Week 7

There were a lot of moments in this Bean chapter that made me reflect on some of the difficulties I've been having during my first semester teaching Interpretation of Literature. To pick one, the section that discussed students having "difficulty with assimilating the unfamiliar" (problem #9) was one of those resonant moments. I have this one student, who is, in a lot of ways, a joy to have in class just because his energy is so engaged. He's always excited about participating, always has his hand up, always has an idea to share, is doing the reading, etc. Just a big ol' sweetie pie. Yay!! The trouble is, so many of his comments, and especially what he writes in his reading responses, are some variation of "This reminded me of this time I went snowboarding" or "I related to this part because I also feel happy sometimes" or whatever.

Which...I mean. I guess I can't really blame him, because as the reading notes, learning and unlearning is something that involves building and dismantling structures at the neural level, and this kid has lived in Solon, Iowa his whole life and his whole extended family lives in Solon, Iowa and that's just his whole deal. But those moments are not as frustrating to me as their opposites: when the student's response to a text is to basically just to say "yeah, I can't relate." And I've tried to respond to those comments in a way that doesn't discourage the student from making connections with the text, but also, communicates why these "I can't relate" moments are not where our conversation with a text should end — it is, in fact, where it should begin. And I have communicated this, but I'm not sure it's sticking, because it keeps happening. How to get inside students' brain so that these thinking patterns start to happen organically?

I've tried to frame that by talking about the reasons why we consume any kind of media — not just the books we read for class, but also the music, TV, movies, etc we CHOOSE to engage with. And the difference between these forms of media as like, mirrors versus windows. But from there, it's easy for me to veer into problem #3, which is how teachers' willingness to lecture over difficult material can create a vicious cycle of students just waiting for you to explain this thing to them, and you finally just do it, because you only have 10 minutes left and there 20 pairs of dead eyes looking at you and this Solon kid is talking about snowboarding again.

Comments

  1. Rachel P. RiendeauOctober 15, 2019 at 6:45 AM

    "...which is how teachers' willingness to lecture over difficult material can create a vicious cycle of students just waiting for you to explain this thing to them, and you finally just do it, because you only have 10 minutes left and there 20 pairs of dead eyes looking at you and this Solon kid is talking about snowboarding again." THIS. Especially the "20 pairs of dead eyes staring at you." Are there strategies for ignoring those eyes?

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