Post-FOKI

Posted: December 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment

(I have grayed out most of my original post; I have only left the goals in black.  My post-FOKI is in green.)

Introduction

In my eighth grade English class, Mrs. Koval assigned the young adult (YA) novel Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. I had read it a year or two before, so Mrs. Koval decided that I could read the next novel in the series, Dicey’s Song. She sent me to the library to check it out. That was on a Friday. The next Monday, I informed her that I had finished the book and asked what my next step was. She was visibly frazzled. I believe her words were, “Well, Ashley, I had really expected you to read it chapter-by-chapter along with the rest of the class.” (At the time, I thought she was angry with me, though now looking back through a teacher’s eyes, I realize she simply didn’t know what to do with me then.) This story, for better or worse, exemplifies my relationship with reading through my young adult years. I was a marathon reader, reading for hours at a time without stopping, but I never reflected on what I was reading. As I said in my Journey Book reflection, it wasn’t until my later teen years that I was personally affected by literature at all.

That experience (or lack of experience, really), is why I am really excited to take this class. I get to learn about a genre that I never really got to know. This is also the first course I have taken in the CED (thus my blog title), and I am excited to explore the world of teaching young adult literature and, more generally, the academic world of education.

My Three Selves

Professional Self

My undergraduate degree is in English and Psychology from West Virginia University, and my Master’s degree is in English Linguistics from North Carolina State University. Though both of my degrees say “English”, that’s only because linguistics is often housed English departments (literary analysis has never been my strong suit, unfortunately). My interest and background in linguistics, specifically sociolinguistics (a field few have heard of, so here is Wikipedia’s overview), has a strong social justice component. I know that every person speaks a dialect, that every dialect is rule-governed and complete, and that there simply are no inferior dialects or languages; these are facts, but unfortunately, they are not well known facts. Given that dialects are the “last back door to discrimination” (Lippi-Green 1997:73), I am obligated to pass the knowledge I have along.

I learned as a Teaching Assistant at NCSU that I also love teaching, and I have been teaching composition here since I graduated. My knowledge of how language works translates nicely into the composition classroom. The class I teach focuses on the different academic disciplines, rhetoric, and academic argumentation, rather than literature. I have no experience in teaching literature or in Curriculum and Instruction, nor do I have any K-12 experience.

Literate Self

I don’t remember reading much YA literature as a young adult. I read so much so often (as it was my only source of entertainment, since we didn’t have television and I lived on a farm with no neighborhood children to play with), so I moved quickly to reading adult novels. They simply lasted longer. I do remember some things, like the Homecoming series I talked about above, but I also remember reading my father’s Sidney Sheldon novels in elementary school. YA literature simply didn’t figure largely in the development of my literate self.

I do have some adult experience with YA literature. My brother, who is six years my junior and has a different set of talents and interests than I do, read much more YA literature than I ever did. I served as his tutor in middle and high schools, so I read his assigned books along with him. I also took a YA literature course in college, and while most of it has left me now, I remember some of the foundational ideas.

Virtual Self

My husband claims I am an internet addict, but really, until recently, I was most definitely an online spectator, not a participant. I even refused to join Facebook until a year ago! Now, however, I have a personal blog (where I keep my distant family updated on our household; the past two months have been extraordinarily busy, so that has fallen by the wayside temporarily), I have joined Facebook, and I participate in several online communities (e.g., Pinterest, a virtual bulletin board to keep track of creative inspiration of all sorts).

I also have a virtual teacher self. I teach a “Bring Your Own Computer” English 101 class at NCSU; my students are required to bring a laptop to class each day. They turn in all assignments online (I use Moodle), and I give them feedback electronically. More recently, now that all students have a Gmail account, I have started using Google Docs and other Google Apps for classroom activities, and I am available on Google’s chat feature for student support.

Goals

Professional

I definitely look forward to learning what teaching a literature-based course means. I have taken them at the college and graduate level, of course, and I know most of my high school courses were lit-based, but I am ignorant of the pedagogy surrounding that type of class. Given my lack of personal connection to YA literature as a young adult myself, I would like to learn how to facilitate that connection for other young adults. I feel like I missed out on good experiences, both personally and socially, by not connecting with the literature I was reading, and I don’t want my future students to miss out as well.

Wow!  Yeah, I definitely learned a lot about YA lit – both how complex it is as a category of writing, and also how complex it can be to incorporate it into the classroom.  While I don’t know that I am confident that I will always be able to pick the perfect work,, I definitely feel much more prepared.

As for teaching a lit-based course, the Waves of Change Voicethreads really helped me understand the breadth of pedagogical theories that are out there.  That assignment really gave me a good basis for understanding the lay of the land, and I look forward to diving into individual theories later on, and using that assignment as a basis for understanding how they fit in.

Literate

I definitely look forward to reading and connecting with some YA literature. The better I can learn to do so, the better I can teach my students to do the same.

And read YA literature I did!  Seven books (Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making, Feed, The Glass Castle, Fun Home).  I have to admit, it didn’t feel like work.  I enjoyed each of them, and I feel like they have me  a good understanding of what YA lit can offer young adults and the different ways it can be used in the classroom.

Virtual

Already, I can tell that my assessment of my virtual teacher self as adept and cutting edge was … generous (if not just outright wrong). I am generally comfortable tackling new technologies, I just rarely do so unless I have a reason, so I look forward to learning and becoming literate in the various technologies we will use for this course. I especially look forward to thinking about how they can be applied to my current classroom setting (college composition) as well as potential future settings, specifically, secondary English classrooms.

I am definitely, definitely more confident in this area.  I’m already thinking of using Twitter next semester to field questions from students (though Meg uses Facebook groups, which is almost equally appealing, so I’m trying to decide between the two).  I like WallWisher for questions; I have my students run most discussions in my classroom, so this would be a good tool for me to introduce to them.  And I’m sure that VoiceThread and some of the bookmarking sites will make their way into my classroom eventually.  I really like all the tools we have used, but I don’t want to overwhelm myself (or my students) by introducing them all at once. 

I also look forward to learning how to teach some of these different technologies. I have learned the hard way in my English 101 computer classroom that, while students today are digital natives, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are fluent in every dialect – for example, I have watched students exchange Twitter names (handles? identities? see, I’m still learning too) on the first day of class, and then not know how to attach a document to an email. It’s a big digital world out there, and I want to be able to help students work towards a greater digital literacy.

Here’s what I learned here:  What’s cool about using Facebook or Twitter is that these are the technologies that most students already know how to learn.  Basically, I’ve noticed that the web-based programs are the ones most students are comfortable with, so those are the easiest to integrate into the classroom.  The more social-networky it is, the more likely it seems that students can pick up on it.  Now if I could just get them to see that Word is almost as intuitive …

Overall, this has been an awesome semester.  I’ve learned so much about YA lit and about technology (and the links between the two!).  This has been a wonderful first excursion into the education community, and I feel prepared – and excited! – to continue my journey.

Synthesis and Reflection

Before I wrote my Journey Book reflection or this inventory, I never really thought what kind of personal impact literature had on my life. I had always taken for granted that I was a reader, and that reading was a large part in my child- and young-adulthood. It wasn’t until I was challenged to come up with a piece of literature that stuck with me that I realized that wasn’t necessarily the role reading played in my life. I would like to at least try to give students a different experience than I had. I think literature, and especially YA literature, can be an asset for young adults who are just learning who they are.

While thinking about and writing my professional inventory and goals, I also realized that if I want my current teaching experience at the college level to translate into teaching at the secondary school level, I need to work to find the connections. I am already beginning to see that it is a different dialect of education than I speak … if not a whole different language.

Works Cited

Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge.

Multicultural Literature

Posted: November 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bookhenge, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Before the readings

I am going to begin by talking mainly about African American literature, only because I have a good example and good resource for doing so.  I don’t actually have much experience with the pedagogy surrounding multicultural literature, so this is really the best way for me to access the topic. I understand that the topic of multiculturalism is much broader than just African American literature, and that the topic at hand is awards, not curricula, but this was how I began to think about the topic.

My good friend Sara (you may remember her from here) is getting her PhD in African American literature from University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  Before Sara, I have to admit that I never thought about the pedagogical and systemic justification for teaching African American literature (or any minority literature) separately from the rest of the canon.

It is an interesting situation.  Teaching African American literature separate from the canon implies that that literature progresses separately from all other literature – so the themes, issues and societal things that influence other (presumably white) literature does not influence African American literature, which simply is not true.  And yet, there are special issues brought up by African American literature.  And this literature has long been left out of the traditional canon, so teaching classes dedicated only to African American lit is a way to begin to right that wrong.  As Sara explained to me, the latest trend in teaching African American literature is to make sure to situate the literature being taught into the broader trends that were going on in the other literature being written at the time.  Until African American literature has equal recognition in the canon (and I won’t even try to define the canon), this seems to be the best solution.  Though one could make the argument that continuing to teach courses dedicated to African American literature makes it harder to include such literature in more general survey courses.

Whew.  This is complicated.

After the readings

I was almost equally swayed by both Aronson’s and Pinkney’s arguments, which makes sense, given my non-stance on teaching African American literature in a separate course.  Aronson’s most compelling argument for me was that integration is the only acceptable way to recognize any literature.  It made sense – like integrating African American literature into standard survey courses.  I underlined the sentence “Creating a new award is a concession that the other awards will never change” several times (2003:6).  I also liked his argument that we should focus on content, not biography.

But Pinkney’s argument (and the arguments of other Aronson opponents that he discusses in Chapter 3) that we don’t live in a perfect world, and full integration has not happened, thus awards for multicultural literature are still necessary, was equally persuasive for me.  When I read this, I realized that Aronson’s argument for integrated awards might be too idealistic, however logical it sounds.

Both sides make good points, and ultimately, at this point in time, I don’t think there is a right answer.  What is the best approach, then, is open, honest discussion – much like what Aronson and his colleagues do in Section 1 of Beyond the Pale.  Hopefully someday Aronson’s idealized vision can happen.  Until then, the awards that the ALA gives out will serve as a guide for those looking for diverse and enriching literature.

As for how to expand young adults’ exposure to multicultural literature, I think the biggest first step is making sure including different cultures’ voices is a classroom priority.  An ALA Best Books for Teens multicultural list would be helpful, but teacher awareness seems to me to be far and away more important.

Works Cited

Aronson, M. (2003). “Slippery slopes and proliferating prize.”  Beyond the Pale: New essays for a new era (3-10). Maryland & Oxford: The Scarecrow Press.