I went back and read my entries and realized that I really do believe that the class must be interested only in what I like about a specific reading.  I tend to go through and sort of touch on the readings and glow about what is so neato in each. 

In my defense, I have no real experience to draw on or application of the techniques described to share.  So what would I discuss?  In reading through I realize that I do focus, and criminally so, only on what I like.  Others go on about what is annoying, how they feel it may or may not work in class.  I just drone on about the happy joy, joy.  The piece about Sonny’s Blues really annoyed me, so I did not write about it.  I should have.  All of my anger at that teacher — I sat across from my husband bellowing about her — should have been included in my blogging.  I have never blogged before, though, so the whole concept, while getting easier, is a little bit wide open for me. 

I have been obviously sort of sponge-like.  I go on about how the readings have been resolving some of the stress I have at the prospect of teaching and my hope of being effective in the classroom.  In reading the other entries, I have found more solace than in writing my own.  Seeing the application of the information we learned teaches.  I trust the other students’ experience and their application of these concepts more than Blau.

My writing in the blogs has relaxed a little.  Still, it is hopelessly in agreement.  I tend to go through and pick out what jives with class discussion, what concurs.  I see in other entries the open discussion of annoyances and grievances that I have never felt “allowed” to mention in class before.  I guess I have perfected “schoolish” behavior and will discipline myself against it in the future.  How good of me to do so. 

I see how my writing changed in style a little.  It has eased.  It is less formal and sort of paper-ish.  Blogging, as I said earlier, is a new and strange idea.  I like it, and I can see myself easing into the practice over the few entries I have made. 

Not much else to say here.  There is nothing else I can express that is likey-likey today.

laurel

Reading through my blog posts, I came to a not-so-startling conclusion: I like to talk about myself. A lot. I’ll summarize it for you as succinctly as possible:

• In my first post, I wrote about the anxiety I felt as I confronted new terminology and theory. In a classroom full of experienced teachers, I found myself struggling with both the material and my relative lack of experience.
• In my second post, I recounted my childhood experience with summary cards in a post that could be subtitled “How one summer trained me to be a “good” student and taught me to dread reading.” In this post I also suggested that Linkon’s VKP research could help teachers break schoolish behavior and restore the fun and exploratory aspects of reading.
• By my third post, I was feeling comfortable enough with the material to make a critical argument re: Crosman’s interpretive theory (and haranguing of poor old E.D. Hirsch). The argument, however, was grounded in my personal outrage at Crosman’s tone and questionable logic.
• With my fourth post, I again returned to comfortable “me” territory in a discussion of Blau’s overarching point that literary study, at its best, can impart practical critical reasoning skills that will serve them well across academic subjects and in their future everyday and professional lives. I grounded the discussion in my own inability to answer the question that plagues many studiers of English: “Why don’t you study something useful?”

So what do these posts say about me (other than the possibility that I am some kind of narcissistic freak)? Three main things, I think.

First, I’ve gained confidence in my own ability to interpret and analyze the assigned readings. Most telling was the shift in tone that occurs gradually over the course of my posts. Post 1 is teeming with qualifiers (e.g. “I have limited knowledge of pedagogical theory.”) The second post contains fewer qualifying comments, as does the third. By the fourth post, I (by my own estimation) comment confidently on the perceived frou-frou nature of literary study. As asserted by Salvatori and Donahue, the very process of writing about the readings increased both my comprehension and analytical capacity.

Second (building on the first point), as my comfort level with the material has increased, I’ve been better able to grapple with the “meat” of the assigned readings. The first two posts were largely reflective of my own struggles, and only brush the surface of the readings. The last two posts more directly address the theoretical underpinnings of the two readings in question (Crosman and Blau).

Third, despite my apparent comfort in talking about myself, writing in the first-person is something that is new to me. In fact, the lion’s share of my academic first-person writing was composed this summer in a writing class organized around a mini-autobiography and personal essay. I am still learning how to interpret and analyze in the first person.

The “story” of my posts, therefore (by my interpretation), is a story of evolution and increased comfort with new material. It is also a story about navigating the process of first-person writing for non-autobiographical purposes. I am curious to see how both of these narratives unfold over the course of the semester.

 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

This assignment helped me see my growth as a writer in such a short period of time.  Although I have only posted four blogs, each blog has helped me identify difficulties and advances in my writing.   In my blogs I specifically discuss issues that I have struggled with in reading and writing about Literature.  I then highlight and note areas in our reading assignments and class discussions that help me realize why I struggled in a specific area of literature, reading, or writing.  This combined practice helps me note the problem areas my future students may face, and as a result helps me devise plans to help make it easier for those students struggling in reading or writing.  Coming from a bicultural and bilingual background where English was hardly spoken at home, and the literature discussed at home was Persian Literature, I can understand the difficulties students with different backgrounds can face when reading and writing about American Literature. So the weekly blogs have helped me identify reasons for these difficulties I faced in reading and writing, and use this knowledge in my future teaching experience.
Recurring themes that I noticed in my blogs were issues pertaining to understanding poetry, and a teacher’s ability and art to teach writing and reading. I have brought examples from my high school and undergraduate teachers who impacted my writing and literary skills.  But, I have also realized that the nature of my posts has changed after the four weeks.  Now, I tend to write less about my previous writing experiences, and focus more on writing about the text and how I will be using what I learn from here on in my future teaching.  For example in my last week’s post I show more comparison of Blau’s work and our class discussion, as opposed to my own experiences.  Although I still continue to write about my experiences as it helps me put the subject matter into perspective, but I have been able to focus more on the text and class discussions in my writings.
Certain subjects encouraged me to write more than others, especially when I was able to compare and contrast my own experiences to those in the text.  For example during the week we read the visible knowledge project, I was able to write more than the other posts because I was able to see more practical methods of teachings rather than theoretical methods.  Whereas in my third post “Author vs. Reader” I did not write much on Crossman’s article because I felt it was dealing more with theory, and I was not able to respond as effective.  Instead I paid more attention to the Think Aloud project in my post.  Although I do agree that theory and practice must work together to provide productive results in teachings, but I realized that for me writing on practice is much easier than writing about theories.
For my future blogs I will try to focus on the texts we are assigned to read and find practical methods to connect the text with our class discussions.  I will also continue learning from the teaching methods my classmates mention in their blogs. I have tried to read the blogs of my classmates before writing my own, so that I can compare my experience with others.  Relating the experiences of others gives me new perspectives in my writing.  In general I find the blogging experience to be very helpful, and I will definitely return to my discussions in the future.  I will especially return to the posts pertaining to practical teaching methods and techniques.

I recently celebrated my thirtieth birthday.  And oddly, looking at that statement in print just brought more anxiety about the turn of another decade than did the actual day itself.  As to the reason for this incipient unease regarding my fleeting youth I can only say that there is something intensely meaningful about putting thoughts down on paper (or, as in this case, on a computer screen).  Musings are made permanent, private discourse becomes public and life feels, well, cemented, for lack of a better word.  Perhaps this is why people blog:  it aids in constructing meaning out of our own days and questions of existence (for me, it has lately been a matter of identity.  Who am I?  Mommy? Teacher? Student? Gourmet chef?  Freelance writer?  Jack of all trades and supreme master of absolutely none?). 

 Reading through my blog posts has been enlightening, to say the least.  Aside from an annoying proclivity for longwinded discourse (sorry about that – I’ll keep this one brief), I tend to use the weekly post as a way to contextualize the readings within my own framework.  In other words that would make Peter Elbow proud, I write to figure out what meaning the text holds for my current situation as a teacher on hiatus, temporarily pursuing a different career (though one that is in many ways similar to what I used to do).  My posts seem to carry different variations on a theme, all centering on the teacher’s role in creating a community of learning wherein the student is guided toward constructing her own knowledge in concert with peers and current educator.  I value student-centered practices and assessments which connect the critical thinking skills necessary in expert reading to those outside the classroom walls.  I seek to inspire students to virtuoso status, guiding them to develop and apply critical creativity in the questions they ask and the thoughtful research in which they engage.  I hope to help them see learning not as a “read, memorize, repeat” endeavor but as a life-long, open-ended product worthy of revision and deeper inquiry. I look for ways to evaluate my teaching through my students’ eyes and model the meta-behaviors I want to cultivate in them.  In the end, it seems as though I take from the readings and synthesize that information which, when added to my teaching toolbox, will help me become the kind of teacher who embraces difficulty along with her students and leads them down the path to becoming better readers, thinkers and writers. 

As for the voice of this sleep-deprived mommy of an insomniac toddler, I noticed a distinct shift in the third week’s post.  I started to fear that I wasn’t sounding “academic” enough, that my posts were inferior to that of my peers because I was focusing more on personal experience than academic discourse.  So I changed how I wrote, and to be openly, viciously honest – it stinks more than a day-old dirty diaper.  I don’t think the last two posts sound like me, nor do they convey what I wanted to say as clearly as I would have liked.  I’ve since gone back to the real “me,” and it feels much better.

Reviewing my writing has thus helped me realize that while these posts are (1) an assignment and (2) read by my colleagues in the course, they are really for me.   They are a record of my efforts to make meaning of the course material and apply it in a suitably challenging way to my professional vocation.  They allow me to go back and review my development as a thinker and writer, an act which is integral to intellectual growth.  And they make my search for knowledge a concrete and communal undertaking rather than a cerebral, solitary act. 

So, yeah – maybe this is why people blog.  Here’s looking forward to my next thirty years of self discovery.   

    Analyzing my weekly blog posts has allowed me to notice several trends in my responses. Rather than comparing several of the assigned texts to each other, my posts consist of an examination one text and its relevancy to my own classroom teaching. Each week, I identify either new methods I hope to implement or those I currently utilize with my students. Embedded throughout these reflections are comments on my emotional responses both to the texts we read and the strategies I practice in my classroom.

Throughout the blogs, the primary focus is on practical application: How can the knowledge presented in this reading

• • Make me a better teacher?
  • Help me more fully engage my students?
  • Enable my students to attain higher levels of critical thinking?

Repeatedly, I choose to examine ready-to-use strategies such as establishing a repertoire; writing difficulty papers; translating a “highlight” into a verbal response; and “thinking aloud.” The commonality between these methods is their function; each offers a clear process for students to surpass mere literal readings of texts on their way to more interpretive understandings. As I mentioned in my first blog, a professional development workshop in August prompted me to make deeper reading of difficult texts a targeted area of instruction this year. Conveniently, many of our readings have supported my pursuit of this agenda by offering specific strategies applicable to the reading of difficult texts. In my posts, I explain the appeals of each strategy and what qualities make it a successful match for my classroom. I also offer evidences of success in my own classroom: my students’ overwhelming excitement for the Think Aloud activity; their deeper understanding after completing Difficulty Papers; and the effectiveness of connecting art to poetry. Hearing stories of successful classroom experiments gives me the courage to try my own; it is for this reason that I feel it’s so important to share what works with our students.

Speaking of “feeling,” I was unaware of the frequent inclusion of my own personal emotions toward trying new strategies until I reread my blogs. In the course of four posts, the span of my declared emotions is incredible: nervous, afraid, excited, enthusiastic, insecure, relieved, impressed, eager, interested, and convinced. This range of emotions speaks to the deep investment I have in my students and my profession; I am passionate about discovering and sharing with my students the best information, the most useful tools for their success both in my classroom and beyond.

Another observation I’ve had relates not to the content of the posts themselves, but to their publication dates-I tend to publish early in the week, usually Friday or Saturday. My reasoning is twofold: time constraints force me to complete most of my work early, and I enjoy reading others’ comments on my posts. The encouragement and additional suggestions for improving my students’ learning are much appreciated. Because my only response which did not elicit comments was published very late in the week, it seems natural to assume that the earlier I post, the more likely I am to receive much-desired feedback from classmates.

            Over the past five weeks, the entire class has responded to various readings using a blog.  Each of us has shared personal experiences and chosen specific passages to critique and analyze.  Reviewing my posts over the first several weeks of the semester, a few key themes and patterns clearly emerge.  My blog entries have focused exclusively on the question of “valid” textual interpretations and the need to help students tackle traditionally difficult works of literature.  The pattern of analysis used in these posts follows a two-tiered structure.  The first part of each post is a short summary and a theoretical response.  After defining the issue in more general terms, the remainder of each blog entry blends personal experience with the theoretical approaches explored in the reading.

Creating meaning and judging interpretations is a dominant theme throughout my blog posts.  My exploration of the concept begins with a response to Robert Crosman’s Do Readers Make Meaning and his refutation of New Criticism.  Predictably, the response to this article begins as a summary and ends with personal and practical applications.  Using a personal example about literary interpretation allows me to move into teaching experience.  The blog entry from that week emphasizes the confusion over the issue and concludes with an analytical conclusion that “evidence is the key to determining validity”(Week 4).

Although the structure of the response is similar during Week 5, the actual progression of thought regarding textual interpretation slightly changes.  The idea of using the text as the basis for interpretation remains, but there is a new focus on discussion.  Textual support is important, but classroom debate and discussion also enter the equation.  According to my Week 5 posting, “Even more frustrating was the teacher’s decision to move on to another text without any discussion.”  Once again, a personal example is used to expand upon the discussion over “valid” or “invalid” meaning.  This shift in argument is partly a response to Blau’s text and also a result of discussion about interpretation during the class.  Consequently, my view of interpretation moves from strictly textual to one that includes discussion and debate.  This shift is likely a result of direct writing.  When tackling a single subject through repeated writing assignments and analyses, new insights and details are often discovered and integrated into the approach.

The other major theme that is apparent in my blog posts is the concept of difficulty and the strategies students use to negotiate a complex work of literature.  My first response to this topic involved a broad assessment of the problem and the need for students to defer meaning.  As my Week 1 post indicates, my approach to the issue was one-dimensional.  Students should simply skip over difficult material. Framing this argument through my experience as a teacher I state, “I always tell my classes to avoid getting stuck at any one point in a reading” (Week 1).  At this point, there is little depth provided.  This point was clarified and further explained in subsequent postings.

Fortunately, the posts generated a number of comments from other students.  One of the class members, Edith, asked, “If we tell students to just skip over the tough parts and aim for the overall meaning, are we skipping a step in the reasoning process?” (Week 2).  My peers were concerned that my one-dimensional “skip until later” approach was a quick shortcut for difficult texts. Using these comments, I was able to more fully expound upon my argument and define it as only a preliminary strategy for novice readers.  This refinement took place within the “comments” section.  Student interaction was vital in shaping my argument and redefining the technique of deferral.

Clearly, the process of blogging has created some noticeable shifts in my thoughts and responses to teaching literature.  The comments and discussions from other students have proven invaluable to my own growth as a learner and teacher.  The constant need to construct written responses while interacting with both texts and peers forces me to critically evaluate my opinions and interpretations.  It is not sufficient to simply share an experience.  As the changes in my blog posts indicate, integrating textual support and comments is vital to uncovering meaning and shaping my approach to the teaching of literature.

–Francois Guidry

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.