Literature is such an important thing to be incorporated into the classroom and something students should enjoy, but sometimes we have teachers that can ruin that. We have all had that teacher back in the day that only had one right answer when it came to interpretations. This makes students not want to try to answer questions because they are worried about getting the answer wrong. Literature has more than one interpretation. I think as a teacher that is something that we need to keep in mind. We need to allow students to come up with their own interpretations of the text and as long as they are able to back up what they are saying we should accept that. Another thing about teaching literature to students is that they should feel a personal connection to it. Their personal connection or background is very important because that is going to influence how they feel about the text. It will add to their interpretation of the text. I found a great cite that talks about how to get students involved in reading and making it something fun. I think if students can find some type of connections to a text they are able to be more involved and engaged in reading it. It can be hard sometime to find a text that speaks to all students but when teachers are trying to find something engaging they should make sure that it connects to students culturally and to their experience as Tchudi mentioned in the reading. I think that can sometimes be a challenge in classrooms especially in a school that is very diverse. Even when you find that book that speaks to students or spark that connection it can be hard to have students get into deep discussion about it. I know that there are students that won't participate in that discussion. I used to be one of those students because I always had that teacher that would look for a particular interpretation. I think that has ruined my take on discussions and that is something that teachers need to make sure they don't do. We need to take as many interpretations as possible and not make students feel as though they are always wrong.
Marissa, we won't spend too much time on methodology of teaching literature (because that's another class-English 4800), but what you're talking about is a reader-response approach, which means that what the reader gets from the text is more important than a correct interpretation. Cultural studies is also an important aspect, meaning that we want to text to connect to the student and to the real world.
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