'Oh my goodness, the first day of 6th grade! New school, new friends. I'm so excited and nervous at the same time.....Okay, last period, reading. I can end the day in a favorite subject. Cool."........Fast forward mid-year...."How did I end up in this class? No one cares, not even the teacher. I can't believe we spend almost every period reading out of the textbook, taking turns by rows. I'm the only one here who actually wants to learn anything." The rest of the year, just reading copies of stories and out of the reading book with a teacher who seems to have been ready to leave after second period and doesn't care that no one is paying attention to her. No one wanted to be in that room.
"Please let this year be different. Hmm.. reading is split with lunch. Oh, it's Mrs. Ledbetter. She looks like a fun teacher." In my 7th grade year, I learned about diagramming sentences using my body. I can still visualize my English teacher using her arms and having us reenact the different parts of speech. This was also the year I was introduced to Ray Bradbury. Never would I have chosen to read this genre, yet The Illustrated Man and Fahrenheit 451 piqued my interest when I was assigned to read and write about each book, deciphering and interpreting the meaning in the text in ways had never done before. Science fiction was a new genre to my reading eyes. Over the summer, I filled my time reading The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine. I realized my elementary school teachers had placed me in a regular reading class schedule for sixth grade. The sixth-grade reading teacher, I presume, noticed I was attempting to be a good student placed me in the advanced/enriched reading class for seventh grade. I am grateful for her decision to move me to a more advanced course.
"This is the year we learn about Mythology, yes!" I don't remember anything about the first semester, though I know it was academically intense for an eighth-grade class. Ms. Sullivan taught us about organizing our studies and preparing for high school. With all that training, it was the second semester's theme I wanted her to discuss. I could not wait for our return after Christmas. Everything we read, researched and wrote about dealt with Greek and Roman Mythology. It was such a fascinating semester. I can recall it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, but we were engrossed in creating projects and having our first comparative journal to keep notes on the differences in the different characters. I am pretty sure my journal is still in my mom's hope chest.
Sometime during my middle school years, I discovered V.C. Andrews. My friends and I would read all the books in the series as quickly as they were released. The teachers did not need to worry about extraneous conversations during D.E.A.R. time. We were all engrossed in the latest novel, and our discussions were connected to the storyline. In a sense, we had our own book club aside from the texts assigned by our teachers.
"Oh gosh, please don't ask us to introduce ourselves. I don't want anyone to notice me in a weird way." Freshman year, my thoughts in every class the first day or week of school. Somehow Mrs. Jackson knew this about her ninth-grade students. Each class period began with five to fifteen minutes of writing in our journals. We were allowed free writing most of the time, just pouring our thoughts into our journals, much like the journals provided in Freedom Writers. I immediately thought of Mrs. Jackson and our journal time when I first saw that movie. In my freshman year, we read Shakespeare, specifically Romeo and Juliet. I think this was also the year we read The Canterbury Tales. I know we must have read some other books, but having Shakespeare respectfully explained to me was what I most remembered about my freshman literacy experience.
"This lady is wild...and not like the good wild of Mrs. Ledbetter." So, Ms. T. was an interesting, eccentric teacher. Yes, we read Lord of the Flies. The book itself made an impression on me, although I cannot reflect how the text was applied in classroom instruction. Ms. T helped us craft and fine-tune our writing through student teaching exercises and sharing our creations. I was terrified. Looking back, there must have been a public speaking component in the essential standards for sophomores. Nevertheless, I did not enjoy teaching my peers about adverbs or reading my adolescent hormone-filled, heartbroken poetry. I didn't die, but there were many times in sophomore English I thought I would.
My junior year, this was the year I loved. Mr. Borah was "the cool" English teacher. He had a U2 poster hanging in his classroom. Mr. Borah spoke to us like we were college-educated. He asked us questions I knew only college professors would ask. This is when I fell in love with social justice, dystopian novels like Orwell's 1984. This is the year we read The Great Gatsby, then watched the movie to compose a research paper comparison of the book and movie. Oh my goodness, I loved having Mr. Borah's class. He brought the literature alive. We had in-depth class discussions regarding the novels he assigned. Mr. Borah encouraged us to think for ourselves and challenged us in our compositions by asking us leading questions. He encouraged us to share with our peers other pieces of literature we enjoyed. We felt seen and validated.
My senior year, Woah...this was the year I think was meant to prepare us for college. Mrs. Dickson only taught seniors. She was keenly aware of senioritis, especially since her son was in my class. She did her dead-level best to keep us engaged. I can only imagine this could be compared to entertaining preschool children after a Christmas party. The texts we read do not come to mind; however, there was a lot of reader's theater, project writing, and hands-on creations. I discovered I could not memorize passages adequately, but I could paraphrase and provide an oral interpretation to compensate, which I did often.
I appreciate the novels I was assigned, though I believe choice is an essential factor in building a child's love for reading. There is a balance. I never would have selected science fiction if I had not been assigned the reads. The teachers who truly loved literature shared that love with us when reflecting further. They brought the texts alive through their teachings and the activities we were engaged to create. Looking back, I can find strengths in all my secondary English teachers, even my sixth-grade teacher, who probably did not have good class management, to begin with and was exhausted by the seventh period. I take that teaching morsel and try to be mindful with each group I work with, especially my last group of the day. I also try to share books with my students that I have a personal connection to, even if it's a book I just bought at the book fair. I want my students to be lifelong readers. I want them to find that joy I have when I am in the pages of a book.
