Another Letter to Another New Hero

Here is my letter to illustrator Israel Sanchez:


Israel Sanchez,

I am Amy Whitaker, an undergraduate in the English Teaching program at Brigham Young University. I am currently enrolled in a class called Writing About Literature in the Digital Age, where we discuss the new methods and formats of expressing our interactions with literature. At the beginning of the term, each student chose a work of literature to focus on in the context of consume, create, and connect. In other words, we are expected to "read" the work differently than we've ever read anything before (through audiobooks, e-books, reading it out loud, reading others' blogs about it, looking at others' derivations of it, etc.), create scholarship on the work that is original, imaginative, and nothing like the traditional scholarly essay, and interact with a broad online community to collaborate ideas and share our scholarship on the work.

My book of choice was a childhood favorite, Where the Red Fern Grows. I was absolutely thrilled when I discovered your art that you did for the book for the Picture Book Report project. The illustrations provide a beautiful and nontraditional interpretation of the book that I find thrilling. I am interested in sharing some of these illustrations directly on my blog, but I wanted to make sure I have your permission. You will receive appropriate credit for the work, and I will provide links to your blog and website.

Thank you so much for your beautiful artistic interpretations of one of my favorite books. You have somehow portrayed both the childhood whimsy and the deep emotionality of Where the Red Fern Grows, which I find absolutely inspiring.

Thanks again,

Amy Whitaker

My Letter to a New-Found Hero

Today I discovered a website that will greatly enrich my experience in English 295. It's even going to enrich my life. Picturebookreport.com demonstrates everything we're learning about the evolution of the consumption of books, and it particularly addresses how we create based on our interactions with text. In a very brief nutshell, the Picture Book Report is a collaborative effort of fifteen illustrators to craft artwork as a response to their favorite works of literature and then share them online. Meg Hunt, the leader of the effort, calls the project, "an extended love-song to books."

When I saw that one illustrator, Israel Sanchez, had crafted art for Where the Red Fern Grows, I felt as though I had struck gold. When I saw that the art was beautiful, I was overjoyed. This is exactly what I have been looking for.

I'm sure I will have many posts that result from this wonderful discovery. Below is an e-mail I sent to Meg Hunt. I will soon contact Israel Sanchez to ask his permission to share some of his work directly on my blog. Until then, I encourage you to visit his page on the Picture Book Report website.

Meg,

I am an undergraduate in the English Teaching program at Brigham Young University in Provo, UT, and I am currently enrolled in a class called Writing about Literature in the Digital Age. The basic premise of the class is that we live in an age when literature is consumed, reacted to, and shared in new and ever-evolving formats. Your picture book project is fascinating, beautiful, and reflective of our heightened ability to share our creativity (which is inspired by the literary creativity of others) through digital media.

At the beginning of the term, my professor asked each student in the class to pick a work of literature to consume (study), create (inspire us to craft substantial "scholarship" on the piece, including blogs or other creative venues), and connect (share our ideas and creations with others and encourage feedback). My choice was a childhood favorite, Where the Red Fern Grows. Needless to say, when I discovered Mr.Sanchez's magnificent artwork, I felt as though I had struck gold. Your entire project addresses how the experience of literature can be expressed through formats other than the traditional scholarly essay and enriched by digital collaboration. I will be contacting Mr. Sanchez myself to thank him for his art and to ask his permission to share it through my own blog.

Thank you,

Amy Whitaker

The Wonders of a Physical Classroom

Today in my creative writing class I was put on the chopping block. And I loved it. In that class we take turns having our pieces workshopped, and today was my turn. I sat back and listened to my classmates’ feedback. What they had to say about my essay was beneficial for me, but their suggestions went beyond just words. I could gauge their sincerity by their body language. I could hear in their intonation exactly what they were saying. My classmates’ even had the opportunity to (respectfully) challenge one another in their assessments of my paper with instantaneous—and sometimes inaudible—feedback. It was a wonderful environment of interactive learning, and it all took place in a traditional physical classroom.

Now, this may seem to contradict what I said in my recent blog post regarding the magnificent opportunities that technology can provide, sometimes replacing face-to-face interaction. In fact, I specifically mentioned the practice of peer review, or, as we call it in my creative writing class, workshopping. So, yesterday I suggested Google Docs as a preferred format for peer review, and today I am suggesting that there is no replacement for the traditional method. And I am not going to retract either statement.

Teaching is, and always has been, the art of not only knowing the material, but how to teach a particular lesson in a particular situation. There is a time and a place for technology in the classroom. There is also a time and a place for physical interaction. There are benefits to both, and I believe it is absolutely necessary that teachers and students remember this.

Teachers vs. Technology

In about a year from now I hope to be a professional English teacher. My experience with middle and high school English was wonderful (or I probably wouldn't be going into that field), but it was almost completely void of technology. Occasionally I would make a video for a project. Every once in a while we would do a traditional research paper with a little bit of the research on the internet. Besides that, we sat around and talked about books, or we got out our paper and pencils and wrote some solid five-paragraph essays.

Teaching methods are changing. This is obvious. Many teachers are embracing technology and allowing it to enrich their classrooms. Some are resisting. My classmate, Ashley Nelson, bookmarked an article on the future use of Google Apps in public schools. While my initial response should have been, "Wow, that's awesome! I wonder how I will be able to incorporate that into my teaching methods to benefit my students," it was instead, "Dang, that sounds like it will take a lot of effort on my part. Is it even worth it?"

I know. I'm a terrible person. I have taken plenty of technologically-rich classes in college, and I have seen how technology can benefit pedagogy. Maybe it's because of my experience with technology in the classroom that I am so aware of how difficult it can be to implement. Every new technology that we believe will benefit our classrooms is worth exploring, but we can't expect smooth sailing from the infancy of our digital experiments.  And if something just doesn't work, we need to be willing to drop it.

Digital Collaboration in the Classroom

I'm an Assistant Learning Specialist for student athletes at Brigham Young University. My role is primarily to help students who are struggling academically learn how to learn. While we participated as a class in the brainstorming session via Google Docs, I realized that this could be incredibly useful for a particular football player I mentor. We'll call him Bob.

Bob doesn't care much for writing. He's a hard worker, but he likes to get in, sit down, and write what he needs to write. Often, though, he gets frustrated when his ideas just aren't coming together. I usually work with him before he turns in a rough draft of a paper for Writing 150. We pound out a paper (all his ideas and words, for the record), then he turns in the rough draft to several of his peers. After he gets this feedback, Bob can finally work on his final draft.

This is an incredibly disjointed method of writing for a student who desperately wants to do his best writing, right then, right there. One mentor, even though I'm quite a confident writer, is not enough collaboration; the peer contributions to his piece are useful, but they are too delayed.

Why not use technology to rectify this problem? Why not use Google Docs, or any other digital collaboration tool, to help Bob clean up his ideas on the spot? How wonderful this instantaneous feedback would be for a student who wants things done instantaneously! The status quo condemns Bob's natural writing methods. The status quo says that Bob is wrong to want to sit down, right his stuff, stand up, and go play football, free from lingering thoughts on the paper he still has to complete. As writers, it might be hard to understand why Bob struggles so much with the process. Non-writers wonder why it has to be so drawn out. Technology can help us bridge the gap between the need to go through the entire writing process--including peer workshopping-- and the desire of many to write a paper and be done with it.

Goodreads Review on Rainbows End

I am not a fan of sci-fi (which, I admit, is probably the primary reason for only two stars...sorry for the bias). This book does, however, have some great things to say about what it means to be a citizen in a digitally-saturated society. I quite frankly didn't care much for or about the characters or plot, but the connections that can be drawn between the characters and plot and our contemporary society are highly intriguing.

Women Aren't Where the Red Fern Grows

I'm reading Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows for my personal text for English 295. At some point I know I'm supposed to focus in on literary aspects of this book that I want to explore (though I'm not completely sure what the encompasses yet). Nevertheless, something significant about the book just stood out to me, and I thought I'd publish it here to see if any other Where the Red Fern Grows readers have thoughts on the topic.

On page 146 of a novel that only has 212 pages, I learn for the first time of the existence of a living grandmother in the story. The grandfather's role in the novel is major from the beginning to the end, but not once until page 146 is his wife mentioned. Also, Billy has three little sisters, all of whom are frequent recipients of Billy's generosity and admirers of his dogs, but not much else. His mother is a perpetual worrier, constantly concerned about Billy's safety. There isn't much depth to her character at all. In fact, there is no depth to any female character in the entire novel (unless you count Little Anne, Billy's dog).

I love Where the Red Fern Grows, so I hate to see in it something so unappealing as what I've just pointed out. Am I just being a feminist? I don't think so. The women are inarguably flat. I'll love this book no matter what sort of sexism I uncover, and I think this might be a topic I want to look into further.