Pre-reading

So far in my student teaching, I feel like I've only made one really large flub. I had an assignment where I would discuss lynching, a concept which I don't think many kids in Vermont will really understand. I needed them, for the sake of getting how significant of a scene they were reading in To Kill a Mockingbird was, to really make the connection between what they were reading and what a lynching is really about.

To this extent, I showed them some fairly graphic images. As I passed out photocopies of these images (a copy made for each student), I told them that they were going to be looking at some really disturbing and violent imagery. In retrospect, what I wish I had done was first sit down and talk about what they were going to be seeing ahead of time. To really hammer home what this type of violence means and then use the imagery to support the details of how awful and terrible this action was.

And I messed up. I just let the images get out there with only the most perfunctory of warnings. It is with this in mind that I say, as Mrs. C and I move on to discuss Elie Wiesel and his book Night that I want to help do things right. This particular item of holocaust literature is deeply moving, fairly horrific and ultimately painful to read. Yet it's important to really understand the history behind the event and the nature of the book and experience. This intensely personal narrative is one that I don't want to simply throw the students into unprepared, and so she and I are going to work together and do some preparatory materials to really let everyone fell, well, prepared for things.

For my full student teaching where I'll be carrying a full class load, I am going to be doing eight days of Writing work (or maybe something else thrown in) and then two days of preparatory material for Night. I'm really excited about how this will ultimately turn out!