What have I been reading this week? First Opinions―Second Reactions

First Opinions, Second Reactions is an interesting online journal devoted to children's and young adult literature.

 

It’s co-edited by Drs. Jill P. May and Janet Alsup at Purdue University. I found a number of the first opinion pieces (pieces that usually offer a reading of a book) and the second response contributions (these usually contain teaching ideas) interesting.

I’m glad a colleague introduced this journal to me.

 

If you’re new to First Opinions, Second Reactions, you might start with Michelle H. Martin’s “Y’all Keep Up” or Christian P. Knoeller’s "Breaking Down Stereotypes of Contemporary American Indians."

"But They Won't Let You Read!" by Grace Enriquez

Reading Martinez last week reminded me of "But They Won't Let You Read!": A Case Study of an Urban Middle School Male's Response to School Reading by Grace Enriquez, an article I read  during Thanksgiving break.

 

Martinez reflected, in part, on how she believed her school experiences, largely influenced by standardized testing, silenced her as a writer. Enriquez’s work features Derrick, a student who has a similar argument. Derrick says his teachers will not “let you read.” Derrick articulates his conclusion after noticing that his teacher seems to champion reading, particularly reading for pleasure, prior to the administration of the state test, but quickly moves on to other aspects of the curriculum thereafter.

 

Derrick seems to say, “OK, the teacher has to do what he has to do, and I do too,” as he decides to ignore instruction partially in order to satisfy his appetite for books. Anyone who has taught for a minute has seen the student who hides the book he/she cannot stop reading inside the textbook the teacher has assigned. The question is what assumptions might a teacher make about this student and why. Teachers at Derrick’s school begin to see him as “distracted.” In the end, Enriquez asks us to think about “how our messages and views about reading conflate and conflict with one another” (p. 43).

 

Derrick’s case is personal to me in large part because it reminds me so much of conversations I have had with my own son about how he perceives education. I worry that the stories told about black males and their literacy practices are too few and often too generic. Awareness of this prompts Enriquez to note, “Derrick presents a different case: a Black adolescent male who wants to read, who sees his formal education at school as valuable, but who feels that challenges to his growth, enjoyment, and success as a reader ironically stem from inside school walls, not outside them” (p. 35). Enriquez’s words are best used to highlight the habit (and the outcome) of ignoring boys like Derrick, “Derrick's situation as an adolescent Black male who enjoys and values reading is more precarious, as current reform policies zero in with monolithic understandings of Black male students and compel schools to adopt blanket instructional practices that ignore and may possibly thwart possibilities for students like Derrick” (p. 36).

 

Want to Read It?

"But They Won't Let You Read!": A Case Study of an Urban Middle School Male'sResponse to School Reading by Grace Enriquez, Journal of Education • V O L U M E 1 9 3 • N U M B E R 1 • 2013, pgs. 35-46

Whew! What have I been reading?

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. —Audre Lorde

 

 

 

Cited in

 

''For Our Words Usually Land on Deaf Ears Until We Scream'': Writing as a Liberatory Practice by Shantel Martinez, 2014, Qualitative Inquiry, 20.3,3-14



About the Article

I recommend this article to anyone who might need/want a story about how we teach writing/literacy matters. Martinez responds to (and conjures up) several questions I have thought about (or someone nudged me to consider) over the last academic year as I struggled to write, teach, and learn:

What is valid and true in the writing process?

What/which writing rules really matter?

Can critical thinking exist within the way we teach writing right now?

Is writing linear or recursive?

Wait a minute! Which texts are mentor texts?

Obviously, the article challenged my thinking, but it also validated some of my own frustrations with what gets valued as scholarship in academia.

 
 
 
 

A Model for Close Reading?

What have I been reading?

Hsieh, B. (2012). Challenging characters: Learning to reach inward and outward from

characters who face oppression. English Journal, 102(1): 48–51.

 

 

Hsieh asks a few questions that probably plague most English language arts teachers at some point:

 

How am I going to get 21st century middle school students to connect with The Diary of Anne Frank (The Diary)?

 

How does The Diary connect with contemporary literature? and

 

How can I encourage students to look closely at characters and themes--to do close readings?

 

Hsieh wondered if DEJs, or double-entry journals (generally a t-chart, quote on one side, reflection/insight on the other) would help address these concerns. Each text would be read with attention given to how the main character experienced oppression. Of course, Hsieh modeled the strategy first.

 

Students were asked to focus on exchanges between characters in a short story (Bruce Coville’s “Am I Blue”) and to respond to a quote from the exchange.

 

Next, the strategy was applied using a longer work, The Diary-- still with Hsieh as the guide.

 

In addition to the DEJ, students were asked to take on the persona of a character in The Diary and write a letter “…to someone on the outside describing what life was like in the annex….” (p. 49)  

 

The success of the strategies was tested when the students were asked to form literature circles. Without prompting from her, Hsieh wondered if skills, especially those related to close reading, would be retained. She concluded that they were.

Are You Living or Existing? by Kimanzi Constable

from Google

Are You Living or Existing?

What a great question!

I recently reviewed this book for ForeWord Reviews.

Constable shares nine steps to creating a meaningful and fulfilling life. In short chapters filled with advice inspired by the author’s own experiences, readers learn how to define their goals, excise negative people and thoughts, and more.

 

Please read the review.

The best article I read this week?

The best article I read this week is “Urban Fiction and Multicultural Literature

as Transformative Tools for Preparing English Teachers for Diverse Classrooms” by Marcelle Haddix and Detra Price-Dennis (English Education, 45(3), April 2013).

Please visit NOW to read my thoughts about it in terms of the writing angle. Please read the article itself to think about how (and why) you select texts to share with your students.

Best thing I read this week?

What is your brain doing while you're enjoying a book or reading in preparation for a literary analysis assignment? Well, I don't really know.

The piece that grabbed my attention this week offers some answers. It is about what the brain might be doing when we read for pleasure versus when we take a formalistic approach to reading. The subjects were doctoral candidates who read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park

while fMRI (functional magnetic resonance images) take note.

While I've read pieces about how literary analysis is good for the brain, taps critical thinking, and such, this piece introduced me to the field of literary neuroscience.


Want to read it?
The piece is titled "This is your brain on Jane Austen, and Stanford researchers are taking notes."

Curious about other things I've read?