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Category: Teaching

Books from the Summer Bucket: Rumble Fish

June 11, 2007 • • Leave a comment

I’ve never read The Outsiders (but it is in the Summer Bucket) so Rumble Fish is my first SE Hinton novel. It’s one of the many in my classroom and it’s relatively popular among the kids, but it was recommended to me by one of the staff who read it as a kid growing up in the Bay Area. Turns out everyone at my school who grew up there in the seventies had to read it.

It’s about a junior high kid named Rusty-James, the toughest kid on a tough street, who loves to fight and wants to be in a gang like his older brother, The Motorcycle Boy, once was.

Rusty-James narrates, and he tells of a few days in which he gets in a knife fight and the Motorcycle Boy comes back to town. Rusty-James idolizes the Motorcycle Boy, an idealized older kid who has it all from street smarts to book smarts with good looks and a rep for being a seriously dangerous dude. The Motorcyle Boy can do anything with his life, but he doesn’t want to do anything. Naturally, Rusty-James only sees the Motorcycle Boy’s rep and wants to be just like him.

SE Hinton does a nice job evoking a rundown urban wasteland full of kids going nowhere fast whose only hope seems to be in maintaining a tough enough rep to stay alive. It’s a pretty bleak look at the all-too-real problem of kids growing up without dreams or any kind of vision of what life could be like, and in Rusty-James’s idealized view of the Motorcycle Boy we see the peril of choosing the wrong heroes.

This is one I’ll probably consider having my kids read next year. It has a very nice (perhaps I should say “nicely written” since it’s not really very ‘nice’) ending, which I won’t spoil, and besides it’s a really good character piece.

I think my students will be able to relate to this as well since so many of them are on the same dark road to nowhere as Rusty-James. Who knows maybe one or two will see in Rusty-James’s story a life they might themselves avoid.

Books from the Summer Bucket: Crank

June 7, 2007 • • Leave a comment

If there is one book that all my students want to read or reread it’s Ellen Hopkins’s Crank.

It is 537 pages of scattered free verse poetry from the point of view of Kristina, a teenage crank addict (that’s methamphetamine to those of us who still have all our teeth). Kristina starts out as the perfect kid with a lot going for her. Then she goes to visit her ex-junkie dad who isn’t as ex- as they thought and she meets a boy who introdues her to crank, aka ‘the monster.’

Naturally, 500 pages of deadly downward spiral ensue. Kristina begins to change and starts calling herself Bree in a sort of Sméagol vs Gollum battle for her soul.

It’s fairly straightforward good-girl-in-trouble and speed-kills fare, but the writing is vivid and lively. Hopkins’s poetry is often spaced and arranged in ways that allow certain pieces to be read two different ways, which nicely reflects the Kristina/Bree split. For example, “Flirtin’ with the Monster”:

Life was good
before I
met
the monster

After,
Life
was great

At
least
for a little while.

I found myself interested in these kinds of splits that occured occasionally, nicely reminding us that Kristina was still in there somewhere or that Bree was waiting right around the corner.

The book doesn’t pull many punches and even manages to drop a few f-bombs, unusual in young adult fiction, but then within the context of the subject matter highly appropriate.

Considering that many of my students have lived through and are living through similar circumstances and quite a few of them have had personal encounters with ‘the monster,’ I give the book props for ringing true, and it should. It’s based on Hopkins’s own experiences with her daughter.

Books from the Summer Bucket: Murder on the Orient Express

June 5, 2007 • • 5 Comments

Back in February, I had the opportunity to purchase a ton of books for my classroom. Well, okay, not a ton, but it did take two Old Navy shopping carts to get out of Barnes & Noble and I’m not just talking any old navy shopping carts, I’m talking the kind that could withstand a barrage of cannon.

I got a lot of books is all I’m saying.

I tried to pick ones that my kids would want to read so I got an eclectic mix of young adult, genre, poetry, and classics many of which I had never read, especially the YA and some of the genre stuff. The books were a hit and silent reading days suddenly became quite popular. Often the kids would want to talk about what they read, but I was too often clueless and so this summer I took home a large bucket full of the books that were especially popular.

My wife and I are blazing through that bucket and finding the joys of young adult fiction. My wife was even able to brag that she read five books on Saturday. Five whole books, I swear to God, five books. Since I’m also writing a book, I’m moving a bit slower on the reading, but I did just finish my first book from the Summer Bucket: Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express.

I’ve never read any other of Christie’s novels (or any detective novel for that matter other than Isaac Asimov’s Caves of Steel), but it was fun. It’s about Hercule Poirot, apparently Chritie’s recurring detective who finds himself snowbound on the Orient Express with a murder to solve. It’s a clever story with a surprising ending. It’s an easy quick read also, which is why, I think, several of the kids found it so appealing.

I’ll probably read a few more Agatha Christie novels (including Evil Under the Sun, which is on my Lost list) simply to see if this was typical or a particularly unique work. Either way, Murder on the Orient Express had me turning the pages and looking forward to spending a little time each day on that fabled luxury train of the mid-30’s, trying and failing to stay one step ahead on Monsieur Poirot.

They Spoke

May 4, 2007 • • 1 Comment

One of the things many of us teachers wrestle with is how to bring technology into the classroom in a way that is meaningful, useful and relevant.

Here in Texas some of the state standards require us to have students use technology to communicate with writers outside the classroom. I can’t really do that one since I teach in a correctional facility, but I think it’s important for kids to be aware of social media and how to use it well and in ways that won’t embarrass them later.

I learned today that Mr. Powell at St George’s Technical High School in Delaware required his English classes to read and comment on web sites that reviewed the novel his students are currently reading: Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, which I reviewed back in February. One of the sites he asked his students to look at was mine. From his students, I received 83 comments at last count, making my Speak post the most commented post on this blog. By a long shot.

I haven’t yet read all of them (I had to work at work, you know), but I will. The ones I’ve read so far are honest, polite and direct. Everything a good blog comment should be.

Cheers to you and your students, Mr. Powell, and thanks for helping to get young people interested in both books and social media. It looks like your assignment worked pretty well. I’m enjoying the comments, so thanks to your students also for taking the time to write interesting things. Perhaps over the weekend, I’ll be able to respond to a few of them.

Englishes, Olde and Nu

February 22, 2007 • • 5 Comments

It’s not uncommon for students to protest that they aren’t used to “old English,” that it’s too hard. I frequently hear this while teaching Shakespeare, Poe, Lord of the Flies, or anything else written prior to 1985. I try to explain that everything I’ve taught is modern English, but today, I thought it would be fun to show them.

When I was student teaching, I learned how to read the prologue to The Canterbury Tales in Middle English, and I had an overhead with some side-by-side comparisons, but I thought it would more powerful to use something the students would likely be familiar with. While browsing Wikipedia, I found the Lord’s Prayer in Old English:

Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum,
Si þin nama gehalgod.
To becume þin rice,
gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum.
urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg,
and forgyf us ure gyltas,
swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum.
and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.

I figured most of them would be familiar with the modern version of this, so I hunted it down in Middle English to show the transition, first finding a version here, and then discovering Words in English, which had already done my work for me:

Oure fadir that art in heuenes,
halewid be thi name;
thi kyndoom come to;
be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene:
gyue to us this dai oure breed ouer othir substaunce;
and forgyue to us oure dettis, as we forgyuen to oure gettouris;
and lede us not in to temptacioun, but delyuere us fro yuel. Amen.

The modern version comes from my memory:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
They Kingdom come.
Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

I spent a lot of time staring at this, comparing words and lines, fascinated by the evolution of this wonderful living language and wondering where it would go next. I often joke that I’m teaching a dying language, but it’s probably just evolving. Though, hopefully, not into something as utilitarian and artless as this:

dad@hvn
ur spshl.
we want wot u want
&urth2b like hvn
giv us food
&4giv us
lyk we 4giv uvaz.
don’t test us! save us! ok

I shared all this with my kids, attempting to pronounce the Middle English as best I could based on what I learned from Canterbury Tales, and they thought that was cool. They enjoyed seeing the Old English, and sadly, the text message version made perfect sense.

And, now that I think about it, I realize I’ve written about the texting of literature and its effect on language before.

Hatchet

October 12, 2006 • • 1 Comment

I have one class of middle school students and no idea what literature to teach. I’m set with my high school kids, but middle school. Woof.

After exploring the room I inherited, I found class sets of books that seem middle-schoolish. One in particular jumped out at me – Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. I heard this book was good so I started my kids on it and then proceeded to get out ahead of them.

Hatchet is about a thirteen-year-old boy named Brian who is traveling in a two-seater Cessna to see his dad in northern Canada. The pilot has a heart attack forcing Brian to try to figure out how to crash land the plane… in the middle of nowhere.

Brian’s struggle to survive in the vast Canadian forest with only his windbreaker, the things he had in his pockets, and – you guessed it – a hatchet makes for an interesting coming of age story in which the young hero must learn to let go of his old problems and one-by-one solve the riddles of his new life which is quickly reduced to its simplest terms: food, water, warmth. Paulsen’s fast-paced writing, which is immediate and internal, simultaneously takes the reader inside Brian’s psyche and deep into the pristine wilderness of the northern forest.

By the end of the book, it’s hard to leave Brian and his lake in the woods, and the deus ex machina ending, while logical, leaves the reader wanting more. Paulsen’s fans thought so as well prompting him to write a sequel, Brian’s Winter, that changes the ending of the first book and extends Brian’s adventures into the more perilous wintertime.

By the end of Hatchet, I’m left wanting to go camping to escape into the wilderness but not under circumstances as dire as Brian’s. Books take us places, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending a summer on that nameless lake watching Brian learn for himself the ancient lessons of man’s survival as he discovers the clarity that comes with self-reliance.