Teaching Methods
The Literature Workshop
I think it is important for students to read like writers—to read in multiple "drafts"(19). I believe in a three-part reading of a text, such as what Robert Scholes suggests: reaction, interpretation, and criticism(20). Sheridan Blau, a professor of English and education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, explicates Scholes' ideas in The Literature Workshop. He sees the three-part reading as having three central questions: "What does it say?" "What does it mean?" and "What is its value? or So what?"(21) Accordingly, in this unit students will be looking at texts—starting small and working larger—multiple times and for multiple purposes. Eventually, they will write and discuss based upon their writing.
Blau's work has heavily influenced my teaching(22). My students read and write about their reading daily— often twice a day (in class and at home). My co-teacher and I apply Blau's workshop activities regularly, a process which, as Blau notes, "takes a step toward dismantling the top-down structure of the classroom," where "the students become valued experts because only they can know their own experience as readers engaged with the problems they encounter." In this sense, Blau's work is very much set up like the YNI seminar I participated in. All participants, including the teacher-facilitator(s), are co-learners in the workshop. There are a few strategies of Blau's that I have integrated, which I will outline in the successive paragraphs.
Reading Logs: Creating A Personal and Authentic Response
As mentioned earlier, much of what my students do revolves around independent selection and reading of texts appropriate to their current levels of reading readiness. Because I teach students who are at such varied grade level equivalents in reading, this approach has been best for engaging all readers. After each instance of independent reading (which is sustained, in class, for 20-30 minutes daily), students respond directly to the literature. The logs morph in format throughout the year, but often take a three-part approach, answering the questions noted above: 2) What does it (the text) say? 2) What does it mean? 3) Why does it matter?
In this unit, students will be responding to picture books and poems, though; so, one might wonder exactly how this will work. As a means of illustrating this example, I will refer to a page from Virginia Lee Burton's picture book The Little House.(23) This text is about an anthropomorphized house who is very happy living in the country. She (the house is feminine in her gender identity) becomes curious about the city but it is fairly removed from her daily life in the first third of the book. Then, the city begins to close in on the Little House. She becomes surrounded by markers of industry and is swallowed by the metropolis. I don't want to ruin the book's ending, but—suffice to say—Burton's depiction of urban life is not favorable.
I'd like to use this text in my unit, and think that the log audit format can guide them to the point of being able to make a similar response about a text. To begin—as I mentioned earlier in this paper—we'll start small: with a single image. The most striking image I noticed upon my re-reading of the book was located somewhere in the middle of the story. I'd set up the assignment (modeling my thinking for my students in the first-person) like this:
- What does it say? I see a picture of a city. The city seems endless: buildings tower over people. My eyes focus toward the top of the picture and then are pulled toward the middle, where a small house with broken windows and a boarded-up door is hidden. The city lights and night sky are in color. The house, most of the people, the train, and the cars are in charcoal.
- What does it mean? It looks like the tall city buildings are swallowing the house. The house is almost unnoticeable at first. Is the author trying to comment on urban life in the early 1940s? Beginning in the mid-1860s and lasting through the turn of the next century, Americans moved en masse to cities. People continued to build up metropolitan areas until just after World War II, when white flight caused city centers to deteriorate. The Little House seems to be expressing (via her very human facial expressions) her displeasure with the state of American domesticity—preferring the quiet calm of the country to the hustle and bustle of the city.
- Why does it matter? Burton's illustration matters because it expresses a certain attitude still held about cities (often reinforced by those who dwell in them). That idea is one that the city is a dark, dirty, unkind place to live. When I looked at this image, I focused so much on the house's dissatisfaction with her current situation. Could it be also that the house is commenting on the plight of the urban woman? After all, the author/illustrator clearly presents the Little House as female (by painting her pink—a feminine color). I am unsure what else to make of this image, but it seems like there is a lot going on in it.
(Blau and Peter Elbow alike refer to the unnecessary mandate many teachers give their students: "Do not use the word 'I' in your writing!" I like to model using the first-person singular because—as Blau rightly points out—students will have more success with writing if they can write as authentically as possible.)
The Literature Workshop also recommends that students complete periodic "audits" of their reading response logs, eventually forming rudimentary literary analysis essays. My colleagues and I have adapted this method beyond what Blau suggests to push our students farther in writing about specific literary devices or forms, and I plan to stick with this format of response in this unit.(24) The "audit" is divided into four sections: a description of a typical reading log entry (which Blau calls "A Brief Tour"); analysis of the length and quality of the logs as well as any observed changes over time; reflection on the act of writing the logs including an investigation of the perceived value of keeping such logs; and, finally, three or so exemplary log entries that best represent the student's overall content in his or her logs. The audit is, in many ways, a better-structured paper than students would write on their own and can turn into fuel for discussion or end-of-semester papers. In this unit, students will log their responses to picture books and poems after each reading (in logs kept separately from their independent reading logs). Then, they will complete one log audit at the end to examine the varied perspectives on urban life present in the content of the poems we explored as a class. As students read and respond in writing—daily—to poems, they will not only gain experience in practicing as interpreters; they will be able to see the diversity of urban landscape and human experience.
Shared Reading Experiences as a Means of Unlocking Meaning
Independent reading and response is only one means for interpretation. As noted earlier—Hirsch's recognition of the interpretative paradox (that one must break things apart in order to understand a whole object but that one must also understand the whole object in order to critically examine its parts) presents an interesting challenge. This type of critical, close reading—especially when done according to the method suggested in the successive paragraphs— also has the potential to do what is referred to as defamiliarization (making "the familiar strange and the strange familiar").(25) When working together, both students and teacher-facilitators alike can also learn a great deal. Democratic collaboration and exchange of ideas allows all members of the classroom community to work together to understand a challenging text. I will elaborate on this method and its activities further in the Classroom Activities section of this paper.
I realize I have drawn upon methods available to teachers from a fairly recent and accessible text, but I find them so compelling for replicating the kind of thinking promoted in my YNI seminar. In many ways, Sheridan Blau and Seminar Leader Paul Fry are suggesting the same thing: starting small and working toward larger understandings of texts.
Poetry Writing
This unit is also one where students will write their own poems about the city. Drawing upon Kenneth Koch's(26) work in teaching poetry to children, poetry reading and writing will be a part of our daily routine. Koch writes about his students: "Sometimes a child wrote a poem that showed a remarkable mastery of a particular poet's way of seeing and experiencing things." I see that as akin to interpretation. A poem is simply an interpretation of an idea, a moment, a person—the subject. Broadening students' horizons of what interpretation is, then, seems healthy. We will break apart the idea of interpretation in order to put it back together in whole-class discussions.
We will experiment in mimicking the form of each day's poem— from Richard Wright's haiku to Claude McKay's rhyming couplets in "Subway Wind." Each time, students will be expected to use urban images or signifiers of urban life in their poetry, all while working within the form. In total, students will write anywhere between five and seven poems that evoke a sense of place. Those poems can be worked into Reading Logs if peers exchange work and read their partners' writing.
Paideia Seminars
Just this year, my co-teachers and I adapted discussion in our classes to draw upon The Paideia Classroom.(27) The Paideia seminar is a structured method of inquiry and discussion that can, ultimately, force students to ask and answer questions that one would expect in higher-level high school or collegiate courses. It is not unlike the Socratic Seminar method, but is an easy one to teach to students, gradually releasing the responsibility for discussion preparedness and leadership onto the students. As teachers, my co-teachers and I simply monitor and facilitate these seminars. Student discussion is more uneven at the freshman level, but I believe if it is based on shorter texts and scaffolded up— as it will be in this unit— student discussion will also approach a more critical level. I will elaborate on this method more in the Classroom Activities section of this paper.
By combining this approach with the Literature Workshop and enhancing them with my new knowledge about hermeneutics, I believe I have designed a comprehensive unit that will engage students in college-ready reading and response to literature. Furthermore, I have provided students with both a forum and a format for exploring the unit's essential questions and themes.
Comments: