Every semester I tell my students that I learned from them, and I’m sure this is something that most teachers say, or at least think, at the end of the semester. This last semester, Fall 2014, I thought my students should take this to the next level by writing their own pedagogical essays. The logic being, since we all learn from our students, why not tap directly into them as a resource and see how they would teach us to teach material to other students? They were all part of a topics English class focused on banned books and censorship. When I was constructing the book list for the class, I really struggled with the confines of the 15 weeks that I had at Minnesota State University. There was a whole unit on young adult literature or children’s literature that I simply couldn’t fit into the class, so I made that the focus of these pedagogical essays. Students had to choose a young adult or children’s book that had been banned, challenged, or censored, and come up with a way to teach this to a particular audience. I let them choose what that audience was, essentially which grade to teach this book to, and left them to their own devices to come up with a method for teaching that book. As usual, I was pleasantly surprised, and greatly impressed, at what they came up with.
What follows this short introduction are three of essays from that class. One essay is dedicated to Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one on Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, and one on Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. Each essay takes a unique approach and offers practical activities that can be directly applied to any classroom. The essays follow a standardized format: an introduction and overview, summary and background about the book and the challenges against it, and suggestions for teaching the book. The hope is that by using this standardized format, that instructors can navigate to the sections that are most relevant to them. Beyond the direct benefit of the lessons themselves, however, I believe the true gift of these essays is an opportunity to see these texts, and our classrooms, through a fresh set of eyes. Students teaching teachers to teach students. Enjoy.
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