The Idea Men are Plotting…

Schools expose students to variety of books

By: Brandy Rissmiller

Republic Herald

Students at Minersville Area Schools in
Minersville, Pennsylvania have a pretty sweet system going when it comes to exposing students to literature.  Grades K through 12 are given ample resources when it comes to fall school in the library and the classroom.  For example, Kelly Crowe, a teacher of AP literature atMinersville
Area
High School, provides students who take her class with a full semester of great literature.  Brandy Rissmiller, a writer for The REPUBLICAN & Herald, states that the class reads “ “Their Eyes are Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston, “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller, and “Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas.  Other Students that have taken her class, I am not sure if their read them in there or not have read “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.

I think this is so stupendous that they are getting this exposure to greats early because I have the same sediments that Crowe has.  She says “Kids never really read the classics until they are made to.”  I never had to read any of those in high school except for these which I can remember: “The Great Gatsby”, “Grapes or Wrath”, “Hamlet”, “Frankenstein”, the staples in a core curriculum.  I read excerpts of Hurston’s novel and Dickens novel, on my own free time, other then that the others are just question marks.  It makes me feel pretty bad that I haven’t read those which Crowe refers to which leads me into another thing that I think.

I think that if my school would have had a system like the next school I am going to mention, I would be aware of these novels which I really need to read now.  Mahanoy
Area
High School has a superb summer system set up for their students doing the transition from 9^th to 10^th and so on.  Michelle Wells, the librarian at Mahanoy says “Students are required to read two books over the summer and four to eight books during the school year.”  I will freely admit that I wasn’t the most motivated individual when it came to reading but when faced with making choices on what to read it may have been a whole nother story.  Some of the choices that the article mentions for student choices are (for what grades I am not sure because it is not mentioned) “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, “Harry Potter and Sorcerer’s Stone” by J. K. Rowlings and “The Outsiders” by S.E. Hinton. ( I love the Harry Potter Series and “The Outsiders”)

I love the fact that the librarians and teachers are working hard to establish lists of books and novels for their students to read.  I can’t ever remember any of my teachers in high school giving me a list of books to read over the summer or for that matter a list of books I should check out from the library.  Also, these school libraries sound so much more knowledgeable in current and past literature.  Also they sound younger and more hip than the fossils that worked at my high school.  I know this much, I never wanted to go ask the librarians about anything; they scared me.

Overall, I would like to stress that I may not know what Kelly Crowe’s teaching strategy is for these novels, books, and short stories she teaches, but the students love it.  She must be doing something unbelievable.  That is what I hope for one day in my class, students that get excited about Shakespeare and Charles Dickens.  Also I hope that the school I teach at one day has great librarians that are hip and keep great books in the library for the students.

These are some of the links that I included in my blog:

All links to Authors and Books/Novels provided by: Www.Wikipedia.Org

Link to this article provided through Google Reader:

Schools expose students to variety of books