chapter 5

Tina and Aaron I totally love the ice breaker cartoon. This type of humor will also help our students to relax when getting to know us, as their new teacher, and allow them to express their personality a little easier with a little help from our comic relief side. That would be a great way to open a class. I was very in tune to Christenbury's notions of literature being the pleasureable thing to students, opening them up to a new world of literature. It was very helpful to have her explain the four types of literary criticism: Historical, biographical, New Criticism, and reader response. I'm going to try to include all of these into my curriculum with my students to give them the ultimate experience of lit. That would be ideal, I think. Christenbury does hit the nail on the head -I sometimes don't feel that I have learned all of the information necessary to teach other people how to write, which is where I feel my main focus for teaching will be sometimes because it's the most creative aspect of English that I love. But, I know I will eventually be where I need to be with the experience in the class. Several teachers have told me that they gained most of their knowledge in the class. So keep plugging, eh! I agree that the reader response is most useful at times because it pushes students to look for personal relationships. I'm going to use a lot of this type of criticism in my class.

Priscilla