Was My High School a Freak?

Something has been really standing out to me in my reading and it's probably one of the dumbest things to notice too because it's so irrelevant to the plot at hand. Class schedules. And I'm not talking about an individual character's class schedule but just the schedule in general. Namely the number of classes per day, usually 8 or 9.

This was not my high school experience. I haven't had this many classes a day since I was in middle school. As an incoming freshman, that was the first year (1997, hi and welcome to me dating myself) my school system starting using block scheduling, aka torture if you despise the class. The board's theory was that it was a means to get students used to the longer classes one would see in college (irrespective of the fact that not everyone was college-bound). So instead

of 8 classes a day at 45 minutes (or so) each, I had 4 classes a day at 84 minutes each. Do you have ANY idea what chemistry was like for me??? The days were then split between A days and B days with rotating lunch schedules and what not. So while I didn't have to deal with hated classes on a daily basis, I had to sit through nearly an hour and a half of them EACH when they did come up. Like I said, torture.

So back to class schedules, this leaves me wondering if this is something that never picked up on a greater school scale. The block scheduling was something that lasted throughout my high school years. Whether they're still going with it I have no idea. I'm assuming so. But considering I keep coming across books where students have the typical 8 class days, I'm starting to think my high school experience in that realm was atypical. And I didn't go to a special school or anything. Regular public school for me.

Yeah, totally asinine I know but it's been niggling. Has anyone else known the joys of block scheduling in high school or am I the loner at the lunch table?

Choose Your Own Reading

What if you had a teacher that, instead of forcing books on your from a curriculum, let you choose which books you wanted to read? Pretty neat, huh? It's sort of this progressive movement that more and more teachers are getting into in order to fuel reading as opposed to stifling it by forcing students to read things they may not want to.

From a teaching perspective, school isn't about doing the things that you want. It's about learning. If students did only what they wanted, no one would know algebra. There is a method behind the madness of forcing cosine on young minds.

On the other side, though, in the English world, even as someone that loves reading, I cried on the inside when I had to get through books that I just couldn't get into. And that was through college. And, really, those that I was forced to read I didn't really get anything from. Nothing sunk in, I wasn't hit with any kind of profound insight. I'd have to read them again now in order to get that. And, in all honesty, I have more entertaining things to read.

If it were me teaching, I'd keep some of those unsavory works and force them upon my students, really, for their own good. It's the one time where you know you can shove in the "classic" reading and they actually have to do it. But I'd let them choose their own works as well. Why not? As if you can't pull deeper meanings from today's YA? Please. Properly dissected, you can learn anything from anything.

I'd want to keep students reading the same things for a portion of the time because working in a group dynamic will allow students different insight to the same works. They'll be able to get different views that they may not have been able to see on their own. Then I'd allow them to take those dissecting skills that they learned in their groups and apply it to the reading that they choose. Really, I don't see the harm.

Yeah, "fun" reading can be done anytime and school is supposed to be where the "hard" stuff is learned but if you screw up reading for kids young enough, they're not going to want to do it later in life. Equate reading to work and it ceases to be fun. Allow reading to be associated with fun and learning and it's beneficial to everyone.

How do you feel about that? If you're beyond school age, do you find a benefit to integrating personal choice into a teen's education? If you're in school, would your teachers allow something like this? Do they? Which books would you choose to read if given the choice?

Where did you learn to love reading?

According to a Telegraph article, it's not in the classroom. See, I don't think that's necessarily true. If you have the right teacher, one that actually gives a damn and attempts to step outside the curriculum to integrate some contemporary flavor into the classic dust, it could be a very beneficial environment. When you have the schmoes that are more concerned about their paychecks and social lives than performing their job as they should (meaning superseding the bare minimum absolutely required), you get kids that are being gypped.

I never remember not having books around. In fact, my mom and I just unearthed a whole box of an old but pretty valuable set of books that were saved over the years. I don't remember not having them around, that's how long I've had them. My mom's always been a big reader and I remember flipping through her books when I was really little. I couldn't understand anything but books were always around and I always wanted to touch them. Reading's always been there so when it came to school, it was a breeze. It's like going to art class when you already have a natural talent for art that doesn't involve stick figures.

It didn't matter what was forced on me in school; it never hampered my want to read. And, I think, having a teacher there that's the source for such an introduction to reading for a child that might not have had the same literary influence could be just as beneficial. Classrooms, while cess pools for mass market education, can actually be helpful to a child, especially if that child is eager for something and they just might not know what that something is.

So where did your love of reading come from? Your parents? Your own curiosity? A teacher that was so overly enthusiastic about books that you just had to see what the big deal was? Spill.

Last Five Things.

I think this is a pretty insightful article on the reading habits of teens (like I need to read articles on it when I'm neck deep in the YA book blogging world, right?) What I got out of it? Teen reading is just as diverse, if not more so, than any adult that says all teens read are crap. What's the very first book on the very first list from a sixteen-year-old? The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, one of my favorite books. I actually remember seeing this on summer reading shelves last year and was a little surprised. It's a pretty intense book and I didn't read it until college. I'd love to see how English teachers are teaching that one.

So what were the last five things you read? I won't bother listing mine since all you have to do is scroll down to see my answers. I would list the last five things I wrote but since my brain's been molested my insurance inundation the last month, I haven't written anything (whichis changing tonight, dammit). How about the last five things I thought of about my writing that I hope one day people will be able to read? Does that work? See the link there? That's like, three degrees of Kevin Bacon.

1. Layla from a series I'm writing about a psychic who owns a shop in Coney Island, lives with her husband and her two guinea pigs and has the cesspool of the supernatural world constantly on her ass. I'm changing the character to make it more YA friendly - instead of in her 30s, she'll be 18. Instead of living with her husband, she'll be living with her boyfriend. The cesspool and the guinea pigs stay.

2. My fanfiction. I just opened a companion site so I can dig into the characters more outside of the stories they're in, complete with pictures and crazy insane babbling.

3. How my first ever novel, while being an immense help in the writing department, will ultimately end up in the trunk. Well, at least not subbed. I'm considering releasing it on the internet when I'm done editing it.

4. My second novel and how it's much better written and gives me a better fighting chance of getting an agent's attention.

5. Deciding which novel I'm going to write next, as the ideas just keep piling up.

Thanks for boosting paranormal romance, Twilight

Not that that's a bad thing but I'm not a fan of what it's egging on, or what's the egger. USA Today points out that because of Meyer's books, there's been a surge in teen paranormal romance manuscripts that publishers are seeing. And because editors want to get in on this cash cow, they'll snag up something like Twilight, but different. Something with more drama, maybe. Or taking place at an academy. Giving Gossip Girl fangs.

The truth of the matter is, and know this, what you see on the shelves is a solid year, upwards of two, behind what editors and publishers are buying now. Go ahead and try to sell a paranormal romance now. I dare you. Unless it's something so exceptionally different and fantasmagorically insanely written, it's not going to get bought. The market's saturated with this kind of book so, and this is grounded in absolutely nothing but my own logic, the only authors that are going to bank on this kind of upheaval are those with series already out. The House of Night series, The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Kisses. I know I'm missing some. Wait a year or two, when what's being bought now cycles out and see how the market changes.

Now, you probably think I'm just, yet again, ranking on Twilight. Well, kind of. I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of it getting credit it doesn't deserve. I'm getting sick of the unwarranted comparisons to JK Rowling that's being made of Stephenie Meyer. The two aren't even in the same universe. I'm sick of the Twihards giving Meyer credit for inventing the vampire, the love triangle, the I Heart Humanity vampire, books, the ya genre, vampire stories in general and how everything, in some fashion or another, is a rip off of Twilight.

I'm. Sick. Of. It.

Yeah, thanks for getting more kids to read. Nevermind JK Rowling actually single-handedly revolutionized the young adult genre with Harry Potter (which has been statistically proven) and for which had she not done it, something like Twilight probably would have never seen the light of day. But for all Twilight's worth, perhaps those readers should just stick to fanfiction. A fair amount of it is better quality (which is saying something) and it has all of the same melodrama as the published stuff but for free online.

And the irony is here I am bitching about it, drawing more attention to it and wasting my time. An even bigger irony, I've deemed Spine-Breaking Spawn next up on my to-be-read list. Why? Because I don't want it looking at me from my TBR pile anymore and I have other, more worthwhile vampire stories to read, like Mari Mancusi's Blood Coven series and Beth Fantaskey's Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, plus The Vampires Promise series by Caroline B. Cooney, Vampire Beach (although I don't know how good this one is) and Parliament of Blood. Not to mention a couple of vampire compilation books, Vampire Stories from New England and Vampire Stories from the classicists like Bram Stoker, DH Lawrence and Anne Rice (although the last can be questioned). Spine-Breaking Spawn is the NyQuil I have to swallow and the rest is the tub of icing I use to wash the green death taste out of my mouth. Prepare yourself for the review on that one, what with Edward giving a whole new meaning to the term "eating out" and all.

You know, it wouldn't be so bad if the mania around Twilight weren't so psychotic. The actors in the Harry Potter movies don't get death threats from diehard fans that they'll be killed if they screw up the characters. Fans of Draco Malfoy don't scratch at their necks when they see the kid that plays him because their reality synapses has failed. I've said it before. These books are decent fluff. If you want to shut your brain down and take a couple hours and pile through them, you'll be entertained. I was. But this is just ridiculous.

So yeah. Just let me sit here and bitch and moan every once in a while as I pray to whatever sadistic god that may be listening to ease the pain a little sooner. Until then I have things like this and this.