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"When Are We Reading Another Book?"

Teaching Literature in the Alternative Education Classroom

"Ms. Thurston?" Mr. Riley approached me, thumbing through a stack of referrals. He stopped at one with my handwriting. "I found your missing student. He was in the bathroom."

I sighed. "Smoking?"

"No." From over the rims of his bifocals, his eyes met mine. "Reading."

I tried to contain my grin.

Shaking his head as he walked away, he said, "I don't know how you do it."

I did.

Do you love to read? I mean, really love to read? If given a choice, say, of things to do an a Saturday afternoon, would reading be in the top three? Do you get distracted in bookstores and lose track of time? Do you ask for books as gifts? Is the collection in your house slowing becoming a fire hazard?

If you're smiling because you see yourself, then you may be able to teach literature to kids in the Alternative classroom. It's kind of like a math problem: you just have to love books more than twice as much as your kids hate them. See? It's easy.

The Program

I started teaching English in the Alternative Education Program at Gates Chili High School in 1990. Housed within the main high school building, the purpose is to provide these kids with the academic, social and emotional supports necessary to graduate with a high school diploma. There've been changes over the years, but overall, it's still a gradual phasing back into traditional classroom settings after a nearly complete immersion in the ninth grade year of English, global studies, science, math, and study skills. Our classes are not self contained: students come and go to gym, lunch, foreign language, technology classes, or whatever else is on their schedules. In the tenth grade, English, global and science are offered and for juniors and seniors, only English and social studies are taught. There are also weekly and bi-weekly counseling groups that I co-facilitate with the school psychologist.

The beauty of the whole thing is that I have the same students in English class for four years. Imagine: four years of teaching literature, building on four years of past experiences, exposing them to as many different aspects of language that I can manage to fit in.

It's because we get to know each other so well that the magic happens.

"A room without books is a body without a soul" - Cicero

The Classroom Environment

Do you pick the most uncomfortable chair in your house in which to sit and read? Didn't think so. Where your kids read is almost as important as what they read. If you make reading a pleasure, something special, an activity to look forward to then you're halfway there.

In my room (I'm very lucky to not have to move from place to place ‚ all the other English teachers do) I have some butterfly and sling chairs that are used during reading time. The chairs sit on area rugs and are conveniently placed next to book shelves and magazine racks. My only rules: no sleeping and no talking; the students take turns rotating who gets a chair and we are on our way. But that only takes care of four, what about the other eight or nine kids? I tell them to spread out, get comfortable. Some love to sit at my desk, others grab an extra chair and prop up their feet, some move their desks to face a wall to avoid distractions, some grab a stuffed animal on which to rest their head. I get comfortable and read right along with them. My room is mess, but it's filled with the seeds of loving literature.

"In the education of children: there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books." - Montaigne

Text Choice

Before I hand my new freshmen a book, I ask which of them hates to read. Not needing to count the hands, I ask them why. You know their answers. But this is what I tell them: "I'll never give you a book that you'll hate, trust me."

You see, my program is all about making a foundation based on relationships. If I can get these kids to trust me, trust each other, trust themselves, then there is no goal that can't be reached. I use books to do that.

I ask them what kinds of books they want to read. Suspense? Mystery? Sports? True stories? Romance? I get their input when I do the budget for the upcoming year; what sorts of magazines do they want? Yeah, I know, what about the requirements? I'm getting to that. But look, before you hand a kid Steinbeck or Shakespeare, you have to get them to trust that what those authors have to say is just as interesting as, say, Stephen King. So, start with something they want. You have a whole year, don't you? Me, I have four, I've got tons of time.

I balance the curriculum with who is sitting in front of me and what's happening in the world. I n my school, there are dozens of books that could be taught at each grade level, so I look at the class, their dynamics and interests. I look at what they're learning in social studies, I look at what's going on in the community. And then I pick, or sometimes, let them. For example, last year's tenth graders were really interested in the holocaust, the topic they were studying in their global studies class. And then I read in the paper that Elie Weisel was coming to our area to give a talk on human rights. Well, there you go. I gave a book talk on Weisel's autobiography Night (Eli was 14 when he and his family were taken to the concentration camps) and asked them if they'd be interested in reading it and going to see his talk the following month.

Do I really have to tell you their answer?

"When you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book."
-Mr. Brautigan in Stephen King's Hearts in Atlantis

Books That Work For Me

I don't want to give the impression that I change books every year for every class. That would be an incredible amount of work and it's not at all necessary. The classics are classics for a reason: they speak beyond the time period in which they are written. There's no need to toss the baby out with the bath water, just toss in a few bubbles and a toy or two in the beginning.

In the ninth grade, I've started with the same book for the last nine years: Jennings Michael Burch's They Cage the Animals At Night. I have never had a student not absolutely love this book. They Cage... is the true story of the years Jennings spent in foster care in New York City in the 1950s. And talk about connections you can make with the students! It's all about overcoming obstacles, about trusting positive adults and learning to let go of pain. It's uncanny, but I swear, there is something magical about what this book does to kids. Find a copy, read it and tell me different.

The second book I do with them is their choice as a class. I ask them to give me a type of book ‚ it's usually a mystery/suspense/action/romance montage. And I'll give them a book talk of a few contemporary titles and they vote. Majority rules because I'm not ready for these kids to be reading separately yet; I don't know all of their strengths and weaknesses as independent readers. And we plunge into book number two. By the time I hand out Of Mice and Men, they trust it will be good, even though there's often some grumbling about the title: "We're reading about mice now?" But by the time we get to where Slim is taking George away from the clearing, the kids are in a heated discussion about why this novel was better than the last two we read. And I know they trust me when I hand over Romeo and Juliet because they're too busy arguing over who gets to play the lead roles.

In their sophomore year I have a dozen or so I pop between, again based on the make up and dynamics of the class and what might be happening around town. I knew the local playhouse was going to perform Twelve Angry Men one year, so I saved the play (I usually do it freshman year), did it with every grade and then took the whole crew ‚ dressed to the nines, I might add ‚ to the theater. But when things are not happening outside of class, I look within. Racism and persecution are hot button themes, and I find To Kill a Mockingbird, Night and Lord of the Flies are always big hits.

With the juniors, I love to use Fallen Angels: a great contemporary novel about the Vietnam War by Walter Dean Meyers. I also use Melba Patillo Beales' Warriors Don't Cry, her autobiography about the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Both of these fit fabulously into the eleventh grade U.S. History and Government curriculum and really help the kids remember what they learn in that class. To satisfy my need for a classic now and then, The Crucible can't be beat : witches, trials, affairs, murder ‚ come on, who wouldn't read that? And this year is where I do independent, outside reading ‚ each kid can pick his or her own book and work with me through guided journal entries. By now, they've learned how to choose a book, they know different strategies for comprehension and trust that I'm right there reading along with them.

"Never Confuse Motion With Action." -Ernest Hemingway

Strategies

I don't ever just hand out books and say, "On your mark, get set..." I start reading first. Me. After handing out copies, I stand in front of the class, take the book in hand, turn it over and read the back out loud. I turn it back over and look at the cover, read what the New York Times said about it, draw conclusions based on the cover art. I skim to the copyright date and get an idea when it was written and wonder out loud what was happening in the world at that time. I look at the author's dedication or opening quotes to get more information about the journey I'm about to take. Good readers do this. People who love books do this. So I do it with my students. If it takes a while, so what? I want them to become lifelong readers, so I need to take the time.

I begin every book out loud. And I don't ask for kids to read ‚ they're usually not very good oral readers and those doing the reading are so self-conscious about hearing their voice that they don't remember a darn thing they read anyway. So I start. I model good reading. I want them to learn how to interact with the text: change their voices when different characters speak to each other, pause at space breaks, be aware of transition clues, to stress those words that are in italics, yell when they see an exclamation point. It's all about hearing voices in your head; it's all about seeing the story unfold before your mind's eye. Most of my kids have never had that happen for them and it's why they've always hated reading. I show them how to do it and they tell me they love when I read to them. My emotions sometimes get the best of me when I read, but I think that's okay. Good books should evoke strong emotion. When my voice shook last year towards the end of Night when Elie finds his father beaten and dying, I told them they'd have to read that section without me because it was just too painful for me to read out loud. The kids saw a piece of my humanity and paid closer attention to what they were reading because they saw the power it had on a person.

I also have them follow along when I read. But I tell them why I do. Spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, vocabulary: all of the things that trip our kids can be learned by seeing the words as they hear them. I tell them I was the worst speller in the world (and I was) and that reading fixed that. I still may not be able to spell everything right, but I recognize a word spelled wrong when I see it. I rarely teach these skills in isolation. As the book progresses and after the kids are engrossed in the story, if I come across a semi-colon, I'll ask what they think its purpose is, why it's there. Because they can see what it's doing, it finally makes sense ‚ that will carry over to their writing better than any mini-lesson on punctuation. Use those teachable moments when you read out loud. I find reading out loud improves attendance, too: if they miss class, they have to read on their own and write me a summary in order to rejoin the class. Attendance is always good during novel units.

How long I read out loud depends directly on the difficulty of the book. To Kill a Mockingbird is tough for my kids to tackle themselves, so I read a lot of it out loud. Scout's voice was meant to be heard and I get so caught up with it, I spend half my day locked in a southern drawl. With They Cage the Animals at Night, I let them go after just the second chapter. They don't need me with this book. And I love telling them they can't read ahead ‚ you know what a teenager does when you tell them they can't do something, right? I'm not as dumb as they think I am...

No class is immune to the outside world, though. With this population especially, a million variables can impact how much they'll invest in a book, no matter how good it is. Several years ago, I started to lose a group with Lord of the Flies. There was a ton of 'stuff' going on outside of class in many of the kids' lives and I knew I had to do something to get them back with me fast. I told them something special would be happening in the next class, but wouldn't go into detail. I just told them, of all the classes with me, they didn't want to miss this next one. The following day, I had the door locked and the lights off just before class. They were knocking and calling to me, but I wouldn't answer. With the bell sounding, the other teacher unlocked the door for them and they filed in hesitantly, carefully walking through the dark, giggling and fumbling for a seat. When they were all in the room, the other teacher flicked on some back lights, leaving us in semi-darkness, but with enough light for me to read and be seen. My students screamed: there I sat, dressed as Jack, a stick sharpened at both ends leaning against the log on which I sat. Leaves and twigs hung from my messy hair, torn shorts and shirt hung off my body. A dead fetal pig (courtesy of the biology department) lay beside me and I was chanting, "Kill the pig, cut her throat, spill her blood."

Needless to say, I got 'em back.

"I feel that fiction ought to have the potential to change your life." - Antonya Nelson

Evaluation

I use reading quizzes, response questions, group discussion and some independent journal assignments to track their progress. I rarely give unit tests. More often, I tie in what we read with a writing project of some kind ‚ creative or essay or research. I vary the writing projects so they don't get bored and, more importantly, so they don't associate finishing a book with a test. Nothing kills a love of reading if there's always a test at the end. For goodness sake, when I return a book to the library, the librarian doesn't hand me an essay question. Reading shouldn't be about tests, it should be about pleasure and growth and experience.

And something must be working because whenever a tenth grader sees a ninth grader with Of Mice and Men, they say, "Oh, you're so going to love that book!" I know I'm doing something right when I see a tissue box being passed between students when Jennings finds out Mark died after a collapse in the cafeteria. And I am convinced these books are working when a student makes a positive choice in his or her own life and tells me it's because of something they learned from a character we read about in class.

But, probably the best evaluation, for me as a person, comes when a student of mine gets a couple of days of in-school suspension. He'll stop by on that second morning, before that first bell and say to me, "Ms. Thurston, I can't take it anymore. I'm so bored in there."

I nod, getting materials ready for class, biting back the urge to say, 'Then why'd you do what you did to get in there in the first place?'

He asks, "Could you pick out a book for me and send it down?"

I look up and smile. "I'd be happy to."

"Make sure it's a good one."

"I will."

And I know that later, after class, I'll send another student with the chosen book down to the in-school suspension room. In my mind's eye I can almost see it. That student will give it to the ISS monitor who will hand it over to my bored student. He'll read the back first and then turn it over to examine the cover. After a few moments, he'll turn to the copyright and then look for the dedication page. Soon after, he'll turn those first few pages to the cover page where he'll find that Post-it note I put there just moments before that says, "Trust Me."

Alternative Network Journal January 2001 Page 28-33

All speeches and articles are copyrighted by, and are the property of, Laurie Thurston, and may not be reprinted without permission of the author.