Marta Escamilla Casajuana 22/02/2019

1. Introduction

I have always had the impression that literature (as such) was something schools impose
because teachers made me read books I did not use to like. Moreover, the kind of teachers I
have been taught by were teachers that just focused on the plot and on doing exams to check if
we have read the book. For this reason I have always disliked what literature is for most of the
children that are taught at a high school. However, I have always loved reading, but reading
books that I found interesting for my pleasure. I read The Help, To All The Boys I‘ve Loved Before,
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and so on. For me, that was not literature as such but reading
just for pleasure. So, along this essay I will try to show how each topic has changed my vision on
the different aspects that I will try to apply when teaching my classes in the future.

2. Literature and education

As I said before, teachers during my schooling experience have shown me literature in the wrong
way due to the fact that they taught me literature throughout authors, main themes of the
books and without making us enjoy the book. As Fleming (2007; page 2) states in his article “Too
often the canon debate is conceived only with regard to content” we can see that teachers and
schools have like a list of books which can be taught and everything that is not on that list is
excluded from our “compulsory” readings. This is what Fleming calls the literary canon. A canon
which we cannot escape from and that cannot be modified with everything that is not
considered “literature”. I would like to invite teachers to modify this idea that only certain
authors can be studied at high school or university. My teacher during this subject has showed
me that we can find literature everywhere and that canons should be avoided. People think have
a misconception about literature: it is for wise and clever people, it has difficult language, it is
not affordable for everyone, and so on. However, now I see that literature can be taught in many
different ways in class and that we can take a piece of it to work with our students. Therefore,
this is one of the things that makes literature interesting and engaging for them (and for me as
well). Moreover, by teaching literature to our students we can engage them on what we are
doing, as it is something different that they maybe do not expect. As Beach et al. (2006) suggest,
engagement is very important when learning and it gives them a sense of ownership and
responsibility.

3. Poetry

I would say that poetry is the most repudiated genre above all, especially for teenagers in high
school, who find difficult to understand it. As a personal experience, I did not like or enjoy poetry
when I was at high school, and neither at the beginning of my degree. This was, again, because
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maybe the teaching methods of our teachers were not the appropriate ones. If they would have
taught poetry as our teacher in this subject did, it would have been much more different and I
am sure that it would have been more enjoyable for the class. If we just give the poem to our
students and make them read it and give them the topics of the poem with no opportunity to
interpret them as they think, is a big mistake. For me, poetry was a genre I did not like but now
I’m trying to introduce it to my units so that students can see that poetry can be understood and
interpreted in many different ways. As Finch (2003) shows is his article, there are too many ways
to make poetry appealing for students. Even with music. As he says, “Pop songs are popular in
the EFL classroom for a number of reasons, though they are rarely regarded as poetic texts, or
as models for creative English composition.”. The problem arises when the teacher just sees
music as music itself and excludes it from being a source of poetry and engage students with
what they enjoy the most. I remember that during my degree we had a subject related to poetry,
but we did not focus much on the meaning of the poem and what it evoked, we simply focused
on poems by important poets like Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. Moreover, we analysed
poems just by focusing on words, sound patterns, rhyme, rhythm, etc. This fact is clearly
depicted in McCourt’s (2005; page 223) memoir as there is a student who says, “you know what
English teachers do to poems. Analyse, analyse, analyse. Dig for the deeper meaning. That’s
what turned me against poetry”. This proves what I previously said about teaching poetry to
students, that they mostly find it difficult and not motivating.

On the other hand, I would like to mention the day when our teacher gave us a nut at the end
of the session. At the beginning, I felt very surprised and I did not know why we had to crash a
nut and then write about it. Actually, it was a way to work with metaphors; we found some
difficulty when crashing it and then we came to the discovery of what was inside, as we do with
poems. Another example I would like to mention was the newspaper activity, in which we had
to cut some headings and then create a poem. This was a very creative task where we could
create a poem by linking short sentences or words from different places and give them a
meaning. As a surprise for me, during this part of the subject I enjoyed poetry in such a way that
I ended up looking for poems to read. That was something that has never happened to me
before. I used to read short poems that appeared in some Instagram accounts, but it never came
the occasion of looking for poem books and read them for pleasure. This fact shows me that my
teacher has made me see poetry in a different way and that throughout my schooling years
nobody had been able to do so.

4. Life writing
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This unknown genre was useful to show me that even when we write a simple letter to a friend
can be a pure sign of literature. I also discovered that life writing is a recording of memories and
experiences either one’s own or another’s. In this type of genre, the self is the centre of the
productions that can be in written, recorded, audiotaped and other formats.

We have to take into account that students in high schools do not like to write unless they are
motivated to do so. Mahiri and Sablo (1996; page 176) realized in their research that “these
youths perceive the limits on their expression imposed by schools in contrast to their voluntary
writing”. However, we should take advantage of it and encourage them to write any piece of
writing they would like to no matter what the topic is. Life writing has shown me that we can
take a piece of text from anywhere, even from our memories, experiences we have had, a rap
song, a thought, etc. That leads me to the conclusion that teachers in our schools have always
made us write about what was established o the student books or what they wanted without
any freedom of expression and that could be one of the reasons why teenagers do not like to
write and read. Sometimes in my English classes I like to give freedom to students and let them
write about anything they want and share it (or not) with their classmates. By doing this activity
anyone has the opportunity to express what he or she feels at that moment. However, I must
say that there are occasions in which some students find difficult to think of something to write
either because they are not motivated or because they have difficulties when writing.

On the other hand, life writing has made me come back again to the past and remember things
that made me happy many years ago. The teacher told us to bring some pictures of our past,
and I must say that it was a difficult job to choose only five photos because all of them were
important to me. By doing this exercise I realized how many memories I have been collecting
during my life and that those photos are a treasure for me. Moreover, we had to choose a title
for those five photos, which was a difficult task for me too. Those photos evoked me so many
memories that I did not know which words to choose as there were many in my head. That was
a really moving and emotional exercise in which we discovered that everybody has its own
memories and that we can project them either visually or written. This is why we should
encourage our students to do so because they are able to express freely what they think or feel
in many different ways.

6. Fiction

Since I was a child I have not had an extreme passion for books, there was a time during my
childhood in which I spent my summer holidays reading books about Geronimo Stilton. Those
books were so appealing to me, as they had illustrations and the way that they were written was
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very funny. Later, when I grew up, I started to focus more on the plot of the book and on the
descriptions but, still, I was that kind of person that saw a thick book and immediately said: “oh
no, it is too long!”. However, when I watched a film that I really enjoyed or had some kind of
effect to me, I would look for the book version and read it. What I want to say with this is that,
although books have not always surrounded me, I have found interest in those that appealed to
me and I got the most out of them. Some of the books I enjoyed the most were “The Help” by
Kathryn Stockett, “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” by John Boyne and there is one which I have
recently read called “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” by Jenny Han. The way I remember
reading those books with enthusiasm as if there was no tomorrow is a feeling I have only
experienced with those books I have really loved. As I have always liked books related to
something about history or even books depicting teenagers, books of this type have always
interested me and called my attention and indeed, they are the reason why I keep on reading.
Moreover, it is worth saying that even films can be a form of art and they all elicit a story that
can be as enjoyable as a book.

Therefore, teachers of literature in high schools should take advantage of the reading they know
their students read for pleasure and use them in class so that they will enjoy their lessons. In
fact, this is what I did with my students at the language school. We had to choose a book from
a list for them to read in English, but instead I made them choose a book they would like to work
on. With this, we can see that students read, but they read what they are interested in, and
nowadays it is the school system, which is doing it wrong.

7. Drama and Theatre

Again, we come with a genre that has no place in high schools unless there is an optional subject
for it. Firstly, teachers do not devote time to this genre because it might be the less explored by
the students, which in my opinion is a big mistake. In fact, with this genre, I have learned a lot
and how a poem or a story can be interpreted and put into practice. In addition, students’
creativity can be fully developed with this genre and I think this is one of the main reasons why
students are spontaneous when playing a play in class as practice. However, excuses as “there’s
no space to it”, “it requires more time that the one we have” and so many typical sentences are
the reason why teachers do not teach this genre in high schools. Plays such as Romeo and Juliet
or simply improvisation would make our students experience empathy, feelings and sensations
they might had never had. Shakespeare plays work very good with all ages as they can be
adapted and interpreted in many different ways. Moreover, if we practise drama with secondary
students they learn to work cooperatively and, as Ballesteros and Lopez Velasco (2014; page 78)
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claim, the teacher becomes a guide not a person who tell students what to do all the time, so
students can act more freely. During our drama classes, I was really intrigued and interested in
seeing what we were going to do next in the class. Some of the exercises we did had a purpose,
either to connect voice with body (like the exercises we did about the literary museum) or to
practise vocal expressivity (like the exercise we did about reproducing atmospheres while lying
on the floor). Besides, I have noted that we, as teachers, are always performing in class as we
try to persuade our students to do something or to behave correctly. Therefore, we can consider
performing as an art of seduction that we constantly use in our daily life, even when selling a
book we try to convince customers that our book is the best by using appropriate language.

5. Visual Literacy

Visual literacy can be referred to the interpretation of visual images. Sometimes we look at a
picture and we are able to describe what we can see at first sight but it contains much more
than that. Paintings, for instance, can be a source of literature too. Many painters have painted
portraits and paintings referring to a novel or a piece of literature. This shows us how literature
and painting are related to one another. Just by analyzing a picture we can see more that the
paint itself, we can see a story behind to be told, to be discovered or an enigmatic secret the
author of that painted wanted to show us. As Frey and Fisher claim, teaching visual literacy to
students can enrich their literary understanding, enhance their critical thinking and it increases
motivation and enjoyment. This is why they suggest working with comics or graphic novels in
class, as it is a different way to work with literature.

It is a pity that we have not been able to apply this type of educational literature in class as it
could have been funny and interesting. For me then, realizing that we can find literature beyond
the paint of a painting, a comic, a graphic novel or a picture book is something that has made
me change my mind. For that reason, I would like to apply some exercises in my classes to make
students know that even a picture can entail a whole book of adventures.

8. Conclusion

As a conclusion, I might say that I have learnt a lot with this module and that my teacher Nuria
Casado has made me see literature in a different way and now Iam really looking forward to
applying these new contents to my teaching classes in the future. For me, it has been a sequence
of days learning and experiencing with new things that in fact they were not new. However, the
way she has made me see them has changed totally my perception of what literature is: a magic
world to discover and interpret.
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9. Bibliography

 Fleming, Mike. The Literary Canon: implications for the teaching of language as

subject. University of Durham: United Kingdom, 2007.

 Mahiri and Sablo. Writing For Their Lives: The Non-School Literacy of California's

Urban African American Youth. The Journal of Negro Education, 65 (2). Pp. 164 – 180, 1996.

 Finch, A. Using Poems to Teach English. Research Gate, 2003.

 McCourt, Frank. Teacher Man: A Memoir. New York: Scriber, 2005. Print.
 Ballesteros, Pablo & Lopez Velasco, Juan Pedro. Child Soldier: ejemplo de cómo llevar las
técnicas del teatro contemporáneo al aula de secundaria. Didactica. I.E.S. Al-Satt, Algete
y ETSI. De Telecomunicación. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 2014.
 Beach, Richard; Appleman, Deborah; Hynds Susan and Wilhekm, Jeffrey. Teaching
Literature to Adolescents. Erlbaum: Mahwah, New Jersey, 2006.
 Frey, Nancy, and Douglas Fisher. Teaching Visual Literacy: Using Comic Books, Graphic
Novels, Anime, Cartoons, and More to Develop Comprehension and Thinking Skills.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2008. Print.