Interview with a Classroom Teacher

For this assignment, I interviewed a good friend who is a gifted and inspiring teacher of 2nd and 3rd grade public school students in California. Her teaching philosophy is rooted in the Whole Language movement, with a focus on high-quality literature and integration of literacy skills into all areas of the curriculum. With a mixed grade classroom, she is a proponent of small reading groups and shared reading, with an emphasis on reading for meaning and building and sharing connections, which the children journal about in their "literature logs." She highly recommended The Reading Teacher as a source for literature study ideas.

In my friend's classroom, the school supplies the books, which I find interesting, since in DC it seems that teachers are required to build their own libraries from scratch, for the most part. She characterized her library as reflecting diversity of ideas as well as of authorship and characters, but she did say that her primary focus is always on high-quality literature, with diversity playing only a secondary role in book selection.

My friend's mother was a longtime kindergarten teacher in Phoenix before her recent retirement. One of the things that she did with her students was to send books home with children, along with a list of questions to begin discussing with parents. The goal, central to the Whole Language approach, was to stimulate a love of literature and to build a positive foundation of questioning and discussing books in the search for meaning. A concern that I have with this sort of approach is whether, in a socioeconomically diverse community, it has the potential for exacerbating the built-in head start that certain children have when their families place a premium on education and are in a position to offer this sort of after-school support. In DC there would certainly be many students whose parents would not be able to participate in this kind of activity, and it seems important to me to maximize the learning that occurs within the school environment, where children are more ostensibly on an equal footing in terms of their access to resources, including adult time.

As I look forward, towards the time when I have my own classroom, I know that I will strive to the greatest extent that I can, consistent with the needs of the curriculum, to incorporate the many insights and lessons of the Whole Language philosophy, which, interestingly, shares with the Critical Literacy movement a broad view of "text." As I discussed in my banned books entry, I view literature as a powerful tool in shaping ideas -- much more so than the cold pages of textbooks. While Tarry Lindquist makes a powerful case in Seeing the Whole Through Social Studies for relying more heavily on nonfiction, as a way of integrating learning and creating cross-curricular connections, as a writer, I would be very sorry to see fiction leave the classroom. Like my friend, my first priority in book selection would always be to choose high-quality literature, which is apt to be more motivating to students as well as to offer richer, more multifaceted opportunities for learning and teaching. I have come to see in this class, however, that it will be critically important not only to talk about issues of authorship and positioning but also to offer children regular exposure to literature that reflects their experience in a meaningful way, which is consistent with Constructivist teachings. Diversity will accordingly also be an important consideration as I build my classroom library.

Banned Books

It was very interesting to look at the lists of banned or challenged books at the ALA website. Many are books that I was required or encouraged to read as a child; many are books that my son, in private school, is required to read now, and still others are books that I sought out on my own. One thing they all share, to my chagrin, is that I have failed to retain a strong enough command of them to feel able to discuss intelligently the reasons that they are challenged or the value -- or harm -- that they might hold for today's students. That having been said, here are some reflections on a few of the more prominent titles on the lists.

At the moment, my son is reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was one of my favorite books in high school. I didn't have time to reread the book myself in preparation for this class, but I did read Wallace Stegner's thoughtful introduction to one edition, written in 1960, and I'm looking forward to discussing the story with my son from a critical literacy standpoint as he digs further into the book.

Another favorite that I was worried about revisiting is Uncle Tom's Cabin. I know that, as a child and teen, I was drawn to books that explored the terrible injustices of slavery and, I think, managed to bring my own critical literacy reading to books like Uncle Tom that, by modern standards, may be regarded as complicit in perpetuating harmful stereotypes. One thing that I took away from all of these books was a powerful feeling that slavery was America's Holocaust -- a gaping abyss from which our nation may take many centuries to recover. It's possible that I was influenced without knowing it by the offensive stereotypes in these novels, but I have to believe that the dividends that I gained from reading them, in the form of deep human compassion and a very palpable sense of grief and pain over this part of our past are things that I could not have picked up from the cold pages of history books. While I do appreciate the reasons for the recent backlash against Uncle Tom, I hope that, over time, the book will be remembered more for its pivotal role in galvanizing popular feeling against slavery prior to the Civil War than for some of the unfortunate stereotypes it employs that seem so glaring and distasteful when examined under a modern spotlight.

Another old favorite that seems to figure prominently on banned book lists is To Kill a Mockingbird. This wonderful story, by Harper Lee, was required reading in my favorite year of school -- 5th grade. It was also one of my favorite books of all time. I assume that it's challenged because of the allegations of rape and the theme of family violence. While I think there's room for legitimate discussion about whether 5th grade is the ideal year to be reading a story with so many adult themes, I really can't see any legitimate grounds for keeping it out of the curriculum altogether. Madonna's trashy, self-exploitative Sex, on the other hand, I have read and am completely comfortable keeping out of school libraries.

Cinderella and Friends

I'm very sorry to have to miss tonight's class, in which we begin discussing Cinderella narratives. Cinderella is an issue very close to my heart on many levels -- so much so, in fact, that it forms part of the chorus of one of my songs, "Hollow Victory."

As a mother of young children, I always sought to expose my children to high-quality literature while sheltering them from narrative suggestive of stereotypes. At the same time, I recognized that there is, as Vivian has discussed, "cultural capital" in familiarity with popular stories, both within and across generations, so I didn't want to avoid the classic children's stories entirely.

Instead of Jack and the Beanstalk, we read Mary Pope Osborne's Kate and the Beanstalk, and my children's first association with beanstalks will always be that of a headstrong, brave, and perhaps reckless girl determined to save her family and right a wrong. Another interesting retelling of a traditional story is Virginia Hamilton's The Girl Who Spun Gold, a Caribbean spin on Rumpelstiltskin, featuring a father afflicted with hubris and a daughter blessed with the cunning and humor to redeem at least part of his mistake. One of the great pleasures of reading this story, for someone who loves language and accents, as I do, is trying to read it in the lyrical Caribbean voice in which it was written.

We have several Cinderella retellings in our home library, but one that has always had a special place in my heart is Erica Silverman's Raisel's Riddle. Raisel takes place in long-ago Poland, where the poor granddaughter of a Talmud scholar is forced to find her own way in the world during the harsh winter in which her "zaydeh" dies. She finds work as a housekeeper in a rabbi's home, over the objections of his head housekeeper, who is determined to make Raisel's days miserable and to thwart any social contact between Raisel and the rabbi's family.

The Cinderella parallels in Raisel are strong, as Raisel is granted three wishes by a magical woman in repayment for her kindness and uses her wishes to attend a Purim party in the costume of Queen Esther. Although Esther's story is not retold in the book, it bears note that Esther was a Jewish woman in ancient Persia who risked her life by standing up to her king and his advisor to save her people.

Raisel does offer marriage as the basis for salvation from hardship -- perhaps as an homage to the traditional Cinderella narrative, or perhaps just in recognition of the fact that most hardships are borne more easily in a context of love and partnership -- a point minimized by counternarratives like Princess Smartypants. In a twist that improves upon stories like Princess Smartypants, however, Raisel does not peddle attractiveness as the key factor in determining a woman's marriage prospects. Although the wise and kind rabbi's son does comment on how lovely Raisel looks in her Queen Esther costume, her true appeal for him lies in her wisdom and interest in learning. Best of all, her answer to his ultimate query is not a foregone conclusion.