How to Teach Literature
After I was hired but before I started teaching, I skimmed several of my university library’s books on how to become a great teacher. Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs.
I’m a little lost.
A lot of the books that I read encouraged me to instill a love of literature in my students and that would guide them the rest of the way. One of my professors told me to teach students to build relationships with texts. Many of the blogs that I read focus on objectives, skills, and paths to success. I seem to be following the third trend.
Though a few students write things to me like “I never enjoyed English until I took your class,” I think most students remember the strategies, learning activities, and my personality more than Maya Angelou, Homer, and Shakespeare.
I do feel that building personal relationships with the text is very important, but I still think that students must be able to approach a text with strategies and confidence before they can build a relationship with the text. Isn’t that relationship otherwise just a bland, circular statement like “I liked that author because I liked that author?” It seems to me that a sophisticated relationship with the text is one that is based on critical thinking — and critical thinking is a skill that can be taught.
Perhaps that’s naive and I’ll discover a new perspective as I grow as a teacher.
