The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

Added recently to our English teachers' reading list is The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs. The distractions are all the obvious ones in our electronic age - the web, social networking, texting and so on. Jacobs, an avid and fluent reader, found himself increasingly stymied when attempting to read the long texts which he once devoured, and this book is his response to this dilemma. It is also a passionate defence of the importance of pleasure in reading, and casts a sceptical eye on worthiness. It's a greatly pleasurable read itself, and Jacobs is an affable and intelligent companion. It should prompt plenty of thought on what is one of the central issues of our vocations.

A key word for Jacobs is 'Whim'. Reading should not be programmatic, and we should take ourselves where we fancy. As he writes, "the child who reads with a pure enthusiasm, signaling nothing to anyone, is beautiful": it is this kind of enthusiasm that is easiest in childhood, and which is very hard to recapture. He also discusses the way the Kindle rescued his 'pure enthusiasm', the importance of marking certain kinds of books ("Reading with a writing instrument in hand is an unnatural act for many readers, yet I think in most cases it is necessary to attentive response"), the pleasure of 'upstream' books (those which have come before, influenced and shaped our current reads) and much more.

Three quotations of particular interest to English teachers:-

• The“pedagogical challenge” for teachers, in the foreseeable future, will be to combine hyper attention with deep attention and to cultivate both.
• What reading teaches, first and foremost, is how to sit still for long periods and confront time head-on.
• In school, then, reading gets linked to a zig-zagging alternation between empowerment and anxiety, an alternation that for some people can last a lifetime

Below, Jacobs discussses the book and answers questions on his ideas.
Alan Jacobs discusses 'The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction' from The New Atlantis on Vimeo.

Leaving Certificate results, 2012

Congratulations to our recent leaving VI form, who last week gained an outstanding average of 451 points per candidate in their Leaving Certificate results. See full details on the College website here.

All 68 candidates sat English, 61 of them at Higher Level, which amounts to 91% (65% nationally).

• 7.3% of all our candidates achieved an A at Higher Level (nationally, 6.7% of all candidates achieve this).
• 27.9% achieved a B (nationally, 17.3% of all candidates).
• 35.3% achieved a C (nationally, 25.6% of all candidates).

See previous results by clicking on the years for 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

'Wonder' by R.J. Palacio

R.J. Palacio's new children's novel, Wonder, is making a big splash at the moment, and it's not hard to see why. The 10 year-old central character (and the first of several narrators), August Pullman, has a rare and extreme genetic facial disfigurement, and we join the story as he faces into his first school (he has been home-schooled so far). In the first paragraph, he tells us: "I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse" (later, another of the narrators, his sister Via, does give a vivid physical description of a face that looks as if it's been badly melted in a fire). The story that follows rips along, tugging plenty of emotional strings as Auggie faces this new world.  As Auggie tells us "It’s like people you see sometimes, and you can’t imagine what it would be like to be that person, whether it’s somebody in a wheelchair or somebody who can’t talk. Only, I know that I’m that person to other people."

'Faces' is always the appropriate metaphor here. Eliot's anxious J. Alfred Prufrock says that "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet", but nothing Prufrock has to face comes anywhere near Auggie's daily challenges as he heads out daily from a very loving cocoon of a family (including the dog Daisy), and no-one he meets has the time to prepare a face responding to Auggie's (almost everyone flinches, and he always notices). Hallowe'en is the best time of all: Auggie can wear a mask like everyone else and be free of the mask that is his own face. And 'face' is also a metaphor that will chime with young readers; central to childhood and adolescence are uncertainty and self-consciousness, and the difficulty of fitting in. Palacio takes her readers skilfully through the ups and downs of friendship ("nothing tests friendships like high school").

The blurb says that (cue gravelly voiceover) "in a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope" - as crass and badly written a description as you could hope for. Wonder is better than this, with a powerful examination of identity - how we are seen, how we see others. However, it does point to a fault some may find: the arc of the story turns out to be somewhat predictably one of triumph over darkness, with perhaps too many saccharine markers, and some of the later narrators are not always as interesting as Auggie or Via (such as her boyfriend Justin, and his friend Jack Will). But these caveats are likely to be a long way from the minds of young readers who will be cheering through their tears by the end.

Reading for English Teachers

The holidays are the best time for refreshing ourselves intellectually, so here is a list of good reading for English teachers (it will be regularly updated). You can contribute by the comments section below, or via Twitter to @sccenglish.

This blog has always been (amongst many other things) about putting our own learning as teachers openly alongside our pupils' learning and achievements (including our use of Twitter). Click here for over 50 English teaching posts.

While we're on the subject, here's an interesting recent post from Darcy Moore, an English teacher in Australia, on the interesting new world of 'social reading', a world which presents us with new opportunities for direct and intellectual engagement with others (including authors) about our reading. 

[updated February 2013]


Recommendations, in no particular order:

1. The Art of Slow Reading (2011) by Thomas Newkirk : outstanding short book that, appropriately, should be read slowly, to absorb its considerable practical and philosophical wisdom.
2. Prefaces to Shakespeare (2010) by Tony Tanner. Most of us spend a lot of time with Shakespeare. This could well be the single most intellectually stimulating book on the playwright. Originally introductions to the Everyman series, they are now thankfully collected in one volume. 800 pages of pure gold.
3. I Is An Other (2011) by James Geary. A book about one of the most important elements of language, metaphor, packed full of examples and ideas we can use in the classroom. Particularly strong on 'real world' use, such as in economics.
4. The Learning Game (2002) by Jonathan Smith. The autobiographical reflections of an English teacher looking back on a career. Very readable.
5. Readicide (2009) by Kelly Gallagher. Subtitled 'How schools are killing reading and what you can do about it), this book was prompted by Gallagher's dismay at how American schools are approaching reading, but has a huge amount of material relevant to other countries. It is also consistently readable.
6. Write Like This (2011) again by Kelly Gallagher. Again, the subtitle summarises: 'Teaching real-world writing through modelling and mentor texts'. Lots of practical activities. Gallagher reminds teachers how important it is that we model writing for our pupils, as 'the best writers in the room'.
7. How to Teach (2010) by Phil Beadle. Not confined to English teachers, but written by one. On marking: 'Make no mistake: this is the most important thing you do as a teacher.' Read his story in Chapter 5 about Cerise, and the tragedy (yes, really) of her unmarked book. 
8. The Language Instinct (1995) by Steven Pinker. The intellectual underpinning of Pinker's thought can be controversial (see several articulate caveats in the Amazon comments), but simply on the level of rich material and examples this is a terrific book for the classroom. See also his book on verbs, Words and Rules.
9. On the same subject, The Unfolding of Language: the evolution of mankind's greatest invention (2006) by Guy Deutscher. 'Linguistics for laypeople' ... as with Pinker, a great bag of stuff for the classroom here.
10. Old Friend from Far Away (2009) by Natalie Goldberg. Plenty of good prompts and exercises for the classroom, but also a reminder that we should be writing away from it, too, and memoir is a good place to start.
11. The Perfect Ofsted English Lesson (2012) by David Didau. A short book with lots of good sense (and plenty of value for those of us who don't have to undergo the British Ofsted inspections).
12. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (2011) by Alan Jacobs. The changing nature of reading in the electronic age is something all English teachers should think about, and Jacobs's attractive and sensible book helps us to do this, as well as providing a lot of pleasure in itself.
13. Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a world that can't stop talking (2013) by Susan Cain. Lots to think about here, especially for those of us teaching a subject that requires quietness (reading) and also oral engagement (discussion and debate).
14. Finally, Drive (2011) by Daniel Pink. Not about English teaching, (though teaching is often discussed), but its lessons about motivation at work should be at the core of our vocations, what we do in our classrooms, and why we do it.

After 'The Hunger Games'

For the many among you who are fans of Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games trilogy, Lawrence Public Library in Kansas has a handy infographic pointing the way forward after you've finished Mockingjay, particularly towards books picking up the themes of action, love and dystopia. Click here for the original post, here for the file itself as a PDF. Lots of good material and advice here.

New Sonnets App

No 15 in a series of reviews of iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad apps useful for English literature and language learning and teaching.


A recent outstanding app is The Sonnets, from some of the team who created another outstanding resource for students and teachers, The Waste Land.

Here, all 154 poems are beautifully-presented, and all performed by a variety of academics and actors. You can follow these performances as video, audio, or simultaneously with the text (each line being highlighted in turn). 'Perspectives' gives both video and text of comments by Don Paterson, James Shapiro, Katherine Duncan-Jones and others on topics such as 'The order of the Sonnets' and 'Shakespeare's Sexuality'. There's also a Facsimile of the 1609 Quarto, the full Arden introduction, and notes from Arden and Don Paterson on every poem (with room for your own notes).

This is a superb production, and immediately becomes the best single resource on the poems for teachers, well worth the cost of €10.99. Next up? Paradise Lost? Great Expectations? The Great Gatsby?


[Above, Sonnet 90 read by Nathan Stewart-Jarrett].

123 Books for Summer Reading

Open publication - Free publishing - More books

Above, our first holiday reading suggestions list for pupils - 123 excellent books in fiction (both junior and senior), general non-fiction, sports, science, history and more. Click once for a closer view, once again for closest, and use the arrows to scroll through the seven pages. You can also click here to see the file, and download/print it.

Parents' Holiday Reading

Open publication - Free publishing - More books

Above, our third annual reading suggestions list for our parents (you can also read/download it here): 25 good books to enjoy over the coming months.

Among the goodies: Kevin Barry, Teju Cole, Susan Hill, Anne Enright, Patrick Gale, Gerbrand Bakker, Belinda McKeon, Graham Swift, and lots more...

Actiontrack 2012

Below, a slideshow of photographs from last Saturday's Actiontrack show for 2012, Weaver Story To Tell, inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses...

Summer Reading Lists

We've now published our suggestions lists of summer holiday reading for pupils (125 books) and for parents (click for the latter's 2010 and 2011 lists). 

Leading up to this, on June 7th we joined the New York Times Learning Network's #summerreading day on Twitter, sharing some books recommended by our Transition Year pupils. Meanwhile, here is a round-up of summer reading resources on the web, divided between Schools & Youth, and General Adult Readers; like our annual Books of the Year lists (2011, 2010), it will be frequently updated.

Any other lists? Please Comment below, or tweet us @sccenglish.

Schools & Youth

1. A great reading flowchart of 101 books, from Teach.com.
2. The Guardian: Children's summer reading, including suggestions from distinguished authors such as Michael Morpurgo, who recommends The Secret Hen House Theatre by new author Helen Peters.
3. School Library Journal - summer reading suggestions from authors and illustrators (including Mitali Perkins - Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye).
4. The School Library Journal: the value of summer reading programmes.
5. 'Creating a Summer Reading Network' from Andrew Marcinek on Edutopia, and also 'How to Inspire Your Students to Read this Summer' by Rebecca Alber.
6. The New York Times Learning Network invites suggestions from young people aged 13+.
7. Another one from the New York Times Learning Network - their 3rd annual Summer Reading Contest runs from June 15 to August 17, and concentrates on non-fiction and informational texts.
8. International Reading Association: the 2012 Young Adults' Choices list (PDF).
9. ReadWriteThink: 'Bright Ideas' to combat the 'summer slide'.
10. Summer Reading from NYC Libraries- lists for all ages.
11. NPR: Teen Reads for this summer - five books on friendship.
12. National Endowment for the Humanities: a particularly helpful list for parents, starting with kindergarten books. For older children, David Almond's Skellig, for example.
13. English Companion Ning for English teachers: 'What Are You Reading This Summer?' forum discussion (requires login).
14. Huffington Post: Devon Corneal's Summer Reading: Books for Kids of All Ages (divided into boys/girls, and picture books for each).
15. LA Times: Summer Reading Guide for Young Adult & Children (hover over book covers for descriptions).
16. 4th Graders from the Dalton School make their summer recommendations.
17. The Boston Globe: Young readers' (non-required) summer books list (including Morgan Matson's Second Chance Summer - "warning - tissues recommended").
18. Chadwick School Library Middle and Upper School Summer Reading 2012: well-presented recommendations.
19. Lots of choice from William Fremd High School.
20. The Seattle Times: Reading fun in the sun for children, teens and young adults.
21. James Patterson's list for 'Tweens and Teens, 11-up'.
22. The Horn Book: Summer Reading Recommendations for ages through to high school (including Marie Lu's "Hunger Games read-alike" Legend).

General Adult Readers

1. London Independent: 50 Best Summer Reads (including Bed by David Whitehouse).
2. The Irish Times: 30 Great Summer Reads (including Elizabeth Taylor's Complete Short Stories).
3. Financial Times: Books of the Year so far, include Shalom Auslander's comic novel about Anne Frank, Hope: a Tragedy, and Jubilee Lines: 60 Poets for 60 Years, edited by Carol Ann Duffy.
4. The Guardian's Biggest Novels of 2012 include Anne Tyler's 19th novel, The Beginner's Goodbye. As a follow-up, readers suggested great short story reading for summer.
5. The Observer asked writers which books they would download in e-form, and which take away on holiday in their print form: answers include Skios by Michael Frayn (the poet Wendy Cope and the film critic Philip French), and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain (Rachel Cooke, critic).
6. NPR: 15 books chosen by independent booksellers (including Jeanette Winterston's new memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?).
7. NPR: new releases this summer, from three critics. Includes Richard Ford's new novel Canada.
8. New York Times: Books for Basking, including Don Winslow's The Kings of Cool.
9. LA Times: Summer Reading Guide, with Beach Books (including John Lanchester's Capital), History and Biography, Lifestyle, Quirky and Audio (hover over book covers for descriptions).
10. The Toronto Globe and Mail: Sandra Martin's 'sizzling summer reads': one reader 'peeks over' her son's summer reading list and chooses from that - this year, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini among others.
11. London Evening Standard: Best books for summer 2012 - the top holiday reads, including Madeleine Miller's Orange Prize-winner The Song of Achilles. With other sections: The winners for older children, The best books to awaken the imagination of younger readers, The classiest crime and Pick of the Paperbacks - lots of good suggestions.
12. Chron.com's 'ultimate summer book list' includes Hilary Mantel's Bring up the Bodies, sequel to her Booker-winning Wolf Hall.
13. CNN : 10 Titles to Watch For include Bring up the Bodies again, and Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a debut novel set in Iraq.
14. JS Online has a very good list of 99 summer book recommendations, including Laurent Binet's HHhH, certainly one of the best titles of the year.
15. The ever-excellent Brain Pickings from Maria Popova features 10 Essential Books for Cognitive Sunshine including a beautiful children's picture book, Germano Zullo and Albertine's Little Bird.
16. The Seattle Times: 10 non-fiction books to last the season includes Ben McIntyre's new Double Cross: the true story of the D-Day spies.
17. 'Doorstep Novels' for the summer from BookPage, including Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.
18. OnPoint's Great Summer Reads, including Ann Patchett's well-received State of Wonder.
19. Huffington Post: 5 thrillers for the summer.
20. Wired: 11 Sci-Fi and fantasy books. 
21. Sports books from The Scotsman. 
22. Deep South magazine: best summer reads from the area.
23. Daily Telegraph : Summer Reading Special - well-known figures make their choices, including England football manager Roy Hodgson, who goes for two books by Stefan Zweig, including his haunting Beware of Pity. Also, authors including Diana Athill and Geoff Dyer make their choices, including Jan Morris going for Montaigne's Essays, "torn into handy segments to use while soaking in the bath".

Under the Hair

As part of her Transition Year Work Portfolio, Helene Peters wrote this piece, which at the Transition Year English evening guest speaker Tom Doorley praised as being worthy of Radio 4 (Helene herself read it powerfully). Click 'Read More' for the full piece if necessary.

I hate them all. The way they move, so self-satisfied. The way they scream and laugh about everything. The way they throw their hair back.

I was always described as 'unusual'. My Primary teacher said so, and after a couple of years, so did my Mum. She was influenced by those cheap hair-throwers.

But what they really mean is that I'm crazy.

 

It's because I like to wear shorts and sandals to church every Sunday, and because I sing the loudest. It's because I eat dinner at breakfast and give names to my furniture. Ted is my table, Stella my lamp.

I don't do everything in order.

Actiontrack 2012, Day 4

Alex Owens reports on the penultimate day of this year's Actiontrack project for Transition Year:

Day 4. This morning we started off with another full music rehearsal of all the songs for Saturday night along with bringing in the soloists that were chosen for the songs that were worked on yesterday. Following this we took off from where we finished yesterday evening, quickly trying to make our way to the last scenes of the play before break. Unfortunately there are a few hiccups and slips along the way, causing a delay. Nevertheless steadily throughout the day we all kept on working on any costumes props and set-pieces needing work (in between our scenes in our play). Along with this the rest of the choreography for  all the songs was created and put into practice by us all. However as the day came to an end our brains grew tired and we slowly began to lean against the wall. (Notice my new rhyming skills...) Tomorrow night all will be REVEALED!!

Actiontrack 2012, Day 3

 Alex Owens reports, now over half-way through the Actiontrack Showbuild:

Day 3. First thing this morning we had a full music rehearsal with the song-writer and musician in the Actiontrack crew, Rich, and finally our script was given out (created by Nick, Molly and Rich incorporating all our ideas). After break we were given our final parts for Saturdays performance! Quickly enough we began to go through every scene getting a feel for the whole thing. Along with this we all began making decisions on costumes, props and solo parts for the songs. After lunch more of the stage set design was slowly but gradually worked on, along with choreographing the first of our big hit songs.

The Submarine, June 2012

Open publication - Free publishing - More fiction
The latest edition of our Library magazine, The Submarine, is hot off the presses, and here it is in e-form via Issuu (click once for a closer view, once more for full screen, and use the arrows to scroll).


Librarian and Editor Tom McConville's introductions are always thoughtful and interesting. This time he challenges the notion that "the library must necessarily cease to be a place of silence, thought and reflection and instead become a kind of feisty information stock exchange" and passionately defends the value of silence: "It encourages a calmness and thoughtfulness that is vital to the absorption of knowledge. It is a calming energy which does not exist in a computer room or Chapel or in any other part of a school - they have their own, equally valid, energies - and it is also good for the soul." Much of this echoes the Sub-Warden's ideas in his recent Chapel talk on the value of reading, the text of which opens the edition (see below for the full talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which prompted that piece).


Elsewhere in the magazine are Sadhbh Sheeran's 'Solstice' from her senior poetry prize-winning portfolio, junior poems by Mark Russell, Thomas Lyster and Hollie Canning, a lively report by Oyinda Onabanjo on the Inter-Schools' Library team quiz, the ever-entertaining 'What's Reading Me' feature, a review by former English teacher Morgan Dockrell of the book Southern Ireland and the Liberation of France by Gerald Morgan and Gavin Hughes (particularly pertinent given this very recent news), Jack Dunne's review of Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design and Mr Morris's of Jo Nesbo's thriller The Leopard, junior pupils' quick reviews of Quick Reads, a report on World Book Day 2012, and news of one of this year's innovations, the Library Committee.


Finally, on the back page in the 'Shoot the Messenger' slot, V former Niamh Faulkner gives her scathing angle on sharing on social networks (an essay prompted in English class by this original article in the Guardian, 'Sharing Can Make You Happy'. Niamh doesn't agree).

Actiontrack, Day 2

Alex Owens reports:-

13th June. The hard work continues again today towards our performance on Saturday evening. We took off from what we did at the end of yesterday using our quick pitch’s we made from Ovid's Metamorphoses. We were split into six groups and given a pitch each and were given the task to give a quick and short performance of the pitch bringing it to life again using the current day situation that was created for it. We got two stories each to do. In these we were allowed to incorporate different genres as well. We worked on these short performances for the majority of the morning then on song writing skills after lunch for the rest of the day. Finally today the stage design is complete!

Actiontrack Day 1

Over the next week, Alex Owens will be reporting on the daily progress of the Transition Year Actiontrack Showbuild. It started today, and so here is her first report:-

Tuesday 12th June. Today is the first day of our Actiontrack Showbuild. Nick, the main instructor along with his peers Molly and Rich, have come over to Ireland from England to help us, Transition Year put on a performance made from scratch at the end of the week. Yes: no set script, no set songs, no set dance, but all from scratch and all our ideas.

Today we started off today by playing Actiontrack's most famous game, ‘Zip Zap Boing’, to help us all warm up. This was followed by creating letters moving around the room while not being able to move anyone nor talk to anyone else. After break we then moved on to creating the life’s story behind a made-up character called Fran Alex Benedict. After being split into groups we had to act out different stages in his life incorporating any ideas we wanted. We then were given genres for each scene we got and had to incorporate our genres which could have been Rom Com (Romantic Comedy), Gothic fantasy, SciFi etc. We also looked at basic fairy tales and making sketches for each one followed by looking at the message behind all of them and then bringing them to life showing off the  message behind each fairy tale incorporating our genres again.

After lunch we were given short stories written by the famous writer Ovid from the Metamorphosis in which we had to make a quick pitch on whatever story we got for about a minute long, setting it in current times or relating it to a more current day situation but using the main story behind it.

'I am a Feminist'

Congratulations to Sadhbh Sheeran, winner of this year's Transition Year English award at the TY Prize Presentation last night. As winner of this year's Peter Dix Memorial Prize for Poetry as well, she read two poems at the occasion. Here is the text of her essay on feminism, which she read at the Transition Year English Evening, and was part of the Portfolio which helped win her the award.

Journeys

Two more poems from the recent Senior Poetry Prize entries, this time from Helene Peters of Transition Year:


Journey – 1

Here we are in this desert of dullness;
Around us, nothing but grey.
No shape, no figures, just endless wideness.
Even the horizon fades every moment.

How did we come here?
Nobody knows.
We just took our hands and ran.
We were enough for each other.

Now opening our eyes we don’t know where we are,
Who we are.
Still holding on to each other
Because of this endless fear.

What comes next?
Where will we end up?
Who is there around?
Will we end up alone?

So you go right and I go left.
Maybe we can find a way
To get out of here.
The second you let go my hand I'll run

And run and run
Into the grey largeness
To find again my horizon
And maybe

One day
I will take your hand again
To run
Together.


Journey/Beginning -2

Willing to leave behind the pain
I go
Far away
From familiar faces

To find a new home,
Somewhere you don’t know.
Not thinking about my heart ,
Its broken, lonely shape
The black hole
It has become.

Until one day
With an incredible pain
The black hole sucks in
The walls I have built up

And I realize
There is no new beginning.