Category Archives: Classroom Library

Reel Reading: The Emperor of all Maladies

AP English, Books, Readers Workshop February 6, 2014 Leave a comment

ReelReading2I read the first part of the prologue to my classes and asked them to respond in their writer’s notebooks. We’r writing the introductions to our feature articles. I hoped that students would understand that the most engaging articles have elements of story. The story of Carla at the beginning of The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddartha Mukhergee grabs with an emotional pull. Many students wrote poignant descriptive responses. I love it when that happens.

A documentary with the same title as the book is in the works. It’s coming to PBS in the spring of 2015. Check out the website and the great trailer here:  CANCER: The Emperor of ALL Maladies.

Text Study: All the Pretty Horses

AP English, Books January 27, 2014 Leave a comment

I have a hard time with Cormac McCarthy books. I tried to read Blood Meridan, and I made it through about 120 pages before I couldn’t stick with it any longer. I had never tried another one until last week when I picked up All the Pretty Horses. I haven’t read very far yet, but I get it now. I get why so many people love this author.

A passage I will read with my students is this one:

The house was build in eighteen seventy-two. Seventy-seven years later his grandfather was still the first man to die in it. What others had lain in state in the that hallway had been carried there on a gate or wrapped in a wagonsheet or delivered crated up in a raw pineboard box with a teamster standing at the door with a bill of lading. The ones that came at all.  For the most part they were dead by rumor. A yellowed scrap of newsprint. A letter. A telegram. The original ranch was twenty-three hundred acres out of the old Meusebach survey of the Fisher-Miller grant, the original house a one room hovel of sticks and wattle, were driven through what was still Bexar County and across the north end of the ranch and on to Fort Sumner and Denver. Five years later his great-grandfather sent six hundred steers over that same trail and with the money he built the house and by then the ranch was already eighteen thousand acres. In eighteen eighty-three they ran the first barbed wire. By eighty-six the buffalo were gone. That same winter a bad die-up. In eighty-nine Fort Concho was disbanded.

His grandfather was the oldest of eight boys and the only one to live past the age of twenty-five. They were drowned, shot, kicked by horses. They perished in fires. They seemed to fear only dying in bed. The last two were killed in Puerto Rico in eighteen ninety-eight and in that year he married and brought his bride home to the ranch and he must have walked out and stood looking at his holdings and reflected long upon the ways of God and the laws of primogeniture. Twelve years later when his wife was carried off in the influenza epidemic they still had no children. A year later he married his dead wife’s older sister and a year after this the boy’s mother was born and that was all the borning that there was. The Grady name was buried with that old man the day the norther blew the lawnchairs over the dead cemetery grass. The boy’s name was Cole. John Grady Cole.

 

I think of my grandparents’ farm when I read it. If I knew the right dates I could move through the years, portraying lived and significant events just as poignantly –okay, maybe not just as, but I could try.

I know my grandpa was born in the farmhouse in 1899. He farmed the land after his father did. My great-grandfather grew up there from the time he was about two when he was left by his father who emigrated from Scotland. That foster family owned it first. My uncle worked the farm with Grandpa and then took over at grandpa’s passing. My mother grew up there– on the foothills of Ben Lomond Mountain in Pleasant View, UT. It was my favorite place to visit. An adventure for this city girl from Texas.

I bet my students could write about the history of a place. Might be kind of cool.

Reel Reading: Wonder is Still Wonderful

Book Trailers, Readers Workshop January 23, 2014 Leave a comment

ReelReading2My students have been reading pretty hefty titles lately. Books like Wonder by R.J. Polacio might do their souls a bit of good. I think they deserve something special. I’ll give them a glimpse into August Pullman’s story with this, and then I’ll show them the comments, mostly by students much younger than mine. They are heartwarming.

 

Reel Reading for Real Readers: Winger

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Book Trailers, Books, Readers Workshop January 23, 2014 Leave a comment

ReelReading2Winger by Andrew Smith is another book I kept hearing about. (I’m a little jealous that so many of my teacher friends seem to be way ahead of me in their TBR piles.) I knew I needed to keep this one — like I did Eleanor and Park— and read it before I let my students get their hands on it.

I did not have my own copy, but at #ALAN13 in Boston, after I had the pleasant task of helping Donalyn Miller with her jacket, she gave me a copy from her book stacks. She gave me a copy! 

Surprisingly, I found no book trailers promoting it. However, I did find and read an interesting piece in The New Yorker called “The Awkward Art of Book Trailers,” which made me rethink the value of them at all. Rachel Arons says, quoting Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom:  “Franzen explains—in a tone that is polite but characteristically aggrieved—his “profound discomfort” with having to use moving images to promote the printed word. “To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place,” he says. “You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can’t really multitask reading a book … To me, the world of books is the quiet alternative—an ever more desperately needed alternative.”

Hmmm. I might agree with that.

So instead of a trailer today, let’s read a book review. I love this one at TLT: Teen Librarian’s Toolbox, and I’m thinking that a next step in my students’ literary journey is to write their own “professional” reviews. This one will make a good mentor text.

Any thoughts on book trailers? good idea or not?

G/T Teens and Reading — Persuading Awesome

AP English, Books, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop January 20, 2014 Comments: 4

Guest Post by Tess Mueggenborg

This transition has not been easy for me.  It’s taken me several years to get comfortable with the idea of giving students more choice – even free choice – in what they read. Part of it is that I’m a bit of a ‘control freak.’  Part of it is that, as I freely admit, I’m a classical canon sort of gal – and I want to share my passion for classical literature.  But I know that my job is to help my students, not to spread my own personal gospel of literature.  So I’m changing – and the results have been surprisingly, rewardingly positive.

I started this transition last fall, allowing my GT sophomores to choose their books (from a long list … though I also allowed them to bring in other books and convince me that their book was worth reading), and giving them time every week to blog about their reading.  I’ll admit: not every student finished their book.  But not a single student complained – not once – that they didn’t like their book or that I was ‘making’ them read something boring.  So that was a nice change of pace.  And, truly, most students DID read.  And they ALL blogged.  Even if they didn’t read, they still wrote.  And every English teacher knows that just getting them to start writing can be a challenge – even with GT students.

So here are a few excerpts from their blogs, in response to this prompt: ‘Persuade me, Professor Mueggenborg, whether or not I should read your novel.’  Some are funny, some are poignant, some obviously leave much to be desired.  I have not edited the responses, so all mistakes are the students’ own.  It’s a work in progress.

Dillon read Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out by Mo Yan

If you have not yet had the absolute pleasure of reading this book you should stop what you are doing right now and go get a copy of it; if you have had that pleasure you should do it anyways. I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I will tell you something so irresistible that you will have to read this novel.There is a dance routine with an ox and ghost children. I refuse to tell you the page it is on so that you must read until you find it. At this point if you haven’t rushed to a library of bookstore to at least find that in the book there is nothing more I can say except that this work of art shows genius in contemporary literature the likes of which I have never witnessed and I am truly grateful for having gotten the opportunity to experience it.

 

Freddie read Transatlantic by Colum McCann

If anyone else is considering reading this book, I strongly recommend it. I loved this book from start to end. I advise, however, not to get discouraged if the first three chapters seem completely incoherent (which they pretty much are). The imagery and similes such as “A chandelier of snot from his nose. The blood backing off his body, his fingers, his brain.” (pg. 31) help the reader imagine what the protagonist was seeing and feeling.

 

Janice read Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton

I absolutely suggest that anyone and everyone should read this book. The book is insightful, interesting, emotional, and thought-provoking. Throughout the entire time I was reading it, I was somehow able to connect to Chanda. Stratton did an amazing job. Honestly, I never thought I would be able to connect so deeply with a girl that has experienced practically the worst of the worst. Her parents both die, her sister died, she was raped, her best friend is a prostitute with AIDS, her neighbors all gossip about one another, and she was forced to leave school in order to make money for her family. All of these things are horrible and I’ve never experienced anything close to the troubles she goes through, yet I can still feel close and bonded with Chanda.

 

Andrea read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I have seriously been waiting for this question for as long as I have had this novel. YES. 100% yes! I enjoyed it so much and you will too! Although, if you don’t want to get attached to characters, do not read this novel. If you don’t want to get your heart ripped out of you because of said characters, do not read this novel. If you don’t enjoy reading about death and medical things, do not read this novel. But please, what’s the fun in reading a book if none of those things happen?   

 

Alissa read The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

The best part I love about this novel is that it’s actually reality like these things happen in real life, it’s not just make believe. The things that happen in this novel happen to most people in the world and can relate to almost anyone. There are some very important lessons in this novel that led me to caring about my parents and my culture more.

 

Emilio read Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

I believe you should read this novel if you are interested in looking up a bunch of Spanish words or phrases you may not know. This is also a great book for those people who like to try and cook random dishes just try them. You have to be pretty interested in learning about Mexican dishes, even I didn’t know about some.

 

Ellen read In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

I really enjoyed this book. I usually don’t say things like that (especially about a book) because I just don’t really like reading. Like if I were to finish a book, I would always end up telling myself, “what a waste of time”. But this time, it was actually different. When I finished reading this book, I loved it!  It helped me as a woman feel better about myself and it also shows us that if we were to have hope, things will get better in life.

 

Andrew read Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Before reading this book, please consider you mental state. If you have no hallucinations, sleep soundly through the night, and plan to keep yourself that way, do NOT read this book. You will likely lose your mind to the ravenous punctuation devouring demons that reside deep in these pages. They are evil creatures that will eat your quotation marks. Seriously. However, if you are already mad, are not fond of your sanity, or feel that you need something a bit different, it should be relatively safe to read this. I wouldn’t recommend it but it could be done. While this book does have an interesting approach to character development, a somewhat interesting plot, and a cool name, all of that, when calculating how much of your time this is worth, equates to the value of a dead gnat. For one reason. QUOTATION MARKS. I know, I know, I have already complained about this, but it really is that big of a deal to me. Every new paragraph I find myself rereading and checking to make sure that I am on dialogue (or not). Quotation marks serve a legitimate purpose in literature. They show dialogue, sarcasm, and well, as the name implies, quotes. They are NOT for decoration.

 

Matthew read And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

I never read and I personally can’t stand reading. The first time I picked up this book was because I finished all my work in one class and nothing else to do so I started it and from the very first paragraph I read I was hooked. This story broke my heart and then sewed it back together and gave it warmth and then did it all over again. The stories in this book are so heartfelt and they teach so much about the people and lifestyles of other cultures. I would tell anybody to read this book. In a way this book changed the way I felt about everything. It was crazy to think about what some families have to go through. The way that families in America value one another is ridiculous compared to those of the lower classes. I love how the ones that are in poverty and living in lower standards have very good family values. The way that they love and cherish and would do anything for each other is amazing. This book grabbed a hold of someone that cant stand reading and got him to read it and enjoy it which makes that book amazing because otherwise i wouldn’t have read it.

That last selection, from Matthew, is the one that sealed the deal for me on this whole “give them choice” concept.  Awesome.

photo credit Even Hahn

 

“Professor” Tess Mueggenborg teaches English (and anything else with which her students need help) at RL Turner High School.  Her academic passions lie in comparative language and literature.  The Professor lives in Dallas with her husband, Jeff. Tess’ on Twitter @profmueggenborg

Student Choice in AP English–It’s Working

Amy Rasmussen, AP English, Books, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop January 18, 2014 Comments: 3

Our Compass Shifts 2-1My friend Matt is leaving teaching. I’ll miss him. I started teaching a year before he did, and we’ve kind of grown up as educators together. But with him leaving, I’m thinking–maybe I can get his AP Literature classes. That idea’s sinking in, and we aren’t even done with January.

AP Language has been my sweet spot for a lot of years now, and I don’t want to give it up–I’m a little possessive, but I would love a split with Lang and Lit.

I know, I might be crazy. The prep. The workload. The grading.

Although I have heard of other teachers doing it– just not at my school. We have 6 of AP English teachers, but we all have a split with some other English prep. (Right now I have my own vertical alignment with PreAP English I and II.)

Here’s the thing:  I’ve done readers/writers workshop in AP Language for several years now, and the format fosters confident readers, accomplished writers, AND higher exam scores. Mine jumped 12% the first year I trusted a whole move to workshop and student choice. I know readers/writers workshop will work with AP Lit. I know it.

So, I am planting seeds.

Today I spent hours compiling lists of award-winning books. I should have been planning a presentation I’m doing Monday or grading timed writing essays from Wednesday or tidying my classroom. I couldn’t seem to help myself once I got reading these lists of compelling titles. These are the complex and richly written books I want weighing down my classroom shelves and the minds of my advanced students. I already have a lot. (I made a list of those, too.) I shop thrift stores and bargain bins, and as long as I know the titles I’m looking for, I often strike gold. Gold Pulitzer stickers anyway. I found Tinkers by Paul Harding not too long ago.

Every day my students read during the first 10 minutes of class. I quickly take attendance and then try to talk quietly to a few kids each day about their reading. I use passages from books for mini-lessons– grammar and analysis, and I model what a reader’s life looks like. Not many of my colleagues do this.

I sat in a department meeting with Matt and others this week. We listened to advice on lessons that would get our students prepared for their end-of-course exams, and the topic of independent reading came up. Matt shrugged, defeated, and said, talking about his AP seniors and his on-level sophomores: “My students won’t read. They just won’t.”  Without question, I know why.

He isn’t doing workshop.

But Tess is. She’s doing it with her G/T sophomores and surprising herself with the results. Her guest post will run on Monday.

We have to get students reading. We want to get them reading, don’t we? If we want, not just to develop critical readers so they can pass a test, but if we really want to instill empathy and compassion and knowledge into kids’ heads and hearts, we have to get them reading. Allowing them free choice, drowning them in book choices, and giving them time–time to read, well, that’s what’s making mine into READERS.

Reel Reading for Real Readers: Eleanor and Park

Amy Rasmussen, Book Trailers, Books, Readers Workshop January 16, 2014 Leave a comment

20130207-190708I hope I get to read Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell before this post runs; I am writing it in advance.

Every time I hear this title another person chimes in with commentary on how much they love this book. Thankfully, I finally got a copy at #ALAN13, and it’s steadily rising to the top of my TBR pile. Sometimes I let students read books like this first, but from what I’ve heard, this will be a popular hit with my kids. I was scared I might never get a chance to read it .

Yes, sometimes I am selfish and read books first.

Here’s another way to introduce students to books:  introduce them to blogs about books. I like this one jenna {does} books. She’s got a Top Ten Tuesdays: My Favorite Quotes from Eleanor and Park.

Workshopping Yourself

Books, Guest Post, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Shana Karnes, Writers Workshop January 12, 2014 Comments: 3

ocsIf I ever write a book about teaching, I will write about the importance of being yourself in your classroom.  For some reason, I used to believe that it was not appropriate to be the real me as a teacher–maybe it was because I was fresh out of college, inspired by professors’ styles that were so very different from my own, or maybe it was because I was so young when I began–just 20 years old–that I felt I should try to put some distance between myself and my students.

Over the years, I’ve dropped the stern, strict, distant persona I tried initially to teach behind…and have just been myself.  I embrace my nerdiness, I’m loud all the time, I never stop smiling, and I don’t try to hide my enthusiasm for what I love (coffee, cats, my husband).  I’ve subscribed to the philosophy that I’m not just modeling reading strategies or writing processes for my students–I’m modeling a life philosophy too, of being oneself.  I have, essentially, workshopped myself…revising, paring down, adding in, and determining what to let alone in order to become the best possible version of Teacher Me.

Still, what I’m beginning to realize is that no matter what lesson plans I write down, what stories I choose to tell from my anecdotal arsenal, or even what clothes I put on in the morning, I’ll never have full control of how my students see me.  We never perceive ourselves the way our students perceive us…we never can.  I’m sure if I perused one of my old literary theory textbooks I could find a name for this phenomenon…but for now, we’ll just say that our students see right through us.  Right through the masks we wear when we’re having a bad day, through the halfhearted energy we try to muster if we’re ill, or through the moment’s hesitation it takes us to consider a diplomatic response to a particularly strange question or comment.  They see right through our sometimes-staged actions to our true beliefs, our values, and our feelings.  They see the real us, which is why I shake my head now at what a fake they must have thought I was during my first year of teaching.

Thanks to the fact that my students (current and former) write me lots of notes, I’ve gotten to do a little bit of research on exactly what they see.

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One thing that they all know is that I spend a lot of time reading and writing.  One student left me a note saying that she hoped I had a good weekend reading since I don’t own a TV.  Another student wrote in an exam response that he was shocked to see me at the gym on a Saturday night, “getting swole,” since he assumed teaching was my “entire life.”  Another student wrote that sometimes when he read books, the voice in his head was “a letdown” because it wasn’t as excited as mine when I read a passage for booktalks.

One of my most excitable learners, a foreign exchange student from Brazil, gave me a goodbye note on her last day of class.  It was a simple list of things she was thankful for, and its straightforwardness couldn’t have been more tearjerking.  She said “thank you” for…

  • being crazy for books
  • being patient about my questions
  • lending me books
  • being happy every day
  • accepting me with open arms
  • being honest
  • saying the things you say
  • being my teacher

There is nothing on that list, or in any of those notes, about becoming a better reader or writer–nothing there about increasing knowledge of domain-specific vocabulary, or learning how to make a strong claim and support it with evidence, or analyzing the development of a theme throughout an extended work.  And yet…that list, and those notes, made me feel like an amazing teacher.

The things our students take away from our classes don’t always have to do with what we write in our lesson plans. Sometimes they do, yes–but so often, the things we teach are so far outside of our content standards that we don’t even know how to name them…when we talk about modeling, we can’t forget that we are also ROLE models…thinking models, reading models, relationship models, fitness models, etc.  Our students absorb the lessons of these models incredibly quickly.  We are influential in ways that we may never intend to be.

In a recent letter from a former student, the following words brought tears to my eyes: “I really do appreciate your kind words and wise ones. If it’s not evident already, your one year in my life has taken the effect of many.”

I don’t know what exactly the effect I have had on that student is, or will be (which is a little bit terrifying, to be honest).  What I do know is that I’m thankful for the chance to affect kids every day in my classroom, and I think the workshop model is an excellent way to do that.  There are so many opportunities for meaningful dialogue in this structure, both between student and teacher and in small or large groups of learners.  As workshop participants, students AND teachers get to be themselves, and get to discover more about themselves (and each other) through talk about reading and writing.  There’s no pressure to conform–the whole POINT is to be yourself and do your own thing, and that right there is more than enough to motivate me to do the outside work the workshop requires.  So, I’ll wrap up this post–and get to the two-foot stack of grading next to me–by leaving you with the wise words of the always-original Oscar Wilde:

by

Reel Reading for Real Readers: The Black Count

Amy Rasmussen, Book Trailers, Books, Readers Workshop January 9, 2014 1 Comment

ReelReading2My personal reading goal for 2014 is to read more award winning books. The first for the year is The Black Count  by Tom Reiss; it’s the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer for biography.

I cannot even tell you why I was drawn to this book, other than while wandering the aisles and staring at the stacks of books at Costco, I saw the gold prize emblem on the cover. My mother had just died, and I’d rushed off to Utah to plan and participate at her funeral. I needed a book to read or I’d go mad.

I remembered reading The Three Musketeers as a young teen and falling head-over-heels for all four of Dumas’ dashing men. I’d later read The Count of Monte Cristo, which I loved, and once I read the cover of The Black Count, I knew I could escape into the story of Dumas’ dashing and daring father.

Honestly, I do not know if I can get any students interested in reading this book. I doubt many have much interest in French history, although several probably know Dumas’ famous stories. I want to try though. The writing is not just informative, but at times it is moving. Reiss helps us feel the love that the novelist Dumas has for his long-forgotten (but never by him) father.

I only found one book trailer, and it was kind of weak. I’d rather introduce this insightful book to my students through the author’s own words.

Author’s essay from Amazon:

I’ve always loved exploring history. It’s like an uncharted hemisphere, and when you look at it closely, it has a tendency to change everything about your own time. I’m also drawn to outsiders, people who have swum against the tide. I often feel like a kind of detective hired to go find people who have been lost to history, and discover why they were lost. Whodunnit?

In this case, I found solid evidence that, of all people, Napoleon did it: he buried the memory of this great man – Gen. Alexandre Dumas, the son of a black slave who led more than 50,000 men at the height of the French Revolution and then stood up to the megalomaniacal Corsican in the deserts of Egypt. (The “famous” Alexandre Dumas is the general’s son – the author of The Three Musketeers.) Letters and eyewitness accounts show that Napoleon came to hate Dumas not only for his stubborn defense of principle but for his swagger and stature – over six feet tall and handsome as a matinee idol – and for the fact that he was a black man idolized by the white French army. (I found that Napoleon’s destruction of Dumas coincided with his destruction of one of the greatest accomplishments of the French Revolution – racial equality – a legacy he also did his best to bury.)

I first came across Gen. Dumas’s life in the memoir of his son Alexandre, the novelist. And what a life! Alex Dumas, as he preferred to be known, was born in Saint Domingue, later Haiti, the son of a black slave and a good-for-nothing French aristocrat who came to the islands to make a quick killing and instead barely survived. In fact, to get back to France in order to claim an inheritance, he actually “pawned” his black son into slavery, but then he bought him out, brought him to Paris, and enrolled him in the royal fencing academy, and then the story begins to get interesting.

What really stuck with me from reading the memoir was the love that shows through from the son, the writer, for his father, the soldier. I could never forget the novelist describing the day his father died. His mother met him on the stairs in their house, lugging his father’s gun over his shoulders, and asked him what he was doing. Little Alexandre replied: “I’m going to heaven to kill God – for killing daddy.” When he grew up, he took a greater sort of revenge, infusing his father’s life and spirit into fictional characters like Edmond Dantes and D’Artagnan, with shades of Porthos, too. But the image of the angry child stuck with me and drove me onward to discover every scrap of evidence I could about his forgotten father.

And recovering the life of the real man behind these stories was the ultimate historical prospecting journey for me: I learned about Maltese knights and Mameluke warriors, the tricks of 18th-century spycraft and glacier warfare, torchlight duels in the trenches and portable guillotines on the front; I got to know about how Commedia del Arte influenced Voodoo and how a Jacobin sultan influenced the Star-Spangled Banner, about chocolate cures for poisoning and the still brisk trade in Napoleonic hair clippings. I discovered the amazing forgotten civil rights movement of the 18th century – and its unraveling …

This review here The Sentinel Alexandre Dumas:  The Black Count lends a powerful voice to the impact of this biography. It also includes some audio clips from the book, which I will share with my students.

That’s another of my reading goals:  more audio books. I think busy students need to know the value of listening as reading, too.

 

 

Finding Success in Hell

Books, Guest Post, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop January 8, 2014 1 Comment

Guest Post by Jackie Catcher

flames“Ms. Catcher, do you have Inferno?”

“Inferno?” I asked.  I looked up at Sean*, a skinny freshman with small gages in his ears and a bleached blonde buzz cut.  His punk skater image matched the rebellious reputation of the book he had recently finished: The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  This was the first time he had come to me with a book request for his independent reading.

“Yeah, you know that book about hell.”  I couldn’t help but chuckle—when Sean came into my classroom he associated books with being in hell, now he wanted a book on hell.

“Um, yeah, let me find it.  Dante’s Inferno?” I repeated again.  I tried to mask my surprise but could hear my voice crack with the title.

“Yeah, that one,” he said straight-faced.  The image of my tired college English professor popped into my head; the threadbare sports jacket he wore as he droned on about Inferno; I remember feeling like he single-handedly had pulled me through all nine circles of hell.

Sean owned the video game adaptation of the book, which had sparked his interest.  I handed him a copy, warning, “This is a hard read.  Even if you get through part of it, that will be impressive!  I read this in college.”  I felt the need to somehow soothe his frustrations even before he started.

“Ok.” He brushed off my warnings.

Every day I watched Sean crack open Inferno and slowly make his way through the convoluted English translation.  And every day I expected Sean to walk into my classroom and abandon the book.  But he didn’t.

“How much does he really understand though?” asked another teacher after I brought up Sean’s accomplishments.  She made a good point.  Not only was Sean in my academic class, the lowest level in my tracked high school, he had also scored partially proficient in reading on the New Hampshire state standardized tests over the past two years.  Even if Sean didn’t understand the book in its entirety, I believe he gained just as much as any freshman English major dissecting the poem.

Sean might not have delved into the intricacies of the epic poem, but he took away a sense of confidence and pride that can only accompany struggle.  Many students lack the reading stamina Sean exhibited, an essential skill for success in post-secondary schooling.  Students can be quick to abandon books, and I have found that it isn’t until students become more developed, advanced readers that they understand the value of pushing beyond the first ten or even one hundred pages of a book to get to the “good stuff.”  Despite Sean’s distaste for reading prior to this year, his hunger for a challenge paired with the independent reading initiative allowed Sean to build his stamina and prove himself as a reader.  As Sean said, “I kept telling myself it’s just a book.  You can keep reading.”  Reading Inferno stemmed from his curiosity and transformed into an undertaking of pride.

Sean’s experience with Inferno didn’t include deep literary analysis and his takeaway would most likely make my stuffy college professor cringe, but I’d argue that Sean learned the lesson Dante intended: perseverance and hard work lead to significant achievements.

 

*The name has been changed to protect the identity of the student

 Jacqueline Catcher is a first year teacher at Exeter High School in Exeter, New Hampshire. She teaches Academic and College Preparatory Freshman English and an upper level elective writing course using the workshop model.  She can be reached at jcatcher@sau16.org.