You've Gotta Read This

I've had a stroke of genius that just needs to be shared. This is a great assignment for a comp class working on literature analysis and could be applied to short story, poetry, essay, film, plays, songs, etc. It could even be applied in just about ANY discipline in which evaluative analysis is used. I would love to hear what other teachers think of this or other ideas that this might spur.

Okay, truth is, I'm not the genius. Ron Hansen, the editor of You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe. Essentially, the book is an anthology of the stories selected by the contemporary American writers, each of them introduced by the writer. The introduction is really a kind of analysis, telling stories about the writer's response to the story, how it affected them and why. Each includes, inadvertently, an analysis of the elements of the story the writer felt were most worth mentioning.

So, when coming to the literary analysis section of class, and facing yet another year of stories in our textbook, which I'm a bit tired of reading, and even more tired of reading the same old tired responses and analyses of them by students (bless their hearts), I was hit with a brainquake. This is what I came up with:

Give the students literary journals of contemporary writing - I just happen to have copies to share with students, but the students in larger areas could find these at their local bookstores and in library stacks. I would use the NewPages Guide to Lit Mags as the check for quality: if it's not on the list, clear it with teacher first.

Have the students sample read around until they find a story that really knocks their socks off. Then, have the students write an intro to the story, just like in Hansen's book. By doing this, they are able to relate a personal (reader) response as well as make a close analysis of all or select elements that they felt were well developed in the story with examples to support their writing. I also required them to include SOME comment about the author of the story, encouraging them to search the author on the web, but since most are brand new, there may not be anything on them at all. At the very least, I know there are contributor notes in the journal, and I've told them they can use those as long as they put it into their own words and weave it in well with their writing.

Further, I encourage the inquiry approach to research, and they may include other relevant information they find out about the author and historical, geographical, etc. information that appears in the story. We do read shared stories for class, and a good example of this inquiry approach is Chinua Achebe's "Civil Peace" - one of the questions that always comes up is "What war was this?" By following this inquiry, students are able to learn a great deal more about the culture and thus have deeper understanding of and appreciation for the story itself.

The students have agreed upon a common formatting for their writing, and will submit their writing along with a copy of the story (which I will copy to control quality). All of these will then be compiled into our own class anthology - which students have yet to name - but each of them will leave the semester with a copy of this. I have agreed to create a source page for the back of the book - a works cited page. They have to type up their own entry, MLA format, and give it to me on a disk or e-mail it to me, then I will compile the page. As far as copyright, I'm pretty sure we're okay as a one-time educational use on these. Ideally, it would be way cool to get permission for reprint and make something like this to distribute wider than just our class - or sell it as a fundraiser for some student activity - but that's much further down the road.

We've been studying stories and discussing the elements of fiction, writing brief analysis papers and doing worksheets for a couple of weeks, so I think the students are ready for this. They seemed receptive and even excited about the project. None expressed any reservations about sharing their writing with others to walk out of class, and this even seemed to pique their interest in the activity.

Can't you also see the applicability of this to other areas? Art, music, math (yes, math - select your favorite problem from the semester...), history, business - the possibilities are endless! It helps in literature that the authors are contemporary as it eliminates the possibility of students getting canned essays off the web. But, at the same time, the assignment, just by virtue of being such a personalized response practically eliminates the ability to copy and paste - at least a whole essay start to finish.

I am so excited about this idea. It's risky as a new assignment - especially with my not having read the stories, but at the same time, that's what makes it so fun for me as a teacher. And the students added their own challenge for me: they want me to do the assignment with them, because they want to see what kind of a story I would pick. I moaned to them about that, saying, "Oh no, now I'm going to have to read..."

Actually, by the end of the day, I had my story all picked out. Now I just have to do my homework.