Teaching Wonder part 1- Why do we come to school?

Okay, so I've been thinking about education lately. My role (as teacher), the role of the students and of assessment and how and why education is changing and should change in the information age.

And what I've come up with is...(drum roll please) a sense of wonder. A sense of wonder is...what drives people to learn new things. Because let's face it, if you only learn things for 13 years (counting Kindergarten) or for six years of college (which is how long it took me to earn my five year Master's Degree) then how sad would your life be? A sense of wonder is what makes us read books and magazines and articles and sometimes look stuff up on Wikipedia and *shudder* Urban Dictionary. A sense of Wonder is what makes us want to know more, it's the basis for science and for philosophy and probably for math even though I rarely wonder about that. The math I do, however, is about wondering. How much house can I afford? How much will I be paying for it? Wonder is what makes us expand our minds, even when we don't have to. And if we as humans, weren't willing to do that, well, we'd probably still all be working little patches of farm land and never going beyond our personal horizons.

Little kids have an abundance of that sense of wonder. How many questions can a child ask per minute? The number of questions is limited only by the complexity of the question, the pause as the adult tries to answer the question, and the speed at which the child can articulate the thoughts that are tumbling about in the spin cycle of their mind. Ezra and Noel come home from their Montessori school fascinated by plant systems and parts of trees and this last week synonyms (which Noel pronounces in a way that makes me vaguely hungry for Cinnabon). But by the time students get to high school, that sense of wonder seems to mostly be gone. I'm going to argue that it's still there, albeit under the surface. I'm also going to argue that cynicism is not necessarily the antithesis of wonder. (Just a good way to camouflage it). This may be self serving because I tend to be cynical and like to be around other cynics, but I will argue in nonetheless.

This week, I'm blogging about education, with a focus on that illusive and marvelous sense of wonder, because I think it's what education has to be about in the information age. Now, there must be more tangible results to education than just the sense of wonder. Education must be about comprehension, and analysis. But in reality that's just creating a framework for understanding all of the things you discover as you wander through the subjects that entice you.

Let's take history, one of my favorite subjects, as an example. There is no possible way that your history teachers can teach you every facet and fact of American history, or Western History, much less the history of the rest of the world. And hopefully the role of the History teacher is not just to make students learn lists of dates and meaningless facts. It is to connect those facts in a way to make sense, to give students an overview of enough history that they understand how to make sense of history. So they understand the broad implications of historical events as well as the more individual repercussions of change.

The same concept applies to literature. As an English teacher, my job is not to teach all the books and stories in the world, it's to teach students how to understand literature. That's where the balance comes in, and it's a precarious one. How do you teach without making the wonder go away?

Creative Writing in High School

I (and maybe my students, if I can be so immodest as to say so) are fortunate to have a high school creative writing class. In fact, it's one of the great things about a block schedule that our students have a wide range of electives.

In regular English class we just don't have time for much creative writing. Our jobs as English teachers are to improve student reading/communication skills and to get them ready for whatever college or the world will throw at them. Even as an English major in college the only creative writing I did was in creative writing elective. So, let's face it, while I would love to have time to do short stories and poetry with every student...it simply isn't important enough in a world where our electives/block scheduling also make the classes a bit shorter than they would otherwise be.

Because the English department has limited electives (I am teaching English half the time and Young Adult Lit, Paranormal Lit, or Creative Writing the other half of the time) I will not allow Creative Writing to become a bunny class. I'm determined that students will learn something in there.

On the other hand, I don't want it to be a class that a student can't take for fun. It's a little hard to balance the two. Sigh. It's hard. The other thing is that while many creative writing classes do workshopping type activities, I find these and random weird writing activities somewhat useless. Workshopping is only as good as the collective skill of the class. And in a class with Freshmen through seniors, the skill level is very mixed.

This is the first creative writing class I've had in some time that doesn't want to use any in class work time. I try to build in class work time for students to work on whatever they need to do. Only, they won't use it. So do I do activities/lecture/minilessons/talk for the entire period? I'm unsure. Very unsure.

Tomorrow they are turning in updates on their progress with their independent projects. I am a little afraid of what I am going to learn...who hasn't done anything, etc. A little afraid.

Fantastical Horror

The next few posts will be related to my Speculative Fiction class, which I am planning for right now...
The class is going to be split into four (overlapping) categories, Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Paranormal/Urban Fantasy. So, I'm working on the Horror section first. Believe it or not, I'm not that big a fan of horror. Yes, it's true. I get completely grossed out by anything gross. I particularly don't like horror that could really happen, like serial killer type stuff. On one level I would say this is because it truly scares me, and yeah, it does, but on another level, I think I just invest more in stuff with a fantastical element. So, I do love horror that deals with a fantasy type setting, or fantasy type creatures, just not...realistic horror? (though I do think characters have to be particularly realistic and sympathetic to work in horror).

Now, when I was in middle school, V.C. Andrew's books were placed in the horror section, and I read those, but I think the first true horror book I ever read was IT by Stephen King, and it remains one of my favorite books, one of my favorite books by King (though his only horror book that would go on that list) and one of my favorite horror books.

My all time favorite horror book, though, is Shadowland by Peter Straub.

This is the cover I had when I was in middle school, possibly early high school. The silver part was extremely shiny, and I think I wrote my name on it with an orange marker-pen (the precursor of the gel pen, I suspect). And, here is the copy I have now, just purchased a new one to see if I still love it as much...

So far, I do. One thing I remember about this book is the mix of real horror, the sociopath kid who is morphing into something else, and the fantastical. In fact, I have to admit that I'm not at all sure what happens at the end, just that I was so invested in the characters and the world that I couldn't put it down.

Now I'm trying to choose a short selection of horror books for the course I'm teaching. These will either be YA books, or fairly short books, since the students will have only 3 weeks to read them. There will be some exceptions, and I plan to have a supplemental list with books like IT, that will take longer to read, but will be interesting to some students. They only have to choose one from the list.

Here's what I've come up with so far...if anyone has some great suggestions please let me know.

I think these two will cover basically any person who wants to read about zombies. Very very different books, but the idea is to give students enough options to find something they will enjoy, while few enough that I can have some control of the content and discussions.As I look at these titles, some of which I like better than others, I think the element that it comes down to for me in horror, (besides liking the characters, which is crucial) is suspension of disbelief. So what makes good horror for you, and what horror books would you recommend?