Good News?

[Editor's note: American-Chick-Lit is the pseudonym of a second-year teacher in a high school in the Bronx.]

When I walk into my school building in the morning, there are usually copies of the New York Post piled on the floor near the security desk. I usually resist the temptation to grab a copy of the local tabloid. However, if I’m heading out the door in the afternoon and there happens to be a sensational headline screaming at me, I’ll snatch one up for a light read on the way home. Here are some recent Post headlines that grabbed my attention: “HOG WILD!”; “FATAL FANTASY”; “SCARE FORCE ONE.”

Throughout the school day, I hear students discussing hot news topics like the ones mentioned in these sensational headlines. My students will often interrupt a vocabulary lesson with a very eager: “Miss, did you hear?” They have asked if I knew about the hero pilot, the man who killed his family, about the continuing drama between Chris Brown and Rihanna. I see these headlines peeking out from under notebooks in class. I feel like sometimes I should stop and address relevant, poignant, or important current events when I come across them in class, but are the headline news stories really the things I should be bringing to full discussion in English class? I haven’t figured out a way to hold a productive discussion without losing the lesson I planned entirely. When, I wonder, did we do away with the old “current events” assignments… or did we?

As media backlash occurs in our society, how can we as teachers help direct a (hopefully) impressionable population of kids to be informed, well read young adults? How do we steer them away from news sources that digest stories into such small bits such as the Metro and AM New York – or do we steer them away from this at all? When I try to bring in the New York Times to class, I get feedback that it’s “too tough,” and when I have brought in a USA Today article, I was faced with the question from a colleague: “Isn’t that too elementary for them?”

So this morning when I saw the photos and bold print of the Metro (the free paper) unfolded on the desk of one of my honors students, was I right to ask her to put it away in order to focus on the lesson? Should I just be happy that my students are reading something — anything? Interactions with words, especially those that may make you a culturally, even globally richer human, are valuable. And reading the papers at all is a good thing, right? My vocabulary and cultural knowledge — and not necessarily my English Education degree — tell me yes.

Tagged: Bronx, English, high school

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