Three Teachers Talk

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Today is the third and final installment of our week-long discussion using Google Docs.  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

Question 6: How is it different to be forced to teach a certain novel versus to be able to choose the ones you teach?

Jackie: I will readily admit that I am “forced” to teach To Kill A Mockingbird and Macbeth at the freshman level.  That being said, I love teaching both of them and am fortunate that my students respond well to both pieces.  The challenges are certainly different though.  I must create student buy-in or else my students will drag through the next four to six weeks of our unit.  I frame each lesson to fit their needs and I make sure to fit the book into a workshop structure the best I can to create consistency.

I do believe that teachers must have a choice in what they teach, though.  We must be allowed to tailor our lessons to fit the needs of our students.  Independent reading allows us to understand our students as readers and individuals, which in turn, allows us to further assess what books our students might connect with best.  Fortunately for me, the freshman team I work on is progressive and forward-thinking.  They’re always willing to try new things, which oftentimes involves integrating contemporary works.

Shana:  This summer in Tom Newkirk’s class, he innocently posed this question to our class:  “Why is the defining novel about race in our country written by a white woman?”  He was referring to To Kill a Mockingbird, of course, as many of us were discussing its lately-released sequel.  That question, so casually tossed into our midst, made me think about why the canonized novels taught in schools are often so heavily prescripted.  Why does Harper Lee have a voice of authority about being black in America?  Why do my rural students need to read a particular story about race?  I know why it’s important to read stories about people different than us–I would argue that it’s essential to building empathy and a broader worldview to read widely–but why does Harper Lee hold the monopoly on that topic, and not someone like Toni Morrison or Zora Neale Hurston?

As usual, I have raised more questions than I’ve even attempted to answer, but I’m still not sure of the correct solutions.  I think it’s preposterous to have a rote schedule of “books to teach” for all teachers in a school when it’s blatantly obvious that the community of every classroom is different, which means the culture of its students is always unique, which means that no child ever needs the same book at the same time.

Jackie: It’s funny that you bring up Tom Newkirk’s question.  As I was sitting next to you, I had one of those hide-your-face-moments when I thought, “Oh geez, I teach To Kill A Mockingbird!”  As I said earlier, I am required to teach this book, and while I love it, it does not meet the needs of all of my students.  Teaching in New Hampshire, I have a predominantly white population.  This means that their understanding of race relations and their exposure to diverse literature is rather whitewashed.  We desperately need new, diverse voices to help our students understand and empathize with a variety of individuals.  The precious few books we read together should be based on the needs and interests of our students instead of being dictated by a one-size-fits-all approach.

Question 4: What is the most effective way to frame a whole-class novel and create student buy-in?

Jackie: At the beginning of the school year I discuss the different types of reading we encounter as lifelong students.  I explain that, as a reader, I read for pleasure as well as for knowledge.  Oftentimes those two paths can and may cross, but typically my personal reading life looks drastically different from my professional reading life.  I love pouring through popular YA lit, but in the same breath, I can’t get enough of dissecting poetry with my AP Literature class.

This same pattern applies to my students’ reading within our classroom.  As a class we must learn to maintain a fruitful and engaging personal reading life that allows us to not only learn from our literature but to also explore our own interests and passions.  That being said, we mustn’t overlook the power of dissecting and discussing language and craft as a class.  Reading whole class novels reinforces the fact that no two people read a book the same way.

Shana:  If choice is the golden guide to teaching of reading, then I think the culture of a classroom must dictate the novel we read.  While A Raisin in the Sun was immensely popular in my inner-city Cincinnati classroom, it completely flopped here in West Virginia when I tried to teach it.  The inverse is true of Huck Finn; wildly successful in WV, but a total fail in Ohio.  Thus, I seek to hear the themes my students return to again and in again in their writing and conversations–this year, we are engaged in many discussions about political rhetoric, the origin of power, and the struggle that class/social/financial/ethnic differences create.  Thus, I’ll seek out novels that explore those themes to help us engage with them more fully.

In closing, we leave you with a list of the most successful whole class novels we have taught as well as a list of the books we would teach our current students if given the opportunity.

Most successful novels I taught, from Shana:

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

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

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I’d love to teach, based on my current students, from Shana:

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

Boy21 by Matthew Quick

Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Most successful novels I taught, from Jackie…(you’ll notice some repeats):

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (read aloud and performed as a play)

On Writing by Stephen King

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

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

What I’d love to teach, based on my current students, from Jackie:

Sold by Patricia McCormick

Here, Bullet by Brian Turner

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments! We would love to hear your perspective on whole class novels and how you incorporate them into your classroom.

Click here to read day two of our conversation.

Click here to read day one of our conversation.

This past summer Shana and Jackie found that we’d both taken on a unique experiment within some of our classes–we had decided to strip them of whole class novels and instead focus on independent reading, book clubs, and smaller whole-class texts.  As workshop teachers confident in the power of choice reading, we each felt that this shift would be both empowering and inspiring within our classrooms.  After our year of experimentation, we both left our classrooms with unique perspectives on the power of whole-class novels as well as how we would incorporate them moving forward.

Here is day two of our insights and discussion we’ve had over the past week using Google Docs (click here for day one).  Please, join the conversation in the comments!

Question 3: After a year without whole-class novels, how did you feel?

Jackie: At the beginning of the year, I felt like a rebel.  The thought of not only allowing but also empowering students through independent reading went against the entire curriculum within our department.  All of my colleagues taught whole class novels, which meant that none of my students had experienced the pure freedom of choice.  That being said, three-quarters of the way through the year, I missed whole class novels.  Despite having unique successes with the independent reading, my classes lacked the communal experiences of reading, discussing, and simply just enjoying (or sometimes hating) a novel together.  By the end of the year, I found that both my students and I missed some components of reading whole class novels.

Shana:  I reflected on my teaching after a year without whole-class novels (mind you, many novels were read through book clubs, literature circles, reading challenges, and independent reading), but I felt like the one thing that was lacking in all of my instruction was the idea of sustenance.  I wasn’t seeing my students sustain an idea for an extended period, or grapple with an issue over time, or try to live with a topic for more than two drafts and three weeks.  The case was the same in their reading and writing–I wanted them to have more length in their thought processes and I wanted us to engage in those long thought processes together.

Question 4: Why is teaching a whole-class novel valuable?  More specifically, why do we do it, and what skills are taught?

Shana:  I am not sure why I used to teach whole class novels, or, specifically, why I taught the novels I taught.  I know that there were valuable instructional methods behind the way I taught them (thematic units, Socratic circles, exploratory essays), but I don’t know if I had a sound rationale behind the obligation I felt to actually teach multiple novels to all of my students.

After a year without them, though, I find that the collective classroom experience of reading, interpreting, and discussing a novel produces a route for a unique connection to a text that cannot be achieved without reading as a group.  I missed the experience of coming to a new, shared understanding of a text as a whole class, and I felt that my students missed out on that experience as well.  I don’t believe that when I read plays independently in my undergraduate Shakespeare capstone that I would have comprehended, connected to, or engaged as passionately with those plays alone as much as I did through our frequent in-class discussions, activities, and writings.  I don’t want my students to miss out on that experience either.

Jackie: This year I am teaching AP Literature for the first time.  I took the challenge believing that this new course would be somewhat of a paradigm shift for me compared to my contemporary-lit based freshman English class.  The more I prepared, the more I yearned to discuss my thoughts, questions, and analyses of texts.  I went so far as to ask everyone around me to read these canonical classics and discuss them with me.  Preparing to teach AP Lit reinforced the social significance of reading literature.  At its base, dissecting stories as a group is interesting and engaging.  Beating the crap out of them is not.  I agree with you, Shana, in that the experience of sharing a text is one of the blessings of being in an English classroom.  Once students graduate from high school, they rarely have the opportunity to interact with texts in a classroom setting.

Shana: I love that the way you prepared to teach was to ask friends to read books with you, then discuss them.  You engaged in an authentic book club there, as I know you have your students do now.

More of our discussion will follow tomorrow.  Be sure to join the conversation today in the comments!