The Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s definition of spring break (noun):   a vacation from classes at a school usually for a week in the spring.

I hope my students and parents enjoy their spring break. There is no school during the week of April 3-7. Classes will resume on Monday, April 10.

“Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it’s far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do – it can make us identify with situations and people far away.”                                   ~ Chinua Achebe

This is one reason I like to read and teach literature. As we read and comprehend complex texts, we can experience empathy – a vicarious, spontaneous sharing of affect. Whether a true story or fiction, a connection to a narrator can build our ability to understand and share the feelings of another. This is part of the human experience. Empathy leads to love and respect for one another as I like to encourage my students to focus on the fact that we have more in common with another than we are different. 

My 9th grade Literature students completed their poetry unit with a summative poetry project and I want to acknowledge the amazing creativity seen in all of the completed poetry projects. The following students demonstrated a high level of creativity, originality, and understanding of literary devices. The Most Outstanding poems and analyses were written by Jackson Bortz, Blake Schroeder, and Manny Vicente.

Other students who also received a perfect 100 for their incredible writing is:  BJ Abson, Calena Darden, Ander Martin, and Brooke Schierle. Other top writers with an 85 or higher were:  Autumn Bruce, Calynn Deangelis, Gabriela Londono-Salazar, Grace Malloy, Angelica Martinez, Jasmine Nikkel, Trey Oudt, and Addie Westbeld. A special shout-out goes to Faraz Porbanderwala who wrote his first poem and made the most progress and growth in this project. Being open and coachable is one of life’s most important skills and attitudes that will lead him to much success in life.

The Love of St. Patrick

May the love of St.Patrick,
find a place in your heart,
A love of a country,
a land set apart,
A love of a people,
so proud and so true,
and lastly the love,
that I feel now for you.

In 9th Literature, I encourage my students to be open-minded as we study poetry and try looking at the world from a new and unique perspective – one that poetry is sure to deliver. Let’s see life from the eyes of another. In 12th British Literature, we have discussed how literature can be a social, historical, and political document as well as a work of literature to analyze. We’re studying how the English language has evolved from The Dark Ages through today.

Reading literature has helped me in my journey of self-discovery as it stirred my imagination and taught me about culture, people, history, and places. It has helped me learn to critically think and analyze a difficult text to make meaning of it. Therefore, I am a fan of these Top 10 Reasons on why our students should read and study literature. Enjoy the list.

The following is cited from Caffeinatedthoughts.com March 2012:  Dr. Steven Lynn, Dean of the Honors College at the University of South Carolina, addresses the folly of reducing our students’ exposure to literature:

Top Ten Reasons Why Students Need More Literature (Not Less)

In uniquely powerful ways, literary study prepares students for richly rewarding and meaningful lives. No other reading experience or learning activity duplicates this preparation.

1. Imagination: Reading literature cultivates the imagination. That’s one reason why tyrants and dictators hate literature, banning or strictly controlling it. From the ancient Greeks to the present day, cultures steeped in literary study have thrived on creativity and innovation.

2. Communication: Writing and talking about literature helps prepare students to write and talk about anything. Not only are they working with words, with carefully considered language, but they are also considering how different kinds of people think and react to and understand words.

3. Analysis: Literary works—whether fiction, poetry, drama, creative nonfiction—challenge readers to make connections, to weigh evidence, to question, to notice details, to make sense out of a rich experience. These analytical abilities are fundamental life skills.

4. Empathy: Because literature allows us to inhabit different perspectives (What’s it like to be a teenage girl, a Jew, in Nazi Germany? How would you feel if you thought your father had been murdered but no one else believed that?), in different times and places, we learn to think about how other people see the world. We can understand and persuade and accept and help these others more effectively and fully.

5. Understanding: We think in terms of stories: this happens, and then that happens, and what’s the connection between these events, and what is going to happen next? People who’ve experienced more stories are better able to think about actions and consequences. Experience is the best teacher; literature is the best vehicle for vastly enlarging our possible experiences.

6. Agility: Literary works often ask us to think in complex ways, to hold sometimes contradictory, or apparently conflicting ideas in our minds. As brain imaging has shown, this kind of processing helps us to be more mentally flexible and agile—open to new ideas.

7. Meaningfulness: Literary works often challenge us to think about our place in the world, about the significance of what we are trying to do. Literary study encourages an “examined” life—a richer life. It provides us with an almost unlimited number of test cases, allowing us to think about the motivations and values of various characters and their interactions.

8. Travel: Literature allows us to visit places and times and encounter cultures that we would otherwise never experience. Such literary travel can be profoundly life-enhancing.

9. Inspiration: Writers use words in ways that move us. Readers throughout the ages have found reasons to live, and ways to live, in literature.

10. Fun: When students read literature that is appropriate for them, it’s intensely fun. Movies are enjoyable, but oftentimes the written version, readers will say, is more powerful and engrossing. Students who don’t find literature to be a whole lot of fun are almost certainly reading the wrong things (too difficult, too removed from their interests), and not reading enough (perhaps they are slogging line by line, week by week, through a text beyond their growing capabilities). When students do discover the fun of literature, they will read more and more, vaulting forward in verbal skills and reasoning abilities, and becoming better readers and writers of other kinds of texts (letters, memos, legal briefs, political speeches, etc.).