Odd conversation with lit teacher...

[linders]

Another swim team mom teaches middle school English at a local well-respected private school. They are merging with another private school and she is appalled - she asked what literature book their students have used previously and was told no lit text, the teacher had the students read, discuss, and write about whole novels.

 

I must have looked confused, because she went on to explain that you can't just read whole books. The lit book provides specially selected excerpts from specific books, with comprehension questions and a discussion of the literary term(s) to be recognized in the selection. And all of this needs to be done in a certain sequence.

 

Then the inevitable, "So what lit book do you use?" Uhm...what the other school does?

[Farrar]

Her understanding of literature has been institutionalized. How sad for her.

[BugsMama]

I suppose I can see that working in a setting where you can't expect the kids to read or have an intelligent conversation about a whole book.

 

But really???? That's just sad. Even my little kids can sit and enjoy a "whole book" and discuss it. I can also pull out portions to discuss later.

 

Mind. Blown.

[mommaduck]

When I was in school, certain grades read whole books and certain grades used lit books. The lit books always bugged me. We never finished a story or we started part way through a story.

[AnnaM]

We did both in my school years. It is sad to think that anyone is so set in a particular method that they can't see the benefits of other methods.

[SorrelZG]

That must have been awkward.

[mom2scouts]

She doesn't think you can study literature by reading literature? That's strange.:001_huh:

[Thia]

In my public schools, whole books were always used. If a shorter portion was required, we read short stories. While I do not generally enjoy short stories, only reading a small portion of a longer work is just terrible!

[Wheres Toto]

We did both in my school years. It is sad to think that anyone is so set in a particular method that they can't see the benefits of other methods.

 

Me too. I think we used the Nortons Guide to British (American) Literature, which I think had excerpts, short stories and poetry. We also read novels outside of our "Lit textbook".

[Harriet Vane]

I went to public school K-8th grade, and we always did excerpts.

 

I had the opportunity to go to a fabulous private school for high school, and had two of the best English teachers EVER. We read mostly whole works. There were exceptions, but even the exceptions were almost-entire works. For example, Beowulf is very repetitive--the characters talk about doing stuff, then they go do it, then they talk about what they did. We read a stripped-down version of Beowulf that stripped out some of the repetition. Other than that type of situation, though, we read whole works.

[fourisenough]

As a previous commenter said, she has been so institutionalized that she can't see the lack of logic in her perspective. Seems like this is a case of: if you can learn literature just by reading and discussing good books, why is there a need of a teacher? Perhaps this merger of schools will be a growth opportunity for her, as well as for her students!

[chepyl]

We did both. We read and discussed 5-8 novels, 2-6 plays or epic poems, and then used an anthology for short poems, short stories and excerpts of longer works we would not have time to read in full but should be exposed to. We never used the comprehension questions at the end of the section.

[BinahYeteirah]

We read mostly whole works in all my high school literature/English courses, including AP English Literature. Plenty of us got good scores on the AP exam, so my teacher's methodology seems to have worked reasonably well.

[AHASRADA]

I attended PS in a good school district. I only remember reading whole books, although my memories are sketchy (don't remember much of any content prior to 7th grade :001_huh:).

 

I remember reading 12 Angry Men and Across Five Aprils in middle school, and To Kill a Mockingbird and Emma in high school. Obviously there was more, but that's what comes to mind.

 

However, I was in the highest reading group in elem./middle, and the middle tier of English in HS (there were 3 tracks: high/average/low). I suspect the "low" tracked kids might have used Lit. books?

[Farrar]

I don't think there's anything wrong with a good anthology of excerpts. I just think it's completely bizarre that anyone would think it was impossible to teach without it. It reminds me a bit of all those people (both parents and teachers) who try to mystify reading by acting like it can only be taught by "experts" and that if us regular parents tried to teach our children to read we would ruin them.

[NotSoObvious]

Her understanding of literature has been institutionalized. How sad for her.

 

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

 

Especially if she teaches at a private school that has the luxury of excluding children with special needs. Most of her students can probably access the literature at a higher level, and, being totally stereotypical here, probably have extensive background knowledge to bring to the table.

 

How sad for her, indeed. How sad for her students. What a waste of tuition!

[Roadrunner]

So Mosdos would fall under the Lit book? I don't even think we have anything like it in our elementary school.

 

We always read entire books growing up and then wrote about them. I don't see any need for a separate textbook. A good teacher can direct discussion and assign writing.

[Deniseibase]

My public school when I was growing up used nothing but books with excerpts. I was a voracious reader tho, so I LOVED that, it was like a sampler platter! :D At the beginning of the school year, I'd take my lit book home, read the whole thing, discover a whole bunch of new authors that I wanted to read, and usually a few authors that I didn't like and was grateful I only had to read an excerpt!!! :lol:

 

However, I doubt many other students took that approach...

 

With my own kids, we read whole books. I probably will get a Norton anthology or two for high school, not as a main text, but as a way to expose the kids to those works that they should have SOME idea about but may not want or need to read the whole work - especially for my engineering-focused daughter! Also, Norton anthologies are great for poetry.

[Dmmetler]

Edited to say that I agree with Denise. Sometimes a sampling is a big help.

 

My DD's former school had just adopted a new reading series the year we left, and the principal offered me a set of the books if we wanted them. (These were Scott Foresman Reading books). DD LOVED them. At the time she was 5, testing really, really high on reading and perfectly happy reading non-fiction books with a lot of pictures no matter what the difficulty of the words was and reading any picture book she wanted, but insisting that any book longer or with more words on a page than Magic Tree House was "too hard for me"-despite going through 10 or more said books in a day. A Paddington Bear or Winnie the Pooh story pulled out and illustrated as a picture book, fine. The actual book, even with the exact same text "Too hard for me".

 

Those anthologies which were, from about 3rd grade on up, almost all chapters of longer fiction books and biographies, ended up being exactly what she needed. Because the format was more like a picture book-big colorful graphics on larger pages, and because of the aura of "big kid books", she WANTED to read them-and would then fall in love with Chester Cricket or Ramona Quimby. The result was that we ended up going to the library and bringing home stacks of books by the same authors so she could read more about those characters, or stacks of biographies about a historical figure.

 

I expect that, through read-alouds and the like, she would eventually have made the jump to reading such books independently because she would have gotten sick and tired of my pace, but I do credit those anthologies with helping her gain the confidence in her reading.

Edited July 6, 2012 by dmmetler

[Crafty Mathy Mom]

Same here. The first whole novel I read in public school was Great Expectations in 8th grade.

[ScoutTN]

Her understanding of literature has been institutionalized. How sad for her.

 

 

And for her students!

And for their parents who are likely paying lots for a "premium" education!

[Tarreymere]

Public school graduate here.....we NEVER read an entire book in a literature class during my school years. We didn't have AP classes in my school either or I would have been in them, but I always took the most challenging literature classes available. We did do the comprehension questions in the literature book. :tongue_smilie:

 

Further, there was no other meaning that could possibly be found in any piece of writing other than the very shallow, limited interpretation our teacher insisted we repeat back to him

 

We also only wrote one 'research' paper in our entire four years in high school.

[Kathryn]

The varied experiences are interesting. I was public-schooled and in the highest English levels available. We read whole novels and anthologies of short fiction/poetry. We never used the questions in the books. I honestly wasn't aware that there were anthologies of excerpts.