Beginning to Blog

I've been reading a lot about the value of student choice in education lately, particularly during my recent visit to the NCTE conference in DC.  I have struggled in the past to allow students full and free choice regarding their reading.  As a teacher who wants students to see the craft behind a text, to analyze the authors' messages and meanings, to become better critical readers, I thought free-choice reading ran counter to these aims.

Admittedly I am a bit of a control-freak, and so I found it easier to control the texts my students read, rationalizing that I would not be able to guide them to the aforementioned goals if every student were reading a different text. I can be a master of one text, The Great Gatsby, for instance, and help students to see how Fitzgerald's use of motifs build to an essential meaning.  I can guide them to understand how the allusions in Fahrenheit 451 help develop Bradbury's point about the dangers of technology.  I can guide their reading and their understanding.

But, does such an approach build students who love reading?  Because of course this is another goal. I happen to love exploring authors' craft, an interest that goes back to my own high school days when I first read literary criticism.  I don't think all of my students, or even most, love literary criticism as I do. Perhaps they can appreciate it, and appreciate the work it takes to create a work of art that is more than just plot, as some commented when we read a passage from one of Toni Morrison's lectures about her creation of, and intentions for, the first sentence of Song of Solomon. 

A class structured around a single text also harkens back to my high school days, when we all read the same thing.  But I was always reading my own thing too.  And it seems that my students, so busy with so many activities and responsibilities, aren't reading on their own, and if they are they frequently choose young adult texts which are plot-heavy but, generally, style light. 

And so I came to this blog activity.  I see it as a chance to achieve all of the goals I've listed above.  Since my AP students have already read two class novels, they should have a good grounding in my expectations for close reading and insightful analysis.  Since they have to choose a text that would be applicable to a question three AP exam question, they will be choosing something that is not too easy, that is more than a quick read. And, of course, I hope that they will like, if not love, the books that they select, classic or contemporary. 

It's not easy giving up control to my students, and I'm worried about all that might go wrong: the technology problems, the looseness of the assignment, the possibility of students just Sparknoting their novels. However, I've enjoyed the first results of this endeavor-the conversations I have had with students about book: which book to read, which books is most like this other book that I liked, why isn't this a work of "literary merit?"  These discussions haven't happened in the past, since the choice of text was teacher-centered. At the end of the day, and the year, and their high school careers, it isn't really about me, though. It's about them.  About their ability to read a complex text and analyze it for meaning. About their willingness to work through a task that is difficult. It's about these students being readers who look to fiction as a way to understand themselves and their world.