Getting There One Step at a Time!

It continues to amaze me that I can use so much of what we learned last spring in ENGL 486 and 487 in my current classroom. This week I dusted off my copy of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian to combine with The Light in the Forest. I used the split personality diagram in Diary to lead a discussion of the White/Native American characteristics as presented in the text of Light in the Forest. In order to see the importance of perspective, I drew an x/y axis with four quadrants: 1) White culture from white perspective; 2) White culture from Native American perspective; 3) Native American culture from Native American perspective; 4) Native American culture from white perspective. In a discussion format, students and I filled in the areas with topics ranging from religion to housing and clothing. Their prior complaints that they didn't understand the book faded away by the end of the period. To wrap it up, I handed out a blank split diagram with the outline of a frontier boy on one half and the outline of a Native American boy on the other half. The assignment was to fill in corresponding characteristics for homework. By the way, I did give a brief talk about True Diary at the beginning and had several students ask to borrow it at the end of class. One boy took it home and we will pass it along to the others. That was my coolest moment: having lights of understanding go on and having 7th graders ask to borrow my books!

To connect this scenario to our ENGL 488 work, my experience above relates to what Jeff Wilhelm and Bruce Novak are discussing in Book Club on English Companion Ning. One teacher wrote in asking how she could teach from the philosophical vantage that their book promotes "with her hands cuffed behind her back." She was referring to standardization and dictated "coverage." One of the authors answered her quoting Matthew Arnold, using a reference to throwing off the chains of repression. For those of us who cannot achieve that kind of complete liberation at the moment, we can create lessons that get us and our students closer to the free exploration of ideas and expression. I realize that I must take baby steps in my movement away from the "schoolish" toward the "toolish," to quote Jeff Wilhelm, but each time I do, the students' reaction makes me realize it was a rather big leap!