The Pleasure of Work, continued

Book Trailers / Commercials

Sources of Pleasure: Play Work Kinds of Pleasure: Intellectual Social Kinds of Value: Instrumental Intrinsic Review

From Chapter 4 of Reading Unbound: When we were working on Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys, we were pretty confident that we were collecting good data. But we worried because none of the books and articles we were reading seemed to be useful in explaining those data. But when we read Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi’s (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, we knew we had found what we were looking for. An excited from Michael to Jeff: “You have to read this book.” An excited response from Jeff: “This is it!” We took enormous pleasure in that reading because the book was so useful in helping us think about something important to us. What we experienced was what we are calling the pleasure of work, a kind of pleasure that’s distinct from the immersive pleasure of play that our readers experienced by entering a story world. Work pleasure is the pleasure one takes from using a text as a tool to accomplish something. As you’ll see, the ends that our readers were seeking to accomplish were not those instrumental ends discussed by policy makers. For the most part, our readers weren’t thinking about college and career. They had much more immediate and personally compelling goals. (48)

Two kinds of pleasurable work: Work that accomplishes practical ends (Reading a text that helps you understand something or someone, or maybe reading a text that will help you build or create something) Work that addresses deeply personal issues; inner work (Reading a text that helps you make sense of some aspect of your life, that helps you grow, or maybe that helps you claim your identity)

Two kinds of pleasurable work: Work that accomplishes practical ends Reading to develop as a writer; to learn craft Reading to develop as a speaker or talker Reading to develop as a thinker Picking up content knowledge Picking up thinking skills Reading to develop as a doer (such as to improve gaming skills) …there’s also another kind of pleasurable work:

Two kinds of pleasurable work: Inner work Reading to “try on” different roles vicariously Reading to play out various moral choices Reading to discover one’s identity Reading to “imaginatively rehearse” life situations

Intellectual Pleasure The pleasure of solving problems The pleasure of considering what happens next (Series books extend the pleasure to the next book) The pleasure of thinking about characters The pleasure of thinking about themes The pleasure of thinking about the author’s craft Sound like the work teachers encourage? make predictions make inferences attend to themes attend to craft

Social Pleasure Using reading to connect to others Using reading to name and identify oneself In a culture of reading, students share books the way they share jokes. (“Have you heard/read this one yet?”)

List some possible goals for using it as a whole-class novel. List some possible strategies (or lesson plans) to reach those goals, and ways to measure progress toward reaching them.

6.1 Analyze the development of related themes across a variety of texts citing evidence to support-analysis; provide an objective summary 7.2 Analyze how literary texts and related media allude to themes and archetypes from historical and cultural traditions 9.1 Evaluate the impact of the author’s use of diction, conventions, figurative language, and/or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful on meaning and tone 11.1 Analyze how point of view and author’s perspective and purpose shape content, meaning, and style; supports rhetorical or aesthetic purposes; and conveys cultural experience Critique how an author’s choices concerning how to structure texts, order events within the text, and manipulate time create different effects Engage in whole and small group reading with purpose and understanding 13.2 Read independently for sustained periods of time to build stamina. Selected details for English 4 (12 th grade) standards for literary texts:

Controversy in the Classroom

Genre: Contemporary Realistic Setting (time) – present day or recent past Setting (place) – place is real or could be real (i.e., not fantastical) Characters – believable; no special powers Plot – believable; could happen today (again, not fantastical); events/issues tend to resemble real life – issues that face people in contemporary society Themes (in YA lit) – growing up, confronting personal and social problems, finding/understanding one’s identity, learning to understand one’s self and others, dealing with relationships

Contemporary realistic books can let readers do inner work: Reading to “try on” different roles vicariously Reading to play out various moral choices Reading to discover one’s identity Reading to “imaginatively rehearse” life situations

Inquiry: Pose a question & look for answers Who am I? Why do people consider books dangerous? What’s the history of banning books/ideas? Historically, what groups have been marginalized/oppressed? Why? What happens when groups try to ban books/ideas?

Next week: Commercials, trailers, reviews. Genres: dystopia, horror, post-apocalyptic, science fiction, fantasy Review of literary terms