Field Blog Post 3/ Orange High School

Question I will be exploring:                                                                                           
How does the teacher expand students' knowledge to a deeper, more critical level? What specific strrategies does he use?

When we visited Orange High School, I observed an 11th grade honors English class taught by Mr. Polster. The class was discussing Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Throughout the discussion, Mr. Polster used many techniques that reminded me of Ayer's concept of "building bridges." For example, Mr. Polster employed the use of connections to increase understanding and "deepen [his students] way of knowing" (47). He asked students if they could relate the ideals of Henry David Thoreau to those of Holden Caulfield. By drawing on the characteristics of Thoreau, whom the students were already familiar with, Mr. Polster helped the students shape a more complete understanding of the main character. The students, themselves, were able to explain that like Thoreau, Holden is sickened by the materialistic and profane nature of society and thus wishes to live "off the grid." Mr. Polster gave the students the idea that two had similarities, yet he did not lecture about these similarities. Instead, he let the students discover them. Using an Ayers analogy, he laid the "first plank of the bridge" to deeper knowledge, but let the students take it from there (57).  Similarly, he related Holden's desire to preserve youth to that of Peter Pan. After such connections were made, the students' participation increased, implying that the connections engaged them and increased their comprehension.

Mr. Polster also used a bridge building technique to help increase the students' ability to detect symbolism and other rhetoric strategies. For example, he asked the students to closely examine the initials of a character, James Castle. One student responded that his initials were J.C. When Mr. Polster asked who else had those initials, another student responded, "Jesus Christ." Mr. Polster then asked his students if they thought this similarity was coincidental or purposeful. A third student responded that like Christ, the character of James Castle could be seen as a martyr (a vocab word). This then led to a deeper discussion of the text. Again, Mr. Polster led the students in the right direction, but then let them discover the deeper knowledge themselves. Through this strategy he also taught the students to examine the significance of names in other novels. This skill is important because almost every character's name will hold some significant, symbolic meaning.