What Kind of Reader am I?

 The common thread I found among the blogs I have posted in the last month is questions.  I want to know if these ideas, such as the ones in Blau’s workshops, will work in my classroom.  They are very neatly packaged (scripted, actually) in the text, and I was taught to believe that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  The skeptic in me asks things such as how relying on my peers instead of my teacher will make me feel more empowered to discover the meaning of difficult texts.  I questioned Crosman’s motives and assumptions behind his challenge of Hirsch’s belief about Truth and where meaning lies.  I questioned the value, implicit in the posters by Bass and Linkon, of readers making speculations about a text for speculation’s sake.  Where does authority, to use one of Blau’s terms, of the interpretation and connections fit in?  And my first blog is even titled with a question as I wonder how I can help my students move toward becoming expert readers.

Apparently I have a need to know how to apply all of this very new stuff.  Every week we read about authors, texts, and concepts I have never heard of before, and my way of trying them on to see how they fit is to ask lots of questions.  Doesn’t sound like a bad approach to me.  Naomi