Mary Kempen

Reflections: Whale Talk

Portfolio submission 1
Question 1.
My favorite characters in Whale Talk are Chris Coughlin, Dan Hole, and T.J. Jones because these
boys are portrayed as good-hearted even though T.J. is perhaps the only multidimensional one. Chris
Coughlin is viewed primarily through the lens of his disability. He is bullied by other students because he
has a cognitive disability as well as because he fails to conform to the athletic departments cultural
norms when he dares to wear his brothers letter jacket. Despite Chriss budding potential as a
competitive swimmer, Mike Barbour and his friends wish to deny him the right to a letter jacket for no
apparent reason other than a refusal to allow someone with an intellectual disability into their club.
T.J. also views Chris primarily as a representative of an intellectual disability and a means to strike at the
popular athletes. Although T.J. does eventually see Chris more for his strengths (swimming) and his
emotional needs which are similar to those of other adolescent boys, as Richard Gargiulo and Debbie
Metcalf recommend (2013), Chris remains a somewhat undeveloped character. The most striking
characteristic I see in Chris is his love for his brother and his absence of anger or other malicious
emotional response toward anyone in the novel, not even toward his tormentors. This kind of
innocence elicits affection from me. I admire Chriss pure heart and wish we could all be a little more
like him in this regard.
Dan Hole reminds me of myself with respect to his highly developed linguistic intelligence, yet
his underdeveloped interpersonal skills are slightly annoying. Dans motivations for using obscure or
lengthy words when shorter, more familiar ones would improve his communication with others are
unclear. He does not seem to be showing off or otherwise deliberately displaying arrogance. He may be
experimenting with his identity in Eriksons fifth stage of psychosocial development (Woolfolk 2013, p.
88) and trying out the role of an intellectual. Coach Icko has certainly made him aware that his lexical
choices have a negative effect on others, but Dan either does not care how others respond to him or
enjoys the attention he gets from Icko and is satisfied that at least this way someone interacts with him.
Perhaps Dan does not know how to make people feel comfortable in conversation with him, but he
means no harm to anyone.
T.J. chooses lengthy sentences when shorter utterances would do. He appears to be
experimenting with an identity as a leader and uses elaborated language in an informal register to
express confidence he may have already or still aspire to feel. He has a strong sense of justice and
could possibly place in stage 6 on Kohlbergs scale of moral development for a belief that there are
universal principles of human dignity and social justice that individuals should uphold, no matter what
the law or other people say (Woolfolk 2013, p. 101). However, he might also be displaying signs of an
Oppositional Defiant Disorder; he does refuse to participate in school sports out of spite, and he
organizes his swim team in part out of vindictiveness against Mike Barbour for Mikes abuse of Chris. T.J.
can be difficult to like because he stubbornly refuses to become engaged with his school and has an
impulsiveness that leads him into confrontations, but he is clearly the protagonist of the story while his
opponents are detestable antagonists. I like his leadership, eventual self-analysis regarding his motives,
and concern for the weak and oppressed.
Question 2:
If Dan Hole were in my classroom, I would specially address his need to develop his
interpersonal intelligence and his strength in linguistic intelligence. To develop his interpersonal
communication skills, Dan may need to have his tasks rephrased in terms of a specific audience. For
example, if the class were to produce a writing assignment, I would ask Dan to write in the style and
with the vocabulary of the local newspaper. Dan could accept this assignment as a challenge and focus
on the importance of audience reception in communication. In another assignment, I may ask the entire
class to write a set of directions to use a device they have in their rooms. The directions need to be
simple enough that people who read at a sixth-grade level can understand them. Dan and the rest of
the class can then work with peers to determine if their writing is understood by the target audience
and what revisions are necessary to make it understood. In this step, Dan can experience interaction
with a peer and perhaps receive feedback on how his language choices affect them in what may be a
non-threatening situation. On the other hand, the fact that my classes are in Spanish might eliminate
the pretentious element in Dans language as he along with the rest of the class will be learning an
entirely new language. Dan may find the informal registers of Spanish to be challenging enough and be
unable to adopt an inappropriately formal or pedantic register of speech.
To address Dans strength in linguistic intelligence, I would offer him challenging reading
material. If he does master simple texts faster than his classmates, he can progress to more authentic
literary pieces. His style of using big words and intellectual-sounding speech would win him respect in
Hispanic cultures more so than in the United States, so in Spanish class I would provide him examples of
writers who use a style similar to the one he prefers and encourage him to imitate them. (Mario Vargas
Llosas work comes to mind.) In this sense, Dan might feel more at home in Spanish class than in other
areas of his school life.
Question 3:
Whale Talk has deepened my understanding of middle and high school learners (Standard #2) by
its literary features as much as by its characters. The extremes of the plot, which in its entirety is
implausible although each segment may be credible, reminded me that learners in this age group seek
intense emotional stimulation and how this urge plays out in the classroom. These learners would be
attracted to the melodrama of T.J.s birth mother abusing him, his defense of the baby deer that gets
shot anyway, his triumph over the evil athletes and their abusive ringleader, and the heart-wrenching
death of his father in the climax. They would also appreciate the sentimental conclusion with the long-
lost brother for T.J. As an older adult, I react to the story by criticizing the lack of a nuanced portrayal of
some of the characters and the one-sided introduction of the unlikely brother in the end as a happy
ending, without consideration of the hardships that brother must have lived without a father. My
students, however, will probably enjoy the clear lines between the good and the evil characters and the
emotional reward of the ending. They will also see their own lives in these terms. Their teachers may
be completely evil in their eyes or completely heroic. Their break-ups with girlfriends and boyfriends
may be the end of the world. They will want swift justice against wrongdoers like T.J. wishes to
administer to Mike at the dance, and they will not have the patience to hear multiple sides of a story
before acting. They will have dramatic lives.
My students will also be diverse, and each of them will have something to contribute to the
class. It is my job to draw their contributions out of them. The saddest aspect of this novel is how the
boys who eventually form the swim team were neglected by the adults in the school. First, the staff
were negligent with the students safety. I cannot believe that the principal allowed Rich Marshall in the
building. The man was clearly a threat to some of the students. School learning environments need to
be safe for all students, and this means taking a no-tolerance stance on bullying and hazing among clubs
and teams. Second, even though Mr. Simet reached out to T.J., no teacher seems to have reached out
to the other members of the team. Andy, Jackie and Chris were marginalized in school; as a teacher, I
believe I am responsible for helping students like them discover their abilities and qualities that can be
appreciated by others. I am also responsible for helping others appreciate these students qualities.
Diversity is to be explored and valued rather than squelched, and cultural sensitivity means we students
and teachers are to develop empathy for people who are different from us and welcome them without
trying to make them identical to us.
References:
Gargiulo, R.M. and Metcalf, D. (2013). Teaching in todays inclusive classrooms: A universal design for
learning approach. 2
nd
ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Woolfolk, A. (2013). Educational psychology. 12
th
ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.