TEACHING LITERARY CRITICISM THROUGH INDEPENDENT READING
By
Stephen Wisch
A Thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate Studies Division of
Ohio Dominican University
Columbus, Ohio
in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH
May 2019
Wisch 1
Wisch 2
Introduction
Out of the advancement of literature and literary theory throughout time has resulted in the development of literary criticism as a field in its own right. While novels, poetry, and the plethora of other forms of writing might have more commercial success, literary criticism allows for the analysis and consideration of how a given piece fits within the timeline of humanity. No doubt art would go on without the critic, but having a well developed and informed method of criticism helps to develop said art both in terms of the society that the literature is a part of at the time of its writing and in terms of the larger track of humanity from the beginning.
Understanding this reality places an importance on how society goes about training and developing literary criticism in its students. While the halls of education do not do well to tell students what to think, it is essential that academia develops students into having a strong ability to go about thinking and contemplating literature in a systematic method. At its beginning, education in general, and literary criticism specifically, was the bastillion of the few; a position for the extremely educated. As the merits of a widely educated general public became more and more apparent, critical thinking methods like literary criticism expanded from the base of the ivory towers of prestigious universities to secondary and primary schools throughout the country and the world. This expansion has led to a somewhat muddled view of what teaching methods create the best possible situation for students who come in with varied levels of experience. What age and maturity level allows students to completely comprehend the higher level thinking necessary for proper literary criticism? Are instructors best to utilize partial methods of literary criticism, or to try and introduce the entire process all at once? What type of texts make for the best subjects to introduce and cultivate literary criticism in students? Should these texts be centered around new texts that allow students to blaze their own trails, or should literary Wisch 3 criticism be taught through texts that have been well mined by other readers? As this own process of developing critics at all levels of education has developed, there has been a concurrent and equally fascinating debate in education centered around the usage of class, group, or individual novels.
While traditional teaching methods center around one text for an entire class, with a teacher leading reading and discussion over said novel, more recent research has pointed towards the positive impact of students having choice in their reading. In the development of a reading classroom, the two core parts of design center around student growth and student enjoyment. In that sense, free-reading fits both bills: “Students and teachers prefered the free-reading program, and small but significant gains occurred in reading ability in the free-reading classes” (Purves
165). This combination of freedom of choice and the ability to differentiate text based upon a student’s individual reading ability helped to increase both the enjoyment and the growth of reading in the classroom. While the cultural impact of having a more open ended view of what makes up “important” or “worthy of being taught” literature may be lost in this free-reading program educational system, the actual impact on a student’s reading ability is not negatively impacted. Students still are able to learn and develop in their reading strategies, but there is an increase in enjoyment while students are growing in these strategies. The impact of the knowledge gained from these studies was primarily focused on impacted and changing earlier reading education. Students in elementary schools were allowed choice within the school day about what types of stories that they wanted to engage with. These free-reading programs are often combined with some sort of prize system based upon pages read. While this does not speak towards the upper levels of education, this change in education regarding reading instruction at Wisch 4 even its most basic level can be looked upon the epicenter of any shift that independent reading might have in upper thought process activities of education such as literary criticism.
As pedagogical viewpoints shifted, there soon became an acceptance of a variety of methods in reading classrooms. As long as students have a chance “to learn language by reading extensively, to learn about language by reflecting on their reading strategies and literary knowledge, and to learn through language by using literature to inquire about the world and their own lives,” (Short 132), then the reading lesson plans can be carried out. Instead of only being focused upon the “what,” reading lessons became more and more focused upon the “how” and the “why.” That being said, there still is an acceptance of the idea that independent reading might be fine in order to grow a student’s comfort with text, but the true question lies upon how to best facilitate deep textual thought in regards to a text. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of college English programs, where one would argue that the “serious” literary thought is being developed and discussed, go on a class discussion of a single text at a time schedule.
There is nothing wrong with that, in fact, just a few lines after the previously quoted text about the positive impact of free-reading programs, Purves argues that the focus on reading independently is not a cure all (Purves 165). The concept of reading as a group allows for deeper discussion and the ability of a crowd of voices to bounce ideas off of one another while moving forward in each student’s journey of understanding around the text. The question becomes what aspect of using the class novel compared to an independent reading program is so appealing to instructors across grade level, location, and demographics.
The class novel allows for much more control by a teacher than is allowed with some variety of the independent reading program. While some like Maxine Hariston argue that this focus on a singular text and focus allows for control of the teacher to push his or her own Wisch 5 political agenda or reading, “I’m convinced that the push to change freshman composition into a political platform for the teacher has come about primarily because the course is housed in
English departments,” (Hariston 702), there are more forgiving reasons a teacher might seek this control over the class thought process. The usage of a class novel allows teachers to guide students past potential pitfalls and dead-ends because the instructor, having mined this book for meaning his or her entire career, has walked into and out of these same pitfalls and dead-ends.
The class novel system allows the instructor to feel a sense of safety that is honestly not possible when students are attempting to write, in a serious manner, about independent reading books.
Could this control and guidance be used maliciously as Hariston argues, and therefore be used to try and convert students to one single reading, and one single political leaning? Certainly, but like all tools, this tool for destruction can also be used productively. The dark truth, though, is that by holding students hands through these lines, instructors are shortening and tampering with the growth of the students who they are trying so hard to keep safe. The more open-ended nature of independent reading books allow for more meaningful chances to push outward and into a new avenue of learning. What would this method of instruction look like? What would this open ended view of literary criticism development attempt that was different than traditional instruction centered around literary theory and how would a system be put into place that would allow for student success? By changing the comfort zone of instructors, this independent reading literary criticism program could produce more meaningful learning while also increasing student engagement.
Background Wisch 6
Strong literary criticism in the classroom is sometimes difficult to define in its own right, outside of the extra hoop of implementing the literary criticism through independent reading novels. Before moving forward on designing a proper project for high school students, complete with formative and summative assessments, it is essential to formulate an understanding of the scope and purpose of any literary criticism process. Literary criticism is not merely a regurgitation of plot points or summarizing of themes, but instead true criticism reaches into the place of viewing the text through new eyes, and through this new viewing mining out deeper and newer lessons from a text. Entering this conversation with high schoolers comes with an understanding that “Every age has its theoretical definitions of the nature of literature and its theorized principles on which critical approaches to the analysis of literature are premised,”
(Selden, Widdowson, Brooker 2). It would certainly be presumptuous to expect students to enter this ages long debate without expecting some missteps. Even more so, the structure of assignments could miss its mark. These assignments are allowing voice and choice in the hopes to generate autonomy and intrinsic motivation within the students, and therefore student engagements; however, this results in less of a safety net for students. How to balance this pursuit of freedom for students with a desire to allow opportunity for individual expression and determination is part of what makes this set up so engaging and also what helps to ensure that it is a fluid process to meet the goal of having an excellent design. In order to properly concentrate the efforts of students, the wide world of literary criticism must be narrowed to a certain set amount of examples. This allows the instructor to provide at least a moderate amount of instruction and examples for these select versions of critical lenses while also allowing the students to pick a lens that fits both the text in question and the thought process of the student him or herself. For purposes of this assignment’s foray into literary criticism, the focus will be Wisch 7 narrowed to New Criticism, Historical criticism, Feminist criticism, Marxist criticism,
Psychological criticism, and Reader-response criticism.
New Criticism is connected to other schools of thought like Deconstruction and Formalist
Critics. This school of thought starts with the understanding that “the text is a self-contained entity, and that everything that the reader needs to know to understand it is already in the text.
New critics totally discount the importance of historical context, authorial intent, effects on the reader, and social contexts, choosing to focus instead on the layers in the text. This school of criticism works with the elements of a text only - irony, paradox, metaphor, symbol, plot, and so on - by engaging in extremely close textual analysis” (“Critical Approaches”). Sometimes this school of thought is easier for new students of literary theory to interact with because of the focused nature of the thought process. Instead of trying to do external research, New Criticism allows the focus to stay on the anchor text. There is a certain amount of background knowledge required to really attempt New Criticism with aplomb, for example students would need to truly understand what makes irony or paradoxes essential to the text, but once that base knowledge is reached, New Criticism can be approached in a variety of texts without completely relearning the rules of the situation whereas something like Historical Criticism would need to be constantly realigned based off the context of whatever novel is being read. The drawbacks of New Criticism as a first exposure to literary criticism is the amount and depth of textual unpacking that is necessary to organize and explain the thoughts and arguments in a New Critical text. This process is sometimes difficult for a beginning writer.
On the opposite end of New Criticism is Historical criticism. Students may find drawbacks to the New Criticism focus solely on the text, and Historical criticism answers this complaint completely. While New Criticism looks at the text in a vacuum, Historical criticism, Wisch 8
focuses on the literary text as a part of a larger social and historical
context, and the modern reader’s interaction with that work. New
historicists attempt to describe the culture of a period by reading
many different types of texts and paying attention to many
different dimensions of a culture, including political, social,
economic, and aesthetic concerns...historicism acknowledges and
then explores various versions of “history”, sensitizing us to the
fact that the history on which we choose to focus is colored by the
being reconstructed by our present perspective (“Critical
Approaches”)
This avenue of criticism can be some of the most interesting for students depending on the text in question. While some time periods might not seem like an automatic place for rich understanding, if the text in questions touches on a point of personal interest for the student, a war or a period of social change, Historical criticism is an opportunity for the type of further cross curricular inquiry that allows students to find deep enjoyment and excitement with a given text. By its very nature, Historical criticism requires deeper research outside of the text in question, which can act as a deterrent for potential critics, but it sometimes gets organized into understanding a little easier for students than something like New Criticism. While most students do not engage in any type of formal literary criticism, as it would be defined by colleges and universities, in that student’s junior high and earlier high school days, the practice of background knowledge and discussion about the context for a novel and an author is pretty widespread. By engaging this common practice in a new and more refined way, Historical criticism can be an appealing method of literary criticism for beginning critics. Wisch 9
The pursuit of perspectives and rights for groups outside of the traditional white patriarchy is still a relatively new concept when considered within the context of American
History at large. By this understanding, it makes sense that Feminist criticism is often avoided at the high school level. To make it even more difficult, this lens requires much of the same type of outside research necessary in Historical criticism in order for critics to,
place[] literature in a social context and employ[] a broad range of
disciplines, such as history, psychology, sociology, and linguistics,
to create a perspective that considers feminist issues. Feminist
theories also attempt to understand representation from a woman’s
point of view and analyze women’s writing strategies in the
context of their social conditions (“Critical Approaches”)
Empathy is often a hard skill to develop in even fully grown adults, when thrown in together with the sort of emotional and hormonal struggles inherent of the egocentrism that is common in younger students, so it bears no great surprise that Feminist, Queer, and Race Theory are all sometimes found to be missing from a traditional high school English curriculum. Rather than attempting to expose students to these three slightly more empathy-heavy ideologies all at once, the project will attempt to converse with the critical lens of the three which is most easily accessible for students in my rural, conservative, and racially homogenous district. Therefore the goal will be to introduce Feminist criticism instead of trying to incorporate some of the more controversial theories. These literary lenses, like any attempt to pursue real understanding of what it is like to walk around in someone else’s shoes, all require a tremendous amount of direction and development in order to respectfully consider these diverse perspectives. By slowly introducing these ideas to students rather than attempting all of them at once, it will hopefully Wisch 10 result in students better understanding and engaging with a viewpoint that might not be readily accessible based off of previous experience. The emotional and political considerations of this lens, combined with the difficulty of truly considering how these aspects of a writer’s life might impact the text, makes it the critical lens that is most challenging to properly guide independent practice with.
When considering topics that are difficult to truly guide students in engaging with on an empathetic and emotionally respectful level, economic considerations probably are a close second compared to the above mentioned considerations of minority voices. Marxist theory,
insist that all use of language is influenced by social class and
economics. It directs attention to the idea that all language makes
ideological statements about things like class, economics, race, and
power, and the function of literary output is to either support or
criticize the political and economic structures in place. Some
Marxist critics use literature to describe the competing
socioeconomic interests that advance capitalist interests such as
money and power over socialist interests such as morality and
justice...focuses on content and theme rather than form (“Critical
Approaches”)
This theory’s focus on the impact of financial considerations on plot and character development makes it accessible to many students. Even if a student has financial stability in his or her own life, it is often much easier to put yourself in the place of, “What if I could not afford that?”, than, “What if I was systematically placed at a disadvantage because of my race, gender, or sexual orientation?” This critical lens’ focus on content and theme instead of the more form Wisch 11 centric views of approaches like New Criticism allows it to be more accessible for beginning critics. Considering the ways that economics impact a character or a plot could easily be connected to informational articles regarding to matters in social studies and personal finances classes and therefore represents another opportunity for the type of cross curricular activities that lead to student engagement. A potential downfall of introducing this critical lens is the amount of exterior research, regarding economic and sociological issues, which is essential for a complete
Marxist critique of a piece of literature. This might be overwhelming for some students as a starting place in terms of literary theory, and therefore must be scaffolded with pieces that lead to a deeper sense accessibility.
Similar to Historical, Marxist, and Feminist theories, Psychological criticism requires a fair amount of research that is exterior to the text itself. Contemporary culture’s growing interaction with the way that the human psyche influences the movements and decisions of people, with the commercial success of films as varied in audience as Inside Out and Split, has helped to move this literary theory to a place of accessibility for more students and potential critics. Psychological criticism interacts with “the idea of the existence of a human consciousness
- those impulses, desires, and feelings about which a person is unaware but which influence emotions or behavior...explore the motivations of characters and the symbolic meanings of events,” (“Critical Approaches”). While the external research necessary to truly be able to apply the understanding of a psychological disorder or condition to a given character or situation is quite steep, this avenue of exploration can offer another way for students to bring knowledge obtained and grown outside of English class into the study of novels. This consideration also can allow students to make deeper understandings around a character’s actions, particularly those actions which are initially hard to really understand in the story’s moment. Wisch 12
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Reader-response criticism requires a minimum of research exterior to the text. While that may seem appealing to a burgeoning critic, it is important for beginning Reader-response critics to realize the natural drawbacks to this more individualized type of literary theory. This lens,
removes the focus from the text and places it on the reader instead,
by attempting to describe what goes on in the reader’s mind during
the reading of a text. Reader-response critics are not interested in a
“correct” interpretation of a text or what the author intended. They
are interested in the reader’s individual experience with a
text...This kind of strategy calls attention to how we read and what
influences our readings, and what that reveals about ourselves
(“Critical Approaches”)
The lack of “correct” answers helps to make Reader-Response criticism one of the least imposing or intimidating versions of literary criticism with which to begin textual exploration.
That being said, the open ended nature of this theory leads it to being difficult for some critics to really explore to the lens’ full potential. Not having a base place of historical or other type of research puts the author of a Reader-response criticism at the center of the ensuing literary criticism. It takes a level of understanding and self-reflection that is complex for many authors.
By attempting this theory, students would need to be independent and reflective because while the teacher can help guide students to pertinent historical information, the conversation centered around a reader’s own experience with the text is a private and singular experience.
Implementation Wisch 13
Considering the incorporation of these literary lenses into a high school class is a intimidating process. Many college courses, designed for a self-selecting group of students who are therefore more individually motivated than the average participant in a high school English classroom, only touch on one of these lenses and trace the development of this literary theory throughout multiple texts. In order to really open up the doors of voice and choice to students all of these lens have to be open to be chosen. The struggle to balance an open-ended introduction to these literary theories and do so in a time conscious way will undoubtedly fall short of the ideal and this first step down the path of a literary criticism based independent reading project will only be a small brick in the eventual building. That being said, there are some strong research- based practices that will help to develop this into the best possible situation.
Before the works can properly be unpacked and viewed through a lens, the text has to be read. By creating a system of choice when it comes to what texts will be read, the instructor is unable to utilize traditional methods of formal formative assessments like quizzes as a way to check student progress. Other concepts such as reading logs and page counts, while effective among younger students in some situations, can easily be manipulated by older students. When marking progress in the text itself, guidance can come from another common aspect of English instruction, the “writer’s workshop.” These benefits have been expanded on by Sandra
Goettelman as “Conferring in the Reader’s Workshop is in many ways similar to that of a conference in the Writer’s Workshop. Both work to target a child’s needs in that particular time and enable a transfer of a particular skill or strategy to future encounters with text…[and] supports students in ways that are respectful to their needs and development,” (Goettelman 2).
For the same logic that has built the institution of office hours and individual tutoring into countless educational systems, maintaining a steady system of conferences with students during Wisch 14 the reading time allows the instructor to ask about the progress of the novel while also refraining from the busywork nature of many formal formatives. Part of what draws instructors of literature into the field of education is a love of working with people and literature. Moving the class structure into a more conference based system, it helps to move the class into a more focused nature. The discussions over the book in question can go as deep as the student is able in his or her individual situation without being drawn back because of a lack of other student progress or being pulled too far too quickly because of a slowness in the student’s understanding of the text.
This differentiated nature helps a student to learn at his or her own speed and manner.
These conferences also have the added benefit of being an opportunity to do behavior intervention in a research based manner. While removing much of the lecture-based nature of instruction in this conference-focused form of reading instruction cuts down on opportunities for students to disengage during class, the fact of the matter is that any group of people working together requires behavior intervention at certain times. By making conferences a regular part of the school day’s organization, students being called over conference with a teacher for a behavioral reason loses much of its stigma. Also, individual conferences have been shown to be one of the most effective means of interrupting negative behavior loops: “The problem may be a lack of information. This is the easiest, quickest intervention. Planned discussion is a very respectful and potentially empowering way to address problem behavior,” (Sprick 2). While the goal of this structure is not merely to allow multiple opportunities for student redirection, it is a nice benefit. Structuring the class with multiple opportunities throughout the week for teachers to have individual conversations with students, it can go a long way towards building a positive teacher-student environment. The relationships built through these conferences can do much more to productively impact a student’s learning and progress than any lesson. Wisch 15
During the first phase of the project there will be time divided in the classroom for reading, individual conferences, and mini lessons to explore aspects of story development. While each literary lens has specific components of story that it focuses upon, in order to properly investigate any lens, the critic needs to have a strong understanding of story dynamics in a general sense. These mini lessons could be focuses on any variety of things, but for the unit at the center of this research, the mini lessons will focus on the following topics: story introduction methods, the hero’s journey, character development, and tone. These mini lessons will primarily focus on a three part process: students will get an overview of the concept itself, be shown and discuss a few instances of where they have seen this concepts in other texts and popular culture, and reflect and write upon how this concept is being shown in their independent reading book.
Fleshing out these ideas, it will hopefully give students some common language before our literary criticism papers, and it will serve as a chance for students to think critically about the novel in question before the summative assessment of the literary criticism paper.
After finishing the novels in question, with titles ranging from Stolen to Game of Thrones to Why I Fight, students will have an introduction to different schools of theory. This introduction will include the history and examples of these literary lenses, and the opportunity for students to do some smaller writings attempting to find instances of the previously mentioned literary ideologies: New Criticism, Historical criticism, Feminist criticism, Marxist criticism,
Psychological criticism, and Reader-response criticism. These smaller writings will give students an opportunity to test out the theories in question without fully committing to a paper topic.
These days will also be accompanied with a teacher-provided example of a paragraph unpacking a common text in the respective lens. These “common text” examples will either come from assigned readings in earlier years of instruction or extremely popular movie examples like The Wisch 16
Lion King. Spending a day on each school of thought before the commencement of the paper in question is a very quick way of going about a extremely nuanced process, but it is probably the most efficient way of ensuring introduction to these theories. The actual process of writing will take on the writer workshop centric method where students’ original attempts at the variety of criticisms will serve as a jumping off point for conversation and development of the papers.
The actual success of this experiment will be tracked a couple ways. While it is hard to quantitatively measure a student’s understanding of the literary critics in question, in order to properly measure the unit in question, an attempt to measure understanding must be attempted.
Students will be measured along three lines: engagement, comprehension, and writing competency. Engagement will be measured through the (hopefully lack) of behaviorally redirections and an end of unit anonymous reading percentage survey to assess how much of the text that students read. These reading percentage surveys are part of what has driven me to experiment with independent reading novels in my classes in the first place. It has been my practice at the end of every unit I have taught to include an anonymous survey to flesh out student ideas about the unit as a way to assess my own practices, while also helping to develop and build my future lessons. One of the more disconcerting aspects of these surveys has been the
“reading percentage” questions. I simply give students a sliding scale, from 0% to 100%, and have them mark how much of the book they read. Since there are no names attached to these surveys, I have no reason to believe the students are being anything but honest. It was a strong shock to my system to see the low numbers that students have reported in our class novel percentages. I will be using the base number of 61% as a starting place for reading percentage because that was the average reading percentage survey response on the last full class text we did this school year. Comprehension will be assessed on the student’s literary criticism papers as I Wisch 17 look to see to what effect students are knowledgeable about both the text in question and the theory that they will be attempting to employ in their writing. Finally, I will separately assess students ability to structure the argument around the lens. While it is essential that a good literary criticism is written efficiently and in an organized manner, I will try to assess that separately from the student’s knowledge of the text so that I can make the proper tweaks to the unit after this trial run. If students know the books in question but are inefficient in writing about them, that is a different set of problems than if the students do not know the text but can use proper writing technique. By using these three different focus points, I can hopefully find where potential breakdowns are and adjust accordingly.
Results: Conferences
One of the most striking things about this entire project has been the implications of the reading conferences. While I have done conferences with student before - for papers, during class novels, and other projects - these reading conferences have resulted in some of the most rewarding conversations of this school year. Obviously, there are students who are not engaged. I do not know a single policy, educational or otherwise, that has a 100% success rate in engagement. However, the opportunity to sit down regularly with my students one-on-one, while the rest of the class works on their novels or on short pieces of writing that will help to build into the larger paper, has resulted in deeper and better understanding of my students themselves and the books that they are reading. Even my students who might be working through a novel that they dislike enjoy sitting down and being able to discuss what makes that novel “bad.” It is these types of conversations and relationship-based instruction that drew me to teaching in the first place, and by placing reading conferences at the center of my instructional techniques, I am able Wisch 18 to keep the center of why I wanted to teach in the first place at the center of my day. These conversations are also much more productive than when I have done similar conferences with my students over a shared class novel. Because the students cannot use common knowledge, it requires them to explain and communicate everything about the book to me. Even when I have read the book before, I like to pretend that I have not so that the student feels obligated to communicate more and more about the story to me.
During these conferences it also allows me to speak positivity about the reading experience into my students’ lives. Everyone has reached a place in a story at some point where they have felt that there is too much confusion about a given novel. For many of my students, this is where they have disengaged. While teachers would love to develop a little more natural grit in students, the reality is that it sometimes takes a cheerleader to push over the hump of “I don’t understand what is happening” and give permission to spend time brainstorming ideas about what the story is doing at a given point. By structuring individual conversations into the daily life of the class, reading conferences allow me as the teacher to be that cheerleader. I am able to tell a student that his or her questions are valid and their confusion is not a sign of stupidity, but rather a part of the process of reading. Multiple students mentioned during their conferences that the novel for the project is the first one that he or she has read since 6th or 7th grade. Since I teach seniors, this is a clear sign of trouble. If it is to be agreed that literary criticism is a good and valid process for any adult, then it surely is true that reading is a good and valid process for any adult. Allowing voice and choice for students, an opportunity to take command of what they read, is just one part of fostering reading in students. Individual conferences give importance to the reading. How often are high school students given the gift of their words mattering and being important? Something as simple as spending five minutes a Wisch 19 couple times a week being told that what they are reading is important and worth focus helps to encourage the reading process. While the focus of this research was on the production of literary criticism writing, one of the most interesting results has been the increase of actual reading by the class structure of both allowing students the ability to choose what they want to read and also having the conferences as a checkmark along the way instead of the traditional reading quizzes or other modes of formative assessment common to whole class texts.
Student Results
One of the hardest things about anything done in a classroom is doing the proper reflection afterwards. Teachers have to wrestle with questions such as whether the classroom action successful or unsuccessful for each student, and why did it meet that criteria? The first part of this reflection centers around defining what makes something “successful”. As previously stated, this project will be measured along three lines: engagement, comprehension, and writing competency. After measuring students performance along these lines, it is part of the teacher’s duty to mine out what led to positive or negative results in these areas, and endeavor to make positive improvement in each aspect for each student. That may be a little Pollyannaish, but the goal of any classroom should be positive growth for all students, not just the ones who “want” to be there.
When endeavoring to chart the success of a project or activity, I like to start with the kids
I know did not get it. This is for a twofold reason. First, these are the students most in need of positive intervention. While it is important to continue to guide and build up the students who are doing well, these students who did perform well need to be intervened with as soon as possible.
Also, on a strictly personal psychological level, by reflecting on the students who performed well Wisch 20 last, it allows me to have a positive after taste when it comes to the project moving forward. Part of teaching is the realization that not every student is going to be ready every day to do what you as the teacher want to do. Combine that with the inherent flaws that comes with a teacher being human, there are going to be at least a handful of moments every day that could easily frustrate a teacher even on the best possible day. Reflection is a valuable tool, but if you only use it to beat yourself up, it is not a tool as much as a weapon. When teachers beat themselves up for the failures of things that are going to happen such as Wifi not working, or students not all being totally engaged in every activity, it is going to result in the teacher lashing out at students and coworkers and creating an inhospitable classroom environment.
English IV as a larger class consists of the vast majority of the seniors in our school.
Students have the opportunity to take dual credit Composition through a partnership between the school and a local university, the elective Creative Writing for the final English credit, Technical
Writing through the vocational school, or English IV. Of the 62 seniors in the class of 2019, 39 of them took English IV this year. Traditionally, English IV consisted of class set novels such as
Glass Castle, Catcher in the Rye, and The Color Purple with a few research units throughout the year. With these class set novels, the assessments traditionally have worked from a starting place of reading comprehension questions to check for student understanding and progress throughout the early parts of the book, and then students will write a summative paper tracing a theme through the book itself. Students have not been asked to place these themes in the larger context of literary theory. Putting the respect independent reading novels in conversation with the literary theory at large is future improvement that will be added to this project in coming years.This is my first year teaching English IV at this school, and the concept of independent reading as a unit and the idea of literary criticism presented within the context of literary theory such as the ones Wisch 21 used in this project are new ideas for this class. The newness of these concepts will undoubtedly skew the data at least a little. For example, one of the downsides of this being a new concept for the students is that all sample work provided for the students come from work created by the instructor rather than from fellow students.
When it comes to the project itself, the majority of work falls into three groups. There were some students who struggled with the selecting of a text that they could fully get into and be excited about. Roughly 20% of students fell into this group. Whether that came from an unfamiliarity with the library, an unfamiliarity with choice in reading, or something else, the open ended nature of selecting a novel of his or her choosing was sometimes insurmountable for a given student. Unfortunately many students have survived in English classes throughout their scholarly career by a combination of Cliffnotes and Google searches. While it is entirely possible to piece together the gist of a book and succeed in this independent reading project without actually reading the novel in question, and I am not so arrogant to believe I caught all students who attempted this, the independent reading book project creates issues on this process. Namely, conferences turn into very awkward affairs when a student has not read his or her novel. For the vast majority of my students, the looming discomfort of conferences over a book that they have not read was motivation enough to push through even when the book did not seem appetizing.
Future renditions of the project will include book talks, student and teacher led previews of novels that are available in our library. Including these book talks before the project begins and during the early parts of the project will hopefully help to combat some of the confusion over what book to choose. I did not do a good enough job ensuring that every student had sufficient access or awareness of books that might fit his or her personality. Hopefully the incorporation of Wisch 22 book talks into our larger class structure will work to create a culture of reading that helps to solve the issues from this first group of students who never really got into the book itself.
The second group of students fell into the larger theme of people who read their books, but did not fully comprehend the idea of forming strong literary criticism writing out of it. This would include about half of the students in the class. These students would have engaging conferences where they could talk about the book in question, but when it came to actually writing about the novel within a literary lens, the student would seem adrift. Oftentimes their papers would turn into statements of facts over whether something existed in the book rather than an argument that showcased how a certain psychological trait impacted the decisions of a character or how a structural technique used within the narrative, for example multiple narrators, impacted the understanding and meaning of the text itself. This group of students were probably the most frustrating for me because I feel like it was at the largest, a result of instructor failure.
These students had the information, they had read their texts, but were unable to showcase the skill in question. That means the instruction of the skill was lacking. I can do a much better job of scaffolding how to go about analyzing literature for argument rather than just regurgitating what happened in a part of a text. I severely underestimated how this would seem foreign or at least difficult to my students. Throughout the school year I plan on incorporating more argument pieces in how we do instruction. A debate unit towards the beginning of the school year could help ensure that these expectations of not just stating information but truly arguing information for a reason are in place. Also, during the process of writing for this independent reading project,
I want to do a better job of workshopping papers with kids as a large group. As I build up past papers to go over with students, it will be more and more helpful to showcase the difference between a synthesis and an actual argument. Hopefully by better scaffolding this expectation it Wisch 23 can guide students like these to move past merely reading a book, and enjoying that process, to reading and critiquing in a compelled and excited way.
The final group were students who really got into both the reading and the writing portions of this project. This included some of my traditionally high achieving students, students who would have done well regardless of the assignment in question, but also some students who have struggled in the educational past. On the total, this high achieving group was about 30% of students who were involved in this project. Multiple students brought up in their conferences that this was the first time they had actually read something in school, one student went from last fully reading a book in sixth grade to reading an entire series that she got hooked on in the course of this project. These student’s experiences reinforce multiple education studies that support this idea of autonomy and choice positively impacted student engagement (Hanover Research).
While students were quick to tell me that they did not normally read, the vast majority of the students told me that the freedom to pick their own book was a huge positive. I had a couple students mention that they missed doing a class novel because in those stories you are forced to move at a certain pace, and pacing is a hard thing for the student in question. One of these students did admit to me that the class novels also let them talk with each other and piece together what happened even if they did not read, which made this independent reading project more work. I am okay with that frustration being a part of the project. My more traditionally successful students also pointed towards the freedom to select his or her own novel as a large positive. One student, who has been a high achiever throughout high school with a GPA over
3.8, shared with me that he often felt overwhelmed at school and worried about trying to keep pace with all the reading and work in his other courses. That is why he chose to be in English IV rather than the dual credit Composition class. This student pointed toward his experience in the Wisch 24 independent reading project as a relaxing and positive part of his day. While I undoubtedly want students to read and understand literary theory for the important and serious work that it is, I also hope that this project can lead to an appreciation of reading a healthy and lifelong activity. This project was able to help foster and grow this positive appreciation of reading within students while also introducing them to literary criticism concepts.
Conclusion
While the project was not an unanimous success, it was a very positive experience for my students and myself. I do not always know how to best engage individual students, but this project allows for multiple aspects of best practice to be engaged. First, students have autonomy and choice in this independent reading project. This autonomy and choice is essential to a positive experience for students and for adults. Part of what drew me to teaching at the school I work at in the first place is the freedom to do what I view as best in my classroom. I have worked places with less autonomy, and it was a very frustrating experience. If I can say those things about myself, how much more true must they be for my students. I think autonomy is one of the aspects of teaching that can move the majority of your kids to at least partial engagement. The second main part of this project that allows for best practice in regards to engaging students is the positive teacher to student relationship that comes from conference-based instruction. While it allows me to individually communicate and provide feedback for what a student is working on, it also helps to ensure that students are being told that what they are doing is worthwhile and good. It is so easy for people, adults and students, to feel like no one cares what is happening to them. This conference based instruction helps to ensure kids know that I am paying attention and Wisch 25 care about what is happening. It also allows for productive communication with students and the ability to check in with students as people rather than just test scores.
The actual incorporation of theory into reading independent reading books seemed to have a positive increase of enjoyment for our readers. While it is impossible for me to have a perfect qualitative comparison of how a student would have felt about the exact same book without this including of literary theory, I do have multiple cases of students becoming more engaged with a given text because he or she was able to spend the extra time analyzing character and plot developments within the context of a literary lens. By far the most successful lens as far as getting students more engaged in the content of the story is psychological criticism. Students got into the idea of trying to connect a character or situations in the story into real world psychological issues and some of the best developed papers I read contained insights into bipolar disorder or Stockholm syndrome. If I was going to scale back the assignment and not allow any choice in terms of critical theories, I would require everyone to write about the story within the context of psychological criticism because it almost ended up being incredibly in-depth character studies. For a few of my students, this opportunity to do a longer psychological analysis of a character raised insights like, “I had never thought about why he (the character) would do that…” or “I guess when you consider how her parents treated her, it makes a lot more sense…”
The slowing down and digesting of the material, something that literary criticism requires, resulted in students having a deeper understanding and appreciation of their novels than if they had just read the same story without the literary theory attached.
This version of the project also allowed me to realize a couple areas of improvement for the next run through of the independent reading project. First, I must do a better job of celebrating and encouraging personal fiction engagement throughout the school year, not just Wisch 26 during the project. Incorporating weekly book talks can help sell my students on reading as a fun activity well before we get to this assignment. It will not be perfect, but it is another brick in the building. To help increase student comprehension in regards to true criticism and arguing for the impact of a lens rather than just proving that aspect of a story exists, I will need to incorporate more example papers throughout the project. By showing and breaking down what I actually want, it will hopefully help to clarify points of misconception for students. Finally, I need to draw back my writer’s workshops into more basic states. I overestimated my student’s writing ability and they need more of an opportunity for feedback from me throughout their writing process and an opportunity to provide feedback towards each other. This peer directed feedback needs to be scaffolded and supported better by me as an instructor as well. While there are obvious places for improvement, utilizing independent reading as the center of literary criticism instruction can help to increase student engagement and can also develop a student’s ability to see the aspects of literature as part of their everyday lives rather than just something they did in school.
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