Ms. Mac’s Reflections

The readings for this week, from both the Appleman and Gibson texts, make me wonder. In Chapters 4 and 5 (Critical Encounters), Appleman explains her views on teaching Marxist and Feminism to adolescent students. Gibson (Teaching Shakespeare) discusses how to make Shakespeare active. These are both topics that I have been battling with lately. My classroom is overcrowded and sometimes having students moving around a lot is overwhelming. I think that with more experience under my belt, I may be able to find comfort in seeing my students really move around and act out Shakespeare. This year, however, it seems like a daunting experience. For those of you who have seeming unmotivated students, do you have any advice for making Shakespeare active in a real classroom?

As far as critical theory goes, I have been wondering if my students may find a way to make critical theory self-centered. Maybe I am being too cynical, but I can imagine my students making a discussion about class or gender about themselves and their worlds. How does one submerge a student in a text and make them stay there? Especially after engaging them with personal connections. How do you separate the reader from the text for the sake of critical theory? Or do you?

The reading from But Will It Work, brought up a serious issue. It may not be serious in the grand scheme of academics, but it is a serious issue in my world. Alsup and Bush paint a picture that show the benefits of both Young Adult Literature and Classic Literature. I think however, in the real world there are so many who don’t see the potential in YA Literature. I teach reluctant readers, many of whom have never left the environments that they were raised in. While the themes of classical texts are themes that they can relate to, often they don’t have the motivation to engage with the text enough to understand those themes. I would love to teach novels that my students could better relate to, but I have been met with opposition, because the texts that I think would intrigue my students do not appear “academic” to the powers that be. I think that my students would read more if they were reading about characters and places that they could relate to. There is also the reality that the classics must be read. Right?

Alsup and Bush brought up a good idea when they recommended teaching a YA novel alongside a classic novel. I may try this next year, but I wonder how to motivate students to read not only one, but two novels per unit. I also wonder if teaching YA literature to my students would really motivate them to read more? Has anyone brought YA novels into the classroom? How did it work?

When I started teaching, my biggest fear was “Do I know enough?” I spent the summer brushing up on my content knowledge. At the New Teacher Orientation that my county offers, they brought up the notion of classroom management. While drowning in grammar, literary terms, and other Language Arts staples I hadn’t put much thought into classroom management. I went straight to Barnes & Nobles and read as much as I could on the subject. Then the school year began. On the first day of school, I could see that my students would be giving me a run for my money. At the end of the day all I could do was sit quietly and shake my head.

Luckily, I have a very supportive base at my school and they are constantly giving me advice and encouragement. Even with all of the help and books, the semester was rough, I was so glad to see December come. I spent my break trying to prepare myself to be a better classroom manager. I am approaching the middle of my second semester and I am doing better this semester. My kids are still trying me, but I am staying firm. I have discovered that with practice and experience, my classroom management skills will improve and hopefully one day they will be second nature. As for now, I am wearily navigating the course. I am trying to understand how I can make my kids sit still and learn, how to stop the excessive joking and playing, and how to make them respect me and classroom.

For starters, I am a huge fan of the Cambridge Schol Shakespeare series. While I am teaching Romeo and Juliet, I keep their edition handy. I am a fan because of the interesting amounts of innovative and creative ideas. I have no negative comments about this week’s readings. I am just interested in taking some of these ideas into my classroom.

I definitely agree with Gibson and his notion that as a Shakespeare teacher it is important decide what is important for your students to know. I have seen my coworkers try and cram all things Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet into their units, but I think that students can learn and enjoy Shakespeare much better if it is given to them in manageable chunks. I decided at the beginning of my unit what literary terms we were going to focus on and I refuse to add to my list. Paring down what I wanted to teach was difficult because of course I want to tell my kids everything I know. I had to cut things from my unit because more important than trying to teach rhetoric to 9^th graders is helping them to get a glimpse at the beauty of Shakespeare. They have two more plays that they will study while in high school and the knowledge that they get then should build nicely on the foundation that they are building now.

Ok… Before you read this entry, you should be reminded that it is coming from a disenchanted first-year teacher who works for a Title 1 school in an urban community. As I read the Intro and first two chapters of Appleman’s text Critical Encounters in High School English, I was sitting there thinking “These are wonderful ideas that would never work in my classroom.” Prior to August 2007, I had this very lofty idea of what teaching would be like. I went into my classroom and I realized that those ideas may not work in my room. I do not doubt my students intelligence, but I am well aware of their lack of motivation and focus. While I am sure that there are classrooms where teaching literary theory could be more than a notion, I do not believe that it will be anything more in mine. My students are no where near ready for the EOCT and I am spending most of time just trying to brush up their reading comprehension and basic grammar skills. I have been given a curriculum guide that has day to day plans; plans that contain no literary theory.

I think that Appleman does a decent job at making something as complicated as bringing literary theory into the secondary classroom seem simple, but at this point with the set of students I have, I have no time for literary theory. If I gave my students an essay on lit. theory, no matter how approachable it seemed, they would look at me like I was crazy. I hate to sound jaded but this seems to just another idea that I will learn and put into my mental rolodex but will never use while I am in my current school. The students just aren’t ready for this. Appleman tries to make looking for symbols and themes seem trivial, but that is what students are expected to know in this high-stakes testing world. So what do I give up? Themes, symbols, and passing test scores or literary theory?

The Alsup and Bush section on Testing was interesting… I suppose. Since this is my fist year in the classroom, I can reflect on the students that I have worked with this year. My ninth graders will be taking the Georgia End of Course Test in two months. My students have been victims of high-stakes test for most of their educational career and what I have noticed is that they are so used to cramming for standardized tests and immediately forgetting what they were tested on. I don’t believe that standardized tests really test what students know but what students know at that moment. Then the sad thing is that the results of the tests convince us that these students are where they are supposed to be academically when in reality they are just falling further and further behind.

Again I feel like the Alsup and Bush text is a bit utopian foe a book that prides itself on sharing ideas that will work in the real classroom. I agree with the teacher who responded to the narrative. I wonder what kind of instruction is being forfeited in any classroom where passing a standardized test is the main focus. I am curios as to how long we will let a report written a quarter of a century ago run our classrooms. When will educators, politicians, and parents call for innovative changes that reduce the amount of high-stakes test that students must cram for?     

            The reading for this week was very helpful. I am getting ready to start teaching Romeo and Juliet in a week or so and my kids are terrified. On one hand, Romeo and Juliet is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays and I want them to love it as much as I do, but on the other hand, when I was a ninth grader I was just as terrified about my first time reading Shakespeare. I held on to a fear of Shakespeare well into my college years and I think that it is due to the way that it was presented to me. The Gibson text was refreshing to me. It helped me to see what Shakespeare instruction can be. While I teach in a setting where a lot of movement may not be feasible (I have 31 desks and 33 students in one class), I do think that I can help my students take ownership of Shakespeare and to see why it is important and enjoyable to read his works.

Gibson says that teachers should help “students to ask their own questions, to create and justify their own meanings, rather than having to accept only the questions and interpretations of others” (Gibson 9). This struck a cord with me because in my ideal classroom, I could do this with ease, but realistically my students come from a read-and-answer-the-questions background where there is always a right or wrong answer.  I would love to learn how to ask my students the right questions that will help them to be more intrinsically motivated to understand and own Shakespeare.