high school

Telling Teens Reading Doesn’t Suck … Using Vomit

As mentioned previously (twice now), critique partner extraordinaire Mindy McGinnis joined me in the southwest for the weekend, including a set of presentations to my school.

The first two presentations were to younger students (grades 1-3 for the first, then 4-8 for the second). We broke the kids into three groups and had one come up with a character, one a setting, and one a “problem,” plus each group had to offer one random word. Then Mindy had to pull all that together and make up a story on the spot.

Ninjas are very popular this year. And Mindy managed to turn our school’s founder into a zombie ship captain on Mars.

The other presentation was a little more formal for the high school kids. Mindy talked about the idea of lots of stories having the same basic plot at their root, but weaving in specifics that make it interesting and new. She’d give several examples of a particular Big Idea, then offer a specific premise for the kids to guess.

For example, under “Boy and girl fall in love but can’t be together because ______,” she gave, “Pretty blonde with a perfect life falls for a Hispanic gang member from the wrong side of town.” Several of my female students jumped right in with the answer: Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles.

I think many of the kids came away with the point Mindy wanted to make. The “sameness” of many stories is a good thing, because if you find one you really like, you can find others you’re likely to enjoy as well. (And librarians can help you with that!)

As writers, though, we need to remember the second part of that formula—bringing a fresh, new take to the same old story. Too often, we find ourselves just writing the same story with only superficial differences, and that’s just boring.

Oh, and the vomit? Yes, Mindy totally has a story that makes vomit relevant to reading. But you’ll have to hear her tell it sometime.

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How Hard Do You Push?

People who say teenagers are lazy, don’t care whether something’s good for them, don’t know the value of hard work, etc. don’t know what they’re talking about.

Okay, I know there are teens who fit that description.

So do some adults. (That’s beside the point.)

Here’s my evidence: Despite the fact that they want to have fun and don’t really like homework (except for Student X, who asks for extra work just because she gets bored at home), I’ve had a surprising number of students complain about teachers not challenging them enough.

Some teens out there who have nearly a full load of AP classes will wonder what planet I’m living on where such a complaint could be voiced. It’s a very small one, where “on grade-level” is pretty much the top of the food chain. But maybe we could push them higher.

After slogging it out for nine months, they want to feel like they’ve accomplished something—like they’ve completed their first marathon … not like they’ve been doing daily jogs around the local park. They may complain about how hard it is while they’re running, but deep-down, many of them seem to want that push.

I have a point, I promise.

I think our characters want to be pushed, too. And they want to push back. Throw a tough situation at them, and get them to slog through it. There’s a balance to maintain with believability, but don’t make it easy on the little dears. Let their reactions happen in vivid high-def with surround-sound. Challenge the characters. Challenge your readers.

Problems shouldn’t be solved too easily. The path of the plot shouldn’t be laid out neatly with big, bright roadsigns posted every mile. Emotions shouldn’t be consistently lukewarm, only half-felt. Sometimes, a character needs to have a solid freak-out.

And yes, most of this post is directed at myself.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to brainstorm some ways to torture challenge both my characters and my students.

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English Class #1: Required Reading

A couple days ago I was eavesdropping on the weekly YALitChat on Twitter.  It’s too bad I was too busy to pick up more than just the comments from people I already follow, since the topic was how teachers influence what teens read.  Some statements about required reading lists, curriculum, etc. caught my attention.

I thought back to my own experiences as a student.  Honestly, I don’t remember most of what I was required to read back then.  I remember reading some Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet and The Merchant of Venice) and A Tale of Two Cities in ninth grade.  My teacher that year was smart enough to discuss the themes in a modern context so the books weren’t just old and dusty to us.  (There was a particularly heated discussion when he insisted that arranged marriages were the only intelligent way to do things.)

The rest of high school, though?  I remember packets of short stories, but I don’t remember titles, authors, or the stories themselves.  There were probably worksheets involved.

You know what else I don’t remember?  The popular books for teens at the time.  I don’t think I read them … too stuck in sci-fi land back then.  Can anyone help me out?  What was hot in YA back in the mid- to late-90s?  Was there YA as such?  I never considered myself a “normal” teenager, so I have no idea what was considered “normal” to read.

Is it the same story now?  Nothing but classics, no current works?  From the transcript of the chat, it seems to vary widely.  I can only talk about what I know firsthand, at my current school.

We’re lucky for a few reasons.  Our classes are tiny (I think eight students is the biggest), so if teachers want to order copies of a current book, it’s not a financial hardship.  This year we started giving students two Language Arts classes – one for reading and one for writing.  This means a lot more time for covering more novels.  I know one of my colleagues tends to alternate – a book from the curriculum list, then one the students choose.

How do I influence my students’ reading, especially as a math teacher?  We have twenty minutes of required silent reading time after lunch every day.  For that, I’m in the “I don’t care what they read as long as they read something” camp, particularly because I have struggling readers that period.  I happily help one girl understand the articles in fashion magazines and explain new words to a boy who reads online graphic novels.

Other than that, I keep a shelf of loaner YA books (which no one seems to expect from the MATH teacher).  They see me reading them, and it’s fun to discuss what they did and didn’t like after they finish each book.  The kids like series, so I’ve got Uglies, Hunger Games, Darkest Powers, and Mortal Instruments sitting up there.

And of course, students keep telling me to get mine published and add it to the collection.

I’m working on it. 🙂

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RANDOM: Musings on Celebrity

I had this thought ages ago.  Might as well document it for posterity.

Every time I go to the grocery store and see tabloid headlines about so-and-so breaking up with what’s-his-name, I wonder why I’m supposed to care.  Every time I see fans gushing and going into hysterics over the hottie-du-jour, I wonder if they think of him as a human being.

Celebrities are like the popular people in high school.  I have the same “outsider” perspective on both, since I’m not famous, nor was I popular in high school.

(I’ll pause while you recover from the shock.)

While I wasn’t popular, I was friends with some people who were, and I observed the behavior of others.  This was easy to do for a quiet, shy person such as myself.

(Okay, I’ll give you another minute.  I know, these revelations are earth-shattering.)

Bottom line: Some of the kindest people I knew back then were some of the most popular.  Some of the social high-rankers were jerks.  Scum of the earth.  I could only hope they’d either grow out of it, or crash and burn when reality hit.

Their popularity had absolutely nothing to do with the quality of their character.  Their popularity told me nothing about whether they were worth knowing.  It only gave them a wider audience.

Same goes for celebrities.  I don’t care about Jennifer Aniston’s love life any more than I cared about the head cheerleader’s.  And if I ever ran into the latest piece of guy-candy, I wouldn’t go to pieces any more than I did if some cute guy said two words to me in high school.

(Okay, when cute guys acknowledged my existence, I’m pretty sure my heart rate skyrocketed.  The point is, I didn’t show it … I hope.)

So in my perfect world (which I’ll run someday), people will be treated as people, regardless of social status.

Now, off I go to the grocery store.

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