Learning Letter

Dear Dr. Agriss,

Before I start in earnest with this letter, let me just say: thank you for being an awesome instructor and for listening to all my moaning and groaning about the literature unit plan. That being said, let me begin:

Book Talks: These were awesome! It’s not often I get to share reading materials that aren’t strictly academic with other students, and it’s not often I receive reading recommendations from peers that aren’t for academic purposes. These book talks were also a wake-up call of sorts to branch out into reading books from other genres, and not just my usual go-to favorites (though still amazing) on my bookshelf at home.

Lit. Unit Plans: Since you already know about my rather strong feelings associated with working on this assignment, I’ll move on to other venues. As I’ve mentioned before, I really do recognize and appreciate the merit that this assignment holds, as I’ll need all the help and preparation I can get in my training to become a teacher. However, I believe that a lot of my heated, loathsome feelings in regards to this assignment don’t stem from “man, this is a lot of work, I hate this” so much as from this assignment making me feel rather lost and helpless to a degree. What I’m trying to say is: I’m being an impatient, teacher-trainee-wannabe that wants to rush in and get teaching experience right now, this very minute, rather than sit down with lesson plans of which, due to the fast-pace nature of the classroom, will inevitably change to fit the curricula I need to impart to my future students. Am I making sense?

Don’t mind me. I think I’m just being headstrong, young, and foolish in thinking I can handle an actual classroom crammed full of students at this point and time in my life. I’ll just have to scrape up as much patience as I can and carry on with working on lesson plans in the years to come.

Theories and Concepts: To tell you the truth, I couldn’t name a single one we went over in class: their official academic designations, I mean. I deal much better with theories and concepts when shown in examples or demonstrated for me to see. One concept, however, stuck out like a sore thumb to me because I still feel baffled as to how to teach it: teaching students how to read. Of course they’ll know how to read; but teaching them to read as I read: annotating, analyzing, critiquing, and summarizing all at the same time. At this point in my education, doing everything I just listed above while reading seems perfectly natural to me and I can do them without realizing that I’m doing them.  How do I get students to a point where they’re on their way to reading the way I read? How do I explain all this to them? I guess I’ll find out.

Predictions for the Future: Being in English 493 has helped me realize that I can indeed be a teacher; a teacher filled with humor and realistic expectations when it comes to the work and herding students this way and that. Realistic expectations as in knowing that I won’t be this perfect little automaton of a teacher that does and says everything right, and that there will be days where I’ll want to give up or tear my hair out in frustration. English 493 has been like a buoy in uncertain waters, with a message stamped on it that reads “You can be a human being and a teacher at the same time: you’ll be okay!”

Thank you for your time Sean!

Sincerely,

Angela Hardesty

Elie Wiesel's 'Night'

A favorite human pastime is imagining oneself being steady in the middle of a crisis. What do I mean by ‘steady’: repelling the pain of starvation, hard labor, and torture. ‘Yeah, I could take it,’ we like to think to ourselves. People assume that, if ever they were to encounter a measure of pain that could either kill them, or kill something inside of them, they would be able to draw up the will to live from some hidden depth of strength and courage, and then patiently wait for the horrors to cease.

Usually these assumptions are made by those who have been untried

.

The other assumption humans like to make: ‘no matter what happens to me; no matter what I’m threatened with, I’ll stand by my principles and my family. Survival will never be as important to me as them.’

By the end of Elie Wiesel’s Night, the young author is enslaved to survival. The strain of his suffering destroys him physically, thus destroying him mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I was particularly horrified by his thought on the death of his father after he wasted away in that death camp: “Free at last!” It wasn’t the thought itself that horrified me: it was the fact that I could understand it in some feeble, instinctual way.

The human brain and body are hardwired to survive, hardwired to endure up to a certain point. What happens when the brain and body are brought to and beyond that point? Your body will undoubtedly betray you in a way- it will seek out the surest path to live, and if that means being glad to be alone, glad that a beloved family member is dead and no longer needs the resources to be cared for, than you will be glad. My question to myself is: if even half of what ripped Wiesel apart happened to me, would I still be me? Would I do anything to protect my family, my beliefs? In the insanity caused by sickness and hunger and intense, relentless fear, would I long for the death of a loved one, if only to save me one more hurt?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. 

- Angela H.

Graphic Novels in the Classroom

The question is: am I for graphic novels in the classroom? Absolutely! But I believe that any teacher that wants to integrate them into their lesson plans needs to shop around and vet these novels first before letting students get their hands on them.

For example: I’d love to have students peruse through The Graphic Canon, edited by Russ Kick, granted that they are in the appropriate grade levels and, to be honest, maturity levels. The Graphic Canon may be a set of illustrated works of literature classics, but I have to be mindful that many of those classics deal with sensitive or explicit material. Sometimes visuals of these explicit scenes in literary classics can be a bit more disturbing than merely reading about them. Just something to keep in mind (pictures can be worth a thousand words and can pack a hell of a punch on the average human psyche).

Vetting materials for the classroom is probably old hat to many a veteran teacher out there; in my defense, however, graphic novels are seldom made a part of curriculum, even at the college level. And, to be honest, a lot of my personal favorites in graphic novels are seriously inappropriate for student perusal in the classroom.

Speaking of favorites, my go-to graphic novels for reading, and viewing, would have to be Frank Miller’s Sin City series, especially volume 4, That Yellow Bastard, and volume 7, Hell and Back. It’s not so much that I’m a hardcore Frank Miller fan, but that I have a weakness, especially in the realm of graphic novels, for neo-noir cop-dramas that center around the seedy underbelly of a city. In fact, I’m just starting to get into what I have dubbed as ‘future-noir’ or ‘dystopian future cop-drama’ graphic novels, Judge Dredd now at the top of that list.

- Angela H.

Edgar Allan Poe's Letter to Maria Clemm

So. The online sources I pulled up and skimmed over about Sherman Alexie’s sexual harassment allegations report that many of his (supposed, or not) victims are beginning to share their accounts of the author’s sexual misconduct with them. One woman, anonymous so far as I know, was quoted to have said that many Native American men like Alexie view Native American women as ‘easy prey.’

The words ‘easy prey’ made me automatically think of something I’ve wondered about poet Edgar Allan Poe for a time, since I read his letter to his aunt Maria Clemm, about his cousin and future wife, Virginia Clemm.

Even if this letter were addressed to a grown woman, and not to a 12 to 13 year old girl, it would still be predatory and insane. Actually, if you read it, the letter is primarily addressed to his aunt, with only one line to spare for his young cousin:

“My love, my own sweetest Sissy, my darling little wifey, think well before you break the heart of your Cousin, Eddy.”

Now I don’t pretend to know everything about Poe’s life or his marriage with Virginia. The only bits of information I can recall about their marriage from reading a biography or two of the poet’s life is that he supposedly struck a bargain with his aunt that she and Virginia would move in with him, that Virginia would marry him upon turning 13, and that he would not engage in any sexual activities with Virginia until she was at least 16. Their marriage until her death was said to have been a happy one.

My question is: did Poe actually love his cousin and respect her body and boundaries until she was ‘old enough’? Or did he simply nab what he thought was ‘easy prey.’ After reading his batshit, crazy letter to his aunt, of which he addresses the ‘object’ of his affections with a scant one-and-a-half lines, and those lines both condescending and threatening at that, I’m nudging towards the latter.

The link to the letter: https://www.eapoe.org/works/letters/p3508290.htm

- Angela H.