Get Back to Reading

I can’t sleep. I start school in a week.

It’s going to be my fourth year teaching. Why do I still feel brand new?

Some things have changed. I still don’t know what I’m doing, only now I don’t care that I don’t know what  I’m doing as much. That is until I start having my annual School Starting Anxiety Dreams—then I wish I had prepared my butt off all summer.

But I did other things. I started writing songs and played shows with a rock band. I attempted to play Transformers with my new four-year-old, who is unnaturally obsessive about anything that ends with “con". I cooked food in my kitchen without using the microwave. I stopped taking the meds that were supposed to stop me from becoming a depressed zombie and found out they’d been making me a depressed zombie.
I walked my ridiculous Chihuahua and did sit-ups on a regular basis.

I did not, however, read Great Expectations.

Summer reading should be sweet, pleasurable, and thought provoking in a ninja-like way. Summer reading should inspire life-long reading habits in kids. Summer reading should not be like a fist to the gut of a going-on-ninth-grader, who is suddenly longing, nay  pining, for the good old days spent with Atticus Finch and Family. Great Expectations is an incredible book, but it is not good summer reading.

I am tickled by the possible redeeming social value of my very privileged students reading about Pip and his pathetic piece of dinner bread stuck up a pants leg while they lounged on the beach with friends in Costa Rica, cruised to Alaska, and cavorted in Sweden. Perhaps they all suddenly appreciated their exceptional place in society. Perhaps some will decide to throw off parental expectations and become social workers, public defenders and readers for the blind instead of succumbing to investment bankerdom. But, perhaps not.

I’d like to wager that many didn’t get through this novel at all. I am comfortable making this wager because I am hovering at around page one hundred, and I am their English teacher.

I’d rather assign books that would get greater numbers of them all the way through their reading, hopefully encouraging them to love reading and to look forward to reading in high school. Couldn’t we wait to scare and intimidate them with our mighty profundity after school starts?

So, here’s to a summer reading list full of books like Harry Potter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and The  Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time! Here’s to letting kids choose their own summer reading books!

Ok. I am not really an English teacher’s English teacher. But I still kinda have a point.

What was my point? Oh, right...

I should get to sleep, so I can read Dickens tomorrow. There's a long road ahead for me and Pip.

Comments

[Mimi]

Ha!! I teach second grade (not high school English) but I am right there with you in terms of expectations for ourselves this summer. I admire teachers (like my mom) who spent tons of time developing some area of their practice and reading up on new strategies. Yes, I did take a class in redesigning social studies curriculum and wrote a kick-a*s unit, but then I also read a huge amount of chick-lit, devoured Harry Potter and caught up on back episodes of What Not To Wear. Mmm-hmm. Now I've got two weeks to go (and I'm switching grades!!) and I'm rationalizing that being super rested and armed with a great new unit is enough...

Good luck with your new school year!!!!
Mimi

PS_ loved your blog...keep it coming!

www.itsnotallflowersandsausages.blogspot.com

[jennifer]

you're my kind of teacher.

[Stacy]

I'm excited to have happened upon your blog. I teach at a school full of privileged kids who have everything so I could definitely relate to your comment about how far removed a book like great expectations is from your students. The other day I had a student who didn't do her homework (post a comment to the class blog) because she coudn't figure out how to work her new iPhone.

My plan this summer was to overcome the envy I feel towards my students who travel the globe all summer long by making a group of them take me along. We had a great time in Alaska. It definitely beat summer reading.

I'm adding your blog to my reading list (and skipping Great Expectations).

[superdeens]

My favorite summer reading was Love in the Time of Cholera. What teenager wouldn't plow through a book with so many sex scenes?!

[Buy Online Rx]

Given how bad we looked at trial, do we even want to appeal the Witt case? If we don't appeal Witt, though, have we in effect conceded the whole ball game? Will a lame duck session pull our butts out of the fire? This is really no fun.

[fashiontips]

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