#lessons in action

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"I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all"

In chapter 22 of The Catcher in the Rye, we find out about the origins of the title of the novel, and Holden states explicitly what it means to him. There's a reference to Robert Burns' "Comin' Thro the Rye," which I shared briefly with the students, so they understand the allusion in the title, and the irony of Holden's association with it. But though they locked onto the meaning of the poem immediately, I still wanted them to see what the poem meant to Holden. Since the last visual activity worked so well, I tried that approach again.

My students were able to quickly interpret the "catcher in the rye" as Holden's way to protect kids' innocence, and save them from the phoniness of the adult world. And then the visual sparked some amazing unexpected interpretations that knocked me off my feet. They gave me interpretations like:

The rye is innocence/ignorance because the kids can't see in it, and so they can't see the corruption or the cliff around them.

The cliff is a turning point--there's no going back once you fall off, just like how you can't go back to being a kid once you become an adult.

Falling from the cliff is caused by gravity. It's like growing up. There's no way to stop it. It's nature.

(Big) Holden is trying to catch the kids from beyond the cliff. HE'S already an adult, and has already fallen, even though he doesn't want to admit it.

The kid that's running toward the cliff is Phoebe. She WANTS to be an adult so that she could be with Holden.

My students used the visual to go far beyond any interpretation I thought of, and they broke it apart figuratively in ways that most of them still can't conceive of in writing. It seems that to approach figurative meaning, visuals are much better than any graphic organizers or probing questions I can produce. The visual makes the abstract concepts accessible and tangible, and allows my students to run away with their wild, risky, brilliant interpretations that may have been stunted otherwise.

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If a body catch a body coming through the rye

In the reading due Friday, my students came across the first mention of the title of the novel, The Catcher in the Rye. I knew we had a limited time to discuss it--shorter period and a packed schedule--and I wanted all of them to really understand what the titular poem means to the narrator, Holden. So before they came in, I sketched the scene on the board under the discussion prompt:

  I asked them to discuss briefly in their groups what the scene hints at. To do so, I asked them to think about what is literally happening in the scene (a boy runs alongside a busy street singing), and what is figuratively happening (in Holden's eyes). This was the (abridged) end result:

Granted, since this was a small group discussion with debrief, I don't know that all my students reached these conclusions--it may well be only the 4-5 that volunteered. That said, I liked doing this lesson visually. The students who spoke had this scene pinned upon their first try (usually it takes us a while to get anywhere), and the visual helped my students separate the literal danger in this scene (zooming cars) from the figurative danger (growing up); they lit upon key words without my even having to prompt them. By the time the discussion was done and I asked the class what the kid represents to Holden, all of them said together "innocence," and that Holden wishes to protect it. The discussion, however short, was successful.

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Asking the right questions

Last week, my juniors and I looked at Ackley and Stradlater--two characters in the novel that offset the narrator and show something about his character by the way he describes them. The activity was good, but ended up being more of a character analysis of Ackley/Stradlater than Holden, the narrator, which is what it was intended for. My students still were able to make something of that prompt when I asked them to discuss/write about it, but had not reached the depth I hoped for. Clearly, I was asking the wrong questions.

Yesterday was a simple lesson: reading chapter 13 of The Catcher in the Rye together as a class. I told my students it is known as the infamous "prostitute chapter," where Holden meets up with a prostitute, but nothing really happens. That is all the background they had.

While reading, we reached a paragraph where Holden explains how when he's about to have sex but the woman tells him to stop, he stops. I heard a few muffled reactions right away, and I asked the class: does Holden respect women?

This sparked a conversation that was both feminist (I was proud of my students) and insightful about Holden. In three minutes, without even having seen the rest of the chapter, my students figured out that Holden is trying to seem masculine, that he's scared of women, that he's so lonely that he's willing to pay a prostitute just to talk to him. The other classes only reached those conclusions after reading on.

What I suspect did the trick is asking a question about a subject  in which my student have some emotional or moral investment. Asking a question that drew on their prior knowledge helped them figure out a character written 60 years ago, based on a combination of textual evidence and what they made of the evidence.

You can't really interpret literature based on feeling or mere opinion; however, those seem to be good starting points, frames and schema through which students can get to the bottom of a character's psyche based on the text itself and their own readings of it--and that is really what literature is about.

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Lord of the Balloons

"I thought I was gonna break my neck. 'Cause I fell from all the way over there to the ground."

"It's kinda like the Hunger Games. You're allowed to team up, but everyone tries to hurt each other anyway. Once your balloon is gone, you don't want anyone else to win."

"Couldn't really trust anybody."

"After people got out, no one had pride, no one had any fear. Once you're out, you have nothing to lose, so you can go all out."

Sunny: "It's human nature to exploit each other's weaknesses. I said it at the very beginning, if NO ONE pops each other's balloon, everyone gets a prize."

"Of course it was the guys that started it."

Sunny: "Even though we could have all gotten the prize, it's almost human nature to not want other people to get the same prize." (and while she explained it, someone popped a balloon in her ear; this happened twice)

"Some people tried to use their advantages over other people. Tom is more athletic than everyone in this class, so he was like the dominant Alpha male, he was able to go for everyone in class. Then there were people who thought they could delegate their way out of getting their balloons popped."

"If we didn't have government, we probably would have driven ourselves to extinction."

Jerry: "I never believed that you'd have prizes for everyone who won, so I figured, might as well outlast."

"It was fun at the beginning, but after the balloons started popping, it was like, oh crap, I'm gonna die."

Despite the safety hazard (I swear this activity should require waivers), what was MOST fascinating, from the observer's point of view, was that these 30 sophomores KNEW what Mr. T was trying to get out of them (by the frame of the novel), but soon enough they all abandoned their meta-analysis of the situation and descended into savagery. It was a brilliant way to illustrate the novel before the students even cracked the cover. For anyone considering using this activity, keep in mind:

It is a safety-hazard (things got very violent, very quickly). Mr. T said he had to cut off his worrying side in order to do this activity (after several years of desensitization)

The class I observed is particularly rowdy (it took them 10 minutes to fill up their balloons and calm down from just THAT much excitement), but they also all rather LIKE each other. I don't know if this would be more dangerous in a class with preexisting enmity

It has also been implemented by multiple teachers for multiple years at my school. I'll collect more data soon, I hope, to see how it has gone for THEM, and what kind of environment they would recommend to do this activity in, because it is a GREAT Into activity for the kind of themes the students get out of it.

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Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

The Romeo and Juliet performances started today. As expected, some of the students seemed really into their interpretations of their characters, while some students could do little more but muddle through their Elizabethan English. Though it's too early to assess, judging by the reactions from the audience--laughter and gasps at the right places--I think they would benefit from watching and performing as they have been. The pun lesson was a mixed bag. Period 1 wound up understanding the coal-collier-choler-collar puns, but did not see how they were fun at all. I amended this in Period 4 by explaining that those puns are the Shakespearean equivalent of something I found on tumblr:

A: You must wait a week to have nachos. B: What if I die tomorrow and never get my nachos? A: Then I guess it's nacho day.

I negotiated the sexual puns by warning them that there are sexual puns and coughing when the students read them out, but I did not elaborate on the anatomical meanings; I will leave that part to their parents. Repeating "My naked weapon is out" (I.i.34) in a flippant tone helped dissolve some of the awkwardness over this very obvious dirty pun. Both Period 1 and Period 4 LOVED the Shakespearean insult battle. They began practicing their insults on their friends in class before I even gave the word, and I heard several students ask if we could do this every day or that this is the greatest class ever. Mr. T. and I raised the stakes by dividing the class into two houses--the Capulets and Montagues--and promising a cookie party to whichever house has the most points at the end of the unit. So far, the two houses are both alike in cookie points. For the future: If I'm to keep the portion on puns--which I intend to--I must be sure to make explicit connections to modern-day puns that will allow the students to appreciate Shakespeare's humor. I'd also ask the students to identify the parts of speech used in Shakespeare's insult workshop (adjectives and nouns), just to be sure we continue reviewing their grammar. Overall, though I felt a bit uncertain about this lesson, it went better than I expected, and I will be keeping it.