I might stand alone with my complaint, but I’m rather accustomed to that, so I’ll just air my grievance. I found Wilner’s analysis of her students’ interpretive skills rather alarming and a bit degrading. She states that her “students responded to texts in such self-centered, such willfully naïve ways, that instead of interpreting or even shedding light on the text, they appeared simply to defy it” (173). I found myself questing whether their lack of interpreting ability was a personal flaw or their professor’s failure. Wilner’s expectations regarding the basic level of her under-graduate students’ analytical skills seemed excessive. The texts her under-graduate students were given, “Territory” and “Sonny’s Blues,” not only require open-minds but high-level skills in literary analysis. The cultural, literary, and historical knowledge needed to handle the texts Wilner provided seemed beyond the capability of her students. The critical stance Wilner took toward the failings of her students should have also been directed at her teaching style.

I do not applaud the forum that Wilner provided for her students to voice their hateful stereotypes and prejudices. Wilner told of the time she wrote the word homophobia on the chalkboard and a student vocalized his hatred of homosexuals. Though it shocked me that this behavior was allowed in a higher education atmosphere, I felt Wilner should have addressed the student’s hatred for what it was—narrow-minded thinking. Instead, I felt she labeled all of her students unfairly because of a few bigoted perspectives. The bigoted outburst of one student seemed to allow a forum for bigoted conversation. Was this the learning experience that Wilner wished for? I hope not. Perhaps Wilner should have taken a mental note of her student population before assigning a text that they were not culturally equipped to handle. The need for scaffolding with this particular group of students seems obvious, even from a secondary educator’s perspective. Wilner’s students needed an anti-New Criticism approach to the reading of “Territory” before actually reading the text. If Wilner would have known her students’ cultural biases more thoroughly—and used scaffolding methods to approach culturally difficult texts—I feel the students would have been better able to analyze the material. I wondered throughout the essay which came first, Wilner’s assumptions about the inept literary skills of her students or her assumptions regarding their inept cultural sensitivity?

If I were teaching “Territory” or “Sonny’s Blues” to under-graduates who appeared culturally and analytically bankrupt, I would hope my approach would focus first on background knowledge and literary and cultural sensitivity. Though I am not a fan of front-loading information, I believe that when presenting potentially controversial texts, a teacher must know when to forgo the New Critical approach. I was pleased when Wilner began the process of self-reflection toward the end of her essay in the section “Am I Blue?” The truest statement of the piece was Wilsner’s analysis of her own approach: “Unless I continue to examine my own assumptions, I will not be effective in helping students confront theirs. Unless I view my practices as always provisional, I cannot expect my students to see themselves as always ‘in process’ ” (193). Wilsner deserves credit for writing about her failed teaching strategies; though I feel I have learned more about what not to do when teaching difficult texts than what to do from reading her self-analysis.

The examples Sheridan Blau provides from his teaching experience, especially his teaching poetry are very clear and easy to follow. I especially enjoyed the case scenario in the introduction with Wordsworth’s “My heart Leaps Up.” In addition to the step by step process he had the students follow, his discussion on how much we need to to know about the author in order to understand the poem took me back to our class discussions on how much information do we need to know on the author. The case that Blau was presenting suggested that knowing about the author is not really necessary and can at times be misleading. I agree that students are capable of understanding a poem without knowing the background of the author or certain terms, but I also believe that knowing the definition of certain terms during the poet’s lifetime can actually help students with understanding a poem.

Blau does a nice job defining a poet’s task of simplifying complex matters into a few lines. The student/reader’s task is to decode the concepts within those lines. “Poetic difficulty” is universal, and students from every culture are forced to experience this difficulty. The art of the teacher is to help them understand that poetry is difficult, yet the students are capable of understanding them if they focus.

Blau’s discussion on page 23 on why teachers may skip difficult text reminded me of my own teachers. When learning poetry, many of my teachers would put so much emphasis on making the class memorize and learn the author’s biographical information, that it really took my focus away from possible deeper meanings within a poem. My understandings of poetry were limited to the penciled in translations above each line in a poem we were studying dictated to us by the teacher. Our essays about a poem only expanded on those definitions and meanings and explained why they work. I was content and felt safe when the teacher would give me the right answer, and when left alone I feared to think of deeper meanings in a poem. Although I agree with Laura on the matter of lecturing, in fact I believe students have to be lectured. But I believe that any form of lecturing should be short, say twenty minutes or so. Something that will not cause students to doze off and just write down anything they hear just to stay awake. In many of the lectures I would just write so many notes without understanding a word the teacher was saying. My plan was to go home and figure everything out on my own, and then compare it to the lectures.

It’s fascinating, the dichotomy presented by contrasting Wilner and Blau (while acknowledging Blau’s caveat that compare-and-contrast assignments are simplistic and nigh-worthless). Several of Wilner’s students refused to read certain texts, much less analyze them; anything that contradicted their worldview was anathema. But Blau frequently points to the typical student’s tendency to regurgitate the teacher’s interpretation, maybe just for the grade, or perhaps because it’s just the most recent explanation that they’ve read (not really a case of being armed only with a hammer, therefore making all problems look like nails; more a case that they’ve just read a book on hammers, and all problems have begun to temporarily—if naively—appear as nails). Put these behaviors together and you have a bout of intense resistance followed by near blind obedience. That’s cult atmosphere.

It reminds me of an old “Simpsons” episode from about ten years ago. Homer sold all his family’s possessions so that they could join the “movementarians.” Lisa was heavily resistant at first. What finally broke her down was a very singular form of brainwashing. The answer to every question in her class became“The Leader.” Who discovered Electricity? The Leader. Who invented the cotton gin? The Leader. What is 4 + 5? The Leader. Lisa was initially livid; however, as her frustration evolved, the question of whether the answers were wrong became much less important. What became important was her need for validation, her need to get good grades.

Now, we’re not trying to teach such an absurdly simplistic curriculum (hopefully), but this parody does show that students understand more about what teachers are unconsciously afflicting upon them than we might think. Students who savagely refuse to try new ideas are resisting the breakdown of their personal identity. They understand that they’re being indoctrinated into the very thing Blau warns against: blind obedience to the interpretation that the teacher presents as fact, blind obedience to what will get them good grades—no matter how bull-headed or prejudiced their position.

Also of interest was just how resistant Homer was to the brainwashing at first. This was not necessarily because of his stupidity (although that helped), but because of his extreme inattentiveness. The movementarians initially tried to brainwash everyone with a mind-deadening film sporting Ed Wood-level production values, all about their eventual relocation to the magical land of Blisstonia. Whenever anyone tried to leave the cultists would immediately shine a spotlight on them, telling them they were free to leave at any time…but had to explain why. Everyone was too embarrassed to counteract the cult atmosphere. However, when the cultists asked Homer what he thought about the film, something different happened:

Homer: Wait, I’m confused about the movie … so the cops knew Internal Affairs was setting them up?
Male Cultist: What are you talking about? There’s nothing like that in there.
Homer: Well, you see when I get bored I make up my own movies. I have a very short attention span.
Female Cultist: But our point is very simple, you see when…
Homer: Oh look! A bird! Hee hee hee!
(Homer runs after the bird)

Sometimes tuning the teacher out isn’t just laziness. After all, the student doesn’t have to rail against the breakdown of their personal identity to try and maintain their own individuality. The can recognize the impetus towards blind obedience and ignore it, but unfortunately ignore everything else as well. Their bird-watching becomes their form of protest. Now, is it better to ignore the stultifying lecture and maintain your own individuality, or to copy notes furiously and become nothing more than a sheet of paper upon which the teacher writes. This is an important conundrum that requires a great deal of thought and much discussion, lest we become that which…

Oh look! A bird! Hee hee hee!

-Matt

P.S. How amusing that I put down the punchline and then signed my work.

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.

I cannot seem to leave comments…so Renee, I’ll just say here that I did not mind your supersized post.  It was terrific to hear exactly what I have been thinking or wondering about during the course of our readings.  I kept thinking that the group discussions were so tedious as a student.  No one works in them.  They chat.  I have always considered them hangover days for the instructors.  But to hear that you had these same concerns and as an actual teacher, which I am not, had some hesitation to use groups made me read on and really enjoy your post.  I do not have that sort of classroom experience, so it is essential that I learn a lot from those of you who do.  I especially liked your adjustments.  I liked that you worked with the difficulty papers and then proceded and that those papers excited your students. 

The funny thing about the reading this week is that I had the same reaction and have had the same reaction that I think students will have to the prospect of not getting “the answers” from the instructors.  I read Sonny’s Blues and when I began reading the piece about it, Confronting Resistance, I was set back on my heels at first to her mention of homosexuality in the piece she had been teaching to her class.  I thought, what homosexuality?  Did I misread this?  As I read on, I realized that her title is odd because she only touches on Sonny’s Blues and that she was discussing a different story.  When she finally arrived at Sonn’y Blues, I was very happy to see that my interpretations had been correct, at least according to her.  I was, in spite of our readings and the fact that I am sold on the idea of self-exploration, really happy about that.

 So the reading goes on, and in the Blau book I had the same reaction again.  I really wanted to get through the chapter to the final analysis of each poem that we read.  I wanted confirmation.  But something else happened as well, the tension has eased as I think some of the teachers in class have mentioned as they experiment with these techniques in their own classes.  I am less “freaked out” by the prospect of weeding though a piece and picking out those parts that I used to gloss over.  I want to do more.

At the gym one of the trainers said to me something along the lines of, so why do you study English?  Why don’t they just write what they mean instead of hiding it?  I wanted to ask him why he liked going to school and studying muscle tissue and nerve response, but held back and wrote out the l(a poem by e.e. cummings for him.  I told him to go through and pick out what hurt in the poem. (Word choice he understands only too well) He stood there for a moment and asked me difficulty questions.  He asked, was this a parentheses.  He asked why is was written that way.  I told him the form may have to do with meaning.  He told me he got a really high math SAT.  I told him I did not.  And then, while I struggled through leg raises and scissor kicks, he figured out the poem, or a lot of it. 

So I am not a teacher yet, but the readings do support me as an individual and give me some confidence that I may know how to approach this idea of teaching when the time comes.  As far as the lecturing, which someone wrote about, now I find it a relief in a way but I think also that it depends on the teacher.  My writing teacher talks for two hours a night and the time flies.  She uses the readings to illustrate a specific style and then expounds on it before we read our own work.  She is truly an excellent guide I would say rather than lecturer.  But, that said, I do now see through the experiences I have heard about in class, in the readings and from Renee today that these techniques are truly effective.

Perhaps the lecture is the teaching method we love to hate because it is the one-size-fits-all solution our teachers used throughout most of our education. If it had been used more judiciously, if it had been just one tool among many used by a variety of teachers in a variety of ways, maybe then I wouldn’t hate it so much. As it is, I hate lectures and take no pity on them.

I didn’t always hate lectures, but having experienced something better, I can’t go back. Especially after the many community-based classrooms I have experienced here at Mason, I can’t help but respond to instructors who teach through lectures with the feeling that they are arrogant and self-absorbed [though I realize many instructors who continue to use primarily lectures are not arrogant or self absorbed, just … unenlightened =) ]. My time is much more precious now than in high school or undergraduate, and pure lectures seem like a waste of my time—so very focused on what the instructor wants to say and so very little focused on information I can actually use. It seems to me that lectures bypass the process of learning for everyone except the teacher. Blau points out “the ironic paradox of teaching: the fact that the intellectual work undertaken by teachers in the teaching-learning relationship presented richer opportunities for learning to the teacher than anything the teacher might do in the course of teaching his students” (55). This certainly rings true for my experience as a student.

From time to time, we do fit lectured information into meaningful knowledge webs that stick with us, that we can and do apply to the real world, but as Ginny encountered with her optometrist, more often we fail to see how we can apply what we learn once we are out of the classroom. In a similar incident, I was talking with another writer in the Teaching of Writing and Literature program who was curious about the teaching of literature class. She was surprised when I said literature classes were often my favorite in undergrad, as I said, “because we got to sit around and talk about stuff.” After walking away from the conversation, I realized this feeling came from one solitary class that (though I was unaware of this at the time) was an experimental class on English “contexts and contests.”  It was essentially a literature workshop and my first discussion-based class. It focused not only on the contexts in which texts were written, but also the criticism and other texts that came after them and responded to them. All of this was examined in order to explore meaning. The instructor was very hands off. Her silence often forced us to initiate the discussion, to find our own connections, and to draw our own conclusions. We got to see how not only different students/readers, but professional critics disagreed about meaning (and in doing so to study models for finding meaning). Like Blau’s discussion of how the common interpretations of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” changed over time, as students, we got to see textual evidence of such swings in interpretations. It seems counterintuitive, but it was in this one class where the teacher did the least in-class work that I learned the most important skills: how to think critically and how to examine (and apply) a text in relation to the real world.

“Louise Rosenblatt says that taking someone else’s interpretation as your own is like having someone else eat your dinner for you” (Blau 25). And as Karen pointed out a couple of weeks ago (and as Blau points out in her book), students relish the idea that they can be on equal footing with the teacher, that they can participate as a true academic and work with the teacher to find meaning. While developing and then giving students a formula to swallow may seem like we are doing more for them, spoon feeding them the answers is essentially just setting them up to choke … if they ever do move on to real food, that is. But, as we’ve been discussing over the past weeks, encouraging students to tackle “difficulty,” “questions,” or “confusion” themselves is essentially teaching them how to chew, and to my experience as a student, a literature workshop is a good method for getting students to really bite in and taste what studying literature is all about.

(But I’ve been glutened and have been nursing a migraine most of the night, so forgive me for being both persnickety and rambling.)

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.

I have to admit that reader response plays into my reading habits quite a bit. I find that when I can apply information I am digesting to something practical in my life, it seems to give it a place to hang its hat so to speak in the living room inside my head. Having said that, The Literature Workshop by Blau reminded me of watching my son learn to read.

I’ve put to good use the techniques we have discussed in class and in the TEAPOD and have begun annotating texts, circling places where my flow of a text is interrupted and focusing on my difficulties. I find that when I break it down, I really understand a lot more of a text than I had thought on my first reading. As I analyzed the process which I used to interpret the Thoreau sentence in Blau’s short reading experiment, I found the method I used mirrors the way my son is learning to read. Just as he breaks down the sounds in the words and puts them together to see if they fit to make a word and then determines if the word he arrives at fits into the context of what he is reading, I broke down the sentence into the pieces I knew and the pieces I didn’t know and began to fit them into the context of the full sentence. I identified the words that stopped the flow of reading, just as he stumbles on certain sounds, and focused on them until I had a clearer understanding of their meaning. I was surprised that, although, my initial reaction when I read the sentence was, “huh?,” when I broke it down, I found that the only pieces I stumbled on were “once-and-a-half-witted” and “a third part of their wit” which were both pieces I could easily interpret when I focused on them.

I love literature and in lectures I soak up information, internalize it and learn from the examples provided by my teachers. I know that not everyone learns this way though and not everyone enjoys literature enough to make an effort, but perhaps the student who reads something and goes “huh?” would be more likely to see a text as manageable and not “too difficult for them and above their reading level,” as Blau’s students did on her initial presentation of the Thoreau sentence, if they too were taught to identify the pieces they did not understand. I had some wonderful teachers, who found a balance between lecturing and class discussion. They provided me with some information and let me dig out other information for myself. They broke down the process into small enough pieces for it to seem manageable. Once they modeled interpretation for me, they encouraged me to interpret literature for myself and they accepted my interpretations as long as I could provide valid arguments for them.

It would be easier for me to tell my son the words as he stumbles on them when learning to read, but just like learning to interpret literature, learning to read isn’t about learning words or text. There is an infinite amount of words, and an infinite amount of literature, and it would be impossible for me to teach him all of the words he might ever need to know. Learning to read is about being able find the answers on his own and being able to break down the process and apply different techniques until his interpretation makes sense. Just like my English teachers did for me when I was reading literature, there are times when I step in with information to help him. When he’s trying to sound out a silent “e” or pronounce the “g” sound in “light” I help, but I always allow him the first opportunity because I know how important it is for him to learn to do it on his own and more importantly, because I see how much more pride he takes in the words he works out without my help and how much motivation it provides him in working out the next puzzling piece. It is not his joy at learning a new word that motivates him — it is his joy at being able to figure it out on his own. Why is it that we value of critical thinking skills in kindergarten, but, as Ginny’s optometrist demonstrated, only see facts and information  as important as an adult?

All of the different suggestions and ideas in the Sheridan Blau book this week really got me thinking about getting my students to actively engage and think about what they are reading. This reading, in conjunction with some of the other readings we’ve done so far this semester, was still in my head when I went to work this morning (and, if I am to be perfectly honest, I was reading it during my planning period :-) ), so I decided to try a little experiment.
It just so happened that today I was starting The Odyssey with my ninth graders. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why that text was chosen for ninth graders, but in previous years, I’ve always ended the unit feeling like they really had no idea what was going on. I was thinking about how Blau was enforcing in his book that many students hate reading because they feel like they don’t understand, and that talking about what we read is useful in helping us to assess our knowledge of the topic (as evidenced in several of his workshop examples). On page 56 of the reading, he posits:

    Group work on problem texts is also crucial to the learning that needs to take place in literature classes because of what it contributes to the construction of a particular kind of classroom community and classroom culture and for the sort of ethos it fosters for intellectual work within such a culture. Working in groups on interpretive problems helps to build a classroom culture that honors the process of noticing and acknowledging difficulties in understanding texts….In a classroom where intellectual problems and confusion are honored as rich occasions for learning, students and teachers will be more inclined to confront and even seek rather than avoid the textual and conceptual problems that offer the richest opportunities for learning.

Like many teachers, I’m sure, I often become frustrated with group work because it never ends up being work. It ends up being a time for the students to socialize and answer a few questions when they get around to it, in between discussing the drama of who stole who’s boyfriend, and what they did over the weekend. At the end of last week, I had my kids studying world mythology, and instead of leaving my desks in the traditional rows, I arranged them into little pods of 5 desks. I decided to leave them like that. So when the students came in, they were already set up for what I hoped would be meaningful group work.
In the spirit of, as Blau says, honoring confusion, I started off by telling them that I knew the story would be difficult and that even I struggle with it. I asked them how many had purchased a video game or some kind of puzzle, beat it in a few hours, and then felt unsatisfied and bored at how easy it was. Many of them raised their hands. “See,” I said, “when things are too easy, we don’t have any interest in them. Inherently, we want a challenge.”
I tried a different approach with each of my classes today, but at the sake of not taking up the entire blog page, I’ll just describe what I did for my last class of the day, which, in my opinion, worked the best. As a class, we read the introductory material and background information. I covered some terms with them and refreshed their memories after their 5 days away from my class about where we were coming from and going to in this unit. I instructed them to get out a piece of paper. They immediately wanted to know which questions they had to answer at the end (those awful text book questions). I said that what I wanted them to do with that paper was keep track of their difficulties and questions, as well as what they think they understood with some degree of clarity. The section we were reading was relatively short, so I told them to read it twice. On the first reading, they were to write down questions and difficulties. On the second reading, they were to note if there were any moments of clarity, as well as any further questions and difficulties. I gave them 25 minutes, and then I waited. Usually about 5 minutes into an assignment like this is when I start finding out what’s going on in everyone’s social lives. But today, I heard them actually working! They were talking about what they were reading. They were calling me over to ask me questions. It was wonderful. I couldn’t believe it! At the end of their 25 minutes, I called their attention back up to the front of the room. I told them that for the third reading, I was going to read it to them. In two of my three classes, when I started reading, I heard comments to the effect of “oh, THAT makes sense now!” I thought that only happened in text books or with teachers who had been teaching for years upon years, but it happened to me in my third year of teaching. After I finished the reading with them, some still had questions, understandably. Blau says that the reading process is as much about the teachers learning to interpret the material as it is for the students. This is very true for me, especially since I had never read The Odyssey until I had to teach it. I’m a very visual learning, so in an attempt to help my students as much as myself, I made stick puppets with magazine pictures of celebrities. I put them on magnets and drew some rough drawings on the board and proceeded to “act out” today’s reading for them. Because they were interested to know which celebrities I used and they thought it was funny, they were paying attention. At the end of that performance, I had even MORE students saying that they understood.
So even thought this little experiment of mine isn’t commenting directly on the reading, I thought it was worth sharing because I really did enjoy the chapters from the Blau book. They gave me so many ideas for my classroom and allowed me to question certain conventions that I hold about teaching literature. Sorry for such a long post!

I’ve often wondered why different sections of the same class would read different literary selections.  It didn’t occur to me that as an undergrad, my job was to learn HOW to interpret the text, but to learn enough about the author and the text in order to regurgitate it to future students. Sure, we discussed the text, defined unfamiliar words, and listened to what others had to say, but then waited for the teacher to tell us the point or real meaning of the assignment. (And high school was so long ago, that I just can’t recall if any English teachers felt it was their job to teach us how to better understand what we had read). In looking back, I feel cheated; and although I enjoyed most English/lit classes, I wonder how much more satisfied, and less deflated at times, I could have been.  But as the saying goes, that’s all water under the bridge.

Thanks to Blau, I’ve reached that Aha moment! I’ve always been a voracious reader but would encounter texts that I just” didn’t get.” Of course, I thought it was just me and was too shy to ask for further help, but then I wouldn’t have known what to ask anyway.  I feel so much better now. My confusion represented an advanced state of understanding!

But what to do about the teachers who are not engaging the students to become the producers, especially students that are average or in the general ed. class?  As a parent of a son labeled LD, I know he is capable of understanding this process.  He loves looking through and reading books, and still allows me to read to him.  My fear is that because he reads on a lower, slower level, a teacher may overlook his cognitive ability since he’ll always be in the inclusion or general ed. class.  Some past teachers seemed more concerned with his lack of fluency and speed and yet continued to push him onto books that were beyond his reading comfort zone.  So I felt relieved (and a bit smug) when I read that weaker readers need extended exposure to easier texts, which is what I have been doing. Another thing is that I make sure to expose him to anything and everything I can since he has this terrific memory.  There have been many, many times were he has surprised teachers with his intertextual literacy.  In these cases, I’ve looked at the teacher with wonder, but would reply with a simple,” of course.” 

But I still don’t know what to do about the differences I see in the classrooms using the same curriculum.My son’s classes tend to be of the teacher- lecture/student- highlight type.  While another class may be more hands-on or interactive, I see this more so in the GT class.  As a parent, I’m quite frustrated at times by how and what he is being taught; but as a future teacher, I relish the opportunity to employ these collaberative strategies that Blau speaks of.  I just hope I’m not creating a disillusionment for myself.

Group work has always been a mixed bag though.  Once, in American lit., we were placed in groups of three to discuss T.S.Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land.”  Well, one student hadn’t read it and the other hadn’t reached the part that we had to analyze and present informally to the class.  Our interpretation time was practically wasted with them reading it for the first time. So perhaps by instituting this concept to younger students, they’ll learn the value of the exercise itself and the importance of being prepared.

Susan

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.      

As a teacher of composition with virtually no experience with literature beyond introduction to literature and a Shakespeare class in my undergraduate program more than 25 years ago, I appreciated the practicality of Sheridan Blau’s The Literature Workshop. I teach freshman composition as an adjunct at a very small college with no full time English instructors, but the college is required by the accrediting agency to add fulltime professors and course offerings each year, and I am likely to be the next person they add to their faculty. As the sole member of the English department, I will certainly be teaching any literature courses they add, so I appreciated the book’s theoretical base at least as much as its practical applications.

The Think Aloud activities we conducted in class were very much like one of Blau’s workshops, in which he provided opportunities for students to read and reread a text, and then discuss the difficult parts with their peers to determine what the text was saying. My observation of that activity confirmed what Blau says about the power of rereading to clarify a text. As we read the poems again and again, the “lightbulb” became increasingly brighter. However, I have to say that I never achieved the satisfaction of feeling that I really understood what the poem was saying. And that leads me to question two things about Blau’s workshop on interpretation: 1) What if the students are not able to figure out what the poem is saying? and 2) How is relying on peers to tell me what the poem means any different from relying on the instructor to do the same thing? Either way, I conclude that finding meaning is a mystical power I do not possess. I certainly had that feeling from reading the discussion about the poem “Pitcher,” because I do not believe I would have seen a metaphorical meaning in the poem if I had read it 100 times. I felt much better when Blau admitted that someone had to point it out to him, too.

I can fully identify with the students who feel that their inability to understand a text is a measure of their incompetence as a reader, and simple tools such as rereading, providing necessary background and pretexts, and old-fashioned experience with literature can make a huge difference. I may not have seen the metaphorical reading of “Pitcher,” but with enough experience reading poetry, I may learn to look for metaphorical interpretations. Additionally, I have never heard an English professor candidly confess, as Blau did, to not understanding lines in many difficult poems that he has studied and taught for years. I wonder if my Romantic poetry professor had similar experiences with the poem “Julian and Maddalo,” a poem I admitted out loud in class that I did not finish reading because I did not understand one word. The student next to me who said she thought it was “beautiful” did not help a bit, but I suspect now that she didn’t understand it either.

I had never thought about it much, really – my purpose in life as an English teacher. That is I never realized that I needed to think about it until I found myself at the optometrist for an annual eye exam. In a darkened room, perched uncomfortably in a metal and leather space-chair with a phoroptor pressed against my face, I concentrated on figuring out just which lens was clearer…one or two? As he switched attachments and fiddled with the settings, the doctor casually inquired exactly what it was I did for a living.

“I’m a high school English teacher,” I said, squinting slightly at the squiggly black lines on the opposite wall.

“An English teacher, eh?” came the reply. “Can I ask you a question?”

Still attempting to decipher the stubborn hieroglyphics, I absentmindedly answered, “Sure.”

“What exactly is the point of English class?” he began, and I felt my neck stiffen. “I mean really, why did I need to learn about the themes and symbolism in Moby Dick when it had absolutely nothing to do with what I’m doing now?”

Now this is a question one would not normally expect from a grown man. A teenager, yes – but an adult with an advanced degree? Several responses flooded my mind, including some choice words which will not be repeated. But I thought better of myself and answered, “Well, it’s not just about recognizing a theme or a symbol and being able to spit it back out. It’s about developing critical thinking skills and learning how to express yourself in both oral and written language.”

I don’t remember what he said in response, or what happened during the rest of the appointment, but I do remember that moment as the beginning of something much greater than a new prescription for my contact lenses. I suddenly realized that my efforts in the classroom were integral to my student’s lives. That even though a large number of them would never go into a literary field, they would need to analyze, evaluate and, most importantly, express themselves clearly and professionally. I had to ask myself – were my lessons and assignments preparing my students for life outside the classroom walls? I wasn’t sure. This epiphany led me to apply for the Northern Virginia Writing Project’s Summer Institute and, upon completion of the program, a completely new way of looking at the teaching of writing and literature.

I had all but forgotten about this moment until I started reading Blau’s Literature Workshop. He reiterates my realization at the eye doctor when he notes that

“in teaching the operations of mind that are fundamental to the study of literature, we are also teaching and providing students with regular practice in a process of evidentiary reasoning that is the basis for effective intellectual work in any academic field or profession they might enter, and that also defines critical thinking in every enterprise of business, civic, or private life” (53).

Blau (and Wilner as well, as I will discuss momentarily) understands what behaviors lie at the heart of effective teaching. What I would like to do, therefore, is highlight the habits of effective teachers as indicated by Blau and Wilner.

1. An effective teacher recognizes the importance of communities of learning and applies such pedagogical thought in the classroom. Blau reminds us that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it, begging the question – what does this mean for our students? Just as teachers benefit from programs like the Writing Project where teachers teach and learn from one another, students benefit from an environment in which they are teaching and learning from another as well. I began using a classroom blog in the Spring of 2005 with one of my freshman English classes. The assignment required once a week posts on topics of interest from the reading. After posting, the students were expected to comment on one another’s posts, cultivating a dialogue about the topic at hand. My intent was to provide as little guidance here as necessary, though I must admit I was a tad concerned about the end product. I needn’t have worried, however – the students crafted some of the most thoughtful, engaging discussions of literature I had seen since entering the classroom five years earlier. This explosion of critical thought spilled over into the classroom: textual discussions were more vibrant; quiet students who previously said little suddenly came alive with brilliant insights. My students recognized this as well. As one of them posted at the end of the year:

“[P]osting on the blog…has allowed us to have some really interesting and analytical discussions. We were able to start conversations and carry them back and forth from the internet to the class. I appreciated the chance to not only voice my own thoughts and opinions but to hear everyone else’s, including those of you outside [our class].”

2. An effective teacher identifies and supports the balance between guided practice and cautious revelation of background information. As Blau indicates in the Mora workshop (and as we have discovered during class discussion regarding critical theory), there is a fine line between providing too much and just enough historical context for a literary text. Professor Sample’s handout on “The Flea” showed us the benefit of thoughtfully placing a text within its environmental framework. But we also discovered that knowing too much (or too little, as Blau discusses in Chapter 4) about a text’s or author’s background can lock students into a particular interpretation that may or may not be appropriate. An effective teacher, then, determines how much information is suitable for the situation, providing the most favorable conditions for the development of true critical thinking in the explication of a text.

3. An effective teacher not only crafts instruction based on his or her own academic knowledge, but considers the perceptions and prior knowledge of the students as well when designing appropriate lesson plans. I found Blau’s ability to consider the implications of particular teaching practices highly enlightening. I never would have considered, for instance, that skipping over difficult lines might indicate to a group of students that they are “too stupid” to figure them out on their own (27). He also appreciates the vast body of cultural knowledge (or in some cases, lack thereof) a student might bring to a text and how this would affect individual readings. Wilner, too, exhibits this ability, and I was inspired by her willingness to revamp an already developed curriculum in order to help her students work through a knee-jerk response. By embracing activities that were neither part of her original curriculum nor traditionally used in a collegiate setting, Wilner helped her students craft critical responses that dug beneath the surface of their novitiate interpretations.

4. An effective teacher uses writing about literature as a means to foster critical thinking. Relevant writing assignments allow students to explore their own processes for making meaning. An effective teacher guides students in code-switching and the development of an individual voice tailored to the needs of the writing environment. In addition, an effective teacher emphasizes critical thinking skills necessary for constructing suitable analytical content over archaic and unnecessary “rules” for writing such as the avoidance of first person and “to be” verbs.

Effective teachers, then, create communities of learning in which student and teacher are partners in the construction and expression of thoughtful, relevant meaning. They understand their role in preparing students for life as thinkers and seekers of knowledge and, like Blau and Wilner, teach confidently in the face of questions like, “What’s the point of English class, anyway?”

-Ginny

Sheridan Blau’s The Literature Workshop is a two-pronged approach to address the various issues encountered in a literature course.  The author begins by analyzing the various challenges that arise when students and teachers interact with a given text.  Having explored those difficulties, the author moves on to provide concrete examples of assignments and activities for teachers and learners.  However, I found the discussion in Chapter 3 to be particularly interesting and insightful.  Blau brings up some of the difficulties with asserting that a single meaning is “correct” when dealing with a specific text.

Blau uses Roethke’s My Papa’s Waltz to illustrate the cultural effects on literary interpretation.  Before the 1980s, most students tended to view the poem as an expression of warmth and a fond recollection of the past.  Students growing up in the 1980s and today generally read the poem as symbolizing abuse.  This is a compelling argument against the idea of a single meaning within a text.  To a large extent, the reader is a result of his or her cultural background.  I remember reading this poem in the 1980s.  At the time, I thought it was clearly about the author’s love for his father.  Predictably, half of the class brought up issues of abuse or the idea of a strained relationship.  Even more frustrating was the teacher’s decision to move on to another text without any discussion. These clashes in interpretation are at the heart of literature.  Discussions are vital whenever a text is explored; otherwise, students tend to file the poem away as simply “something else they had to read”.  In my case, the potential for learning was never realized.

Blau’s comparison of the literary field to other disciplines is also enlightening.  This is the first time I’ve seen this particular argument made, and it mirrors my own views on learning.  Blau implies a number of interesting parallels between literature and other fields, such as law.  Courts are considered the final word on a particular issue, usually an interpretation of a piece of law.  However, these courts often have split decisions with nearly half of the judges voting against the majority.  It should come as no surprise that the idea of finding a universal and singular meaning from any text is problematic.  Yet many instructors fail to recognize this parallel and continue to teach the “correct interpretation” of a particular text.  This argument strikes me as especially powerful because it broadens the definition of a text.  Most students view literature as a specific field, but the reality is that every piece of writing can be considered a text.

My view on the matter of a “single interpretation” is close to Blau’s argument.  When I was an undergraduate, many of my literature courses were straightforward lecture-and-repeat classes.  The meaning of the text was explained, and my task was to recite this meaning on the test using textual examples as support.  I didn’t see a problem with this approach because I simply used the so-called “single meaning” provided by the instructor as a springboard to arrive at my own personal interpretation.  On the tests, I simply repeated what was expected.  Internally, my views on a specific text were often different than the accepted “single meaning”.

As a teacher, I realize that students have different learning styles and may not be able to use the “single meaning” to internally create their ideas.  Interpretations should be weighed and discussed during class, and the emphasis on any one reading of a text should be debated.  It seems to me that the goal of the literature classroom is similar to the goal of courts: an interpretation must be made based on textual evidence.  One of the overarching aims of college is to encourage students to think critically, and the multiple meanings derived from text serve as a perfect opportunity.

–Francois Guidry