by Jessica Lahey
Some lessons take a while to germinate. I know that. I have been at this teaching thing for a while now – long enough that a few of my students have become teachers themselves – but I am still amazed by the long germination rates I’ve noted in some of my lessons. I generally follow the “Ten Year Rule” in my classroom: I aim to stress the material that will be important for my students to know ten years from now. Clearly, my teaching style self-selects for these protracted germination rates, but sometimes, just sometimes, I get lucky, and I actually get to witness the moment when the seeds bear fruit.
The first five minutes of my English and Latin classes class are dedicated to a “Cultural Literacy Tidbit” related to the class material. I try to select items that once heard, will begin to show up in the films, books, television, magazines, and music my students encounter. It has taken a while for the daily lessons to pay off, but this week, I scored a particularly fast-maturing group of lessons
When I arrived at school this Monday, the middle school was littered with comic strips. They were on my chair, desk, pinned to walls, taped to the white board…you get the idea. I assumed the decorations were all part of some class-on-class prank, eighth graders messing with the sixth grade or something. But then I noticed that the comic strips were all the same strip – Dennis the Menace. In the strip, Dennis’ mother discovers a broken vase. She asks Dennis if he’s responsible for the destruction, and he asks, “What happens if I say no?” His mother replies “I’ll put you in the corner for fibbing,” to which Dennis replies, “Then yes, I did.” When Dennis ends up in the corner anyway, he muses “Now I’m confused.” As his mother walks away, she tells him, “I’ll explain a Catch-22 to you in a few years.” It just so happens that I had explained Catch-22 to my students just the week before. I read the students the scene in chapter 5 where Doc Daneeka explains Catch-22 to Yossarian. The kids laughed, and the two students who had read the book encouraged the rest of the class to borrow it from the independent reading shelf. And that was that. Until the appearance of the comic strips, now pinned to my bulletin board en masse as a reminder that, if you know what to look for, Cultural Literacy Tidbits are everywhere.
The next day, I turned on the car radio as I pulled out of the school parking lot and tuned into an interview on NPR about Joseph Heller. I missed much of it (my drive home from school is blissfully short, good for the environment, bad for NPR), but by dinnertime, there were twelve messages from students piled up in my email inbox, all excitedly detailing what they had heard on the radio as they made their way home from school or to soccer practice.
And yesterday, the Supreme Court heard a case concerning warrantless GPS tracking of people suspected of a crime. Normally, the police have to get over the bar of “probable cause” in order to obtain a warrant from a judge to search for evidence, but the FBI had attached a tracking device to a suspected drug kingpin, and this case has made its way to the highest court in the land. The case turns on whether or not the FBI needs to obtain a warrant for continuous, 24-hour automobile tracking with a GPS device. When Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben suggested that no warrant was needed, Justice Stephen Breyer asserted, “if you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movements of every citizen in the United States,” a scenario that “sounds like 1984.” I made a mental note to play the NPR story in class tomorrow, as 1984 was my Cultural Literacy Tidbit two weeks ago, and the novel is our independent reading double-extra credit selection of the month.
Obviously, there are plenty of moments in my classroom when my students’ lack of background knowledge cause my jokes to fall flat. All teachers have these moments – when we refer to something well within our cultural experience only to look out at blank, uncomprehending faces. It happens far more often that I’d like, and often leads to an impromptu cultural literacy lesson. YouTube streaming has become an invaluable resource in my classroom. We’ve watched the chocolate factory scene from I Love Lucy, the “Singing in the Rain” dance sequence, the opening sequence from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. Many of these moments arose out of test or homework questions that assume a baseline of common knowledge. Without that cultural literacy, the questions are nearly unanswerable despite the students’ knowledge of the concepts being tested. “In the long-running TV series I Love Lucy, the husband and wife enlivened their relationship with [insert appropriate vocabulary word here] wisecracks.” The answer is “astringent,” by the way, but the question is challenging if they have never heard Ricky’s drawn out, “Luuuuuuuuucyyyyy? What did you do?”
This week, my students will learn about W. B. Yeats, “Second Coming,” Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and “Ozymandias.” I will synthesize all of these topics at the end of the week, and with any luck, my students will catch a reference to a “widening gyre,” falconry, or The Second Coming in the next couple of weeks to cement the lesson. As my students already know the story of Oedipus Rex, I can only hope that with some leading hints, someone will point out the connection to the Sphinx in class tomorrow.
I can only wait, keep adding fertilizer, and see what takes hold.
Jessica Potts Lahey is a teacher of English, Latin, and composition at Crossroads Academy, an independent Core Knowledge K-8 school in Lyme, New Hampshire. Jessica’s blog on middle school education, Coming of Age in the Middle, can be found at http://jessicalahey.com.
Excellent post—just keep piling on that fertilizer!
Comment by KM O'Hara — November 9, 2011 @ 5:51 pm
I’m glad to see the connections to cases in the Supreme Court. As a prosecutor, I say, let’s not loose site of the benefit of getting that drug king-pin off the road. In my experience “Big Brother” isn’t trying to monitor regular people 24 hours a day, just the criminals! Perhaps the standard of Reasonable Suspicion is sufficient. Either way, its wonderful to help students see how their cultural literacy will assist them in understanding a multitude of issues in their lives.
Comment by Melissa Guldbrandsen — November 9, 2011 @ 7:33 pm
Well done, Jess! Now I know why several 6th graders asked me about a Catch-22!
Comment by Betsy — November 9, 2011 @ 7:53 pm
These students are fortunate to have a literate, motivated teacher. I’m sure the cultural literacy lessons flow both ways, which should lead future classes to gain lessons, indirectly, from current ones.
A refreshing story from the front lines for once.
Comment by Jon D — November 9, 2011 @ 7:55 pm
An impressive story of how core knowledge sparks our students learning in many indirect ways. Thank you for your energetic teachings,and making the world a better place!!!
Comment by nancy tehan — November 9, 2011 @ 8:20 pm
Always a joy to hear about your experience in the classroom and the connections the students make. Let’s continue to work together to heap up the pile to get it ready for germination.
Comment by Christiana Whittington — November 9, 2011 @ 9:31 pm
First I must say how lucky your students are and secondly, I wish I had a teacher like you when I was in school. Any cultural lessons I learned I had to figure out for myself. Keep up the good work.
Comment by Jerry N — November 9, 2011 @ 10:22 pm
Fun way for me to get educated to subtilities [is that an english term?] of english litterature – thank you!
Comment by sophie — November 9, 2011 @ 10:22 pm
Great thoughts Jess. Isn’t it wonderful when your efforts grow fruit that you get to see??
Comment by Lee Byron — November 9, 2011 @ 11:12 pm
I love the way that you ensure that your students comprehend the point that you are attempting to deliver. You go that extra mile to get them on the same page. I love it!
Comment by Anna J — November 9, 2011 @ 11:31 pm
Impressed at your long-range goals and your cultural literacy tidbits. It certainly does seem that your seeds of thought are bearing fruit earlier than you anticipated, but considering the inspirational and motivational character of your students’ teacher this is unsurprising. Keep up the good work.
Comment by Melanie — November 10, 2011 @ 1:08 am
Our students are indeed fortunate to have a teacher who makes a point of weaving Cultural Literacy Tidbits throughout her lessons to enhance their ability to make meaningful connections. Oh, how I wish I was 13-years-old again and in your English class!
Comment by Marion F — November 10, 2011 @ 9:43 am
How lucky my boys have been to experience your tid-bits!Keep them coming!
Comment by Heidi — November 10, 2011 @ 9:49 am
My wish is that all teachers be this thorough, this caring, this informed, this thoughtful. Great article, Ms. Lahey.
Comment by Teri — November 10, 2011 @ 9:57 am
Welcome to the Blog, Ms. Lahey. I love teacher tales in general and this one in particular. But what should not get lost is that “cultural literacy” IS literacy. It certainly enlivens a student’s understanding when they get the reference, whether it’s knowing what a Catch-22 is or what it means for something to be like 1984. But our discourse is larded with shared understanding, common references, and presumed vocabulary. Put enough of them in a reading passage or a spoken utterance that go over the heads of our students and ALL meaning breaks down, not just the explicit literary allusion.
This is why, to my mind, Core Knowledge is and always has been at heart a literacy curriculum. It’s not “mere facts” or a bunch ‘o stuff. It’s the glue that holds our discourse together. In a diverse nation, if all of us do not have language, common knowledge and shared references, we will be left — literally — unable to understand to one another.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — November 10, 2011 @ 10:11 am
Well put, Mr. Pondiscio.
Comment by Jess — November 10, 2011 @ 10:13 am
Well said Ms. Lahey! Knowledge is key to comprehension and comprehension is key to motivation. Keep planting those seeds.
Comment by Jean — November 10, 2011 @ 11:29 am
Popular culture and Core Knowledge really do mix! Those were great teaching moments. Well done!
Comment by Libby — November 10, 2011 @ 1:33 pm
I have started reading Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and I wonder how many of her many avid readers realize that she is reenacting the Greek myth of Theseus. I think one of my great aha moments in high school was when I realized how archetypes framed stories. Making these connections can help many kids realize how relevant their education is and can be.
Comment by DC Parent — November 10, 2011 @ 3:04 pm
Lovely post. Its nice when the connections come up immediately. I like the 10 year idea though still.
When I was working at the International School here some of the students were asking why they had to read xyz play or book (I think it was Shakespeare but I’m not certain). My answer was even if they didn’t like it (which is fine, not everyone has to like to everything) its important to be familiar with it. Because that’s what the (educated) English speaking world considers to be literate (and I got this from 10th grade history) and so when they’re at some fancy gala dinner or some such and someone makes a witty reference to it they’re not left in the dark feeling and/or looking foolish.
Ah cold pragmatism…
Comment by S. Campbell — November 10, 2011 @ 5:09 pm
@S.Campbell Mark Bauerlein wrote a piece along the very same lines you describe at the Chronicle of Education a while back detailing the “real world cost” of a lack of cultural literacy. Highly recommended:
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/the-underestimation-of-cultural-literacy/6935
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — November 10, 2011 @ 5:42 pm
@DC Parent – hold on, I’m getting to that very issue in my next post. My answer to your question? At a Core Knowledge school, where the kids have been reading and talking about mythology since they were five, the answer (one I asked in my class just about four weeks ago) was half. Half. . To top it off, they criticized the text for its failure to see the story out and the moments where it may have overreached.
The entire middle school takes the National Mythology Exam annually, and preparing for that test is one of the most entertaining parts of our Latin class. It is a gift to teach to these kind of students.
Comment by Jessica Lahey — November 10, 2011 @ 5:42 pm
In my work on how the brain learns, one of the key aspects to enhancing student memory and transfer is emotional connection to content. Pop culture or any reference connecting content to stuff kids care about is critical to retention and transfer. These are really great examples of making those kinds of connections for your students! Great!
Comment by Kim Williams — November 10, 2011 @ 6:07 pm
@ DC Parent. I confess. I read all three Hunger Games books (OK, I abandoned the third one out of boredom). Theseus? I had no idea.
I feel mentally undressed.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — November 10, 2011 @ 6:22 pm
Labyrinth (of the game), golden thread guides them out of the seemingly impenetrable game, monsters at the center that are half one thing, half another…
The subsequent two books are a letdown, but there’s an interesting reference to Roman feasts in Catching Fire. She could have done SO much with the allusions, and yet…and yet…
Comment by Jessica Lahey — November 10, 2011 @ 6:29 pm
I have a longtime friend in Estonia, a teacher of English to Estonian middle school students. Her very best resource, she told us, is American comic books. Good article on grabbing them where their interest lies.
Comment by Terrell Harris Dougan — November 10, 2011 @ 6:37 pm
Hi Jess. You make me want to go back to school because it’s so painfully clear that much of the teaching back in my day was so one-dimensional. But I would only want to go back to school if you were the teacher.
Beautiful writing as always! /d
Comment by Douglas Harp — November 10, 2011 @ 10:27 pm
@Robert Pondiscio
Excellent article, thanks for the link!
Comment by S. Campbell — November 11, 2011 @ 2:14 am
Hmm, I suppose that thinking The Hunger Games was a bit of a rip-off of the Richard Bachman/Stephen King novel The Running Man (memorably made into a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura) shows my cultural literacy is a bit lower-brow than DC Parent’s.
Comment by Crimson Wife — November 11, 2011 @ 5:53 am
One of the great markers of good eduction, for me, is when students start both integrating academic disciplines and integrating their academic learnings in their dailey life. Jessica shows beautifully how small tidbits can fertilize a process that can enrich for a lifetime.
Comment by Bruce — November 11, 2011 @ 9:48 am
I should amend my post: a couple of people have pointed out that Catch-22 is not appropriate for middle school students due to some racy content. They are absolutely right. My students know that the version of this novel on our independent reading shelf copy has been excised a bit and that it is not the entire text. I have done this with a couple of books that I really want to keep on the shelf for their literary value but that are problematic in their maturity level. I teach at an independent school with a strict PG policy.
Comment by Jessica Lahey — November 11, 2011 @ 11:07 am
Thank you for this wonderful piece. What lively and thoughtful teaching, and what a gleeful response from your students. (I realize they aren’t always gleeful, nor should they be.)
You handled the teaching of the book well: by reading a passage aloud and having an excised version (that the students knew wasn’t complete) in the classroom. That’s better than using an adapted text (not that one exists–I don’t know) or keeping them ignorant of this hilarious book and the term “catch-22.”
It’s great that your school has both a strict PG policy (at this level) and an appreciation of literature, including controversial literature. The students get the best of both worlds: exposure to delightful works and protection from excessively disturbing content. So much of literature is and must be a little bit disturbing. But sometimes there are isolated passages that go too far for a particular age group, and this is one good way of handling them.
Congratulations, also, on your write-up in the New York Times!
Comment by Diana Senechal — November 11, 2011 @ 11:56 am
Outstanding, outstanding, outstanding.
Comment by Kas DeCaravlho — November 11, 2011 @ 5:34 pm
Good job making learning relative!
Comment by Betty Sue Robie — November 12, 2011 @ 7:22 am
I do a very similar thing with my 5th graders at a Core Knowledge school. I have to first prime the pump by showing them that the cultural allusions are all around them. You should see my collection of Donkey-Hotey comic strips!
Comment by 5th grade teacher — November 12, 2011 @ 8:14 pm
Your story about the “Catch-22″ reference brought to mind a passage in an article by Dr. Hirsch:
“…it’s not just the words that the student has to grasp the meaning of—it’s also the kind of reality that the words are referring to…When a child doesn’t understand those word meanings and those referred-to realities, being good at sounding out words is a dead end. Reading becomes a kind of Catch-22: In order to become better at reading with understanding, you already have to be able to read with understanding. Long before Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, this idea was implied in the Gospel of Matthew, which stated that those who already have shall gain more, while from those who have not shall be taken away even what they have. Alluding to this biblical passage, cognitive scientists and reading researchers have spoken of the “Matthew effect” in reading. Those who already have good language understanding will gain still more language proficiency, while those who lack initial understanding will fall further and further behind.”
(from “Building Knowledge: The Case for Bringing Content into the Language Arts Block and for a Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Core for all Children.”)
Comment by bruce — November 13, 2011 @ 4:08 pm
Bruce, that’s just….well, that’s just lovely. Thank you. I wish I’d thought of it myself.
Comment by Jess — November 13, 2011 @ 4:20 pm
What an inspiring post! It is often frustrating when our students lack the background knowledge they need to understand what we are teaching. It is such a great idea for you to use your “Cultural Literacy Tidbits” as a means to provide them with that information.
I teach second grade, so the content that you expose your students to is very different to what my students need to know. However, I find myself needing to find the time to provide them with information additional to the content in the curriculum. One way to do this is during SSR, which is the time of day when the students are expected to read silently while I conference with individuals. However, at the beginning of SSR I am required to teach a mini-lesson or do a read-aloud. I find that this is an excellent time to locate books or articles that pertain to the background knowledge that my students need to have to succeed academically. When planning ahead, it is nice to share these materials during SSR on the day prior to the lesson that will involve that knowledge. This way the students are already prepared when you teach the lesson the next day. This is also a great time to share vocabulary that will be in the texts that students will be reading the next day so that they do not struggle with figuring out the pronunciation or meaning of the words.
The students always are engaged when teachers bring in artifacts from their lives outside of school. I am sure that your students love to hear about the books that you read when you were their age and to be able to make connections between school and things like comic strips. I am sure your students love being a part of your class!
Comment by Christina C — November 13, 2011 @ 6:46 pm
Wow! Your post is inspirational. I always hope to inspire the learners in my class to make connections in the real world. It is difficult in this time in education to make real-world lessons. We are expected to meet standards set forth for us by administration, communities and governments. It is challenging for teachers to teach required material at the correct pace while still adding daily-living skills into each day. I enjoyed reading how you have incorporated the students’ lives outside of school into their school work. As a teacher leader, I hope to bring examples of this back to teachers in my district. Teaching of this magnitude keeps students engaged in the learning process and teaches them lessons that they can transfer from school to life after school. The skills that you use ensure that students are learning and should be shared with others. You have lucky students and colleagues!
Comment by Aimee K — November 14, 2011 @ 6:24 pm