Singleton Say/Do 1 (Transacting with Literature)

Say/Do #1

Say: One of the biggest tasks that I am faced with as a teacher is being able to connect what I am reading in class to my students. I mean--isn't that one of the first things we are taught as educators? Are we not taught that if we do not understand the lives that our students come from, we will have a harder time trying to get our students to be engaged in the classroom especially when books are involved? I like to think that I am a more realistic teacher--I know that the population of students who I will be serving will have negative preconceived notions about reading and writing. We are often taught that in our readings, one of the biggest tasks to do is create a classroom in which my students are able to transact with literature and hopefully build collectively so that they will be able to explore reading more. And while some may feel that it is best to read a mixture of YAL books, some feel that they aren't able to do that due to their lived experiences don't exactly matching that of what they are trying to teach and are afraid that their teaching will come off as "unauthentic". Roberts stated, "But no matter how much I loved all the YAL I was reading, I couldn’t help but feel a little unsettled. After all, if I wanted to be a high school English teacher, shouldn’t I have been devoting more time to reading the classics?" Growing up, I never really liked reading and this was due to me not being able to connect with what my teachers had in class. I now understand that my thoughts were wrong!! I know from transacting with the literature that a key component to connecting students is by having them engaged from the beginning. There is no one set type of literature that we are forced to teach--in fact I am certain that you can teach ANY literature (canonical included) as long as you're able to do what Rosenblatt says we should be doing..."Making meaning." Rice says that we can achieve this even with the newly accepted genre of graphic novels in the classroom. I also learned that if I want my students to truly transact with literature, I need to set my own experiences aside that I think we may share, and focus on what may be best for them, not what I think is best for them. I absolutely agree with the quote from Directing vs. Exploring,  "Our own love of reading and literature presupposes what we select and what we think is best for our students". I decided that I wanted to do this with my class that I have in Internship A--I wanted to find a short piece of literature that they would be able to become engaged with together, not because I thought they would connect with it, but because it helps us all connect together so that they would not only work with the literature, but create their own literature in the process. Please see the results as I upload a selected poems written by one of my students as a result of us reading and discussing the poem, "I am From".

Do: Artifact

I am from……

BY: K. D.

I am from birth of a loving mother and father

I am from the spirit of happy- so I dance

I am from the spirit of education- so i go high and beyond the standards

I am from the spirit of niceness- So I welcome others

I am from the spirit of helping- So I tutor.

I am from the spirit of silliness- So I make others laugh

I am from Christ who saved me

I am from M&M eating

I am from traveling

I am from people all around the word because we share the same home.

I am from the spirit of home training

I am from pink

I am from the spirit of loving

I am from a loving mother and father

I am from sibling rivalry

I am from Barnwell

I am from girl get out my face

I am from ME!!!!!