Thoughts on Life Inside and Outside of Room 26
It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations – something that will help them make sense of their own lives, and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own. I am taken aback every time I read the wisdom of Katherine Patterson. When I feel discouraged, I find a speech, an interview, or an article by this author, and find myself once again invigorated! She is eloquent, and sometimes brash in her resistance to "readicide" and rote memory. She sparks something in me as a teacher that makes me want students to jump into books with reckless abandon and not have to worry about literary analysis, or a dreaded 'packet' at the end of the story.
As I prepare for my one class of thirty-two Contemporary Literature students, I am already looking forward to pushing them beyond. Had you been a student in that class in the past, you learned that the course it not as much about books, as it is about the power of reading on our human interaction; our very existence. I honor Ms. Patterson and her dedication to young readers: challenging, changing, pushing, and gently (sometimes not so gently) relating their lives back to them in pages and pages of beautiful, relatable literature. Thank you Ms. Patterson. Thank You.
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I am...A teacher of students of British, World and Contemporary Literature. Archives
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