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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So...what do you do in class when everyone is reading a different book? Granted I was in MS almost twenty years ago at a private school, but as I recall we did a lot of discussing the plot, symbolism, character motivation, close reading, etc. Or is literary analysis now outdated as well? It seems like “read something you love to develop a sense of joy with the written word” is for SSR in elementary school, not middle or HS English class. What’s changed?

(PS: we read Kindred in seventh grade and idk if it counts as a classic but it was great!)[/quote]

They can still discuss all those in the context of their own book. Track YOUR character’s development. What motivates them? What do their words and choices reveal about them? How does YOUR book use imagery or setting to impact the story? They can do all that and have discussions around big questions (e.g., “Who or what determines whose stories get told?”) in the context of their own  book.  All books have plot, characters, dialogue, literary devices- they’re just applying their knowledge of those things to analyze how they work in their book and to what effect. [/quote]

Right, but what does the classroom actually look like? One kid is talking about the hero’s journey as illustrated by Frodo’s character arc or whatever, how are any of the other students who aren’t reading LotR going to connect with that? “Hey, look at this cool way light and dark imagery shows up again in this climactic scene, reminding me of the scene where the protagonist was introduced...it’s on page 73 of a book I’m the only one who has.”

Look, cards on the table, I think there’s a certain corpus of material people need to be familiar with in order to engage productively with those big questions. Never mind with works of literature! You’re not going to understand what Derek Walcott is saying if you haven’t read the Odyssey, and frankly reading Ulysses helps too. “Whose story gets told” is, IMO, a question that you need to know a lot of history to answer and I’m not convinced you can provide appropriate context for students who are reading twenty five different books. I mean, fine, if you want to do the Harlem Renaissance not everyone needs to be reading Invisible Man, but I can’t imagine a productive classroom conversation between someone reading Invisible Man and someone reading the latest dystopian YA. This may be a failure of imagination on my part! So I’m curious how you envision it going. [/quote]

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