I’m reviewing curriculum projects for the teaching licensure English majors, offering as much advice as possible to diversify their approaches and texts without increasing their work load. The first five years of teaching will suck you up in an abyss of prepping assignments, dreaming up learning activities, buying supplies, and dealing with the persistent uncertainty that you can't teach it all.
The student has designed a learning unit of five weeks for a freshman high school course that intends to study youth experiences of war. I look over her reading list: Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Trent Reedy’s Words in the Dust, IraqiGirl’s Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness, and the collection Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries. I'm struck by the thoughtful way she rationalizes each choice and the attention she offers to the types of conversations and intersections these texts have with one another. I would be quite happy to see this curriculum emerge in Turner's ninth grade experience.
And this thought brought me pause. Turner may encounter these texts in high school, and it will be for the second (third, fourth . . .) time in his life. This child has the immense privilege of having been read to nearly every day of his life (his sister cannot claim this). He heard feminist and antiracist activist bell hooks for the first time in the womb and was assigned (by me, of course) summer reading lists that were inspired by local authors and classic literature (classic, as in, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Hobbit, and The Jungle). This type of exposure to words and books means he has the privilege of one-on-one conversation about their topics and the social issues they make more visible. This type of exposure to words and books makes him feel like a writer, not just a reader. This exposure also means he'll test better and write more persuasively about these texts when they are presented in the school setting; his reading will actually be a re-reading. He'll remember more details and have the privilege of time to think more deeply about the meaning of the story. This type of exposure to words and books has a ripple effect as well; Turner infect a love for reading into all his friends by sharing the plot of certain series and getting his friends hooked. I've lost more than one library book because Turner's somebody promised to be really responsible. He will never feel alone as long as he loves books this much, and through books he can come to know the world through more than one person's story. Cheers to teachers who keep trying to push at the margins of what we know, by bringing in new and exciting books.
Confession: Books are a catalyst for snuggling, which is an important component to me making time to read with the kids. Poor Mabel. Perhaps someday she and I will can traverse the literary landscapes Turner and I have already traveled together.
The student has designed a learning unit of five weeks for a freshman high school course that intends to study youth experiences of war. I look over her reading list: Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Trent Reedy’s Words in the Dust, IraqiGirl’s Diary of a Teenage Girl in Iraq, Zakes Mda’s Heart of Redness, and the collection Stolen Voices: Young People’s War Diaries. I'm struck by the thoughtful way she rationalizes each choice and the attention she offers to the types of conversations and intersections these texts have with one another. I would be quite happy to see this curriculum emerge in Turner's ninth grade experience.
And this thought brought me pause. Turner may encounter these texts in high school, and it will be for the second (third, fourth . . .) time in his life. This child has the immense privilege of having been read to nearly every day of his life (his sister cannot claim this). He heard feminist and antiracist activist bell hooks for the first time in the womb and was assigned (by me, of course) summer reading lists that were inspired by local authors and classic literature (classic, as in, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Hobbit, and The Jungle). This type of exposure to words and books means he has the privilege of one-on-one conversation about their topics and the social issues they make more visible. This type of exposure to words and books makes him feel like a writer, not just a reader. This exposure also means he'll test better and write more persuasively about these texts when they are presented in the school setting; his reading will actually be a re-reading. He'll remember more details and have the privilege of time to think more deeply about the meaning of the story. This type of exposure to words and books has a ripple effect as well; Turner infect a love for reading into all his friends by sharing the plot of certain series and getting his friends hooked. I've lost more than one library book because Turner's somebody promised to be really responsible. He will never feel alone as long as he loves books this much, and through books he can come to know the world through more than one person's story. Cheers to teachers who keep trying to push at the margins of what we know, by bringing in new and exciting books.
Confession: Books are a catalyst for snuggling, which is an important component to me making time to read with the kids. Poor Mabel. Perhaps someday she and I will can traverse the literary landscapes Turner and I have already traveled together.
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