I-Search: Adolescent Literature

I grew up being a very avid reader. Just about anything I could get my hands on, I would read and love. It was hard for me to ever imagine NOT liking to read - until I entered high school. My english classes required so much reading - and books that I didn't necessarily enjoy - that I was forced to almost stop reading for pleasure. In not so many words, I was told that the books I was chosing were not "intellectual" enough and that they needed to be set aside for the classics. Granted, I'm a fan of some of the classics and I definitely see a need for them in a classroom setting. However, I don't want my students to fall victim to what I did. So I'm doing my I-search paper on Adolescent Literature in hopes of finding how to maintain a proper balance between what is required literature and what students actually want to be reading. I want to know how to combined those two genres in such a way that students are encouraged and challenged to read from both fields. I want to learn how to foster healthy, intellectual reading and foster reading that may be more relevant to their current lifestyles and that somehow, both will produce lasting effects in the lives of students. I want to learn about when and how to let students choose their own readings and what kind of exercises to incorporate so that there is an academic element to that reading. I want to learn how to compare the classics to the current in hopes of making the less desirable reading seem much more interesting and relevant.



I know that there is a growing trend of incorporating adolescent literature back into the classoom (something that didn't exist when I was in high school). I know that it spurs issues on controversy, censorship, relevance, etc. I know that for every person who thinks it should be a part of the curriculum, there is one who thinks it has no place. And I know that I DO want it to have a place in my classroom - so the question is how can I do it most effectively?