"The seminal quality of writing is that it is 'transformational' or life changing in some way,"(Wilhelm, 51).
When reading a book, I find it good to see the text from different angles. "You Gotta Be the Book", by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, has many endearing aspects that can assist a teaching student with their methodology when it comes to teaching students to love reading. Wilhelm mentioned that as teachers, we are not only assigning books to keep up with the curriculum, we are helping in the transformation of students from classroom readers to the kind of readers they will be in the future.
Taken from one angle, the book gives scenarios about students that enjoy reading and their views on books, teaching styles, and the overall enthusiasm to learn. I found myself identifying with beliefs. The students generally enjoy reading and have a thirst for knowledge. We as upcoming teachers must fill that thirst with an enjoyable challenge. The challenge can come in different forms, it can be to help identify reading options that they may not have considered previously, to give them a more challenging book to understand, or to have them work on their writing skills by asking them to express how they feel about reading. From this angle, you can see the students willingness to comply with the challenge, which will render positive results in the classroom.
I also looked at the text from a merely teacher based angle and found that Wilhelm challenges some old age conventional ideas about what constitutes literature. From his frame of mind, it has helped me to understand that we are teaching because we want students to want to learn. If that means that instead of reading Huckleberry Finn, we introduce them to the Twilight Saga, maybe then they will be wanting to learn instead of hiding their sparknotes in their backpacks. We want the students to want to be readers, so we have to be willing to listen to what catches their attention and go from there.
Sometimes I believe students feel the need to use sparknotes because they are intimated by the literature assigned. Do you think they are intimated because they feel as though teachers are looking for a correct interpretation? Using sparknotes is just reading other people ideas and interpretations and we (as teachers) need to help encourage creativity. Let's not be afraid to create and discover.
ReplyDeleteI think it is important to look at the book from different perspectives. As a student, this book makes me laugh because sometimes I feel the same way as the students mentioned in the book felt. As a future teacher I look in to the book and see a lot of ideas that I can use in my classroom. I think literature should be based on interest because the more people that are interested then the better the discussion will be. As for sparknotes, they are written because students are sick of reading these novels that are overused, tiresome, and lack a certain feel that an average student needs to have in order to be interested. I think a lot of people do not understand that people like to read. As a matter of fact, I think everyone likes to read...it is just some students never found a book that they liked. As teachers we need to find a book for each student to enjoy and connect to.
ReplyDeleteHow am I going to challenge the students who are naturally engaged readers? I feel as though I spend a lot of energy thinking about how to reach the uninterested student and the "middle level" students, but I have not often thought about the advanced readers.
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing this to my attention.
You stated, "...we are not only assigning books to keep up with the curriculum, we are helping in the transformation of students from classroom readers to the kind of readers they will be in the future".
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of a reader do you want to transform your students into?