{"id":93,"date":"2008-02-20T07:52:33","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T12:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/02\/20\/confusion-creates-clarity\/"},"modified":"2008-02-20T10:51:49","modified_gmt":"2008-02-20T15:51:49","slug":"confusion-creates-clarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/02\/20\/confusion-creates-clarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Confusion Creates Clarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

After reading Sheridan\u2019s Blau\u2019s The Literature Workshop<\/em>, the very first chapter intrigued me when he stated, \u201cconfusion often represents an advanced state of understanding\u201d (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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t mind if they think it\u2019s 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

In my classes I also notice that they are fishing for me to tell them the \u201ccorrect\u201d interpretation and I\u2019m 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\u2019ve sat in on classes before where the teacher just shuts down a kid completely. I\u2019m sure I did that too when I was young. As a young teacher I was nervous and didn\u2019t want to be questioned or asked questions outside of the teacher\u2019s manual. After a terrible embarrassment involving Animal Farm<\/em> when I was 22, I learned that I need to allow myself to be fallible. When I can show my students that I don\u2019t 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\u2019m a firm believer in \u201cyou learn something new everyday\u201d and I think that\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After reading Sheridan\u2019s Blau\u2019s The Literature Workshop, the very first chapter intrigued me when he stated, \u201cconfusion often represents an advanced state of understanding\u201d (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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}