Aegerter finds that students’ understanding improves if she is able to get them to see connections between their own lives and those in the texts. She believes “it is crucial to help students locate themselves in the space of ‘otherness’ or marginality from which multicultural texts often emerge” (143-144). She has them consider different aspects of their identities, like race, gender, sexuality, religion, or social class, and then she has them identify the one that has the greatest impact on who they are. She finds that “it is usually that which marks one as ‘different’ from the mainstream - race, gender, sexuality - that students list first.” (145). I actually did something similar with my students a few years ago. It was so interesting. Aegerter explains, “A Chinese student and a Welsh student both said that living in the United States had made them realize that their national identities were unquestionably first on their list, although such national consciousness wasn’t evident to them in their respective homes” (146). The exact same thing happened to me when I moved to England. I was so aware of being American and how being American made me different. Aegerter found that students who have traveled abroad can also relate to what I am saying (148). One of my favorite things that Aegerter said was that students “see the ways in which they are privileged and oppressed depending on the context and the situation” (147). That is so true. 

In addition, Aegerter has students free-write. She has them write about the first time they became aware of an aspect of their identity. She said “white students are able to really think about the first time they thought about being white…Previously, their whiteness, because of its normative status in the country, has been so much a given that it has not needed to be named.” Students are able to “understand how it is possible to oppress and be oppressed, to be simultaneously inside and outside of dominant ideology, to occupy both the margin and the center of mainstream life.” Aegerter knows the value in her work when students can finally see how people don’t “just get over it” (148). 

Furthermore, organizing units thematically “facilitates the development of skills” (155). We found the same to be true for us. We moved to thematic units at the same time as implementing competency-based learning. I love the focus on skills because I feel like I am actually teaching my juniors instead of just handing them text after text after text. Lucas and Winters note that familiar concepts or questions “provides a means to approach each text and a means to think about the relationships between texts” (157). 

First, Lucas discusses a course titled Love and Loss. She explains how fun the text selection is and how they can change it year after year. I, personally, love how the course texts span from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century but don’t go chronologically. As John Milstead explained, “difficulty of comprehension increases pretty much in direct proportion to distance in time” (158). This is so true! I always thought about how we started the year with the hardest texts, and then they got easier. Something didn’t seem right about that. In the Love and Loss course, students study poetry, short fiction, drama, the graphic memoir, and film (160). Some of the texts include Romeo and Juliet, “The Story of an Hour,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I have taught all of those, and they are all great. So many teachers love the creativity that comes with unit design, and the co-created courses our school offers allow students to be creative when co-designing their units. Thematic units make these things possible.

Next, Winters discusses a course titled Friendship. The course was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s chapter “Friendship” in The Four Loves. She teaches about the friendship between Lewis and Tolkien. When I read that, it made me think about sitting in this pub in Oxford where the two of the writers (or should I say friends) regularly met. Winters has students read Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle” and watch the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. This course allows Winters to cover a nine-hundred-year period (160). She talks about how she breaks chronology when it is appropriate to do so. For example, she wanted students’ first essay to be on Tolkien’s short story, so she adjusted where that fell. 

Overall, Lucas and Walters found that focusing “on skills means that students are no longer as lost in their first year as they were previously in the chronological course.” An added bonus of this is that it helps students to see how what they learn in one course applies to others. Therefore, they understand that their success is not about the material or a particular instructor (162). 

Many people, including professors, are afraid of theory. Honestly, I would add myself to this group. I found it interesting how Showalter notes that “some of the best ‘theory’ courses are based on literary problems: realism, value, texts and contexts, cultures and subcultures” (107). When you put it that way, it really doesn’t sound as daunting. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it sounds interesting. Showalter goes on to explain that teachers of literary theory organize their courses around things like issues or questions. Actually, that is exactly what we do - at least in a few of our units. For example, our trimester 2 is essentially one unit. Students chose an issue to focus on for the trimester: race, gender, social class, family, or education. They read the play Fences, a non-fiction book of their choice (Into the Wild, The Other Wes Moore, Outcasts United, or On Writing), and a handful of choice essays. In all of these they track what each text seems to be saying about their chosen issue. Then they synthesize what all the texts seem to say in the form of a message for a PSA video they create. These are then shared with the class. It seems like I probably don’t have to be scared of theory at all. We probably are “doing it” without even realizing it. As Mark Hanson stresses, “theory offers students ‘tools to think more deeply about their own lives and situations, beyond literary arcane problems’” (108). I would definitely say that is true of the 11th grade course we teach.

Showalter ends with this: “Making theory relevant to students’ lives is a worthy cause, but theory developed in order to answer literary questions, and the excitement of that inquiry can be recaptured in the classroom by demanding and imaginative teaching” (110). 

Here’s what I’m thinking: 

In most contemporary PD sessions, the presenter or facilitator promises 1-3 things “you’ll be able to take and do in your classroom right away” or be able to use the very next day. The immediacy problem speaks to an urgency in teaching that underscores the intense timeline/schedule we operate under as well as the incredible need to make the biggest difference for students as quickly as possible. But, there’s also another thread at work: teachers dislike theory. 

Think about it--how many of our colleagues (or us) have said about a presentation or PD session or required reading that “it’s too theoretical” or “too abstract.” What we’re saying is that it feels like it will take too much time, energy, creativity, and investment to turn the theory into meaningful practice.

Now, bell hooks didn’t say any of that. But it’s the reality we operate with as public school educators, and we don’t have the same relationship with theory that hooks does, but we have to know that it’s theory of years ago that informs the practice of today. And bad theory will cause bad teaching. OR, as the chapter more explicitly says, unless we embrace how and why we use theory, and work to manifest it, there will always be a disconnect between ideas and practice. She uses feminist theory as her primary example, but I’m thinking the most applicable theory for me is actually race, diversity, and inclusion theories. Here’s why: 

Hooks says that “Theory is not inherently healing, liberatory, or revolutionary. lt fulfills this function only when we ask that it do so and direct our theorizing towards this end” (61). So, reading diversity and inclusion theory isn’t enough. But also, having a presenter “tell us what to do” also isn't’ enough. It’s very possible, in fact, even likely that many books and text chosen out of a goal of diversity, inclusion, or culturally relevant teaching actually reinforce harmful racial or cultural stereotypes or diminish the lived experiences of others because (mostly) white teachers don’t work within a system (theory) of liberation. Reading Of Mice and Men and saying it meets diversity goals because “Crooks is black and treated poorly” doesn’t work. 

So, as an exercise, I’d invite folks to read p. 65 of the chapter, but every time hooks says “feminism” or “feminist,” replace with “race” or “culturally relevant” or “diverse” and I think you’ll see what she meant from p. 61--that theory isn’t inherently liberating and can be used to marginalize or disempower people. hooks goes on to say that “Within white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, we have already witnessed the commodification of feminist thinking (just as we experience the commodification of blackness) in ways that make it seem as though one can partake of the "good" that these movements produce without any commitment to transformative polítics and practice” (71). I really feel this as many entities try to essentialize and oversimplify the incredibly complex task of being a transformation-focused educator. We hear a lot of promises about “answer” and “mastery,” but unless we, each of us, study and live our most core theories ourselves, then hooks implies not only will there be a disconnect (theory without action) but the potential for someone else to enter and act in our space for their own purposes. 

Backing up, Lucksinger says that, while we all discuss or notice setting, even how it plays a role in the plot, “But to identify place--centered writing, one must question the extent to which an author relies on place to tell the story” (359). So, yes, she says that every story does take place somewhere--writing that employs a deep and intense “sense of place” changes everything about the text. 

She explains how she constructs her courses this way, with “the underlying principle guiding a course on sense of place in literature is that place can do much more than establish setting, create mood, foreshadow, or add to the story’s believability. Through place-based texts, we gain insight into self-identity, our community identities, and those of other regions and cultures. We consider the ways that the physical nature of the land affects cultural values and mind-sets, which in turn inform perceptions pedagogy and use of the land. We examine the complexity of the human relation to the

physical world, the universal connections between people and landscapes, and our moral obligation to act rightly toward the places we inhabit. Becoming aware of the wide-ranging importance of place, we inevitably consider our responsibility to specific locations” (359-360)

That is a long passage, but I couldn’t see where to stop; it’s a beautiful explanation and rationale for place-based writing and ecocriticism. I love how one of the main outcomes of her course is that students establish and deepen their own understanding of place; their place, through journaling and a service-based project. It feels like reader response, but on steroids. 

As  read the article, I began to brainstorm texts that are strong place-based texts and I’m wondering if other folks could perhaps confirm or reject some of these ideas, or perhaps comment with other ideas? I’d love to hear more examples of poems that y’all think fit with Lucksinger’s “sense of place”--

Gary Soto “The elements of San Joaquin”

Masha Hamilton Staircase of a Thousand Steps

Toni Morrison Beloved

Colson Whitehead The Nickel Boys

Lisa Parker “Snapping Beans”

Stacy Nigliazzo “Aubade” (I’m really wondering about this one with “place” being the 1980s AIDS crisis rather than a geographical location….would this fit/count?)

Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer and The Poisonwood Bible; which both also lend nicely to ecocriticism and environmental literature. I’ve heard some of her newer books also focus on the environment as well, but I haven’t read them. 

War poetry--anything set/in the trenches or vietnam….like “Camouflaging the Chimera” by Yousef Komunyakaa?

I am also really wondering, based on this article, if the reason why some students (or we) don’t connect or “find our way in” to a text, may be because we aren’t understanding the importance or presence of place. I do enjoy Neruda, and I can tell, from his work and his life (I did a research project on him in my undergrad) how much he loved Chile, but reading Lucksinger makes me realize that I’ve likely been missing the fact that it’s not just that he loves Chile, but that Chile is IN his poetry and there’s a presence I didn’t understand. I’ve read a lot of and about Mary Oliver, for example, and I can picture the forest she escaped to as a child, the house near the ocean where she lived and lost the love of her life….but someone who can’t picture the Northeastern US and what the trees, the ocean, look like maybe would miss the presence of place? Certainly anyone would see that she loves nature and uses nature in her poetry more beautifully and deftly than even Robert Frost, but, like Lucksinger writes, how much are “Students’ developing awareness of their personal senses of place” and how can that help give them “further insight into literature that reflects this notion” and ultimately see that “this dual reading of their lives and others’ stories deepens their understanding of each” (365). My experience with Mary Oliver is profound--because I understand the “place.” And now I want the same from my (re) reading of Pablo Neruda.