After reading Sheridan’s Blau’s The Literature Workshop, the very first chapter intrigued me when he stated, “confusion often represents an advanced state of understanding” (21). Soon after, I understood the genius of this principle. To me, confusion forces a person to look closer at the literature. Confusion allows a connection to the literature. In my teaching career I have taught from the highest IB levels to team taught classes and ESOL classes. Reflecting on my experiences, confusion was and hopefully will continue to be a huge part of my literature discussions and lessons.

To me, confusion essentially forces a closer reading of the text. Blau mentioned that he asks his students to read the poem three times and check and see what they notice first and note that. I feel like I do the same thing, especially in my ESOL class this year. We are currently working on poetry and I read it, then I ask them to read it twice and annotate words, phrases or identify questions they may have. Almost always they are confused by a word, phrase or highly confusing footnote. I always start by asking them what they think of the metaphor or what they see is the overall theme of the poem. Even easier, I ask them to summarize what the poem is about. This activity always brings about a lot of questions. These questions always lead to a great discussion. At this point, I offer up more information about the author. I don’t mind if they think it’s stupid, but I ask them to tell me why. I am always surprised at how well they express their feelings, even if they are negative. I love when kids are passionate about their feelings and use legitimate reasoning to express their interpretation of the text. I think this freedom is especially helpful in a high school classroom because students have a lot more personal experiences than I feel some teachers give them credit for. I’ve had students who have had a lot more life experience than me and can give me really interesting perspectives on more emotional or ambiguous poetry.

In my classes I also notice that they are fishing for me to tell them the “correct” interpretation and I’m so glad that Blau believes that each reader will derive his/her own meaning. Based on our discussion in class last week, I do believe people will relate to literature personally. I also found it interesting when Blau wrote that confidence is a major factor in how students communicate and relate to literature. I’ve sat in on classes before where the teacher just shuts down a kid completely. I’m sure I did that too when I was young. As a young teacher I was nervous and didn’t want to be questioned or asked questions outside of the teacher’s manual. After a terrible embarrassment involving Animal Farm when I was 22, I learned that I need to allow myself to be fallible. When I can show my students that I don’t necessarily have an exact answer, they will feel comfortable being confused and unsure. Hopefully they will think deeper and really explore how they learn. I no longer act like I am the end all and be all of answers in my classroom. I’m a firm believer in “you learn something new everyday” and I think that’s really relevant in my English classes because I love it when I students comment on a poem, story or novel in a way I never thought of. I think my job as a teacher is to teach them, not tell them. This book really embodied that sentiment.