Book Talk: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
By: Steven Chbosky

Description:

            This book follows Charlie, a fifteen year old boy, as he progresses through his freshman year of high school. This book is written as a series of letters that Charlie writes to an anonymous recipient who he chose randomly making it feel as if you are reading Charlie’s personal diary. Exploring intense social issues such as suicide, mental health, sexual violence, domestic violence, drugs, homosexuality, sex, bullying, and abortion through Charlie’s perspective creates a sense of empathy between the reader and characters within the text. Although this text covers sensitive topics, it does it in a way that creates a platform to talk about the various social issues that students may be dealing with as they enter high school and throughout their life. This text can be a difficult read because of the scenes of rape, acts of homophobia, and mentions of child molestation. It is important to know that at the end of the novel Charlie comes to the realization that he was molested by his aunt throughout his childhood and that there is a scene depicting rape between two high school students during a party. Although these scenes are difficult to read, this text can be used to show students the importance of talking about social issues rather than keeping them hidden.

Rationale:

This text is appropriate for the ninth grade student. This text explores Charlie’s life during his first year of high school and may mirror some of the topics or experiences that students may have to begin to face and deal with as they change during adolescence. Erik Erikson in his research outlined different stages of life as various situations of conflict. For adolescence the conflict that is experienced is identity verses role confusion. During this stage individuals discover their sense of self and who they are in comparison to the world around them. The key to being successful in this stage of development is finding and establishing one’s personal identity. This novel can be used to help students understand what they value as Charlie figures out what he values throughout the novel. Charlie is a resource that students can use to help them as they discover what they value and how their values shape their identity.

            Another important factor of this novel is the conversation the novel creates about the many social issues that people may experience in their lifetime. This novel explores issues like suicide, mental health, sexual violence, domestic violence, drugs, homosexuality, sex, bullying, and abortion. Although talking about social issues may be uncomfortable, keeping these issues a secret perpetuates a culture of silence that is oppressive to the individuals that may have experienced one or multiple of the social issues explored in the text. Allowing open dialogue about these issues will educate teenagers who may be struggling with them and provide a support system through the classroom setting. Starting the conversation about these social issues will show students that it is necessary to talk about these social issues in order to promote change and for society to move forward in a positive way.  

Obstacles:

            This book contains many social issues that parents may feel like their child may not be old enough to handle. This book explores sensitive topics that can evoke emotions and memories that may be hard for students to process as they read this book. In order to help combat this it is important for the teacher to be a source of information and resources when using this text in the classroom. Helping the parents understand the importance of teaching this text is crucial. Parents should also be notified about the social issues the text encompasses. It will be important for them to understand what their student is reading about in this unit to promote a safe environment in the home. I expect that in every classroom there could be potential resistance from parents. I think that it is the educator’s duty to advocate for this text and help parents see how this text could be important for their student.

According to the ala.org The Perks of Being a Wallflower was the eight most challenged book of 2014. This could be a hard text to advocate for using in the classroom. I think that school districts will allow this book to be taught but there must be a plan. If one was to do a unit on this book I would expect them to have resources to help students who may struggle with these social issues. I would also expect teachers to have resources available for parents and students who may need extra help to comprehend or cope with what they are reading.          

Students may not feel comfortable reading this text. There are moments in the text that can be uncomfortable or awkward to read so it will be important to process these scenes together as a class. This text may evoke memories of social issues students may have already faced in their life. This book also may mirror social issues that students currently are facing as they read the text. Although most students will enjoy the text after they have finished reading it, it is important to understand how serious the social issues are that are discussed in the book. It will be important to create a safe and open environment where students will be able to process their emotions and reactions when reading the portions of the text that are uncomfortable to read.

Ideas:

1.      (W.9-10.3) Students write a personal narrative using the letter format that Charlie uses throughout the novel. Students should write a narrative reflecting on a time in their life where they went through some sort of personal change that helped define who they are as a person. The teacher should also create a narrative that can be used as an example and to describe the assignment.

2.      (W.9-10.6) Charlie loves creating mixtapes throughout the novel.  Students can create their own mixtape that uses music that tell the story of their life. Using YouTube students can find 5 – 10 songs that are meaningful to them and then create a playlist (aka a modern day mixtape) that can be shared on a classroom blog. Students should be asked to explain how the each song relates to a specific moment in their life as they embed the songs they use in their post. This will allow students to get to know each other in a unique way and will take advantage of technology.

3.      (RL.9-10.3) Students can choose a character of their choice and explore how that character develops throughout the text to advance the plot of the text or one of the themes. This assignment may be less fun but will help students understand the importance of character development within a text. Most of the characters in this text have multiple conflicting motivations making this assignment easy to do in the classroom.

Final Thoughts: Stay away from the movie! It is not worth the class time to show. If students are interested in watching the movie encourage them to do so outside of class and after the unit is completed. 

Readicide

                Honestly, because I have never had a bad reading experience I find it hard to believing that so many kids can get around reading for class. Looking back I can remember the few kids who would explain how sparknotes was their life and they hated reading but I never thought it was as bad to the point that a book was written about how schools contribute to the death of reading. One of the things I enjoyed learning about was that students who have fun reading had better standardized testing scores. I fully believe that reading should be fun and that educators need to make reading fun again. Every child begins with a love of reading. But throughout the education system that passion gets foggy and ultimately is gone by the time high school graduation comes around.

                I also like that Gallagher suggested the idea presented that schools are setting up students to fail. One of the things that come to mind as I reflect on this book is the idea of a dearth of books in schools. It was interesting for me to think about how schools have to be committed to helping students become better readers. Having a variety of interesting texts for students to interact with is necessary for students to become actually interested in reading. If I did not have the opportunity to explore the variety of books in elementary school I am sure I would not be as enthused about reading as I am as an adult. As a future educator I want to fight back against readicide. I want to take a stand and help students love reading. It’s a shame that we live in a society where hating to read is celebrated. I liked this text and I and excited to have it in my library as I pursue my educational goals. 

I Read it, but I Don't Get it!

I enjoyed this book. Overall I found it very insightful and it had a lot of good ideas to help students with their comprehension. One of the concepts that I found the most interesting was the idea of having multiple voices as you read. When I read I generally only hear myself reading the text. I do not have any other voice reading the text critically. But, this does not stop me from thinking critically because I am able to make connections as I read… I just don’t have a second voice doing it as I read. It made me concerned that I have been reading wrong but also I probably will keep doing what I am doing because I do not know how to have two voices happening at the same time. Plus, I have made it this far.

I really liked the sections about how she used her strategies with her reading workshop classroom. It made this book a lot more interesting and it helped me see the effects of her strategies as she used them. I am a good reader. I have never struggled with comprehension or reading a text. My biggest problem is that sometimes I lose focus as I read but I catch it before I am on to the next page. It was very interesting to me to see the ways kids can skip reading and how much it actually takes to comprehend text. One of the most shocking sections to me was the section on questioning because questioning text as I read is something that just occurs naturally to me now. I do definitely think I will use this text to help my students. I want to be able to help my students with their comprehension and this book gives me the tools to do that. 

Vernon Wall: One Better World

Yesterday, I was reminded about an opportunity to view Vernon Wall speak about diversity and social justice. His presentation was about an hour and a half long and it had some really good insight that helped stimulate my understanding of social justice.

Something that really affected me as I was listening to his speech was his short emphasis on the difference between “equal” and “equitable”. I think a lot of people do not understand, me included to some extent, that equal is not equitable. In my opinion a lot of privileged groups claim that want equality for all but do not think about what that actually means. Vernon used the example of shoes. “Every child deserves a pair of shoes” that is equal. Equitable is the saying “Every child deserves a pair of shoes that fit”. That sentence opened my eyes. Social Justice is the fight for an equitable America. There are so many underprivileged groups in America that people claim that want equality for but do not fully understand that equality is not the same thing as equitability. It’s important to recognize underprivileged groups and to come together as a community or a society to make changes so that everyone’s experience is equitable.  When you look into someone’s bowl of food you shouldn’t be looking if they have more food than you, you should be looking to see if they have enough.

I think it is absolutely necessary to be teaching students about social justice in the classroom. We need to teach kids that in the real world there are systems of oppression. To help students see the experience of other groups of people will help them become aware of the systems of oppression in our society and hopefully inspire action in order to create a better tomorrow. We would be doing a disservice to students to not teach them about the perspectives of others. We have to expose inequality and oppression in order for it to change.

Reading different articles and websites I stumbled upon this quote that I think is important in regards to social justice and education.

What does it mean to teach for social justice? It means recognizing oppression in its multiple forms, and then taking action in the classroom to interrupt the cycles of oppression. When teachers teach for social justice they are working to end the cycle of oppression.