TGIF is hosted by Ginger at Greads. It’s about answering/asking our readers a random book related question. The question posted by Ginger today is…
Required Reading: Which book from your school days do you remember reading & enjoying? Is there a book published now that you’d like to see in today’s curriculum for kids?
Hmm, it’s all a little blurry at the moment. I’m kinda blanking on what I read in High School English and what I read on my own…
We stuck to the classics in my classes. Think:
To Kill a Mockingbird
(completely forget my experience of this book…always mean to do a reread)
and
Animal Farm
(which I remember loving)
I think we acted out Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar
at some point
and
Read and wrote our own Canterbury Tales
(Again: Loved! Must have been foreshadowing of the future Medieval Lit minor)
But I think my issue with curriculum and required reading (I’m a school librarian OBVI. I have issues with stuff like this, lol) is twofold:
1. Why aren’t there more YA titles on these lists? John Green, M.T. Anderson, even Maggie Stiefvater’s writing…All worthy of more intense study if at least to teach the curriculum standards teachers teach to.
A little lesson:
Every teacher you’ve ever had has taught to curriculum standards. For a 9th or 10th grade English class a teacher is using various literature to teach them the skill:
RL.9-10.2. Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
What about this particular standard screams to be taught to students via a classic?
nothing.
This strand could be just as easily taught by a more “popular” YA or adult book. Even a non fiction text or memoir. Heck, we could throw caution to the wind and even allow each student to pick a different book. Even if they only had a choice of five or so, students could then pick the book most interesting to them. And if it’s the classic, more power to them. But any other well written title would work…
In the end it’s important for students to grow up with knowledge and admiration of the cannon of literature. But wouldn’t they still admire it if we gave them books they might actually enjoy reading as well?
good thoughts. good thoughts. maybe bco2 should do a tkam reread sometime, because i’ve always thought i needed to reread that.
and i remember reading julius caesar out loud in 10th grade english and everyone always giggled at the name “publio.”
(not me, though.) 😉
Great answer, Sara! I had no kind of useful input this week, lol. Glad someone did! 🙂
I agree with you. I teach high school English and last year was our department’s turn to buy some new materials, so we picked up some newer YA books, including a modern retelling of The Great Gatsby and some nonfiction. I also give a lot of choice in my classes as well, which the kids LOVE. And in turn, I get lots of new book recs 🙂
I loved Julius Caesar because I had a great English teacher Mr. Hill who made Shakespeare fun. Or at least I thought it was fun or was it because I had a crush on him. LOL!!
I think this is a wonderful piece of advice – to allow the students a bit more freedom to choose what they would like to read. It makes sense that the reader would choose something appealing to them and end up both learning and enjoying it!
[…] Sara @ The Librarian Reads shared her thoughts on the T.G.I.F topic Required Reading. […]
The unfortunate is that some teachers don’t want to do a little leg work when the teacher guides are provided for the oldies. Then it boils down to a fight to death amongst the teachers, because we all have to teach the SAME thing.