Engaging teens in reading stories in the classroom: a comparison between teen experiences and the protagonist of the story Cow’s head

by Patricia De La LLera

“Oksana lived in a small house on the edge of her town with her father, her stepmother and her stepsister. Oksana’s stepmother disliked Oksana favouring her true daughter Olena.” 

The ghost short story Cow’s head shows an adolescent’s experience through Oksana’s life. This story can be considered as Young Adult Literature (YAL) taking into account Small’s characteristics of YAL (1996). This type of literature can be appealing for adolescents because they can identify themselves with the” adolescent main character who is the centre of the plot”. Small also distinguishes that “a young adult story should include problems in the plot related to teenagers”. Apart from that, “the main character is usually perceptive, sensitive, intelligent, mature and independent”. (as cited in Hertz&Gallo,1996).

Cow’s head is a Ukrainian ghost story whose author is unknown. This story is about an adolescent girl called Oksana that has a stepmother who hates her and asks her husband to send Oksana to the woods where she is left in an old cottage. She experiences a crucial situation in which she has to survive searching for food and she also has to overcome her fears when she has to face the cow’s head. This is a strange creature that resembles the head of a cow which asks her for food and a place to sleep near the fire. Oksana accepts to help it. The following morning she realizes that the cow’s head has disappeared but it has left jewels for her.

Sometimes stories can reflect adolescent’s experiences as it happens in Cow’s head. This essay will compare the character’s experiences and those of adolescents’ in order to propose that Cow’s head can be appealing for adolescents in the classroom.

“Cow’s head” deals with real-life situations that adolescents experience in their lives. These shared situations can be used as an instrument to involve students with the story. 

Life is made up by both pleasant and sad situations.  Adolescence is a stage in human lives where drastic changes happen. As Koelling (2004) states,” changes are not just physical, they ‘re emotional, psychological and intellectual”.  Adolescents begin to face different problematic situations in their families, such as confronting with parents and having unpredictable behaviour due to their growing up process to adulthood.  In the story “Cow’s head”, the adolescent Oksana goes through unpleasant situations at home because her stepmother has hard feelings towards her. The following example shows Oksana facing a disagreeable circumstance at home:

“Oksana lived in a small house on the edge of her town with her father, her stepmother and her stepsister. Oksana’s stepmother disliked Oksana favouring her true daughter Olena.” 

Nowadays, adolescents have to face difficult relationship in family mainly with parents with whom they confront. Koelling is right that “adolescents are openly rebellious with adults and often believe their parents interfering in their well-being “(Koelling,2004).

Adolescents like freedom, especially from their families. This desire of autonomy, make them take their own decisions making them decide about what is right or wrong, no matter what kind of situation they have to go through and the results they get. 

Koelling states, “teens desire freedom from family. They are asserting independence, developing personal beliefs of right and wrong”(Ibid). In the story “Cow’s head”, the teen main character has to confront a crucial situation in which she has to survive in the woods because she is an independent girl now. The story shows what she has to do to survive in the woods:

“She entered to the cottage with her small bundle and found a fireplace, a lopsided table and a rusty old pot. Oksana put away the loaf of bread, the knife and the slab of cheese her father had given her. She folded the blanket and laid near the fireplace. Then she collected wood and built a fire. Oksana knew the bread and cheese would not last her all winter. So she made a snare using the thin, flexible branches of the trees and caught a snow rabbit to eat. She also dug under the deep snow, and found some roots and berries for food.”

Adolescence is a transition between childhood and adulthood. Sometimes teens have to face situations in which they have no experience so they have to overcome difficulties and try to solve them as they can. Dealing with these situations, adolescents construct their own personality through time and little by little this leads them to independence. In Koelling’s view, “each individual develops at his or her own pace, and that development is dependent on many factors: cultural values and individual personality, to name a few, but that development takes place within a larger construct.”(Koelling,2004)

It is important to mention that Cow’s head can be an enjoyable reading to use in the classroom because students need stories that help them to develop their own ways of solving problems. Amey (2003) makes reference to the use of short stories as YAL because “this type of story aids adolescents on their journey to maturity. Throughout the story, teens can fulfil some of the special adolescents’ needs as well as the characters’. These special needs include the need to belong, the need to experience responsibility, the need to establish a self- concept and the need to communicate with adults” (as cited in Gail De Vos, 2003). The fact that there are similarities between adolescents’ experiences and those of the characters’ allows students to identify themselves with the story and feel engaged in reading.

Attracting the interest of students in reading is not an easy task to carry out in class. Teachers can take advantage of cow’s head which offers the possibility to use it in an enjoyable way in the classroom. If this proposal is carried out in the classroom, reading will be an engaging activity for students. 

REFERENCES

• De Vos, Gail (2003) “Storytelling for Young Adults. A Guide to Tales for Teens”. Westport, CT, Libraries Unlimited.
• Koelling, Holly (2004) “Classic Connections: Turning Teens on the Great Literature”. Westport, CT, Libraries Unlimited