Action (Jackson).

So I’ve just now decided, based on this title and the last,  that all of my posts are going to be named after 80s movies.  In advance, I apologize.

Well, sort of.

Ok.  So.  Action Plan.

As I threatened in my last post, I want to develop a “reading process” that I can use in my classroom, and if I have the time (because which of us doesn’t?)  I’ll extend it back from the 11 and 12 classes I teach, maybe building it into hypothetical curricula for younger grades.  (As a for instance: I think it’s absolutely crucial that anyone serious about reading prose effectively know how to read poetry.  Poetry, though, is not part of many of our courses in any kind of rigorous or methodical way, and I’m not sure it would be all that effective to just throw some sonnets at my grade 11s, or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” at my 12s, and expect them either to understand the poetics, or to then turn around and use that understanding to inform their reading practice in more general terms.)

So.  First step: I’ve gathered some raw data.  I handed out the sentence I’m using as my test case (“At the grey tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor” from The Great Gatsby) and given it to my classes, and asked them to tell me anonymously what they get out of the sentence, how they approach reading it, and what techniques they see.  That’s phase 1: identifying where they are at as readers, and what their current “reading process” is.

Phase 2 will be sitting down myself and making very clear where I WANT them to be, and what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they are going to need to get there.

Phase 3 will involve consulting the experts. I’ve begun to gather some resources and put together a reading list.  I’ve asked my colleagues in the English department here at BSS to share some of their best practices.  I’ve been given the names of some like-minded colleagues-in-law through other Cohort 21 people.  I have experts, so once I have a clear idea of where I want to go (and where I want to take my students, more to the point), I’ll enlist their help in charting out the path from here to there.

Phase 4 will likely involve a catchy acronym of things I want to drill into the twittering minds of the kidlets.  That will be the most fun.  I like acronyms.  Plus it’ll be like inventing text speak ROTFLMAO TTYL.

Phase 5 will be time-contingent, but that would be extending this backwards into curricula for classes I don’t teach; like, for instance, the Grade 9s should read Imagists and understand metonymy and synecdoche.  Basically I’ll just alienate all my colleagues by getting my messy pawprints all over their territories.  I’ll look forward to that.

That’s the plan, Stan.  And like we used to say in the 80s…