A history of the United States through American Literature

Since I have nothing better to do (well, I could study for my Praxis, but I REALLY don't want to) I've been mulling about a hypothetical high school course that would teach American History through American Literature.

What I would ideally like to do is use a variety of texts, be it novels, short stories, poems, non-fiction pieces and speeches to guide students through American history. I would also really like to highlight how diverse this country is, and as difficult as it may be, not have text after text from a white man. Here's what I've got so far, with a brief explanation of why I chose them.

Pre-Revolutionary War
Select Puritan Speeches, namely "A Model of Christian Charity"

This speech is where the phrase "A City on a hill" comes from, and since that phrase is still used today in reference to what America aspires to be (or should), its still relevant. Puritan speeches could shed light on why the Puritans came over to the New World and what life was like here.

"Wordy Shipmates" by Sarah Vowell.

I read this book a few years ago for a class and I loved it. Vowell does an excellent job of combining history with a witty writing style and connecting it to contemporary culture. I'd also love to use "Unfamiliar Fishes" in regards to the annexation of Hawaii, though I don't know if it would fit into a school year. Obviously, Unfamiliar Fishes comes later in American History, but seriously...Sarah Vowell is a good read.

Revolutionary War:
"Common Sense" Thomas Payne
"The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" Benjamin Franklin
"The Declaration of Independence".

The most frustrating thing about Franklin's autobiography is that right about the time he gets to talking about forming a new country, he stops writing (perhaps stopped would be the more operative word). Still, it gives a good sense of life in colonial times. Common Sense is possibly the most famous piece of political literature in American history, and well, why not study the Declaration of Independence.

The 1800s, pre-Civil War

This is the realm of the Transcendentalists. I just took 19th Century American Lit, so I'm sort of full of these ideas at the moment. Emmerson and Thoreau are the biggest names. I think it would be necessary to include the writings of Margaret Fuller. For a longer text, students might read "The Narrative of Frederick Douglass".

This is also a time for Western expansion. A friend suggested to me "The Journals of Lewis and Clark", of which I think I may use portions. It is, after all, a very, very long text.

The Civil War

Here's where I think it might be interesting to do something unique. "Life on the Mississippi" by Mark Twain (another book I just read) sort of skips over the Civil War, but its impact is all over the second half of the book. One passage in particular discusses the difference between the war for the North and the war from the South, with the person talking to Twain saying that in the North, few families were affected, while in the South nearly everyone was.

Of course, from a speech perspective, this would include "The Gettysburg Address" by Abraham Lincoln.

Post Civil War:

I really do enjoy "My Antonia" by Willa Carther. Twain discusses the impact of the war on the South. Carther's novel looks at pioneers.

Early 20th Century

"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. This book takes a look at the lives of immigrants in the early 20th Century. So, let's play a fun game of contrasting with...

"The Great Gatsby" F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Of Mice and Men" John Steinbeck
OR
"Grapes of Wrath" John Steinbeck

America is nothing if it does not have a wide variety of social classes. From the lives of immigrants to the insanely wealthy to Depression era farmers and ranch hands, these novels all explore the idea of the "American Dream" and what it means to different people.

Also, we need Steinbeck.

Since I feel that I'll be teaching in Montana, I thought a regional book or two might be nice. "Legends of the Fall" is a good novella focused around World War 1 and dabbles in Prohibition.

This is sort of where I run out of steam, so to speak. I'm not as familiar with the late 20th Century as I perhaps should be, but I did come up with some things...

World War 2:

"Flags of Our Fathers" James Bradley. This is an account of the flag raising in Iwo Jima. I sometimes felt in my history class taking days (its been awhile since then) that the Pacific Theater was somewhat overlooked. I'd also include FDR's address to the nation following the events at Pearl Harbor. Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" speech may make an appearance as well.

The Cold War:
"Cat's Cradle" Kurt Vonnegut.

This may be out of a desire to teach Vonnegut, but not thinking I can get away with "Slaughter-House Five". "Cat's Cradle" satirizes the arms race. If I wanted to include a film element to this course, "Dr. Strangelove" might make an appearance as well.

As for speeches that would speak to the how high the stakes were, I'd include JFK's "We Choose to Go to the Moon" and Reagan's "Tear Down this Wall" speeches.

Civil Rights
The tricky thing about this course is that American history often has many big things happening at once. During the Space Race, of course, comes the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech is sure to be in here, as is his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". If I was feeling daring, I might do Malcom X's autobiography.

The 1970s:
"Winter in the Blood" by James Welch. Another Montana book, looks at life on a northern Montana ranch in the 1970s.

Contemporary America:

"Arabian Jazz" Diana Abu-Jaber. As I said, I want to showcase the diversity of America (though I feel this list falls well short of that) and I felt this book could be an interesting way to do that. It focuses on the lives of an Arabic immigrant family in a small New York community. 

Along these lines of diversity, I think it would be interesting to look at Barak Obama's address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. 

The future:

"The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman 

Look, I don't necessarily know if this fits, but this book is kind of fascinating. It sets out to do exactly what the title says. It is grounded somewhat in history, but from a reading for comprehension stand-point, this book might be worth a look. "What does Friedman say about X....Why?" 

I've asked for help on Facebook with this and I'm hoping people can fill in the gaps here. Help me make this list more complete (especially as we get closer to the present) and more diverse. I have African-American, Native American, and Arab-American authors on here, but I know there is much that I missed. 

For the most part, this is a hypothetical exercise, though maybe someday, I'll cobble it together and teach it. As you may have gathered, not all of these books focus on an event, but are rather a slice of life narrative about living in American society at one time or another. 

I turn it over to you on what I have missed.
 

Observing at Harrison

Since I have to do journals (whatever that entails) for my student teaching experience, I thought I might get this blog back up and running and do it here. Perhaps this will reach through the ethos and some kindly teachers will give me sage words of advice.

Or maybe two people will read it. I don't know.

I've been placed at Harrison High School, which is 50 miles away. Its a bit of a drive, but I think I can manage. A lot of my classmates are in town, but I really think that this placement is going to suit me well. I think it may be outstanding.

Harrison is a small school. The freshman and sophomore classes have five students each. There's one English teacher, whom I will be teaching with. While some of my friends have seventh graders at Belgrade Middle or sophomores at Bozeman High, I will be getting everything. I think this will be a great experience. I'll lesson plan for different classes, teach each grade and ability level, and get a lot out of it. There's talk of me helping out with their media production a bit, which I'm excited about. I did just write a capstone research paper on that topic!

The staff that I met were very welcoming. This started with the cook who asked if I needed assistance. I didn't know what the roads would be like, so I ended up arriving at school a good hour before classes started. I met with some of the front office staff, my mentor teacher (of course) and a few of the high school staff. All were kind and welcoming, and I look forward to working with them.

I did not get to talk to the students very much today, but they seemed like a great bunch and I think they'll be receptive to me coming in. I hope so anyways. The classes I observed seemed energetic and engaged, so I'm excited about going into that situation as well.

I have a plan for the next semester. I'll go back to the school on January 6 and go from there. Two weeks in, I should be ready to start with the Freshman and then add to my workload from there. It is sure to be a busy 14 weeks, one that will be long and yet somehow over before it started as well.

My mentor teacher has said I'll have free reign in teaching, which may be I get to realize my lifelong dream (slight sarcasm) of teaching "Animal Farm". I do get to teach the Odyssey, which I am excited about. When I get the Juniors, I'll be doing a research unit. Since I'm a research geek, I'm ready to go on that front. Since there is one English teacher, I'll do it all: lit, writing, grammar, the whole shebang. I know it will be challenging, but it's a challenge that I'm excited to undertake.

As I drove home today, I felt a bit calmer about going in to the situation. I know I don't have all the answers, and will undoubtedly make mistakes in this 14 weeks. But, I also feel confident to work with the students and help them along their English careers.

I notice that when I talk about not just student teaching, but my future career as well, that I use the word "fun" a lot. "It would be fun to do this..." for example. This isn't to suggest that I take it lightly. Rather, I truly believe that learning should be fun. I think I should have fun teaching. I know it's hard work, I know it will be at times frustrating work, but I also think it's going to be a lot of fun too.

I can't wait for January 6.

Why I soured on NaNoWriMo

I used to love National Novel Writing Month. I've done it three times, even "winning" twice. The first time I did the event, I was in between jobs and the task of writing every day helped me stay as positive as I could. Those that were around me at the time might wonder (correctly) how I was "positive", but it is what it is.

For those that don't know, the purpose of National Novel Writing Month is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. The aim of this goal is kind of noble. How many people want to write, but don't? The event makes you carve out time for writing, makes you sit down and write. Even if it is "crap", you're writing. As someone who enjoys writing, I know that a lot of what I write is crap, whether or not it's part of a marathon sprint.

I enjoy the idea of National Novel Writing Month, but I also know what it has done to me as a writer. As someone who would like to get published someday, I decided to use National Novel Writing Month as  way to get a few ideas started. Both were fantasy novels.

Both are terrible.

I've gone back and read them and hate it. It's the worst stuff I've ever written. There's no thought to the writing. It's just getting words on a page so that I can say I accomplished a goal. While I don't use the "dirty tricks" to get there (I've seen things such as including a characters full name and occupation every time they speak, or just adding needless dialogue), it was still fairly rubbish. I suppose that could be expected for a first draft, but here's the thing.

I ended up hating my characters, my stories, everything. Hated it. Didn't want to look at it. The stories weren't finished at 50,000 words. I went back to continue on writing, but I could not do it. I just hated it to much. I grew sick of the story. Returning to these places that I created became a chore. 

When I first did National Novel Writing Month, I was beginning to flirt with the idea of becoming a teacher. I thought to myself, "wouldn't this be an awesome extra credit assignment? They could get a point for every thousand words they write!" And now, I think "what a better way to turn students off from writing". I will want my students to write, I will want them to engage with their creative side, but I want them to do it in a way that is productive and beneficial. 

I should note that this is my personal experience. But, I do wonder how many of the winners of National Novel Writing Month have similar ones? How many say, "well, that was terrible and I won't do it again". Those that win, but use dirty tricks to get there, do they feel as if they've accomplished something? Do they feel that they are Writers (as opposed to writers, who merely put words on a page, Writers are something more)? 

I came across this article from Salon about National Novel Writing Month. Ironically, I got it from a NaNoWriMo group on Facebook, where it was labeled as "anti-NaNoWriMo drek" . The premise of the article was basically that participants aren't writing anything good (again, stated goal of the event) are ignoring what it takes to be a good writer (reading....and lots of reading), and so if they aren't going to take the writing process seriously, than what is the point? The writing process is NOT just sitting down and writing. It is not just bulldozing your way to the end of your task. The writing process is something that takes time, concerted effort, and a lot of thinking and reflection. I fear that for many of National Novel Writing Month participants, they cut out all of that and just write.

For anyone that comes across this and is ready to blast me for hating on people who create, I am not doing that at all. By all means, write! Create! As one of the commenters on the Facebook post said, "write what you want, when you want". If you feel that you have a story inside of you, than by all means get it out. But, take the story seriously. Take your own creation seriously. Coax it out of yourself, give it lots of thought, develop your characters and your world. Do research to make it more real. Reflect on your story, where it has been and where it is going. Can you do this in one month? Possibly. And yes, I know the saying "write in November, edit in December". But, if you're rushing through the writing part of the writing process, are you really going to give the rest of the process the attention it needs?

Happy writing to you all. I think I'll go visit some of my own characters myself.

My final project

I can't remember all the questions I was supposed to answer in this, but here's hoping I'm comprehensive enough to answer them without realizing it! Here is the plan:

I am going to design a unit plan that will focus on language as identity. Doing a very basic google search turned up this: http://www.ncsu.edu/linguistics/filsoncurriculum.php To quote Andy Dwyer, "Awesomesauce!" Obviously there will be more poking around, find out what's being taught and what I would want to do.

I want this unit to get high school students thinking about language and how it is used. Some of the things we've done in this class could be brought into a high school setting. I think looking at pieces of dialect literature would be able to help students get an idea of how language is a part of an identity. By looking at these pieces of literature, the students could infer where the author (or speaker) is from, their race, possibly their social class. I think there could be some writing involved. I really enjoyed the activity we did in class earlier this year about writing in a dialectal style. I think that's something students could do at the high school level. It may be a formative assessment to see if students are getting the idea that 1) dialects have rules and 2) dialects can relate to identity.

I was also thinking of having the students look at their own language. Take note of what they say to their peers, to their parents, to other authority figures, and see if there are differences.

Because I like the idea of having a companion novel, I was thinking I'd teach Huckleberry Finn. In a different unit I'm designing, I am reading the novel first and then taking a look at some of it's themes in the following week. I'm thinking a similar format might come into play here, where the class would read Huckleberry Finn, paying attention to how language is used as an identity, and then over the next week or so having them explore that idea more in depth.

I've chosen this topic because I think that it is something that not a lot of people think about. We use different language in different situations without thinking about it. I feel it might be interesting to high school students to take a look at this phenomenon. It would give them an idea of how powerful language can be. I think this could also very easily tie into the question that some others are wrestling with of "how do you accept dialects while teaching Standard English?"

There are several different ways to go with a unit like this, but I was thinking of focusing more on how language can define race and class. If students wanted, they could focus on how language defines other aspects of their life such as gender, age, or social group.

It was suggested in my group that a website might be an interesting way to format this project. I think it could be an interesting way to put the information out there, but I'm not sure if it's the direction I'll take. Perhaps it will depend on how quickly the research goes!

Your feedback in the comments is always appreciated. I'll do my best to reply.

Write me a letter
And post it on my refrigerator door,

Alan

Thoughts on discussions

A few things that I noticed during the class discussions:

~ There was a lot of "half-thoughts". A student would say something and then trail off a bit at times. Perhaps through their actions they conveyed their point, or were only wanting the teacher to realize what their point was, and once it was established that they had gotten their point across, they'd stop talking.

~It happened on a couple occasions, but I enjoyed when teachers would add in something that had nothing to do with the discussion, such as "did everyone sign the reading list. I wonder if there was a point to throwing in this bit of class business in the middle of the discussion. Maybe to get the attention of people drifting off or maybe to make sure those that are really engaged don't forget to do something simple and not get credit (that has happened to me).

~I think you could really tell when a teacher had a goal and when they didn't. Teachers could really steer the conversation to where they wanted it to go, but at other times teachers were just content to let the class figure things out. Something that I've started to notice my professors saying is "I'm not looking for one answer", to help keep the conversation going and encourage more participation.

~I felt that the high school transcripts displayed a lot more familiarity with one another than the few college transcripts we had. Students and teachers knew each other better in the HS setting and it showed. I thought the conversations flowed better there than they did at the college level.

What I want from discussions:

I want discussions in my classroom to be a way for students to learn. There are days that I like to just sit back and listen to what fellow students are saying so that I can get a handle on their thoughts. It can help me analyze a text better, for example. So I want my students to feel that they can learn in these discussions. I want to explore the issues in literature that we've read and help students make sense of it.

Now, how does one make sure that discussion is worthwhile? I think developing that report, getting students comfortable with talking in class is essential. It takes time, I would not expect great discussions right off the bat, but I think that as students get more comfortable in the class than they'll be more likely to take part. From that discussion would come the generation of ideas, and that becomes part of the learning process. I think it would be important to guide conversation when necessary, but other times let things ride. Knowing when to do which is probably a skill honed over the course of several school years, but I think its an important one to develop so that students get the most education out of class discussions.

CCR (ENGL 338)

So, what does it it mean to be "College and Career Ready"? It seems like it should be such a simple definition. As teachers we must make sure that our students are ready for their next step in life, whether it be going off to college or entering the workforce. This doesn't sound as much of a common core requirement as much as it does a job description for teachers, so in reality it must be a bit more complex than this.

The trouble that I have with this requirement is that it makes it seem as if our students will know for sure what they want to do with their lives after high school. I, for one, am getting my second degree and working towards my second career. Who is to say that our example student in class today, who is going to be a mechanic and work at Jiffy Lube for his career doesn't have a change of heart later on and decides to pursue something else, possibly higher education. If we only focus on making him career ready, have we not robbed him of the skills or confidence he needs to make a change? Yes, we will develop relationships with students and their families and maybe everyone thinks that this student needs to only be so proficient in something, but I think this definition of "College and Career Ready" opens the door to short-changing some students by not believing that they will or want to go onto careers that require a high level of literacy.

For my Assessments class, we listened to an episode of "This American Life" that talked about how students learn and succeed. One of the things that I took away from it was that there are several "non-cognitive" skills that factor into a students' success. As they say in the program, we consider a student who passes their GED to be on par with a high school graduate intellectually, but students who get their GED's tend to not find much success. It becomes apparent that there is something other than getting the right answer that factors into someone being "college and career ready".

I think getting students "college and career ready" must be more than simple academics. I think it might be related to pushing students to be their best, to challenge them. It might be to help them develop these "non-cognitive" skills that will help them succeed later in life.

My writing fear

National Novel Writing Month is coming up in 19 days and I'm debating whether or not to take part in it. This really shouldn't be a debate. I'm taking 18 credits, 3 lit classes and have more to read and write than I could possibly ever want to do. But, I really, really, really love writing so there is that.

("But you can write on your own time whenever!"someone is surely saying. To which I say, "shush")

Quite possibly the only thing that is keeping me from fully committing is that I don't know what I want to write about. My previous two successful attempts had a game plan (of sorts....as close to planning as I get. Outlines are for suckers!) I knew what story I wanted to tell, the themes that I wanted to convey, and then I let things take over from there. I have three half-baked ideas for my next attempt to half-write the Great American Novel.

1. An urban fantasy story which combines a wee bit o' string theory in with the land of Faerie.

2. A fictional account of a person who grows up in a country that has recently seceded from the United States, paralleling their experiences growing up with the new country gaining its footing in the world.

3. A revival of my lone failed attempt at NaNoWriMo in which a small town bartender learns the value of working in his community, and to not overlook it just because its small.(He ends up becoming a teacher, for the record)

And here's the thing: those brief notes are about as detailed as these stories are right now. They aren't anything more in depth than that. #2 may be the most thought out of the bunch, honestly.

My fear, which I suppose is shared by a lot of writers, is that these ideas will never be more than ideas. I rarely get fixate on the right word or sentence in a story, but I will lie awake at night trying to coax the other half of these ideas into existence to make the story whole. There are these ideas that get inside your head and for whatever reason they stay there. They won't go away. (and if you ever see me scribbling furiously in a notebook during class, chances are I'm working on one...I never was much of a note taker) For me, it is a fear that these ideas that stick in my head won't flush themselves out.

Maybe these ideas need to be written down to achieve that. Maybe I need my fantasy troop to go out and find Higgs Boson to figure out why this idea has any significance. I don't know if it is just a matter of sitting down and seeing where the story takes me. Perhaps the reason why my last two stories aren't completed is because I had the end in sight. Maybe I need to start from the beginning and just write till these stories finish themselves. That may be the only way I ensure these characters don't die inside my mind.

Maybe I need to stop saying "maybe".

I'll keep you posted.

If he's not here, than where...

Alan