The Book Thief and Literature Circles

            Wow, let me begin by saying The Book Thief was truly a gem.  I’ll rank it among one of the best books I’ve ever read – 550 pages flew by without evening feeling like it.  Anyhow,  I thought one of the themes that dealt with the power of words was most appropriate for a time period such as World War II.  To illustrate this point, lets look at one of Max’s lines from the book he created for Liesel, and the part regarding Hitler: “Yes, the Führer decided that he would rule the world with words. ‘I will never fire a gun,’ he devised, ‘I will not have to’” (445).  When I read this I couldn’t help but think of Louise Althusser who spoke so much about the rule ideology has over someone, and I also remember thinking of a linguist who once said “Language speaks us” – and when I searched the person that coined that phrase, ironically it was Martin Heidegger who had associations with the Nazi regime. 

Max spoke of two primary word shakers, both of whom had the ability to influence a lot of people within the book, each shaping the frame of mind people forever – one who promoted love for all mankind, and the other who wished only for a blue-eyed and blonde-haired race of mankind.  Another important detail about the novel, I thought, was how we see the perspective of people from a different angle.  Normally many people make connotations with people based on the country they’re from, just like many would assume all the German people loved Hitler and his agenda.  Not true.  Propaganda and other tactics employed created that image to the rest of the world.  And we normally would think every Nazi was inherently evil, when in reality, they were interpellated as one, with no choice than to suffer consequences if they chose not to.  And how was this all set in motion, again?  Because of that one man’s use of words, the one that knew he would never have to fire a gun or use physical violence to exert his control.

            Now to shift gears to Literature Circles, I think they’re a great idea if used correctly.  I observed several classrooms where the formation of the classroom was in a circle, but the teacher still acted as an instructor for the most part and the children had no control over the material they would read.  But still, it seemed more effective than anything I had to partake in in High School.  I also liked how the author was more in favor of group discussions to promote learning rather than objective tests.  Because like the author mentioned, literature shouldn’t be just black or white, and instead, it should be open-ended with multiple interpretations to allow for the growth of the student.  I also think he devised a way to create an almost bullet-proof approach to teach literature, where striking a right balance is fundamental.  He also emphasizes the importance of the teacher be a facilitator rather than the instructor.  Similar to why the Socratic Method is so popular, the student formulates his own meaning while being guided along.  I also thought the teacher observation and student evaluations were the best way to assess a student’s learning, because with literature you’ll know if someone actually read the material or not – no need for objective testing here.  And from my personal experience, in college I benefitted the most in classes where we would be in a literature circle fashion discussing the texts and hearing other people’s voices that can help develop our own understand. 

Promoting Multiculturalism

I’ll begin by stating I agree with about everything Christensen and Hade had to offer in their writings.  We have a problem concerning race, class and gender that is “supposedly” being recognized in our classrooms and society, but never really materializes.  Using Christensen’s example of The Lion King, although we most likely follow the story with how it was intended to be perceived, we are still consumers of its underlying shades of gender roles that govern where a man and woman should reside.  To broaden this, we think we are doing enough to serve those from different cultural backgrounds in our society than what we are use to, but we are merely raising awareness of it without doing anything. 

An example of how we try to understand these different cultures is what Hade called a tourist’s view on trying to understand a different ethnicity’s perspective.  He provided us with examples from books that are written from a white person’s perspective trying to depict how the African Americans live, but this can often lead to perpetuating a stereotype of one ethnicity.  The African Americans expected to read this literature in the classroom could not identify with this view entirely because it never originated from them.  I have a feeling many white people would be upset if someone from another cultural background was trying to write their history, too.  That’s why I believe it’s essential to have the perspective of one from that background explain the culture in their book.  Can you imagine how it would be if we read The House on Mango Street if it was from an outsider trying to look in on their culture and create meaning from a standpoint that they know nothing about?  It just wouldn’t work; it would be unauthentic and contrived.

 Harper Lee offered us an insight in how the general populace during his time period viewed Tom Robinson.  When he was shot for trying to escape, people just brushed it off as that is how the mentality of an African American really is, no brains and cannot be patient for an appeal.  However, what if we were hearing it from Tom Robinson?  He would probably say something along the lines of being falsely accused of trying to rape a white woman that came onto him, and this all happened because I was just trying to offer a helping hand for my neighbor.  And when they didn’t believe his testimony, and the jury all found him guilty, he knew he had no other options.  He probably felt it was his duty to escape rather than waste away in prison and leave behind a wife and children. 

What if we continually did this on a larger scale, exposing these instances in our society?  We would break the barriers of stereotypes and racism if we were being more involved with stories that deal with the hardships people from different cultures face when they come to the states for a better life.  We read Esperanza’s view of how living in a small Latino community wasn’t the most optimal place for growing up, but the point was to strive for a better life so disparity and low education didn’t have to thrive in a place like that.  Rather, they would move beyond what they thought possible, like the four trees growing out of the cement, and become something other than a general stereotype that people like to pin on Latinos.  Yet, her duty was to not sever the ties with her past, but to enrich them with the inspiration to move beyond and do better.

Talking about going beyond the boundaries of what we are only expected to achieve, Christensen uses the example of how tracking does more harm than good.  Like Hade’s example of culture determining the value of signs and their place in our society, well tracking is basically doing that in our schools.  Our children are having the mindset that by being pitted in a low-level achieving class, the teacher won’t expect much out of the students, and vice versa.  Therefore, we are already designating our children in a class to which they did not choose.  The school will say, “Your reading and writing skills are less than adequate, so you will go into this class.” And this in turn gives our students the idea that they are confined to a place where they will forever be throughout their High School career.  I believe Christensen had the right goal in mind when he taught English in an untracked class; we gained insight as to why the low-level achievers rarely did much, as they were often intimidated for fear of making  a mistake due to an unwritten  “body of rules” that govern how language should be communicated.  Therefore, by compromising their creativity in writing, they only wrote in safe sentences, and when they spoke, they feared their culture’s influence on their language would get them reprimanded and corrected.  Back to Christensen’s mixed classroom now (low-level students with advanced) we learned a lot how the students were able to change their perspectives and be more open and understanding to students from a different background.  The students saw they weren’t stupid, they just didn’t do well for fear of social stigma – possibly due to the color of their skin, religion, gender, and they oblige to the fallacy that society represents, that they cannot possibly do as good or ever perform on a level of a white student from a middle class family.  Also, before I wrap this up because I have been going on for a long time now, we saw how interested the students were when they were presented with material from backgrounds similar to the one’s they came from, not just learning about our history’s (dead) white people. 

Lastly, as Christensen described, a lot of times these students from different cultural backgrounds are put in low-level classes that are often paired with a bad teacher, and nothing really productive arises from their time being in there.  Christensen said it was our duty to see the strengths in students, and not their deficits when they enter a classroom.  That’s why he thought every student can coexist in a classroom coming from different cultural or academic backgrounds: because we all have potential.  Some students will just need to be taught from a different angle than that of another student.  We need to adjust our teaching styles to accommodate all students, and certainly not try to teach something that bears little significance on our students.  In the scenario that we have a classroom full of Latino and African Americans, why on earth would we expect them to be interested in six weeks’ worth of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson?  We need to diversify our classrooms along with the material we teach.  Not only would we broaden our horizons on learning about different perspectives from people of different cultural backgrounds, but allowing students the right to learn about history that is relevant to them, too.  Remember, as Christensen asserted, “The capacity was evident; the will and belief that he could succeed were not,” meaning it is our job to adapt strategies that assist every child in our classrooms so they can understand the relevance of having an education for their future.

Graphic Novels: alternative ways to better reading comprehension.

Before I started reading American Born Chinese, I was skeptical as to how much it could make an impact on learning for better reading comprehension skills.  I think I was a little biased in that respect because I never read a graphic novel or comic book before.  But let me say this, I was surprised how much fun I had reading American Born Chinese!  I opened the book and didn’t put it down until I was finished – I was that engaged!  I thought that even though the book was not covered head-to-toe with text, the pictures were able to convey meaning that was probably more effective than what text alone could have provided.  For instance, I thought the play-by-play truth-unveiling of Danny really being Jin Wang all along spoke volumes.  In addition to that, when the Monkey King thought he escaped the “reach” of his creator, Tze-Yo-Tzuh, and reached the five pillars of gold only to realize they were the fingers of Tze-Yo-Tzuh himself, it communicated more meaning through the visual depictions than I think could be transmitted through language – I’m not sure about that, but I found it highly effective.a

Afterwards, when reading Wilhelm, I discovered just how important these graphic novels and such could function in the classroom, especially when faced with the dilemma like Wilhelm had dealt with.  For ESL students and DL’ers, these devices could function as a way to bridge the gap between their struggle and where they ought to be.  Obviously for Kae, the foreign student, she could derive greater knowledge from the pictures alone than she could the semantics of the sentence.  However, this is not to say the text was obsolete in her ability to gain knowledge, but rather, the pictures served as a medium for grasping the language better.  Wilhelm could attest to this as well, where language failed him in his German speaking graphic novels, he could fill in the gaps with the use of pictures. 

As we could see, all the effort of acquiring graphic novels to give to our students would not be done in vain.  The article “Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School,” cites several benefits of their use.  The way students can look at a picture and have their own interpreted meaning started getting these students to write better because it allowed them to put forth their own opinion on what happens between the “gutter,” or after the a picture ends on a vague note that allows for several interpretations, thus allowing for the students to think outside of what they see/read concretely.  This method was especially useful for Wilhelm’s students Tommy and Walter, who just needed the tools to build the foundation for reading.  They couldn’t visualize anything when reading, allowing for a very dull, uninspired reading of anything.  But when the students had pictures to complement the reading, the pictures allowed for Tommy, Walter, and Kae to begin visualizing what they read, and therefore begin thinking abstractly by what was not provided in the reading.  Whether through the use of Symbolic Reading Interpretations or Graphic novels, the ability to imagine and see something through our own configuration proves essential.

Like Wilhelm and the authors of the other article, Nancy Frey and Douglas Fisher, we should be expected to reach out to our students and find a way that can serve them efficiently.  If our students aren’t grasping a particular passage or overall theme in a story, we need to reconsider how we are presenting the material.  I think by affording students the opportunity to read graphic novels, we can start to bridge the gap between what is presented by the text and what that transitions to in our mind by the visualizing it.  Thereafter, we can take on a larger project, like a completely text-filled novel, since the students are already becoming accustomed to transferring the textual data in the story to symbolic representations in the mind.  And lastly, as always, we should know our students on personal basis that allows for us to identify their strengths and weaknesses to better access how we should approach presenting the material.  What if Wilhelm had not been observant and had not observed Walter reading Calvin and Hobbes? He probably never would have predicted that he learns best by having pictures provided with the words.  And if it came down to how we presented the material to a child which could make all the difference whether he/she came out of the class with something, I think we would be crushed to know only a slight tweak in our teaching could have been what saved that student.