Well…duh!
February 19th, 2008 JJ
Okay, so I have to agree with Sara, most of Blau was preaching to my choir as well. I share many of Blau’s takes on the teaching of literature and it would seem many of yours judging on the posts that I have read. Alright, I’m going to apologize ahead of time because I cannot remember who said what in thier posts. Background experience has a great deal with how we handle and approach all the situations in our lives. The mention to “My Papa’s Waltz” and how students of the 80s jumped to interpretations of abuse rings very true with my own experience. Someone had mentioned the idea of practice before theory and then there was the story about going to the optomotrist. I too was very unsure of what I was doing when I started teaching, especially since I was teaching on the Navajo Nation Indian reservation and had no teaching experience or education background - just an undergraduate degree in English and that took me 10 years of life experience to gain. (While I was teaching on a ’substandard license’ I earned my M.A.T. in Secondary Education and got loaded down with pedagogy.) So, I approached teaching literature in the same way it had been taught to me in high school - read and answer the questions in the book (YUK!) and we all know what our students do and what we did most of the time - scan for the answers and get done as fast as we can.
What was different about my situation when I started teaching was that I was teaching about 20 students in a self-contained environment ranging from 14-21 years of age and I was thier only teacher. There were computer based modules for them to work on and such in order for them to earn the credits required for graduation, but since I had them all day, every day I incorported class lessons rather than relying solely on the computer based work, which made me more of a manager than a teacher. Long story short - I had that moment when I began questioning why I was doing what I was doing when my students questioned me about our study of literature. When they told me it was boring, I couldn’t understand why they would think like that - I loved literature. Upon reflection, I realized that when we studied literature it was really the only thing that was read and answer, even history had hands on components or games, but there was no critical inquiry with the literature. This is when I started thinking about my college experiences and the discussions we had about the literature and how there were no ‘answers’ just discussions and questions and debates and how I enjoyed these even though there rarely was a resolution everyone could agree upon. After this ah ha moment, I started to take my time with the literature and question the students and have them discuss and act out scenes (one year a group staged the blinding of the cyclops from the Odyssey complete with fake blood oozing from the eye - gross but effective in making the describtions real. Last year, I had students who staged the fight scene between Romeo and Tybalt as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.) What I found that when students could connect to what they are reading it added vaule for them and they were more engaged and willing to learn. But different students connect differently, but rarely is the deeper connection fostered through the read and answer questions that happens in too many classrooms.
Yes, I too agree that lecturing has a place in the Literature classroom (typically in the defining of terms that are necessary to know for testing, or at least that is what happens in my classroom most often). I too had a wonderful lecturer who made epic poetry come alive. Professor Phillip Holt is to be credited with my love of the Iliad, the Aneid, and the Divine Comedy simply because of the passion he brought to the topic. As with Mrs. Lyons, Professor Holt did not preach his interpretation, he explained, modeled and accepted other possible interpretations based on textual support. He also encouraged none ‘academic’ work to illustrate understanding at times with assignment choices that allowed for students to create their own level in purgatory. What is unique about Professor Holt and Mrs. Lyons and numerous other teachers who make their lectures come alive and engage students is that they are lecturing their passion. I know when I cover certain works in my classroom, I am much more engaged then when I teach others which is the point I feel that Blau is trying make for the audience he is addressing. As we know, audience is one of the key components that determines what and how we write, and I feel that Blau is writing for an audience of beginning and novice teachers who are still trying to find their strides or negotiate how to teach ‘required’ texts.
Teaching is more art than science, there are no one size fits all solutions and anyone who trys to tell you that there are is selling hog wash, as such what works for someone may or may not work for someone else; or what works for one text may not work for another, but sticking with the same thing without producing results is just insanity.
Entry Filed under: Week 5
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