Teach Me, Teacher has released a lot of episodes about literacy, books, choice, and fostering a love for reading in students. In several of those episodes, we have discussed the literary canon, and its role in modern classrooms. In general, those episodes do not put the canon in a positive light.
Because I believe in diverse viewpoints and giving several sides to an issue, I wanted to change the one sided look at the literary canon on Teach Me, Teacher and bring on someone who not only defends it, but uses sound reasoning for doing so.
Matthew Ryan is a high school teacher and host of #CanonChat on Twitter.
In this discussion, we start by examining why educators are casting out the canon and why he believes we shouldn’t. From there, we examine how educators who support #DisruptTexts and educators like himself have a lot more in common than debates on Twitter might allow for teachers to realize.
If you are familiar with the canon debates, or are just passionate about books and how to use them in the classroom, this is a great discussion worth your time.
This episode is sponsored by Heinemann—the leading publisher of professional books and resources for educators—and their professional book, Writing Unbound: How Fiction Transforms Student Writers by Thomas Newkirk.
Writing Unbound is about the value of writing fiction in secondary classrooms. Tom Newkirk asks a tough
question: if reading fiction is the center of most English classrooms, why is writing fiction often ignored? Why do we separate fiction reading and fiction writing?
Tom argues that when our writing curriculum is too analytical, students think of “writing” as impersonal, formulaic, and…well…boring. He says that opening a door to fiction writing can ignite students’ interest and convince them of the value of writing. He even argues that allowing kids to write fiction will improve their analytic writing.
Learn more about how fiction can transform student writers. Visit Heinemann.com to download a sample from Writing Unbound.
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