Teaching Literature Presentation

Teaching Literature by: Matt Dickman
How to Teach English Literature: Overcoming Cultural Poverty
by Jennifer Webb
  1. What was this text about?
 This text was about how to teach Literature in an English classroom as well as how to teach students who may come from a family below the poverty line. The text was divided into three different sections. The first, Planning, Organization, and Work Practices. The second, Reading and Analysis. The third, Writing. In each of these sections there are many different sub-sections that cover a very wide range of different things. The first big topic that the book covers is how to teach books. This section covered how it is okay to teach to the students’ needs and not cover the whole entire book. Students should be able to understand things such as plot summary, but time should also be spent having students learn how to develop and write in a way that shows academic understanding of the book that they are covering in the class. This moves the book into the second section in which reading analysis is covered. Webb states that it is really important that a teacher challenges their students even if they come from backgrounds of poverty or other demographics that other teachers feel they need to accommodate. She also moves on to cover language and poetry, which I know are two subjects that many teachers have a hard time feeling confident including in their lesson plans. Webb makes sure that a teacher is able to include both of these things and works to make it enjoyable to read and easy to understand and consider putting in a lesson. She stresses the importance of making it easy for the students and not forcing them to just learn definitions that they will not ever really use again. She also includes a chapter that covers drama and the different ways that a teacher can include a drama lesson in their classroom or how they can watch a play and it can benefit the students. In the third section, Webb talks more about writing, and its importance in the classroom. However, by the time she starts to discuss this in her book, she has already covered it in great detail throughout the book. I am not sure that this section should be called “Writing” but rather something different like, Understanding Learning, as the author goes into great detail about how students learn and how it is important that we as educators not only understand this but also cater to it. 
          2.) Why did I choose this text?
I chose this text because again it was written by a teacher and because of the great magnitude that it covers in just 209 short pages. It is free for Kindle Unlimited and only ten dollars to get the e-book. I think that this played a factor in my decision because it is the cheapest book that I got for this class, and I think it was the most that I was able to learn from. When I looked into the author I saw that she was not just an English teacher but also an assistant principal. I think this increases her credibility in my eyes because it shows that she works well with students, staff, and parents. Teachers who are able to include all three of these things in their work make me feel as though in others’ eyes what they are doing does matter and is making a difference. Also, all of the reviews were great for this book and highlighted how much teaching pedagogy was included in the book and how it was a very academic read by an intelligent teacher and writer and I think that was important and played a role when I picked this text.
3.) Teaching Ideas
There are so many different teaching ideas in this text that it will be very hard for me to cover. I think that me stating the ways that I think I could apply this text to my class may even actually take away from other potential readers before they have read this text because I think there is something different for everyone in this text. The first idea that I had when reading this text was that I should make sure that my lessons are a lot of fun and that lessons should be taught with energy and a certain level of joy. Another thing that I learned was that teachers should know and accept that they don’t know all of literature and that it is important to ask other teachers if you are unsure about something in a subject matter. Another is to find a school in which they allow you to work in the guidelines with the school and district to be able to form their own lessons and work in accordance with other teachers and the work that they are doing as well. Another thing that I learned was that it is important to grade students work quickly, or even right there in class with them. The way that Webb did this was by going through the essays with the students and having them go over what they think is the best paragraph that they wrote in the paper and this will be the one that the teacher will mark with the most intent and for the highest grade. Webb also included a lot of visuals and different charts and methods that students can use to help them understand texts that they are reading in class. I think that is really important because I know some students are like me in which they learn the most through filling out charts and looking at visuals. I think that all of these ideas of how to teach literature and how to structure my class when teaching literature are able to be used by me to incorporate into my own classroom. More that I could include in my classroom is to be able to not just read dramas but also watch movies and plays to ensure that students get the full experience of the drama. She also made good points to look at poetry word by word and line by line then as a whole. This was also important because sometimes in classrooms it is not included in the lesson plans at all. This makes it very simple and she also states that it is important that students are exposed to poetry and other forms of literature but that students should be told that there is no right response or interpretation to literature. It is very important that students are taught this, in fact, it may be the most important part of the whole text. 
4.) Difficulties in teaching these methods
Some of the difficulties in using this book in a classroom is that some of the book was very vague and I feel as though it could be used out of context or used in a way to back up ideas that Webb would not want her book to be used for. I think it could also be difficult to grade students’ work very quickly, although I know that it is important and a goal that I have set for myself. However, I think that it may be impractical especially in my first couple of years in the field. Then again, I do not know if this is true as I have not done expansive work of planning or creating lessons so I do not know what I will and won’t have time for. Some students may not like a teacher that gives them so much work and challenges students who come from backgrounds in which students may not usually be as challenged in other classrooms and they may act out in the class making it hard to keep all of the students on task. It can also still be hard to cater to each individual class and still use all of the teaching ideas that she includes in her text. There also may not be enough time for students and the teacher to do so much work in the school year. 


5.) Anything else that you want students to know?
I would like the class to get this book if they can, and to know that it is worth the two to three hours that it takes to read this book before they go and try to design their own lesson plan. It is important that they read this because it may spark ideas in them that they may have about education and lesson planning. I think that this text can be read all at once and that it would be very easy to go through the book while reading it or re-reading it, highlighting it and making notes of ideas that you may want to use in your classroom. I think a text like this is the reason that we do these presentations, this book really is worth the read.



(link to Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sR18m6mGuCB0EbcQmh04jFEyqk4yqI6ywjoOs6Ixpf8/edit?usp=sharing)

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