In his Dialogues, Plato reported Socrates’ as saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” After experiencing English 6800, I would extend Socrates’ idea to say, “The unexamined class is not worth teaching.” I have known for some time about the importance of tracking data to improve teaching, but in this class we did so much more than just track data. I had never thought to look at the origin of schools and the educational project, nor had I really questioned why we teach literature. Until I began to learn about school origins and the reasons behind literature, my choice of curriculum was aimless; essentially I just chose to teach whatever other teachers had taught. The truly sad part of that rational is that often the teachers I would imitate had been teaching what they taught using the same rational. In effect, the original rational for teaching a particular curriculum was lost and students were getting an education on the premise that “it is what we have always taught.”
I began teaching my courses this year with the rational above. I made copies of Macomb County’s curriculum and followed it faithfully. On day one, I taught what was supposed to be taught on day one. On day two, I did the same. I followed the curriculum blindly for more than half a year. I didn’t enjoy teaching the lessons and the students were often bored. I think this was due to several factors. First, I don’t think I always fully understood the rationale behind some of the lessons. Second, I think that I harbored a different teaching philosophy from the creators of this particular curriculum, even if I hadn’t yet defined what my philosophy was. Third, I had no vested interest in the creation of the lessons, as I wasn’t involved in creating them. Finally, my students never made a connection with the reading materials. My students were trying to read Beowulf, without ever having any connections to the story (outside of having watched the movie). I kept feeding my students the next lesson, and they continued to choke it down. They would ask, “Why do we have to read this?” I would respond, “Because it is good literature and it is in the curriculum.” Naturally, my students were beginning to associate anything that was “good literature” with an unpleasant time. I was committing the ultimate sin an English teacher could commit. I was turning students off of reading. It would have been better if I was publicly burning books. At least, if I was burning them I might have created a sense of intrigue about the books. The students might have wanted to know why the books were being burned and then secretly sought them out and read them on their own.
Fortunately for my students, I learned about hidden curriculums and the misunderstanding that most teachers have about what and why we teach literature. I learned that English Literature was first taught in India as a means of instilling English culture to the nation. I learned that literature is an effective tool for separating class and culture by placing value on some authors and ideas and ignoring others. I also learned that literature is an effective tool for uniting class and culture by focusing on appreciating various cultures and sharing experiences between reader and writer and between reader and reader. In many aspects, I was doing a good job at creating a larger gap between the classes just by teaching out of ignorance of this idea. As I pushed to follow the established curriculum, many of my students were failing the course. Only those students that already had the necessary tools to be successful in a “comply or die” environment were succeeding; those that lacked the skills were bound to meet an inevitable doom. This is an ironic outcome in a school where the philosophy is that every student can and will succeed. Students are allowed to continue working on projects until they display mastery; however a student that does not work cannot master a concept. My push to follow lesson plans that I did not particularly like and use supplemental materials that did not relate to the students stacked the odds in favor of failure for many of my students.
When I first started understanding that by blindly following the lesson plans and teaching texts because “they were always taught,” I was able to have small meta-discussions about the canon and the texts we were reading in class. Giving students the opportunity to talk about how the books they were reading created some interest in the books and encouraged me to begin straying from the lesson plans and developing lessons that would speak more to my particular students and their lives. I also began looking at new perspectives in teaching. I did not care for reader-response theory until reading Rosenblatt. I liked the idea of cultural-studies and I really liked the idea of using literature circles to expand the scope of reading while exploring themes. I was able to expose students to Plato and Thomas More in the same class that I explored Stalin, James Jones, and the Holocaust. I was able to differentiate reading levels for students without letting any student feel that they had “dumbed down” stories.
The literature circles were good practice for the students to improve their team work skills and to learn how to problem solve amongst themselves. This provides me the opportunity to really push to the heart of my teaching style, which means creating a student-centered learning environment. Ultimately, I would like to move away from being the head of a classroom to becoming a partner in the learning process. Not only does this appeal to me as a more fun way of teaching (How nice is it to learn from your students?), I also believe that this is the learning format that will best prepare students for working in the 21st century.
In the last six weeks, my students have really moved into a 21st century mode of learning. My students have been working with new technologies, problem solving how to accommodate and improve on inadequate equipment, worked in groups that have been both productive and non-productive, they have had to think independently, they have had to learn how to research ideas from reliable sources and they have been exposed to many new perspectives that have required them to move out of their comfortable rural environment. The final project my sophomore class will be working on requires my students to create virtual worlds and think critically about what it takes to create an effective society. The project is a shortened version of the course I developed in my transformation papers.
I feel that I have not only learned a considerable amount of theory in this course, I have also put much of it into practice. The course has made me step back several times and really examine what it is I’m teaching, why I am teaching, and the approach that I will take as I continue to teach. Each time I implemented a new idea it has improved my teaching and the environment of the classroom. The real reward has come in my student’s response to me as a teacher. I spent much of the year listening to students openly telling me about how much they cannot wait until their former teacher comes back. They now are asking me to stay another year and speak of how much they do not want me to leave. My student’s grades have improved and my stress is less. I think this is the proof that my teaching is improving and what I have learned in the course is effective. I believe that what I have taken from this course is deserving of a final grade of an “A”.
Mr. Pippenger 