Reading the World

Have you ever thought about reading the world?  You may even ask: what does reading the world even mean?  In my Literacy class, one of the first questions we were asked at the beginning of the semester was: what is a text?  Most people would immediately think of a book, newspaper...the written word.  But what about musical notes on a score?  Don't we say that people can "read" music?  But does a text have to be read?  What about the strokes of a brush on a canvas?  Is that a text?  While my view may be really broad, I characterize literacy as learning how to read the world.  This may be knowing how to read a book or newspaper, notes on a score, brush strokes on a canvas, the motives or objectives of a character on stage or a person in history, or being able to understand or at least question the events of the day.  Everyday we read the world, most of the time without realizing it.  We interpret what we see and make decisions or judgments based off of it. We question what we see, hear and read and try to come to conclusions.  So is my definition of literacy too broad or even fathomable?  It is to me. 

I hope to be able to teach my future history, ESL and theatre students how to read the world.  In history I want students to explore the past with questioning and searching eyes.  Not only will they read sections of the textbook, but more importantly they will read the actual words of the people who lived long ago and not so long ago.  This includes varying levels of writings from the Declaration of Independence to letters written home from soldiers at Pearl Harbor.  I will prepare them for the different types of documents they read and help them understand what they read by engaging them in the text.  They will have the opportunity to see the world through the eyes of another and put themselves in the shoes of the people of old.  They themselves will write letters as if they were these people.  They will ask questions about them: how old were they, how many brothers and sisters did they have, what was life like for them when they were a kid or teenager, why did they decide to go to war, was it a hard decision, who supported them, who were their friends during the war, was it hard for them to kill another person, what do you think that was like...Through these questions students will identify with the people of the past and be able to write about them and their decisions.  They will be able to argue for or against a decision, take a complicated event in history and write it for a 3rd grade class, and think about what they would have done if they were in their place.  They will see that there are people in the past who have been forgotten, who have been written out of the books or pushed to the side.  They will find these people and learn about them.  They will see that there are people today who feel as though they have been forgotten and pushed to the side.  They will learn how one simple act can change the course of history.  They hopefully will take what they learn and use it in their own lives to read the world around them.
With any ESL student I want them to see that their way of reading the world is just as important as this new culture's way of reading the world.  For ELLs, not only are they learning a new language, but they are learning a new culture which may be profoundly different from their own.  We cannot push one culture aside for another.  Both ways of reading the world are important.  Also with all students, but especially with ELLs, it is important to find connections between them and what we are learning.  You have to build on their background knowledge and make it applicable to them, otherwise I think many students get lost.
In theatre, students learn to read the world as they learn how to portray characters on stage, how to work with others as a team and explore the people around them, the person within them and the people on stage.  Preparing students to read a script is essential, whether it is an Ancient Greek text, Shakespeare, Beckett or Les Mis.  Not only will there be words that they do not understand, but actions of the past that may not make sense to them.  Discussing what we read and how we can make sense of it, is important in helping the students connect with the individual characters, especially when they begin to portray them.  But theatre is not only about acting and reading plays.  It is about learning to read and explore the world.  Theatre of the O
ppressed is a perfect example of exploring territory that a lot of people choose to push away.  It is about exploring feelings, problems, solutions... Theatre is a place where students learn who they are.  They learn to read themselves. 
Whether students are playing a piece from Mozart,  painting a figure on a canvas, portraying Macbeth, passing a basketball to a teammate, reading a letter from a Civil War soldier, exploring the world of the internet through research, creating a glog or public service announcement...they are all engaging in some form of literacy that will help them learn to read the world around them. 

Young Adult Literature

"It all seemed so silly.  Why couldn't she and Max and the Zwirns and the German children all play together?  Why did they have to have all this business of decisions and taking sides?" (Kerr, Judith. When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. pg. 73) 

Cami, Hayley and I decided that for our self-selected project we would read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr and Fever by Mary Beth Keane. 
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - At first this story was not at all what I expected it to be.  I expected a story that was full of historical facts surrounded by a fictional story.  I have read a lot of historical fiction and really enjoy them because, though they are not true stories, I can begin to see what life may have been like for a person.  It took me a while to begin thinking this way as I read Pink Rabbit.  It is a story of a young Jewish girl and her family who move from Germany to Switzerland to France and by the end have just arrived in England during the 1930s.  It is based on the author's life.
As a group, we did not like a few things about the book.  Firstly, the book is written at a 5th or 6th grade level, which is a little young for us.  We were hoping for a more realistic story.  Secondly, we agreed that the story was very simplistic.  It was written with a lot of happy endings that we did not feel really fit the time period.  The author could have gone into a lot of depth on many issues facing the people during that time period, but stuck with very simplistic stories, we assume, of what she remembered.  This is where, I think, knowing who your audience is, is very key.  If Kerr had wanted to write a story to high school students, I think that we would have a story told in a very different way, perhaps with a lot more detail and discussion on those very deep issues (suicide, isolation, identity, racism).
Though we had a hard time with it at first and were not pleased with it's simplicity, we found numerous ways to apply this to one of our classrooms.  The first thing that I came up with was using this story in a ESL classroom or to benefit ELLs in a mainstream classroom.  This story follows the main character throughout three different countries where different languages are spoken.  ELLs could especially relate to her experience in France where no one spoke German at all.  She explains how frustrated she becomes, how she had to learn to speak with others through gestures, how tired she was because of the effort she was putting into the language and many other issues and problems.  ELLs are most likely going through very similar experiences with learning English.  Not only could they relate to learning a new language, but also getting used to a new culture, new people and trying to maintain their own culture at home.  I think that this story could greatly benefit them.  I also think that it could benefit non-ELLs because they could see how hard it would be to be in the main character's shoes, and in the shoes of the ELLs in their classroom.  Hopefully, this would open a great discussion between ELLs and non-ELLs.  We also liked the different perspectives that were represented in the book.  Not only did we learn about the main character, but we learned about relatives that stayed behind in Germany, Nazi supporters that they ran into, writers, actors and other artists that fled Germany...There was a wide range of people that we met, all with a different view on the situation.
We also came up with some teaching strategies that could be used while reading this book.   Some pre-reading activities that we thought of were: researching the author and her life to give us some context, discussing the use of propaganda and the role that it played during that time, as well as having a discussion on why artists/writers were a big target of Hitler's (the main character's father is a writer).  These activities would give the students context before they went into reading.  There are many during reading activities that could be used with this book.  Each chapter begins with a picture.  We would have students make predictions of what they thought would happen in the chapter based off of the picture.  We could follow the movement of the family on a map to help the students see where they were.  We also thought of the students writing postcards from the main character to her Onkel Julius back in Germany.  This will help us be able to assess the student's comprehension and analysis of the story.  There were two post-reading activities that I would consider using in my classroom.  The first would be to have the students predict what happened to the main character after the story ends, since it ends when she is still a little girl and before the outbreak of World War II.  Secondly, as we continued to learn about World War II, I would have them write her story again, but as if she had not moved out of Germany.  Both of these activities would be great assessments and would allow the students to decide how they think her story would be different.
Overall, after reading the whole story and reflecting on it, I would use it in an ESL history class, especially if I could work out a cross-curricular unit with an English teacher.  But if I teach older grades I would definitely keep this in my classroom library.
Fever - Fever was also not quite what we expected.  This story is a fictional representation of the woman who became known as Typhoid Mary.  We follow her from Ireland to America, through the different households in which she worked and the people with whom she associated, to her capture and through her trial.  It became a very interesting story.
We felt that this book was written for a more mature audience, such as 11th and 12th graders (as it has some suggested material and profanity).  The biggest criticism that I had while reading the book, was the way that it was organized.  Instead of following Mary from when she lived in Ireland straight through to her trial, it basically begins with her capture and takes us through her trial while she remembers her life before.  It is a memory piece.  I can see how this would be confusing for students and hard for them to follow because I had a hard time following the story. 
Though it was difficult at times to follow and not our favorite story, we also found ways that we could incorporate it into our classes or at least use material from the story.  One very interesting thing that I liked was that it mentioned real events that were happening around this time.  For example, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is mentioned.  Students would have the chance to go and research these events for assignments and then compare their findings with the story.  This story is also based on fact and real person, so we thought that it would be interesting to have them read primary documents about this particular story.  We would help them find journal entries and newspaper clippings on the typhoid outbreak and have them relate it to what they are reading.  But what we thought of doing mostly was discussing the issues that are mentioned in the story: gender roles, trial proceedings then and now, the use of evidence, immigration, city life in the early 1900's, social status, economics, and civil rights.  Having discussions on these topics would be great during-reading activities to help the students expound and flesh out the life of Mary, the main character.  They could join her in the streets of New York and the hospital where she was held for two years just by studying the ways of life during that time.
Like Pink Rabbit, we felt like Fever could also be used for a cross-curricular unit between English, Science and History.  Though I probably would not use the entire book in my history class I can see using excerpts from the story to bring up discussions. 
For me, reading these two books was a pleasure.  I really like reading historical fiction books for fun, when I can just enjoy them.  Though neither one was what I expected them to be, they both could be used in my classroom, even if they were only found in my classroom library.  I think that students enjoy reading books like this for school because it is a break from reading a text that is so full of heavy information.  Young adult literature is also a lot easier to relate to one's life, especially young students.  After taking this class and reading these books I found myself looking for things that I can teach students which is pretty amazing!