The New Side of Literature
In high school, they usually forced me to read a book that I never really enjoyed at or was intrigued by the topic or the ideas involved with the book. But I was forced to read them for the grade. I needed to pass the class. I remember just feeling so stupid every time I couldn’t see the same interpretation as the teacher did because to me this was a math class with word problems. In the end, there should only be one correct answer. No more. No less. That was until my senior year.
Mrs. Halsey was my English teacher for my senior year and she showed me a new side to literature. I had heard about her being a really cool English teacher but that what I told about my previous teacher and I did not like her at all. So, I didn’t believe in what other positive remarks students had of her until I could see it myself. She managed though to surprise me and lived up to her expectations. She always accepted any view and would really encourage us to see things differently than what others saw. She was very supporting of what we did and did it in such a calm and peaceful manner. She was probably one of the “chillest” teachers I have ever had for English. No matter what I did she encouraged us to try new things and really made English fun for me. I always enjoyed showing up to that class and I feel like my work improved because I wrote with passion about a book instead of despair because I was forced to read.
The class already seemed like it was going to be an interesting one because all of my football friends were in this same class together and let me tell you that some of us were thumbs. Now that I look back on it, that was a terrible combination to put together in a class because none of them wanted to be there. They did not care for their classes and usually did the bare minimum for work or handed it in late. We all hated reading. We would come to class and just before the class began, we would look up a summary of the chapter we were supposed to read. We did everything in our power to not read and some how come out with a decent grade. This would cause problems especially for things like quizzes or group discussion because we can’t contribute much to the group and would probably just sleep all class. We would try to BS our way through everything. This would not last long in our senior English class. Not with this teacher.
I remember when we were given the first assignment ever for the book The Alchemist. I walked into class dreading it as usual because I hated English with a passion at the time. She included a piece of paper where we are supposed to write words and what we believe that they signified. At first, I thought the whole assignment was completely stupid and a waste of time but I did anyways because I need the grade. After completing the assignment, we had a short discussion on what we had found and she wrote it out on the board. Two students both stated the same thing which was what the desert could symbolize. One student stated that it can stand for the hardships of life and all the obstacles that you will encounter throughout this person’s life. The other would say that the desert represented the desert as how his life seemed dry and is lost without finding his personal legend in the book. Then Mrs. Halsey responded with, “The child can stand for the obstacles in life OR how his life is dry and he is lost.” Or. I never heard that come an English teacher before. This shocked me. Most of my teachers already had a value for the word and that would be the accepted meaning but she didn’t. While this doesn’t sound like anything for others; to me it was a revelation that a teacher would accept multiple meanings. All throughout my academic career, while people could have their own opinions, the teacher was always looking for a specific answer. But she supported the idea that it could stand for multiple things and be correct. This was just the start of what opened me up to literature.
Like all other English classes, there was a book that we had to read but this book was different from the rest. It was called The Alchemist. It was not a long book only having about 250 pages in it instead of others where they may have like 500. But in these 200 pages, I learned way more about the purpose of reading and why people enjoyed doing it as a hobby. It was so deep in text where everything from a dove was representative of something else in the book. It allowed me to dream and have my own interpretations of each word instead of being forced to buy someone’s else’s idea because it was an accepted value. The setting was just up my alley too. I always had an interest in adventures into the unknown where you don’t know where the protagonist will end up and how he/she will make to there. From the humble beginnings as a shepherd where he was satisfied with his life, but had a dream and gave up everything to pursue it. For the first time, a school book I was forced to read was actually intrigued me. It sucked me in and I found at times that I wanted to read the book and read it page for page. Usually, I wouldn’t read the book at all and just Spark Notes the chapter so I could know what was going on for class so I could participate and get the grade. Now, I read page for page with curiosity of what would happen next and I enjoyed it thoroughly. My interest in the book increased the quality of my work. Instead of just trying to BS an assignment, I tried very hard to create a fine piece of work.
I remember on projects for the books we read she would give us guidelines and shed some light to help guide us to end up where we wanted for the project. Although she gave on ideas of what we could do for the project the last bullet was always saved for you to do something creative that you would like to so that way if you didn’t like anything about the project you could always be creative and do something that you wanted to do. For example, the final project of the year we had to give a presentation about our book in any way we wanted to. One girl explained her whole book by having the class make slime that was the color of water and had a sea animal in it to remind us of the book and that we would never forget which I didn’t. I recall when I did my presentation, my group and I tried to explain a theme of the many for the book, Grendel. Our brilliant idea at the time was to buy or make a cake where on the outside it would be look like another type of cake but on the inside, it would consist of other flavor or filling of some sort to throw the person off. I was hoping it would get my point across of not judging the book by its cover and that everything is not as it seems. Even though it didn’t go as smoothly as I would have liked it to because people just kind of ate the doughnuts and ignored its whole purpose. I liked how I could get creative with it and not have to give some boring PowerPoint or presentation of some sort where I would just stand there and speak about it.
I believe that every teacher can be like Mrs. Halsey because while she is an amazing teacher, anyone can do what she did. All she did was accept every plausible answer as a valid one which allowed students to like me to explore more and not be afraid of saying the wrong answer or a different answer from what was accepted. It allowed me to be creative and improved my overall opinion of English where I no longer dreaded going to class and enjoyed showing up. If all teachers could do this, I know there will be a difference because it happened to me.
