My passion for reading has permeated my teaching more than any of my other passions and interests. Reflecting on my pedagogy, I realize that an emphasis on reading has influenced my classroom without me even realizing it. Last semester, for example, I was mortified that my students didn't enjoy some of our course readings, which I honestly thought were amazing. Who doesn't like Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" or David Sedaris's "Cyclops"? I tried to encourage them to read texts analytically, so that they would have something to say in our class discussions, which resembled creative writing workshops. I showed them an essay I had annotated, which resulted in a collective gasp. We practiced analyzing and annotating an essay in class, much to my frustration since they weren't as quick to recognize certain elements (like the thesis) as I would have liked. We slogged through the rest of the semester's readings, and I felt like some of them would never again pick up a book. Surprisingly, many of last semester's students stated in a customized survey I gave them that they wanted more, repeat, more reading. Specifically, they wanted some short stories, novel excerpts, and other creative pieces.

So this semester, I gave my students short stories and book excerpts galore. I packed a lot of reading into the beginning of the semester, trying to give them practice in analyzing texts and material on which to write their critical analyses. I overdid it a little bit. Like last semester, many students did not like the readings I assigned, a fact of life that I have come to accept and even enjoy. Students are more likely to have specific reasons for disliking a reading than for liking it. By disagreeing with me (whether stated or not), they develop independent, critical thinking skills. Nancy Welch writes in "Revising a Writer's Identity," that reading can be a form of "Re-modeling" in which students recognize that they are not perfectly mirrored in texts or in the teacher who they would imitate to be successful (remember Bartholomae's "Inventing the University"). So if a student doesn't like Flannery O'Connor, then he or she recognizes that I, the mighty teacher, am not the end-all, be-all of literature; nor is the student compelled to be invested in the work, unless he/she wants to rip it apart. One of my students this semester wrote a very good critical analysis of Raymond Carver's "A Small, Good Thing," in which she scathingly criticized certain elements while highlighting the saving grace of others.

Although I am interested in Comp/Rhet and Literature, I am also a fiction writer, as shown by some of my reading selections above and the fact that I typically conduct discussions of said readings exactly like a creative writing workshop. I ask students what they think of the readings, sometimes providing a specific question or issue. I consider their comments, reinforce them with an affirming response that may or may not take their thoughts a little further, and encourage as many people as possible to participate. I love it when our conversations become living things, when I don't get to talk for ten solid minutes except to call on people with respectfully raised hands, when someone surprises me with a fresh interpretation that I had never and would never have thought of in my entire life. This workshop style of discussing texts is just as unconscious, I now realize, as my emphasis on reading. I don't plan to change my style with my new-found knowledge, but I think I will try to pull students who don't share my passion into the conversation through methods such as direct questioning, writing responses, mini-debates, and engaging their interests and passions whenever possible.