Bringing the Common Core into Summer Reading & Writing Program

I am currently working a 2-week Reading & Writing seminar for our incoming 9th graders.

I was a little bit daunted by the prospect of creating skills-based 2-hour lessons for the two weeks. During the school year, I have a curriculum that I work through. It is skills-based as well, but the content is mostly pre-determined.

I decided to base the writing we will do on the Six Common Core Standard Writing Assignments that we, as a department, came up with at the end of the school year. Throughout each year, students will be primarily focusing on six writing tasks:

1) Timed Literary Analysis (Students have to write about an unseen passage or poem, about how the author's techniques create meaning.)
2) Untimed Literary Essay (Traditional 3-part essay)
3) Timed Argument Essay (such as the SAT essay)
4) Untimed "Moral Dilemma" Essay (something connecting the literature to life, using textual evidence from a text, such as, "Should Catcher in teh Rye be taught in school?" and "Is Okonkwo guilt of murder?"
5) Narrative Essay (connected to literature in some way, for example, we'll read Eugenia Collier's "Marigolds" and then students will write about their own epiphany.
6) Research

So, in these sessions, I figure we can practice assignments #1, #2, #3, and #5.

We started with #1 today, as I gave students the Gary Soto poem "Saturday at the Canal". This is a great poem, though, in hindsight, perhaps a bit dark for the first day of high school instruction. Or maybe it was perfect, because that's more what it felt like. I gave them 20 minutes and the question, "What figurative language, imagery, and details does Soto use to describe the speaker's unhappiness with school and his place in life?" (the 9th grade prompt for this type of writing will always get a little bit of direction, like this - by the time they're upperclassmen, they'll get no question).

After 20 minutes, most students had produced 2-3 paragraphs that basically listed a few metaphors or images in the poem. Not much analysis or depth, not much attention to tone, very few seemed to understand the poem.

So after they wrote about it independently, I had another handout ready, one that divided the poem into its ten or so sentences. I paired them up, and had them write inferences for each of the lines, using the Tone Words list I handed out to them. They identified any literary features, but I was more concerned with them identifying the tone and readign between the lines. That's going to be more of my focus this year: tone. Sometimes I get so focused on the identification of literary devices that I realize they don't know what the text is about. This was one of my focuses with the seniors last year, especially towards the second half of the year, trying to create that vooomp moment where they "get" a piece of literature and then go back and find the techniques that create it.

Anyhow, the discussion after the chunking of the poem and pairing of the students went splendidly. They now realized what they should be doing when they get a type of question like that. Tomorrow, we'll see what they've learned when we do Stephen Dunn's "The Sacred".

IB English - students do well

This week was honestly one of the best of my career. I received word that 100% of my students -- I teach our entire load of seniors taking IB English -- passed the IB English assessments. 100%.

The reason I like the International Baccalaureate English program so much is that it really assesses everything about English class that is important. Unlike AP, which is just multiple choice (ugh) and timed writing, IB assesses not only timed writing (thankfully no multiple choice), but also untimed writing, untimed-preparation oral presentations, and timed oral commentaries. These six assessments, I feel, really prepare a kid for college and for life. Add in a curriculum that has plenty of teacher choice and international focus, and we have a great program. I really want to teach in the IB program the rest of my career. It's not about advanced kids -- IB is designed to work for any regular kid -- but it's about a great program with a worldly focus and rigorous, but authentic, assessments.

This year, for Part II, I taught two Shakespeare plays (Richard III and Much Ado About Nothing), James Baldwin's essays (for the non-fiction component), Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. This is the more classicist part of the curriculum, but it's not that classicist -- James Baldwin is one of my options. He's been the biggest revelation to my teaching the last couple of years; his non-fictions essays brim with passion and fury, and the kids really like him.

For Part III, with comes from a list of writers that is more broad than Part II, I taught the Australian novel Cloudstreet (Tim Winton), the Indian novel The White Tiger (Aravind Adiga), the Antiguan-American novel Lucy (Jamaica Kincaid), and the South African novel July's People (Nadine Gordimer). This was my first year teaching most of these novels, but they worked well. Cloudstreet is a beautiful, soaring novel, one that is hard to describe but really got me in the gut. Lucy is a small and bitter little book, but Kincaid's writing is gorgeous; my more vocal students complained about this one, thinking the narrator was too self-absorbed, but, for me, she was a typical teenager, and many kids liked it. I thought it was about perfect. I didn't enjoy July's People, but Gordimer's style lends itself so well to analysis of structure and language that it would be hard to take out. It's not really meant to be an enjoyable read, either; the protagonist's disorientation mirrors the reader's. And The White Tiger, my one repeat teach, continues to be one of the favorites of the year for the students. It's a funny and dark page-turner that most of the kids love. I brought these four books together under the theme of economic disparity, but we found a lot more themes as we read - the effects of parenting, the repercussions of colonialism, master/servant dynamics. The kids went along for the ride with me and, obviously, did well.

Anyhow, I'm pretty happy, and very proud of my students. The only problem is, the only direction to go now is down. :)

Review: Once Upon a River

I bought a Kindle last week, finally, and my first book was from an author that has intrigued me for a few years, primarily because Bonnie Jo Campbell (National Book Award finalist last year) comes from the same southwestern Michigan corner of the world as me. She hails from Comstock, a small town right outside of Kalamazoo, which is the biggest city near my hometown of South Haven. I grew up next to the Black River, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River about which Campbell writes in this text. Besides the geography, the book has gotten some bang-up reviews, and I had to read it.

I wasn't disappointed. Once Upon a River recounts the journey of Margo, a tough 15-year old girl who is left alone after her mother leaves her and her father dies. She takes off in her beloved late grandfather's boat, and journeys on the river, mostly fending for herself but developing relationships along the way.

Told in 3rd person limited narration, with the focus squarely on Margot, I was sometimes frustrated by the character. "Talk," I'd want to say, or, "Don't you see what he's doing to you?". But then I remembered that, despite her self-sufficiency (with her hunting, she rivals Katniss from The Hunger Games), she's a lonely and pained 16-year old kid.

In interviews, I've heard Campbell eschew the Huckleberry Finn comparison a bit in favor of The Odyssey, but they're both there. There were some passages -- such as ones in which Margot reveals her distaste for society and for organized education, or the ones in which Margot discovers her only peace while floating on the river -- that were strikingly similar to something a modern Huck would say. I understand the odyssey comparisons, too; the novel's journey structure is episodic, but the episodes are punctuated by relationships Margot has, rather than monsters she must conquer or outsmart. The lonely men on the river that she meets -- the book is divided into four major relationships she has -- see her as a river goddess, seemingly not a part of their dingy world. Finally, with her last relationship, she meets someone who sees her as a person, and not some sort of mystical creature.

Like with Huckleberry Finn, and The Odyssey, the episodic structure leads to some natural stops and starts in the narrative. In between her relationships, as Margot escapes one painful situation to find her next one, things slow down, like water flowing around a bend in the river. At these points, we are left with some harsh and beautiful descriptions of the natural world, in spare and poetic language that often reminded me of Steinbeck. The men in the novel, who could have been drawn as stock villains, are, surprisingly, often more sympathetic than the narrator (particularly the character Michael, not so much the college professor character). Don't get me wrong; I often ached for the protagonist, so the fact that the more minor characters of the men came off as sympathetic as they were is a testament to Campbell's characterization skills.

The ending of the novel is stone beautiful, a melding of the natural and human imagery that recalls Mary Oliver's poetry. Margot has survived, somehow, and she will be alright.

Someday, when this novel goes into paperback, I think I'd like to teach it to 9th graders alongside The Odyssey.

New novels and the Common Core Curriculum

We are currently seeking our 9th grade novel for next year.

When I came to the school ten years ago, the 9th grade novels were Potok’s The Chosen, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. As our instruction has shifted more from covering so much content to imparting skills on students, our focus on the novel has diminished a bit. Our current curriculum includes one short graphic novel, a modern play, a Shakespearean play, an epic, and two novels – one ‘classic’ and one more contemporary.

I got rid of Potok right away, and Their Eyes Were Watching God got moved up to the 10th grade, and in the past few years, we have done To Kill a Mockingbird, then A Lesson Before Dying, and, last year, The Catcher in the Rye. However, all three of these novels are taught in middle schools in the city - so much so that nearly 100 kids will have read one or more of them by the time they reach us. I love all these books, but 9th grade kids made to read the same book again sometimes do things to hurt themselves -- things like try to remember things from the previous year, for example, and not re-read. And, since our curriculum also includes Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey, I want the "classic novel" section of our curriculum to be as fresh as possible.

The curriculum looks like this (all built around the theme of 'Coming of Age in an Unjust Society'):

I. Persepolis (Satrapi)

II. Fences (Wilson)

III. The Odyssey

IV. (insert classic novel)

V. Literary Circles Novel (students choose from a list of 6-8 international novels tha the teacher generates - this past year, I did Zak Mda's Ways of Dying, Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, Natsuo Kirino's Real World, Alina Bronsky's Broken Glass Park, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, Naomi Shihab Nye's Habibi. The idea here is that they've learned to read a novel critically in the previous unit, and now they read it with a bit more independence in a small group.

VI. Romeo & Juliet

So it’s that fourth slot that needs a book.

My colleague who I’m teaching the class with is a bit more of a classicist than I am. She believes that our students are put at a disadvantage on some national tests – such as the open-ended literature question on the AP Lit exam – because they don’t have enough ‘classic books’ taught to them. Now, I feel like our curriculum has three confirmed classics on it already – R&J, The Odyssey, and Fences. I know the latter might be debatable, but it’s appeared on the AP open-ended question a few times in recent years. Still, I see what she’s saying, and, while I don’t want to be a gatekeeper in my career as an English teacher, I see some value in the cultural capital that comes with reading class books. At the same time, though, the single most important thing that I believe my job as an English teacher is to give some books that they will love, that will make them lifelong readers. Sorry, but The Odyssey (especially our crummy Fitzgerald translation) just doesn’t do that. So it’s a balance.

We’ve also become big fans of the Common Core Standards. Personally, I love it – it’s higher level thinking, unlike what we go for with the kids passing the HSA – and I’ve spent some considerable time already aligning my big writing assessments with the Writing Standards of the Core. I look forward to working more and more with it.

The Common Core offers some suggested “exemplars” for the curriculum for each of the grade levels, and here are the texts they suggest for Grades 9 & 10:

Homer. The Odyssey

Ovid. Metamorphoses

Gogol, Nikolai. “The Nose.”

De Voltaire, F. A. M. Candide, Or The Optimist

Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons

Henry, O. “The Gift of the Magi.”

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis SubjeCtS

Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451

Olsen, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.”

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart

Lee, Harper. To Kill A Mockingbird

Shaara, Michael. The Killer Angels

Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club

Álvarez, Julia. In the Time of the Butterflies

Zusak, Marcus. The Book Thief


Now, I think this is a great list, one that combines classics from the canon (The Odyssey, Steinbeck) with superb more modern texts (Alvarez, Zusak).

The one that jumped out the most at me is the latter, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. It’s one of the most powerful reads I’ve experienced in the last few years, and I’d love to teach it to 9th graders. I don’t think my classics-loving colleagues would be very excited about it, but then I thought that it might be a great idea to combine it with the short classic Fahrenheit 451. I read it in an afternoon this summer (I love summer vacation…) already, and it seems to fit right alongside The Book Thief, in both obvious ways (the book burning), to more important thematic ideas (resistance to injustice, the importance of literature, dealing with censorship). Wow, this was pretty amazing to me, and I got really excited.

Then I realized The Book Thief was 500 pages. Even though some of it is pictures and it reads quickly, that’s still a long book. Doable, though? Maybe. As we’ve become more focused on skills, though, it seems harder to fit stuff in. I mean, you would think that Perspolis would fit in September, Fences in October, The Odyssey in November, Fahrenheit 451 in December, The Book Thief in January, Literary Circles in February, and Romeo and Juliet in March, but that’s almost the schedule we planned for this year, and stuff happened, and we ended up getting just 14 class periods on Romeo and Juliet when we wanted quite a bit more. Things never seem to go as planned, time wise.

I haven’t presented the idea to my colleague yet, which is part of the reason for the blog entry – I wanted to think it out in writing. Maybe something like The Joy Luck Club would be better.

I’m not sure. Bottom line, though, I wish The Color Purple didn’t have the word “pussy” on the first page. That would be a great choice.