A+Project

Nelly Ramos Dr. Shea A Project Canonical Behavior

As the semester comes to an end, I look back and review everything I remember in my head, then through my daybook and notes. There was a variety of topics, themes, and other reading related artifacts that we tackled in this class. One of my favorite and most memorable classes that I really enjoyed was when we started to talk about canonical books and questioning it. I was one of the students that hated and could not stand canonical readings. There were a few that I did enjoy such as “Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck but my worse readings were by Shakespeare and Chaucer.

A canonical book is books each student has to read. The reason why I struggles with reading them and which made me dislike them very much is because starting at an urban city high school, students in my classes would not understand the language as I did, and were not engaging in the books which made them misbehave. My inquiry focus is based on engaging urban students on canonical works while avoiding behavior problems. The question that I have been stumbling on is “//How do you engage urban students in canonical works while minimizing and avoiding behavior problems?”//

The reason why canonical books are still in the curriculum today is because it is universal, opens for discussion, students can relate to characters that have different dialect (British English), challenges belief, make us think, are dynamic, have different interpretation and are books that shape our history. These factors are often the same when we ask ourselves what makes a book worth studying. They are challenging and is why students do not want to read them or study them and this can lead to behavior problems I believe, especially in large urban high schools.

I have learned that in order to teach canonical works, the teacher is to have themes that correlate and relate to the students and connect them to other modern books that students would be interested in reading. Some of the themes that can correlate are family structure, values, addiction and obsessions that are most often seen in Shakespeare, abuse, outcast, hardships, and separation. These are all themes that inner city students can diffidently relate too, but they just need to realize it and that’s where it is the teacher’s job to make that happen.

I did some research on the school districts of Lancaster homepage and searched for English secondary teachers to have them fill out a survey. The survey asked them what they thought would minimize student behavior, what canonical books are on the curriculum, what are strategies they do that will engage the students in canonical books while maintaining most participation. I emailed my survey to English teachers from the School District of Lancaster and got their responses. Some of the teachers responded to my inquiry focus and stated “the moment the students can make a connection to the big idea in the text, the more engaged you’ll see them become. I start each unit with the “big question” (Laura Chiodo Reynolds Middle school 8th grade). “The big question” Mrs. Chiodo referred to reminded me of UBD, when we were doing lesson plans, and trying to get out the big idea out of the lesson to give to our students. She also stated that canonical books may be tough to reach to students but “you want your students to know why and how this matters in their lives.” It really is about relating it to their lives. She said that the more the students participate the less behavior issues you’ll encounter and the more engagement you’ll see. Strategies that Mrs. Chiodo does to keep her students engaged are assigning individual or group tasks, while giving each member a different task to focus on so they will get less distracted and not start misbehaving.

I also got a replied from another English teacher, from McCaskey High school. His name is Mr. Chandler. He was my freshman teacher and was one of the few classes where I had to read Shakespeare and started disliking it. His email began with what a real teacher email should always be like, because they focus on the student’s needs, “I will always make time for people such as yourself, my former students.” He states that in his freshman literature class the curriculum only requires him to teach //Romeo and Juliet// by Shakespeare and //Of Mice and Men// by John Steinbeck. When it comes to behavior issues, Mr. Chandler ties to be a very dynamic instructor who constantly moves around the room trying to keep even the least interested student on task. Since both of these canonical works are highly dialogue-driven, Mr. Chandler tries to solicit students by reading parts aloud and to act scenes out. His bottom line is to keep fast paced and incorporate technology when you can. Since both of these text may have higher language text involved and while this text may be above the literacy level that some urban students may feel comfortable with, they can start to misbehave, because they just do not get it, and if the teacher does not try to cope with them, then it leads to more behavioral problems. “While students grow and develop from the preoperational stage to the concrete operational stage and into the formal operational stage, so should their abilities to understand and read more complex information” (The Journal of Negro Education 2004).

This survey I gave to these experienced teachers, helped me personally and cognitively seek more in depth with my question and struggle with this question. I know for a fact that I want to teach in a large urban school, but have been a bit worried about keeping their engagement high when I would teach those books from the canon. I did not enjoy reading books from the canon, and think part of the reason was because the language that was used in these books which was a barrier and hard to understand like in Shakespeare and Chaucer. My English teachers that taught me these books were not creative and just quizzed and lectured. I am sure not everyone is going too like these books that are forced to be taught by the curriculum, but I just want my future students to try to get involved and engaged by my presentation of canonical books. I hope I do not have a hard time struggling to keep them in order from misbehaving but from these experience teachers that I have surveyed, it lets me know there is hope as long as you keep them engaged, technology involved and incorporate different strategies when teaching canonical books.

Works Cited Chandler, John. Personal interview. 5 Dec. 2011 Chiodo, Laura. Personal interview. 5 Dec. 2011 Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J., Eric Mayes, Leslie Author, Joseph Johnson, Veronica Robinson, Shante Ashe, Salman Elbedour, and Kathleen Collins. "Reading Comprehension Among African American Graduate Students." The Journal of Negro Education 73.4 (2004): 443-57. JSTOR. Web. 9 Dec. 2011.