Reinventing book clubs for grade 8s

So, you want the kids to enjoy reading, make some connections, have insightful discussions. Right. But how to make sure that they have actually done the reading and are able to participate? Let alone assess reading. At some point, this becomes the so-called bottom line in teaching grade 8 English.
This year I tried something new and it succeeded on many levels.
Whether you call them Book Clubs, literature circles or any other term, these groupings are a great way to study novels. While I often start the year with an independent novel study, a couple more times during each school year I select several sets of novels based on a theme and let the students choose their groups.
In the past I tried various methods, from booklets to blogs to task cards, to get the students to document their reading and respond to their books, both before and after group conversations. However, I found these vaguely unsatisfactory for a variety of reasons. And to top it off, it was hard to tell for sure who was reading. Or not.
This year I announced that each week Book Club would also involve a quiz. This was quite a good motivator.
Since I was not about to make up a zillion traditional quizzes I came up with four thematic questions, and this was the sum total of the quizzing, one per week. Week 1, list the 10 most important things that happened in this week's reading. Week 2, discuss the theme of your book, from a list (importance of family, importance of friends, racism, etc.). In week 3, we headed to the lab and in 50 minutes, the students used Bitstrips to dramatize the key scene from the third section of their books. Week 4, they wrote 5 questions (no answers) using higher-level Bloom's-style starters. In weeks 1,2 and 4, the quiz took about 30 minutes and then they met in circles to share their answers.
Finally! Lots of good ideas were presented, points were discussed and debated, and any slacking readers were easy to spot. It also allowed me to listen to the oral contributions of students who enjoy reading but struggle with writing. This satisfied another of my assessment criteria - don't base a reading mark on writing skills.
Next year I will continue this approach, and will try to follow up more formally with those who seem to have fallen behind in their reading.

Boys' Literacy, Part 3

Boys’ Literacy Part 3 of 4
Starting the study

The following year I heard about a meeting in Sudbury where teachers could find out about a research opportunity. I got myself invited and heard for the first time about the 3-year boys’ literacy studies that would be funded. They would all be based on strategies from Me Read, No Way, and it was easy to see I might be able to get some guidance to pursue more action research on “Help make it a habit.”
The other strategy that really appealed to me was “Have the right stuff,” because we did not. As a middle school we had very few resources for students reading below grade level. I will never forget the novel “Mice at Centre Ice” – because it was the only text that we had that the boys liked. The dollar signs lit up in my eyes just like in a cartoon. What if we could get money to establish a leveled book room at our school.
As I said at our recent presentation, as a teacher I was extremely interested in our first strategy, but I was super-motivated by the second!
I wrote up a proposal which was accepted and away we went. There are some great memories from that time. Our whole staff got involved in attending a mini-publishers’ fair after school. We had sample books spread out all over the staff room with feedback sheets for the teachers to fill out. The publishers were fantastic, and brought their own lists of Books For Boys. Our librarian was also a great help and identified which materials library staff could access at a discount via the board’s suppliers, so we could get the most books with our grant.
We went from having a tiny room with Grade 7 and 8 novel sets to having the entire back of our school library set up as a leveled book area filled with beautiful books, teacher guides and other resources. We followed all the advice we could find and purchased a lot of non-fiction sports and science-oriented texts, two different series of hi-interest/lo-vocab novels dealing with issues of interest to teens, best-seller series books, and much more. Over the years, our spec ed and DLRT teachers along with the librarian (one day a week…) have continued to fine tune organization of the area and have added many new, appropriate and engaging books to the library itself.
As for the study… We went crazy in year one. Staff came up with a way to randomly identify 100 students based on class, grade and gender, and we tested them all twice using Flynt Cooter RIC as the tool. Two classes ran the Reading Challenge and were compared to the school as a whole.
The boys and also girls in the Challenge did move forward ahead of the others. But our most amazing results related to Grade 8 boys. We believe we identified a developmental peak of readiness that enabled large numbers of the boys to move forward with their reading. The test results were unbelievable, and crossed over from class to class regardless of teacher or program. One young man with an identification as LD, who I had previously taught, came to me by chance for both his pre- and post-challenge tests and advanced from Grade 4 to Grade 9. I honestly would have been skeptical if I hadn’t sat with him myself as he accomplished this. This is an important consideration when educating boys and taking advantage of readiness skills and alerted us to be aware of more of these windows of opportunity for boys (example: grade 1 new year- European studies).

Boys' Literacy, Parts 1, 2

Boys Literacy Part 1 of 4
Birth of the Reading Challenge

Just before I went to teachers’ college (2000) was the time my interest in IT really took off. I made a deal with my boss at the time regarding lieu time and overtime and started taking courses at Nipissing. The hardest by far was called Introduction to Computers or something innocuous like that but it was really a C++ programming course. The prof was amazing. He was originally from somewhere in Eastern Europe and had been immersed in computers since birth I think. He knew all the machine language and binary code stuff and had a wealth of anecdotes about computers, and many humourous tricks to get us to understand the patterns and routines of programming. The students were also quite a mixed bag. My favourites were those Dr. Schreyer called the ‘squirrels’ or ‘chipmunks.’ Can’t remember which…. these first-year boys who sat in the back row and would pop their heads up over the monitors occasionally to attend to the lesson. They told me they had taken all the usual maths and high school computer courses plus an OAC-level Java course. This little C++ course that was keeping me up at night was a walk in the park for them. The first test separated the sheep from the goats. Over half the class dropped the course. Remaining were the boy geniuses and a few determined others such as me. One day I asked the prof if I would ever really get the hang of programming without a math background. He said, “Sure. To be good at programming you don’t need math. To get good at programming, you need to program.”
About three years later I had a Grade 7 class where in April only three kids were reading at grade level and his words came back to me. What if it was a case of, “In order to become a strong reader, you need to read”?
This was the birth of the Reading Challenge, eight to 10 weeks of extended silent reading using texts selected by the students. And yes it worked.

Boys’ Literacy Part 2 of 4
The first Reading Challenge

Each student in 7C set a personal, secret goal. How many pages could they read during the challenge? They were strongly encouraged to have this be at least the minimum set by me of 10 pages a day, 5 days a week, for 10 weeks. Parents had to sign the form containing their goal.
They were freaked out at the way this translated into a class goal of 14,500 pages! Much complaining and disbelief!
Then we began. They read 40-50 minutes a day in class. In total silence.
Several tools were used to motivate the kids and also get at aspects of the curriculum. All involved minimal writing.
At the end of each class they filled out response journals (visualizing, character, journal style, making connections, etc.) They also created bar graphs of their progress. Because the books were self-selected from texts at appropriate levels, no one was at a real disadvantage. Whether they were reading a high-interest/low-vocab novel or the latest Harry Potter, they had an equal chance to get their 10 pages logged.
There were big celebrations held to mark the halfway point. First we tabulated the bar graphs. Wow! As in all subsequent years, to the students’ amazement, by the halfway point the overall goal had been reached. This was incredibly energizing. We also borrowed the button-making machine from the board and made buttons promoting literacy, our goals, etc., as well as making and laminating bookmarks. At the end, we took an afternoon and used all the new phys ed game equipment outside and ate ice cream cones – their own choice of reward.
When testing took place, two thirds of the class achieved level 3 or greater on a Grade 7 test.

Week 1 - Riches

Lisette Will Annie Suzanne Eva Xavier Marius Gregor. The characters or the astonishing and integral images from nature. The humor, the humanity, the beauty. I do not know which I will end up writing the most about while reading this fantastic book. And in a way it is already impossible to separate them. Literally. We have Will being born again through black spruce as he somehow manages to land his bush plane on a creek, and he also turns to the cold brown water of the Moose River, ingesting it along with his whiskey. We have Annie, supremely competent in her environment of the north – even if she herself has doubts. As a transplanted Northerner I liked seeing that setting represented so accurately, the extreme cold and the annual assault by bugs as a spring rite. I have also visited Moosonee and Moose Factory twice. Some of what is in the book is part of what a tourist would experience and remember, and the rest has to come from first hand experience of those living in a small isolated community. The unique characters are both heart-breaking and funny. For example in discussing Will’s morning-after jogging, Joe declines to participate due to the fact that his truck is running fine and he doesn't see the need. The book certainly set us up by posing far too many essential questions to even mention. Needless to say I just want to know more and more about their stories whether it's Eva, the missing Gus who seems to have unwittingly precipitated so much violence, the two nieces, or Will himself. I'm already picking the book up to read the next page.

Crying in the restaurant of the Holiday Inn

FROM JUNE...
Away from home, a day of workshops over.
Trip to a large but disappointing mall. A novelty for an hour or two. Done.
Too much driving in the rain early in the morning to relish a trip downtown so I had a surprisingly nice dinner in the lounge of a Mississauga Holiday Inn. The server exchanged the saloon lighting for daytime illumination so I could read my complimentary copy of the Globe and Mail.
Lorna Crozier had written a review of The Collected Works of Pat Lowther, an article that brings tears to my eyes. A flood of memories. An empty sadness at the loss of Lowther’s voice and a weird feeling that is like nostalgia for something bad. Impossible to describe. Maybe regret that Canada’s national newspaper didn’t get around to printing Crozier’s account for over 30 years. Because we knew already. Since the night Patrick Lane and Sid Marty told us, we knew it.
At the time of Ray Lowther’s trial for the bludgeoning death of his wife, we were creative writing students at the University of Windsor. The world of poetry and literature was hyper-real for us, peopled with immense and eccentric talents and egos. It was an exciting time, with an air of romance about it, full of striving, small and large successes, and a daily personal connection to people who seemed to be literary artists first, and only secondarily regular mortals.
Before I was 20 I had met Earle Birney, Susan Musgrave, Irving Layton, Tom Wayman, Barry Callaghan and other luminaries of Canadian literature. Mind you, I use the term “met” loosely as I was too self-conscious to talk to them. Rather I watched other students and faculty shake their hands and verbalize the admiration and respect I also felt.
As well, in our English department many of the professors were writers and poets: Alastair MacLeod, Eugene McNamara, John Ditsky, Ed Watson, Rick Hornsey, Peter Stevens. Joyce Carol Oates taught a first-year English course in addition to a graduate seminar. Students came from all over the world to learn their craft in the department. And then shortly after Lowther’s trial, Patrick Lane and Sid Marty came to Windsor to give a poetry reading.
I was so excited to have the chance to hear them read in person. A few years previous Miss Chatelaine magazine had excerpted portions of a volume of poetry called Storm Warnings, in which both poets were included, and I was obsessed with finding it. I was in Grade 11 and being hauled across Canada with three younger siblings and a cat in a navy blue Ford Falcon pulling a small canvas-topped tent trailer. Our beloved Motown music was nowhere to be found on the prairie airwaves, replaced by the Stampeders, the Carpenters and Anne Murray. Classics now, that I admit to enjoying, but the basest insult to my ears at the time. I had hardly any money but I found the book in the Hudson’s Bay in Winnipeg and almost wore it out.
After the reading at the university, Lane and Marty were gracious, friendly and open to setting out for a few beers with the professors who had attended. My best friend Gary and I, plus a couple of other students I guess, tagged along. I can still picture us seated around two or three tables that had been pulled together at Sid’s Bridge House, one of two bars close enough to the small Windsor campus to be regular haunts.
I was seated at one end of the table towards the left side and Gary was right beside me. At the opposite end of the table was a lecturer that I knew only by name and had never met before. He spent a little while trying to convince everyone that, with my hair in a cloud of curls around my face (in what I classified as a truly unfortunate perm) and my natural pallor, I looked like a character from the movie Barry Lyndon. Very surreal. Then later we stood around the car belonging to one of our profs, since he had volunteered to drive us home, mesmerized by the glow of the harvest-moon-coloured orange paint on his Volvo sedan in the bright circle of light from a street lamp. Also very surreal and an even more drunken moment than the Barry Lyndon scenario.
But the most memorable part of the evening had happened an hour or two earlier. The pitchers of beer were disappearing quickly and conversation was wild and overlapping. The two western poets were seated next to the Barry Lyndon man at the far end of the table and we could only tune in some of the time to what they were saying.
But suddenly the chatter stopped and Patrick Lane had our attention. He was angry and passionate about the point he was trying to make: the media coverage of Lowther’s trial was missing the point. Completely. I snuck a glance at Gary. Lane continued. Ray Lowther had killed his wife Pat out of jealousy over her growing literary reputation, which was eclipsing his. As Lane said, people were coming to the house looking for her, to meet her, to discuss her poetry and praise her. This lay at the core of Ray Lowther’s anger, the fury that led him to kill his wife.
I have no idea if there was any debate or discussion amongst the “grown-ups” in the literary community over Pat Lowther’s death and the reasons for it. There was practically nothing said amongst us students, that’s for sure. I remember Gary asking me that night at the table at the Bridge House if I believed Patrick Lane, but I do not know how I actually responded. I was overcome with the implications of Lane’s argument. On a personal level, sure. It was a welcome, insightful, believable, first-hand alternative to what we had been fed by the media. But also what Lane’s vision of a single tragic event meant about the power of poetry as a force in the world.
When I sat in the Holiday Inn drinking white wine and brushing tears away, it was as though I had been transported back to that year in Windsor. But glad Lorna Crozier had written her article.

Norwegian Wood Week 5

Even before I finished the book, I was already thinking about what to write. I was pretty sure about what was going to happen. It did.
Anyway I was remembering studying existential literature because NW with all its frustrations seems to fall into this category for me. (As an aside I was very surprised to read the note at the end of the novel about the enduring popularity of this book in Japan.)
I looked up a bit of info about existentialism on the web:
“Existentialism … generally held that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and their emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts, … and maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving their own life meaning and living that life passionately and sincerely in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation and boredom.”
“… existentialists see that the only certainty for each one of us is death, and that the individual must live in the knowledge of that certainty.”
“Prominent themes in existential literature:
• Life is suffering.
• Life is not fair.
• Individual alienation, the loss of a sense of identity, is perpetuated by the labels and categories we use to describe people.
• Individuals are free to choose how they will respond to the painful existence in which they find themselves.
• Because they are free, individuals are also responsible for their own actions.”
I know it’s not a perfect fit, but it makes some sense of the novel for me. I found this last section livelier and quite humourous in parts, but I kept waiting for the news about Naoko.
Thinking back to university, both then and now, I have always found it difficult to respond to existential literature. I always chose the other options for essays and exam answers! It is the isolation, futility and inactivity of the characters’ lives (the swamp, as Toru calls it) that always strikes me. Therefore it is hard to comment on their motivation or actions. In the case of Toru and Midori, I feel at least that they have youth on their side. All of their suffering, and it has been considerable, has occurred in their teenage years. We know that Toru survives because he is our narrator. He has continued as a witness. First, he was the witness to Naoko and Kizuki, and Nagasawa and Hatsumi, and Naoko and Reiko. Now he makes a living as a witness in the form of a journalist.
I also had a thought about the last section on p 293, below the space. I think it is possible that this section takes place in the present, in Toru’s 37th year, and that he and Midori have stayed together on and off all this time. In my imagination I think he never confided in Midori the truth about his past and the influences of all the characters we have come to know. Being overcome emotionally by the song on the plane has signaled to him that he has to start over with her on a basis of truth, even after all these years, so he calls her from the airport.

Norwegian Wood Week 4

I have been thinking about two pairs of characters this week: Toru and Nagasawa, and Naoko and Midori. I was reminded of my first year philosophy class and although I don’t remember enough to attach names to the various thinkers we studied, I am going to use the word “intent.”
In the book we think of Nagasawa and Toru as two very different kinds of people. Nagasawa seems like a bit of jerk and Toru is quiet and nice. However when we look at some of their actions they are exactly the same, ie. going out drinking, picking up girls and sleeping with them, while supposedly committed to a single woman. Nagasawa expresses intent while Toru always just seems to be going along for something to do, but it is essentially the same sort of aimless amoral behaviour. On p. 208, Nagasawa actually says, “We’re a lot alike, Watanabe and I,” and I feel this is true. Yet we perceive Toru as the “better” of the two men.
I feel that Naoko and Midori are also flip sides of the same coin, but again our perceptions or evaluations of the two are different. They are both crazy, but Naoko has retreated to the hostel while Midori is out there in the world dealing with matters from day to day. She is presented as a bit wild and maybe promiscuous with all her porn talk, although so far she has not acted on this, while Naoko is leading a “better” more ascetic life. I began to question my judgments of these characters based on their “intent” rather than their actions. Maybe if we look at just the actions, we see that Nagasawa and Midori are just more honest and engaged with the real world than their more passive counterparts.
I was also happy to find out that Toru becomes a journalist, and this seems very apt. He has a profession in which the highest achievements come from eliminating one’s own voice, self and opinions, and accurately documenting the world.
Also too bad about Hatsumi. Has HM chosen a sub-set of Japanese characters who suffer from mental illness or despair or is the book supposed to be a commentary on Japanese society? Or the world in general? Do any of the suicides in this book have any commonalities? How about the survivors? I will think about this myself!

Norwegian Wood Week 3

One motif that repeats throughout this section is silence, versus noise. Toru seems hyper-conscious of the quiet at the sanitarium perhaps because the whole situation is so novel. He notices everything related to this, for example the absence of people walking around, the curtains drawn, etc. On p. 102 he talks of steeping himself in the silence, which then brings memories of Kizuki to him. Then he experiences the dining hall; there are people, but they are quiet and subdued in their conversations. He is “surprised to find himself missing the buzz of people. He wanted to hear people laughing and shouting for no reason, and saying overblown things.” He says he can’t relax in the quiet.
Yet he sleeps so soundly on Naoki’s couch. It is as though he is at peace in these surroundings.
This seems quite Canadian in a 21st century way. Most people have to go out of their way to be with nature and experience “peace and quiet” literally. I think of all the cottagers and visitors who travel up our way to be able to sit by a lake with their phones and other distractions removed. They find this rejuvenating and seek it out whenever they can. I know that when my son and I lived in Toronto we certainly did this, taking off regularly to go camping. I still remember how my ears would ring as I tried to fall asleep in the silence.
It also reminds me of decisions I have made in my life, first to move north and secondly to pursue living in locations that have very little background noise, whether of traffic or appliance motors. However this is all relative. We chose not to offer to purchase my father-in-law’s place in Emsdale because of the hum from Highway 11… but my friends who live in town couldn’t hear it and couldn’t understand this!
I am also reminded of a friend who can’t fall asleep without noise of some kind – and runs a fan in her room constantly to provide it.
But back to the story… I think Toru is refreshed by the silence while finding it unnatural. At least he is questioning the setting and its role in the lives of the various inhabitants.

Norwegian Wood Week 2

Congratulating myself for not peeking at your posts – here is my Week 2. I am really looking forward to reading your thoughts and commenting this week.
In this section of the book there are several points in which truth or honesty are either discussed or reflected upon. The more I though about this, the more I see Toru emerging as a character who we are to take at face value. He may not have much depth so far, but he seems an honest observer of himself and others, and I think he is getting drawn into complex relationships that will sweep him into whirlpools of deception. The chapter opens with him reacting angrily to the hypocrisy of the striking students. This is the most emotion we have seen yet from the youthful Toru.
I think he would like to go through life taking people as he finds them but I fear this may get him into trouble. When he first meets Midori, she asks him if he likes her hair. When he says ‘yes’ she asks, ‘you’re not lying are you?’ and he replies ‘I like to think of myself as an honest man.’ Later on that page he assures her ‘I’m just an ordinary guy. Like everybody else.’ But these are two quite different states.
The scene where he tries to reach on the phone Midori is troubling. On p. 54 he is told that she is at the hospital, but then when they get together she tells him that her mother died two years previous and her father ran off to Uruguay. And she doesn’t feel like discussing the hospital. Later on she admits that she manufactures information for her map-writing – what a contrast to Storm Trooper. I hope Toru becomes more discerning as the story unfolds. I wonder if she is as crazy as Naoko – the result of having a mother who is either sick or dead, and a father who rejected her and abandoned her. If any of her story is true. All she admits to is having a ‘cold streak.’ p. 76
Midori herself discusses honesty – she tells Toru, ‘I’m not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I’m kidding or playacting.’
This however is nothing compared to Naoko’s thoughts on the subject. In her letter she writes at length about honesty, asking is ‘fair’ the same as ‘honest’. She seems to think so, using the words ‘fair, honest and universally true’ as synonyms. I am not sure that this is the case. Fair can mean simply balanced, as in treating two people the same. Honest and true are perhaps more synonymous.
I thought the discussion of death on p. 77 had some bearing on Toru’s earlier thoughts. Here we have Midori deploring the kind of death that devolves into endless pain and suffering, ‘the shadow of death slowly eating away at the region of life.’ Toru has earlier talked about how he now sees death in life, but he is not ill, there is no disease or pathology. In contrast we have Kizuki’s death. He precedes his suicide by winning at pool because ‘he didn’t want to lose today,’ and then methodically controls the end of his life.
I was waiting for a picture of Tokyo to emerge and was not disappointed! In this section there are great descriptions of schools, restaurants, Midori’s family’s store and apartment, and especially Toru’s trip by public transit to get to her place. I also like the descriptions of the trip to visit Naoko. The author makes it sound so remote – forests, mountains country scenes, and then we learn it is 40 minutes out of Tokyo! Fascinating.

Nowegian Wood Week 1

Hello everyone, just got the book and will try to catch up today. I read the first section yesterday and needed time to think… Mandi, thanks for another lyrical, beautifully written novel. I was hooked from page 1.
So, interesting that the title is actually front and centre. The only words that I remember without looking up (which I will do later) are: “I once had a girl or should I say she once had me.” Certainly introduces the theme effectively, as we soon find out.
I really liked how effortlessly the author deals with the passage of time. We meet Toru when he is 37, and then learn about his youth in 1969. When he is 19, Toru is sort of aimless. He has left home to attend university, but is not engaged in his studies (unlike his roommate Storm Trooper!) We find out a little about his day-to-day activities, including a part time job as a mover. Now in his thirties, he is a man who is writing a book, who has to write things down to fully comprehend them. (p. 5)
I also liked the time shift that occurs during the months that precede Toru’s 20th birthday. I interpreted his walk in the meadow with Naoko as a visit to her at the institution where she has retreated to deal with her mental illness, as she mentions in her letter to Toru.
As always when reading literature, as opposed to genre fiction, I have my problems with the characters and their behaviour. I mean does anyone really, really meet a person and go for long walks every week for months on end, and not talk? This also comes up in conversation between Toru and Storm Trooper, when his roommate asks for advice on what to talk about with girls. What is the bond then, between Naoko and Toru? Is it their lost friend Kizuki, just that, which holds them together and makes Toru fall in love?
I want to find out what happens between these two to create the crippling surge of emotion that Toru experiences on the plane.
I was struck by how few “Japanese” attributes mark the book so far. Neat in a way that other than the names of people and places we could be reading about characters from anywhere else in the world. I wondered about the firefly though, the caging or bottling up of nature.

Week 11 Edgar Sawtelle

With this amazing complex book coming to an end, I couldn’t help but think back to previous chapters, the use of strong images that repeat and transform as they are used throughout the book to form a theme.
I keep returning to the role played by the basic elements in explaining or supporting the events and characters: earth water wind fire. I think DW is making the point that when Edgar is one with these forces he is complete.
Earth. Edgar finally accepts that Almondine is gone. P. 471 “He lay with his forehead pressed to the ground, the scent of iron and loam filling his nostrils and he clutched the dirt and poured it out of his hands. An oceanic roar filled his head. All his memory, all his past rose up to engulf him.”
This earth image incorporates water as well, and there are others, in particular rivers. In the previous section on p.483 Claude takes Trudy to the falls of the Bad River. He quotes a poem about a “sacred river that sinks in tumult to a lifeless ocean.” This is an image of death from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. As the poem continues it states, “and mid this tumult Kubla heard from far, ancestral voices prophesying war.” As we have all mentioned, Claude is the one causing this prophesy to come true. In contrast, when Edgar is dying he sees the smoke swirling above him and he is in the river of Herodotus, the river of life, p. 551, “the image of a river, broad and placid, beginning nowhere and ending nowhere, flowing on and on.”
In the episode about the whirlwind, we see the dog Essay choosing to face down the storm instead of taking shelter. On p. 472 Edgar describes his father looking out at thunderstorms in the same terms. “You put yourself in front of the thing and waited for whatever was going to happen and that was all. It scared you and it didn’t matter. You stood and faced it. There was no outwitting anything.” (Unlike Claude, the master manipulator.)
As Edgar returns to the farm he seems to have made the same choice. On p. 543 he reflects, “He had never had much of a plan for when he returned except to say what he knew was true and keep saying it.” Now I may be getting silly here but this makes me think of Edgar’s actual name and his pivotal role in this narrative: saw… tell.
As for fire, the most thought-provoking thing I have discovered is that looking back at the crossword scene, Edgar holds back the answer “empyreal,” the word-meaning for the clue “formed of light or fire.” Yet today when I looked this word up in the dictionary, I see that the given definition is, “highest part of the heavens, of sky, heavenly, sublime.” Although Edgar’s fate is sealed by the poison administered by the murderer Claude, his soul is both formed by fire and moving skyward, heavenly, sublime.

Week 10 Edgar Sawtelle

Week 10 – "Trudy"

Sorry for being late, everyone. I have not peeked at your posts and can hardly wait to read them!
In Week 10, we get some valuable insight into Trudy. “As an orphan handed from relation to relation a half dozen times before she was 12, Trudy could wield an insular self-reliance…” p.482. I disagree with the author holding onto this information for so long. First of all, this is the fundamental formative experience of Trudy’s life. She is a main character and perhaps it would have been better to know a bit more about her earlier. I know an author is not supposed to get bogged down in back story at the beginning of the novel, but this is a bit extreme, that we have to wait until the end of the book to learn about Trudy. So basically Trudy’s life was defined by death right from the start. First her parents both die making her an orphan, and then you infer other bad things happening causing her to move a lot and not form any lasting parental-type relationships in her youth. This also to me illuminates the depth of her depression at not being able to form her ideal family, first through having her own children with a man she loves, and then to have it taken from her by Gar’s death. It also means that she had no role models for being a good parent.
Ever since the prologue, the reader has had the idea of poison in the back of their mind. Now I think we are going to see the complexity of this image as DW winds up his story. In this week’s reading we learn about what is “poison” for Trudy: depression, “Every hour spent like that poisoned her, she’d thought, yet the sensation was irresistible, enthralling, equal parts dread and desire.” P. 476. We are also given the black plant image, the extended metaphor from seed to vine to woven cage.
When the wolf pup dies, she resolves, “That night she had made a pact with death itself: she could stay if she allowed death to stay as well. In choosing life she embraced contradiction.” p. 477 I think this means that Trudy has tried her best to overcome all the deaths that have shadowed her since childhood, and to accept death as part of life. She has decided that she will continue to live. Nevertheless, she has had to deal with more than most people. Presumably she has been worried that Edgar has died, because she hasn’t heard from him, and then the death of Almondine has also occurred.
Trudy is also described as insular, but I find that her actions show her to be the opposite of this. She has an unbreakable connection to Gar and Edgar, and her relationship with the dogs is one of complete personal interaction, not the dry paper records that entranced Gar. The dogs are like her pack. Plus she lets Claude into her home and life.
Claude is described as the great distracter, and presented as a wild sort of force but again I feel that in reality he is the ultimate controller not a distracter. Everything is done for a purpose, no matter how random or playful it seems. He has actually taken Gar’s life for his own reasons, and he is manipulating Trudy and Glen. We even see that he is trying to get Edgar to act in a certain way. He makes sure that Edgar gets the money and the key to the Impala so that Edgar will take off again, only this time he will be caught by Glen, who has also been manipulated.
We learn a little more about Claude’s background too. DW tells us, “only classical music bored him with its orderly sterility.” P 483. This is a total contrast to Henry of course, who played the highly structured Bach all the time. As well, this is a bit misleading. Pop music is also written according to a fairly inflexible formula. I have been thinking about why these details have been provided to us. To make us like Claude more? To make him more accessible and human? It has not worked on me!

Week 9 Edgar Sawtelle

I found the chapter called Almondine almost unbearably sad. If Frank hadn't been sitting reading his book beside me I am sure I would have been crying. In the earlier chapter, Edgar is coming to terms with how he has treated Almondine and what he really wants. But, continuing the Shakespeare parallels, between Edgar's thoughts about Almondine and then Almondine's thoughts and actions, it is sure like the end of R & J.
Also, it's almost a year exactly from when I had to take my beautiful Stella Husky to be put to sleep. I still miss her so much, her companionship, trail-loving energy and sense of humour.
I guess some of my comments are going to return to what I wrote last week. Sorry to be a bit limited in my reflections. Much to my surprise, DW has written a bit about the theme of inevitability in the Week 9 chapters. On Page 457, Edgar says, "Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence."
He also addresses the motif of dog training and proofing. Edgar now rejects this cause and effect pattern, and decides on Page 453, "No more commands. Never again." I think this also relates to the earlier passages about whether dogs can analyze a situation and decide for themselves. He is giving this freedom to Essay, and then the whole next chapter is about Almondine's thought processes and her decision. Somehow I feel that the results for the dogs in this book are not going to be any happier than for the human characters.
I see this as a change in Edgar’s world view or personal philosophy. He no longer feels that he can control his future by making decisions. The proofing never worked that well on Essay anyway, yet in her recklessness and disobedience she did survive the waterspout/tornado. Maybe Edgar sees this as a viable alternative, to relinquish planning out his future and follow his heart back home. Or maybe he no longer cares if he is a victim of the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”
I also see that Edgar is moving even further away from the real world. Various elements that we would consider part of the world of human relationships and day to day routines are being removed from Edgar by the author. First his father, then the vet, then his friend Henry, then two of the three dogs … not to mention his focused existence on the farm was already unravelling by the time he left. Essay does not have the same bond with him, to tie him to the quotidian. Now Almondine is also gone. His mother and Claude are left, for now.
I really got thinking about two things this week. First, reading tragedy. Once the narrative has been identified as such, by you, the author, critics, or whomever, are you meant to then read through the lens of that structure? Less identification with characters, less personal connection? Or are you supposed to immerse yourself in the sadness?
Secondly, this year on my leave I have spent a lot of my time reading about the craft of writing and editing my novels. I would find it impossible I think to write a tragedy. I can't imagine the experience of living in Edgar's world every day for the number of years that it must have taken to write this book. Maybe I am too much a "method" writer! Or a wimp.
Finally, I found the writing itself in these four chapters to be even more lyrical and beautiful than the rest of the book. I am in awe of DW's descriptive abilities.On Page 456 he says, "He slept beside the dying embers as if trading them for dreams." Edgar has suffered many heartbreaks through making decisions or following his dreams. But to replace them with the beautiful death of a diminishing fire does not seem to forecast a happy future.
As a side note, this week I had a really interesting instance of the convergence offered by technology, the first for me. I had put a message on Twitter, where most of the people I follow are teachers, which in turn appeared automatically on Facebook, about Edgar Sawtelle as YA literature and a companion to Hamlet for senior students. A teacher from somewhere else in Ontario replied on Twitter that she agreed, and noted that in addition to the correspondence of characters and names we have already noted, she feels Almondine is fulfilling the role of Ophelia…

Edgar Sawtelle - Week 7, 8

For me, a lot of the tone of this book derives from a feeling that no matter what Edgar does, events are going to take their course. But actually that is backwards. DW is making sure that Edgar makes choices throughout his story, and the resulting occurences proceed in a logical fashion just like in the domino cliche.
In Outside Lute, Henry comments a couple of times that this "is definitely not an ordinary situation." (p. 377&381) The reason it feels that way to him is that he has made a decision in his own life to let Edgar and the dogs stay with him.In turn, Edgar must deal with Tinder's situation. He decides that Tinder's wound is too severe to travel, and for him to carry the first aid supplies. He seeks outside help, out of the ordinary for him. He even lifts Tinder himself out of the patch of sunflowers and walks back to Henry. Not to mention the break in routine. Ordinary is to keep travelling.
The fact that Henry is getting accustomed to the dogs, although awkwardly, is new to him. He pats them and handles them in odd ways, but he does reach out to them, brings them bones. And it is he who verbalizes the ordinary/extraordinary observations.
There is a passage descrbing a classic cause and effect scenario, when Edgar reaizes he has not trained the dogs for three days, and returns to the routine of proofing commands. (Been there, done that!) But this occurs often enough to be a motif in the novel.
I feel that DW has been almost mathematical in laying this out. Another example is that Edgar feels guilty for stealing, and this is why he also feels he must stay and clean the shed. Action, reaction.At the same time, cleaning the shed is out of the ordinary - both the ghostly previous owner and evidently Henry too have put off this chore.I think Edgar himself has commented on this. In earlier chapters, he says over and over, "Why did I do that?" He knows on some level that he did not cause his father's death, but also that one thing has led to another inevitably.
Even the music. Probably no more complex pattern than the Bach that Henry listens to - but I think hyper-predictable if you are knowledgeable about that sort of thing (which I am not).Even the extraordinary will become part of an inevitable pattern, I think. I am looking forward to finding out if my predictions come true, but also dreading the tragic future that seems to be Edgar's lot.
On different topic, I want to post in another online community (the YAlitchat Ning) today about whether or not ES is a crossover novel. Is it really Young Adult literature, because Edgar is an adolescent? Is it like Miriam Teows' A Complicated Kindness which is now shelved both with adult books and teen books at the library and bookstores? I would say yes, myself.

First Book Club

I can't believe it. I am finally a member of a book club! Thanks to Mandi for enlisting me. Amidst my usual frenzy of mystery and YA novel-reading, I have now delved into The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski which is the book the club is reading. I had to get to page 411 in order to post (because it is an online club) and have now made it.
Well. Someone should offer DW an honourary Canadian citizenship. Or maybe he is actually a secret Canadian who has sneaked over the border to Wisconsin or Colorado or wherever to live. I bet he is penpals with Alastair McLeod and Miriam Toews and re-reads Margaret Laurence for fun. Because this book is just the sort of grim little agricultural tale that I associate with Canadian literary classics.
Yes, it is an amazing work of art, beautiful, readable, can't put it down... and I am sure I will never forget this experience. The book became somewhat more enjoyable once I realized that every single thing was going to turn out bad so I stopped getting my hopes up for Edgar and his dogs and his family. I get that this is a tragedy and Mandi gave me the Hamlet hint before I started. Yet even though this is such a good book, I wonder if there is something amiss when you have to tell yourself to stop identifying with the main character and just step back and admire the writer's accomplishment in weaving his mesmerising tale.
I know I have been reading it like a mystery, at times, hoping that Edgar will piece together the clues and be able to make a difference. But I fear this is not in cards. Don't know for sure, though.
This really reminds me of a quote I read in a book on writing. It said that popular or genre fiction shows a character arc, plot development, etc., and literature simply shows the existence and reflections of the character.
It has also been interesting to put myself for the first time in the shoes (or armchair) of my students - reading and commenting on a set passage and no further, making predictions, etc. But it felt weird to put the book down at page 411 and not read through to the grand finale. Later.

Working Together – Two Studies

During the past five years I have had the chance to work as project manager on two large, funded studies, and each was fun and gratifying in its own way.
Boys' Literacy
The first was a three-year Boys’ Literacy study in which we focused on the strategy “Help Make It A Habit:” a lengthy sustained, silent reading unit, enlivened by a bit of competition, rewards and various lessons.
This weekend I had the chance to read “Me Read? And How!” the follow-up publication to “Me read? No Way!” Both booklets look at ways to get boys more enthused about reading, and hopefully improve their ability as well. It was exciting to see our study quoted twice, including a write-up on our Reading Challenge activity under the heading “Try It.” The study was based on action research I had begun the year before, in which I was astounded at my students’ improvement in reading comprehension as a result of a fairly hands-off, student-directed silent reading project. The study findings were similar.
I can’t help but think back to a university programming course I took. It was a killer – a mixed bunch of us in a first year C++ course. Two thirds dropped it; the rest of us stuck it out. I ended up with a C (appropriate enough), by far the lowest mark I ever got on a report card other than in Grade 6 when Miss Roadhouse gave me a D in handwriting. But the teacher was excellent. He said, “You do not need a math background to be a successful programmer. To be get better at programming, you need to program.” So, to quote Malcolm Gladwell, I sure did not get my 10,000 hours in, but I am hopeful that my students will get enough time to read material that they enjoy, that they will in fact become good readers.
TLLP – WeBlog
I have written elsewhere in the blog about the study and also posted our final report. But I also want to mention a bit about the wrap-up conference held a couple of weeks ago. One of the best things about being in the TLLP world, is the respect shown to us as classroom teachers. I have been amazed throughout at the effort, imagination and hard work that went into making all aspects of the study process fantastic. The conference was so great that I honestly did not want to leave. Speakers included Hon. Kathleen Wynne, Annie Kidder and Samantha Nutt. And the chance to meet with other teachers and discuss first-hand their projects and findings was for me an absolutely compelling experience. My only regret was not being able to visit each and every booth. The event was something that will inspire me for a long time to come, both with concrete, classroom-tested ideas, and with the enthusiasm of all of the teachers involved.
I have to say though that even more inspiring was the group of teachers that I got to work with throughout this project. They were the most creative, hard-working and supportive team I have ever encountered. And that is from someone whose preference is rarely group-work oriented. (Yes, the term control freak may be used here, readers.)
I have tried over the last year to think about why I enjoyed the TLLP project so much. First, it never really seemed like work. Learning the technology was challenging but fun. Teaching the students about blogging and wikis was a blast because they were so engaged and produced such fine work.
Second, none of us tried to limit the work of the study in any way. Following the advice from the first TLLP conference, we allowed other people to participate, being inclusive, and broadening our focus and our learning.And also I have to say this was the first group I have ever seen where participants were not trying to over-structure, control, limit, and ultimately slow down the other group members. Everyone always seemed open to the idea of moving forward, applying our knowledge in our own worlds, and taking that learning as far as we wished. It was an outstanding experience. Thanks!

Math Lit

I've recently begun reading The Drunkard’s Walk. The sub-title of this book is “How Randomness Rules Our Lives.” It’s written by Leonard Mlodinow. So, what are the chances that, during the week that I am getting some co-teaching help from a high-school colleague, for my probability unit, that Frank would buy a popular book on … probability? Hmmm…
So far I have read chapter one, and it is very accessible and entertaining. One of the most interesting segments looks at the brain actions that govern how humans process uncertainty, and how rats can out perform humans in predicting certain probability results. As a teacher I enjoyed the discussion on the value of positive and negative reinforcement. And of course I was encouraged by the rundown of all the successful authors who had their work rejected many time before achieving spectacular results: John Grisham, J.K. Rowling, Tony Hillerman and others. The author concludes, “successful people in every field are almost always members of a certain set – the set of people who don’t give up.”
Subsequent chapters involve, “basic principles of probability and how they are abused,” and “the meaning and lack of meaning in measurements.”
Flipping ahead in the book I got a good laugh from the line graph showing synchronous results from the “number of years that 300 fund managers performed in the top 50%, and the number of correct calls of 10 coin flips by 300 students.” I can’t wait till Frank is finished with his book and I can read the rest.

Lost Poems

In a Twitter exchange with Barbara McLaughlin, I was reminded of how much I was influenced by various poems, upon first reading them. And the pleasure of recalling lines or recognizing a stanza when stumbling across them years later. I remember first hearing the song Memory on the radio – before knowing about the musical Cats - and being sure that the lyrics were from T.S. Eliot. Just this past week a mystery novel I was reading quoted Dowson’s Cynara, and Barbara got me thinking of Ginsberg’s “angel-headed hipsters.” I have never been able to memorize poems thoroughly, except for Raymond Souster’s, “In your eyes, my whole life heaves, breaks, smashes. In your eyes, suddenly without love.” I’ve always liked Leonard Cohen’s “tidal waves of crow-stained sky,” in his poem about the van Gogh brothers. And I remember On Dover Beach, Keats’ Grecian Urn, Gray’s Elegy, and quite a bit of Yeats, all for different reasons. There seems to be no time in my life to sit down with the large anthologies that were my constant companions in university, or to seek out individual volumes by various poets. I have managed to incorporate a couple of favourites into my English course, the narrative poems David by Earle Birney, and The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. I think I may start a scrapbook of favourites, seeking them out and making copies to read and enjoy more easily. Then I wondered about creating an online collection, but it just wouldn’t be the same. Or maybe little Blackberry files?

Zoning In

There are so many aspects of The Element (Sir Ken Robinson) to comment on but I will zero in on The Zone to start with. I first heard this term nearly 10 years ago during the inaugural Muskoka Three-Day Novel Marathon. As the event name would indicate, you go to a venue – empty storefront, coffee shop, community centre, it changes from year to year – and try to write a novel in three days and three nights. One of the founders, writer, poet and teacher Martin Avery, used the term to describe the state of mind you had to get into in order to speed-write your story. In The Zone, you are able to concentrate and block out distractions. But even more importantly, you are in a region of the imagination that enables you to gather momentum, generating the forward movement of your characters through the world of your plot, and pushing your writing to snap out images, description and evocative dialogue, hardly aware of the pages scrolling in front of you on the computer screen.
Sir Ken describes this as being, “deep in the heart of the Element." (p. 86) He adds, “We become focused and intent. We live in the moment. We become lost in the experience and perform at our peak… our minds merge with our bodies and we feel ourselves drawn effortlessly into the heart of the Element.”
I realized the other evening when I was writing to the TLLP team members about ideas for our final report that, once again, I was in the zone. I had not ever made this connection before – that the zone of fiction writing is similar to the zone for project planning. When I think of how much I enjoy writing proposals and reports, and devising new unit plans, I now realize that it’s the zone that makes me feel that I have transcended even the other enjoyable aspects of my job, and there are many. But for me, trying to set out the big ideas and map out the progress of projects or units is a special pleasure. It’s the zone, for sure!