PhyreBards

I finished Chapter 8 in Christenbury and could not believe the irony of reading this chapter right before the ETS exam. I feel like literature is consuming my life, and this chapter was able to put some of the nonsense that we all stress about as teachers concerning literature in perspective. I have read a lot of people discussing how nervous they are about the classroom and not being prepared to deal with both student and content issues. I really liked this quote from Christenbury:
"All of us are haunted by the worry that we are ill prepared, under read, insufficiently educated, ignorant about a number of areas."
She later reassures us that, "...the fear of being ill educated is the unspoken assumption that our reading and study should really be completed by the time we become teachers."
The latter quote was one that I had unconsciously accepted as truth, when upon reflection, it could not be further from the actuality that teaching only begins the time that we are able to work closely with text and learn how to effectively use them to teach others.
Another aspect of literature in the classroom that I have been wondering and read about in the chapter was reading aloud in class. I know that poetry, short stories, and plays are more effective if read aloud, but what about the novels? The book advocates reading aloud many forms of literature in class because it ensures that all students have read the text. Is this a good use of class time? I remember reading in class a lot in high school and most students went to sleep or worried if they were going to be called on to read aloud rather than focusing on the content of the text. What does everyone else think?