Reading the Canon and Writing Poetry

I have already begun curating my library for my classroom. Here and there, I pick up books that I think would be great for my students. Of course, I have the classics that you’d expect, some Shakespeare and Moby Dick, as well as more contemporary books like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Hunger Games. When I took my adolescent literature class here at RIC, I made sure to purchase all of the books because I felt like that was a great place to gather recommendations.  

When I was in middle school and high school, I remember finding the Chronicles of Vladimir Tod and immediately checking the books out back to back when I could. It was so fun to me to read a story about a kid who looked and acted kind of like me. Short of being a vampire, I really did connect with these books and the characters. Other stories like Catcher in the Rye and Beloved are examples of things that when I read, I very much connected with and that are more classic examples.

            Throughout my reading history in school, I was exposed to a wide variety of books. For the first two years of highs school, I was in regular English 9 and 10, and I read a lot of the classic things that you would expect. During this time, it was a lot of textbook curated pieces of literature, with a heavy emphasis on short story. In contrast, when I was a junior, I took English Honors and then a senior I took AP English; in these classes we were focusing on the canonized pieces. I didn’t mind getting out of the textbook but I did feel like my teacher was “simply assigning canonical books is order to check off texts that students are supposed to be reading” (Garcia & O’Donnell-Allen, 94), and that in the words of Antero Garcia and Cindy O’Donnell-Allen, “is ludicrous”(94). They believe that it is our job as educators to curate literature for our students. Of course, thinking of being culturally sensitive to minorities like discussed in other posts, it is obvious this is where this thought process is put into action.

            We have a responsibility to be mindful that the “white male canon do[es] not reflect your own culturally proactive pedagogy and/or your students cultural backgrounds, needs, or interests” (Garcia & O’Donnell-Allen). Later on in the chapter, they talked about if the authors demographic that your students were consuming matched the United States demographic the syllabus would include: half of the texts written by women, 4/10 would be people of color and 6/10 white people, and of these listed 25% would be written by authors of other minorities like LGBTQ+ or those with disabilities. See 2010 Race Profile by Vox. These statistics fascinated me because most of the texts I had consumed were written by 90% white people and mostly men.

            It was only until college that I was truly exposed to different authors. It was purposeful that RIC has required world literature classes. I have had whole semesters where we did not read more than a paragraph or two of a white person’s literature and it was extremely eye opening. I really enjoyed the different stories and perspectives and I know that high school students are eager and willing to read and interact with these types of authors.

            Something I’m worried about is finding the balance of classic literature that I believe is important without white-man overload. As well as making these classic texts accessible and desirable to all different types of students. In one of my other classes we are going over how comic books are a very valuable tool for exposing kids to dense literature. For example, I got to hold Hamlet in comic book form, and I was very surprised by my impressions of it. At first, I dismissed comics because I prefer to imagine the text for myself, but Shakespeare was never meant to be read more seen. I realized that comic books are the closest we can get to actually seeing it on the original stage. This is a picture from when I visited the remains of the Rose Theater where Shakespeare originally preformed the works, we now torture high school aged kids with decades later! If you want to see more, you can check out my blog from that trip here.

            Poetry is another great gate way to literature for students. Chapter 1 of Teaching for Joy and Justice by Linda Christensen talks all about the power of poetry in the classroom. Christensen explains that “by letting go of the rules and the mandates about technical grammar, I freed my students to find their voices” (44). I think that is so important because it is much more enjoyable for students to write once they have discovered how powerful their voice can be in words. Often “teachers hold struggling writers’ hostage to learning grammar before they can write papers” (Christensen, 44) and I think that with poetry students feel more open to making mistakes and taking chances which is so important. It will be challenging because “curricular documents like the Common Core State Standards that make no mention of writing poetry” (Macaluso). I am very excited to incorporate my favorite poem My Papa’s Waltz by Theodore Roethke, into my curriculum as well as have an awesome library for my students.

Cultural Sensitivity is a BIG issue

It is a scary society we live in where some people are not free to enjoy their culture without fear of getting the cops called on them. Maybe the food they brought to lunch does not smell desirable enough to Lauren in accounting, or your hair is not “neat enough” for your manager Bill, or your accent is too thick for the conversation on the subway. Situations like this are a constant reminder for people of color that they are forced to assimilate as to not offend the white people they are seated next to.This one time my younger brother and his friends stole a man’s racist confederate flag. I was tasked with taking him to the man’s house to apologies, and of course the man had to come up to me sitting patiently waiting and start making conversation. I began by explaining that I’m sorry my brother did this of course, but your flag is inherently racist and frankly un-American. He obviously disagreed and said that “the Puerto Ricans fly that flag as disrespect to Americans.” What that man failed to realize was that the Puerto Rican flag is an American flag and in no way disrespectful, just an expression of their culture. I should send that man this video.  We clearly did not see eye to eye, and I’m not admitting anything but if that flag goes missing again, this time they won’t be able to connect my brother to it.

In education, especially inside a classroom, students should feel free to express their joy in different cultures. We as educators have a duty to the students to not tolerate differences but celebrate them. As a white man, I have done the work to reprogram my thoughts to allow for a more compassionate approach to teaching. Gary and Stockman suggest that “rather than merely consuming content, students who learn in compassionate classrooms produce it as well” (99). It my biggest fear in my classroom to put a lot of effort into a lesson or activity for my students to be unengaged and really not enjoying it at all. By leading with compassion and understanding, I believe that students will want to be engaged as a way to express their cultures and beliefs.  

There are many different methods to compassionate cultural teaching and they all offer different positives and negatives. A staple in class instruction is simply conversations. Sometimes, teacher lead, small group, and one on one. I obviously look forward to being a teacher in the classic sense, standing in front of the class talking, mostly because I like the way I sound, but also because I think I have a lot of good things to say! This allows for students to focus on one thing and really absorb what I’m trying to teach. I agree with Kay when they said, “This teacher-student-teacher rhythm has been ingrained enough to make any disruption in the pattern feel monumental” (63). Although this method works, it almost eliminates the students voice and creativity, which is linked to their cultural expression and identity. I find that teachers often forget that students have ideas and probably know how they are to learn best and they “rarely as students how they feel about the different methods we faithfully employ” (63). I think it would be beneficial during the school year to take a sample group of students and do almost a focus group for lessons and activities. That way I could do a better job planning my lessons, and thus allowing me to be more sensitive to cultures and identities. Small groups were one of my favorite learning styles growing up. I think I really shine in a smaller group; I find that it’s the perfect size to show off my knowledge without feeling like I have to battle to get my words out. In these small groups, it is less teacher supervised which allows students to “freely deal in stereotypes and half logic” (72-3) which is a great place to be in as a student who wants to learn and grow.

 A pressing issue that is always involved when thinking about student’s growth and learning is the achievement gap. This I feel is unavoidable, but we must do our best to fight it. How are we as educators to change a system that is flawed and designed only for students to are granted a certain level of privilege. This system is still controlled by the same people who created it and it is clear that it was not made for people of color or of differing abilities. Winn and Johnson say, “Remnants of classist and racist theories continue to linger in the policies and pedagogies that shape schooling for minority and poor children” (13). This is so true considering schooling has changed very little while history is changing rapidly. More and more students are attending school and seeking higher education, and more often than not, education may be the only way “out” of the situation they were born into. It is crucial that we see all students, regardless of their varying abilities. It is important that we purposely create lessons that are easily changed to fit the needs to all students we are tasks to educate. I still feel hopeless at times because these systems are so deeply ingrained in the system that I don’t know how easy it is to change from the inside like this, especially speaking as someone who hasn’t even begun teaching yet.