There is no doubt that great literature changes us. A good English teacher helps her students see the relevance of the literature they read. But a great English teacher shows her students that they can take the lessons learned from great literature and use them to make positive impacts on the world.
There are many reasons I love working where I do, but the reason closest to my heart is that I work in a school and community that places the highest value on what I consider to be its most valuable asset: its children.
Though the community is large, having a core value as focused as ours - a core value that centers around its children - makes it feel far more close-knit than our population would suggest. We joke that the kids in our community live in a bubble - and in many ways they do. Don't misunderstand me; I do not consider this a bad thing. They live and learn in a community that is nurturing and values learning. However, sometimes living in a bubble can create a lack of global understanding and therefore a lack of global empathy. Reading widely allows these students to develop an understanding of the world outside of "the bubble" and develop empathy for all different walks of life.
My Project
Students should have a voice in the literature they read and in their learning because if they don’t, that learning stays behind when they leave my classroom. I use the responses from student surveys to guide my planning. A common response among my students last year was that they want to become better readers, students who actually like reading. They have the desire to experience great literature, but it seems that once kids move into high school, they develop more loathing for the written word than love. Why is their love of reading overshadowed by a need to simply get through the assigned pages? To honor their requests, I conduct independent reading where students choose their own novels that will help them master the concepts and skills studied in class. They can explore the vast corners of the world, covering the farthest reaches of time and space to activate their interests in a way that whole-class novels cannot.
The value of literature is obvious to me, but I realize the connections between students' lives and the literature they read are not always so clear.
Every day I have a choice: I can try to force my students to become obedient readers for the sake of getting through the content, or I can harness their reading interests and allow them to take ownership of their desire to read. I choose to teach readers who question the hows and whys of literature because those are the hows and whys of the world.
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