About Becky Gaconnet Expertise I can address any question about establishing rapport with high school kids, managing behavior, and designing activities and curriculum for varying ability levels. Also I am knowledgeable about registration and administration of SAT, PSAT, and ACT.
Experience I have taught in public schools for 27 years, but still feel young because I like what I do. I have taught all areas of English language arts at remedial, regular, and AP levels; speech communication; and ACT/SAT prep. While I firmly believe my job is to push kids to achieve more than they want to, I also believe it is possible to make students work hard but still have them love your class, no matter the ability level. I have served as a test center supervisor for ACT and SAT.
Awards and Honors Co-chair English Department
Three time district secondary Teacher of the Year nominee
Expert: Becky Gaconnet Date: 11/20/2006 Subject: literature
Question Becky;
Hi, I was wondering if you could provide any personal insight about literature that would help students solidify their goals for the future- any examples of specific books, essays, poems or other works, or general advice on the subject would be appreciated. Thanks so much for your time! -Dave
Answer This is a question that might take some real thought to answer! Let me pop off a "top of the head" thing for the moment and maybe get back to you if I find some better ideas swimming around.
I recently had my upper level students choose a nonfiction book by an author of another culture or ethnicity than themselves. I pushed them toward variety. A large part of their purpose for reading this is to become more aware of what makes us all human, regardless of cultural, racial, or ethnic divides. But another advantage to reading nonfiction is that is usually provides a look into how another person or group accomplished something.
You might look into some biographies. Historical or current would probably work. Most people who end up with stories about them are people who were focused on a goal or on their future for much of their lives.
Another way to start the conversation might be with Of Mice and Men. A major theme of the book is the human need for a dream. Now, in that book, the guys aren't successful! But the dream and having something to work FOR is such an important element of humanity, and it is a central idea in the novel. So you could maybe read that, talk about the importance of goals, and then turn to nonfiction works where real people DO achieve.
Hmmm....then there's The Great Gatsby, where Gatsby is driven to "success" by a dream. However, his dream (Daisy) turns out to be fake, worthless, and leads to his destruction. So depending on your audience, that's another piece of "don't do it this way" literature! The point I might make with that is that Gatsby HAD a dream; it just was not worthy. So we need to consider the value of the goals we set.
Then there's always Ben Franklin. His Autobiography is a great piece for showing how a young man can start from nothing and become successful and contribute so much.
Of course, students need to see that their dream doesn't have to involve "changing the world"! You could maybe help them focus on short term goals for now, with an eye toward what might be possible in the future. I have a tendency to tell kids they don't have to have their life's work planned out by the time they start college. It's OK to start college with an "uncertain" major. And it's even OK not to go to college! (That, of course, requires a more focused goal NOW.)
That's my comment for the time being. If anything brilliant or any particular book that would be useful pops into mind, I'll let you know. I do
