Violent Cases

I was interested to see what they were going to do with this book for two and half hours. I was surprisingly impressed though that you could do so much with the book and not make it extremely boring. I think this group did a really good job with all the different activities. I particularly liked the activity with drawing the comic in groups. I also thought it was a good idea of broadening the lesson into teaching comics, and graphic novels more than just the book. I think we did get off on a tangent though about memories, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was actually really interesting to listen to. I thought they were very planned out and had a good presentation. I had some reservations about the Marxist theory since it did change how i felt about the book. I still like the book, but i just don't think it was the best lens too look at the book through. We talked about this in class, but i think i would be one of those students, or teacher who might introduce the lens to give some students the ability to find things they might have missed, but i wouldn't focus on it, and i also think that i wouldn't outright say what we were doing. I think i would be a little more subtle about it. I liked the lesson though!

The Bell Jar

I thought that the Bell Jar teaching went well. It seemed like they did a lot of planning, and had everything worked out, so there were no kinks. I also liked the fact that they kept us engaged in everything. It was slow at some parts, but i think it had to be, while we were getting the background knowledge of Silvia Plath's life. It was needed to be able to better understand the book. However, the only thing that i am slightly confused about is what their objective was. I know it was to analyze the book, but i thought it had to be more precise. This could just be my misunderstanding though. Other than that, i liked how they used different activites, like the visuals, the youtube, and everything else. It was entertaining, and informational. i felt like i learned a lot that i didn't realize about the book while reading it. I think they did a good job, and should be proud of it!

Literature and Lives Ch. 7

I think that this chapter is a good one, but i am not too sure how i feel about it being the last chapter before the conclusion. I think that this chapter would do better after one of the first ones when Webb brought in the speaker. I only feel that way because I feel that a testimonial is the second best thing to getting a real life speaker in your classroom. i would love to use testimonials and or autoenthnographies in my classroom. I also think that they would work really well in a history classroom if the testimonial is by someone who dealt with a historical marker. They give such insight to specific things, just like a speaker would, however this way you can read it over and over again instead of only hearing it once. I also think that these forms of literature can give a very different, and more varied way to think about a specific topic. I didn't really like reading this chapter overall, but I do like the ideas it proposes.

Response to Literature and Lives

This book was the most enjoyable to read, and i also found it to be the most informative and beneficial to a future teacher. I really enjoyed how Webb connected a lot of what he was talking about to things that really happened in his life, and gave a lot of background as to why he was teaching the things he was passionate about. That is another thing. Webb seemed so passionate about his teaching, and you could feel his emotions as you read. You would feel troubled when he did, nervous when he did, and proud when he did. It really got you hooked into the book. I also liked how Webb gave a little description of each literary theory in the chapter it was talked about. This helped to give the reader some background information to what the theory was, and they could easily find it when reading about it. This book seemed much more intimate than the others, and i think that helps soon to be teachers because they see the not pretty side of teaching. They see that not everything works out how you thought, and sometimes things have to be adjusted on the fly. Another huge asset that this book has to new teachers, and old teachers is the lists of suggested texts, etc. at the end of each chapter that can help relate to that topic and other such topics.

Reaction to Criticial Encounters

I also enjoyed reading this book as well. I thought it was a good insight into the different theories and criticisms and how to go about teaching them in the classroom. I think the most beneficial part to this book is the lessons we read about by specific teachers and how they worked or didn't work, and also the appendixes in the back of the book with different activities. I also think this book would be completely different if it didn't include the conclusion, or the conclusion was different, as i have said before. Connecting all this stuff to the real world i think is a huge help to students, especially those that struggle with looking at something through a specific lens. Out of the three books, however, i liked this one the least. It just seemed a little repetitive, but also vital to have to read as a going to be teacher. I think Appleman could have done without A LOT of the responses that students gave to things and still would have gotten the same point across. But, i am not saying that i didn't like this book. I found it informative and useful for my future career. I just didn't enjoy reading it, like i did the others.

Reaction to You Gotta BE the book

I think that this book was my favorite one to read in this class. I think a huge part of that is becuase i prefer reader response theory. However, when i came into this class I had no idea there were so many other choices out there. I would have probably only taught my english class through New Critical, or perhaps reader response. i do think that reader response is important and a good way to get kids to really think about a book. It is a good introduction as well to the other theories and the idea of looking at a book through a lens. I also liked how this book got detailed in the case studies and looking at specific students, and how they read. It also wasn't the most advanced readers that were looked at. The stuggling students were also given attention, which i think can help teachers who might have a similar situation in their classes. It was also fun to read about the different types of activities that can be used to help specific struggles students might have, like acting things out or artwork. This was especially nice to read about becuase i was one of those students, and it is nice to hear that i wasn't alone, and it is actually a fairly common thing that students struggle with.

Literature and Lives Ch. 4

When Webb started this chapter, i couldn't help but relate it to my pre-internship. There were two students in my classroom who were involved with killing a student from Loy Norrix in a drive by shooting. Even though i was in a math class, and math is what we do, the worst thing i think my teacher did was ignore the problem. It was clear that students were worried, confused and concerned when the police came, during our class to escort one of the students out of school, and he never came back. Kids aren't stupid, but they don't always know what to do with their emotions, and i was really upset that my teacher just moved on like nothing had changed in the classroom. After that incident, the class became very separated, into African American students, and white students. The tensions rose, and i think it because the students were scared and confused above anything else, and if they were just talked to, things would have been different. Anyway, this is just my own personal experience with violence in the classroom, since i went to a mainly all white, upper middle class high school myself. I agree with Webb when he says that there is high racial tension in our society, and i think a lot of that has to do with the fact that so many schools don't introduce works like Webb did in the classroom. I know i didn't read anything like this in my high school, and that just makes me look ignorant to what is going on, and has gone on in the world today. I wish i had been able to read more text like Webb introduced and be able to work through them, with support from my teacher and my fellow classmates.

Critical Encounters Ch. 8

This is totally trivial, but when i was reading this chapter i was thinking "man, this sounds like a really good conclusion of everything we have read in the book so far". Little did i know that it was the conclusion, and when i found that out i felt a little silly, but Appleman really does a good job about concluding everything from the previous chapters. I also like how she broadens using the literary theories and the use of critical lenses into looking at our lives, and how we fit in the world. This is actually how i have always thought of literary theories. It is easier for me to relate them to things in the the real world than relating them to a text. A lot of the time, while i am reading i will relate the theory to something in my life, then use reader response, almost, and relate that thing in my life to the text. i know it is a little skewed, but it seems to work for me. The activity that Appleman did with her students to have them look at things in the world around them, i thought to be very beneficial to the students. It seems so obvious, that i think a lot of kids might over look these things in every day life, but when told to look for it, it is so hard to miss, and it will give them a more critical look at everything in life, and might help them out in the long run.
One topic that Appleman covers in this chapter that i really agree with didn't come from her. It is the idea about critical lenses being like a prism from Henry Louis Gates Jr. I think this is a great metaphor because it seems to visually fit really well with what literary theories makes the reader do to a text. I also think that this is supported by what the kids have to say about using many different ones on one text, and being able to pick out which ones work better for a given text.