Franz Kafka wrote that "a book must be the ax for the frozen sea inside us. " I once shared this sentence with a class of seventh graders, and it didn't seem to require any explanation.
弗兰兹·卡夫卡写道：“书就是一把破除我们内心冰冷的斧子。“我曾经与七年级一个班的学生分享过这句话，无需过多解释。

We’d just finished John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men. When we read the end together out loud in class, my toughest boy, a star basketball player, wept a little, and so did I. "Are you crying?" one girl asked, as she got out of her chair to take a closer look. "I am," I told her, "and the funny thing is I've read it many times. "
我们刚刚看完约翰·斯坦贝克的小说《人鼠之间》。当我们在课堂上大声朗读结尾时，我最坚强的男孩，一位出色的篮球运动员，忍不住抽泣，我也是。一个女孩从椅子上站起来仔细看了看，问：“你哭了吗？” “是的，”我告诉她，“有趣的是我已经读了很多遍了。”

But they understood. When George shoots Lennie, the tragedy is that we realize it was always going to happen. In my 14 years of teaching in a New York City public middle school, I've taught kids with imprisoned parents, abusive parents, irresponsible parents; kids who are parents themselves; kids who are homeless; kids who grew up in violent neighborhoods. They understand, more than I ever will, the novel's terrible logic - the giving way of dreams to fate.
不过他们理解。当乔治射杀伦尼时，悲剧在于我们意识到它总是会发生的。在纽约市公立中学任教的14年里，我教过父母被监禁、父母虐待、父母不负责任的孩子；自己也当了父母的孩子；无家可归的孩子；在暴力社区长大的孩子。他们比我更理解这部小说可怕的逻辑——梦想被命运所取代。

For the last seven years, I have worked as a reading enrichment teacher, reading classic works of literature with small groups of students from grades six to eight. I originally proposed this idea to my headmaster after learning that a former excellent student of mine had transferred out of a selective high school--one that often attracts the literary-minded children of Manhattan's upper classes—into a less competitive setting. The daughter of immigrants, with a father in prison, she perhaps felt uncomfortable with her new classmates. I thought additional "cultural capital" could help students like her develop better in high school, where they would unavoidably meet, perhaps for the first time, students who came from homes lined with bookshelves, whose parents had earned Ph. D.'s.
在过去的七年里，我一直担任拓展阅读老师，与六至八年级的学生一起阅读文学经典作品。我最初向校长提出这个想法是因为得知我的一位前优秀学生从一所精英高中转学——这所高中往往会将曼哈顿上流社会有文学头脑的孩子吸引到竞争不那么激烈的环境中。作为移民的女儿，父亲在狱中，她可能对新同学感到不舒服。我认为，额外的“文化资本”可以帮助像她这样的学生在高中更好地发展，在那里他们将不可避免地遇到，也许是第一次，来自书架林立的家庭的学生，他们的父母已经获得了博士学位。

Along with Of Mice and Men, my groups read: Sounder, The Red Pony, Lord of the Flies, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. The students didn't always read from the expected point of view. About The Red Pony, one student said, "it’s about being a man, it’s about manliness. " I had never before seen the parallels between Scarface and Macbeth, nor had I heard Lady Macbeth's soliloquies read as raps, but both made sense; the interpretations were playful, but serious. Once introduced to Steinbeck's writing, one boy went on to read The Grapes of Wrath and told me repeatedly how amazing it was that "all these people hate each other, and they're all white. " His historical view was broadening, his sense of his own country deepening. Year after year former students visited and told me how prepared they had felt in their first year in college as a result of the classes.
除了《人鼠之间》，我的小组还阅读了《桑德尔》、《小红马》、《蝇王》、《罗密欧与朱丽叶》和《麦克白》。学生们并非总是从预期的角度阅读。关于《小红马》，一名学生说：“这书关于如何成为一个男人，关于男子气概。”我以前从未见过疤脸和麦克白之间的相似之处，也从未听过麦克白夫人的如同rap一样的独白，但两者都有道理；这些解释很有趣，但很严肃。有一次，一个男孩介绍了斯坦贝克的作品，他接着读了《愤怒的葡萄》，并反复告诉我，“所有这些人都互相仇恨，他们都是白人”，这是多么令人惊讶他的历史观正在扩大，他对自己国家的意识在加深。年复一年，以前的学生们来拜访我，告诉我他们在大学第一年的时候，由于这些课程的学习，他们感觉准备得非常充分。

Year after year, however, we are increasing the number of practice tests. We are trying to teach students to read increasingly complex texts, not for emotional punch but for text complexity. Yet, we cannot enrich the minds of our students by testing them on texts that ignore their hearts. We are teaching them that words do no. amaze but confuse. We mav succeed in raising test scores, but we will fail to teach that reading can be transformative and that it belongs to them.
然而，年复一年，我们正在增加实践测试的数量。我们尝试教学生阅读越来越复杂的文本，不是为了情感冲击，而是为了文本的复杂性。然而，我们不能通过在忽视学生内心的文本上测试来丰富学生的思想。我们告诉他们，语言不会让人惊讶，但会让人困惑。我们可以成功地提高考试成绩，但我们无法教会学生阅读是可以改变的，它属于他们。