Response to Poetry--What's the Deal?

The initial thoughts I get when I read poetry:

-Deep

-Shallow

-Too simplistic

-Way too much depth

-There's too many allusions I cannot make connections

-Oh--I think I know where the author is talking about--oh wait...I really don't.  Do I?

It seems that there are antithetical ways of viewing poetry that coexists in a paradoxical swirling of emotional and cognitive knee jerk reactions.

Mr. Staunton mentioned that it was frustrating teaching poetry with a either/or method.  Either students read poetry and TRULY UNDERSTAND the truth about the poem through neatly package processes skills.  OR they write poetry or write about the poetry in non-poetic form.

What interests me about this article is the motivation for the study: it was fueled by an interest in learning about poetry as well as noticing the frustrations about poetry himself.

As I've learned in this class, whenever something is confusing or frustrating, it usually is IMPORTANT.

I really like the definition of poetry being a concise ordering of word choice.  I'd like to take a poem and have my kids cut up all the words and RE-CREATE a poem using ONLY the words used in the poem.  I'd have them be required to use at least 90% of the words.

Teaching Outside of Your Ethnicity--Minefield or Goldmine?

In Lucy's article, I found a particularly interesting answer to WHY teaching African American Literature IS NOT appropriate for the non-black: 

"some knowledge is inaccessible to those of us who have not lived the experience of being black"

--this is NOT Lucy's ideology, but a counterpart at the University level where she originally formulated her doctoral thesis and dissertation.

My thoughts:  In my research paper, I used Meyer's critiquing of authoritative voices in the classroom.  He argues that the "privileged" and "unprivileged" statuses in the classroom are hindrances to making greater strides forward in education. 

I think that this notion of "who is privileged?" does not just involve teacher and student, but when it comes to race, or any other human experience--let's say the Holocaust or the My Lai Massacre--for that matter, that ONLY those who have been THROUGH it or EXPERIENCED, or "know a lot about it" have the privileged voice on the topic.

It is true that race is a sensitive topic in our world--especially because of the loaded terms and ideologies that we've been exposed to regarding each race.  It seems to be a wonderful opportunity to explore those boundaries (because our aim as students and teachers should be to deconstruct prejudices and not fortify them).

Literature TEACHES me as well as it teaches my students.  I think that we can use literature as a voice in the classroom and treat IT as privileged and we are the participants in the literature.

In a very strict sense--no one is privileged in the classroom except the texts we teach.  We have our experiences that can help us UNDERSTAND the text and perhaps the historical context that they speak from.

"I also aim to create a space in which students can learn to theorize and talk about race: its construction and its effects, how and why it is constituted and shapes our everyday and individual experiences."

This quote from Lucy was very insightful.  Key words that jump out at me is SPACE; THEORIZE; SHAPES EVERYDAY/INDIVIDUAL experiences.

These are loaded words:  What kinds of space?  What does theorizing look like?  Will someone be criticized for theorizing something that may/may not be appropriate?  What parts of race or racial experiences shape our lives?  How can sharing those stories be helpful or enrage others?

I shared a poem last week that I KNOW was controversial (Paul Lawrence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask") and I thought that more of my classmates could have and might have shared ideas if my text was not so "racial."

Why is that so?  What's the harm in sharing texts?  Sometimes I think that bringing in sensitive material is taboo!  I've felt that way with my students and when discussions crop up, I am quick to segway if I'M NOT PREPARED for the dialogue.

-Travis

What Am I Supposed to Teach?

Brauer and Clark's work, "The Trouble Is English: Reframing English Studies in Secondary Schools," presents an interesting claim at the beginning of the article: English Education has an identity crisis.  B and C point out that English Education in our current system is so broad that there is a lack of definitive quality.  "

Given this variety of purposes, what subject or curricular content do English teachers teach? Skills and content driven by state tests? Character development? Literary theory and criticism? Self-knowledge? Class-based literacies providing upward mobility? Charged with educating students in terms of academic literacy, moral development, cultural tolerance, media savvy, literature appreciation, standards achievement, and civic responsibility, most English teachers (ourselves included) frequently end up feeling like the so-called jacks-of-all-trades—and masters of none" (296).


After reading this passage, I totally identified with the feeling that I am teaching with many of these objectives in mind.  Does this "thing" called English Education feel like a grab bag of sorts to anyone else?  In my department, there is debate over what books to teach, what to do with each book, how to be creative and yet get our kids read for the standardized tests.  In the end, I am at a loss to REALLY know what my kids should be getting and what it looks like when they get there.


B and C are encouraging teachers to understand the frames of influence that shape their methods and objectives in the classroom.  I think the most interesting one was that we teach texts as windows and position students as tourists/witnesses.  I've been inclined to read vicariously and I encourage my students to do so as well.  I do have to take into account a major issue--the way in which I teach is never void of bias.  When I teach a text, I am superimposing information that may or may not be present based on my background/experiences.  Being aware of that bias can also help me to teach more effectively--partly because I can neutralize the bias, but also because I can help students realize that we are all biased in some fashion.


What will English Education look like in the future?  That's up for grabs.

American Literature is Male Literature and Black Matters

Fettery's article made me think of the literature that I have on my shelves in my study.  How many of the texts contain female perspective?  What about the movies as moving texts that I watch?

We live in a patriarchal system that has affected every facet of American life.  The key phrase that struck me in her work was: To be American means to be male.  A woman's only option for identifying herself with an American ideal is to associate male symbols and schemas.

I just wanted to post a few books I have and the male perspective they present:

1) Hatchet--Brian, a boy, learns how to live in the wild after his plane crashes.

2) Lord of the Flies

3) Animal Farm

4) The Inheritance Collection

I haven't done an exhaustive count of all my books, but in looking at these key texts, it's apparent that a male perspective is definitely dominant.


Toni Morrison, a well known poet and essayist wrote this piece with a similar motif--the repression of a people group in literature.

Morrison points out that Black identify in literature and life is being overshadowed by whiteness.  She reveals points of political historical moments and movements as being rooted in blackness.  I was intrigued with this argument and found it fascinating.  I've always been an avid reader of "black literature," but I never really made the connection that Morrison made in relation to how blackness is infused in all writings because it provides the lens that we view/interpret other events.

The American Civil War--literature devoted to this topic must be interpreted through the lens of black slaves.

The Civil Rights Movement--which lead to better public schools for all--must be interpreted through the black identity as well.

Overall, Morrison makes the claim that literary criticism is not making room for the black lens of literary scholarship to be fully recognized and embraced.

Snow, Snow, Snow, and Snow

These four stories contain the imagery of "snow" and do so in creatively different fashions.

The first two selections by Butler and Alvarez provide similar metaphors for snow. 

I noticed in Butler's piece that to the Vietnamese restaurant worker and the Jewish lawyer, snow was a symbol of death.  The Vietnamese woman had seen and thought of snow as covering and killing the wonderful items beneath it.  She also thought of herself as dead because of the snow covering the shelter where she was staying in St. Louis.  Similarly, the Jewish lawyer associated snow with the death of his father.  Every time it snowed, he remembered the moment when his father sent him away from the ever-nearing Nazi regime that planned on killing all Jews.  He threw himself onto the frigid snow in protest to his father, and this desperate act of defiance was the symbol that represented his father's death--that he intuitively knew well before news was delivered.

In Alvarez's piece, Yolanda, a young immigrant attending a Catholic school during the Cold War, experiences snow for the first time but interprets snow as nuclear missiles.  She is a taught to be afraid of objects falling out the sky and to conduct fall-out drills in preparation for "the end."  I thought this piece was interesting because of key terms/ideas: snow and Cold War.  Snow is a symbol in Yolanda's mind for a disturbing event on the horizon.  It is my inferential judgment that Yolanda, if she was a real person, would associate snow with her first impression of it as being a sign of the end of her life.

Overall, the two stories both connect the "snow" as being related to fear, death, and loss.


Baxter's piece contains snow--based on the setting.  However, I noticed the term "snowed" as a synonym for being impressed.  "She will be snowed!" (47).  I also noticed that the brothers saw Stephanie get snowed (50) as they when on the snowy, icy lake to view the car that broke through the ice.

Beattie--this piece was difficult to follow.  I interpreted snow in the last paragraph of the piece as a metaphor for the life span of a person.  Snow was used to conceptualize the large mass of life that is unnoticed and that the small, meaningful parts are covered and lost by the enormity, like bird seed being thrown outside while it's snowing heavily.


 In closing--all four stories relate snow as being a primarily negative object.  Loss, death, somber, and ubiquitously engulfing everything important.   

It was interesting and enjoyable to read all four selections and seeing the connections they share.

Travis Dalsis--Testing and Engagement with Literature Response

A key idea that I was intrigued by is this idea of "text repoduction" within the framework of whole-class discussions.

Initially, when I think of discussions in a classroom, I DO think of text reproduction as a way to "test" whether or not my students comprehend and read what they were supposed to read.  As the study shows, this is not student engagement with texts.

What about making connections, finding passionate positions to stand on and argue about, or inserting your own dilemmas and working them out?

I just wanted to share this important idea and how we sometimes think that students are really "learning" when all they are doing is comprehending.  Comprehension is an important part of learning to become a critical reader, but with standardized testing, it limits the ability to extend beyond those boundaries because the standardize testing is a calculated a,b,c,d opportunity that only involves knowing an answer.  It doesn't ask students to engage in the themes and determine what about them connect or challenge them as humans.

Travis Dalsis--Transitions of High School to College Readings

Claim: Most college students are not preparing by reading articles, chapters, and books for class. 

Students who were invested into reading practices were so for other purposes than college classes.

For the study:

1) Questionnaire
2) Reading journal
3) Interpreting Journals

What this article is mainly trying to expose is the lack of depth students are experiencing in their readership as college students.  It "urges faculty members and program administrators at [their] institution to think differently about reading in their courses.


What were the conclusions this article draws?

1) College students are reading, but not studiously as it relates to their courses.  They are using reading practices to pursue areas of deeper interest than those presented in the classroom.  Reading for the classroom was "uninspiring, painfully required, and dull."

2) Few students made text to self/world connections.  They didn't take time to think about the text as a social document speaking to them about their own lives and the innate implications it provides.

3) Texts that students interact with most are technology based.  "The majority of their time reading for pleasure is spent reading and writing emails, instant messaging, or creating and perusing Facebook and MySpace profiles."

Suggestions for faculty:

1) Explicity teach reading practices that engage reading with the kinds of texts college students are being required to read.  This is connected to the lack of support that the Common Core Standards are moving away from.  The METACOGNITIVE aspect of reading needs to be explicit in all levels.

2) Integrate technology to the reading experience for classes as well as technology that allows discussions to take place (Blackboard).


My personal commentary:  I am very intrigued by this article for a couple reasons.  One, it made me think of the connection with my last blog post regarding how we teach at the secondary level.  Also, it helps us to critically think about emergent tools that technology provides.  Literacy today is defined differently than it was 10 years ago.  Today, digital literacies and multi-modal literacies are very fascinating items to consider.

I also am intrigued by a recent TED Talk related to using interactive texts.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/shilo_shiv_suleman_using_tech_to_enable_dreaming.html

Check out the link if interested!

Travis Dalsis--Reflecting on the Common Core Standards

Travis Dalsis

LITR 585

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Daumer and Dr. Baker

4 March 2012

"The Common Core Standards: How to Interpret is the Key"

As an educator, I highly agree that reform in education is something that should be a "living document."  Like any other field, when progress is not being made, areas can begin to stangnate and be rendered ineffective.

However, the common core standards do not address pedagogical aspects of learning; it responds to the question: "What should my kids be learning?"  With that being said, I believe the more something becomes steamlined, the more vague it must become to be as inclusive as possible.

The old Grade Level Content Expectations addressed a very important element: metacognition--how should we teach students to think about their learning processes?  The new standards do not address this explicitly.  This then may be overlooked.  I know that when I teach my students "how to read critically," I refer back to the metacognitive standards in the GLCE's.

What are the metacognitive standards that are going by the wayside?

R.MT.08.01 self-monitor comprehension when reading or listening to text by automatically applying and discussing the strategies used by mature readers to increase comprehension including: predicting, constructing mental images, visually representing ideas in text, questioning, rereading or listening again if uncertain about meaning, inferring, summarizing, and engaging in interpretive discussions.

As we start to examine the idea of reading, this eighth grade glce addresses a very important part of being a skilled, successful reader--strategies. 

-predicting

-teaching visualizing

-visually representing ideas (perhaps a group exercise or diagram)

-questioning

-rereading

-inferring

-summarizing

-interpreting and discussing interpretations

These are the key words and elements of this glce.  Doing away with this gcle means that these strategies will not be part of the state's benchmark for teaching.

As a teacher, I really like this glce because it helps me to see that having kids read and do the "textual evidencing" is a process that utilizes many of these strategies beforehand.

I think the new common core standards are missing an important element.





Travis Dalsis_Response to “Recent Trends in Teaching Literature”

Travis Dalsis

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Baker and Dr. Daumer

4 February 2012

“Where do I see myself as a teacher of English?”

            If one doesn’t take a step back from their position within an framework, he or she cannot see the situation they are in.  They cannot examine and subjectively judge how or why they do what they do.  Reading Santora’s article helped define some of the elements and pedagogical schemas that are working in my school and in my own mind as a teacher of English.  His definition of the progressive movement in teaching English, characterized by: self-discovery, broadening one’s horizons, and using literature as an aid to form social/moral values resonated with my thoughts of allowing students to self-select texts.  In my classroom, part of our curriculum is that students are able, once a week on Mondays, to choose a text for their own purposes.  I often valued this experience because I saw many students find interests in books where characters were “like” them or they felt connected to a plot-line.  Looking at the progressive movement as a whole, there are still elements lingering in my mind and in my school’s agenda with regard to reading.

            I also am reminded of the rigor that is needed in our day and age of MEAP testing.  The academic period of teaching English revolved around being mechanistic and studying the very fundamentals of literary structure and theory.  This method was aimed at providing a college experience in the high school classroom.  I see elements of this being forced into my English classroom at the eighth grade level.  In our school, students are being asked to connect many elements together to produce literary papers and doing close readings.  I see value in this model of teaching—I am most familiar with it as an English major.  Overall, this academic period seems most familiar and it covers most of the landscape of teaching at my school with regard to studying literature and teaching the elements of it.

Travis Dalsis_A Response to Mellor et. als. "Reading Fiction"

Travis Dalsis

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Baker and Dr. Daumer

4 February 2012

“FREUDIAN, FEMENISM, ETC: How to read texts from different perspectives”

“Texts in this book are not thought of as containing meanings.  We argue instead, that reading produces possible meanings of a texts, and that there are always plural” (Mellor, et. al. 1).  The notion that texts are neutral and that we add meaning and building understanding of them is interesting.  I do hold the view that texts are written with an initial view of characters, plot, symbolism, etc. by the author.  Reading another’s thoughts like art, in my opinion, produces alternative interpretations.  Is the artist’s initial craft and interpretation more valid?  Pershaps, as Mellor states, it’s not more valid but dominant.  Reading texts, as I have experienced, can be viewed from several perspectives such as feminism, Freudian, etc.

     

             

Travis_Dalsis_Response to Mind, Bodies, and Readers

Stock's “Mind, Bodies, and Readers”

An interesting notion that Stock relates in this article is the presuppositions that people possess related to a field. In his work relating to medicine with regard to the mind and the body, Stock relates how dualistic Western society has become. He argues that we've been viewing medical science as dealing with the body, while religion and philosophy relates to the mind. It was not so in ancient civilizations. I enjoyed this piece because it challenged me to view reading differently as well. Do we as a society view reading with lenses that limit our capacity to engage fully? Stock would argue that we do. Our limitations are on the presuppositions we possess. If we embrace a holistic sense of readership—community within ourselves and without—we will experience a transcendental existence!

Taking the Fluff-Talk Out of "Inquiry-Based Learning" and Really Doing It!

Travis Dalsis

Eastern Michigan University

ENGL 585

Dr. Baker and Dr. Daumer

16 January 2012

A Response to: “Whose Inquiry Is It Anyway?  Using Students’ Questions in the Teaching of Literature”

            Meyers presents a systematic array of strategies to engage readers of literature to take ownership over their processes of reading.  I found three aspects of this piece to be particularly engaging and though-provoking: 1) As teachers we often assume that we have the best questions. 2) Questioning has layers and levels. 3) Critical thinking about literary texts is a development and questioning in various forms allows teachers and students to synergistically learn and employ critical inquiry.

            As teachers we often assume that we have the best questions: Meyers makes a claim at the onset of his work that inquiry-based learning, where the students ask the questions and construct meaning from their experiences, has been highly-valued in education but under-employed.  He argues that teachers can easily fall into the “I am smarter than you so I know the really important questions to ask, so just answer the questions I create.”  I am reminded of Dr. Baker’s comments about how teachers will continue to teach how they were taught.  I believe Meyers is making visible the reality that even when teachers say they are being inquiry-based, they are either consciously, out of uneasiness, or subconsciously, out of a schematic framework hardwired into their brains still doing what was done to them.  Meyers challenges teachers to pay attention to their practices of questioning and realize that if we are going to be inquiry-driven, we have to trust our students to ask questions that are substantial.  How do we do that?  Well, he doesn’t just say—“Tell them to create questions!”  He provides a framework of understanding.

Questioning has Layers and Levels and Critical Thinking Develops

            To create great questioners, Meyers does imply that teachers must be readily available to guide students as they read literary works.  With that mandate, Meyers empowers teachers to empower their students with ten levels of questioning.  In reading this text, I interpreted Meyers’ induction of each strategy to build on a previous strategy.  The irony here is that the levels of questioning seems to increase linearly in demand for higher critical thinking, but it is stated that questioning itself is circular!  Overall, Meyers points out that great questioning does involves a starting point and a guide (the teacher), but students must be given the chance to create questions that may not be THE BEST.  We must eschew our immediate notion to correct and give students a chance to test their questions in real, authentic discussions with peers.   

            Overall, I think the most helpful part of this article is the methodical breakdown of the types of student-lead discussions that can be generated.  Often times I just tell my students—create five questions: (who, what, where, when, and why).  This framework encourages students to expand and allows my job as teacher of literature to be at an equal level with my students.  They are the facilitators in the classroom through their own questioning.

Dalsis_About Slowness

Travis Dalsis

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Douglas Baker

5 January 2012

A Response to “About Slowness”

Whenever I bring home leftovers from a restaurant and I don’t feel like eating them the next day, I given the meal to my three dogs.  They gulp the food down in an instant.  They don’t stop to taste the sweetness of the pasta sauce, apply the meaty texture of the ravioli to the palate of their mouth, or feel the satisfaction of a crisp buttered bread roll crunch under their teeth.  They swallow it all whole—most of the time.  Newkirk’s introduction to his text, “About Slowness,” reveals a cognitive pattern akin to the fine-dining experience.  In the opening section, I immediately felt that much of my reading was somewhat in between a fine dining experience and a dog swallowing leftovers whole.  It challenged me to consider what Newkirk calls auditorizing a text.  In a disconnected, individualistic culture we often forget that an authorship and readership consists of an invisible, intangible relationship.  The author prepares a bountiful meal and invites the reader to partake.  The role of the author is to engage the reader in a mental dining experience that resonates deep in the heart of an individual much like people who experience the warm-fuzzy moments when they sit down at their favorite restaurant booth and enjoy a meal together.

What does it mean to read slowly?  Newkirk debunks preconceived notions immediately when he states that it’s not about speed.  It’s not about “word-to-word struggle” (2) either.  Slowness in reading consists of processing the information—“follow a train of thought, mentally construct characters, follow the unfolding of an idea, hear a text, attend to language, question, visualize scenes” (2).  In essence, Newkirk defines slow reading as paying attention to the decisions an author makes in a literary work; reading and rereading a text with a new engagement each time; it is also likened to the ebb and flow of a tide where there is moments of fast-paced reading and slow, deep reflecting moments, as well as moments where a reader completely pauses to savor the text (thoughts and emotions evoked during the reading).

“Reading taught me to be attentive” (5).  Paying attention to minute details of a text, constructing meaning through reading and rereading, and excavating the ideas the author lays before a reader is what Newkirk values as a slow reader.  He sends the message to his audience that one can brush pass a text quickly and miss the savory details that makes reading rich.  Newkirk’s thesis claims that paying attention is a difficult practice to undertake, but there is relevance to paying attention to texts.   

1.                      Slow down and pay attention to words.  The author uses words intentionally and if we callously graze over them without savoring their intentionality, we’ll miss meaning.

Overall, Newkirk provides interested metaphors for reading that helps teachers understand the complexity that students are working through when they are reading a text for the first, second, or even third time.  Disciplining oneself to read slowly and pay attention is a skill that all need work to increase.  U.S. culture is inundated with information from many mediums and it’s difficult to stop and carefully read/process all that is presented.  Newkirk makes this implicit reality explicit in his work and thus challenges readers to slow down.

Dalsis_A Feeling for Books

Travis Dalsis

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Douglas Baker

5 January 2012

A Response to “A Feeling for Books”

Radway offers a delicious understanding of her ambivalent experience as a “middle-brow” reader and an intellectual.  Her work examines the feelings she experienced from early childhood and the struggle to transform herself and become a member of a different social climate—and the discomfort and confusion that she experienced when trying to hold on to a past pleasure of reading books.  Radway shows the layers of complexity that surfaces when one discusses what reading literature is and the socio-cultural assumptions attached to literature when it’s branded.

            A common theme in Radway’s work is the underlying motivation and her feelings about what she read.  Her doctoral studies also examined the popularity of romance novels.  She interviewed individuals and discussed the books selected by Book-of-the-Month club to examine the literary body being called “middle brow” literature.  In her research she uncovered the complexities and enthusiasm within the texts read and sold.  Overall, her article challenges the notion that certain readership is serious while others are not.  Claims about literature are not necessarily true—Radway uncovered this truth.  Feeling while reading is a powerful relationship and there is something to be said about it.  When we feel a certain way about what we read, there’s a reason.  Sorting out the whys and so whats is worthy of our time.

            One goal of mine is to examine about how I feel when reading certain pieces of literature.  I can remember from taking a Young Adult Literature class reading twelve novels.  One novel in particular, Where the Red Fern Grows, evoked much emotion.  Laying on the couch of the coffee house while sipping a mug of coffee and reading this text, I remember crying my eyes out.  Why?  The parts that I was reading were sad.  What was it that created such emotional reactions in the texts?  All I can remember was the when the main character decided he wanted two coon hounds (beagles).  He worked so hard to earn the money to get them and he walked through the country to the nearest store to pick them up.  I’ve lost the immediate details of the text, but I still feel the twinge in my heart when recalling this scene.  Perhaps because, as Radway explains there is a human condition in my own life that connects deeply with the text.  Radway challenges us to explore those feelings and the hidden mysteries behind them.     

Dalsis_Disliking Books at an Early Age

Travis Dalsis

Eastern Michigan University

Dr. Douglas Baker

5 January 2012

A Response to “Disliking Books at an Early Age”

            Assumptions about reading—what reading is, what type of person reads, and how reading is executed—are entrenched in our culture.  Graff opens his work on “Disliking Books at an Early Age,” with an examination of the cultural landscape of middle-class children living in Chicago during the 50’s.  He reflects upon the cultural forces that work against the reading of literary texts and intellectualizing of them by claiming certain gender role expectations among males and social class observations among females.  In essence, what Graff starts out discussing is the idea of community.  He dictates his own experiences of alienation to a literary community early in his academic studies as a prelude to the discussion of how we as a society read texts and are expected to teach them in classrooms.

            A thread of discussion that Graff props up is a response to the debate over relevance of literary criticism and its role in establishing readers’ interests and confidence in studying canonical and classic literary texts.  Graff describes the argument that anti-literary theory groups make which is that secondary texts involving literary analysis of a primary text convolute and contaminate the purity that the reader is supposed to experience the text with.  The notion that one would consult a theoretical framework to engage in close reading of a text is a violation of the idealized consumption of texts.  Graff argues against this position through evoking personal testimony to the futility of the practice.

            A major point that Graff employs is the idea that literary criticisms can empower readers by giving them a reference point of understanding.  If a student is reading Jane Eyre with a Freudian literary lens, they are empowered to close read for certain objects, words, colors, and characterizations.  Without this literary lens, Graff, like many students, feel alienated from discussion because they have no lexicon to confer with colleagues.  I agree with Graff’s position that helping students find a position to think about texts is vital.  Graff claims that this strategy is useful for students to engage them in reading difficult texts because reading is a communal experience in the classroom.  If students are alienated from a text because of the language, allusions, or other elements, then literary critiques of that text are a road map to help them move closer and they provide an inroad to a more engaged experience.

            Overall, what I enjoyed most about this article was the fact that Graff made explicit the implicit work he engaged in to become active and interested in reading.  Educators cannot always pull back the curtain of his/her students to see the arduous work that they engage in as they struggle with texts.  His ideas help bring an awareness of the illusion that giving a text to a student and allowing its brilliance to vibrate outward is automatic.  He helps ground idealists in the reality that teachers impart theoretical lenses when teaching (if they are doing their job) and that introducing critical theory in the classrooms alongside texts is a powerful opportunity for debate and discussion that will result in critical literacy.