Robin Hardy Online
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As part of her teacher certification process, Robin's daughter Stephanie was required to write reflections on what she was learning about teaching. What follows is her final reflection before receiving certification.
It took some time for me to decide on what topic I would end my student-teacher reflections. I was hit with inspiration in a way I least expected. The last two Saturdays, I have had an interesting experience at Gifted and Talented Training. Since I took on honors classes this year, of course it requires additional staff development through my district. I did learn from the last session in particular, but unfortunately it was a more revelatory than expository experience: I received a great deal of modeling in how not to teach.
A large part of my academic career, beginning in high school and progressing through college, has involved a lot of frustration on my part in dealing with really bad literature. I began questioning my high school teachers, and I found myself truly amazed in college, over the reality that my teachers and professors were choosing modern trash literature over and above the time-honored classics. I managed to get through high school and the equivalent of a literature major in college while barely touching on the canon of Western literature. Instead, my teachers and professors fed me a steady diet of "deconstructionist" literature, with a heavy dose of morally degenerate works thrown in for good measure. Most of my college papers were spent ripping these to shreds. While I received A's because I supported my position, I was not a popular student.
What I discovered Saturday shed light on this entire experience, and once again irritated me to no end. This highly respectable English AP teacher told us, as honors teachers, to get our hands on the most controversial material we could take in the classroom and not get in trouble. She said that the more controversial it was, the more it would provoke the students into responding and engaging the literature. Not that we should choose literature that is known for its depth; not that we should choose literature for its potential to push our students to their great capability at that age and level: but that our primary criteria for selecting material should be its ability to inflame the students.
To me, that screams disrespect. It is a cheap shot to think that a student will not engage the material unless it gets her exasperated somehow. I was a student that was willing to engage material if it was worthy of my engagement. I did not want to read a short story filled with pornographic references and murder at the end, simply for the sake of decrying the decaying state of humanity (this short story was written by a Princeton professor). I wanted something that had been around for 300 years and was declared worthy of study, declared unworthy of study, and survived anyway. No one is going to know which short story I referenced above in 100 years, and if they do, it will be a laughable byword. But people will still know Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton. And I want to give my students the same respect I asked for as a student—even at the sixth-grade level.
Students have an uncanny ability to discern when you are genuine. Why should they not detect it if you put a story in front of them purely for the purpose of appealing to pathos? Didn't the Greeks know there were two other ways to appeal to the soul? Students certainly instinctively know if something is worth their time and attention. I would rather risk being a little bit more boring for the sake of building a lasting interest and dialogue with literature than burn my students out because I base their relationship with books on emotion alone. This is especially true for gifted students: they want a challenge deeper than what they can master in a few minutes. A story that is controversial is, for the most part, going to have less depth than a classic. Therefore, while the classic is not as enticing on the surface, it is more satisfying in the experience, and ultimately will keep the gifted student coming back.
I am surprised that I had so many teachers that fell into that trap. Perhaps they were just being good teachers, marching to the beat of that "we have to get students engaged at all costs" drum. But I had a few teachers that refused to do that: my ninth-grade English teacher (thank you Ms. Gorman); my college sophomore British literature teacher (thank you Ms. Coppersmith), and an upper-level literature professor who specialized in Jane Austen (thank you Dr. Michaelson). I am going to choose to model my teaching style around those teachers who gave us as students enough respect to say: "Here, I have chosen what I consider to be the best and deepest literature that is worthy of your time and your energy. I did not take the short-cut to keep you from getting bored, because I know you are better than that, and I will see you rise to the occasion." And the vast majority of us, no matter what age we are as students, really will.
posted Jan. 20, 2008
copyright 2008 Stephanie R. Cole
