is valuable to the structure of the story. I would also have the students read Wiesel's acceptance speech before reading the book itself to alleviate the tension that consumed me when I read it believing that the graceless attitude of the author towards God and the world was absolute. I would not impose such a heavy book at all on any student younger than a senior. This book is very mature, in a truer sense of the word than is commonly used today, that is, not because of violence or sex, but because of raw and brutal passion. A comparison of the book with The Hiding Place could be very enlightening, however I would hesitate to add text after text of holocaust life-stories on top of the inevitable Diary of Anne Frank. It would be better, if possible, to encourage this as an independent reading book.