Class Motto

Class Motto and Research

Our study of literature is guided by a principle which was offered by Elaine Tuttle Hansen in an article she wrote entitled "Teaching Beowulf in Translation to Undergraduates" (in Approaches to Teaching Beowulf, edited by J. B. Bessigner and R. F. Yeager, pub. by The Modern Language Association of America, 1984). My students and I have found this principle to be most useful in our search for meaning in literature and in our efforts to write intelligent papers of analysis. The principle is stated as follows:

"If something seems odd or inappropriate or confusing or boring, it is probably important."

Research on the class:

A few scholarly articles have been written about the class, and one of them has as its title the class motto. The article was first published in Research in the Teaching of English in August, 1999. It is available here in a PDF version. The article is copyrighted by National Council of Teachers of English and is available only for viewing.

"If Anything Is Odd, Inappropriate, Confusing, or Boring, It's Probably Important": The Emergence of Inclusive Academic Literacy through English Classroom Discussion Practices, by Lesley A. Rex, Ph.D, University of Michigan.

Abstract: Describes the role of class discussion and a teacher's particular discourse moves in the development of an inclusive learning culture in a high school English literature course with a rigorous academic curriculum. Focuses on how the teacher transformed previously tracked gifted and talented and general students' understandings of what counted as being a reader while negotiating collaboration.

Editor's notes from Introduction:
Lesley A. Rex and David McEachen report on efforts to establish a classroom culture that allows for the inclusion of diverse students. Lesley employed domain and semantic analyses of what class members said, how they acted, and what they produced to understand both how David engaged students in understanding the kind of reading and thinking practices that counted in his classroom and how he provided opportunities for students to take up those practices. David’s efforts were complicated by the fact that his students came from different academic tracks and consequently had had very different experiences reading and talking about texts. Lesley’s analysis of eight telling cases in the critical first three weeks of David’s teaching demonstrates how he renegotiated local academic literacy and students’ identities. David’s teaching, they argue, provides an example of how inclusion is a tenuous cultural norm that is realized in and through classroom interaction.

Additional Research:
An article by Lesley Rex and Tim Murnen appearing in the American Educational Research Journal (Fall, 2002) analyzes the stories told by Jack Hobbs, a teacher at San Marcos High School, and by me as ways of helping students to understand basic elements of our classroom cultures. It is available here in a PDF version. The article is copyrighted by American Educational Research Association and is available only for viewing. Teachers' Pedagogical Stories and the Shaping of Classroom Participation: "The Dancer" and "The Graveyard Shift at the 7-11", by Lesley Rex, Tim Murnen, Jack Hobbs, and Dave McEachen. Copyright 2002 by the American Educational Research Association; reproduced with permission from the publisher and available only for viewing.

Remaking of a High School Reader, by Lesley Rex, published in the Reading Research Quarterly (2001 - Volume 36). The article is copyrighted (2001) by the International Reading Association and is available only for viewing.

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