Connecting School to Home Experiences

As a child, my mother told me the story of Jane Eyre as a bedtime story.  Granted, she dumbed down it down quite a bit, but nonetheless, I enjoyed the story.  She did the same thing with many other classical novels.  What is more, I had seen film versions of many of these stories with my mother.    By the time that I encountered these stories later in my education, I knew and recognized them.   My acquaintance with classical literature early in my life sparked a personal interest in reading challenging books.  I wrote a lot too.  When we were younger, my sisters and I had our own newspaper.  We had the idea to do so after Mom told us the story of Little Women.  We wrote stories, articles and drew pictures for our newspaper.  I considered myself a writer at a young age and found writing as an effective outlet of expression. 

Experiences like these had a large part in shaping my personal approach to language arts.   In many ways, reading is listening and writing is speaking.  All language domains are the means of conversation and discussion.   One example of this two sided conversation is the newspaper that my sisters and I made, being inspired by the March sisters of Little Women.  We listen to the ideas expressed and responded by using writing to speak for ourselves. 

Chances are, my students will not have the same experiences that I did with my discipline.  However, I think that it would be fair to say that all students come to the classroom with unique funds of knowledge.  In the language arts classroom, part of this knowledge comes from the books that they have read or that they are most interested in.  For instance, I had a teacher in ninth grade who found out that I enjoyed reading classical novels.  She would ask me questions about what I was reading, if I liked it or not, and even gave me a few reading suggestions.  The fact that she took an interest in my reading habits encouraged and motivated me within the discipline of language arts.  She insisted that I had intellect to contribute and encouraged me to do so.

The best part about language arts is that student’s interests can be activated by theme, especially when that theme is connected to issues directly related to their lives.  For example, if I were to study Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron with my students, I might instigate a discussion of equality.  From there, students may be given the opportunity to fill in the discussion with their own thoughts, impressions and experiences with equality.  Overall, I believe that the most important thing that we can do as teachers to connect school with home experiences, despite our discipline, is allowing students the opportunity to express themselves in a risk free environment.   Students can do this in small group discussions, responding to journal prompts, writing personal narratives, etc.  Language Arts is, ultimately, the science of discussion and conversation over a variety of domains.