Internet Killed the Literature Class

Back when I was in high school, the Internet was a new thing. Only the very privileged had access to it. In addition, when we were given papers to write or literature to read, the only source of information we could rely on was whatever was placed in our brains. If you knew about it, you could get your hands on a copy of Cliffsnotes (the book version) or the Bloom's analysis books. If you were really stupid (or had your back against the wall in dire fashion), you might get the movie version and think you had a one up on your teacher until you realized (either by verbal embarrassment or on the exam) that usually the book version was not exactly the same as the text. In other words, there wasn't a damned talking dog in Animal Farm. The moral of the story ultimately was if you didn't read, you failed.

Those were the golden days of literature courses. You read, you became enlightened, you gained vocabulary. Not in this age of the Internet; in the best old folks rhetoric I can muster up, "these new whippersnappers" have the world now at their finger tips. For the new-aged literature student, if you forgot to read, don't fret: you have Pinkmonkey, Cliffnotes, Sparknotes, and everything else. Oh and you have a paper to write on the text? Just search for the paper you need and either cut and paste or BUY a paper online (the devil in tangible form to a literature teacher). All is right with the world to these new millennium literature students. 

What a travesty! The authors widely included in the literary canon are no doubt spinning in their graves and cursing the internet. This situation gets worse and worse yearly. According to the Plough Library, "In 2001, Donald L. McCabe of Rutgers University performed a study of 4,500 high school students that found that, '74 percent of students admitted to cheating seriously on an exam one or more times; 15 percent admitted to turning in a paper largely taken from a Web site or a paper mill; and approximately 51 percent admitted to not citing the source from a Web site when using a few of its sentences in their papers'" (1).

Now, I've been around the block in the teaching game: I've taught grades 6-12 and college composition courses and Technical Writing. I'm also young enough to have known what life was like before the internet, but have also had to be a college student with internet at my disposal. Fortunately, I know what is on Sparksnotes and all the "study guide" sites so I can tell when students relied on the study guide rather than the text itself. In fact, I design tests with these sites in mind so that the kid will automatically fail if they didn't read the text by adding those small details that only a reader caught onto. I also use cheat sites like turnitin.com so that students can upload the text to the website and both the student and I can see where citations need to take place. When money is short for fancy technology devices, I rely on good ol' Google and cut and paste parts I think are stolen. Cheating can be combated, but unfortunately will never be

stopped.

As students become more and more technologically advanced, and teachers get older and older, technology will eventually win. I see it as the teachers like me winning the battle, but technology ultimately wins the war. The problem with technology winning the war is that students become worse at critical reading, and literary analysis, merely comprehending only what the cheat sites tell them to comprehend, never checking what is written against the actual text. We have students less able to articulate themselves in polysyllabic terms because we all know personal vocabulary is only built by reading and listening.  The damning effect: inevitably literature is forgotten in the technological abyss and the classics will be banished in the depths of lost lore similar to the way the poor contraptions Kris Kringle found that nobody wanted, were sent to the isle of misfit toys. 

A person who loves literature the way I do find this disheartening. How can a student not want to explore the love of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or the dark thoughts of Edgar Allan Poe? Who doesn't want to visit Eatonville with Zora Neale Hurston, or understand the true satire behind Mark Twain's Huck Finn? And the complexities of J. Alfred Prufrock? Or read the Canterbury Tales and wonder what could have happened had Chaucer completed his stories?? Or fall in love with the poetry of Langston Hughes and contrast it with Walt Wittman? Or really figure out what happened to that Last Duchess by Browning? Or dissect the rhetoric that is the Narrative of Frederick Douglass. Or be wondering where the hell Thoreau is going with his seclusion in Walden. Most importantly, never, ever be proud of the accomplishment of understanding the archaic and stylistic Renaissance vernacular that is Shakespeare? The internet is destroying, single-handedly, literacy. The small sliver of hope is that Kindle and e-books might make reading enticing, but one can only hope. 

How can we literarians (a new word I've devised if you will) arm ourselves against this onslaught in the age of student plagiarism? First of all, teachers need the best tools available to tell if students plagiarize. Schools must get tougher on the consequences for plagiarizing and enforce them. Teachers should also know why students plagiarize and teach out of it, literally rebuking the bad habit in the name of Jesus. Some students don't understand the difference between plagiarism, summarizing and paraphrasing. Others haven't been taught how to cite properly. These skills must be taught step by step. Evaluate what skills your students need and teach and model explicitly. Lastly, teachers should just understand that students will use these tools, but teach students that it is ok to use them after they have read to ensure they understood fully. In that context, it could do more help than harm, since it's going to happen anyway. 

Yes, in the same way videos killed radio in the 80s, internet is killing literature in the 21st century. Teachers, stay informed. Teach students time management and definitely discourage these students from cheating themselves out of a literary education.  

1. "To Catch a Thief: Plagiarism Resources for CBU Faculty." Plough Library: Christian Brothers University.  http://www.cbu.edu/library/faculty/plagiarism/. 3 Sept 2011.  

The Invisible Kids

Throughout my entire career, I have been asked to cater to the most underserved in our schools; by underserved, I mean the students who haven't been taught to read properly; the students who have unstable households; the students who would pass the state tests by a wing and a prayer. And each year, I took those students and performed the miracle of teaching them. I have ALWAYS had that knack. Maybe from being a student who had friends just like them, who lived on my block and played basketball in my backyard. You deal with them with a sympathetic touch, not feeling sorry for them, but making them aspire for more than what they are at this current time.

But what happens is that these students end up running the school. All teachers go at their pace and stay on their level. Those kids get the interventions, those kids get the tutoring. To accomodate, teachers dumb down what they are doing and teach to the test.

This is the manner of education. In the era of "No child left behind", many of those have in fact been forgotten. The invisible students- our advanced population.

In today's classroom, every effort is being made to get kids to pass these state mandated tests, and help low-performing schools achieve. By any means necessary. And by necessary, I mean teaching from old tests, textbooks, coach books and berating those students to death with practice tests. However, students who generally are proficient or advanced tend to have low engagement in school because expectations are so low that things are easy for them. And as long as they know how to read, they will pass the test, with bad teching or not. Schools depend on these proficient and advanced kids to score well and pull their scores up, yet do barely nothing to make school rigorous for them.

The biggest faux pas is that kids who score proficient automatically are placed in advanced classes, whether that kid is advanced or not. Which holds truly advanced students back as well. My biggest fear is that students at low performing schools are considered "advanced" but in the real world outside of the city limits, these kids in some cases would be considered barely proficient.  Are we preparing these semi-advanced students to be able to compete with the students from rich households, at magnet schools, at private schools, who will be entering college classrooms with them?

In order to provide an equitable education for advanced students, we need to accelerate them to the level of their academic abilities, not to the level of their chronological peers. As a teacher, it will be my job to ensure that my course work is rigorous for all students. It is also imperative to make sure my expectations are higher and hold those students to those higher standards and support them in achieving those standards. I have to ensure these invisible, misused students are taught and will take something away from me. It is my job to push myself to be better for those kids. And when I feel myself becoming complacent, I have to continue to press. When administrators attempt to make me "blitz" students with standards, it is my job to demand differently, since research tells us that "blitz" never works.

It is my job to be the voice for these invisible kids. 

What Students Don't Know Won't Hurt Them

I have always been a staunch realist. I have NEVER been a person to see a glass half-full. Even though I won't necessarily consider it half-empty (a pessimist? me?), I have always thought of it as just a glass with not enough water in it to fully quince my thirst. In layman's terms, things are as they appear. It is what it is. Straight, no chaser. You get the cliches.

I have also been a person who has been an expert at my craft. In this profession, you could say that I "have arrived". Prior to this past year, I only served as a classroom teacher for 3 years. The principal I worked for then called me, in all my 24 years of wisdom, a "veteran teacher". I was very surprised at this assessment during my tenure moment: that term was always reserved for teachers who had spent many, many moons in hallowed halls and had many, many stories to tell you-the novice teacher- chronicling their adventures in teaching. In my 3 years of teaching, I was considered a darn good teacher.

In my fourth year as an educator, my district propelled me to the top of the literacy totem pole as a literacy coach. My task- avoiding becoming the "reading Nazi" and truly mentor teachers and lead my school into AYP success. That I did for 3 years and was successful in making AYP all 3 years. I was, at 25 years old, giving professional development for English teachers throughout the district, running departmental meetings, shaping curriculum, mentoring first year teachers...living the LIFE. I think what added to my reputation was the fact that I was a realistic expert. I knew what I was talking about and the research behind it and was frank with them about the expectation of them getting the job done. Yeah everybody didn't like me, but they respected me. This whole idea of "I love you but this is business" really sums up my attitude about work. And I was good at it. I helped in the making of 14 excellent teachers during my time as a specialist.

Then all of a sudden, reality came crashing down, as my husband (who was hired in Memphis and commuted 6 hours on weekends to be with me and our sons) put his foot down and told me I had to move to Memphis.

Here I was, 7 years into my career, starting over. Almost instantaneously, all of my storied career was reduced to a resume.

So being the realistic expert I am, I started over, and that was one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. Take it from me- it is not easy to close your eyes to craziness and unprofessionalism running a muck all around you when you know you have the wisdom to possibly suggest better. Envision the Titanic- you are in the band, and even though the damned boat is sinking, you are being paid to do your job, and thus sink with the boat. That sums up my first year.

But, I made a little of a splash. My scores were not hardly as disappointing as much of the STATE of TENNESSEE, so that says a lot. If that makes any sense.

My principal, who believes in my ability, decided in this second year, to really push me (whether he knows it or not). I was chosen to teach some upper level courses. In my mind, being the realist I am, decided that I could use this as an opportunity to pull out some college stuff and try to force the kids to be mature learners. Yeah, it could be a daunting task, but clearly I had the ability and the background knowledge to get this done...............

However, shortly into planning, I realized, I was out of my comfort zone. Being in the Middle School for 6 years and teaching 10th grade in my 7th, has really removed me from English Literature and rhetoric exponentially. I am no longer the Shakespeare buff; no longer the quoter of Langston Hughes and Robert Frost. No longer the lover of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the reader of critical analysis or the intellectual who could allude in and out of literature. No longer the admirer of the dark charm of J. Alfred Prufrock. No longer the MLA and APA whiz. Not even the scholar who would have realized the last 5 sentences constituted an aphorism! I realized, in essence, that I have either dumbed myself down or let myself go. I received my M.A. a little over 5 years ago now, and I am certainly convinced that furthering my education is an action that is well overdue. I have to find that 24 year old English student and merge her with this now almost 30 year old woman who has matured pedagogically. Thanks to this, I now consider myself having moonlighted as a M.A. in the past 5 years, because I certainly didn't use ANYTHING I learned in school during my teaching career. What and how I had been teaching was merely what I had learned as a teacher! Which was really not the teaching of literature, but clearly teaching students how to read and comprehend, and Lord knows I definitely did NOT learn that skill in school.

That realization angered me: what was the point of going to school to be a teacher, if most of what you used was on the job training skills rather than what you amassed serious debt TRYING to learn? Secondary education is clearly for people who are going straight to high school to teach because my matriculation at the school of education did not teach me what I needed to know as a middle school and early high school teacher.

The way I came to this realization was unnerving: I was in a training with higher level English teachers recently, and found it difficult to converse about syllogisms and enthymemes and troupes and schemes with them. Those terms were interred in the land of "lost vocabulary". I also attempted to attend a William Faulkner convention and when I got a whiff of the conversations those people were having, I turned tail out of there before they began asking who the hell gave me a graduate degree.

I guess that is essentially what happens to Middle School and 9th and 10th grade teachers who are trained as secondary teacers: removed from the canon and the likes of Poe and Hawthorne to trade them in for Walter Dean Myers, Gary Soto and Ann M. Martin.

Nothing wrong with adolescent literature- except that unless you actively continue with your "English buff" status by being a part of literature groups or in school, you lose it. The issue I am tackling with bothers me because I have ALWAYS been the expert; in this case, I still have quite a bit to re-learn. Experts don't believe in this: that there are ideas you don't know or can't remember in your area of expertise. In a little over a month, I have to reprogram my mind to the world of American Literature and rhetoric and teach my hungry students how to write and think by any means necessary. The realist in me understands that I AM an expert and a heavily proactive person, and that I have a lot to do to design this course AND make it rigorous.

They don't know how much work that is. How many late nights that will be. How much dedication it takes on my part. I told my students last year, when they asked me to move with them to eleventh grade, that I had taught them everything in my brain. What I should have said is I had taught them everything I had taught recently, which was what the average middle or high-schooler was supposed to know. Now, in 11th grade AP, we have a whole world of challenge that we all are about to encounter, which really starts with me excavating the lost lore within my head. I swear, it is there. I just have to go into seclusion and find the M.A. that resides inside of me.

And as the addict goes to rehab to learn how to be the person they were before the addiction, so will my journey back to being the English Literature teacher I was when I completed graduate school 5 years ago.

Boy, I feel so sorry for the AP students who will follow this group of juniors.