Monday, October 23, 2006
What Do Your Students Want?
As future educators, we have to decide for ourselves what it is we deem "teachable cannon." ENG 311 is helping us explore this idea through exercises, exposure to various text, and class discussion. This is done in the hope to help us make good decisions when it comes to what we teach our students one day. This is one aspect about this class that I really enjoy, but it, along with the following post, got me thinking: What about what the students want to read?
My supervisor organized a meeting with the library's collection development team to meet face to face with a group of teen library users. We spent an hour talking about what they like (music got the nod but could use more underground-especially from this recommended site), what they want to see more of (adult books and with more controversial themes, foreign films, political comics, contemporary biographies, car and computer magazines, video game soundtracks, anime soundtracks) and what they didn't even know existed (new fiction, new movies, Cliff Notes).
These teens created lists of titles after the meeting and were encouraged to talk with their friends and get their feedback on the collection. Surveys were created and made available online to get teen input as well (albeit-more passive, but some responded they were interested in being part of a teen driven focus group-and a few agreed but only if paid).
Youth participation is so fundamental to this process. Aside from just exchanging titles and general feedback, listening to their experiences (never finding new movies on the shelf because they are always on hold and not knowing things can be held, buying books instead of wanting to wait for the ordering and processing time, wanting more representation for various religions in materials and not finding them) means we've got some work to do. Today was a great start.
Even though the post is referencing a library, it still has a lot of relevance to the classroom. The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has a focus on YA lit, so who better to get ideas about YA lit from for your classroom? By completing their survey board either in your classroom or if the district you work for is revamping the curriculum can be benefitial in getting students the texts they want to read.
Article from:
Czarnecki, Kelly. "What do your teens want?" Online posting. 21 Sept. 2006. Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). 24 Sept. 2006 <http://blogs.ala.org/yalsa>.
My supervisor organized a meeting with the library's collection development team to meet face to face with a group of teen library users. We spent an hour talking about what they like (music got the nod but could use more underground-especially from this recommended site), what they want to see more of (adult books and with more controversial themes, foreign films, political comics, contemporary biographies, car and computer magazines, video game soundtracks, anime soundtracks) and what they didn't even know existed (new fiction, new movies, Cliff Notes).
These teens created lists of titles after the meeting and were encouraged to talk with their friends and get their feedback on the collection. Surveys were created and made available online to get teen input as well (albeit-more passive, but some responded they were interested in being part of a teen driven focus group-and a few agreed but only if paid).
Youth participation is so fundamental to this process. Aside from just exchanging titles and general feedback, listening to their experiences (never finding new movies on the shelf because they are always on hold and not knowing things can be held, buying books instead of wanting to wait for the ordering and processing time, wanting more representation for various religions in materials and not finding them) means we've got some work to do. Today was a great start.
Even though the post is referencing a library, it still has a lot of relevance to the classroom. The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has a focus on YA lit, so who better to get ideas about YA lit from for your classroom? By completing their survey board either in your classroom or if the district you work for is revamping the curriculum can be benefitial in getting students the texts they want to read.
Article from:
Czarnecki, Kelly. "What do your teens want?" Online posting. 21 Sept. 2006. Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). 24 Sept. 2006 <http://blogs.ala.org/yalsa>.
// posted by Julie L. Lenhart @ 6:58 AM 
