Running head:
Brian Felder
East Stroudsburg University
Two years ago, when I decided to start applying to graduate schools, I was in my second year as a math teacher at Dieruff High School in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I had been hired as a salaried substitute at Dieruff after having taken only one education class and not having taken a math class since my Senior year of high school (1997). My ego was, to put it mildly, gigantic.
I was accepted here at East Stroudsburg University, but my first year did little to deflate my ego. Sure, I discovered that I was not the math genius I had built myself up to be, but still I was able to get decent grades in Calculus I, II, Descreet Math, and Computer Science. Then I switched to the English program. As for my education courses, with the exception of Seminar I, they were all lecture based. I did very little teaching of my own and did not observe any teachers in the high school setting. So, coming into Teaching of English in Secondary Schools I was still pretty convinced that classes were a necessary evil if I was going to get my Master’s and my Certification, but that I did not have much to learn. The combination of the class, my observations, my own teaching experiences, and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writing Project Conference (NPWP) have opened my eyes to the fact that I lacked many of the skills necessary to be a great teacher. Further, this semester has made me much more aware of the fact that becoming a teacher and then growing as a teacher really is a process which will continue from this day until the day I retire.
Class Discussions and Web CT
When I came into class on the first day, the chairs were set up in a circle with the head of the circle, the chair reserved for the teacher pushed slightly back away from the other chairs. This is a set up which I have seen time and again, both at East Stroudsburg University as an English/education major and at Ithaca College as a Politics major. The chairs are set up in a circle, which gives the impression of all people in the classroom being equal, but in my experience it is usually the teacher, sitting slightly removed from the rest of the circle who dominates the conversation. Indeed, I have been in a number of classes where the room is set up like this, but the class itself is as much lecture as it is anything else. I was expecting more of the same here.
Dr. Stanovick came into the room, sat in the chair at the head of the circle, and passed out the syllabus. Pretty standard first day stuff. The plan, I assumed was to go over the syllabus and other course requirements, and then be told that class was going to end early tonight, but we should come having done the readings and be ready to discuss them next week.
I was wrong. After going over the course requirements Dr. Stanovick started a conversation about what assumptions we make in the classroom. However, once the conversation was up and running Dr. Stanovick moved her chair in. She did not try to run the conversation but rather listened, and took notes, and contributed in the same way as all of us. We got into the assumptions we make about ourselves in the classroom. That is, when we are talking and people are whispering, we assume that they are whispering about us. We talked about where these assumptions come from. I told the story of how horrible some of my experiences were when I was teaching in North Carolina and so that is where my assumptions come from.
I told the story the same way I have told it a thousand times before. It is dramatic to the listeners, but just words to me. I am on auto pilot. Then I was done, I was asked, whether by a student or by Dr. Stanovick I do not know, to examine the story I just told and see if that story gave me an excuse to make the assumption that whenever I was being observed and the person observing me is taking notes, or if there are two people observing me and they keep whispering to one another what they were say was both about me and bad. My immediate answer was that, no, I can not make that assumption.
That was my answer because I know that, “when you assume you make an ass out of you and me” that was my answer because that was the right answer, I assumed. The question did not go away and I found that over the next few weeks or months, whenever I was teaching either in front of high school class, one of the classes I teach at Northampton Community College, or in front of my peers I passed my thoughts about people talking in the back of the room not on memories but on my own analysis of how the lesson was going. Over time, I began to notice those observing me less and less and this gave me the ability to pay more attention to, and improve upon, my own teaching.
The assumption conversation was far from the only class discussion which had a powerful effect on me. Several weeks ago, as a result of a conversation which came out mine and my peers reaction to the story, Where Are You Going Where Have You Been, there was a discussion on whether or not we have the responsibility as English teachers to have our students read literature that deals with such sensitive topics as date rape.
This question caught me by surprise. I had thought that I could take the skills I had developed as a math teacher, modify them only slightly, and be fine as an English teacher. However, at no point as a math teacher had I needed to deal with such loaded topics as date rape. Dr. Stanovick had an opinion on the topic, but was certainly not saying that her opinion was any more valid then any of ours. As a result, I had to look deep inside myself to come up with an answer.
My initial reaction was to say that, no, literature like Where Are You Going Where Have You Been, should not be taught in a high school. After all, I thought, there are enough challenges I will face as a teacher without needing to deal with such sensitive issues. However, after much reflection and after reading what other people had to say in the Web CT discussion which followed the class, I completely changed my stand.
Now, I firmly believe that it is my duty as an English teacher to teach literature which may deal with date rape, or with prejudice, or with any of a number of other loaded issues. These are all issues which my students are aware of anyway. There is more then a fifty-fifty chance that some of my students will have been the victim of date rape. To avoid the topic, simply because it keeps my life simple, would be unfair to them. To weed out great literature because it may touch on tender topics would be horrible. After all, part of what makes great literature great is that it forces the reader to question and examine their own beliefs. Indeed, that is exactly what the discussion about this particular piece of literature had done to me. The reading and the discussion forced me to examine my own beliefs, and when that examination was done I came away with a conviction that I never would have had otherwise.
The Readings
When I examine the readings I did for this class I divide them into two different catergories. The first category is the articles we, the class, read in the first half of the semester. The second category is made up of the short stories which I read for the lessons my peers were teaching.
One of the first articles which was assigned came from Tijusimoto’s writing about how to teach poetry. I will admit that I did not expect much going into the reading. I figured it would be like so many of the other texts I had been assigned since starting in the education program at East Stroudsburg University. I figured the article would be theory written by some guy who had never set foot inside a high school or middle school classroom. In retrospect, it is more then a little bit embarrassing that I would made this assumption right on the heels of a conversation about how dangerous assumptions can be. Nonetheless, I made the assumption.
However, the article was not just boring theory. What grabbed my attention was that towards the middle of the reading there is a line which reads, “When I first heard that this
quarter we were going to do a poetry book, I nearly died. At that time, I had very little experience inreading, let alone writing, poetry. To me, poetry was a bunch of complex rhyming words, in a funny arrangement, that has some obscure meaning, written by a freelance weirdo.” Surely this is not a line written by someone who has not set foot in the classroom. As I continued reading I found that, in fact, the line had been written by a student. This article was an analysis of how so many of us view poetry. This article was pointing out that until we can overcome these views we can not hope to effectively teach poetry.
Here again, I found myself confronting an issue I had not given much thought to. I had assumed, there’s that word again, that I would go to school, get a list of books I would be teaching, and teach them. It never occurred to me that I might not be ready to teach all of the books. It never occurred to me that just because I have read a book and maybe read some criticism or analysis of the book does not mean I can teach it. This article was pointing out to me how important it was that I examine my own attitude on literature.
I thought immediately of Hemmingway. I had to read Hemmingway in high school and again in college, and I can not stand him. The more I thought about it, the more powerful was the realization that unless I examined what it was so many people found to be so wonderful about Hemmingway I would not be able to teach him in any kind of way that would interest my students.
The next day I was at the library looking at what literary critics had to say about the man. I am still not a big fan of books like The Old Man and the Sea, however, I am now able to understand how deep the symbolism in the book is, and how powerful it can be if given a chance.
The lesson I got from this article reaches well beyond Hemmingway. The lesson is that when I get or when I create a reading list, I need to examine what is on it and make sure I understand what is brilliant about the work. I need to make sure that I am capable of teaching my students how to read literature, and how to understand poetry, and how to write in a way that shows real depth rather then just mirroring my own opinion of the works.
Teaching and Identity Discourse was another article which shook up my vision of what a teacher should be. When I taught in Allentown, I wore a shirt and tie every day. My theory was that this is what I would wear if I was teaching at an Ivy League College and my students deserved that same respect. The problem was that I could not connect with my students. They lived in a world which ties were simply not a part of, so insteach of coming across as respectful of them I came across as someone who insists on making the point that he has more money then them. Still, I did not question what I was doing or the way I dressed. It took an article to point out that there is something to be said for being yourself in the classroom. This was a point which be driven home at the NPWP conference.
The second set of readings for the class came from the short stories which my peers taught. A great deal of what I got out of these stories came from observing the different ways people have of teaching literature. However, the readings themselves showed me how broad a spectrum of literature I can expect to teach. I read everything from Edgar Allen Poe, to Shirley Jackson, to Langston Hughes, and everything in between.
The idea of teaching such a wide range of pieces is truly exciting to me. Again, this is very different from math where you are always teaching the same material from year to the next. The readings assigned by my peers has opened my eyes up to just how much freedom and creativity there can be in the English classroom.
Teaching
Over the course of the semester I have had the opportunity to teach in a couple of different settings. One was in front of the Teaching of English class. This opportunity was one which afforded me the opportunity to experiment with different forms of medium. The other teaching experience I had was that I taught a course in creative writing at Northampton Community College. This course gave me the opportunity to put into practice much of what I was learning in the Teaching of English in Secondary Schools class.
The assignment in Teaching of English was to teach a lesson which incorporated some text or work of art other then just the short story which your lesson focused on. This was not something I had seen done before. When I was in high school I can remember Mr Forker my Freshman year and Sopamore years, Mrs. Flindt my Junior year, and Mr. Breslin my Senior year staning in front of the class lecturing day after day. The idea that they could incorporate music or art work into their lessons never occurred to them, and it had never occurred to me either.
The moment I got the assignment I was excited. I love literature and I love music, the idea that I could combine them in the classroom was, and still is, a thrilling prospect. I knew right away what author I wanted my story to come from, Anton Chekov. The reason for this is that I am a fan of Russian literature and while Dostoievski has written no shortage of brilliant short stories, for a more manageable reading, I think Chekov is the way to go.
The question then was, what story. I settled on Old Age and the theme of death or spirituality. The story suggests, at least to me, that there is nothing after death, so I needed a song which reinforced that point. My original thought was to go with James Taylor’s Gaia. In the song he talks about being an atheist. Then, the more I thought about it, the less I wanted a song which said the exact same thing as the story. After listening to many different artists, each with their own take on spirituality and death, I settled on PM Dawn’s Patient Eyes.
Without knowing anything about the band the listener can pick up on some of the spiritual overtones of the song, but it is not real clear just where the band is coming from. After we discussed the story, I had the other students in the class read the lyrics to the song and discuss similarities and differences between what they thought the song was saying and the story. The conversation showed them that their were many possible interpretations of both the short story and of the song and that all of the interpretations were valid.
Then, I played the video of the song for them. The video makes it clear that the members of the band are Christian and that they meant the song to call up images from the Bible. This led to a brief conversation about whether or not the artists interpretation should carry more weight then the reader’s or the listener’s interpretation. It is not a conversation which would have been possible if the only artwork used was the text itself. Coming out of the lesson, I was even more excited about the prospect of using music in my classroom.
The creative writing class, which was billed in the Northampton Community College catalog as an Introduction to Fiction Writing class, started before the semester started at East Stroudsburg University. This being the case, I went in thinking that I could just teach it in much the same way as I had taught math.
On the first day of class, I had the students do a guided freewrite on why they were taking the class. After that, I did exactly what Mr. Forker and Mr. Breslin had done when I was in school. That is, I stood at the board and lectured about how different authors used different techniques to write an introduction or to develop interesting characters. It was a creative writing class, but my teaching style did nothing if not stifle creativity.
The sad truth is that I probably would have spent the entire semester teaching this way had I not been in Teaching of English. Over the course of the semester I started to have the students discuss what they were reading. I had them compare different styles and then do some of their own writing implementing what they liked. Then, I had them experiment with writing different endings or adding characters to stories they did not like.
In the end, the class did not have as much direction as I would have liked, but I was able to break away from the method of teaching which had turned my off to literature for so long. I think that as a result of my allowing my students to take some ownership not only of their writing but also of the class gave them more courage to experiment with their writing.
I have been asked to come back and teach the same class next Fall and am excited to design a course which incorporates the ideas and lessons I have taken from Teaching of English.
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