Staunton: Deranging English and Education

Staunton, John A. Deranging English/education: Teacher Inquiry, Literary Studies, and Hybrid Visions of "English" for 21st Century Schools. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2008. Print.

Staunton's 2008 book is a welcome contribution,perhaps the only contribution, to the hybrid field of English and Education. In many teacher education programs, English as a discipline is treated as separate from/than education, and I am not even sure that programs would label education as a "discipline." Education course work is generally seen as "covering" the history of education or surveying strategies to fill the teacher tool box. Thus, Staunton's work in this book asks that we re-see ourselves as more of a hybrid of the two to avoid mirroring back to those in power their assumptions about teaching,learning,literature, and students.

In this book, Staunton works to move beyond the paradigm of teacher success that looks more like transmitting the American canon of literature to something more about a joint endeavor of uncovering -"what you discover you're capable of doing in the face of student confusion, textual resistance, or serendipitous collisions" (85).

Not unlike Freire, which I don't believe he cites, Staunton sees the teacher and student as co-teachers and co-learners. (I am attempting to share the "teaching space" as well in this semesters ENGL 489 at UIC. We are all uncomfortable as "students" co-lead a seminar on Rosenblatt or teach a 10 minute lesson demonstrating active learning. During the Socratic seminar, I can feel them waiting for "my take," and I can feel myself resisting.) The "undercurrent" here is really social justice, as Staunton seeks to alter the relationship between teacher and student, student with one another.

One key concept is the notion of "found pedagogy" teaching literature for and with students (90).whereby our task is not to articulate meanings about literature or texts but to put those meanings in conversation with others" (148).

Below are notes from the final chapters -

Ch 4- anchoring points

Song of myself

92- Curricular informants moving from the sidelines of the curriculum to the front lines of the knowledge base of what and how American literature means

93- Or have we practiced so long to learn to read and to get at the meaning of poem that when confronted with the sound of language struggling with the mysteries of being in the world we are struck dumb and at a loss for words

97- What has the potential to unravel what we think we know about offering students freedom to explore their ideas in classroom settings that then close the door on any real application or test of the freedom

Disrupting the trans mission of American literature

104- To read Whitman's lines and not allow students a chance to filter meaning from their own experiences is to miss it crucial opportunity to create experiential learning and occlude a key component of the poem's own agenda

Picture- 108- It models a way of approaching history and literature that allows both to speak to contemporary context without being totally removed from their own fields of production

118- online discussion boards

122- That I need to work against the transmission of a master narrative about American literary history that is both historically and ideologically suspect

He argues for teachers to have an opportunity to acquire a deeper understanding of American literature from exposure to primary texts historical and contextualizing documents and cultural artifacts from across media and artistic modes

To prepare students not to rely on the history package by their anthologies and curriculum guides which send it next messages about the content of American literature

Ch 5- what counts as knowledge

James gee -- the public discourse model - Shapes the expectations and assumptions of and about teacher candidates discourse models are theories storylines images explanatory frameworks that people hold often unconsciously and used to make sense of the world and their experiences in it

Common sense- but socially situated meanings and practices that Hyde powerful assumptions about people, communities, and literary values -124

133- finally mentions the actual students they will teach

Recognizing that either position throws us into existing and powerfully defining discourses about who we think we are when we are teaching English thrown ess into a discursive wilderness pedagogy marks the boundaries of one horizon of understanding. What we do and who we are is marked by what has come before us the way out is one that can be discovered through shared inquiry and recognition of those student students who join us on the way- 148

Ch 6

153-The work they do in English remain separate from an alien to the things they do in their pedagogy courses

Draws out this concern for social justice an undercurrent throughout this book