Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Pushing through Push
I finished “Push” by Saphire last night., a sad horrible good book. My emotions were played like a piano. I remember as a child wondering about my dad crying at sappy movies; now I just wonder how I can be so much like him when he died when I was seventeen. Of course this thought makes me think of Precious in Push overcoming her wretched parents: is that possible considering how abusive and destructive they were to her. I know the redemtive ending is heartwarming and all, but is it really a reality? Can literacy and a few caring people really become so transformative? It would be nice to think so. Rosenblatt seemed to think that reading could change the world; while I agree that literacy can be life changing/affirming, I am not sure it can save someone so quickly who had been crushed down so completely. I did enjoy the contrast between the positivist therapist using the test score data to catergorize and marginalize Precious, as oppossed to Rain Blue focusing on the individuals in her class and the power of the word. Made me happy, after reading a memo from central office about a workshop on how to teach the students to write higher scoring short answer questions. One final comment for this entry. When I mentioned to one of my students that I read “Push” last night, she got excited and wanted to talk about it. She had read it over the summer, and has been loaning it out to friends since then. She was surprised that I had read it for a “college’ class; that seemed to legitimize the book in a “school” way to her.
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3 comments:
It is great that you had a chance to have the conversation about Push with your student. Students get so excited when we read "their" books. We want them to have conversations about the text we choose. Why shouldn't we read what they like, as well>
I was thinking about your comment,
Can literacy and a few caring people really become so transformative?
I hope so. Sometimes, it amazes me how the little things you do for a kid can make all the difference...particularly when they have nothing. The question is...Will this support give them the strength to fight to overcome their circumstances? I talked about the book "Fires in the Bathroom" in one of the posts on my blog. I found it interesting how when kids were asked "What qualities do good teachers possess?" students rarely discussed knowledge of content, but usually commented on whether or not the teacher showed he/she cared about them personally.
There were definitely times I had to put the book down, rub my head, and exhale before continuing. I don't want to think of it as a realistic story although I know it most likely is. It's so unfair, what some people are going through while the rest of us bitch about minutia. But more to the point of this blog, I think it does highlight, as you said, Kelly, the ease with which the standardized, bureaucratic school stance lets the truly messed-up kids slip through the cracks. How quick we are to judge, to classify, to write off the kids that behaved like Precious did at the beginning of the book, without taking the time to really delve into what happened to them. I am a little too cynical to believe that a book can truly change your life, but maybe more than anything, texts provide the stories which let you know you're not alone. That for me was the most powerful part of the book, when the incest support group experience changed her from feeling worthless and alone to part of a community of survivors that wanted to hear her story.
Michelle, I agree: it is the small things we do as teachers, not our "class" It is the caring, not the Canterbury Tales, although I think the caring for them combined with a caring for what they think and read, that makes them care, or at least begin to take an interest, in the things we care to thinka and read. It is a recipricol process,which is not quantifialbe, but can lead, probably more often than I think, to transformation and perhaps even redemption.
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