I’m starting to reconsider teaching…..

We had a great discussion for our book Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick in the English Classroom. I was assigned the last two chapters of the book and, needless to say, the discussion on Tuesday was incredibly helpful understanding what was going on in my section. Our discussion concentrated on the first half of the book and focused around many case studies. What I sort of concluded from listening and discussing all of the different case studies was that not having resources and technology is literally the LAMEST excuse for not getting kids excited about a book, engaged in a conversation, or just get them to understand what is going on the book, article, poem, whatever it be. A major problem that I had not even considered before was not only the generational gap of the book but the culture is dramatically different from those in books like Moby Dick. Getting students to taste, feel, see, experience the shipping yards is nothing but extremely helpful, because that is what the story is based upon.

It was also somewhat cool to think back to my high school and it rather dawned on me why my favorite teacher was my Junior and Senior year English teacher. Every year when we were reading the Great Gatsby, he got his students together and organized a huge party to mimic the one in the book (minus the loads of alcohol). We rented out this beautiful building and spent the day decorating it, then partied and danced to our schools jazz band in costumes and ate food and had a great time.  In fact, people got more into this party than prom or senior ball! We did this while reading the book so we had just finished a major party scene that school day before. This personally experience, as well as the case studies, proves to me that participation and engagement of the senses works really well on getting people intrigued and allowing a further understanding of whatever they are doing in class.

I am starting to reconsider teaching because of this class and book! What can I say, I like doing things. :)