My fondest memory of literacy stems from my junior year combined history and English class, titled American History. The class was a double period, co-taught by a history and English teacher. Our texts each focused on historical events, while incorporating both fiction and non-fiction. As a student, English was never my strong suite, but I absolutely adored history. History class to me was a matured version story time, and I believed that taking a class that combined the two would allow me to improve my writing skills. My English teacher was not a completely sane woman. Among other traits, she was utterly obsessed with finding glimmers of symbolism throughout texts. She never strayed from hiding what she wanted us to find in every chapter, whether through music, colors, animals or simple sentence structure. Reading became less of a class chore, and more of a way to beautify pages finding the different themes throughout.
I found immediate joy in turning the loose-leaf in class to find multitudes of colored notations and symbols I had coded. The books I read for this class quickly became torn and shredded, a demonstration of the time and love I had dedicated. The methods I learned from my teacher have crucially stuck with me throughout a variety of education quests. Coding and note taking has become one of my favorite forms of literacy. Today, my computer rarely leaves my bedside desk as I venture to class with my planner, notebook and pencils, attempting to recreate beauty on the notes I take for class.
I had an English teacher that did roughly the same. My senior class was her last year of teaching so I personally think she gave her most into our senior class. It was my favorite class throughout high school. It was the first time I really learned how to look at literacy and pick out the significant aspects of it all – wether that be highlighting the main point or note taking in the margins. I still use everything she taught me, even in my recreational readings. If you look at some of my favorite books, the pages have stains from being read in all sorts of settings (the beach, kitchen table, etc.) as well as underlined portions or notes in the margins indicating my favorite parts.
In my Literature class this semester my professor made a comment to me about how old books that are tattered are the best books. You can see the notes of other readers and the dog eared pages that past readers thought were important. This is definitely the idea that you are getting at with your beloved books, however I find it interesting that instead of notes yours has stains. I guess the great books are the ones that we take with on our travels.
I love the co-teaching aspect of this class. I think you really could learn more deeply in both subjects through the two different interpretations of the literature! It is as if your teachers are combining the literal and figurative meanings of the texts in such a way that you see all sides of the story. I think this is great! I’ve never heard of teaching in this manner before. Thanks for sharing. 🙂