A Response-Based Approach

Reading Judith Langer's A Response Based Approach to Literature, I agree with her on many factors. She breaks down the process of literary understanding into two categories: horizon of possibilities and point of reference. I agreed with what she had to say, in particular when she says that when someone is done reading a story there are many possible conclusions and places someone can take one story. I agree with that completely and as a future teacher I think it is important to understand that I myself may have gathered one possible interpretation from a story while one of my students may have gathered something completely different from the same piece of literature. It reminds me of how in class during one of our discussions we talked about how a teacher may go into a class discussion thinking the students will respond to a piece of text one way and then they actually may respond completely different or have conflicting opinions from the teacher.

Langer also references a study in which they found that literature is usually always taught as if there is one single answer to a question. In reality, there are always multiple interpretations in literature, that's what makes literature unique. I can speak from my own experiences where in some of my English Language Arts classes that I had teachers who would want you to reiterate what they said or thought while they were reading a story. Teachers that conduct their English Language Arts classes this way are doing a real disservice to their students and closing off that creativeness that every student can have if the teacher allows them to do so. I believe this goes back to social justice in the classroom and teaching this way is a form of injustice. A teacher isn't giving their students a voice when they teach like this and I think shutting that voice down is teaching the students never to challenge authority or the status quo. The example of the Huck Finn question on an exam actually made me laugh out loud that a teacher actually expected a student to respond to a very close ended question like that.

The part where Langer talks about how teachers excuses for shutting down students for saying things they did not anticipate come from the fact that they were expected to generate and follow precise and specific lesson plans. I can see where someone with that mind state is coming from, however I do not agree with shutting students creative minds down, but I certainly can understand. Being a student in the Education Department sometimes I feel as if the TPA is so structured and fine tuned that it almost relies to much on little details and not enough on the actually pedagogy that will be taking place. I agree when Langer says that the lesson plan should be more of a reference and not an exact script that the teacher must follow. The reality is that teachers aren't going to have a written out long detailed lesson plan for every single lesson they ever teach, there just isn't enough time for a teacher to do that. I do see where the Education Department is coming from by making us plan for students with special accommodations and differentiated instruction.

I think one of the most important ideas that Langer presented in the text was to invite students initial responses to a piece of literature they may have just read. I think that is very important for students to be able to express how they felt when they were reading any piece of literature. It is also great for students to hear what their classmates were feeling and to see if they had similar feelings or contradictory feelings. This gives students the opportunity to learn from one another instead of always having an oppressive teacher figure barking over them telling them what is wrong and what is right. Plus an idea may mean more coming from one of their peers than from the teacher.