Page 148 - Getting of the fence

Chapter 6
speaking-, listening-, reading- and writing skills. Four teachers used literary texts in order to practice their students’ writing skills by either integrating essay writing or creative writing in their literature curriculum. After discussing Swift’s Modest Proposal, Sarah for example decided that she wanted her students to create a link between the literary text and today’s world to which end she asked them to write a contemporary modest proposal. “Several students did not get the gist and wrote about the terrible situation of FC Groningen [football cub] whereas other did understand. One group wrote about the greenhouse effect and that it was so nice and warm now.” The teachers also provided their students with assignments in order to practice their listening skills whenever they watched a video fragment in class. Sarah remarked that providing her students with listening assignments “really forced them to listen carefully instead of just like ‘oh chill a movie’.” A clear difference between having the knowledge that you can integrate language and literature and being able to implement this in your lessons was mentioned by Ralph: “These are things you already know, but sometimes you need somebody to flip the switch.”
Implementation reality
The teachers considered year 2 to be a pilot year. “It is merely initiated. It is a kind of floating thing that was first under water and now it has come to the surface but it has to come up even more. It is a kind of five-year-plan” (Caitlin). Only two teachers indicated to be more or less content about their literature lessons in year 2. Lack of time and lack of enthusiasm from colleagues were arguments why teachers were less content about their literature curriculum in year 2 than they expected to be. Liz was somewhat disappointed with the fact that she felt the lessons had not changed at all. However, she also mentioned that she needed this pilot year to come to terms with the Comprehensive Approach: “I have the feeling that I am only now ready to do it in my own way. A combination of what I’ve learned, looking at those different perspectives, and that I really want to do something different, make something different”. A different explanation was provided by Sarah and Ralph. Both mentioned that it is quite difficult to change things when you are stuck in a set routine. Sarah acknowledged: “I occasionally reverted to what I already knew and what I already did.” Ralph compared working from this set routine with a conveyor belt, “you crawl into a certain mode, a syrupy routine” from which it takes time and energy to break free. Nevertheless, Ralph did feel that they are “very well on their way to a different way of dealing with literature in the lessons, although it is still in its infancy.”
146