I am always reading ahead and I avoid posting my thoughts on the book until after everyone is supposed to have read, but then by that time I've forgotten everything I really wanted to post so here it is, if you don't want spoilers then don't read yet...
My big concentration in my minor is poetry and creative writing, and having known so much about poetry this book was a really hard read for me to get into. The cliches and sappiness of allot of the poetry bothered me, and the predictable rhymes, even some rhymes seemed forced or overused.
But last night I opened the book in the perspective of not the poetry scholar, but as a middle level teacher. The predictable rhymes makes it easier for students to keep up, and find the pace. The sappiness is simple and at the mind frame of a teenager. The metaphors were not overly stretched beyond their comprehension. The story line is even easy for them to follow seeing it is about young love.
This collection would also make the transition into poetry quite a bit less painless and shocking then it could be. It is still telling a story so we are slowly step by step moving from the idea of a prose. It also doesn't have any major code to crack of deep inner meaning, because the meaning is easy to follow as the story moves along. I love this idea. It also has a little bit of a rap beat mixed in which will really reach out to some of the kids.
My only hesitation in using this particular book is one poem in its entirety and that is the jail scene and what can be read into it. If parents went crazy over Chippendale, then they will definitely go crazy over "my soul between my legs"(24) and "Bend and grin"(25). I believe that this is simply them searching her, and invading her space, but I feel it can be very easily confused with something entirely different when referring to jail in particular. Also with this particular age group, I know this part will also be taken out of context with some student and will be spread around the room. But who knows? Depends on the group of students really.
I love the way this book speaks of injustice, or as my students would probably call it "unfairness". This is an age that they are just realizing how unfair life can be, and their fascination with it will sore. I feel they will cling on to the injustices in this book and fight, and take passion in it. They can also see as Junice and Damien take their injustices and try to make something good and justified out of it. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade!
So far this book is the only one I feel we've read in this class that I would actually consider using in full in my classroom, and didn't feel like such a waste of my time. Don't get me wrong the books have been great so far as a read, but my goal is to learn to teach. I took my share of English classes and now I want to know how to apply all that I have read into my classroom. So if I feel the book we are discussing won't even be used in my classroom then (in my 21 hours of classes) that book was just in my way as I'm trying to achieve everything else I need to be achieving this semester.
EDIT: Mind you I'm not saying it doesn't have a deeper meaning at all! I'm just saying that the poetry is not so abstract that it would be impossible for a student to find that meaning. I am the meaning queen and I can find the symbolism and meaning in anything, trust me this piece is loaded with meaning, but none too far advanced for my students. Is that better to understand?
Myers, Walter Dean Street Love. New York: Dutton, 2006.
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6 comments:
By "how to teach" do you mean we should be making posters and bookmarks and doing PowerPoint presentations and book summaries and other various and sundry manipulatives? Inane things to hang from the ceiling and colorful cover sheets for papers? If this kind of covers it, well, I think it'd be a disservice to the literature. A collage of clippings from a magazine that "summarizes" a student's take of a book is a slap on the face of the fiction or poetry. It belittles it. The way to teach literature, I mean to get at the core of it, is, in my opinion, what we've been getting at this last couple of classes: discussion, but real discussion. Not about the superficial, but the deep down stuff. How else, really and truly, can we teach a young reader to do that for him/herself except by example? STREET LOVE is not basic and superficial. It's rife with meaning and allusion. Symbolism. Apply to it or read into it all that you've learned in your other lit classes and you'll see.
I never said I would like you to dumb down your teaching style, I think there are ways of showing me how to teach without treating me like I'm in sixth grade. Tell me what strategies to use, tell me how I should present a text rather than, 'what did ya think of it?' Cuz I can tell you right now 'what'd ya think' isn't working with the reading class I'm helping in right now.
Discussion is great, but a sixth grader can only do so much of that, and only certain students will be able to listen to that. When I was a kid I was a daydreamer, the minute the class sat down for a discussion I was in space and never heard a word. I was a hands on learner as were many kids. I really delved into books with different projects. Just as the old Chinese Proverb goes:
“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.”
What the heck are these mini-lessons we are supposed to be learning about in ad lit? I finally had to stay after class with another teacher to learn this strategy of presenting materials to my classes.
I loved most of these books that we have read, but like I said Street Love is the only one I would actually use in a classroom. If you don't want to waste your class time teaching the strategies atleast suggest a book I can turn to, to get this information.
I'm working with a sixth grade class right now on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and my students can't sit down still for a real in depth discussion, trust me I've tried that one. They need something hands on and active. Some are still working on just comprehending period, much less having a decent discussion about it.
Here is something I did today when Ms. Watts left me in charge of all of her classes for today. I had them get up and perform Pygamalion and they were involved; they had fun. It went further than JUST A discussion would. After they were done we had a short five to ten minute discussion (depending on the classes capability) on the play itself, and what it stood for, and what they thought would happen next.
So what I'm trying to say in ALL of this, is discussion works but it can't be my only tool. I need more to work with...I'm not trying to disrespect you in anyway, or try to get at you or challenge you. I don't know, it is just something that has been bothering me since day one, that I just kept in and kept in and kept in until I am just exploding with it! Kind of like the idea that multi-cultural is everything but "white", that is another thing I have been biting my tongue on since day one. All I really am asking is for a little more strategy and a little less book talk. We know how to talk books, lets take it a step further maybe?
I agree and disagree with both of you. Every class this semester is redundant and the same. Saldana's class is refreshing at times to say the least. There is nothing more fun than watching a video in one class on stuff WE ARE ALREADY doing in another. Why are we watching a video on strategies we are already practicing in another class?
Why do I have to create 3 different lessons for 2 different classes in the SAME CONTENT AREA?
Discussion doesn't always work however because I am a daydreamer myself. I'd be lying to every teacher I've ever had if I said I "I'm a good listener". I daydream all the time epecially when teachers LECTURE on strategies we've learned about over and over again. Every college teacher claims lecture is like the worse thing to do but thats all every teacher does!
I think discussion is the MOST IMPORTANT tool in any class mainly because you hear your students.
I agree there with Thomas too...
I don't feel like I've learned as much as I hoped I would in any of these classes. Allot, although not all, of these classes we are taking this block have turned out a tad bit "redundant".
I think I learned more today in sitting with Ms. Watts's class the entire day then I have in any of my classes thus far this semester. But just like I said in the proverb: "involve me and I'll understand"
Ms. Watts teaches this reading class that is just so neat, they do different things each time with each book they read. They do projects, monologues, discussions, read-alouds, etc. etc. And they use mini-lessons in a very neat way!!! They each read their own book and then present it to one another in a book talk in the end. It is really fascinating!
And yet, here we are, having this awesome discussion about strategies, failed or successful, and I'm learning more from listening to you/reading what you have to say. I wish there were more of this honesty in a class. In every class. I'm not so thin-skinned that what you (and here, Jessica, I don't mean you specifically necessarily but "you" as is students in general) say is going to kill me, or as one character in a book I just finished reading says over and over, "destroy me." I am on the spot revising my own lesson plans for our class based on your comments. Yours, right? And I don't mean to minimize your statements in the least, simply seeking clarification, right? I have spoken to my sister-in-law about this matter before; she's a teacher herself: about taking up part of my classtime to give students these kinds of practical things to take into the classrooms themselves, and she said about these strategies: I packed those projects away after I got them back from my professors and they're still in that box, four years' worth of "strategies." Hasn't used a single one. Why? Because a class dynamic is constantly in flux and what might work this one year won't next. Or is so quickly outdated. And, her recommendation: on the spot training. That is, your Tuesday/Thursday class when you, individually/independently take charge of the class. Not take over someone else's lesson, but take charge and do what you think will work and sink or swim and learn for the next time. And Thomas is dead on: we in the field tend to be so redundant: we're all about read-alouds (a thing that really works so long as you're consistent), about this or that method or strategy. This might be a good or a bad thing. If everyone of us says read-alouds are so dead on right, it's for a reason. But it can get said too much that our charges cease to pay attention: for example, Jessica's statement about the exclusion of the "white" perspective in multiculturalism. Over and over, we teachers say this or that about it, share with you the same titles or authors, but don't go beyond just that that it comes across as an agenda on the part of the teacher, if it isn't outright agenda-driven. So, come Monday, we'll take time in class to, get this, discuss what you all are doing in your classrooms that's working and not. And even though I used to knock the lecture/discussion myself, I've been to a great many meetings where I'm put in small groups and one of us has to be the reporter, the secretary, the note-taker, the cheerleader, etc.; or where PowerPoints are used, and I don't get anything out of the majority. But it's not due to the presentation; it's the purpose of it that matters and the presenter's knowledge. I've sat in on some awesome lectures where I haven't been made to physically participate, and I've gotten so much out of it. The same can be said of other kinds of presentations, both good and bad, right. Poor lectures, great techno-visual workshops. But I think we still are giving an undeserved back seat space to the lecture/discussion.
Wow. Aside from my fiction here recently I haven't written that much on one topic in a long time.
What we do have to constantly be asking ourselves as teachers is, "What do I want my students to learn from this assignment or project or method?" Sure, we have to contend with TEKS and TAKS and the like, but man, if I'm teaching the real business of reading and writing, I shouldn't even have to mention those standards in class once in a year. Students would know how to approach them each in stride, and have left over knowledge.
Thanks again, Jessica. Refreshing. Let's do this kind of talking in class. I'm telling you, I don't mind it. And who says my students shouldn't be challenging me? I think that's all part of the work we do.
About the redundancy...I too believe that we are learning a lot of the same information in our block classes this semester, and no matter how repetitive it is, I enjoy it. I like it because I am really learning and taking in all of the strategies and theories that are being repeated in these classes (speaking as a college student). In my observation class (6th grade reading) the students will always read a passage about a specific thing (author's purpose, main idea, etc.) and then play a game about it. Yes, that is super repetitive, but once they take the TAKS test, I bet they will be thankful that they kept doing the same thing over and over to become better learners.
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