Before you start reading this, let’s get one thing perfectly straight, this post is not just about the students in your class, or the kids who say they don’t like reading; this post is very much for the teachers who stand in the front of the class, attempting to hide their sweat, and the fact that they are on the exact same page as their students – that they have never read the book that they are in the middle of teaching. It’s way more normal than people might think. Frankly, the first time teachers hand out an assignment, it’s not unusual for them to have never gone through that assignment, and be absolutely clueless as to how it’s supposed to go. Unless they were assigned certain texts in high school – and let’s face it, most teachers, myself included didn’t read everything they were assigned – they’ve never even considered opening the book that they’ve already placed on their classroom desks.
Last week, one of my students returned from a two weeks pre-arranged vacation. He was aware that we would be smack dab in the middle of reading Catcher in the Rye, and had been given all of the assignments ahead of time, as well as a reminder that the assignments, and the actual text of the book could be found on my classroom website. When he showed up in my classroom to ask what he had missed, it was more than obvious that he hadn’t followed through with any of the work we’d spoken about before his foray into the sun. We were just about to start chapter 20, and his response to me was, “Well, I read through the Sparks Notes last night, so I know everything that’s happened in the book.” Yikes. It took me a moment to figure out if he was serious. I mean, Sparks Notes were the hidden way to catch up when I was in high school, and not something that you openly bragged about having read. I told him that while I was glad he had a brief overview of the text, he had missed out on a book that might have taught him a little bit about his life. I mean, come on, even Holden Caulfield got A’s in English.
I did a lot of thinking about what my student had said, and it brought me back to my first couple years as a teacher, where, much like I mentioned earlier, I had not read all of the books that I was going to teach. I remember scrambling for “themes” and “meanings” and “symbols” and any possible “teachable moments” in the text just before the morning bell. That’s why, while I was not happy about what the student had done, I had to laugh it off. Frankly, the kids only mistake was telling me about his venture through the yellow and black.
There are some really good aspects to reading guides like Spark Notes, and sometimes it’s just the push we need to actually figure out what we are supposed to be gathering from certain texts.
For an example of what I’m talking about, RapGenius.com, has published a guide for The Great Gatsby. The movie is coming out this week, and a lot of American Literature classes are scrambling through it because teachers know that their students will soon be forking over their money to watch Leo DeCaprio portray the famed liar. It’s not the easiest book to understand, and it takes some time to truly grasp the depth of all the symbolism. This is a fantastic guide, and honestly, I’ll probably use a good deal of it when I teach this book next year. I’ve read Gatsby several times, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t use a refresher course.
Sometimes it’s not just the students who feel like the dumb ones in the class, and it’s okay to admit that, as a teacher, you don’t know everything.
F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby (Chapter I) Lyrics
