The Living Library of NCTE.
2011; National Council of Teachers of English; Volume: 101; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2161-8895
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
Resumoauthor of the book that I would be reading through out my teacher training be there in the flesh? Lit erature as Exploration, the book that shaped how I, and thousands of other English teachers, framed our teaching of literature was standing in front of me, a first-year teacher who somehow thought that going to the Annual Convention of the National Coun cil of Teachers of English (NCTE) might be a good idea. I thought I would pick up some lesson ideas, some handouts, and maybe a book or two, but I never thought I would actually meet one. I was struck immediately by how accessi ble Louise seemed. There was an adoring knot of conference-goers who surrounded her, peppering her with questions and offering examples of their re sponse-based literature lessons. It seemed so demo cratic: a rookie teacher whom nobody knew granted access to one of the most important books ever writ ten about the teaching of literature, this is just one of those freak occurrences, I thought to myself, like the sighting of a celebrity in a West Hollywood restau rant—a democratic accident, a bibliophile's dream. Something like this will never happen again. But it did happen, again and again, begin ning with the very next year. Perhaps fittingly, given the deep intellectual and personal bond he shared with Louise Rosenblatt and her transactional theory of reader response, the next walking book I saw was Response and Analysis: Teaching Literature in Junior and Senior High School. In another conven tion hallway, in a city I have long since forgotten, a boyish Robert Probst was heading into the same concurrent session I was. As an anonymous second year high school teacher, I was flummoxed. I could hardly keep myself from asking him the million questions I had about the teaching of literature that his book had raised for me. And then, from the cor ner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a book I had admired for years, a book that helped radicalize my approach to thinking about the work of teachers. Tall and elegant on the outside, belying its fero ciously radical exterior, was The Dialectic of Free dom (Maxine Greene). I was speechless. This NCTE conference is something I better keep going to, I thought. These walking books are too good to miss. The following year was peppered with walk ing books. Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English (Arthur N. Applebee) and Envisioning Lit erature (Judith Langer) took graduate students back stage to describe their research methodology and to expand on their theories of response to literature and the pedagogical stances that literature teachers ad opted. Peter Elbow was Embracing Contraries in an other corner of a poorly ventilated conference room, and George Hillocks Jr. was explaining his wide ranging findings of Research on Written Composition. I remember being awed by the commanding pres ence of Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America (Geneva Smitherman) as she highlighted the linguistic and cultural forces behind her power
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