Reinventing English

When I was reading the first chapter of Reinventing English, I found myself agreeing and responding to what Gaughan was writing about. The approach he had about the high school pecking order and the societal pecking order was interesting when I was considering if my own life--and how I might look at someone different because they are not the same as me, or agree with the same values that I have.

In addition, much of what Gaughan does in his classrooms was how I envisioned my own classroom. I think that how students respond to literature is indicative of who they are and where they come from. Literature, no matter how dated it might be, is always going to be, and reflective of, society; and, I believe, that as teachers, we need to expose (which, does not always sound like the best word) our students to different opinions and topics that they might be comfortable with. I always remembered by favorite English classes were the ones that I did not agree with the text we were reading. For example, although I do not like the book The Scarlet Letter, one of my favorite and memorable classes was where I was able to disagree with the teachers or other students.

When Gaughan posed the questions of: What is English? What is it for? What should English teachers be trying to accomplish? (Gaughan, 6) I thought about what if we asked our students these questions? How do they see English, and how does it play a role in their everyday lives? I think part of asking those questions would be seeing who they are, as a student of English (at least for the period that you have them) and where they are coming from.