Kite Runner Survey

At my high school where I teach, parents have recently called the appropriateness of The Kite Runner, a novel in the sophomore curriculum, into question. While I did not experience any problems with my students or their parents, the other two English II teachers did. I decided to perform a survey to determine how my students felt about the novel. I wish I had used SurveyMonkey, which would have analyzed the results for me. But I figured taking the survey in the computer lab would take way too much class time, so I had to tabulate the results myself.

Without further ado, I present to you the results of the survey.

Kite Runner Student Survey Jan 2011

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Second Time Around

Do you ever make time to reread a book? I hardly do. There are so many good books to read that I feel rereading a book is usually a waste of time. It blows my mind that my high school students sometimes reread the Harry Potter series. I'm all for students reading for fun, so I don't stop them from going back to Hogwarts. But rereading a series indicates to me that a reader is immature. Why not try something new?

All the same, I recently reread The Kite Runner because I was teaching it for the first time to my sophomores. I had read Kite Runner while I was in college, but I could not remember all the details, thus the reread. I added this acclaimed novel to the curriculum this year after I cut out The Natural. I don't like to use pre-made quizzes and tests. I write my own. Plus, I wanted to lead discussion on the novel based on my own reading experience, and not on an online summary.

I know some English teachers do not reread a novel each time that they teach it. They just reuse their notes from the past, which is understandable. Not every teacher has time to reread a book year after year. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my second go round with this novel. I picked up on the foreshadowing this time--there was a lot of it--and I understood the characters better. There was even one small part of the plot that my students explained to me during discussion that I had never understood before!

What novel(s) do you like to reread?