TE 847 Advanced Methods for Teaching Language Arts
Advanced Methods of Teaching Language Arts led graduate students through the use of Book CLubs or Literature Circles as a pedagogial method for teaching literacy. While engaging in Book Club activities around several contemporary novels such as The Namesake and Water for Elephants, we also designed lessons for using Book Clubs in our own classrooms. The content of the course was highly applicable as it coincided and added to my use of Book Clubs in my fifth grade classrooms. The following essay is an example of a reading shared with my Book Club partners written as a conclusion to one of our Book Club readings.
Advanced Methods of Teaching Language Arts led graduate students through the use of Book CLubs or Literature Circles as a pedagogial method for teaching literacy. While engaging in Book Club activities around several contemporary novels such as The Namesake and Water for Elephants, we also designed lessons for using Book Clubs in our own classrooms. The content of the course was highly applicable as it coincided and added to my use of Book Clubs in my fifth grade classrooms. The following essay is an example of a reading shared with my Book Club partners written as a conclusion to one of our Book Club readings.
Old Folks and Water For Elephants
To be honest I wasn’t terribly excited about reading a book about circus characters. I guess I’m not much interested in the circus. I had enjoyed The Namesake and The Kite Runner, but I felt I might plod through Water for Elephants. Yeh, I know, don’t judge a book by its cover…fortunately, I was drawn into the story by the geriatric Jacob Jankowski. I find old people and old characters much more interesting than circuses or elephants. So, as a reader, I was hooked by Sara Gruen’s use of the elder Jacob’s flashback dreams and the non-linear plot structure.
“How might we learn to appreciate the stories and life lessons of our elders and encourage people younger than ourselves to appreciate our own?”
I want to take a more reflective approach to this post than I have for the others, because I am someone who has an appreciation for the stories of old people and perhaps reflecting on my experience can elucidate how people can learn to appreciate their stories. Old folks are not seen as sources of wisdom and, as Jacob expresses, are more a financial and physical burden that are left to rot away in nursing homes. I’ve watched this first hand, but have also seen alternative relationships with elders.
As a kid, there were a lot of old folks in my family. In third grade, my brother and I used to walk to my great grandmother’s house after school. She lived with my great aunt and great uncle. We would stay with them, usually drinking Cokes and watching TV, and would listen to their stories, their funny sayings, their teasing one another. My mom would go shopping for them and I can still remember items from their shopping list: orange marmalade, Pepperridge Farms bread, brandy. My brother and I used to help my great uncle do yard work and listen to all his peculiar idioms and interjections…ein schwein pickledorf! At that young age, I recognized that they were people with stories, a sense of humor, and an appreciation for the pleasures of life. And since they no longer worked, they were people that just lived and talk about living.
Unfortunately, after my great grandmother died, Uncle Paul and Aunt Betty were both moved into an apartment and later to a nursing home. We visited the nursing home often. I can still remember the smells and the moans of other old folks. Aunt Betty would sit in her bed at age eighty-something and tell us what she did at age twenty as if it were yesterday. I guess she didn’t have much worth remembering after that.
At about the same time my dad was interviewing and photographing the old folks of Caldwell County, Texas. These oral histories and photographs were published as a book entitled The Earth Has No Sorrow. He used to take us out to visit and eat with the old folks he'd interview. We would sit and listen to Will Langley, at age eighty-eight, talk about how he had farmed hundreds of thousands of acres. I sat as a kid and watched my father, who was about my age now, sit and listen attentively to old Will Langley. I learned to twiddle my thumbs by watching old Will and was surprised to count his six toes one afternoon.
My connections with old people seemed to be continuously present in my life. My brother adopted an old Puerto Rican poet named Jorge Brandon also known as El Coco que Habla. He would walk around the Lower East Side of Manhattan with El Coco and take care of him, buying him food and drinks. El Coco would talk about Puerto Rico and create spontaneous poetry in both Spanish and English. I would sit with him listening to an eighty year old with more charisma than just about anyone I knew.
As I hit forty, I’m starting to wonder why we shun old folks. How we can put them in morbid nursing homes, distance ourselves, and allow them to end their lives in loneliness? I wonder if it is because they are such a blatant remainder of our own mortality. As I get older I am much more aware of the brevity of life and how that permeates my concerns about career, relationships, everything. As people focus on career and kids and acquisition of junk, we are scared to face our own mortality and old folks are too much of a reminder. Of course, there are many cultures that value the wisdom of old folks and incorporate them into the family until they pass away surrounded by those they love.
When I was about twenty six, my eighty year grandfather and I drove back from fishing trip on the Texas coast. For the three and half hour drive, my grandfather talked the entire time, recounting in chronological order every job he had ever held, why he changed jobs, and what he enjoyed about each. I listened. Listening to a proud retelling of his own life taught me something, something about how we build our lives and hopefully can share our recollections with those we love as we come to towards the end. I’m glad I was there to listen.
He died at ninety one. My mom had help to take care of him up until his death. I ask her if it was tragic to watch such a strong man slowly grow weak and die. She said no, that in fact that it felt noble, an act of grace, to take care of the man who had taken care of her during her whole life.
So, I enjoy Water for Elephants because I imagined it like that car ride, just listening to old Jacob enjoying telling his best story. I’m glad he left that nursing home in his slippers for a last adventure and met Charlie, a person we should all emulate….
To be honest I wasn’t terribly excited about reading a book about circus characters. I guess I’m not much interested in the circus. I had enjoyed The Namesake and The Kite Runner, but I felt I might plod through Water for Elephants. Yeh, I know, don’t judge a book by its cover…fortunately, I was drawn into the story by the geriatric Jacob Jankowski. I find old people and old characters much more interesting than circuses or elephants. So, as a reader, I was hooked by Sara Gruen’s use of the elder Jacob’s flashback dreams and the non-linear plot structure.
“How might we learn to appreciate the stories and life lessons of our elders and encourage people younger than ourselves to appreciate our own?”
I want to take a more reflective approach to this post than I have for the others, because I am someone who has an appreciation for the stories of old people and perhaps reflecting on my experience can elucidate how people can learn to appreciate their stories. Old folks are not seen as sources of wisdom and, as Jacob expresses, are more a financial and physical burden that are left to rot away in nursing homes. I’ve watched this first hand, but have also seen alternative relationships with elders.
As a kid, there were a lot of old folks in my family. In third grade, my brother and I used to walk to my great grandmother’s house after school. She lived with my great aunt and great uncle. We would stay with them, usually drinking Cokes and watching TV, and would listen to their stories, their funny sayings, their teasing one another. My mom would go shopping for them and I can still remember items from their shopping list: orange marmalade, Pepperridge Farms bread, brandy. My brother and I used to help my great uncle do yard work and listen to all his peculiar idioms and interjections…ein schwein pickledorf! At that young age, I recognized that they were people with stories, a sense of humor, and an appreciation for the pleasures of life. And since they no longer worked, they were people that just lived and talk about living.
Unfortunately, after my great grandmother died, Uncle Paul and Aunt Betty were both moved into an apartment and later to a nursing home. We visited the nursing home often. I can still remember the smells and the moans of other old folks. Aunt Betty would sit in her bed at age eighty-something and tell us what she did at age twenty as if it were yesterday. I guess she didn’t have much worth remembering after that.
At about the same time my dad was interviewing and photographing the old folks of Caldwell County, Texas. These oral histories and photographs were published as a book entitled The Earth Has No Sorrow. He used to take us out to visit and eat with the old folks he'd interview. We would sit and listen to Will Langley, at age eighty-eight, talk about how he had farmed hundreds of thousands of acres. I sat as a kid and watched my father, who was about my age now, sit and listen attentively to old Will Langley. I learned to twiddle my thumbs by watching old Will and was surprised to count his six toes one afternoon.
My connections with old people seemed to be continuously present in my life. My brother adopted an old Puerto Rican poet named Jorge Brandon also known as El Coco que Habla. He would walk around the Lower East Side of Manhattan with El Coco and take care of him, buying him food and drinks. El Coco would talk about Puerto Rico and create spontaneous poetry in both Spanish and English. I would sit with him listening to an eighty year old with more charisma than just about anyone I knew.
As I hit forty, I’m starting to wonder why we shun old folks. How we can put them in morbid nursing homes, distance ourselves, and allow them to end their lives in loneliness? I wonder if it is because they are such a blatant remainder of our own mortality. As I get older I am much more aware of the brevity of life and how that permeates my concerns about career, relationships, everything. As people focus on career and kids and acquisition of junk, we are scared to face our own mortality and old folks are too much of a reminder. Of course, there are many cultures that value the wisdom of old folks and incorporate them into the family until they pass away surrounded by those they love.
When I was about twenty six, my eighty year grandfather and I drove back from fishing trip on the Texas coast. For the three and half hour drive, my grandfather talked the entire time, recounting in chronological order every job he had ever held, why he changed jobs, and what he enjoyed about each. I listened. Listening to a proud retelling of his own life taught me something, something about how we build our lives and hopefully can share our recollections with those we love as we come to towards the end. I’m glad I was there to listen.
He died at ninety one. My mom had help to take care of him up until his death. I ask her if it was tragic to watch such a strong man slowly grow weak and die. She said no, that in fact that it felt noble, an act of grace, to take care of the man who had taken care of her during her whole life.
So, I enjoy Water for Elephants because I imagined it like that car ride, just listening to old Jacob enjoying telling his best story. I’m glad he left that nursing home in his slippers for a last adventure and met Charlie, a person we should all emulate….
