Alien Pedagogy

At my school, we have a staff book club. We’re now entering our third year and I’m in charge. Here’s what’s happening.

Starting the Club:

We sent out a staff-wide email inviting anyone to join. After that, our email list consisted of those who responded. We expanded the club through word of mouth.

How We Meet:

We meet twice a month — both times before school starts. At one meeting, we discuss our “free” novels — whatever we happen to be reading. At the second, we discuss our book club selection.

Every member is responsible for getting a copy of the text. Two or three people can share, or everyone can buy a copy.

Selection Guidelines:

• Length — no more than 400 pages generally.
• The focus on selection should be community enjoyment more than “I think very few people will actually like this but everyone should be reading more obscure science fiction.”
• Everyone in the club should get to choose one text to be read during the year.

Popular Selections We’ve Read:

• Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
• Haruki Murakami’s After Dark
• Alan Moore’s The Watchmen
• Tim Winton’s Breath
• Schlink’s The Reader

Unpopular Selections:

• Enright’s The Gathering *
• Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem
• Ian Fleming’s James Bond books **

Benefits:

I strongly believe in modeling reading and an enjoyment of reading for students. Having a staff book club shows that adults do form communities based around literature. We often put in extra copies of our selections into our classroom libraries and then say “oh the staff book club read that last month — it’s really good, though Mr. X didn’t like it.”

You’re exposed to literature that you might not have read otherwise.

I think it’s always a good idea to have systems that allow staff to meet each other. It makes it easier to collaborate.

***

*Although we unanimously loathed The Gathering, it was a fun meeting explaining why we found it so difficult to read.

**Each of us chose a different Bond novel. It was my idea, and I still think it had potential. Quantum of Solace was released that month.

I’m taking over three courses this year from another teacher. Her files are all saved on our community hard drive — there are many. Not that I’m pulling out my hair, but my life would be easier if the file names had clearer titles.

In addition to using file folders, my files are named according to this system:

Course  Unit  Task  Purpose.

Example:

• EHS Epic Essay Assignment
• ENG Poetry Notes GO*
• ELA Unit Test
• EAP Irony PPt**

This also allows me to use finder search instead of digging through file folders.

One thing that I recommend people do with their files is sort them into years first.

*GO is short for graphic organizer.

** PPT is Power Point.

Last year, I led a PLN session for my colleagues. It was not a mandatory meeting. Only a few people showed up. Here’s an update.

At first, I was a little disappointed because it didn’t seem like any of the staff were using their feeders to read educational blogs. However, at the start of the year, I passed on Scott Mcleod’s Push series and educational blogs are now in their feeders.

On top of this, our environmental science teacher is using social bookmarking and RSS feeds to bring current events into his classroom.

It’s a good feeling.

It seems like I’m always thinking of ways to make groups in the class.

In Honors English, we’re discussing how meaning can be found in the text according to: author, reader, text, and context. So students were grouped according to these categories today.

In grade 11 English, we’re discussing archetypes, so students were grouped according to the archetypes we found in Native American literature.

I’ve begun to count my books based on school years. These books may not have been published in 2008 / 2009, but they were read during that time. I recommend them all.

• Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council — The Bas Lag trilogy by China Mieville. Mieville seems to be changing the rules of fantasy / sci fi. While his prose and diction sometimes disappoint, he dares to do what no one else appears to be doing now in speculative fiction.
• Breath by Tim Winton. A very literate approach to surfing and why we drive ourselves to extreme limits.
• The Things They Carried and Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. I read these for the staff book club and my AP training. O’Brien is a fantastic writer. His voice carries a direct authenticity that few writers seem capable of.
• Microserfs by Douglas Coupland — Though written in 1993, Coupland’s depiction of software culture continues to be relevant.
• Whites by Norman Rush — I’m not a big fan of short story collections, but Rush does well in this short set. His novel Mating — which is also set in Botswana — is also highly recommended.

In all, I finished about sixty works. Many were good, but these were the best.