The Final Blog Prompt: reaching the ever expanding frontier of ELA
Well, if we haven’t gotten it yet, I don’t think we ever will. Doering et al. and Miller very nicely sum up the point that P. Stearns has been making all semester: the ELA classroom must be a multimodal classroom. There are many different ways to achieve this, from making digital stories to creating wikis, but the song remains the same. Our students live in the 21st century and so must we. Alas…but wherefore can we study the classics? Well, we still can. Take Miller’s example of digital poetry movies. There is still an opportunity to expose students to our favorite poems, but instead of simply reading and analyzing them, line by line, we can help our students to create and design works of their own using the poetry as inspiration. Isn’t this what artists and poets do in the real world? Unless all of all students are going to be literary critics (as if there aren’t enough already), we need to provide them with relevant tasks that people actually do in the real world. Perhaps this should be the litmus test for everything we teach in the classroom: is this a relevant task, or just “school work”? If the latter, junk the assignment. There are plenty of wonderful assignments to give, as outlined in the Doering et al. and Miller articles: assignemnts like mini-media ethnographies and digital narratives which have some real purpose to them. Within the context of these assignments, we will find that not only are students more interested in school, but that we can still teach much of what we love about English: irony, tragedy, comedy, theme, symbolism, story arc, etc.. Just because we work in a multimodal framework doesn’t change the fact that we are still primarily concerned with the telling of and interpretation of texts. I happen to love the classics, particularly because of their universal human themes. But these themes exist inside of all authentic literature. Even in the literature that our students create when they make digital stories about their own lives. I don’t know how many times I’ve told my students to tell the truth, but tell it “slant” like Emily Dickinson. Don’t always go for the most obvious choice. Make us think a little. Right now my students are making music videos, and I’ve been able to teach them the difference between denotation and connotation in the context of images. There are so many ways to incorporate what we’ve learned this semester into our daily teaching practices. We just need the courage to wade out into some potentially cold water, which at first might be shocking and uncomfortable, but will be so refreshing once we get used to it.
Jonathan
I agree, Jon. Years and years ago I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t continue to teach high school English if the courses I taught were focused on “school” work.
Long before it was popular to think this way for most teachers (I guess) I was determined to create an authentic literacy learning environment with my students.
If the work didn’t “count” in the real world, I wasn’t interested in kids doing it.
I know that those crucible-like years when I was evolving into a constructivist and in most ways a radical teacher form the template for the professor you have in 506.
The insistent voice that school work must be real work has just gotten louder in my head.
Last night I had a discouraging conv. with a great student teacher who is finishing up a high school placement in a relatively rural district. The kids are reading (or mostly not) Gatsby.
They’ve pretty much refused to read it…another light bulb moment for me. This is a pretty short book–possible for even a disaffected reader to manage with not that much effort.
But the kids aren’t reading it.
And this is a highly charged student teacher who has done everything she can to “make it interesting and relevant.”
When I think of what you say here about texts/classics, and how much we love them, I think of those kids in this high school and what we do when our love of texts meets their resistance.
I’m not sure making videos of Gatsby or wikis about Gatsby or podcasts about Gatsby is going to make much difference here either.
Ok, SO, what do we do???? I’d like to talk about this tonight for a bit if we have the chance. KES
Your post hits on so many of the key points that we’ve explored this semester, but, as Karen probes in her comment here, in many cases, we still have to scratch our heads and ask just what DO we do in some situations, even if we have the ideology and perspective in check in regard to what it means to have a multimodal, multiliterate classroom. Just looking at the Gatsby scenario here, I do think that there are no easy answers to that problem. Can we ask the question, ‘do we teach Gatsby anymore? why do we teach Gatsby anyway?’ I know many of us ended up in this field of work because of our love of the classics, but is this something we have to do for our students in order to “do” English? 506 certainly has shaken this idea up for me quite a bit and, as I approach student teaching, knowing I’ll probably be teaching those Gatsbys and Mice and Men and such, I’m really interested in our discussion of the question of what we might do to inspire student interest.
Jon, it has been a joy watching your students grow via your work on the blog and class discussions, because they certainly have seemed to blossom as you’ve explored new concepts (and of course, your taking time to do something you’re passionate about, creating music)!
Amanda