Pytash: Chapter 4

This chapter was alright, I didn't like how the author spent the first page talking about how the average language arts teacher is doing things the wrong way, and that she is perfect ,and expects nothing but the best from her students, aparently she has never had an off day or ever setteled, she's never been complacent or satisfied, she siply strives to be the best. However, I don't see any new ideas in this chapter about how to teach the elements of literature to students. The list of most commonly used literary elements was what I would have expected. I like that the author used The Call Of the Wild to show the differences between first and thrid person points of view, I was taught the differnce using Jack London, and I hope to one day teach the difference using Jack London. I agree with the authors thinking regarding the notion that students rember what they think about- the teaher demands harder thinking about complicated texts- therefore studetns will rember these complicated stories that they were assigned because they invested their thinking into the text. I, like the author, want a student of mine to remeber the classics rather than meaningless assignments that don't challenge the students. I wonder what percent of language arts teachers teach literary elements by giving a defintion matching quiz with words and their definitons, that is how I leanerd the literary elements and I know them all very well, but it seems so dated and against what I have been learning in my education classes. However, I belive students today will be a bit more motivated to learn some of these literary deivces, like figurative language, 99% of the hip hop/rap that they play on the tv and radio today is figurative language, Lil Wayne is strickly metphors in most of his songs (not that I would ever listen to him).