Literary Immersion

by Grace Steele

“Mrs. Steele, I think this might be my favorite book of all time.”

I love hearing that phrase. We finished A Single Shard in 5th grade recently, and many of them have said this to me since then. I’ve noticed that my students often have a delightfully passionate response to the books we read in class, which has a lot to do with the excellence of the books themselves. But a transfer student who decides to go back and read some of the previous year’s literature books for fun rarely has the same ardent reaction… So book choice doesn’t explain all of it. I have come to describe this exuberant, joyful reaction to literature as being a result of literary immersion: complete preoccupation and delight in a novel. 

In my classes, we become preoccupied with our novels by spending a long time reading a single book,  poring over its myriad beautiful details, and  experiencing its conflicts together. This combination results in “literary immersion,” which gives way naturally to an enthusiastic love of literature. 

On average, each of my classes reads between seven and eight novels per year. We spend roughly a month reading each title, give or take a week for extra-long or super-short works. The students are not allowed to read ahead of the rest of the class, and they are assigned approximately a chapter of reading each night. This slow and steady pace allows for us to luxuriate in the story and get really familiar with its setting and all of our characters, until we all feel like the people we are reading about are our friends, and the place where they live is just around the corner. We live and breathe the book’s atmosphere for long enough that even the least motivated student stands no chance when trying to resist engagement. This gives us the opportunity to soak in every beautiful detail of the author’s creation. 

My lesson plans revolve around those beautiful details. Each day, the students engage in lively discussion of the various important aspects of their reading. I guide them through the novel by asking careful questions, demanding commitment to the text on the page, and highlighting what I personally love about our books. They listen, they ask questions, they take notes, and they write. Oh boy, do they write. Because we take our time going through our books, we have the wonderful opportunity to dive into, not only what makes the work important, but how to express that importance in their own words, giving voice to the growing love of literature inside of them. 

The last aspect of literary immersion is the most fun, and perhaps the most important: we enter the story together, we experience its most dramatic events together, and we leave the story together. I read aloud to them at the beginning and end of the novels, and at the parts where I can’t stand to miss their reactions—the most pivotal, dramatic moments. This community experience seals the deal of literary immersion. Not only do we take our time, luxuriate and appreciate, but we also get to experience the most impactful moments of the story all together, in an environment tailored to the love of stories. The students feed off of one another’s excitement, which causes that excitement to build and build until it reaches a fever pitch of enthusiasm for the story which makes the experience all the more memorable and special. 

With each new book I begin with my classes, it is my goal to achieve literary immersion. I want my students so immersed in the story that they shiver with cold while reading The Long Winter, that they laugh with tears in their eyes when finishing Jane of Lantern Hill, and that they gasp in horror when Madame de Villefort commits her last murder in The Count of Monte Cristo. 

My dearest hope and ambition is that, through literary immersion, my students will build up a store of experiences that fill them with the joy literature can bring to one’s life. Then, they can go into the world armed with the values imparted to them by the books we have read together, and also with the desire to read more, mining the world’s literature for more of the infinite value it has to offer.

In Defense of Organic Writing

by Jeremiah Cobra

I recently had a discussion with a tech entrepreneur about artificial intelligence and its potential to emulate human writing. He was particularly interested in speaking with a teacher on this topic because he wanted to know how they might employ A.I. on their assignments. I immediately felt the need to defend organic writing by telling him that the current rise of A.I. had made very little impact in my classroom. For starters, all of the writing done by VanDamme Academy students is done in the classroom, usually in pencil. I followed this defense with another: that my own experiments with ChatGPT have revealed its current inability to generate content that I cannot distinguish as artificial. Nevertheless, I am acutely aware of the potential for A.I. not only to convincingly emulate human writing in the future but quite possibly to render human writing obsolete. As a writing teacher, this is a terrifying outlook; if J. M. Steadman and Norman Forester are correct in their notion that writing in its essence is thinking, then A.I. may mean the obsolescence of human thinking. That is a potential reality against which I will fight with absolute fervor.

In my lifetime, I have been privy to the war waged on writing. Academically, the battles have included attacks on the importance of phonics, the relevance of grammar, and the value of the structured essay. Culturally, we have seen the ubiquity of text messaging, the prevalence of social media, and most recently a fascination with artificial intelligence. While the former three weapons are the product of gross intellectual negligence in academia, the latter three are most dangerous because there is an obvious value in the potential for technology to increase productivity and human connectivity. Artificial intelligence may someday bring about a capacity to create tremendous amounts of important literature in the blink of an eye. This capacity for productivity can be harmful in its automation of writing, and that harm is most easily observable in the current limitations of A.I.

As I expressed in my conversation with the tech entrepreneur, it is currently quite easy for me to distinguish between my students’ work and an artificial writing. The minor observations I have made are that the vocabulary and grammatical structures in artificial writing are either too sophisticated for my students or awkward in a way that does not reflect their natural linguistic struggles. Artificial writing also lacks specific references to discussions I have in the classroom before my students begin their first drafts. Then alas, there is the first draft: A.I. has no need for them. Thus, its stories lack the initial chaos of a child’s imagination, and its essays do not reflect the struggle every writer faces when organizing his thoughts by the process of outlining, drafting, and editing. Every computer-generated piece of writing is a missed opportunity for someone to refine an idea, which is often quite disorganized in our minds regardless of our individual intelligence or cognitive development.

This is the value of writing: that much of what we know is a fairly chaotic mess in our heads until we begin to organize that knowledge on paper. Even now, as I write this article, I am engaging in the organization and clarification of a battle that I was not quite able to identify until I was halfway through the first draft. On that draft, I simply meant to get the chaos out of my head. I then organized it into an outline with the following thesis statement: The more we neglect the process of writing, the less capacity we will have for clear thinking. In a world of increasingly complex technologies and economies we cannot afford a shortage of clear thinkers.

A few days after my conversation, I became much more cognizant of commercials by Grammarly, which explicitly promises people that you do not need to know grammar; Grammarly’s new algorithms and technology mean that an A.I. will be right there to think for you on that important essay, article, or cover letter. By the final draft of this article, I have become quite clear on the importance of teaching my students to write in spite of the imminent rise of artificial intelligence. The words that we generate are more than just a tool to pass a class or get a job. Those words represent the process by which we expand the capacity of our minds. And we must persevere any onslaught against that process.

A Note of History

by Andrew Lewis

As students grow in knowledge and develop in maturity, they need fresh challenges to stimulate and promote their intellectual development. At VanDamme Academy, one such challenge is presented to them in 6th grade history classes: to write their own notes.

When, early in 6th grade, students are told that they will be learning to write their own notes, the announcement  is usually met by understandable trepidation. It sounds new and scary, like removing the training wheels from the bicycle for the first time. However, as with learning to ride a bicycle, students have been preparing this skill since they wrote their first sentence in kindergarten. And they have been imbibing the correct format for organizing written material since they began copying notes from the whiteboard in 2nd grade. Nonetheless, “writing your own notes” can be a disconcerting prospect.

It takes about a month of 6th grade for the students to acclimate to the increased rigor and pace of the junior high history curriculum and to solidify their already well prepared note-copying skills. The actual “challenge,” once the students have been suitably prepared, takes only a day or so to accomplish. By the end of the first week of taking their own notes, the students’ reaction ranges from, “What was the big deal?” to “This is so much better!” and “This is fun!” As with any skill, it takes further guidance, practice, and monitoring to truly master the task–all of which they will receive through the end of 8th grade–but the basic  skill is mastered quite easily and quickly, and students quickly reach an implicit grasp of just how well they have mastered it.

The main classroom benefit of independent note-taking is that instruction is significantly more efficient. Instead of waiting for students to carefully copy notes from the board, the teacher can proceed with the lecture and cover more material as the students are readily able to keep up with the material at an increased pace. The students are exposed to more content, and they learn more, especially as they intellectually process the material more thoroughly to put it “in their own words.” This has a more lasting and meaningful educational impact than accurate copying. But the main benefit to the student is deeper and more enduring.

As their note-taking skills develop, and as their work is checked and corrected on a daily basis, the students develop more confidence in their own minds—their abilities to process and understand intellectual material—and to then communicate that knowledge in a meaningful way. That confidence is not confined to one subject. It is a broad, general sense that to grasp any and all material is possible with appropriate effort and diligence. As all their teachers have nourished this trait in a variety of ways since the day they joined the school, by the time they graduate, those students have established not only a well founded confidence in their own minds, but also a significant sense of independence, that their minds are efficacious and capable of embracing and succeeding at whatever challenges they choose to meet in the future.

All from a simple note of history.

Help! My Child Has a Feeling!

by Kyle Steele

Before I became a father, I had 12 years of teaching experience under my belt. I thought, probably foolishly, that this might make being a parent easier for me. I thought I would have an easier time when my child had social or emotional problems at school. After all, a big part of my job, and one of the most enjoyable parts, is helping parents and students when students have social conflicts or feel sad about school. I have a long track record of having parents come into my office worried and upset and leave feeling calm, optimistic, and heard. Surely, I’d be able to navigate my son’s social challenges with grace and poise.

Little did I know…

When my son, Isaac, turned four, he started to seem reluctant to go to school. He would tell stories of students not wanting to play with him, even speaking unkindly to him. When we would ask him who he played with, he would say no one.

It took precious little time for me to start worrying intensely about this. When I would pick him up, I would try to spy for a few seconds at the dynamics at recess, as though those few glimpses could give me a clear picture of his social life and reveal how I could help him. I tried to teach him at home how to play with other kids at school, which was a little like trying to teach a fish how to swim—they don’t understand you and it comes naturally anyway. I began to question every decision Mrs. Steele and I have made as parents. Maybe we should let him watch more TV, I would think, and then he could talk about Transformers and superheroes with his friends.

Seeing my child unhappy made me miserable. Lacking first-hand knowledge of what really happened at school made me worried. And being powerless to help directly made me go a little nuts.

Happily, cooler heads prevailed in the Steele household (that would be Mrs. Steele, of course).  She advised me to give myself the same advice she had so often heard me give other parents. I’ve never put this advice in writing, so I thought I would do that here in hopes it might help other parents.

1.     Not every feeling is an action item. When our children are infants and toddlers, their feelings are their only way to communicate and get what they need. At these ages, feelings = parental action. But as they get older, their feelings are something we observe and sooth more than act upon. For older children, feelings of anger, fear, worry, and sadness are often ways they energize themselves to solve their own problems. You should expect your child to experience the full range of human emotions over their childhood.

2.     Most problems are solved when students grow through them, not when we intervene from the outside. Practical problems like tying shoes or getting food often require parental intervention and instruction to solve. But most social and emotional problems are things children grow through by experiencing them. For example, they may have to encounter the same annoying kid over and over until they figure out for themselves how to handle and relate to this challenging peer. It can be frustrating for parents and teachers to watch the child go back to this same person like a moth to a flame, but this is often how growth happens. It is easy for us as adults to overestimate how essential and effective our interventions are into social and emotional challenges.

3.     The best thing we can offer at home is safety, comfort, and love. But the above should not be construed as saying that parents have no role to play and should be hands off in all matters. Children need the safety, comfort, and love of home in order to process whatever social challenges they are working through and fortify themselves to tackle them again. This might be a conversation about the problem where you offer sympathy and even advice. But just as often this looks like happy family meals and quality time that has nothing to do with the mean kid at school. These experiences reinforce a positive view of oneself, the world and others that will help them face challenges outside the home.

4.     Most problems last longer than you want them to, but not as long as you fear they will. It’s hard to have the patience to give love and support at home while a child tackles new challenges at school. We want to fix the problem now, and we imagine nightmare scenarios where the problem will go on forever and grow exponentially over time. But if you reflect on your own experience, you’ll recognize that most problems in your life or in the life of your child don’t grow unchecked forever.

5.     Big problems have big symptoms. The things that require parent intervention usually look different than other problems. They involve something big like hitting, gossiping, threats, or theft. Or they persist longer than might seem normal. It’s difficult to make simple and concrete rules for what constitutes a “big problem”, but if you hold that category in your mind, you will know it when you see it.

6.     Teachers need information more than solutions When you think you have a big problem on your hands, or you think you need to learn more about a problem, it’s best to go to your child’s teacher. You don’t need to put the burden on yourself to identify the root cause of the problem and the solution. Instead, you simply need to provide information. Often, the teacher can put that information into a broader and is in the best position to find and implement a solution.

When Mrs. Steele got me to think about this advice, I was in a better position to help Isaac. I realized that conflict with friends is natural in childhood. Isaac would likely grow through it with time so long as Mrs. Steele and I provide him a safe and loving homelife to retreat to. I remembered that the problem last longer than I want it to, but it wouldn’t last forever. And sure enough, in a week or two, Isaac was playing with all his friends again and making new ones. I didn’t need to talk to his teachers, but because Mrs. Steele and I picked a great preschool that we trust, we are confident we could have talked to his teachers about our worries and gotten useful insights from them.

From the Archives: To Love Great Literature

by Lisa VanDamme

I have spent my twenty-five years as a teacher further and further refining my purpose, to its present obsessive focus. My animating ambition, the one I live, sleep, and breathe, is to help people learn to love – to love – great literature. 

In the span of that time, the task has become only tougher, primarily because of the omnipresence of technology. The quick and ready entertainment, meme and soundbite style content, and constant din of calls for our attention that come with a smartphone in every hand mean it has become increasingly difficult to get anyone to read.

Nevertheless, when my students are in the classroom, held as a captive audience, their devices all turned off and set aside, and we have in our hands one of the beloved books of my carefully chosen curriculum, I still feel an almost infallible power to turn them into thoughtful, eager, and passionate lovers of books.

While I myself am always learning more about what it takes to teach literature well – whether that means conceptualizing techniques that come to me as instinct, or gaining new insights from the world’s great teachers, present and past – I am confident I can name the fundamental principle behind my (perhaps immodest) boast of infallibility.

To be an effective guide and mentor, you must be in love with literature yourself.

I say “be in love with” rather than “love” to give emphasis to the personal and passionate form the attachment has to take. If familiarity with great books feels to you like some duty of cultural literacy, if the experience of reading is more cerebral than it is of the soul, if the books you teach do not reverberate in the very core of your being, then you are not “in love with” literature.

Most of my memories of studying books in school involve, at best, dry discussions of literary devices, and, at worst, no discussion at all, but only multiple-choice tests to prove I’d done the reading. Almost never do I recall a teacher modeling an earnest emotional investment in the work, and rarely did I come to feel that kind of intense and personal connection.

By contrast, someone recently described to me how, as a boy, reading Lord of the Rings had made him desire to be good. He found himself unable to abide the thought of doing anything that, in his mind, would make him a disappointment to heroes like Frodo and Gandalf. That is what it means to be in love with a book. He saw the novel’s theme, he felt its import, and he made it a part of himself.

One of the problems endemic to education is that this love of literature has been lost. We cannot teach that which we are not capable of ourselves. So, if our capacity for that love has atrophied, or was never properly developed, what are we to do?

It is important for me to note here that I did not learn to love books until I was in my mid-twenties, and already working as a teacher. I have a vivid memory from my youth of watching a performance of The Miracle Workerand finding it painfully dull. Today, it is painful for me to confess that, because this play has come to stand in my mind for what it means to awaken a child’s soul to “a consciousness of her immortal nature” – to be a teacher, in the truest sense of the word. And after teaching this play every year for two decades, I still cannot read the climactic scene without crying.

My own eyes were first opened when I read Victor Hugo’s novel Ninety-Three aloud to my little group of homeschooled students so many years ago. We were wholly absorbed and focused. We were riveted by the plot. We gasped in chorus at the sudden twists and sighed over sentimental passages. We discussed our reactions as we read, and we worked to decipher Hugo’s message. The experience was as much a life-altering one for me as it was for them.

The point is, even if a passionate approach to literature does not now come naturally to you, it is a skill that can be revived or learned afresh.

·      Connect again with that classic that really made you feel – in love with the aloof Mr. Darcy, awed by the integrity of Atticus, pitying of poor Jane Eyre.

·      Find a mentor. When I discovered a great literature teacher, I consumed every word of his I could, and, afterward, strove to emulate his process. I am now trying to offer mentorship myself through a program called Read With Me, whose mission is “to help people connect emotionally with the classics.”

·      Take a close look at Mark Edmundson’s Why Read? or Arnold Bennett’s Literary Taste. Hear the former tell you in impassioned tones why “real reading is reincarnation,” and let the latter explain how literature helps us raise the plane of our existence “to the top level of the peaks.”

·      Recall that reading great books is meant to be a pleasure – not an idle one, but the profoundest kind we can know. Don’t consider a book part of your personal repertoire or eligible for your curriculum until you are able to consume it as a life-enhancing pleasure yourself. 

Now, in one sense, a love of literature is only the precondition of effective teaching; it doesn’t give you a process. But it another sense, it is necessary and sufficient.

If you yourself have mastered a book’s meaning, felt its import, and made it a part of yourself, then you will know that all your efforts must be integrated around helping your students do the same. You won’t allow yourself to be distracted by too much talk of literary devices, you won’t be content for your students to prove only a rudimentary grasp of the content, and your discussions won’t be soulless and cerebral. You will be better able to trust your instincts, because you will know, deeply, the purpose you hope to achieve.

With my own faithful repertoire of books I dearly love, I can now be sure that every year a student will, for example, beg to keep her copy of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House so she can share it with a sister, or create a year-long calligraphic log of favorite literary quotes, or declare indignantly that I have ruined her for romance because no man will ever be a Cyrano de Bergerac, or weep with me more than once over scenes in Les Misèrables, or ask for keepsake versions of the books we read for Christmas.

I am in love with these books, and they learn to love them too.