FOKI-Post: The Final Blogtier

Original FOKI
FOKI-Mid
FOKI-Post

 

Professional Self

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.  It was never important to me, either, the way that it was important to other people.  I never stopped to wonder why, really—how could I, when I didn’t really care?  I only wanted to wake up each day and do the things that interested me, so I did.  In high school, my teachers and guidance counselor were sure that I’d study sciences in college, and convinced me of it, too.  A couple of semesters in, though, I realized that I was reading a lot more literature than I was any of my science-based textbooks, and so I naturally started taking more English classes instead.  Forced to declare a major, I chose English Lit with a minor in creative writing–another interest that sparked in me somewhere in that time—and before I knew it, I had a BA in English Literature.  I started working—technical writer, online magazine editor, legal assistant, and on and on, usually changing jobs every couple of years because of the boredom that would quickly settle in.  I knew this whole time that I was most interested in teaching or counseling of some sort–but for the first time in my life, I didn’t follow my interest because of the societal stigma associated with teaching–those people were underpaid and underappreciated.  I didn’t want to be one of them.

So I floated on, stringing together meaningless jobs until I finally recognized my fallacious reasoning, and almost immediately applied and enrolled to earn my MAT and finally see if I’d be as happy a teacher as I’d suspected I would be.  I’d worked with words and continued reading heavily in my adult life, but I have to admit that I’m out of touch with the canon of high school literature, having opted primarily for non-fiction—historical and anthropological works—for the past ten years.  Additionally, as a pre-service teacher, I still feel rather unprepared, pedagogically speaking.  Well, of course I’m still unprepared.  I did just meet my cooperating teacher (no observations yet) and I found that I understood most of what was being spoken about in the English III PLT meeting, which was good.  Still in the kiddie pool, and will be until I’m in the fire.  I have a few more ideas about specific ways to run classes, but not specific ways to run specific classes.  The PLT made me realize that they have completely different activities for classes of differing abilities that they teach.  I think the school at which I am student teaching has pretty segregated classes.  You know, by “academic ability.”  Hmmm.  My favorite texts from the program thus far have been those that offer advice and examples on conducting lessons in the classroom.  When I read about them, I think “I can definitely do that,” but I feel like I have to read and compile a good many more in order to be more prepared.  I have more ideas for projects, but not necessarily for how to teach them up to the point where they are loosed to start/complete their projects.  Must feel more comfortable in the day-to-day.

I am feeling far more confident in my “teacherly” self at this time.  While I learned plenty and was moved to think by our activities throughout the course, I recognized the greatest difference in professional sensibility when making the Change Project CCI with my team.  I’d never even thought about how to go about making a CCI before, but when we got together with our subject matter, the ideas started flowing, both from the group and from myself.  I realized that I was thinking about teaching, thinking about learning, and making them meet for an imagined class.  Observing my CT had something to with my rise in confidence, too, to be fair—being around the school and talking to the students made me feel much more connected to the whole thing.  I’d have to say I feel more like a teacher now.  I went out yesterday and bought some teacher clothes and didn’t feel ironic about it.  How about that?

Literate Self

Though I’ve read precious little fiction in my recent history, I had a moment a few weeks ago that bolstered my confidence.  I was visiting my family, and took my 16-year-old nephew to the library, where I needed to grab something.  He’s never been much of a reader, so we don’t typically talk about literature, but while we were there, he asked what he should read, as he was getting bored at the end of his summer vacation.  I surprised myself by my lack of hesitation.  I began asking him what he’s read in the past that he liked, and answered his “I don’t know” with good questions of my own.  Fantasy, like Tolkien?  Detective stories?  Mysteries?  His lack of experience didn’t deter me, either.  We walked through the fiction stacks and I described the kinds of stories I saw.  After a few minutes of this, I realized he wasn’t going to have an opinion, so I thought about the right voice for him to read.  I took him straight to the Vonnegut section.  Writes like a grandfather spinning a yarn.  Master of satire and understated morality.  “Cat’s Cradle,” I said, handing him the book.  “Read the first ten pages and tell me what you think.”   A few minutes later, I looked over at him from across the library, and he glanced up.  I widened my eyes in question, and I got the double approval—a thumbs up with an enthusiastic head nod.

Young Adult literature was never on any of my reading lists, for some reason, but what I’ve read for this class thus far—Drowned Cities and half of The List—I can appreciate for the simplified themes and reflective natures of the works.  It’s just the kind of writing that would appeal to moderate readers and raging discoverers of self, and the themes would actually be pretty easy to discuss for these students, so I am fast becoming a fan.  I’ve been reading plenty since, and I am pleased at how my English brain is thinking about the things I’m reading, but I’ve still got some distance to go.  This is a lifelong pursuit, I know.  But my library still feels small at this point.  I certainly have a long way to go and a lot of titles to read, but this is my craft now, and I’m surprisingly grateful to be introduced to this genre at this late date.  New fear, after meeting my CT and her colleagues:  there is no money for books and the ones they do have are falling apart.  They seemed to be content to stick to the classics and what they had, though there was small trove of “reader’s choice” books, of which they had 2-5 copies of each.  Starting small is still starting.  But the teachers in the PLT didn’t talk at all about trying to expand from what they had from the canon.  I wasn’t ranking enough to discuss YA in the fast-paced meeting today.  Also, though I remembered very little from my high school reading of Their Eyes Were Watching God, it came quickly back to me as I read it this summer, which gives me confidence as well.  I am well-read, even if I don’t remember many of the details, and I have a decent enough knowledge of literature in general to be able, I hope, to guide my students, especially as I continue my refreshers.  Again, there’s a path in front of me, and there is much to remember and learn, but I feel ready.  Ish.  Ish indeed.  I’m just gonna keep on reading.  And listening to students.  Glad I know to enlist the help of teens like the Eva Perry club.

I have surprised myself this semester with how much “for pleasure” reading I did despite my courseload.  It’s helped me to realize that I have no reason to be afraid of my lack of overall knowledge of YA literature and my hazy memories of other literature.  I can read YA lit quickly, and my “teacher brain” actually works pretty well for picking up themes and the like.  It’s happening with everything I’m reading.  I’m becoming a “teacher-reader.”  I just see things that way now.  I still have a lot of knowledge to gain, but I’m unconcerned that I’ll fail to get there.  Everything in time.  What I’ve learned about listening to students is probably as valuable as any of the books I’ve read. 

Virtual Self

On the technological literacy front, I feel semi-prepared.  I’ve blogged and made videos for years, and I feel great about my ability to explain the use of the internet as a research tool.  I’ve taken one edu-tech course, and just started another, and I’m learning more about the Web 2.0 tools that are available to teachers for instruction and creative presentation. I how to use them much better than once I did, but I am still not fully comfortable.  I really believe this will change by the end of this semester, but at this point, if I were to ask students to Storybird for me, I’d have to sit right down next to them and approach any question they had as though I had it myself.  I’m getting there, but still, there are miles left for me to travel.  I need to be introduced to more clever uses of these technologies and vastly build my proficiency with them.  Miles to go still.  I’ve stepped beyond my comfort zone and feel good about the products I’ve made out there.  Still so much to learn.  BUT, I’m pretty confident in my ability to learn these things.  

With every project, my confidence and creativity swelled a bit, which is great.  I feel good about using a good many technologies—and about instructing them.  I am certainly aware that when I begin teaching, I am going to feel as though I’m in a time-vacuum, but I will always try to make time to learn new tools, consider their affordances, and how to use them.

In specific regard to my online identity, I am presently unprepared, I suppose.  I keep a blog, but it’s not one I want my students reading.  I am not really sure how to go about creating an appropriate online presence, either.  I know I need to change the name on my personal FaceBook account.  Should I build a webpage for my classes?  For myself the teacher?  I am ready to use technology for assignments, but how much of myself is reasonable to have out there on the web when I have students?  I want them to have my email address.  I want them to know I’m available.  A class Wiki could be really good for keeping everyone on the same page, and I’m fairly comfortable with the prospect of making and maintaining one of those.  I’m not sold on Twitter for class use… yet.  I definitely have a lot more questions than opinions on this front, obviously.  I have plenty to learn before I decide and more fully implement my online identity.  Don’t be mad, but I’m still not sold on Twitter.  I think that I’m far more comfortable online, but I’m obviously not interested in having my classes meet in SL–so many problems.  I see them lessening for us all as we get a few weeks under our belts, but I don’t see how that would do for high school.  I do feel that it’ll be important to have an online course page for my classes, but understand the importance of keeping it up to date and compact for sure. 

So.  I’m still not a Twitter fan.  I’m sorry!  I don’t mind the concept, but integrating its regular use into my life is unclean.  It’s clunky for me–it doesn’t fit into my organization very well.  I could spend 5 minutes reviewing it, or it could bloom into 2 hours if I find a handful of interesting posts, and that is difficult to fit into my attempt at becoming well-organized!  My blog has made me feel more established, and I am definitely going to do one of these for my classes, perhaps as part of a course website—it’ll be such a great way to keep parents apprised of what’s going on and will widen the community of our classroom. 

My Goals

Professional Self

More than anything else, I want to be better acquainted with the books that I will want to teach in my career.  This means wading deeper into the waters of young adult fiction, feeling more comfortable with the catalogue, and knowing what kinds of books will appeal to the varied demographics of my future classrooms so that I can be sure to include a little something for everyone.  Shy people, happy people, confused people, angry people, everyone.  I also want to know what’s out there to help me include as many different kinds of people’s points of view so that I can help my students to understand that one culture’s point of view is never the right one, and that every culture, no matter how dominant or dominated, has something to learn from every other culture in the world.  I feel relatively confident of my knowledge of literature in this regard, but knowing what’s available in YA fiction would be wonderful.

I know more, and I know more resources to find ideas for books for independent reading choices for my students, which is great.  Again, I am now thinking about class time and resources.  The teachers I met today were only talking about removing things from their courses.  They said the administrative decree was to do less, but more in depth.  I still want to expand my knowledge, and I will, and I will focus on including readings with many points of view for comparative/empathetic purposes, but I am worried afresh that the “shrinking time” that the teachers I met today were speaking about is going to cramp my professional style and the goals I have.  Still—it would do no good to gloss over things so much that the students don’t learn deeply enough from what we cover.  This calls for a fantastical balancing act of genius proportions.

I am feeling much more confident about my knowledge, and I think more importantly, about my ability to quickly find resources that contain the knowledge I do not have.  That has mostly been a by-product of my education, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to make a plug for it—teaching future teachers how to quickly find quality teaching stuff resources is a great idea!  Because I won’t have time to read every book that comes out.  But when I know how to find a trustworthy teacher or consortium of teachers who have reviewed it, I can have a good idea of the value of this book to me and my classroom.  This is why I want to remain subscribed to the Bookhenge Daily, in fact—lots of great resources within. 

Literate Self

Put simply, I would like to expand my knowledge and gain confidence in my use of the pedagogical and technological tools available to help me teach literature to high school students effectively.  What instructional methods and web tools are good for helping students compare points of view from disparate texts?  How can I help them see the differences?  I need to understand these technologies so I can be a more savvy and informed user and choose activities and technologies that are truly helpful, not just neat.  I might not have made much progress here, but I think it’s because I’m not yet teaching or designing instruction.  If I were to have a curriculum, I think I’d be okay at recognizing the Englishy prospects within each one, and could direct student reading with good questions and things to look for.  And I know at least 10 web tools now, and understand their benefits.  I can probably figure out how to use them for specific desired outcomes for students.   Will need practice.  Like designing a CCI.  Oh, that’s coming up,  you say?  Well, huzzah!

How many accounts do I have now?  How many projects have I created?  How many great ideas have I gathered from my community of learners here?  I am amazed at how much more knowledgeable I feel, and how much more I actually feel as though I’m becoming part of a community I have only seen from the outside previously.  I feel like I know how to teach—I am aware that it takes my mind far too long to cogitate the ins and the outs of the instruction still, and I’ll need to gain speed with my practice—but I understand so much better the process.  I am less bashful about delving into subject matter.  I am excited to find more nonfiction to teach, for one thing.  Why my brain never really thought that teaching Fast Food Nation was possible in high school English is beyond me.  I am far more confident in my ability to choose content and make lessons out of it.

Virtual Self

As I mentioned earlier, I would like to more fully form my understanding of the aspects of a virtual self that would be helpful to me and my students and their parents.  I want to have a presence for communication and collaboration purposes at least.  Are there more uses I should consider?  I want to be judicious in my choices so that I am an efficient and helpful online presence, and so that I know where to be to help and be helped by other teachers.  I’m ready for instruction in this area so I can begin to form my opinions on the matter.  My thoughts and abilities are starting to gel, here, I think.  I spoke about keeping a web presence for my courses, and needing to keep them very up to date and clear.  I want to do a monthly (or so) email to all parents if it’s appropriate for the kind of classroom I’m running.  It made more sense to me before I met real teachers today, and I thought:  How would I put these things into an email?  Not that everything of which they spoke needed to be communicated to parents.  But even just the class updates.  Not sure yet.  It’s an idea in my mind, and will come to be reexamined as I begin student teaching.   

Monthly email?  My brain is an idiot!  I feel like I’ve had the idea of having a course blog for years now, but I suppose it just came up in the last couple of months.  I have projects up at a dozen different Web 2.0 tool sites or more.  I can throw a Weebly together in ten minutes.  I can create my course on Edmodo and keep my students and parents up to date simultaneously–plus have room for announcements.  How strange, this knowledge and confidence and presence came on so sneakily.  Even as of my FOKI-Mid, I was putzing around about my presence in web-worlds, but now I feel like I’m quite a part of it. 

I am a changed man as a result of this course, my fellow learners, and my work within it and with them.  The support here has been amazing—I hope that we can all maintain some semblance of it as we move forward.  I’m not really interested in jumping out of the nest yet.  Or at least, I would like to return to it after each day for a while, okay?  Okay fine, we can just keep together via the thing that brought us together though we be apart. And I’m going to stop now before I start calling Dr. Crissman “mama bird.”  Ooops.  Too late.

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#bookhenge

Thoughts on Online Interviewing and Other Incomprehensible Ramblings

I was thinking, on Thursday while we were trying to grill Marc Aronson, about how an interview is  a really interesting set of dynamics, particularly when it’s being conducted in a crazy venue like Second Life.  In a real life interview, body language helps people know when to start and stop talking, and when they’re getting off topic.  Eye contact makes a big impact.  I was noticing that Marc was giving great answers to the initial question, but when he came to his natural stopping point, there was a space in between his finishing, people feeling certain that he had finished, and anyone else jumping in.  And when that space got to be more than a couple of seconds, Marc felt compelled to elaborate, which was fine, but I think must have been exhausting for him.  An interview is a conversation, but it is definitely difficult to have a conversation like that in a virtual world at this point.

Besides the interview component of the class, where I wanted to jump in several times but didn’t want to cut in or interrupt our guest (again, this is where eye contact and body language helps to signal such desires in real life), it wasn’t terribly different from my hesitance to jump in during our regular live classes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve clicked the “Speak” button to chime in—only to click again and scramble to put a thought in the back channel or leave it be entirely since the speaker had moved far enough beyond my comment to render it disruptive and awkward were I to give it voice.  It happens.  It’s not a perfect world!

Marc was great though, and a real trooper.  I think I would have liked to have spent the whole class talking about the future of the publishing world, which we only spent a few minutes on, because several of us have interesting ideas about that, and so did Marc.  I really appreciated his feelings on the writing process, though—particularly his thoughts on coming to terms with a finding he didn’t expect through his research or which might be unpopular with other people… or entire populations.  That’s the most interesting thing about writing nonfiction, I think.  You are either printing something people already basically know or you are showing the world something for which there is no canned response, and you might stir up more controversy than intended.  I think controversy is great for societal growth, though, and I have to admit that I am now keeping my eyes open for a story I might want to tell in the world as I navigate it.  Nonfiction writing is suddenly appealing to me in a way it’s never before been.  Since I’ve taken this CR post in an unintended personal direction (writing is an exploration, after all), I would like to admit that I’m jealous of Marc and anyone else who seems to really know what makes them go and don’t think twice about doing it—just doing it—because that’s where their heart leads them.  I’m improving in that realm, and it’s good to have role models to prove the feasibility and beauty of such a personal constitution.

I may be too old to be figuring out what I want to do with my life, but you’re never too old to be finding things you want to do in your life.  The thing that most people don’t know is that there is actually no difference between the two beyond societal perception.

#bookhenge
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Development Teams and Owl Things: A CR Post for All of Us

Darnit—for the second time, wordpress is not displaying my post title.  Don’t worry, I’ve figured a way around it.  Post title within the body!

Development Teams and Owl Things:  A CR Post for All of Us

Hello, loyal readers.  Some of you may have been disappointed to find that I neglected to post my critical reflection last week.  I wasn’t testing your ability to survive without the sage words of a scrambling monkey—I would never do that to you.  I know how important I’ve become to you, and if you don’t know by now, let me promise you that my love is not contingent upon your loyalty.  If you’ve found another self-involved blogger to follow during our break, I won’t be upset, and I will still always care deeply about you and what we’ve had.  If you care to read on, however, I’m back for more e-talkin’, and our codependent what-have-you can continue as before.

Let’s talk CCI-making.  Let’s talk nonfiction.  Let’s talk…  real world.  You know, I’ve always loved reading because of its ability to take a person simultaneously out of their sphere of knowledge and deeper into themselves; no matter how foreign the topic or unlikely the story, a reader cannot help but relate what they apprehend to themselves, their experience, their personal story.  Like all art, it’s a window out and a mirror in.  I have read a book on fictionalized Hobbits and an article on establishing a victory garden, and both helped me to shape my feelings about the world around me and to understand better the soul within me.

So as my class (and classy) group and I worked to form our findings on Marc Aronson’s Witch Hunt (2005), it struck me that not only did I take something personal from this work of nonfiction, but that as we worked to create a CCI out of the themes we found important, we were forming new ideas together—a CCI within our CCI creation.  In other words, group work can really work!  We extended our personal takeaways from the text to think about it in new ways.  This isn’t new, exactly—all of our CCIs have done this—but the allowance of creativity in taking these findings and going where we felt would be most fertile grounds for student discovery and inquiry added a teacherly dimension to our personal reflections.  It was good to be on the other side of that coin.  I must give props (that’s a word kids still use, right?  I mean, I do) to this assignment and its placement within the curriculum (which must mean giving additional “props” to our guide—props to CC!).  After participating in several CCIs throughout the semester, we were ready to build a lesson out of it that would challenge students and bring the ideas within the book to an opportunity for discovery into their world.   We didn’t just have historical connections—we created contemporary connections.  And I believe that providing the opportunity to see a subject, an idea, a theme, in multiple contexts is a fantastic way to appeal to a greater number of students.

My group was incredible—we took the themes of Witch Hunt and took them to places I wouldn’t have found on my own.  Why don’t teachers teach in teams?  PLTs are great, but it’s such a limited time in which to grow these kinds of professional ideas.  I found myself thinking this week that I’m feeling pretty confident in my class delivery skills (or at least in my ability to figure them out quickly, on the fly) but I’m still concerned about my curriculum building.  If I could spend all of my time planning the curriculum, I’d be okay, and if I took well-conceived curriculum that I believed in and delivered it, I’d be okay.  Doing it all is really intimidating to me.  Late-night talk show hosts get writers.  For all but our most amazing teachers, our curriculums could be so great if there were a dedicated curriculum-writing team of teachers feeding great activities to actively participating delivering teachers.  It’s a whole new paradigm!  Think-tank and public relations teamwork!  Or am I just showing my fear of being overwhelmed?  I think both!  Team-written curriculum could be so much more complete than a single teacher’s thoughts.

I hope this blessing of knowledge helps to assuage the wounds of last week’s missing post, readers.  We’re back together again, and I promise that if I must disappear for a few days again, I’ll let you know about it ahead of time.  And I’ll return bearing chocolates and flowers and possibly some really cool owl-themed jewelry.  I’m going to spend the rest of my week being thankful you’ve returned to me, and hopeful that you’ll stick with me until the very end.

This isn’t my style. But do you like it?

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#bookhenge

Anything Can Lead to Truth: A Critical Reflection on the Classroom Use of Nonfiction

I’m going to start incredibly uncritically and remark about the state of my brain at this point.  It is alarmingly dull.  It may be that I’ve been sick for a week, but I think I noticed it rapidly blunting a couple of weeks ago.  Here’s the proof:  usually, when I sit to write my critical reflection, I spend a few minutes thinking about all of the conversations and revelations I gathered through the week with my classmates, decide on a couple that work thematically well together or that particularly interested/surprised me, and set to composing.  Tonight, my thoughts are sputtering.  I can remember of which we spoke but in only vague terms this week, and I don’t know how about I’m about to get critical.  Oy, this semester.

So forgive me if this isn’t the hard-hitting incisive self-journalism it usually (occasionally) is this time around; I’m getting a bit fried.

I’m not sure if it’s the simple fact that I’ll soon be in front of a living, breathing class, but this week’s discussions put me into a similar frame of mind to other recent weeks—which is to say that I’ve been nervously considering the information we review and build in light of how it’s going to affect me as a teaching professional.  Do the Common Core Standards mean to tell me that I’ll be teaching non-fiction 50% of the time in my classroom, or are they hinting that other subject areas will need to incorporate nonfiction to the point that the students will be reading this much?  Sonya hit me with the statistic that has been rattling in my head all week—that if English classes start teaching 50% non-fiction, students will be getting something like 12.5% fiction/poetry/other literature in their educations, which bothers her on account of the fact that fiction literature can teach a person so much about themselves, their feelings, and their world, and these are points with which I agree whole-heartedly.

But I also think that nonfiction can serve this purpose when well-chosen and well-taught.  I do believe that the artful language one finds in some fiction is really worth the effort, though, and let’s face it, there are so many works out there worthy of student attention.  Of human attention.  See, I’ve moved from worrying I’d not have enough time to show students all of the amazing literature that can change their worlds because of standardized testing and other secret classroom stuff about which I do not yet know to worrying about how much of it I’ll lose to nonfiction time—and I believe in nonfiction time!  I think that somewhere in my heart I’m resigned to the idea that it will work out, that worrying about these things is silly.  Because I know that what I love about nonfiction is valid as well, and one of the primary purposes of the ELA classroom is to teach students true literacy.  Where I believe that nonfiction can be so much more topically relevant to every student than most fiction can be, I know that teaching more nonfiction is a great thing.  I think my fear, and perhaps this is Sonya’s as well, is that you find your love for literature in strange places, and erasing a large handful of those places we would have explored together is erasing a large handful of opportunities to help students find something that they can love in a personal way.

To wit:  nonfiction is probably better at connecting you with your world as it is.  Fiction holds great promise for connecting you with your true self.  There are many ways to find your true self.  Fiction is just one of those that English teachers tend to believe in as an express ticket.  But that’s a narrow view.  I think the humanist in me tells me that I’ll do my best and it will be good enough in any event, and each of the young people who spends time with me will have equal opportunity to find their way whether or not I’m excessively worrying myself about what I’m teaching them.

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Boyz and Stepchildren

“It is cool when you know what the Gadsen Purchase was (Aronson, 2004, p. 111).”

He’s absolutely right, you know.  Well, not about the spelling of “Gadsden,” but about the cool factor of it.  I once took the head cheerleader off of the arm of Johnny Football Hero with the mere mention of it, and earned a lovely kiss goodnight when I upped the ante with “and at only 33 cents per acre, it was an absolute boondoggle!”  Because chicks love cool guys, and the Gadsden Purchase and using words like “boondoggle” are super cool.

Okay, I’m done busting Marc’s chops for the night.  I really wish he and I were friends so I could throw this friendly ribbing his way constantly, since he has a penchant for throwing things I think are funny into the ether.  This week, I have a difficult time disagreeing with him, really, but I’m sure that’s mainly because I have searched in vain for an informed view on the matter.

I mean, I’m a boy—well, I’m old now, so I’m going to go with the euphemism “dude”—so I should have some insight into what he’s saying when he discusses how boys don’t have literature that speaks to their true experience of learning physically as well as intellectually, particularly through the teenage years.  I found myself wondering about this approach, which he seemed to base on a couple of observations, and I wouldn’t discount it.  Then I started wondering how I’d write a young person’s book about how a car works—I’ve spent a good deal of my life maintaining and repairing my own cars—and I decided that it could be interesting.  I might have enjoyed reading something like that before I was big enough to pop open a hood.

But seeing as how he’s an expert in the publishing field, I believe wholeheartedly that he is not wrong when he says that market perceptions and an unproven interest in these sorts of books have relegated forward-looking ideas such as these to the Imaginarium (my word, don’t steal it) in favor of proven-seller genres.  Sort of like how there are exactly 47 crime drama shows on television now, 22 long-term reality gameshows, and zero shows about what would be my favorite genre, time-traveling cats who try to help the dinosaurs out.  Because business is afraid of straying from the formulaic.  It’s frustrating to be an artist confined by conservative market knowledge.  I hate it too.  So now that I’ve read three of his books, I’m ready to ask him:  what are you publishing that caters to this boy-physical-learning-reading theory?  I’m ready to work with you on a how-cars-work title.  Seriously!  I’m a cheap writer at this point in my career, so he might want to take me up on this offer.  We can test this theory on the cheap behind his publishing clout and our shared belief that there are unexplored authentic-learner markets.  I don’t know that it will blow up, but I’d be interested to see what boy nonreaders would think.  Could have done this for my ALP too…  all of the best ideas came to me too late.

Ancillary to the idea that boys learn physically as well as intellectually through their teenage years, do we assume that girls learn emotionally as well as intellectually through theirs?  Presumably, girls weren’t talked about because there are books out there that speak to emotional issues and resolutions, yes?  I’m asking, and I’m glad I have so many ladies in class with me to clue me in.  Is Aronson’s unspoken belief that girls are taken care of on their “reading needs” front where boys are not?  If so, this might help to explain the general gender gap in reading interest, too.  I’m young in this thought, so show me the way if I am errant.  Just spitballin’ here.

So, I mentioned earlier that I’m without knowledge or opinion as to whether nonfiction truly is the “neglected stepchild” of the literary world.  I tried to imagine what nonfiction I read as a youngster, and I have to admit that I could remember very little.  What this means for the nonfiction-heavy Common Core Standards interests me, because if there really isn’t much of great interest written for younger audiences, I could be in trouble—although I suspect I’ll be able to find interesting nonfiction literature besides.  The thing is, while my scholastic career seldom put me in touch with nonfiction materials, I found my way to them on my own, and they’ve been the jam in my doughnut for the past 15 years.  I would think that students would find much of what I’ve read quite interesting simply because it’s been written by people who are out there right now trying to unravel the mysteries of our time.  One of my favorite books of my last few years is Tales of a Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Mark J. Plotkin, a fancypants Ivy League ethnobotanist who writes of his time researching plants in the Amazon.  He does such an excellent job of coverage—he discusses the shamans who have revealed plant information to him, the drug companies who pay for his trips of discovery and their interests, the ravages of the western world in the small villages he visits, and on and on.  He’s a heck of an anthropologist in his own right and his insights on the peoples he visits are absolutely brilliant.  And though this would certainly not be considered “YA Nonfiction,” it’s written in very accessible and even friendly language, and I think it would be wonderful for students to read.  I’ve got to buy an extra copy and find a teenager with some free time.

I suppose that what I’m wondering isn’t unlike what I wondered when I questioned how the genre of “YA Fiction” got its start.  Just because it’s a newly designated genre, does that mean that there isn’t anything yet published that fits the description?  I feel like most of what interests Aronson is history, and that’s great—it certainly has its place and is an important field.  But there’s more to the non-fiction world, and is it decided that everything available is boring or “too adult” already?  I’d bet we could find some winners.  Perhaps they’ve remained hidden because schools haven’t traditionally valued them enough.  This is one arena where I hope the Common Core Standards are worth their salt and I hope that educators won’t shy away from the challenge.

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A Big, Bad, Bold Critical Reflection

Dear reader,

I’ve misled you and I am instantly remorseful.  I wouldn’t say I regret my actions, but I both rue and lament them.  The fact of the matter is that this will be a rather run-of-the-mill critical reflection, and while there is nothing wrong with this decision, it is decidedly un-bold.  I accept any comment backlash you feel I deserve.

Backlash.  Every teacher can expect backlash, because teachers make decisions all day, every day.  What to read, what to assign, how much to penalize, and on and on.  The authority provided a teacher has always called to me, not because I’d feel powerful if I had it, but because I consider myself fair, thoughtful, and kind, and I’ve seen people, kids included, respond so well to that kind of authority that I can hardly wait to exercise it and experience the kind of classroom environment that should create.

Being a busy benevolent decision-maker, though, and due to the law of large numbers, it is inevitable that I will make some decisions that are unpopular and some that are openly challenged.  I’ve certainly never thought that I’d really bristle at the prospect—I know that I make decisions after carefully considering the benefits and know that I’d never be afraid of defending them and/or tossing them aside if a perspective is shown me that refutes what I initially believed.  I think that observing my cooperating teacher has added a new dimension to this concept, though.  She does not have the time to fight every challenge she faces head-on, and I don’t think it’s because she’s disorganized.  I think teachers are just that busy.  Now I realize that if I’ve made what I think is a good decision and come under personal attack from a parent, I’m going to be annoyed at the time thievery at the very least.  As I’ve learned in life, the last thing you can do is be openly annoyed at an inquisition.  Others take your annoyance personally and the possibility for a communication trainwreck grows large immediately.  One must stay cool, as they say, and deal with the issue openly with a smile on your face.  Which is how it should be.  Everyone deserves their say and their part in a discussion, especially in a public school.

I am pleased as can be to have learned that there is a reasonable process aimed at justice in book choice disputes—and as I mentioned somewhere in our wanderings this week, I really love that at least a student is on the book review committee, as well as other teachers and a principal.  I think that a diverse group of points of view is always important to hopefully reach a fair conclusion in this and any other matter in a diverse society.  Generally speaking, I don’t think I would be upset if a book I chose was rejected by the wisdom of such a diverse group.  I’d feel sheepish and apologetic (and I forgot to ask during class Thursday, but how likely/severe are repercussions against a teacher whose choice is deemed inappropriate for students?  I’m sure it depends on the reasons it was deemed inappropriate and how “obviously” inappropriate the content was) .  But I would accept the wisdom of the group and try to learn from it.

Less enthused was I, I must admit, at the idea of pre-defending a reading choice.  I do get the parents’ rights to know what their children are reading and learning in school, but besides English books and evolution, what do parents ever bother challenging?  I don’t like what a legacy book-burning has in our country, and I’m a little insulted that certain subjects seem to always grab the attention of those whom I swear to never call small-minded.  Swear words and sex scenes.  Let me tell you, I was a teenager, and when I was, I knew a lot of other teenagers, and we all knew swear words—usually from our parents—and we all knew what sex was.  Some of us even tried it!  Not me—I’m not married yet.  Oh, drugs too I suppose.  In any event, I believe strongly in the message of the book rather than the content of certain passages, and after this week’s discussion, I feel prepared to make defenses of probably anything I’d hope to teach based on that distinction.  I still bristle at the idea of preparing defenses to send home before reading books, but I get the reasoning and it’s not bad.  Parents do have that right to know and I appreciate that wonderful western idea of headin’ ’em off at the pass.  Still, I think history teachers I had in high school should have sent home defenses of the very particular perspectives from which they presented their capital h HISTORY.  Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky can cure our preferred point of view problem and promote a wonderful infection social justice thought–and their books aren’t even very expensive!  I’ve digressed, but to finish with only one line more, I think teaching multiple-perspective history may be the single most effective change our schools could possibly make to improve the real education of our populace and promote the brother-(and sister!)-hood that dirty hippies like myself would like to see.

To make a long story short (CHORUS:  Too late!), I think I’m much better prepared now to deal with the eventuality of being challenged in my classroom whether on book choices or other teaching practices, and I do believe that’s fair in a properly democratic society.  Let’s decide what’s best together—a practice which has only gone wrong in Salem and in the Confederacy and in Washington in the 1950’s and in…  oh, but that’s assuming my preferred point of view!  I’m gonna practice what I preach and accept that killing a bunch of people coerced to admit they were witches may not have been a bad thing and is open for debate.  Yes yes, let us decide what is best together.  I’m ready for my part!

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Whose Face Haven’t We Seen? Post MC Critical Reflection

This was an interesting week around the ‘Henge.  For most of our CCIs, I would say that the topics were of a nature that none of us was entirely committed to a stance before we began reading one another’s blogs, commenting, lauding, challenging, and otherwise discussing.  I know that my perception has often been molded or shifted several times because of the good ideas and convincing explanations of my classmates, and that is a very good thing.  It does no good to have opinions on a matter when there is information appertaining to which your attention has not yet been drawn and you’ve not yet given due consideration.

There are some topics, though, to which nearly everyone brings a substantial amount of personal experience, baggage, opinion, what have you, and we stumbled across one of those this week, which I felt changed the dynamic of the CCI in a way I hadn’t before seen.  After we’d read our Aronson and Pinkney essays, most (all?) of us were pretty strongly aligned in the camps we’d chosen, including myself.  I don’t remember seeing anyone move beyond point acknowledgement when responding to another’s post.  And I saw a lot of acknowledgement followed by a “but…”  I tried, I really did, to see things a different way, but in the end, my brain and heart tell me that what I think is true and what our culture needs is a little loaded push to help tip the scales back toward the proper equality that so many of us believe is right.  Many of my classmates think that kind of special treatment is self-defeating and I see their point (acknowledgement), BUT the weight of the inequality that got us to this point is so great and it is so woven into our collective subconscious that establishing a reverse inequality, I think, is the least we can do to speed ourselves back towards what most of us believe in our hearts is right.

I’m just saying, I’m part of this one, and I’d never seen the free exchange of ideas amongst my ECI 521 classmates result in so little shifting of opinion.  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.  It’s not surprising that a racially-loaded CCI is that galvanizing. Not in this country.

As for my classroom, I’ve long been of the mind that I need to be sure to use literature from every perspective, every culture, that I can find.  I feel the responsibility to cultivate empathy within every student I meet, because in the end, I want to live in a world full of empathetic, non-judgmental, kind, caring, thoughtful people.  Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk blew me away in its simplicity—I think a simple story is one of the best ways to make a point, and she did it beautifully, and I’ve diigo’d that sucker for use in my classroom.  People can’t listen to a story like that and not understand the truth of the wisdom.  I must find ways to provide multiple stories for my students and figure out how to give them the tools that allow them to evaluate those stories across which they’ll come that don’t have obvious counterparts.  I’m thinking about how to get people really thinking.

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Lit Review Lite on the Topic of GDocs in the Classroom

For those of you not in the know, my ALP is not completely defined as yet.  My second set of ideas largely failed to impress or inspire my sweet, thoughtful teacher-mentor, and her suggestion in reply does not thrill me entirely.  Shhh!  Don’t tell her, but I’m really not interested in meeting a group of high school kids for the first time and requiring them to write a compare/contrast paper.  I have this thing where I don’t want people to hate me right away.  She can get away with such things because she’s already earned their respect.  But me, I am aiming to win their favor by finding something to do that might even interest them.

SO, I have decided to move forward with a modified version of my idea at this moment, knowing that it may again be modified soon.  I’m confident that my attention to scholarly musings shall not be wasted—we’re surely in the right ballpark regardless.

I always despised group work when I was younger, but word around town is that it’s become extremely popular in schools these days.  I am theoretically on board with this practice—I love the idea of students learning how to work together and possibly even to enjoy the process, appreciating how differing perspectives adds a richness to the collaborative work and how the members’ collective skills come together to strengthen the product.  Without further ado, I present my ALP question:

Can Web 2.0 tools—specifically Google Docs for collaborative group work— facilitate better collaborative learning in the classroom while supporting Common Core Standards?

In a high school English Language Arts classroom, students are expected to learn proficiency in language use, including close reading and logical, clear, and compelling writing skills. The writing workshop inquiry model promotes these skills by offering frequent practice in the review and constructive criticism of literature (both professional and peer), refining and helping to refine inquiries, and writing and revising text both individually and collaboratively.  The 21st century classroom affords new possibilities in the writing workshop, including the use of Google Docs, which allows for remote synchronous and asynchronous collaboration and group editing.

On what exactly am I banking my students’ learning?  Is collaborative writing with Web 2.0 technologies like Google Docs that different from traditional group writing?  Knobel and Lankshear (2008) find that Web 2.0 tools provide new affordances in distributed participation and collaboration, necessitating that a teacher not only teach the technical functions of the tool, but remain flexible to the changes in collaborative inquiry that the tool allows.  It isn’t lost on me that Google Docs provides a shifting canvas that the collaborators can use for research sharing, communication, idea confirmation, and group decision making in addition to the co-writing standard fare of space to write and edit.  A teacher must remain alert to these and other uses and be prepared to help students navigate the many ways in which these tools can provide space for growth and learning.

Kittles and Hicks (2008) point out that it is possible for students in a group project to cooperate and even contribute but not actually collaborate.  The tasks that truly comprise collaboration include “giving ideas and feedback, creating content, debating the merits of an overall argument for the paper, writing and revising a particular section, researching information for that section. . .  editing all parts of a document. . . taking a risk as a writer by sharing all of this publicly, and encouraging one’s group members to engage in all of these tasks” (p. 527).  These tasks and skills climb the ladder of Bloom’s and put the responsibility of the final product in the hands of every group member when all can and do work on a single shared document as in Google Docs.  It’s an exciting tool if it can be taught to be properly utilized—which is to say, if a teacher can teach each of these skills and encourage students to use the collaborative workspace for all that it’s worth.  In my ALP, I’ll be sure to discuss some of these skills and strategies with the students in relation to their assignment, though it seems likely to me that this should be taught in an authentic longer-term assignment (with certain aspects taught compartmentally) to produce the best learning.

Even in a short-term assignment such as my ALP, I think that some instruction on the tool itself is of great importance to the success of the students performing their work.  As the previously mentioned literature has me thinking about promoting higher level learning through the use of Google Docs’ able canvas, an jaw-dropping study by Brodahl, Hadjerrouit, and Hansen (2011) has shown me the importance of teaching and explicitly modeling at least the primary functions of the web tool being used in one’s project.  This study engaged 201 education students at a university and sought to derive data about usability and attitudes toward Google Docs and Ether Pad, another Web 2.0 collaborative writing tool, by requiring collaborative authorship of a short research paper.  Part of their method, though, was to intentionally teach nothing about the tools to the students, presuming that they should be as intuitive to use as the developers claimed.  While I also think that Google Docs is fairly intuitive for anyone who’s used MS Word before (and you would think that this would be a large number of the university students in 2011), I still would have thought that a simple overview at least would be in order.  It turns out I would have been right, as more than 70% of the students reported that the web tools did not work as they expected, less than 14% of them actually used the tools to collaborate with any of their classmates, and less than 16% of the students claimed an increase in the quality of collaboration using the tools.  How any of the additional findings of the study can be considered valid is beyond me, and I’d mock them for even publishing these pointless results except for the fact that they’ve really driven home the value of the mechanical instruction on tools that many of us might assume would be second nature to the young, these “digital natives.”  Students can’t perform if they don’t understand how their tools work to begin with, so that is obviously a very important step in the process.

While I would expect most high school students these days to have a fair amount of experience with Google applications, including Docs, one important facet to this project is indeed the ease of use of this and/or other web tools for students who haven’t before been exposed to them.  While I would never make the just-discussed mistake of refusing to teach anything of the tools before setting students to work, I remember that Google Docs and Wikispaces were very easy for me to learn, and I would hope that the same intuitive learning I experienced would be similar to the experiences of any of my students if I were to use these tools in my project or in my future classes.  Deters, Cuthrell, and Stapleton (2010) found that even with two-thirds of their participants completely new to Wikispaces, their end-of-study questionnaires reflected overwhelming positive reaction to using the tool, including a great deal of appreciation for the provided facilitation of group learning, fostering experiential learning, and the use of Wikis in online learning environments.  These respondents were graduate students, surely more self-motivated than high school students, but their reflection on the advanced learning capabilities is valuable, and the fact that so many of them had never used Wikis before but so enthusiastically endorsed their use in learning environments is heartening to a prospective teacher who’s a little wary of teaching a tool to be used for a specific assignment in an ALP.

The way one teaches the tool for classroom practice makes all the difference, as Perry and Smithmier (2005), high school teachers, found.  Solid and creative peer editing doesn’t happen with the simple introduction of a technology tool.  Especially for high school students, it is an intensive scaffolded process to move students from “This is good” and “put a comma here” to truly engaging with the content of the writing and helping their peers to dramatically improve their work, from structure to point of view to using the best diction for the job at hand.  I won’t have time in this brief ALP to teach, model, and help the students to internalize this kind of deep engagement, but I can perhaps give a few examples of surface editing versus closer reading and insightful assistance.  I see it as moving the students from thinking they’re editing someone else’s paper toward believing that all of the writing they’re reviewing is part of a team effort.  To this end, I believe in small groups where the students get to know the writing they’re editing intimately over the course of at least a week, so the line between “yours” and “ours” begins to blur for them, even in writing with individual authors.  This is what the publishing world does, and this authentic approach should be a buy-in point for this kind of thinking.  Again, it’ll probably have to be my own classroom one day where I have the time to try this approaches, but I will certainly try to briefly describe this idea and give an example or two to the students participating in my ALP.

Parker and Chou (2007) describe the learning theory behind the uses of collaborative Web 2.0 tools (specifically Wikis).  They name the “community of practice” context as one in which learning becomes the collaborative process of a group where members can “share their knowledge with the group, put up interesting pieces of information, work together,” and discuss related issues (58).  Web tools such a Wikis “are characterized by some of the elements fundamental to a successful community of practice, including a virtual presence, a variety of interactions, easy participation, valuable content, connections to a broader subject field, personal and community identity and interaction, democratic participation, and evolution over time” (58).  These features indeed fit well into constructivist paradigm, which I suppose is the most commonly cited learning theory associated with group collaboration.  This kind of collaborative writing work enables students to “reflect upon their learning and. . . understand their own learning processes” (Parker and Chou, 2007, 59).  This is wonderful news for a constructivist at heart like myself.  The challenge remains to get the students into the habit of using these tools to meet these ends rather than as simple text editors.  The greater challenge within my ALP is to design it and instruct the students sufficiently to arouse this kind of learning in a short-term project.  It’s a daunting task.  My mind is on it.

For my next trick—I mean my next research artifact—I decided to find a resource from a real teacher, to see how people utilized the bevy of Web 2.0 tools available to meet their students’ needs and satisfy their pedagogical goals.  This obviously isn’t scholarly, but it does provide insight into the kinds of creative uses teachers have come up with for these tools. Mark Callagher (nd) uses the entire Google suite in his History classroom, and his blog highlights the various uses he’s found and devised for the tools as well as links to student examples and exercises that he has them perform.  I found his use of Google Forms to solicit student feedback about various projects and class activities to be intriguing, as this is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of student perception in your classroom.  He has his students utilize various aspects of the tools to complete projects, going from a Doc for storing research, images, and more, to a published website when a project is complete.  As an ELA teacher (impending), I appreciated the way that he had his students add him as a “collaborator” to any of the papers they were writing so he could check in at regular intervals, make suggestions for improvements, ensure that they’re on the right track, and making adequate progress.  My favorite of his employments actually mirrors something we do in ECI 521, which is that each of his students keeps a personal assessment record document on which they collaborate with him.  He doesn’t use it as extensively as we do—it seems that he mainly uses it as a feedback form so he can let them know how they’re progressing from his point of view—but it reminded me of the power of this kind of process and the “good housekeeping” it promotes.  I did not understand our RAP process at first, but it only took a couple before I saw the value of soliciting student self-assessment and teacher feedback on that assessment as well as on projects through it, and I’m going to unabashedly steal that.  How any of this ties to the short-term ALP I’m proposing is tenuous—I can certainly collaborate with the writing groups to help steer them where they need it or offer suggestions where they may be appreciative—but I’m not sure this project has the scope to open up the depths of assessment like I really wish I could.  It’s the nature of the beast.

Which is reasonable—this is an in-semester project, and what I’m talking about is something that I think I want to weave into the culture of my classroom.  Perhaps my topic is too broad in possibility for an excitable fella like myself within the narrow scope that the ALP can realistically afford.  I’m okay with that.  The project is easily within these ideas; I’ll conjure a shorter, sweeter project out of them and store the deep-thinking student-involving assessment-rich stuff for when my canvas is larger and my brush is my own.  And hopefully that isn’t too much bravado for my ego to handle if the wheels come off and I am left a cowering, weakened, frightened little teacher man.

 

References

Brodahl, C., Hadjerrouit, S., & Hansen, N. K. (2011). Collaborative writing with Web 2.0 technologies: education students’ perceptions. J. Information  Technology Education, 10, 73-103.

Callagher, Mark.  (nd).  Google docs. High School eLearning blog. Retrieved October 28, 2012 from http://markcallagher.com/?page_id=297

Deters, F., Cutthrell, K., & Stapleton, J. (2010).  Why wikis? student perceptions of using wikis in online coursework.  MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. 6(1).  Retrieved from http://jolt.merlot.org/vol6no1/deters_0310.htm

Kittle, P., & Hicks, T. (2009). Transforming the group paper with collaborative online writing. Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 9(3), 525-538.

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2006). Profiles and perspectives: discussing new literacies.” Language Arts, 84(1), 78-86.

Parker, K., & Chou, J. (2007).  Wiki as a teaching tool.  Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, 3, 57-72.

Perry, D., & Smithmier, M. (2005).  Peer editing with technology: using the computer to create interactive feedback. English Journal, 94(6), 23-24.

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Recognition Be: What’s the Problem with Identity-Based Book Awards?

Part the First:  Pre-Reading Rambling on Identity-Based Book Awards

As any of my intensely devoted followers may already have guessed, I have no problem with identity-based book awards.  First, because as far as I’m concerned, any group of people can get together and give any award they conjure based on any criteria they like—this is AMERICA, okay?  It doesn’t mean that their opinions will matter to me until I am convinced and that their criteria is comprised of ideals I hold to be important that they are assessing appropriately for the award they’re giving.  Second, there are a lot of books written every year.  Possibly every day, what do I know?! No committee, no matter how amazing their members, can really give complete diligence in reviewing and assessing every book written.  More readers equals more thought given, and if we need more awards to give more books the attention they may deserve, so be it.

Most importantly, though, is that we don’t live in a one-size-fits-all world.  Non-identity-based book awards constitute a community assessing books on a spectrum of different criteria, from literary quality to popularity to excellence in genre.  This is a narrowing of scope, and in what way is that different from identity-based book awards?  Every award narrows its scope in some fashion.  Is any award worth less or more just because it is based on a certain culture’s or group’s experience of the world?  I don’t think so.  If there were an award given that appealed to me in some way, like it was a Dinosaurs and Cats Utilizing Time Travel Together in a Future Society award, I would be pretty interested in reading its winners and honorable mentions.  So why shouldn’t there be a committee discussing only LGBT-themed books?  They probably discuss a lot of the issues that LGBT people have faced and are facing, and reading books that help them examine those issues is probably very helpful—so an LGBT award committee could offer their opinion of the best books to read.  Wonderful!  The point (here it comes) is that we have a lot of different kinds of people in this world.  If ever-specific book awards, based on identity or anything else, is a way to give a critical voice to any group who wants one within the literary world, then I say awards for everyone.  If you’re not interested in a certain award’s scope, go find one who suits you better.  RECOGNITION BE.

Are We Denigrating the Purity of the “Literary” Award?

Marc Aronson, you scoundrel.  Well.  He’s not a scoundrel, but I would say that he’s viewing the world in an idealized fashion.  I’m an utter dreamer, I admit it, but even I acknowledge that the publishing world is traditionally an old boys’ club.  Aronson is willing to concede this but still defends his stance against racial qualification in literary awards.  I am sympathetic to his call to have a work judged on its own merits rather than the skin color of its authors, but that is supposedly what the Newberry and Caldecott medals are for.  There is no rule (unless there is an I’m about to proudly display my ignorance) that a book cannot win the CSK award and the more pure literary awards (as Aronson implies they are).

The issue is that the publishing world isn’t free of its institutional racism or sexism yet, high-minded as we hope we are, and that’s a primary reason these identity-based awards were initialized: to give credit where white male eyes were blind.  I think it’s a trifle naive to think we’re past that.  But even if we were, I repeat myself:  what’s wrong with exclusionary awards when they are transparent as to their exclusivity?  I think Aronson’s issue is that these awards are housed within the ALA bubble.  He wants to know what’s to stop every single race and creed from demanding their own awards, to get their “share of the honor pie?” (Aronson, 2003, p. 9).  Well, nothing I suppose.  But it’s not a new phenomenon in recognizing the rights and needs of the underserved and underrepresented.  It sounds, and I’m being hilarious but straight-faced here, like when Senator John Cornyn III stated his opposition to gay marriage by proposing that it was a slippery slope as well:  if we allow the institution of marriage to be denigrated by allowing a man to marry a man, then how long will it be before someone’s asking if a man should be allowed to marry a box turtle?

Team Pinkney!  Not that I don’t think that Aronson doesn’t have valid points, but because on this day (and possibly this day only), I am living in the real world.  That wasn’t meant to be rude.  Did it sound rude?  Oh whatever, he’s not going to come beat me up.  But if he did, what a story I’d have.

OH.  And on the topic of there not being a best books for young adults prize or recognition from the ALA:  I suppose that one could make the argument that this genre deserves recognition—sort of a spotlight on the best YA lit for those who don’t know about other sources of information on these books.  I’d say that’s a reasonable oversight for the moment, since the genre is relatively newly recognized.  The fact that there are clubs and prizes judging and extolling the virtues of the best of these is good, but maybe a flagship organization like the ALA lending greater credence to these titles is in order.  I’d have to assume that Aronson would consider such an extension as slipping farther down the slope, so I’m ready to battle him on this one, too.  What’s next, a literary prize for large-print books for seniors?!  He probably doesn’t like my Cats/Dinosaurs/Time Travel genre prize, either, but just you wait until it hits its stride about 20 years after my first novel comes out.

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