I’d like to first mention that I was pleasantly surprised to see Blau mention the National Writing Project; his introduction to The Literature Workshop provides a useful and interesting history of the Writing Project system for teacher development.  As a relatively new teacher, I have only recently learned of this nationwide community of teachers and its local affiliation, the Northern Virginia Writing Project.  Every teacher I have met who has completed the seminar reflects on her experience as “life-changing.”  Because of the overt enthusiasm shared by NVWP participants, I decided to apply for this summer’s seminar.  Blau mentions that the NWP helps teachers articulate and define the theories which influence them; currently, I feel under-qualified in this area and am enthusiastic about developing the vocabulary necessary to explain why I teach how and what I teach (if that makes sense). 

To be honest, I have found myself feeling quite insecure, wondering “Why wasn’t I taught more of these theories in my undergraduate education classes?” and “As a third-year teacher, why do I not already feel comfortable explaining my personal educational theories?”  You can imagine my relief when Blau mentions in Chapter 6 that “in teaching, practice often precedes theory and…teachers must be willing to develop and trust practices that they feel work well for their students, even when they can’t articulate a rationale for that practice” (144).  His claim definitely holds true in my classroom, where over the past few years I’ve implemented several of the reading strategies he includes in The Literature Workshop.  The difference is, he has a clear rationale based in educational research and theory for using the strategies; my choices have been based more on the idea that “it feels right” or “it seems to work.” 

As a teacher of British Literature to tenth-grade students, I often struggle with preparing students for the entirely different world they enter when reading texts like Macbeth, Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, etc.  Many times, especially with average or below-average readers, I find that students dread these works because of their seeming foreignness and difficulty.  I know for a fact that a considerable number of students, in my classroom and others, skip reading the original text altogether and go straight for the interpretations offered by SparkNotes or Cliff’s Notes.  Those struggling readers are certain that they could never develop their own understanding of the text.  Blau’s “Background Knowledge” experiments strike me as the perfect remedy for this way of thinking.  By referring to readers of difficult texts as “travelers in foreign lands,” Blau generates an excitement for the unknown (80).  I’m interested to see how this workshop will work in my classroom; I assume that students will pay more attention to the relevant contextual information that is given to ease their reading and will feel less pressure to “get” the text on the first read. 

Because of the clear explanations of theory behind practice as well as detailed examples and instructions for incorporating varying reading strategies into the classroom, I’ve found Blau’s text to be the most relevant and readily applicable to my own teaching.  I’m looking forward to “experimenting” with my students to improve their literary comprehension, interpretation, and analysis.