Who Is a Reader Anyway? Of Interest to All of Us–

This is the gist of an article that appears in the TIMES today. Do take a look. KES
Harry Potter, James Patterson and Oprah Winfrey’s book club
aside, Americans — particularly young Americans — appear to be reading
less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are
declining. At the same time, performance in other academic [...]

Christenbury and the truth about teaching

I love Christenbury’s book so far and find that I can even relate to some parts, particularly the lack of movtivation among students and the lack of support from parents. I appreciate the honest account of her experience. In my after-school program, I have had a hard time motivating the tweens to participate in the [...]

LI’s YA Paper

Reading Slavery from A Post-Colonialism Criticism Perspective
Day of Tears, a truth-telling fiction of the biggest slave auction in American history on March the second and the third, 1859, in Savannah, Georgia, has brought the slavery alive through personal accounts. We, as readers, not only hear the voice choked with tears, see the separation embedded with [...]

Eureka

I finally got the time to sit down and read most of the much-anticipated book, Retracing the Journey.  Leila Christenbury’s account of going back to high school after being a college professor was the one book this year that put things into perspective for me.  A lot of what I have been learning in the [...]

Class on Tuesday

I look forward to a strong discussion of RETRACING THE JOURNEY. I am going to assume you have finished the book — but if you are concentrating on your paper I think we can safely discuss specific moments in this text that tease us into thought without “giving anything away” for readers who will finish [...]

Coe Booth II

This novel would be great to teach to kids of the inner city because they would finally have a text in which they could relate to.  One of the best ways to get kids to read is to find a novel that speaks their language. It may be different depending on the kid but it is [...]

Christenbury & Shortening the High School Experience

“Microsoft CEO Bill Gates has called high school obsolete” (Alliance, December 12, 2005, p.1).
  
In Christenbury’s Retracing the Journey, chapter twelve poses some ideas for reforming the high school experience, and one of them has stood out to me as a great topic for class discussion.  Christenbury writes, “Some high school reformers have embraced a call [...]