NCTE Reads: YA Pedagogy Element 1 - Classroom Community

This week for NCTE Reads, we are delving into the development of pedagogy that addresses young adult literature in the classroom. Element 1 focuses on classroom community. 

Many years ago, I learned that it is pointless to discuss rules and procedures on the first day of school. Students are tired and adjusting to being back on a schedule. They are excited to see their friends and what teachers they have but not to learn anything, especially on day one. So I switched gears and started focusing on classroom community from the first day of school. If we are going to be a family for 178 days, we need to be comfortable with one another. I have no issues with building community within the first two days of schools. But how to I extend this community into teaching young adult literature?

_______________________________________________

Which quality do I try to focus on?

 Quality #1: Belief that the work is important

Buehler discusses that teachers must treat young adult literature in the same capacity as they do classic literature. My classroom library consists of mostly young adult literature and a few pieces from the canon. Although I do not teach young adult literature in my AVID class, the selections for middle school English in my district are mostly young adult titles. Books I have taught in my fourteen years of teaching include:

In regard to classic literature, I did teach Treasure Island one time (and it was one time for a reason), and I taught Tom Sawyer one time. I would rather not discuss how those went over.

I have to say that I think I have treated these works seriously. Except for that one time when I made fun of A Wrinkle in Time profusely for everyone being saved by love (not my favorite story). Ok, I also expressed a few negative thoughts about the end of The Giver. But aside from that, I swear I have treated these books with the utmost respect.

I do read everything I can from my  own classroom library, and I have done my best to make sure I have books that represent all of my students, and some of those titles have to be treated with care (ex. Fat Angie, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the World, Tomboy).  When I have one-on-one conversations with students about the books they choose, I always treat the chosen story as the greatest novel ever written. 

_______________________________________________

I would have to say that the rest of the qualities are all challenges for me in the AVID classroom, as the class itself is not a literature class. The previous coordinator did tell me that there have been years when the classes examine a shared text, but not in the traditional sense of what we teach in English language arts. They have read We Beat the Streets to share and discuss how they can overcome the odds against them. 

I suppose this text could meet the Quality #4: Collective investment in a shared experience.  I have read the book myself, and it certainly invites discussion and debate. I do not think, however,  that this book represents enough of my students for them all to discover deep meaning. Quality #3: A sense of being known and valued focuses on choice as "an element of YA pedagogy" (84). In order to address both of these qualities, I believe I would have to introduce more titles into my classroom, whether fiction or nonfiction, about teens overcoming odds.

In teaching English, I feel confident I could address all four of these qualities and have probably touched on them all at some point in time. Bringing this pedagogy into the AVID classroom is not impossible, but it will take some work on my part. My overall goal is always to show my students that they have value that is important and recognized, so if I have to work a little bit harder for them, so be it. 

NCTE Reads: Teaching Reading with YA Literature (chapter 1)

It's summer vacation, so I am sitting around doing absolutely nothing - said no teacher ever. I am tired just thinking about everything I am doing this summer - two graduate classes, two technology certifications, and an NCTE book study, to name a few.

For the book study, we are reading Teaching Reading with YA Literature: Complex Texts, Complex Lives by Jennifer Buehler. Now, I just finished up school yesterday (we had Saturday checkout), and our activities for the book study start today. Why no break? Because I am a teacher. And I strive to be the best possible teacher I can be. I don't need no stinkin' break! And of course, I will be sharing on my blog, as well.

_______________________________________________________________________

 

 _______________________________________________________________________

Week 1: MAKE

This week we’re going to create a curated list of YA novels with rationales for why they are complex texts. These lists may prove useful if you choose to use any of these novels in your class and are asked to justify your selection. Please share the title, author, and a few sentences explaining why a YA text of your choosing should be considered complex.

My response: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas - Initially, I was not going to list this book, but I reconsidered. This book addresses topics and themes that are relevant to today’s youth. A young African American male is murdered by a police officer, an event witnessed by the story’s protagonist. The content invites natural discussion and real-world connections.
 _______________________________________________________________________

Week 1: TALK
 
How do you use YA literature in the classroom, and where does it fit in the larger context of all we’re meant to do in ELA?

My response: 

Due to a change in teaching assignments this past year, my focus on YA lit was put on the backburner. I moved from teaching eighth grade English to seventh and eighth grade AVID. Although AVID still incorporates reading and writing, I spent this year figuring out how to teach the class and bond with students who lost a beloved teacher to another position on another campus, some of whom resented me for coming in and leaving my classes and students behind. 

Personally, I did not discover young adult literature until sometime around 2007 or 2008. I know that most of the Twilight series had been published. I was teaching seventh grade at the time, and my girls were devouring the series. They wanted to talk to me about constantly, so I borrowed the set from a student to be able to reciprocate their discussions. 

I hate Twilight. Despise. Loathe. I found Belle to be a repugnant role model for young girls. To this day, I am quite vocal about my grievances with the series. It did, however, set me on a path of reading young adult literature in search of something worthy to share with my students. 

I abused my library card and read everything I could get my hands on. I recommended reads to my students, many of whom would go to the local library to find a book our school library did not carry. I started building a classroom library, thanks to a state literacy grant. 

I tend to showcase books in a display and talk about what I am reading, encouraging students to use my classroom library. This has been pretty successful, but I have not been able to reach every student in this manner.

During practice state testing situations, I will watch kids and try to determine what they might like to read. When they finish, I will bring them books from my shelves and see if I have hit on anything they might enjoy (I often do, which really surprises me).

Our middle school canon consists of young adult books. I have taught The Outsiders, The Westing Game, The Giver, Homecoming, Redwall, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, and A Wrinkle in Time. In reflection, my book and my mood probably had more to do with my students enjoying any of these books than my lessons did. For example, I dislike A Wrinkle in Time (a little less than I despite Twilight). I openly shared my frustration with my students regarding plot points, which may have been more entertaining for my kids than the story itself. 

For next year, I am considering having my AVID kids participate in independent reading activities with novels. As part of their college-readiness skills, I think they should know how to actively read novels in a particular time frame. I am in the early stages of this thinking and am not quite sure what to have my students do with those readings yet. I am hoping that throughout this book study and its discussions, I can create a meaningful reading environment for my students that carries over into their personal lives.

Stop stopping the violence: boys and writing

One of my assignments for my current graduate diversity class is to conduct research regarding a topic I am interested in, become an "expert" in a few short weeks, and present what I have learned to my classmates. I have been thinking about this assignment at the same time I am conducting interviews for my AVID classes for next year and coping with the frustration of not being able to recruit and keep boys in this program. When the tornado of my brain whipped both of these into its vacuum, I found myself searching Google for information about literacy and achievement gaps between male and female students.


I ran across the article "Misreading masculinity: Speculations of the great gender gap in writing" by Thomas Newkirk, written in March 2000. Much of my early career teaching seventh grade English was spent teaching writing, and writing is a key component of AVID's WICOR. So I chose this as my first article to read. 

One of many topics discussed in this article is the prevalence of violence in boys' writing. If you had asked me few hours ago, I would have said, "Bad, bad, bad. Boys should not be writing about violent topics in school." But Newkirk has swayed me:

(p. 296)

Reading this sent me directly back to my first year of teaching. I assigned something for writing, although the exact assignment has long escaped my mind. The details of B.'s paper, however, are clear in my mind. He turned in his work on green paper, and I marked it up in red pen. B. had written about coming into the school with a sword and attacking his classmates. His story culminated with my head being chopped off. 

Since B. was already a student with whom I had disciplinary issues (he was a 12-year old boy), I treated the writing as a threat toward me. There was a referral. There was a parent conference. There was a suspension. 

If I could only rewind time! I made the mistake of automatically assuming that B.'s "use of violence in writing [was meant to be] vicious or sadistic" (p. 296).  According to Newkirk, I missed a great deal of the complexity that was included in B.'s writing:

• A video culture - B. had actually written his passage based on a video game he had been playing. This information was revealed during our parent conference, but my new-teacher ego was offended at the time. The last time I spoke to B. a few years ago, he was trying to become a video game developer.
• A friendship culture or social world - B. never intended to offend me with his story. He simply cast me as the villain and himself as the protagonist in a story set in our mutual environment. He expressed that he thought I would be complimented to be included in his story.
• "A curriculum culture - ...In transforming largely visual narratives to written narrative, students negotiate popular culture and academic work" (p. 297). B. was simply taking an idea from his everyday life and adding it to my assignment.

I have come a long way in the past 13 1/2 years, and I continue to grow and learn every day.  I want to build a passion for writing, not kill it (pun intended). The next time I see any of my boys including violence in their writing, something I have discouraged over the years, I will engage in more dialogue. I know that in our current times, not every piece of expression can be treated equally, but I am now far less likely to apply the sentence before the trial.