Final Reflection

I believe the general rule for college classes is that you get what you put into them. That might even be true for everything else in life, but I don't think I have the time to try to prove it :) But I found that to be especially true for this class. I could see a few of my classmates coming to class unprepared, and they didn't really get much out of our discussions. But after doing the readings and thinking critically about the books, I found that our class discussions were quickly taking on lives of their own, taking us down paths that none of us expected. And that was the most exciting part of all: watching our discussions begin with a common starting point (the books we had just read) and take off in all sorts of different directions. I've been avoiding reading other reflections because I didn't want them to alter my own thoughts, but our class discussions were definitely my favorite part of the class. They really opened up my imagination to worlds of possibilities that I never considered when reading on my own.

If nothing else, participating in this class has reinforced the idea that reading is social. We get so much more out of a book when we discuss it and share our ideas with other people - that's why children love read-aloud time, that's why book groups still exist, and that's why we take Children's Literature classes and discuss our thoughts and feelings as a group. And that's why as educators we must do our best to embrace the "social-ness" of reading within our future classrooms. No matter what age your students are, they will be capable of reading and having enlightened conversations about what they've read. They might need support and guidance, but to remove reading from a social context does an injustice to everyone involved.

Overall, I found this class to be really beneficial, and it really opened my eyes to the plethora of ways that literature can be used in the classroom. It also got me thinking about how we judge literature. What makes "good" children's literature is as much up to the children as it is to us. As teachers we must be able to help students locate literature that is exciting, thought-provoking, and developmentally appropriate. It is not our job to impose our own values onto our students. We can show them examples of what we think is "quality" literature, and hope that they'll agree. But if little Billy still wants to read Goosebumps in his free time, then he'd probably best off if his teacher could find some way to support or acknowledge that.

Even though I struggled a bit to keep up this blog, I think that blogging has been a helpful tool for our class to use. Blogging is a great way to get our thoughts "out there" for the rest of the world to see - that includes classmates as well as random Korean strangers :) It would also be a great resource for any teacher to use, whether to make book recommendations to students, to connect with other teachers via the internet, or to keep an up-to-date newsletter informing parents of classroom happenings. That's the great thing about the internet: it's easy to use, the information is free, and it connects us to a potentially infinite audience.

I really enjoyed this class, and I have taken a lot of great ideas from it. Hopefully with the information I have acquired this semester, I can help instill in my students a life-long love of reading. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...