Final Blog: Class Reflection

I think the main thing that I learned over the course of the semester is that everyone interprets literature differently. The two times that everyone in our group had to write a paper, I do not think that one person had the same sort of idea for their paper. When we were writing about Boy Meets Boy Katie and I both ended up writing about religion, however the way that we interpreted the book was completely different. Especially in our discussion groups every week, I do not think there was a single time where someone said "I didn't even pick up on that" or "I didn't think of it in that way before." This will cross over in my teaching, because it reminds me that all students come from different backgrounds, and so they will come in with different experiences, different interpretations and different perspectives to bring to class discussions.

Also, one thing that I realized is that it is a lot easier to pick out negative components to childrens literature, especially in diverse literature in picture books. I would finish a book in this class, and think of how great a book it was. (Because I truly believed that all of the literature that we read was quality literature) However, in a chapter book, there are a lot more component so a reader is less likely to pick up on every single detail in a novel. However, in a picture book, you have 30 short pages of information where it is much easier to retain the details of the story. So I am using this bit as a piece of caution for picking out novels to read throughout my teaching years. When I read a novel through to see if it will be appropriate for my class, I know that I will not see every aspect of a novel. After taking this class however, I feel more confident in picking books out because I feel as if I'm better equipped to look at literature and diverse literature in a more nit-picky way. After having discussions, and reading the articles, there are different tips that I've picked up to look for. However, my one concern is that I will start looking at all literature in this way, and thinking that I have to find something wrong with it, because I do not think that there is a perfect piece of literature out there. I do have hope though, since I read all of the novels in this class, I enjoyed them as they were, so my hope is that I can continue this in the future.

While looking over the course readings in the coursepack, there is soemthing that I noticed. That in at least one article from every group of diverse people there are books that are examined. I'm really excited about this, because I will make sure to use these lists in the future. They not only give us positive books to look for, but I was also noticing (like in the Native American section) that there are books that we should avoid using in our classroom. I have often thought though, that it would be interesting to teach a book that has positive attributes of a culture or race and then a negative view on it. I think that it would be a great comparison and contrast lesson that you could teach. Also, students would be exposed to negative stereotypes, which would then make them cautious about using those stereotypes towards others. This would also be an opportunity to disucss that everything that we read is not necessarily a good book just because it was published. So these lists that we are given, both bad and good will come of good use to me in a classroom.

Overall, I'm glad that I took this class. Even though I have a decent background in children's literature, I had never focused on diverse literature before. This class gave me the tools to disect a piece of literature and not only look for the negative attributes, but the positives as well. It gave me a tool to look at literature in a different way that will be beneficial to me as a teacher in the near future.