Memorable Reading, Part 3: Non-Fiction, Pedagogy, and Writing Studies

[susan_bernstein]

This post is the third in a series on Memorable Reading. For the first post and second posts, see Memorable Reading, Part 1: Fiction, Poetry, and Drama and Memorable Reading, Part 2: History, Philosophy, and Psychology. 

It is August, and the minds of many of us are turning back to school and the need for creating new syllabi, retooling old ones, or learning how to teach the ones that we are required to use. As I began the process of course preparation, I thought back to the many texts in my education that stuck with me. Especially significant were texts I discovered in times of transition, between high school and college, post-college employment and my MA, the MA and the PhD. I remember the readings that kept me motivated through difficult moments, and the texts that opened my mind to new possibilities.

I wanted to know what still inspired other educators in and out of school, so I posted my question to my Facebook timeline and to several Facebook groups engaged with writing studies. The responses are listed in two separate blog posts. The first post covers fiction, poetry, and drama and the second post concentrates on philosophy, pedagogy, and non-fiction. Some responders listed more than one text across genre lines. In this case, I have grouped their responses with the first genre mentioned.

The purpose of these lists is to reflect on texts that has inspired the responders over time, rather than to fashion a new canonical mandate. For me, these inspirations, read in aggregate, are powerful reminders of how much good writing matters, and how, for many of us, good writing, carefully read, can help to shape the course of life and vocational choices.

My hope is that the lists offer memories of our own inspirations and, in doing so, allow us to make wise choices as we prepare our courses for the coming term.

Hive mind: What is one reading from your education that you still remember? That transformed you, perhaps? That sticks with you, even though it's been years? NOT something that you taught, but something that impacted you deeply as a student -- in or out of school?

WHY do you still remember it? What impression did it make on you? Why was it relevant to the rest of your life?

I'm considering compiling these readings in a blog post, so let me know if I can use your name, or if you would rather be anonymous.

Thanks in advance for all responses !

Brett M Griffiths In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and 1955 by Alice Walker. Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, everything. I discovered them in the library on vacation around 3rd grade, bottom shelf, halfway back, poetry section at the Leland public library. Spent days each summer reading and memorizing and considering.

Bri DiBacco So many. But I keep going back to Lad Tobin's Writing Relationships. It continues to remind me that a sense of community is vital to good writing.

Caitlin Howell For grad school it was definitely The Rhetorical Stance by Wayne Booth. Something about how seemingly simple it was really struck me, and I do make it a point to cover the issues from that text in my teaching (and I teach it when I teach critical thinking courses). This article combined with various post-process theory research forms a large portion of my pedagogy.

Cara Minardi-Power Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary because it helped my understand some students' struggles as well as my own.

Charlene Cambridge Paolo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed did everything it said that literacy should do. It confirmed everything I instinctively knew about the way I was educated. It allowed me to have compassion for myself and my teachers.

Christian Sisack Mike Rose's Lives on the Boundary, which I read early in my graduate career. This incredible book gave voice to my views on the relationships between class and education and the lives that could be changed despite/because of that. As importantly, the book (and all of Rose's work) was and remains for me a model of absolutely beautiful and precise and human(e) prose.

Deborah Sanchez “I Won’t Learn from You” by Herb Kohl! His own experience of subconsciously not learning Yiddish in order to be in solidarity with his mother sticks with me.

Debra Berry Peter Elbow—every student has something to say and the ability to say it.

Jim Lee Errors and Expectations by Mina Shaughnessy taught me that there is no normal in teaching beginning writing. I must meet the students on their level and work with them toward proficiency.

Lee Einhorn Herbert Kohl's essay "I Won't Learn From You"—the reflections of a K-12 teacher coming to terms with the resistance he finds from his students and learning how to meet them at a place of empathy, mutual understanding, and progress; turned me into a teacher and a better human being before I knew what either meant.

Paul T. Corrigan Parker Palmer's To Know as We Are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey. It was recommended by a teacher during college. It really spoke to me at a time when I was deciding to be a teacher myself. I had a sense that I would spend my life trying to live out the vision of that book. I am rereading it now, more than a decade later, and it's interesting to see how the book feels now that I'm in a very different place.

Sandra Kolankiewicz “Just Walk on By”...Brent Staples. When I am in hostile environments or places where others might feel intimidated by me, such as the first day of class in a dev ed classroom, I whistle too.