Learning Log Week 2 - Darryl Bryant

Learning Log Week 2: This week’s reading really allowed me to refocus on my own experiences with reading. When I was an elementary student in the late sixties and early seventies, I read for learning and also really connected with the text. Whether reading Richard Wright, Dick Gregory or S.E. Hinton the continuum of reading was never satisfied by any one book or poem. Tomkins’ An Introduction to Reader Response Criticism forced me to assess what impacted me as a part of my environment and what connected with me as a reader. Such works as Maya Angelou’s I know why the Caged Bird Sings and The Malcolm X Story by Alex Haley literally drove me to dig into each word to learn about my heritage and respond to waves of emotion that often went unanswered.

            It was in this search for answers that my world was shaped. Values, motivations and assumptions were molded.  I reflected and an obligation to life-learning was committed. Swafford (2005) and Mills et al (2004) as pontificated by Rosenblatt (1978) our matriarch of Reader Transactional Theory may better posit whether reader response criticism was birthed from discussions by I.A. Richards or out of the continuum of readers’ responses. However, I know that my sixth graders will be reading A Thousand and One Nights and The Count of Monte Cristo and hopefully experience and learn concurrently.

Rosenblatt defines literature as the experience the reader has with the text (Rosenblatt, as cited in Swafford, 2005).  This seems to be the argument that threads commonly through this week’s reading and is well documented. Four decades later,  I personally found all three readings relevant and meaningful. I plan to continue to assess the texts, short stories and poems that my students engage and ask questions that check for understanding and embrace connections. I would like to build bridges between aesthetic and efferent stances while also focusing more on experience versus genre (Swafford and Akrofi, 2005). The biggest challenge moving forward with the reading from this course and the teaching in my classroom is to look for effective ways to measure both transactions and experience in the exploration of literature.