My Ideas About Poetry

For this blog post I am going to be looking at 4 different poems. I am going to be looking at the relationships between these poems but I feel that looking at them in pairs will be the most productive. The first set of poems I will be looking at will be "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" by T.S Eliot and "April Rain Song" by Langston Hughes. The second set of poems that I will be looking at will be "The Age Demanded" by Ernest Hemingway and "50-50" by Langston Hughes. For each of these sets I have created some guiding questions for my thinking and use of these poems...

1. How do the two poems compare, how do they differ?

2. What is the tone of the poem and how is that established?

3. How could these poems be used in a classroom? If these could not be used why not, and how could the same lessons or ideas be taught without the use of these specific poems?

"Rhapsody on a Windy Night" and "April Rain Song" -

How do the two poems compare? Both of these poems are about the nature in relation to the night. I think that both of these things are the topics of the poems because both night and nature are mysterious in their own ways. The poems discuss nature and night in very different ways, with different approaches, and different styles; however, they are the topics nonetheless. These poems are different in many ways. The first that is noticeable is their length and format. "Rhapsody" is much longer and has stanzas that vary in length throughout the poem, creating more of a mysterious and chaotic vibe. "April" has a much more traditional layout with 2 stanzas at 3 lines each and a final line at the end. This poem is much shorter, more direct, and less mysterious in its format and message. "Rhapsody" takes the reader on a journey as the night progresses and becomes morning as each stanza moves to the next. With this evolution of night to morning comes a deeper understanding of the narrator or speaker and how crazy he is. The speakers memories have dissolved and so have all his clear relations. He is now at the mercy of the moon, the "lunar synthesis". The man is going crazy as he walks the street the street lamps are the ones that begin to speak with him. The street lamps are guiding his thoughts as we moves forward toward his house, but also closer to morning with each step he takes. This poem is very dark in many ways. This poem takes place in the middle of the night so the obvious setting would be dark with only passing light as he walks under the street lights. The only other light that is provided is that from the moon. The moon, the street lights, and his memories are all working against the man to take control of his thoughts and think about all of the dreadful things that happen at night on the streets. The streets he is currently walking on, the streets that cannot talk and tell the mysteries that lie within them, the streets that he needs to walk on to get home to so he can finally go to sleep and gain control of his memories again. "Rhapsody" is so much darker than "April". "April Rain Song" recalls a warm spring night filled with beautiful silver rain that comes down and kisses the cheeks of the people waiting for it. The rain is used as a cleansing form of nature rather than a disruptive form of nature like in "Rhapsody". In "April" the rain is soothing like a mothers embrace, everything it touches it makes nicer. The rain is so beautiful and melodic that it can sing a lullaby to those that listen. This poem celebrates the changing of the seasons, the life of spring, and the beauty of nature. Hughes even exclaims at the end that she loves the rain, and how could you not when it is acting is such a beautiful and refreshing way? Both of these poems provide great insight as to how nature and night interact with each other and how that interaction influences people. In "Rhapsody" the different aspects of nature, the moon, the wind, the night, all interacted in a negative way that caused the man to lose his memories until morning arrives, creating a manic tone "that makes the reader feel on edge and uneasy. In "April" Hughes writes a beautifully peaceful poem about her love of the rain, its cleansing quality, and how the rain has a calming and nurturing interaction with people when it occurs. Both of these poems I feel are appropriate to use in the classroom. I would like to use them in the same way I did here, looking at the side by side or using them with other works. I find that my students interact well with poetry when they are given multiple to look it, in a way it gives them more to hold onto when they are analyzing a piece. With the lesson I would ask them to find similarities or differences between the two texts that are being analyzed, and I would ask them to find different parts of the poems that they identify with. Do they identify more with "Rhapsody" or "April" and why is that? Does the night make them feel mysterious and scared about the darkness around them? Does the rain calm them and sooth their thoughts as they drift off to sleep? More than anything this would be used as an exploratory lesson for students to read and identify with different pieces of poetry to find styles they enjoy so that when they being writing their own they have an idea of where to start.

"The Age Demanded" and "50-50" -

I chose to group these two poems together because while I was reading them the tone of "you can never win" came to mind, with every ying there is a yang, and life is full of hard choices and contradictions. These two poems are very similar because they both deal with a hard choice being made. A path is presented in front of you but them life demands something else. in "the Age" when "the age demanded that we sing / And cut away our tongue." It becomes clear with this first line that what the age is demanding cannot happen with the circumstances that the people are in. Telling someone to do one thing and then putting those exact restrictions on that situation is the epitome of a contradiction. To sing and then cut away someones tongue creates an impossible situation and potentially with the tone of this poem an impossible age, or world at this very moment. What the age is demanding is not practical nor possible, but is the age really demanding these exact things or is the age actually making much larger demands and this is what Hemingway is using as a placeholder? This is what I believe to be be true for the poem. I interpret this poem as being a depiction of the impossibility that surrounds what the so-called "times" demand of people. "the times" demand something of a generation but then make it impossible to deliver and then label them as a failure or lazy, when in reality this is just "the sort of shit that it demanded". "the Age Demanded" is similar to "50-50" in many ways but also has distinct differences. In "50-50" the speaker has to make a decision about being alone for the rest of her life, or sharing her bed and thus securing a man in her life, and also sharing her money. Is it worth the company of a man to relieve her of her loneliness to also share her money with him also, or is it better to be alone and also have the money that she earned herself all to herself? This is the type of impossible question that only she can answer because every single person would think about this situation differently, that is what makes love unique. This type of impossible situation is what makes these poems similar. What makes them different is that the people being effected is either a singular person or entire generation of people. The outcomes are entirely different for each situation but that does not downgrade the validity of either. Both situations are equally valid in their difficulty but it is how we handle and respond to difficult situations in life that define who we are. The generations choice to become who they are and either do what the age demands or not, is their choice to make, and one that they will live with. This is the same situation that the woman in 50-50 will make, to accept the man and share every aspect of her life with him, or not, these are only choices that individuals can make, and then live with. I think that both of these poems address difficult aspects of life that everyone must come to grips with. These poems would be ones that I would want to use in my classroom but they would have to be prefaced especially with the profanity used in "the Age Demanded" I feel like my students could learn a lot from these poems and there are so many aspects they could really connect with.

Links provided below for the poems discussed in this blog post -

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

April Rain Song

The Age Demanded

50-50

How Important is Death?

Death is something that is very obviously inevitable. Everyone alive knows that one day they will die so why is then that death is a subject so hard to talk about but so prevalent in writing? Death is the theme of both "The Mill", and "Richard Cory" by Edward Arlington Robinson. Robinson is not the only author to write about death, in fact it is a very common topic for authors to explore in their own way. Death is something that has always fascinated me as a topic in literature. Everything about death is unknown. I believe this is the reason so many authors write about it so extensively. authors are attempting to understand death on a deeper level through literature. No one knows when they are going to die, how, why, where we go, what happens when we die, everything about the experience is unknown yet we all live our lives everyday knowing that one day we will not be alive anymore. There are so many uncertainties that surround life and death, this sense of uncertainty is what makes "The Mill" so interesting to me. There are a few different interpretations of this poem that I have found in my research about it, one of which I relate to when reading it. "The Mill" was written in the 1920's during the Great Depression. The poem talks about the miller losing his job because during this era a lot of jobs were being dissolved into new jobs or dying out altogether as a trade when America was moving into the industrial revolution. Once it has been established that "There are no millers any more," (5) the wife was "Sick with a fear that had no form/ she knew that she was there at last; /And in the mill there was a warm /And mealy fragrance of the past" (9-12). The wife found her husband dead in the mill where he hung himself once he knew that he had no other options for his life. So many others around him that were losing their jobs were going without food and dying of starvation anyway, at least this way he would not have to suffer. The wife shortly after finding him had very negative thoughts herself. She began thinking about the idea of killing herself as well because she knew much like her husband did that her options were limited. Without work, a husband or anyone to take care of her, "She may have reasoned in the dark" (18). She went were the "Black water, smooth above the weir" (20) "Would hide her and would leave no mark" (19). The black water would soon be the end of her life, leaving in vain and not leaving a mark on her body the water "Though ruffled once, would soon appear /The same as ever to the sight" (22-23). This poem shows many different sides of both life and death. Life seemed to end as an option for the wife as soon as her husband had killed himself. Life for the husband ended as soon as he no longer had a job and could not provide for himself and his wife any longer. Both decided to end their lives but for very different reasons. The question of reliance and resilience come to mind when analyzing this poem. Could the husband have tried harder to find work? Was he weak for giving up too soon, or brave for knowing when to quit? Could the wife have tried to find a family to live with, or friends to take her in? All of these have to do with the human spirit. If the couple would have had greater purpose and reason to live maybe they would have tried to work a little harder, dig a little deeper and persevere a little longer to find solutions to their problems. This concept of grit, and its application to the human condition is what really shines through in this poem and in "Richard Cory." In the poem "Richard Cory" we are again looking at a man who kills himself to the surprise of the other characters in the poem and the reader of the poem. Richard Cory's death is built up to throughout the poem. His death is hinted at but never explicitly talked about, signs could be popping up that he is depressed or unhappy but it isn't until the end of the poem that it becomes clear the only option Richard Cory saw for himself, much like the miller and his wife was suicide. Richard Cory was a well liked man, "He was a gentleman from sole to crown,/Clean favored, and imperially slim" (3-4). Richard Cory was a man who had access to food, good clothing, and anything he needed. In a time of great want and need, he did not crave access to such common basic needs, he had everything he needed or wanted and more. He had everything and nothing. His happiness was an allusion that everyone wanted until they realized the smoke screen that was in front of them. "he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace" (9-10). Richard Cory was richer than a king, he had more than anyone could ever imagine. What he had was also only his, it was not shared amongst others, it was not divided up and given to the less fortunate it was kept all to his unhappy self. Everyone that lived in the town wished that they were in his place. The grass always looks greener when you are looking at it from a less fortunate perspective. Richard Cory wanted what so many others had but it was something money could not buy, happiness. Everyone in the town thought that money could solve all of their problems, no more famine, no disease, no starvation or hunger, children going without every day, money could have solved all of their problems but for Richard Cory it was the biggest burden a man could have. "So on we worked, and waited for the light,/And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;/And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/Went home and put a bullet through his head" (13-16). Both of our men (and wife) end up killing themselves in the end. Is death the only option for people when they feel like they can no longer handle the life they are living anymore? At what point does killing yourself become a real option that people consider and how can we analyze the obsession for money yet again in our culture. The miller killed himself because of a lack of money. Losing your job is a stressful thing, but is it something to die over? Richard Cory killed himself because he was so unhappy and money could not solve any of his problems. The American dream is something that should be considered when looking at these topics side by side. Is the American dream worth dying over, and does that make it a dream or a nightmare? Is the pursuit of happiness just another way of saying the pursuit of money, and not just enough to be sustainable, but enough to be glutenous with? Money is not a synonym for happiness and yet in both of these poems they are central to the understanding of why people choose to die. I do not know how many answers I have to these questions but here is a final food for thought if you have made it this far in my ramblings... was money created to give control to those who have the most it, or was money created to control those that have the most of it? 

Shadow Tribe

"Shadow Tribe offers the first in-depth history of the Pacific Northwest's Columbia River Indians - the defiant River People whose ancestors refused to settle on the reservations established for them in central Oregon and Washington. Largely overlooked in traditional accounts of tribal dispossession and confinement, their story illuminates the persistence of off-reservation Native communities and the fluidity of their identities over time. Cast in the imperfect light of federal policy and dimly perceived by non-Indian eyes, the flickering presence of the Columbia River Indians has followed the treaty tribes down the difficult path marked out by the forces of American colonization." 
Borrowed from http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/FISSHA.html 


This book has such significance for Washington Natives and should be used in more schools. Shadow Tribe teaches students about Native American culture and the significance of their resettlement through a local lens that they could connect to. So many students already learn about the trail of tears in social studies during their middle school years but what they should be learning is how resettlement and the displacement of peoples has happened locally. This displacement very obviously affects the Native Americans who are having to leave and move to newly designated areas but it also effects the culture of the people, the culture of those around them, and the culture of the states in which reservations are prevalent. Native Americans provide a rich and beautiful understanding of the communities in which they are present and involved. Washington is such a unique state because we have so many different Native American tribes all around that are prevalent on both the west and east sides of the state. Using this book in a classroom would be such an amazing opportunity for students to learn that Native Americans have been effected by others not only from when the Europeans first came to America and started moving them to reservations, but it was happening well into the 19th and 20th century. To use this text as a whole would be difficult because there are a lot of complexities within that I think would go over the heads of seventh grades, which is typically when they are learning about Native American and Washington State history. Using this text as supporting material for a unit lesson like Washington State history would create a more well rounded lesson that was inclusive and allowed for multiple different perspectives. Washington State history is both a really fun unit to teach and also an overwhelming unit at the same time. Students are required by law to take a Washington State history exam at the end of seventh grade or they will not graduate high school. This can add a bit of pressure when teaching it since there is a certain amount of information that you as the teacher have to make sure they understand and have worked through. What would push this unit over the top and make it even more substantial for students would be to include information about each of the reservations that are local for their area. In the greater Spokane area there is the Spokane tribe, the Colville Tribe, and the Kalispell Tribe. In all of Washington state there are 29 federally recognized Native American Tribes with more than 200,000 registered Native Americans and Alaska Natives. There is so much to learn about our Native American neighbors who share an understanding of the state we all live in and love. It is our job to teach the multiple different perspectives of Washington State history to provide students with as much understanding of how this great state came to be what it is today. That includes of course the substantial impact of the Native Americans who fought for their land and their rights when they were so wrongly stripped of them. 

I Heard the Owl Call My Name by Margaret Craven

"When Mark Brian, a young priest, is sent to the Indian village of Kingcome in British Columbia, he finds himself in an astonishing place of salmon runs and ancient totems. Yet amidst the beauty, the old culture is under attack, slowly being replaced by prefab houses and alcoholism. Mark has not long to live, and so he sets about sharing the hunting and fishing, the festivals and funerals, the joys and sorrows of a once proud tribe. Perhaps here he will learn enough of life to be ready to die.

With all the qualities of a legend or fable, I Heard the Owl Call My Name is a journey of discovery, and a story about the transforming power of love. Exploring the clash of old and new, it is an outstanding modern classic, both wise and tragic."

Cited from: Pan MacMillan Website: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/margaret-craven/i-heard-the-owl-call-my-name/9781447289579 

This book was one that I had never heard of until I began student teaching at a middle school that uses it as a part of supplementary curriculum. This book is short, and is an easy read, making it feel more like a young adult read more than anything. I was finding myself getting lost in the details, connecting to Mark, and the scenery that was so beautifully described. I am trying to become more aware when I read books, of how I think my students would react to it, would they enjoy it as much as I did, would they find the details boring or hard to relate to, would they be able to understand the complexity of his life and his problems? Since becoming a student teacher I found myself reading more through the lens of my students rather than as myself. This twist has created friction in my reading ability and enjoyment. Since I have adapted this new way of looking at books, I find myself getting bored more quickly, seeking out action or drama, looking into plot lines that I remember connecting to as a young kid, rather than sitting down with a good book that might have a slow start or a boring character and still being able to plug through the book, getting something out of it in the end. Reading has and always will be a fundamental part of who I am as a person. I love reading, everything about it, as I like to say, the book is always better, and that has in life been proven true time and time again. Unfortunately not all middle school kiddos feel the same way that I did, and still do about books, so when it comes to a text like this one, rich in meaning and with a powerful plot, I still second guess my ability to teach it effectively, wondering if my students will get out of it what I want them to? So how would I teach this book, because I do think this book should be taught... what do I want them to get out of it, and how I am going to hold them accountable for doing so? Well, here are a few of my ideas ... 

Since this book deals with unexpected death and the uncertainty of life I feel like the lessons that work with the book should be reflective or at least aware of that. The students might have a hard time with the fact that he dies, he dies not even from the illness he was "supposed" to die from, he dies tragically, but his death is also a beautiful moment that allows him to realize he has become a part of this Native American tribe, he has learned from them and become their family, he knows this is certain when he hears the owl call his name. Dealing with death at a young age can be hard for students, and this pinnacle moment in the book should be explored to show them that while death is sad their can be beauty from it, or at least a deeper, more rich understanding of life. Students will be asked to write either to the author, or to death. They will have the ability to ask the author why she had Mark die the way she did, how was that important for her, what did it do for the overall understanding of the character, by allowing the students to ask these types of questions it will propel them forward into their own inquiries about why the book ended the way it did. The students that choose to write to death will be writing to better understand the purpose of death, is it to show us the importance of life? They will begin to understand how death can be seen as an end and a beginning, this activity will show them how writing to something rather than someone can be cathartic and help release any questioning, doubt, or anger they have about something, kind of like what the main character did when he left his old life to understand the meaning of all life. The students would have to take an end of unit test on this book specifically, and it would show me how much they paid attention during the reading, and how engaged they were in the activities that took place with the text as well. The final assessment for a text like this would be either a discussion or a mind map, some type of verbal or visual representation that can be shared with others that they have mastered this text, both in understanding its purpose, but also its content, the plot, the characters, and the significance of all literary elements within the story. I really enjoy doing end of unit tests by allowing the students to be creative with their thinking while also demonstrating that they understand the purpose of using this book, and can show me and their peers what they got our of their experience. Overall I really enjoyed this book, I also enjoyed finding fun ways for my students to think about this book, and how they would show their knowledge of I Heard the Owl Call My Name. 

All That I Have Learned ... 

We have done a lot in this class, and on a week to week basis it didn’t feel like that much but looking back on the quarter in its entirety we really have read a lot, wrote a lot, and taught a lot to each other and ourselves throughout our time in this class. The book talks were one of my favorite things that we did in class, I loved that we got to talk about books that we could use in our classroom, and we got really great ideas for other books to keep on our shelves in the future. Without doing the book talks we wouldn’t have had that much exposure to new materials, it really was a unique experience that I haven’t had in another class before. I also really appreciated the teaching element within the class, being given opportunities to lead discussions, that practice is what I think is most important in our classes, especially as I am leading up to student teaching. The blog posts were really helpful as far as getting my ideas on paper in a way that is constructive and allowed for reflection later when we talked about them in class. I also feel really good about the work I was able to do on my unit plan with Aly. We worked really hard on that thing and it took a lot of hours talking and discussing what we thought was the best use of our time, how to organize our ideas, and if what we wanted to do was practical, breaking it down and in some areas starting over. Working with her on this project was amazing, I know that this is something that I could have finished by myself if I had to, but being able to work on it with someone, to talk out ideas with them I think that that was a much better way to tackle a project rather than by myself, because teaching isn’t a one person job. We need each other to bounce ideas off of, without each other we wouldn’t be as creative as we could be, and our students wouldn’t benefit the way they should.

              One of the most important theories that I think we explored, especially the one that we used the most often was the theory of discussion as a way of teaching. We had discussions everyday about what we read, why we read it, what it means, and how we are going to use it in our classrooms, or how we won’t. The amount of discussion that we had in class was so beneficial, teaching is a communal job, we need to talk to each other to figure out lesson plans, different materials that we should use, or how we are going to be most effective in our teaching methods. I really enjoyed the discussions that we had in class, we were all talking about the same materials, but we were reading them with different perspectives, we explored new ideas and came to really solid conclusions as a class about how we felt about a text or what we think it would best be used for. We also talked a lot about real world stuff, just life, things we saw on the news, other things we read about outside of class that we wanted to talk about as it related to the text or what we are working on in class. I want to be able to have as many discussions as possible in my future classroom, but I know that we will also need to do other things too. I think that discussions are so important for students to have, they need to talk with one another about their ideas and practice vocalizing their opinions. I plan on using discussions a lot in class, but I also don’t want it to be forced or seem like it is becoming repetitive, I think that just by allowing students to have that freedom within their own learning and class time will engage them a lot more than worksheets and essays.

              I think I participated a lot in this class, and I feel really good about a lot of the stuff I said. I think that in this class I was really able to explore my ideas around education and how I plan to be in the classroom. There was a really cool mixture of students in the class that were already student teaching, some that are being placed currently (like me) and then others that aren’t even in the program yet. I think that this super unique combination of students allowed for us to have discussions that all came from personal perspectives that reflected our current standings in the program. I feel really good about the comments I made, the discussions I participated in, the connections I made with my peers and the overall effort that I put into this class. I worked really hard in this class and I think that effort is reflective of my efforts in school, and the efforts I will put forth when I am a teacher. This class has taught me a lot more than I was prepared to learn, but I feel really good about my progress in the education program, and going forward into my first quarter of student teaching I know that I am prepared.

Night by Ellie Wiesel

             

The last one … its weird that this is the last blog post I am going to be doing for this class, it went by so quickly, and I have honestly enjoyed this process more than I thought I would. So, for the last blog post of this quarter, lets talk about a really depressing, hard to get through without crying, novel!

This novel is incredibly hard to get through, while you are being taken on the journey of a character within a book we know that it is the journey of real people, of Wiesel, and of every Jewish person that was taken into the horrific world of concentration camps. The Holocaust is one of the hardest things in our human history to talk about, at least for me. Knowing the horrible, cruel, nasty and vicious things that one human could do to another has always boggled my brain. While this is something that needs to be talked about with students it can be incredibly hard to do so, when some of the things that Wiesel writes about are not things that I have personally worked through yet or learned how to talk about. I am not sure how you would have a conversation with kids in middle school about how Nazi’s would burn babies by the truckload, or how they could experiment on people, kill them in gas chambers by the dozens, or just expose them to the obscene amounts of torture, humiliation, and degradation that these poor Jewish people had to go through. While there are going to be so many difficult things that will need to be addressed in the classroom while reading this book or any other Holocaust text, it is 100% something that needs to be talked about, in a safe, inclusive environment, for students to learn what happened, how we got to that place in our history, and how we have tried to recover. There are hardly any Holocaust survivors that are still alive today, around 100,000 in 2016 from a Time article talking about the life of our author, Ellie Wiesel died at 87 and “brought voice to the millions of people silenced in the Holocaust and served as an advocate for peace to make sure the horrors of the past did not repeat itself.” – Time (Melissa Chan)

In a few years there will be no person alive in the world that lived through the Holocaust, not a single person that can recount what happened, or tell their courageous story of survival and perseverance. Books like Night, and authors like Wiesel are vital to the continuation of education that our students are going to need when it comes to some of our worlds darkest moments. We need people to write about what happened, to forever preserve in time the artifacts of their life, our history and the world we once lived in. 

 Words are Only Half the Story

              Before doing research about graphic novels, I was not very familiar with them or their purpose within the classroom and I can very confidently say after reading so much about them I am amazed I have not considered them within curriculum sooner. I used to love reading the comics section of the newspaper when I was a kid, it was my favorite thing to do on Sunday mornings, mom and dad would drink their coffee, I wouldn’t obviously because I hated the taste, so my mom would make me tea with way too much milk, and I would read the paper with my folks and feel like an adult. Its those small memories that never go away entirely but you forget about until you are introduced into something that sparks it back up in your brain. I hadn’t thought about that aspect of my childhood in years, probably because when I got older we stopped getting the paper, but I will never forget what it felt like to sit on the couch and read the “funnies” as my mom used to call them and giggle to myself when a joke made sense or Garfield did something silly again. Reading was a huge part of my childhood, something that I always loved, and it truly did start with reading the Sunday paper and laughing at the comics.

Words really are only half the story, words are so powerful, but they are not always able to convey what the author is saying. It is with the combination of words and pictures that students are able to read what is being said and watch what is being conveyed through the graphic novel. Reading as I have always said is a transitive experience, it is meant to take you to a different time and place, immerse you within the text you are reading but the unfortunate reality of that is, it doesn’t work for everyone. Expecting young readers in their entirety to dive into a text when it is literally only words on paper is a difficult and is a semi-unrealistic expectation. Students need pictures, more often than not they are going to be visual learners, 65% percent of the population consists of visual learners, so in our classroom over half our students statistically are going to need a visual representation of what they are reading or attempting to read. Graphic novels are currently being used in the classroom as either a part of the curriculum or for fun reading that the students can do in their free time, either way students are reading and that is what is important. Earlier in the quarter we read Readicide, about how to prevent students from hating reading by the time they graduate high school, while also still having them read in school. There is a large population of students that are not being reached within the reading community, there are a lot of reluctant readers, and there are even a lot of advanced readers that need motivation as well. Graphic novels are a fun, creative way for students that normally would not pick up a book at all, dive into an imaginative story, and actually enjoy it. There are a lot of boys in classrooms that hate reading, they don’t think it’s fun, and I don’t blame them because there is not a lot being done to help them change their opinions surrounding reading. Graphic novels have had a huge success in reaching the male population in classrooms, because sometimes it can be really hard for them to connect to a text. I think that the use of graphic novels early on in students developmental reading process will help bridge that gap between students only reading for school, students hating reading entirely, and students stopping their reading after graduation. Reading is so important within our society, we have to do it every day and sometimes that feels overwhelming, I think that using a fun and creative text will allow student to understand that reading can be fun, it can be imaginative, and it can become the transitive experience it is meant to be.

              I watched a video that was paired with the Scholastic article that I read, this video featured the District Resource Librarian for the San Diego Unified School District, Deborah Ford and three very successful graphic novel authors. Within this video that was an interview between Ford and the novelists, she asked them some very interesting questions that sparked a lot of my responses within my post this week. I found out that all of the novelists also started their writing and reading careers young, by reading the comics when they were little, this combination of reading and also seeing the characters in front of you made them feel more connected to the text. Ford brought up a point that I had not thought of until I watched this video, our students are communicating graphically every day, every time they send an emoji they are using text, and picture to elicit an emotion, an exact feeling they want to reader to understand, otherwise they wouldn’t include it. I loved that she brought this up, it made so much sense, our students love texting, they love graphic novels and it’s because they love the visual representation that they are seeing on the pages of their books, and on the screens of their phones.

              I would love to integrate graphic novels into my classroom, creating a unit centered around one would be so much fun and the curriculum is already out there waiting to be explored and used. Students can create their own graphic novel (like in the comic strip below) or they can try to create a message with only emojis and see if it is as communicative as text would be. Pictures are everywhere in our students lives, they are going to need visual representations, because words really are only half the story.