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Other books on teaching English

     Bridging English is a must read for anyone who plans on teaching English in a secondary school system.  Not only does it throw out a numerous amount of ideas and teaching strategies, but it also details means by which to implement them into your own personal classroom.  Bridging English makes teachers aware that their profession is not just teaching youngsters how to read and write well anymore, but they are required to go way beyond their normal duties.  “McEwan believes that a confusing ‘multitude of institutional and cultural demands’ are placed on the English teacher.  Where there is no clear vision of the nature of the subject, the English classroom ‘becomes a storage closet of stray topics, a place to teach anything that does not fall clearly within the orbit of other areas of the school curriculum.’  He names a few of those areas of the curriculum that have ‘invaded’ the English classroom without careful scrutiny or deliberate intent: ‘moral education, critical thinking skills, survival skills, journalism, library research, and public speaking.’  With no guiding principles, English teaching can become what McEwan calls ‘a patchwork’ of instructional activities.’”  With these thoughts in mind, Milner & Milner capture the need for a well-planned English class and show many useful and creative ways of doing so.

     “In 1965, Flanders found that almost 70% of all talk in the average classroom is done by teachers.”  Teacher-centered lessons were a thing of the norm during the past few centuries of education.  The teacher would be the boring body that stood in front of the classroom and spoke of her knowledge and expected the students to absorb it and be prepared for testing over the material.  But much research has been done to refute this old way of teaching.  Constructivism is now one of the leading teaching strategies in education today.  Constructivists strongly believe that youngsters must be involved in the learning process in order for them to truly gain knowledge about anything.  One way that Milner & Milner exemplified this constructivist view is in the way they examined the relation between oral language and learning.  Many new rationales prompt us to suggest an expanded curriculum that deliberately includes talking and listening.  Many teachers fear that if they allow their students the freedom to talk and discuss topics that their classrooms will become unruly; but many constructivists believe that the more freedom you allow a youngster to have in his/her learning the more s/he will be willing to cooperate with the rules of the classroom.  No student wants to feel like a controlled animal when they come to school, therefore, by reaching to the students in a creative way, teachers are helping to develop a “whole” person. 

In simple terms, creative drama asks students to put original words and actions together in a dramatic situation.  “Creative drama occupies a place in the English classroom between oral language development and formal drama.  Its association with the elementary language arts classrooms is well established, but many secondary English teachers feel uncomfortable about including it in their curriculum.  It represents quite a departure from the ‘stand-up teaching’ of the ‘talk and chalk’ classroom.  It frees students to imagine, think independently, develop their own ideas, and move closer to their emotions.  It also challenges the teacher's traditional roles.”  Many teachers do not feel comfortable releasing their conventional roles of teaching because they fear that without strict control no learning would be achieved within the classroom setting.   But what Milner & Milner try to present in this section of Bridging English, is that teachers need to relate to their students’ interests in order for them to actively become involved in their learning.  Creative drama is one way that allows students to explore for themselves, in an interesting manner, some of the objectives of the curriculum.  It allows students to use many of their multiple intelligences in groups in order to fully comprehend subject matter. 

Another area that Milner & Milner examined was the area of poetry.  This section was brilliant in so many ways because it began to give teachers an idea of how poetry is usually viewed by students and how they as teachers present poetry can completely change students’ attitudes toward the subject.  “High school students barely notice poetry; occasionally they will consent to a handshake with it, but rarely to a kiss.  In fact, our students often bring strong biases to poems, and those biases are often more negative than positive.”  However, aren’t nursery rhymes well liked throughout childhood?  What can possibly explain the decline to the love of poetry?  Milner & Milner begin by examining the possibility that many poems can not be related to the students’ lives, and without this important relevancy, many students become reluctant to study poems.  Milner & Milner say that “before we discuss the way poems work for meaning making, we need first to engage students in the way poems work for pleasure.”  How right they are!  If students are unable to find the pleasure of poetry, it can become a very dull and non-enjoyable few weeks out of the semester.  Milner & Milner “start [the poetry] discussion at a place [they] have found to be an excellent beginning: letting students find poetry in the world around them.”  Poetry can be found in innumerable places if one knows how and what to look for.  Poetry can be found on billboards, in newspapers, magazines, commercials, and advertisements, just to name a few.  Students simply have to be made aware of what poetry entails and how they are to go about finding it.  “Finding poetry promises the delight experienced with the most found treasures.  And the poetic search and discovery involve all the language skills: listening, talking, reading, and writing.  Our specific intentions in introducing students to found poetry are:

·         to awaken students to the everyday

·         to expose in it unexpected realities and significances

·         to discover how poetry uses words and images to startle us into an uncovering and recognition of meaning

·         to move to more traditional forms of poetry with a new degree of attachment and understanding

We discuss here poetry found in locations common to our everyday lives: nonliterary prose, music, advertising, bumper stickers, and even less expected places.”  This interaction of involving students and their interests is very important when dealing with an overall disliked subject.  There is no possible way to make students become actively involved in something they have a bias against; unless teachers break down their walls and reveal that poetry (or anything else) can ultimately be their friend.

     Many times, however, teachers over look their students’ interests.  Multicultural literature is a topic of concern among many educators.  “Women, people of color, and non-Europeans argue that the canonical texts have largely been written by white European males and thereby reflect a predominantly Eurocentric masculine consciousness.”  However, today in the multicultural classrooms, many youngsters are overwhelmingly excited about examining these areas of ‘minority’ and retreating from the conventional “Dead White Males” mentality.  Because of the widening ethnic boundaries within classrooms, there is a great need for teachers to branch out and explore the ideas and literature of other cultures.  Women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic American, Asian Americans, Canadians, South and Central Americans, and Non-Europeans have all contributed great works and great ideas into the canon of literature.  As the classroom continues to grow and expand in diversity, so will the interests of the students.  And in order to allow these youngsters to grow willingly, teachers need to be aware that there needs to be diversity in the material that they cover within their curriculum.  Yes, there is always a need to meet certain state objectives, but over time, it is the hope of most educators that all education objectives will include diverse authors and works of literature.  But until that day arrives, teachers should not neglect the importance of meeting their students “where they are at.”  If they miss the mark with their students, many times teachers will not be able to regain them.  Teachers must constantly be aware of the diversity among their students’ personalities as well as their cultural differences.  “This multicultural challenge for the high school English teacher is significant, and the resistances to it are many.  Many English teachers have themselves been schooled in the Western European classics” and, therefore, “teachers often enter the [education] field with the impulse to share what they have learned and grown to love.”  But these obstacles can be overcome with patience and deliberate effort.  Teachers “must have the conviction that we need to add the voices of women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, as well as other non-European national traditions to those of the classics.  Milner & Milner describe some strategies to introduce this literature into classrooms that will open students to the diversity of literature.  One obvious, but commonly over looked strategy, is to select literature that sensitizes students to cultural differences, promoting empathy for others, and even opens points of connection.  Another strategy is called Pairing.  “We pair works by writers with diverse cultural perspectives.  The pairings are especially effective when other elements remain constant, as in a similar genre, theme, or characters; the differences between the two writers’ experiences and sensibilities become apparent and teach almost by themselves.  Many students also find that they have more impressions to discuss when they compare and contrast two works, rather than talk of one alone.  Yet another strategy is Resistant Reading, which is a reading strategy that approaches texts with a heightened critical consciousness.  “We ask students to observe and uncover stereotypes of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality in the texts they read.”  The last strategy that they introduced is Student Assays.  Student Assays can engage students before they read and discuss texts and can prime them for paying attention to stereotyping.  Student Assays are a means by which to make students aware of their assumptions before they begin reading.  Using advanced organizers before beginning a text is a good way to help students examine the many ideas that they bring to their experiences with literature.  It is also important to give them questions to think about while they are reading such as “Could this situation happen today?” or “What differences are there between the society we will read about and the society in which we live in today?”. 

     It is impossible for me to recount the many valuable techniques and views expressed in Bridging English in one relatively short critique, but maybe I can leave you with one of the most important aspects of this text.  “In almost every aspect of your professional life, you will need to work between competing claims that will not allow for easy answers or quick solutions.  Milner & Milner deeply express the need to never stop enlarging your repertoire.  “Classroom research can help you see which new directions make sense and what established approaches warrant continued use.”  Whether as a teacher you realize the need to waken your students up to poetry, or the need to integrate multicultural literature into your classroom, a teacher’s job never comes to completion.  It is very important that teachers work on becoming what Milner & Milner describe as a “complete teacher,” one who struggles to maintain a balance between the needs of the students and the demands of state criteria.  Glatthorn says of English teachers with their students; “We teach in our own way, speak with our true voice, search for a deeper self….In our own becoming we touch them and help them come alive again.” Amber Anderson, Berry College