Alien Pedagogy

Since my last expansion of the classroom library, I’ve had about 30 – 40 books signed out regularly and a higher turnover than usual.

Even better, I’ve had two reluctant readers come to me this week speaking about how greatly they’re enjoying their books.

Top of the pops:

• Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
• Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.
• Of course the Twilight series.

This week, the grade 9s started blogging in order to explore their relationship with the text.

There have been some very strong posts, the best of which was a commentary in which the student compared her response to The Little Prince as a 15 year old compared to when she read it as an 11 year old.

Having read the first round of blogs, some students don’t understand the difference between exploring one’s relationship with the text and writing a book report (in this case, a book report is quick summary followed by a “I would recommend this to…” statement).

Briefly, I encourage students to explore their relationship with the text by (not comprehensive):

• Making connections to other texts, their life, “real” life, and “big” ideas.
• Examining why they are drawn to this text, or why they are not. In other words, what can you learn about yourself if you spend your evenings alone reading Emily Dickinson?

To some extent, I’m concerned that the public nature of a blog discourages students from sharing their “real” response. However, I also think that by reading each other’s responses, the class is more likely to comprehend this concept.

I always work hard to “sell” a book to the class. Here are some strategies that I used this week:

Thriller Sales Pitch

“I was looking at this copy of Jurassic Park last night and I almost started to read it. But then I thought ‘Be careful! If you start it, you won’t go to sleep tonight!’ Thrillers are really dangerous, but if you’re willing to risk it, a lot of people enjoy them.”

Inspirational Sales Pitch

I read the back cover of The Last Lecture to the class and then introduced three other books that also bring us hope in the face of adversity.

“Mature” Reading

Some books I marketed as being written for adults instead of teenagers (Procession of the Dead, by D.B. Shan is a more mature version of his teenager stories, though we have those as well). I also marketed Tom Clancy as a more mature version of Horowitz’s books.

Children’s Books

I picked up The Tale of Desperaux and Tales of Beedle Bard, but sold them as books that one reads for the fun of it. In fact, I’d already read Beedle Bard by the time I got the book to the school.

The English Department gave me funds to buy books this week. Of 19 new books, 18 have been signed out.

Reflections:

• Three students brought in books to donate to the classroom library.
• Books that weren’t new were also signed out.
• Many students simply do not understand the diversity of books. They don’t want to read because they haven’t been convinced that there are books that they will enjoy. Spending twenty minutes introducing the plot of a dozen books is very useful.

When asked what books they’d like me to buy, shockingly few students in my classes have any idea of what is good, what might be good, or even what books might be around.

They are aware of books that have been made into movies, of course.