Our high school has a mandated summer reading policy for its students. Freshmen and sophomores, no matter the track, read one title. Juniors and seniors, no matter the track, read the other title.
The summer reading texts this year asked my sophomore students to read Breaking Through by Jiminez and senior students to read Ceremony by Silko. Each text was selected to be one part of an annual task to increase understanding of diversity among the Taylor student body, due to our lack of racial diversity. This year, the target geographic area on which to focus is The Americas; the Jiminez text looks at the experiences of a male adolescent migrant farm worker, and the Silko text moves the native American narrative to the 20th century by looking at the effects of war on an individual who lives outside the white mainstream culture.
What is “culture” about to students did I will teach? Hall (2003)says,
Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and be learned at so early an age, that they appear not to be constructed--- the effect of an articulation between sign and referent – but to be ‘naturally’ given (p. 511).
What, then, was the effect of mandated summer reading on my upcoming students? Did they marvel at the ways that other adolescents or young adults negotiate their lives? Did they scrutinize how society affected Others differently because they were not of the white mainstream? Did striking social-economic differences emerge within coming of age events and prevent my students from appreciating the universality of shared experience?
The students I teach are imbued, as a general rule, with high self-esteem. About 2 percent each year so far have been part of families who receive state or federal assistance in the form of reduced or free lunch, Medicare, or public assisted housing. Thus, most of their experiences have not rested with the need to help support the family financially, as did the protagonist in Breaking Through. They have not been asked to acknowledge that their race implies secondary status as an American citizen. They have been surrounded by the discourse of war, however, and yet their impressions seem to rest, largely, on a patriotic sense of protecting their loved ones. How do they react to a narrative where the protagonist is tortured by the memories of death and pain he saw when a soldier in World War I?
Summer reading lessons take significant prior knowledge building to help students to know their worlds beyond that of the immediate and of personal experience. It requires allowing students to articulate their own definitions as well as to slowly help them to tear away what those definitions might imply for their social interactions as adults in the next few years.
Summer reading can inspire moments of explosion, and they are necessary moments to grow as readers, thinkers, and learners. Unfortunately, in my school district, summer reading was a farce, known to all students and most faculty. A core of us --- teachers and students both --- read and took notes and came ready to the first day of school to be learners. The remainder remembered that previous journals had not been graded; that many teachers were not familiar with the texts; that new students emerged who had not read.
Additionally, there was a significant lack of prior knowledge building: were the teachers and students to focus on the America we know, or were we to extend to other parts of the Americas, like the Canadian provinces or Mexican states or independent native American nations?
Summer reading was a farce. Journals were collected, and data was compiled as to how many total students read. Teachers were not surveyed anonymously as to their participation or vision. A core group of professional status teachers spoke up and asked for change.
What will 2008-2009 summer reading look like? Most likely, it will be more of the same, for Taylor schools are emblematic of the difficulties in schools across America. Change costs money. Teacher need to be paid to prepare new texts. Authors need to be reimbursed for site visits. Families who can’t afford books need to have scholarships.
And a vison as to what summer reading should accomplish --- whether within the mandates of diversity or outside --- need to be precisely delineated so that all participants know real expectations for learning and performance.
Hall, S. (2003). Encoding and decoding. In S. During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (pp. 507-517). New York: Routledge.
The summer reading texts this year asked my sophomore students to read Breaking Through by Jiminez and senior students to read Ceremony by Silko. Each text was selected to be one part of an annual task to increase understanding of diversity among the Taylor student body, due to our lack of racial diversity. This year, the target geographic area on which to focus is The Americas; the Jiminez text looks at the experiences of a male adolescent migrant farm worker, and the Silko text moves the native American narrative to the 20th century by looking at the effects of war on an individual who lives outside the white mainstream culture.
What is “culture” about to students did I will teach? Hall (2003)says,
Certain codes may, of course, be so widely distributed in a specific language community or culture, and be learned at so early an age, that they appear not to be constructed--- the effect of an articulation between sign and referent – but to be ‘naturally’ given (p. 511).
What, then, was the effect of mandated summer reading on my upcoming students? Did they marvel at the ways that other adolescents or young adults negotiate their lives? Did they scrutinize how society affected Others differently because they were not of the white mainstream? Did striking social-economic differences emerge within coming of age events and prevent my students from appreciating the universality of shared experience?
The students I teach are imbued, as a general rule, with high self-esteem. About 2 percent each year so far have been part of families who receive state or federal assistance in the form of reduced or free lunch, Medicare, or public assisted housing. Thus, most of their experiences have not rested with the need to help support the family financially, as did the protagonist in Breaking Through. They have not been asked to acknowledge that their race implies secondary status as an American citizen. They have been surrounded by the discourse of war, however, and yet their impressions seem to rest, largely, on a patriotic sense of protecting their loved ones. How do they react to a narrative where the protagonist is tortured by the memories of death and pain he saw when a soldier in World War I?
Summer reading lessons take significant prior knowledge building to help students to know their worlds beyond that of the immediate and of personal experience. It requires allowing students to articulate their own definitions as well as to slowly help them to tear away what those definitions might imply for their social interactions as adults in the next few years.
Summer reading can inspire moments of explosion, and they are necessary moments to grow as readers, thinkers, and learners. Unfortunately, in my school district, summer reading was a farce, known to all students and most faculty. A core of us --- teachers and students both --- read and took notes and came ready to the first day of school to be learners. The remainder remembered that previous journals had not been graded; that many teachers were not familiar with the texts; that new students emerged who had not read.
Additionally, there was a significant lack of prior knowledge building: were the teachers and students to focus on the America we know, or were we to extend to other parts of the Americas, like the Canadian provinces or Mexican states or independent native American nations?
Summer reading was a farce. Journals were collected, and data was compiled as to how many total students read. Teachers were not surveyed anonymously as to their participation or vision. A core group of professional status teachers spoke up and asked for change.
What will 2008-2009 summer reading look like? Most likely, it will be more of the same, for Taylor schools are emblematic of the difficulties in schools across America. Change costs money. Teacher need to be paid to prepare new texts. Authors need to be reimbursed for site visits. Families who can’t afford books need to have scholarships.
And a vison as to what summer reading should accomplish --- whether within the mandates of diversity or outside --- need to be precisely delineated so that all participants know real expectations for learning and performance.
Hall, S. (2003). Encoding and decoding. In S. During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (pp. 507-517). New York: Routledge.
1 comment:
You stated that, "The students I teach are imbued, as a general rule, with high self-esteem." I disagree strongly with your sentiment and urge you to reconsider that thought. It is the very rare teen that has high self-esteem. Indeed, those that appear to be confident, self-aware, and content with themselves are often projecting such a facade in order to cope with their lack of self-esteem and survive amongst their peers. Teens today are overwhelmed with imagery that reinforces the notion that they are not as good, as pretty, as handsome, as rich, as badass, or as cool as their peers. And they fail to comprehend that they are all in the same boat! As educators it is important that we assume that teens are struggling with their confidence and their self-image and help them construct a personal foundation that will support them for life.
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