Deeper Thinking?

Gallagher, Oh Gallagher. How you amaze me with your advanced skills with metaphors. First of all, I enjoy his baseball metaphors, mainly because I love baseball. I have been an avid fan of the game for as long as I can remember, but I have never heard of anyone fielding a grounder by moving your glove towards the ball. You are supposed to cushion it. I fell sorry for that group of girls and the wasted time in "learning" how to ground a ball. Secondly, I have an affinity for carpentry and woodworking. I have never used the claw of a hammer with finesse. Once that claw is around the nail, it gets wrenched out. There is no room to "ease" it out of that spruce 2X4. That's enough for chapter 7.

Chapter 8 offered me much more valuable insight into what I find to be the greatest challenge facing teacher: getting the students motivated. In his stock answer #1, Gallagher reiterates that the students do not connect with a great book. First of all, the world has changed since he went to school. All Quiet on the Western Front may not hold the same appeal to today's readers as it did for Gallagher. I think that we need to adapt to what the students are interested in - to a degree. I do find the value in the "classics" - especially with the lenses Appleman has offered us. The older texts seem to offer more blatant examples of classism, racism, sexism, etc. However, the canon is now adapting to incorporate the reader's interest. The Hunger Games and Harry Potter are being used in the classroom, and I find nothing wrong with this at all. Most people have seen the films attached to these literary works, which often ruins the reading, but I think this will only enhance the reading. Earlier in the year, we were talking about reading the text a second time; I think that the film can act as the first draft reading, and when they read the book and are enlightened by all the missing details or those that were altered due to adaptation, this will give the learners a deeper appreciation for the text. Maybe the next time people rave about a novel, the student will read the text rather than wait for Galaxy to charge them $13.
I do commend Gallagher for relating Orwell's 1984 to current events. From what I remember from my youth, not many of us watched the sic o'clock news after school. If we can relate the texts we use into present issues, there can only be positives. In my childhood, we did not have ten different CBC channels to catch the news whenever we wanted. On the farm, there was work to do (and I am not trying to produce a 'poor me' rant) and that was more important than catching the news. Not everyone has the time to be an engaged citizen, but I wished that I could have been more involved in my own current affairs. I am noticing that reminiscent events that are being covered in my classes are void from my knowledge. I do not know the past events that should have been my own personal current events. I will definitely try to get my students involved in their own awareness about what is going on in the world.