This is sort of related...

I'm doing observations for my education class and during my last observation there was a period of boredom while students were quietly working on a worksheet. I took this opportunity to look at the textbook they had been using in the classroom, so here are my notes:

The book is Adventures in American Literature, Pegasus Edition. It is broken up into time periods and literary movements. At the end of the book, in Modern Nonfiction, there is an essay from James Baldwin on "The Creative Process" and William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. The end of the nonfiction pieces feature study and discussion questions, as well as prompts for further research. Also, at the end of the book is a section titled "Reading and Writing about Literature." The first objective of this section is for the student to "develop skills in critical thinking." The students are guided through a close reading with the story "A Game of Catch" by Richard Wilbur. Following this is a piece titled "Guidelines for Reading a Short Story." There is also a guided close reading of a poem by Elinor Wylie with "guidelines for reading a poem." The same occurs with a play. After all of this is a section called "Writing about Literature: The Writing Process." The section seems to be geared towards answering exam questions and answering an essay question. Evaluating and revising papers are also covered here. (Just looked on Amazon.com to get an image...the text is from 1989! Can't get an image...you can find it here: http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/0153348542.01._BO2,204,203 )

So there it is. It's not much, but I was thinking of this class as I was looking over the book and I didn't put these notes in my paper, so I thought I'd just go ahead and post them here. I also thought it would be interesting to see an actual textbook that is actually being used in a school this semester. The school is Dulaney High School in Timonium.
P.S. I have an inner ear infection that has given me severe vertigo. I am officially Liza Minnelli on "Arrested Development."
Love,
Lucille 2