What a way to start a Monday–sophomores asking questions!! Woo Hoo!! Except these questions were very uncomfortable questions–but I was okay with that. Sometimes we have to be uncomfortable to stretch and learn and think differently about the world around us. Thank you, J.K. Rowling, for the word of the day: solipsistic (the theory that only the self exists; egotistical self-absorption).
In the quest of helping my students to not be solipsistic, we read “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie, from his book of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. I read the first half to the class modeling a variety of reading strategies with them (we are practicing good reading fundamentals right now). The students were assigned to complete the reading on their own and annotate the text and be ready for discussion tomorrow in class. The students were stunned by how brutish the missionary second-grade teacher was to the protagonist, Victor “Junior” Polatkin. They were shocked by the narrator’s nonchalant use of racial terms for whites and Native Americans. They had no clue about life on reservations or in Indian HUD housing. They were also quite surprised at the glue-sniffing fifth grader. So we had a conversation about what corporal punishment looked like in schools when I was a kid. I also had to explain to them what rubber cement and horn-rimmed glasses were. I shared stories about my hometown in Oklahoma having “Indian Housing” and that Native Americans were the largest non-white racial/ethnic group in my school. Thank goodness for google images and my own personal experiences as the historical context is the difference between understanding this story or staring off into space wishing to be anywhere but the English classroom reading some old story (written in the 90s about the 70s).
So far, in 13 days we have read four stories and written two pieces–a vignette and a letter. Our stories have featured a young lady from the depression afraid to step out of the traditional female role and follow her dream, an immigrant war refugee from Greece, a first-generation Mexican American fifth grader in south Texas, and a Native American on a reservation in Washington state. I want students to build a tapestry of knowledge and backgrounds as rich as the messages of these authors (Richard Brautigan, Nicholas Gage, Sandra Cisneros, and Sherman Alexie). I want them to ask the hard questions that these authors prompt us and cajole us into asking.
We will see how the discussion goes tomorrow–as on deck is the great Maya Angelou…
“Question” by The Moody Blues
When we’re knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
‘Cause when we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed
When we’re knocking at the door?
Because the truth is hard to swallow
That’s what the war of love is for
When you do those things to me
It’s more the way that you mean it
When you tell me what will be
And when you stop and think about it
You won’t believe it’s true
That all the love you’ve been giving
Has all been meant for you
I’m looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me through
And the crashing of the sea
There lies a land I once lived in
And she’s waiting there for me
But in the grey of the morning
My mind becomes confused
Between the dead and the sleeping
And the road that I must choose
I’m looking for a miracle in my life
And if you could see what it’s done to me
To lose the love I knew
Could safely lead me to
The land that I once knew
To learn as we grow old
The secrets of our soul
It’s not the way that you say it when you do those things to me
It’s more the way you really mean it when you tell me what will be
When we’re knocking at the door
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war?
When we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed
When we’re knocking at the door?
ohyesjulesdid 
Oh what a group. Still no answers to our Questions though.
Huge Hugs