This is the static explanation of “Holt’s checkpoint,” which is a part of the reading process and the concept of choosing to read, both of which are explained in their respective posts. The directions are repeated through Google Classroom and Google Forms as part of all formal reading assignments.
Holt’s Checkpoint
In his essay, “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” John Holt explains his approach to reading as follows:
I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.
Holt is right — to a certain extent, at least — and offers us a way to discuss the first 30-40 pages of each extended text we read. This idea of “giv[ing]” an author thirty or forty pages” also invites us to discuss the purpose of literature, using a set of questions proposed in our formal reading process.
After you have read 30-40 pages of the assigned text, answer the following four questions. Start by typing them in a separate document. Then submit them as instructed.
- What “range of emotions and events that would take countless lifetimes to encounter” are you experiencing through this reading?
- How is what you’re reading developing your empathy through “the chance to see things from someone else’s point of view”?
- How is the text helping you reflect on who you are — and the idea that “everyone is a strange and interesting person”?
- To what extent is the text helping you to “see that failure is a part of life”?
Choosing to Read
Once you’ve reflected on the first 30-40 pages (or more) of an assigned text, you can choose to read. The process is outlined in its own post, but it starts simply enough, with a commitment to read.
This is a contract between you and the course itself: You will either finish the assigned text or choose to read a work of equivalent literary merit.
If your choice is to read a different text, you must get your choice approved within 48 hours of the decision, which will be timestamped through a Google Form. That Form will give you two prompts:
- Will you continue to read the assigned text?
- Write your full name below. This is your contract: You will either finish the assigned novel, or you will choose and read a work of equivalent literary merit. If you choose the latter, you will have your choice approved within 48 hours.
After You Read
In the reading process, we return repeatedly to the purpose of literature outside of a high school classroom. The video we watch ends with a particularly powerful quotation:
We should learn to treat [literature] as doctors treat their medicine, something we prescribe in response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best suited to addressing. Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.
After you have finished a book, play, poem, or other work of literary merit, you are equipped to respond to that quotation. Watch the entire video again, as necessary, and then write a response focused on your text. You will be given these prompts:
📖 For what “range of ailments” would you “prescribe” this text?
📖 What problems is the text you’ve read “best suited to addressing”?
📖 How could this text be a tool “to help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness, and sanity”?
Start by typing your response in a separate document. If possible, run this response through the complete writing process in order to make it an essay. (That process is online in this post.) You will be given a place to upload this response separately.