Literature in the Classroom might be DOA

Literature in the classroom might be DOA. I have my comp students usually blog on current topics. Our conversation is lively before as we discuss the topics and get primed. Then we write and then finally we read back the blogs. This leads to more discussion. Sometimes it does feel like a current events seminar but we really are just formulating ides and hurling thesis  out into the blogosphere. I feel this is what is going to help students most in the year 2014.

So on Halloween I shook it up and brought in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story  A Short Trip Home. It is the only ghost story Scott ever wrote. I read it to one class and  the other class I had read a page for every student. It was a snore. Besides people tripping over words  no one could really follow F Scotts meandering prose. I realized too Fitzgerald was probably never meant to be read out loud. But I think the greater issue is literature in the classroom.

I would argue it doesn't really work. It is too passive and too remote and just not relevant to the digital age where we operate in the present tense. I think for English Majors and serious writers literature is essential to learning craft but to our twenty first century view it feels like taking a spin in a Model T. It just doesn't go fast enough.

So we are back to blogging. Like this.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
 

The Learning Laboratory

The pencils are on the desk. The math books open to basic equations. Some of the pencils are in the pages. A few are on the floor. The SMART board is on and humming. But the kids and the teacher are gone. I have arrived early for a speech to find everyone at lunch and I am afforded an unfettered look at the modern learning laboratory of the third grade. The headings South East West North are on the walls. Writing rules float in space and are taped on the walls.  Prepositions. Nouns. Verbs. Subject. Action.

There is a water bottle on the floor. A pencil. Some paper. An eraser. The children were taken out quickly you can see that. There are rules on the wall for spelling. Rules for thinking. Acting. Rules for life. There is the clock. There are the books and the large rocking chair for reading. And in here you can see how hard the kids and the teachers work. You can see all that knowledge flying around the room. And it is serious business. Because they are looking for food. And the room is jammed with the food of knowledge.

And you can just see those teachers in their work. You can see the open laptop under the American flag and the proverbial apple on the desk. So much important work goes on in here it makes you feel guilty. Yes the worlds work must be done but this shaping of young minds does seem pre-imminent. And you hope the teachers stay to their task. Because in this laboratory in the middle of the day in the middle of nowhere are people who are doing the heavy lifting for all  of us.

Could it be any more important?

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher