While I like Jago's approach to teaching "in the zone of proximal development" rather that "the zone of minimal effort," the reading lists she recorded in her textbook contain too much reading in one year for students. She mentions that she is aware that the occasional student may refer to Cliff's Notes, but I think that nearly every student would refer to Cliff's Notes, skim the text or not read a few books at all. 20 texts in one year is a lot to assign for one high school class. Avid reader that I have always been, I don't think I would have even read all of those texts in one year in high school--students should be well-rounded as well as well-read. I would not have been able to enjoy reading unassigned books or partake in as many extracurricular activities as I did if I had to do that much intensive reading and writing for one class. Even taking five books off of that total would allow for students to have an annotated knowledge of classic texts, acceptable for one year in high school.
Two points Jago makes that I really agree with are, firstly, that students write essays on texts they read outside of class; that would allow students to analyze texts in class and on their own. Writing an analytical essay on outside reading in the second semester would allow teachers to scaffold the writing assignments and analyses so that students could become more independent analysts by the end of the school year. Also, I like the idea of having a list of books students have read throughout high school. Perhaps in the freshman year (or even seventh or eighth grade, if the district is really cohesive) students can make an online profile of some sort, or even a blog, including each book he or she has read. Writing a paragraph or two in response to each book read over six years of schooling would add up to a wide range of entries! After reading "Cyrano de Bergerac" again in my adult life, I would like to compare my thoughts now to when I read it the first time as a fifteen-year-old.
While I agree that students should be challenged, I feel that there is a difference in challenging, insightful coursework and a syllabus that overworks students to the point of losing their interest and motivation to learn.
You make a good point - we want to have high expectations for students, but we want to make sure we are engaging our students in their learning as well.
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