Four weeks until graduation. Cue drama.

My career began at a crazy school. It was a private boarding school for behavior problems, and we spent a lot of time in groups talking about our past and feelings; more time spent than we did in the classroom. For these kids, they needed it. We unpacked bags and I learned a lot about 12 step programs, the pitfalls of co-dependence and the healing power of self-reflection. There was also a lot of navel-gazing.

During this time, I also learned that people caused drama to disguise other, more authentic emotion. So, people who were sad about leaving friends would, unconsciously, lash out at that same friend. Why? Because they wanted to push them away before they left. It was about control–Good riddance and anger felt better than loneliness.

So, with four weeks left I warn them to be honest; it makes the days go so much smoother.

Like any middle school, a number of kids mistake drama for actual emotion: No love is as deep as a good fight with a boyfriend. I mentioned this to one student, in a fit of calm she had one day, and she replied, “Yeah, but that’s so boring.”

As teachers, we also suffer from a bit of projection. Lately, I have been feeling the loneliness of my students. The ones with tight cliques want to be with their friends in other classes, while others feel like anchors to the group holding them back. My sister says it’s more me than them–empathy on overload. Perhaps.

And, in the end, what does all of this have to do with learning to read, write and add? Answer: Good middle school is about the student. The whole student.

That said, work keeps them honest. Some teachers let it loose near the end, thinking that kids need a break, and everything goes to pot. 180 days! Meaningful work. No room for pity. As they gaze out the window and ask to have class outside, quietly explain this to them as you say “No.”

Before the end, or holiday break, or any other emotional time, pull this poem out. What makes them forget their own drama? How do they let go? Sports. Reading. Building. Work. Only then have them suggest how to move forward.

At the same time, look at Lawrence’s images. Wild thing. Small bird. Drop frozen dead. Bough. Such a small package, yet it veers from extremes to the poignant.

Self-Pity
D. H. Lawrence

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

My father died last two Tuesdays ago.

As odd as it sounds from someone who keeps a poetry blog, I don’t immediately look to poetry for inspiration or comfort. The morning after the Boston Marathon bombings, for example, the news on television kept bringing up images for me of the science fiction show “Fringe”. Popular movies and television offer, to me, images and immediate visceral emotional connections. This is our age.

So when my father died, I did not rattle off a poem. Even as we put together the program, it was my family who supplied the appropriate bible verses. My mind was blank.

But poetry does offer comfort later. Poetry, and to a lesser extent, prose, provides, for me, the words and images I need to process. To reflect.

Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is a good example of a poem that helped me put my own father’s life, and his role in my life, in perspective. It’s a process that’s been happening as he slowly faded over the past few years, and will continue as the grass grows over his grave. (A friend, unfortunately, does the same thing with “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke. You can go to the Poetry Foundation page here for that sad poem.) The poem guide for “Those Winter Sundays” and related content tabs (including teaching tips) on the Poetry Foundation site are good, and can be found here.

Take a moment with your students for them to appreciate the little acts that those around them do that they don’t notice on a daily basis, but that make a difference. Who, for example, has made their lunch every day? (It might be the lunch ladies, in which case a “thank you” is owed them.) When my NCLB scores come in, I have my students write notes to those teachers that made a difference–taught them to read, turned them onto fantasy literature, or did something else that pushed them forward academically. We once put the little notes in a bowl and left it in the staff room for everyone to read–a big hit and some positive PR for the middle school in our K-8 school.

If literature does guide us, might I suggest a unit on family? Years ago, I spent some time teaching at a Catholic high school. After a theology lesson on the Holy Trinity by our resident priest, I created a unit on fathers and sons (and included mothers and daughters). It was a hit. There is plenty of material out there, and I found my students hungry to explore their relationships at a time where those relationships were changing fast. So much positive emotion came from it, even from the worst of situations (FYI: Great movie for parental relationships, good and bad: “The Great Santini”).

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Post 189 is Peter Porter’s “Your Attention Please.” There, I discussed the difficulties in teaching a subject your grew up with: In that case and this, the Cold War.

This is another Cold War poem, of a different sort. Unlike Porter, this is after the apocalypse.

While the threat of a nuclear war seems to no longer preoccupy our minds, and the threats of terrorism are, for most part, localized, our students are very familiar with the apocalypse. It is one of the most popular genres they read.

For those who enjoy “The Walking Dead” or “World War Z”, the zombie apocalypse offers plenty of examples that parallel Edwin Muir’s poem. In the latter work, Max Brooks breaks down the coming and going of the zombie hoard. It closely follows Muir’s account. As Brooks uses a technique based on Studs Terkel’s works, it can be excerpted from with ease (assign a student to do so!).

You can also have students work out how’d they survive if such an emergency came up. I always have a group of students who love the classic survival stories: Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet and Jean Craighead-Gorge’s “My Side of the Mountain” come to mind and remain perinatal favorites.

The Horses
Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb;
And still they stand in corners of our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its children quick
At one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
The tractors lie about our fields; at evening
They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust:
‘They’ll molder away and be like other loam.’
We make our oxen drag our rusty plows,
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers’ land.
And then, that evening
Late in the summer the strange horses came.
We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield.
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long-lost archaic companionship.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half a dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then they have pulled our plows and borne our loads
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

One of the hardest units to teach is one you grew up with.

Our 8th grade was Columbus to the Reconstruction after the Civil War. Fine. In 10th grade they picked up the baton and ran through World War II (9th grade was civics). Mr. Curtin pushed us into the minutia of the Progressive Era, the finer points of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and the various alphabet agencies Roosevelt rolled out. After World War II, history kind of petered out.

Our teachers were veterans who earned their degrees and certificates through the GI Bill. Some were in World War II, while others fought in Korea. Having lived them, they did not teach them the same way they taught the Spanish-American War. Mr. R. ended one class showing a photo from Life magazine of Mussolini hanging from a lamppost. As we neared the Cuban Missile Crisis, the school year neared its end. One teacher dismissed the entire Vietnam War in a single compound sentence.

At the time, we joked that they hadn’t updated their lesson plans since they began teaching. They left no time for Eisenhower, the Great Society, Watergate or the goings-on in the Middle East.

Trying to teach the Cold War now, I find myself at a loss of how to do it. How to teach a topic that you grew up with–that’s instinctual–in a few weeks? Ronald Reagan means nothing to them, but I’ve got eight years of daily emotional investment in that one historical figure. The Civil Defense films of duck-and-cover seem silly, in hindsight. They were a terror at the time.

Of course, the War on Terror has obvious parallels, which makes using Cold War poems a nice access point.

“Your Attention Please” is an example of using the cold mechanical government apparatus to create a mood. The collection of Civil Defense films used in “Atomic Cafe” does this to great effect. So does Auden’s “The Unknown Citizen.”

Have your students find other examples of such pronouncements in their lives. It could be from the news, the administration or their own essays. Then, see if they can subvert them. Use their observations to take apart Porter’s work. How does it work? Is their own version effective?

Here’s a music version of the poem.  I can’t seem to embed it, so you’ll have to click here.  It’s a “Two Tribes” Frankie Goes to Hollywood type thing, but based on a known poem.

 

Your Attention Please
Peter Porter

Your Attention Please
The Polar DEW has just warned that
A nuclear rocket strike of
At least one thousand megatons
Has been launched by the enemy
Directly at our major cities.
This announcement will take
Two and a quarter minutes to make,
You therefore have a further
Eight and a quarter minutes
To comply with the shelter
Requirements published in the Civil
Defence Code – section Atomic Attack.
A specially shortened Mass
Will be broadcast at the end
Of this announcement -
Protestant and Jewish services
Will begin simultaneously -
Select your wavelength immediately
According to instructions
In the Defence Code. Do not
Take well-loved pets (including birds)
Into your shelter – they will consume
Fresh air. Leave the old and bed-
ridden, you can do nothing for them.
Remember to press the sealing
Switch when everyone is in
The shelter. Set the radiation
Aerial, turn on the geiger barometer.
Turn off your Television now.
Turn off your radio immediately
The Services end. At the same time
Secure explosion plugs in the ears
Of each member of your family. Take
Down your plasma flasks. Give your children
The pills marked one and two
In the C.D green container, then put
Them to bed. Do not break
The inside airlock seals until
The radiation All Clear shows
(Watch for the cuckoo in your
perspex panel), or your District
Touring Doctor rings your bell.
If before this, your air becomes
Exhousted or if any of your family
In critically injured, administer
The capsules marked ‘Valley Forge’
(Red Pocket in No. 1 Survival Kit)
For painless death. (Catholics
Will have been instructed by their priests
What to do in this eventuality).
This announcement is ending. Our President
Has already given orders for
Massive retaliation – it will be
Decisive. Some of us may die.
Remember, statistically
It is not likely to be you.
All flags are flying fully dressed
On Government buildings – the sun is shining.
Death is the least we have to fear.
We are all in the hands of God,
Whatever happens happens by His Will.
Now go quickly to your shelters.

In looking for a copy of Tomas Transtromer’s poem “Tracks” for my last post, I found this Hirschfield poem. I only read it because I had just come from a YouTube video of her reading “Tracks”, which I posted.

Small world, poetry.

a book of essays, but you can find her poetry books here, too.

I am posting this in January. In Vermont, it is cold and the days are short and it is long enough after winter break and far enough until February break that all of the kids seem to be chewing glass. Just an edge of mean in every “joke”. I tell them to circle up, and someone has to quip, “Why not square-up.” But with real anger in the words.

So here is a focus on the gifts we receive every day. At times like these, we often don’t appreciate them. What gifts have your students gotten lately? A good education? Access to the internet? A solid community?

Let us count our blessings.

EACH MOMENT A WHITE BULL STEPS SHINING INTO THE WORLD
by Jane Hirschfield

If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.

Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.

Treat it as you yourself
would be treated, brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.

And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant –

stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’d come to believe were yours,
and plunge in the knife.

Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling,
that you came to love it, that was the gift.

Let the envious gods take back what they can.

//

How’s this for a distracting blog page?

A mess.

My wife gave me this poem, which I like but I don’t really get.  That’s typical of our relationship, not only with poetry.  What do you think?  It’s a clear image, but your students can talk about this all day, no?  What’s with the dream?  How is it like a train stopped?  Huh?

Perfect.

There was supposed to be a video of Jane Hirschfield reading the poem embedded here, but it’s just not working.  So, you can click on this link to see it.  Sorry it’s not within this post.

This is a book that contains “Tracks”

But this is the cover I like the most, so I’m putting it up here (with a bigger photo).

 

Tracks
Tomas Tranströmer

Night, two o’clock: moonlight. The train has stopped
in the middle of the plain. Distant bright points of a town
twinkle cold on the horizon.

As when someone has gone into a dream so far
that he’ll never remember he was there
when he comes back to his room.

And as when someone goes into a sickness so deep
that all his former days become twinkling points, a swarm,
cold and feeble on the horizon.

The train stands perfectly still.
Two o’clock: full moonlight, few stars.

(Translated from the Swedish by Robert Bly)

I don’t remember memorizing more than two lines of a poem. And I did it poorly.

I’m never sure if it’s “Two paths diverge in a wood” or “Two roads….” Of course, both are kind of wrong, one more than an other: It’s “Two roads diverged in a yellow woods.”

For my graduate class on John Milton the professor expected us to memorize passages for the midterm. No texts. On the one hand this seems insane–why do we have books if not to use them? Even in that time before computers were a portable portal to the world’s knowledge it seemed like an unreasonable expectation. With calculators and the internet, memorizing times tables and arcane historical names and dates seems like a pointless exercise in time mismanagement. “Look it up!” is this generation’s battle cry.

But, sadly, they don’t look it up. They (I sadly refer to my students and their generation as “they”, which only betrays my own insecurities) wallow in cultural ignorance and don’t know it. Our culture is so fractured that there is no common cultural currency anymore. So bad is it that I sound like an idiot wring this.

Instead of letting me make the case, poorly, read this: A Memorized Poem ‘Lives With You Forever,’ So Choose Carefully by Camila Domonoske. Let me here make a plug for the “Monkey See” NPR culture blog and its excellent, albeit at times a tad self-consciously twee podcast, “Pop Culture Happy Hour.”

Forever I had wanted to be one of the people who could quote literature. My graduate school friend Joe could–just a smattering, a few lines, that made him smart at parties. I could paraphrase. Syndicated television was more my specialty.

My wife–the high school English teacher, poet, and poetry reader–is also her school’s coach for the annual Poetry Out Loud competition. Most years, she has three kids try out for the honor of representing the school. That one goes to our state capital to read. In her second year of this, her kid won. I’m not sure how much to chalk it up to talent, Vermont being a small state, or poetry being a small pond in a small state, but he won and went to the nationals in Washington, D.C. For her troubles, my wife got a t-shirt and a refrigerator magnet.

She believes in the power of memory. Because I can’t do it, I’m less convinced.

But I do agree with Ms. Domonoske’s central argument that a poem memorized is with you forever. I have found that my favorite poems are ones I’ve read out loud to my students. Many are in this blog. They include “Casey at the Bat” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Perhaps I could memorize them, but after repeated tellings I cannot honestly remember the first line of two of them (“Prufrock” sticks with me a bit, which only argues the warning of choosing wisely).

I do know that with each read I come to understand the poems more. And like them more. They are with me. When I read them out loud to my students, I do a better job of it. They are with me.

So think about poems that your students might memorize. We are losing our common cultural currency, but that doesn’t mean we can’t implant some of that culture into their hearts still.

And, for the record, when we showed up for our Milton mid-term, perhaps five or so couplets rattling around in my head, the professor relented and allowed us to use our textbooks. I think I scored a C-.

An art studies friend in college made up a stamp that read: This is Not Art! She would stamp it on pictures and such that she found in art magazines, but which, in her opinion, was not (capital “A”) Art.

Today I was at a fairly good vocabulary seminar. The gist of it was that we needed to have conversations about vocabulary on a regular basis with our students. Teaching vocab is not a worksheet (although that might be part of it) but creating a constant awareness that language is important and interesting. In a vocabulary successful classroom, the teacher is talking about words, word origins, use of words and having a basic conversation–not a lecture, but a two-way conversation–about what words mean.

After hearing about games, activities, books and whatnot I left with the understanding that the best thing we can do for our students is a daily poem. In a poem there are lessons on vocabulary, idioms, metaphors, similes as well as themes and multiple meanings. And, the lesson is short because poems are short. Because they are accessible at many different levels, they are easy to differentiate.

Ah, and they are Art (capital “A”)!

At this seminar the leader recommended this book “All the Small Poems and Fourteen More” by Valarie Worth. You can find it here:

This brings you to Indiebound.com where you can buy it at your local independent bookstore.

My friend would have stamped this book: This is Not Art!  I have a pet peeve against poesy being called poetry, because I associate poetry with Art and have seen too many tossed off bits with broken lines on the page called “poetry”.  For some reason, kids this age love to be poets and can really crank it out.  Yes, yes it should be encouraged, but I don’t want to leave my standards at the door.  Our basketball coach, for example, doesn’t hold our best players up against Larry Bird.  Let’s draw a line between Susy Student and Dorothy Parker even as we encourage the former on her path to surpassing the latter.

But I digress.

I mention this book because, although it is not Art, it is clever.  (I mean no disrespect to Ms. Worth, and I have no stamp to wield.)  Each poem is designed to describe an animal or thing without giving it away.  It’s a riddle more than a poem.  Our facilitator said she would do it with a class as follows:

1. Pair kids up.
2. Read it aloud, slowly.
3. Kids discuss their thought of what it might be and reasons for that conclusion.
4. Read it aloud a second time.
5. Kids discuss, again.
6. Classroom discussion.
7. Reveal.

I could see kids loving it (everyone likes a good riddle).  And it takes little class time.

But it was relevant for us because the words she uses are great vocabulary.  After the reveal, the teacher can go over the reasons (another slow read) and talk about the vocabulary.  “What does (blank) mean?  How is it used in this context?  That’s what we call a metaphor….”

Before Ms. Worth wrote her book, Emily Dickinson was doing much the same thing.  Post No. 10 “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” is much like Ms. Worth’s work (Spoiler Alert: It’s a snake, but the title will make some older kids giggle for other reasons).  Kids have interesting interpretations of what the “narrow fellow” might be (a hose or a stick are popular).

I present here another Dickinson great, “My Life has stood – a Loaded Gun.”  This, I feel, is Art (capital “A”).  First of all (Spoiler Alert) it’s a gun.  Few kids get it.  (What’s funny is that it’s in the first line, but kids miss it.  Ha, ha.)  That’s not what makes it Art.  And it’s not that, once revealed, it’s obvious.  No, what makes it Art is the personification of the object.  What is Dickinson saying about the gun!  That, in part, is what makes this poem so hard to figure out: We don’t think of guns in this way.

And she is saying something!

For a better analysis of the poem, and an argument for it being Art, read this analysis from a Brooklyn College class.

Once again, as with other Dickinson poems, I cannot attest for the formatting. Between the first printed and the original Dickinson text, twisted by postings and copies, I don’t have the time to find the authentic Dickinson grammar edition. No disrespect meant, but know that I recognize the issue is an important one and that I’m not ignorant (just time strapped).

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun
Emily Dickinson

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun -
In Corners – till a Day
The Owner passed – identified -
And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovereign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him -
The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let its pleasure through -

And when at Night – Our good Day done -
I guard My Master’s Head -
‘Tis better than the Eider-Duck’s
Deep Pillow – to have shared -

To foe of His – I’m deadly foe -
None stir the second time -
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye -
Or an emphatic Thumb -

Though I than He – may longer live
He longer must – than I -
For I have but the power to kill,
Without–the power to die–

In today’s New York Times they write:

It’s the End of the World
According to some interpretations of the Mayan calendar, the world is scheduled to end one day in the next week. Predictions vary: it could mean that all mankind will undergo a spiritual transformation, or that the Earth will collide with a black hole or the planet Nibiru — in which case, there’s no need to finish all that Christmas shopping. Or maybe it’s just the close of another year. Whatever happens, here are six original poems on endings.

The poems are mixed (in my humble opinion), but worth reading.  You can check them out by clicking here.

Here is a more classic “end of the world” poem by Robert Frost.  There are several things a teacher can do with this, but here are a few that have worked for me:

Contrasts: Fire and ice are opposites, and kids often don’t slow down and notice that.  Just getting them to see the obvious is something worth spending time on.  Then, ask why Frost might use these two.  What other opposites can students think of?  Are any better than fire and ice for imagery?  Why?

Symoblism: Fire is hate, while Ice is desire.  Why?  If you created an opposites list above, try and brainstorm what each new opposite might symbolize.  Do they work better than fire and ice (doubtful)?

Cause and Effect: Once these opposites have been established, how do they see the world ending with each?  Fire is easy, but ice?  If you created an opposites list above, try and imagine how those might play out.  Imagine the world ending by boys or girls.  Scary!

Word Choice: I have always found Frost’s use of language in this poem a bit flip.  Suffice?  Also, he uses the “I” voice.  Why?  Is he culpable, or simply an observer?

Remember, don’t freak out your kids if there is too much “end of the world” talk going on–one kid’s joke is another one’s nightmare.  It can be scary (but middle school kids are also fascinated by it all, and it goes well with the slew of apocalyptic fiction titles circulating).

Fire and Ice
Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Not poetry. With the Common Core coming, the topic of non-fiction writing is bubbling up.  Sure, everyone is a literacy teacher, but the crux of success in non-fiction will come down on Language Arts teachers, because narrative fiction is where communication becomes inspiration.  In offering thoughtful pieces, students will engage with their other subjects.

I’m thinking of another site–Middle School Non-fiction 180–as a source of good non-fiction.  Read the article and please make suggestions.

Middle School Non-fiction 180

In my first year of teaching middle school we spent a cold November inservice day listening to a woman tell us how to teach nonfiction.

“People don’t like reading nonfiction” she said with authority.

“What?” my science teaching teammate exclaimed.

“I like reading nonfiction,” I added.

Others muttered in agreement, and a conversation started breaking out on this or that book someone had just read.

At this point, the presenter could have conceded that her statement was a bit overreaching. She could have dismissed us as an usual group; we were, after all, teachers and had degrees in science, history and the like. All of us were readers. Instead, she dismissed us and stood by her statement.

“People don’t like to read nonfiction.”

She might have just stopped the inservice right there, because no one in the room could take her seriously after that. Everything that came out of her mouth was challenged, to the point where our vice principal had to talk to us during the break because we had unnerved the speaker.

In the end, the speaker was talking about textbooks (I still challenger her statement, as I enjoy a good textbook, too). Yet, there is a general assumption that what students like to read are the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Summer I Turned Pretty titles, not Into the Wild. In this, I have a dual response.

First, kids do love non-fiction. In fact, many students told me they prefer non-fiction to fiction. After a lengthy discussion, I believe it comes down to usefulness. While fiction allows a certain fantasy and escape (and a large degree of vicarious living), non-fiction teaches them about the world.

And they want to learn!

My favorite books were biographies. In fifth grade I was not “a reader” but I swallowed biographies of Henry Ford and the Wright brothers. I also liked to read books about aliens and the Loch Ness monster (it was the age of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Leonard Nemoy narrated show In Search Of and all of those Sun Classic “documentaries” on life after death and Noah’s Ark). Later, I carried about reference books: Book of Lists, Guinness Book of World Records and (briefly) a friend’s Dungeon Master guide. They weren’t narrative, but completely engaging.

I wonder about the nature of the narrative and non-fiction.  Having recently facilitated an in-service about the Common Core and non-fiction text, there was a lot of talk about graphs, directions, recipes and video being “non-fiction” text.  Yet, I weep at this.  True, my students struggle with simple step-by-step directions, but a sustained narrative is (to me) the gold standard of reading.

Good narratives are life.

Which leads to my second point: There are few engaging young adult narrative non-fiction books or stories.  Cue the responses.  No, really, if you have suggestions, please put them (and links!) in the comment section.  But let’s explore what I’m saying a bit.

For example, look at sports.  I have a group of boys (always boys) who read Michael Lewis’ The Blind Side.  Why?  They like football and they saw the movie.  It is a compelling story, but it is also an adult story, and even with motivation is often falls flat.  Into Thin Air and Friday Night Lights also make the rounds, are carried around for a few weeks, but rarely are finished.

One reason is that they are adult books.  Their reading level is pretty advanced, as is the need for cultural literacy.  Read the first chapter of Friday Night Lights and see how much knowledge you need to have going in even before you look at vocabulary and text complexity.

Every article I hold dear is like this.  There are two Sports Illustrated articles I’ve kept for decades because I think they epitomize the larger American culture: George Plimpton’s “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch” and  Frank Deford’s “BD“.  To give them to a middle school student is ridiculous, I know, but they illustrate what adults take for granted when it comes to “common knowledge.”

Take Deford’s “BD”, about Yale quarterback Brian Dowling, the late 1960s in America and college football.  First up: What’s Yale?  I explain.  They don’t really understand what college is.  More to the point, they don’t really understand social class and diversity, other than in an academic sense.  Add the history–both of Harvard and Yale, the Vietnam War, SNCC and student protests, Doonesbury and more–and the article is a baffling slog.  In the end, it’s also a tad elitist.

I have collected plenty of those “Best” series for my classroom: Sports, Spiritual, Nonfiction…  I’ve even collected David Eggers’ “The Best Non-Required Reading”, which is a mix of fiction, non-fiction and even cartoons.  To find pieces that are both thought provoking and accessible is difficult.

As a social science teacher, I’ve tried to use NPR updates and longer pieces for current events (and to work on listening skills).  They require a high degree of background knowledge, which never becomes apparent until I’m listening in front of students.  This American Life does offer a number of good pieces, easily searchable by topic, though.  Still, there are plenty that are adult in cultural currency and the subject matter.

Certainly, the library must be full of great non-fiction books?  Many of the non-fiction are uninspiring biographies written way below grade level.  When we buy one with a kid in mind, it gets read (once) and sits there.  Book by book.  There has got to be a better way.

In short, there seems to be dearth of good, young adult non-fiction.

I was inspired to take this topic on when I read this article: What Should Children Read by Sara Mosle.  She had a few links at the end, which are good, but they are more adult oriented (sigh).  I put them in my iPad bookmarks because I like them, but for middle school students….

And looking down my bookmarks, I find many sources, all too adult.  Those that are accessible, like the sports site Deadspin, are infused with profanity and inappropriate language.  Political sites tend to be more polemic, even when the topics seem.  We live in a world of rich non-fiction, but not for middle schoolers.

To follow up Ms. Mosle, I would love to know which non-fiction works you give middle school students.