September 25, 2010
B. Joyce Stallworth’s article starts with a recent encounter at a hair salon. Her experience at this particular location rose Stallworth’s suspicion about YAL when a girl pulls out a novel by Angel Johnson called The First Part Last. Personally, I have never heard of the author or the book before. But it must have been quite an impressive find as Stallworth continues to veer towards the idea that “Contemporary young adult literature (YAL) is an electrifying genre for getting today’s young adolescents reading and exploring who they are. Such literature contains themes, plots, language, and characters that are consistent with young adults’ experiences.” (59) The author’s claims of young adult literature as “…sophisticated, complex, and powerful…” is consistent with the genre’s delivery.
Such novels that mingle within contemporary times are intertwined with today’s toughest questions. Some of the topics that YAL contain scale from minor to more serious issues, such as bullying, sibling rivalry, and teen pregnancy. But no matter what arguments are being made, philosophers like Kenneth Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen are convinced that young people will have a much better understanding and perhaps will be happy to read about realistic expectations, good or bad about the society in which they live.
With that being said, Stallworth advises teachers, experienced, inexperienced, and upcoming to “…inform parents about what literature will be included in the curriculum before assigning controversial titles, and they should be prepared for challenges and objections.” (60) Books are almost constantly being challenged for a variety of reasons; perhaps making it harder for educators to choose titles that are “appropriate” developmentally with the curriculum in mind. In addition to how to face these challenges, Stallworth gives a few pointers to all educators on how to select novels for his or her students. They are: “Read widely and deeply. Involve students in the process of literature selection. Give students choices. Collaborate with colleagues, including library media specialists.” (63)
B. Joyce Stallworth’s article is rather inspiring to a methods student such as myself. When you are in the field, you do not really think about this sort of problem, especially if it has never occurred to you that another teacher, student, or a parent would give you a call, send you an e-mail, or come storming into the school to challenge you about a book that your class may be reading. I know that when I walked into my first schools building for observation that that was perhaps not even the last thing on my mind. I knew about censorship from high school; how Clockwork Orange and To Kill a Mockingbird were being challenged to even show up on the shelves in the school media center. The school librarian would lock away the “banned books” in her own office. I worked as a library aide for two years and was not allowed to walk back there because the school administration thought that those books were simply too explicit for high school students. That was perhaps the extent of what I knew.
I did find one piece of information particularly unreal to me. On page 59 of Stallworth’s article, it states, “Quality young adult fiction can help tweens and teens handle the plethora of emotional, social, developmental, and physical changes they experience.” I wonder if such quality YA fiction can have the opposite effect on readers as well. Though we would like to think that every single reader should be able to “lose themselves” while reading fictional books because they enjoy reading them; what about those children that enjoy the same books but for the wrong reasons? There is a possibility that such young adults; the same readers that are also emotionally attached to ideas simply because it is a time for humans especially to find themselves—who they are as citizens of the world, culturally, emotionally, physically, etc., cannot handle what is being shown to them in textual form.
Take one of Stallworth’s examples on page 61, where the writer talks about Dina, a middle school teacher where 98% of her students are black and low income. Her students read Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, a book about a girl named Melinda, who is raped by a senior at party. I can see a few problems with reading this novel with a class; maybe someone in the class would feel uncomfortable because they had been involved in a similar situation, a student may become too overpowered with emotion and does not wish to participate no matter how hard a teacher may push for his or her students to speak their own minds about certain issues. These types of literature may become “the last straw,” an end to where they may start to exhibit behavior that is considered irrational, unnecessary, or both.
As a future educator, I am well aware now more than ever that in order to succeed, it is better to be safe and careful about my selection of YAL than to merely pick a few off my bookshelf to read with my class. It is important to look at demographics, interests, and experiences of my students before ultimately making a decision. I especially liked Stallworth’s section titled “A Forum for Tweens” where the writer suggests what teachers should do in order to find the best, suitable texts for his or her students. I find that the first advice to be the best: “Read widely and deeply,” since that in itself would be a great issue if the teacher has never read a book before (from front cover to back), but chooses to share it with the rest of the class.
Stallworth says that one way to look further into find literature to present to the class is to work with the school librarian, since they “…have the ability to delve into hundreds of young adult titles and present the best to teachers in a way that makes clear these books’ worth and potential.” (63) I figure that this makes the most sense because, well, they run the school library and hundreds of students walk in and out of the library to read something! Stallworth encourages teacher-library collaboration; it fits, especially with English teachers!
I find that students should not be completely blocked off from the reality in life. I find that blocking off such experiences to students completely would actually do more harm than good. Most students around the “young-adult” stage are looking for clarity in their lives; looking to find who they are, what they truly believe in, looking to see who the good guys, who are the bad are guys, etc. Most students are lost if they are not given the resources to find the truly “good” parts about themselves. I find that young adults these days have truly low self-esteem; they are at the stage where they must battle some sort of parental-unit’s expectations, or even lack of expectations because of whatever reason. And because of the absent of expectations or failure to reach such expectations, many young adults will fall deeply into a dangerous realm, oftentimes ones that are truly hard to crawl out of. It is because of this that I believe educators are the key to student success because it is the educator’s job to not only teach material, but to also teach students on how to truly live successful lives. A teacher’s job does not only stop at spinning threads of details around a student’s body, but we truly become their mentors—that is if they can find us days, months, or years down the road.
Resource(s)
Stallworth, B. Joyce. “The Relevance of Young Adult Literature.” Educational Leadership. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, April 2006: 59-63.
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