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By Maggie Huang
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May. 22, 2009 |
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This summer’s reading list, announced on May 5, includes revised titles for freshman classes, sophomore honors, expository writing and junior and senior electives, as a result of teacher consensus.
According to English teacher Elizabeth Zamboldi, the purpose of the revision process was to obtain a universal consensus on reading materials and to avoid assigning duplicate books to junior and senior English electives. The process began during the first week of March and ended in the first week of April. By March 10, Zamboldi said she had collected the Summer Reading Opinion Surveys — which she had created and distributed to English teachers — for their input on last summer’s list. Teachers then formed committees grouped by the courses they taught, narrowed their suggestions for books down to three and voted again to establish the final summer reading list of two titles per class.
Zamboldi said she hoped the modifications would allow teachers to more easily check that students had completed the assigned summer reading and that the new titles would encourage interest in reading in general. “We wanted to get books not on SparkNotes for freshmen,” she said. “Our goal is to get students to want to read all the time.”
She mentioned certain books that she believes especially cater to these goals. Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories caught Zamboldi’s attention with its playful mythological aspects and poetic style, while President Barack Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father, interested her with its relevancy to current events. “Reading a book of essays by a man who is our president and also an articulate writer seemed like a good idea and very timely,” Zamboldi explained.
Another title, Doug Dorst’s Alive in Necropolis, is part of the One City One Book program, an annual citywide event in which San Francisco public libraries encourage readers to read the same book at the same time. This book was added after English teacher Cathy Innis and librarian Alison Shepard wrote to the public library to find out next year’s title in advance, allowing teachers to plan a visit from the book’s author to augment their lessons. The school has annually held assemblies for the One City One Book authors, which inspired this effort to incorporate the book into the summer list.
English teachers first compressed the reading lists by limiting them to two books during the summer of 2007 for Advanced Placement classes, which are offered to juniors and seniors. The change then spread to all English classes the next year in order to have “specific books with the express purpose of giving teachers something to work with,” according to English department head Svein Arber.
Although Zamboldi said that teachers expressed enthusiasm about the revised list, she said she would also welcome student input for future modifications. “If there are kids willing to put time into it, they’d be eligible to participate in the discussions,” she said, in anticipation of the revision process for the summer of 2010 list.
Some students said they were interested in offering input for future lists. “The books in
Ethnic Literature should be more catered to our Asian population,” sophomore Nicole Lam said, suggesting the course should feature more books written by people of color.
However, others said they were comfortable with the teachers compiling the list. “It’s kind of nice having teachers suggesting the books because you get a wide range of books that
you normally wouldn’t consider,” junior Avery McFarlan said.
Sophomore Lynn Nguyen agreed. “Teachers should listen to student suggestions, but they ultimately should be able to decide themselves (on books),” she explained. “Kids would put Twilight on the list.”
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