One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to Lord of the Rings: The Importance of Parental Involvement in Regards to Reading with their Adolescent Children

            The ability to read is essential in American society today as it can be difficult to go through one’s daily tasks without coming across print that needs to be deciphered.  Reading is one of the first educational subjects that parents begin to teach their children because it has such a grand impact on the rest of their lives.  Parents begin reading to their children as early as infancy—some begin reading to the mother’s belly before the baby is even born—and many continue up through elementary school.  However, experts have observed that at the end of elementary school—around grades fourth through sixth—this parental role seems to decline (Klauda, 332).  The interest that fourth through sixth grade students have in reading seems to be much less than that of previous grades, and this may be caused by the lack of parental involvement in their reading development because stereotypically students seem to get more involved with the learning process when their parents take an active role in their academic career (Klauda, 330).

            Many parents seem to believe that reading with their children while they are babies, toddlers, and elementary school students suffices for the learning support for the entirety of their children’s reading lives, but children need assistance while they are adolescents as well.  Dr. Penny Soboleski, head of the Clubhouse, a children’s literacy program at The University of Findlay, says, “Reading to children while they are adolescents is highly important because parents can read them a more complex text and help them understand it.” There is such a push in American society to concentrate on reading with children at an early age with programs like Your Baby Can Read that many parents seem to worry only about the young ages and once their child grows up they allow them to learn on their own (Klauda, 327).  Parents’ involvement in their children’s education is crucial when it comes to reading.  Soboleski says, “Parents must model what it means to be a reader as well as showcase the variety of reading materials available to their children.” This modeling can occur at any age, but studies show that one age is more important than the rest.  It is just as important to read to babies and toddlers as it is to read with elementary students and adolescents.  However, the decline in reading interest that is occurring at the end of elementary school makes it most important for parents to continue reading with their children as they become adolescents to ensure that children never lose their interest in reading.

            In order to understand the importance of parents reading to their adolescent children, one must first understand the importance of reading to children at a younger age.  Therefore, I will delve into reading with babies and toddlers and elementary school students before I get to my main focus of parents reading with their adolescent children.  By doing this, it will be easier to see how all three groups are similar as well as different.  The groups will be broken down specifically into baby/toddler years from birth to age four, elementary school years from age five to age twelve, and adolescent years from age thirteen to eighteen.  These groupings will allow for a clear distinction between the age groups that are being read to by parents the most and the age group that needs to be read to more.  In setting the argument up in this manner the importance of parents reading with their children at all ages will be seen with an emphasis on parents reading with their adolescent children.

            Reading with babies, children age birth to two, seems to be the easiest for parents to do because babies spend a lot more time with parents than older children and babies don’t have any responsibility, so the opportunity to start molding their mind is perfect at this time. Susan Straub, the developer of The Read to Me Program, agrees with this as she believes that having all this time allows for a system of familiarity to be set up with the child.  She states:

Babies often choose a favourite book and demand to hear it frequently. Why? Besides enjoying its familiarity, I suspect the repetition is akin to the practicing which leads to mastery. If the reader is the parent, the reader is helped to master the art of being a good parent. Additionally, because so much in a baby’s day is out of his control, even chaotic, I think the faithfulness of a favourite book is reassuring (Straub 350).

Straub’s idea of familiarity as the baby picks out their favorite book goes far beyond the fact that they have something they can recognize as their parents continue to read to them. Soboleski would agree with this idea of recognition in regards to the children recognizing their parent’s voice as she says, “Children recognize the voice of their parent and gain an immediate recognition of what is being read.”  Straub also relates this continuous reading with the child to practicing the skill of reading.  Mastering the skill of reading with their child is important when it comes to Straub viewing them as good parents. She asserts that parents who bring literacy into their children’s lives at an early age are only setting up their learning process for many more years of reading together.  Parents who continue to read with their children from infancy to adolescence are good parents in her view as they are taking the time and effort to read with their children in order to help strengthen their reading skills and motivation.  Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction research specialist, Susan Lutz Klauda, believes that babies don’t necessarily have the mindset to be motivated readers just yet, but if the parents are motivated to read to them this learning process will stick with them in following years as parental motivation is contagious (330).  This idea is one that is backed up by many theories and research studies while looking at a variety of age groups of children.  Parental motivation will get the child interested in the book, but still the process of the parents reading to their children is of the upmost importance.

            When it comes to reading with babies, the process is what matters most.  Obviously babies can’t read, but they’re able to gain knowledge from the books that their parents read to them because they remember the pictures and the words that go with them.  This sharing process helps set up the children’s reading ability early on because their brains start retaining all the information.  If a parent were to read a book such as Dr. Seuss’ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to their baby, the child is going to remember the different fish in association with the number of them or their color because often times it only takes hearing the word for the baby to retain the action or description that goes with the word. At eighteen months, babies only need to hear one instance of a word to create a memory of its association with a specific event.  This is evident in studies that have shown that a researcher can play with a child in a room full of toys.  Then they leave the room, and someone else comes in and places another toy in the room.  If the researcher comes in and shouts, “Look!  A dax!” the baby will assume that the new toy is the dax (Curzan and Adams, 341).  The baby in the study has figured out that usually new things are talked about rather than familiar things, so when the word dax comes up again in dialogue they will remember that new toy and associate that word with the toy.  This brain activity also seem to be heightened when working with parents as research has also shown when babies hear a variety of words from their parents their brain development is enhanced, and, on the contrary, those children who are not read to at an early age enter school with a major deficit due to this lack of development (Straub 352).  Straub states, “The ‘reading’ babies are so far ahead and will continue to grow that the ‘nonreading’ babies really struggle to keep up.  Perhaps, then, this is the key to making school successful for all of our children:  get parents to read with their babies” (Straub 352).  This research, as Straub has described, aligns with the view that reading with children at all ages is important because learning how to reading and to continue reading is a building process. 

            The toddler years, when children are ages three and four, are just as important as the baby years because the minds of children are still growing and schedules for parents to read are still there.  Parents of toddlers may have more responsibilities and busier schedules than parents of babies as their children may start getting into daily activities such as dance classes and piano lessons, but they should still have time to sit down with their child to read a book. Parents should be able to talk with their children at this age after reading a book as their children will be verbal, and this will help convey that parents are interested in their children’s opinions (Layne, 34).  Many literary scholars believe when parents talk with their children about what they are reading, they are reestablishing the importance of literacy in their lives.  Isabel Schon, the director of the Isabel Schon Center for Spanish Books for Youth at the San Diego Public Library, states, “Children naturally respond to their parent’s tone, affection, and concern.  Books are a loving way to build that wonderful connection between parent and child that lasts a lifetime” (Schon, 35).  This connection that she is talking about in regards to parents reading with their children should be set up to last a lifetime like she suggests, but sadly many parents don’t stick with it when their children get older.  However, still more scholars advocate for parents to read to their children while young in order to prepare them for the future.  Michael Strickland, a reading and writing professor at College of South Idaho, states, “Children who come to school having rich experiences with oral language, storybooks, and print concepts will be better students…” (Strickland, 35).  Therefore, the toddler years are of high importance when it comes to parents reading with their children because they make up the last couple of years before children enter elementary school. 

            The elementary school years, when students are age five to twelve, are also very important as children are continuing to learn new literacy skills daily from their teachers.  Many parents might believe that the students have teachers in their lives now who can do the reading work with them, but it is just as important for parents to continue with their support.  Elementary schools have begun to set up programs in which teachers and parents do reading activities such as paired reading, reading discussions, and phonic awareness exercises just to name a few.  Frances Imperato is a reading specialist at Martin Luther King School, a K-5 school in Edison, New Jersey, and she has set up a program for kindergartners at her school in which parents and teachers read with children.  She has always suggested that parents simply read with their children, but due to the rise of English language learners in her school she knew that she had to try a different method.  After speaking to a presenter at workshop she was able to implement his ideas at her school as “he recommended a parental involvement and reading instruction routine that involves a daily rhyme that children read repeatedly with their parent and that is followed by one or more simple and quick phonics or phonemic awareness activities” (Imperato, 342).  She has high hopes of her program branching off to other grades at her school if it proves to be successful, and by the looks of her results this program will soon be implemented elsewhere.  During her first year of the study, 2007, she had a decrease of 66 percent of kindergartners not being able to read to only 19 percent not being able to, and this was due to their parents’ involvement in the reading process (Imperato, 344).  She also found the 89.5 percent of the students would leave kindergarten as readers if their parents were able to get involved with the reading program (Imperato, 344).  These numbers help show that programs like this are working in school systems today.  If parents work with their children as much as their teachers are, then there will be a positive influence on the reading abilities of the students.  Imperato states, “I have found that simple, at-home literacy programs that feature authentic and engaging reading activity and that are easily understood, implemented, and administered show positive results in literacy learning…” (344).  If students in every grade in elementary school were able to have dedicated parents, or other positive role models, like this, reading scores would continue to be high as Imperato’s study suggests, but near the end of elementary school the motivation of parents and students seems to decline.

            It has been suggested by students that the support of their parents seems to decline as they aren’t as involved in their academic and non-academic lives (Kluada, 327) starting at the end of their elementary years from grades fourth to sixth (Kluada, 332).  These years are crucial as they are the last years before the children reach adolescence, ages thirteen to eighteen, in which parental involvement seems to continue to decline.  The majority of children are used to their parents helping them with their reading assignments, and then many children go from getting a lot of parental support in elementary school to getting little to no support at all in middle school and high school. (Kluda, 327)  This leads to a lack of reading motivation and a decrease in reading activity for adolescent students, so it is important to change the way that many parents are acting at this stage of their children’s development in order to get their children’s reading processes back on track (Klauda, 330).

            Two theoretical models help back up the point that if parents continue to read with their children at this age the effects will be positive.  McKenna’s model for reading acquisition describes how reading attitude affects one’s decision to read, and Guthrie and Wigfield’s engagement model of reading looks at the characteristics of people who are dedicated to reading (Klauda, 329-330).  By applying these models to adolescent students, it is easy to see that parents should continue to play supportive roles when it comes to their children’s reading.

            McKenna’s model shows that the students are going to have an attitude towards reading based on significant factors in their life, and these factors will either cause them to have a positive or negative outlook on reading.  The first factor includes how the student views their past reading experience.  This factor brings a lot to their attitude because they are going to be more familiar with what they know; their views on the past are going to produce an “immediate impact on attitude without cognitive meditation of belief change” (Klauda, 329).  The student will have a hard time thinking twice about changing their views on reading because they have already been set up; that is why it is important for parents to start reading to their children early and to continue throughout their childhood.  If a child has enjoyed being read to throughout life and their parents continue to read to them during adolescence then their positive views on their parents’ reading to them will be associated with the time in which their parents are presently reading to them.

The second factor looks into the student’s belief of the outcome of their reading. This connects with the first factor in that adolescent’s past reading experiences are going to influence whether they have a positive or negative view towards reading.  Likewise as with the first factor, it is important for parents to provide positive reading experiences for their children through life as their children’s attitude will continue to improve overtime, but if their experience is on the contrary their attitude towards reading will worsen as time goes by (Klauda, 329).  For example, if a child’s parent read to them in elementary school to help them prepare for reading tests and the child received high scores on those tests, then they are going to have a positive view on the outcome of their parent’s involvement in their reading process.  The child will be able to make a connection to that positive reading outcome, and, in turn, connect it with their parent reading to them during adolescence.  The idea of parental involvement in the first two factors also carries over to the third factor as it looks at how the student will view whether or not their significant others value reading. 

This last factor of McKenna’s model stresses that it is critical for parents to continue to read with the children as this repetition of reading will show that the parents hold reading in a high regard (Kluada, 331).  If parents model that reading is important, then it will resonate in their child’s mind that it is important as well.  Therefore, that is why it is important for parents to continue reading to their children when they are older.  If a parent were to just stop reading to their child because the child had reached middle school or high school, then the child is going to view that action as one that suggests their parent no longer values reading.  Soboleski would agree with this as she states, “Modeling reading is of the highest importance.  If a child grew up in a literary-rich environment in which their parents always read to them, they are going to view reading as a positive experience for the rest of their lives” (Soboleski).  The factors of McKenna’s model and along with Soboleski’s view point flow into the next model as students who have positive attitudes about reading can start to become engaged readers.

Guthrie and Wigfield’s engagement model of reading sets up four characteristics of engaged readers.  Readers who are engaged know how to use reading comprehension strategies, are knowledge driven, are highly motivated, and regularly interact with peers, family members, and others with reading activities (Kluada, 330).  This model backs up the point that it is important for parents to read to their adolescent children because that interaction will keep their children motivated and engaged while reading.  Guthrie and Wigfield’s model is grounded in the self-determination theory because it looks at how individuals are motivated when they feel like intrinsic agents, such as their parents, are going to positively affect their work (Kluada, 330).  Adolescent students need this extra motivation from their parents.  When adolescents work with their parents on reading and see that their parents are mirroring that reading is a positive activity then they are more apt to be motivated to continue with the reading activity as these theories suggest.

The other characteristics of knowing how to use reading comprehension strategies, being knowledge driven, and being highly motivated also connect with the parental support in reading.  Parents and other agents of support such has teachers have done their part in reading to the children throughout life.  Therefore, stereotypically by the age of adolescence the children should have mastered how to comprehend the text in which they read although this can still be a growing process as literature gets tougher as the years go by.  Soboleski provides a side story to back this point up as she says, “When my boys were in high school, I would read Lord of the Rings to them.  It was a more complex text with tough vocabulary, so I was able to pause at places and provide them with help with the difficulties in the book” (Soboleski).  This constant learning of comprehension strategies based on this model suggests that the readers will become more engaged in the literature they are reading because they are learning how to understand it. 

Soboleski’s example can also be connected to the last two characteristics of being knowledge driven and highly motivated.  Students are going to become engaged readers after spending time reading with their parents because that model of reading is going to leave them craving more knowledge while motivating them to read more and more.  Soboleski says it best when she states, “No one can read to a child like a parent.  A parent and child have a connection like no other.  Children recognize the voice of their parent and gain an immediate recognition of what is being read.  Even reading with a great teacher can’t compare” (Soboleski).  Just as when they were babies, toddlers, and elementary school students and their parents would read to them, that connection needs to remain through adolescence to help motivate the children to continue to be engaged readers under Guthrie and Wigfield’s model.

Parents who read to their children while they are babies, toddlers, and elementary school students need to continue reading with their children into the age of adolescence.  The parent’s model of reading will help the child connect back to all of their positive reading experiences throughout the years.  As a parent of an adolescent sits down to read with their child, the child will be reminded of the literacy connection they have with parent as well as how much their parent values reading, and these combined motives will help the child continue to become an engaged reader.  As experts from each age group have suggested, reading is a growing and continuous process as the brain continues to gather new information, so when parents of adolescents take the time to sit down with their children to read a book they are making a large difference in their child’s life by giving them the gift of the importance and value of reading.

Works Cited

• Curzan, Anne and Michael Adams. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2009. Print.
• Imperato, Frances. “Getting Parents and Children Off to a Strong Start in Reading.” Reading Teacher 63.4 (2009):  342-344. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Klauda, Susan. “The Role of Parents in Adolescents’ Reading Motivation and Activity.” Educational Psychology Review 21.4 (2009):  325-363. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Layne, Steven. “Features:  Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 34. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Schon, Isabel. “Features:  Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 35. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Soboleski, Penny. Personal Interview. 15 April 2011.
• Straub, Susan. “The Power of Reading with Babies.” Infant Observation 12.3 (2009):  349-352. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
• Strickland, Michael. “Features:  Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 35. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.

A Critical Self-Assessment and Application of My Literary Approach: How a Meshed Genetic/Reader Response Criticism Can Be Used on the Works of Truman Capote

            Literary criticism is a very broad topic that can be looked at using various perspectives.  There are many theories that can be used while reading a piece of literature because everyone reads texts differently.  Some people concentrate more on the story while others are concerned with the realism of the characters.  Others focus on the language and words found in the story, and even more focus on how readers would react to the work.  History, the current culture, and literature as a whole can come into play as well for many readers.  All these different perspectives make literary criticism a very diverse subject that allows each reader to read a piece the way they find best fit.  This makes the subject of literary criticism and theory appealing for many who study it because they don’t have to follow theory by the book and agree with everything that has been said and written about the different perspectives.  They can decide what they agree with and what they disagree with, and they can mesh different theories together to make their own literary approach. 

            Donald Keesey, author of Contexts for Criticism, has developed a graph of formal criticism that many place themselves on in order to understand how they read literature.  Keesey states, “Because criticism usually involves the interpretation of a particular work, it is logical that the work in question should hold the central place in the diagram” (Keesey 3).  Therefore the piece of literature remains in the middle and the various perspectives branch off to the sides for readers to apply to the work.  The graph is made up of an x-axis and a y-axis.  The top of the y-axis is concerned with the author and historic criticism, while the bottom is concerned with the audience and reader-response criticism.  The x-axis is made up of reality and mimetic criticism on the left and literature and intertextual criticism on the right.  When I first looked at the chart, I had difficulties trying to decide where I would place myself because one doesn’t always think about how they read until they are told to do so.  First, I thought that I just fit at the top of the y-axis because before I read a piece of literature I have to always read a biographical piece about the author so that I can connect the literary story to their life and the time in which they wrote the piece.  However, after some deeper thinking, I realized that I do more than that.  I also connect the story to myself and how I react to it as well as how other readers would respond to it.  Therefore, when looking at Keesey’s diagram, I fall on the entire y-axis.  Sometimes I spend more time on the top of the axis and other times I spend more time on the bottom, but usually I spend my time right in the middle so that I can move freely between historical criticism and reader-response criticism. 

            I feel at home on the y-axis because through all my work with the different theories, the historical and reader-response perspectives make the most sense to me.  I feel like I have gained the appropriate amount of knowledge of those theories, so I’m able to apply them to every work that I read and they work in helping me understand different pieces of literature.

            The historical context of criticism looks at a piece of text from the background of the past.  Those who concentrate on this theory mainly look at the author’s background, the author’s intention, and the mores and conventions that were in place in society at the time the piece was written or even at the time in which the story is based.  People who study this will look into the story to find different aspects that they can do further research on to derive some deeper meaning about the story. 

By looking at the author’s background they can see if the story is directly or partially based on something from his or her past or if something that occurred in his or her past caused the story to be written in that way.  By looking at the author’s intention they will be able to figure out what the author has planned to do in writing the story.  If they did some research and found out information about the author’s past then they would be able to connect that to the story and hypothesize why each aspect of the story was written a certain way.  In looking at the history of the time the story was written historical critics look at different scenes and actions in the story to decide where it is taking place.  They will also use what they know about what was going on in the life of the author and the society they were living in at the time that he or she wrote the piece.  This information will help them decide if different aspects of the story were put there on purpose because that is how things worked back then or if they were just coincidental.

E. D. Hirsch spent a lot of time with this theory.  He argued that coherence was not a quality that should be looked at fully to determine meaning, but that the context of the interpretation of the work should be evaluated.  In his essay, Objective Interpretation, he states, “It is natural to speak not of what a text says, but of what an author means, and this more natural locution is the more accurate one” (Keesey 27).  Therefore, he believes that doing research to decide what the author’s intention was is a more accurate way to understand a piece than just looking at it for its words in general.

After reading this quote by Hirsch, I knew that I agreed with his perspective of the historical context.  I too believe that readers are able to understand a text better by figuring out what the author is trying to say instead of just looking at the words.  This is why the formalist context doesn’t work for me because I’m more concerned with what the author is trying to get across in his work.  I spend time studying the history of the time when the piece was written and the life of the author, so that I can figure out what the author means by the piece.  A formalist critic is only going to look within the piece to find its true meaning, and this doesn’t always work.  Many times the author has an external motivator that he brings in from the outside to form meaning in his work.  I find this to be a positive aspect of historical criticism because it offers a different perspective in looking at a piece of literature.  I’m all for cognitive learning, and I feel that it is far less cognitive to search within a piece for meaning than it is to search outside a piece.  It takes some extra work and deeper thinking to find the meaning of a text outside of the text, but after all is said and done I feel like the reader is able to better understand the piece overall by using this literary context.

The reader-response context is made up of an umbrella of approaches to literature that focus on the responses that readers have about the text.  Someone who looks at a piece of text using a reader-response context combines the text with how they feel about it from a reader’s perspective to create a shared reaction.  By taking what they find in the text and combining it with what they know they are able to react to the text and understand it more deeply.

As I have already stated, this context is really made up of a series of different approaches that are interrelated, so to describe this context more clearly I will describe two perspectives that I agree with.  When it comes to reader-response criticism, I tend to follow what Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish have each developed.  I combine both of their theories together to make up my reader-response theory that I can use to apply to different pieces of literary work.

Wolfgang Iser came up with the concept of the implied reader.  This was broken down into two roles that the reader would have:  the role of a textual structure and the role of a structured act.  In the role of a textual structure the reader will be able to look at the text and see things that he wouldn’t have been able to just based on what he was already aware of.  In the role of a structured act the reader will find the meaning of a text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him.

Stanley Fish believed that meaning was derived mostly from the experience of the reader.  The same aspect of a piece of text could be viewed many different ways depending on the prior knowledge that each reader has of the material.  In his article, Is There a Text in this Class, a girl asks her teacher if there is a text in the class that she is going to be in for the new semester.  The teacher replies that there is a textbook because based on his prior knowledge from when students usually asked that question he assumed she was talking about the textbook when she said text.  However, she wanted to know if the class was going to be one where the students believe in poems and other texts or if was just them and their own perspective.    Therefore, based on this example different readers are going to view aspects of a piece of writing in different ways based on their own personal lives.

I know that this context relies more on looking at the text to develop a reaction and then a meaning, and I just got done saying that I’m not too fond of formalism because it looks solely at the text.  However, I feel like the use of the text here is different.  The reader-response criticism doesn’t just look at the text, but it makes a connection with what the reader knows and doesn’t know to help guide them in the meaning.  I don’t like how formalists only use the text to find meaning, but here prior knowledge and experience, two outside sources, are used to help the reader develop meaning.

In regards to this perspective, it is hard for me to choose between the theories of Iser and Fish because I see the use in both of them.  Some critics who follow this context of criticism will only agree with Iser or only agree with Fish, but I can’t really argue that one theory is stronger than the other.  The implied reader idea is appealing to me because I like how a text can open doors and allow the reader to see ideas and perspectives that they haven’t been aware before through the textual structure.  I also find it to work positively through the use of the structured act because the reader is able to find meaning from the text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him, and this can relate to historical criticism in a way.  The perspective that guides the reader can be that of the author’s, and their perspective can be related to their own history.  Therefore, my two different approaches on the y-axis are able to find a connection here.

Fish’s theory also works well in my approach because it can connect the reader-response context with the historical one as well as work by itself.  Fish believed that readers are able to understand different pieces of text based on the experiences that they have had.  Therefore, if a reader has had much experience with the works of the writer they are reading then they will be able to understand the meaning of the piece better due to what they already know.  This works well outside the author realm as well though.  I find that when reading a piece of literature I begin to understand parts that I can relate to more.  I believe this is true for all readers.  No matter what piece of literature one is reading, they will always find a part of it that they can relate to.  This part will stick out most in their mind and allow them to derive meaning from the story based on that relatable aspect that they connected with.

The reader-response context works well overall because it allows for the reader to not only relate the text to what they know in order to respond to it, but it allows them to think about how other readers are going to relate to it as well.  I chose this theory as part of my approach based on this because I like the wide range of opportunity open for readers to use their cognitive minds.  I also find that the umbrella of perspectives allows for this context to be used in a variety of ways, and although I chose to only include two of those perspectives in my approach, just having those two allows for quite an expansive range for readers to use and apply to different pieces of literature.

I chose to mesh historical criticism with the reader-response context because I feel at home using both theories.  I find the connection to the outside world in both contexts to work towards that advantage of finding the true meaning of different pieces of literature.  I think that it can be difficult at times to use other theories that solely look at the text to find meaning because doing that uses more interpretation than my approach allows for, and in interpreting a piece of text it can be hard to know if what you are thinking is what you are supposed to be thinking.  At least with my approach, interpretation has outside sources to fall back on.  I value the fact that records can be looked at to see how the writer lived their life, and the fact that readers can take from their own experiences to react to a piece of literature and find its deeper meaning.

I will now take this time to show how my approach applies to a piece of literature using Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”.  I think this is a piece that I can really showcase my theory on because this piece was influential in helping me design my literary approach.  I read this piece after I began to figure out how I read pieces of literature.  Therefore, I feel like my approach shines brightly in this story.  Capote used different aspects of his childhood in the South to write the story, and I was reminded of my relationship with my maternal grandmother throughout the story.  Therefore, the historical and reader-response contexts show up strongly and can easily applied. 

            “A Christmas Memory” is a story about a little boy nicknamed Buddy and his elderly lady cousin who he refers to as his friend.  They live in a house with many other family members, but the rest of the family is very strict so Buddy and his friend keep to themselves along with their dog Queenie.  They are rather poor, but they save their money up over the year so they can use it around Christmastime.  Starting in late November, they get their money out and go out and buy supplies to make fruitcakes.  They make about thirty fruitcakes a year for people that they have met once or twice or even for those they haven’t met at all.  They make one for a couple whose car broke down in front of their place a few years back, missionaries who lectured in their town the previous year, the bus driver, the reverend, and even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Making the fruitcakes for those people allows Buddy and his friend to feel special because they’re doing something for people who are much more well-to-do than themselves.

            They spend a good portion of the story gathering supplies for and then making the fruitcakes.  They pick pecans from an orchard that isn’t theirs, gather different fruits from town, and purchase whiskey, the key ingredient, from an Indian bootlegger named Haha.  After the cakes have been made and mailed out, Buddy and his cousin finish off the whiskey with their dog.  The other family members in the house ridicule the elderly woman for allowing a child to get drunk.  This brings her to tears, but Buddy cheers her up by reminding her that they will soon get a Christmas tree to decorate and have presents to make.

            The next day Buddy and his friend go out and chop down a very large tree and bring it home.  Then they spend many hours creating ornaments for the tree and making gifts for each other and the rest of the family.  Buddy suspects that his cousin is making him a kite just like she did the previous year, so he does them same.  On Christmas day, the two go out and fly the kites that they made each other and have a joyous time.

            Sadly, Buddy says at the end of the story that this was the last Christmas that he got to spend with his cousin because he got sent to military school.  They still wrote each other letters, but she started to get dementia so she wasn’t the same friend that he held all those fond Christmas memories with.  He ends the story by telling the readers how he knew of her death before he was even told, and he looked to the sky expecting to see a lost pair of kites, like hearts, sailing to Heaven.

            In regards to my literary approach, I always start with the historical aspect first.  Therefore, readers of this piece would have to read a short biographical piece of Truman Capote first or even look into records of his childhood before actually reading the story.  In doing this, they would be able to see that much of the story is taken from his childhood.  He in fact had an elderly cousin that he was very fond of, and they spent a lot of time together because the rest of the family was very strict just like the family in the story is.  However, after getting past this simple fact, the readers would have to explore the reason why Capote wrote this piece.  Did he want his readers to get a glimpse of his childhood life even though it might be a little fabricated?  Did he want to showcase the love between family members, showing that he had at least one person who cared for him?  Did he write accurately about the South in the 1930’s?  Did he actually make fruitcakes with his cousin, or is the fruitcake symbolic of another aspect of his childhood?  Did he actually exchange kites with his cousin?  These are all questions that could be asked dealing with this part of my approach.  The readers are going to want to look at every aspect of Capote’s life including his childhood which he uses for this piece and his mindset around 1956 when the piece as written because it could be just as much about his past as it is about the current state he was in when he wrote the piece.  Readers could look back at records to see where Capote was living while he wrote the piece, who he was living with, and how he was spending his days.  They might also want to look farther back to see what life was like in the 1930’s for a boy in the South or if the other people in the story actually existed.  They could find out if there was a Indian bootlegger at that time who resembled Haha, if a couple’s car had actually broken down in front of Capote’s house, or if missionaries had lectured in his town.  Evaluating every piece of the story for its connection to the writer’s past is essential with the first part of my literary approach because using the outside material connected with the author can help the readers better understand the meaning of the piece overall.

After the historical context has been dealt with then my approach requires readers to travel down the y-axis of Keesey’s chart to reader-response criticism.  Being that this is my approach, first off I would concentrate on the concept of the implied reader, looking at the textual structure and the structured act.  The textual structure would allow the reader to be able to look at the text and see things that he wouldn’t have been able to see before just based on what he was already aware of.  For instance the reader might not have been aware of the fact that Franklin D. Roosevelt and the other patrons who received the fruitcakes were higher up on the social ladder than Buddy and his cousin, so this part of the story would allow the reader to see that Buddy and his cousin feel like they are important because they get to make the desserts for those people.  Likewise, this story introduces a diverse family connection that many readers might not be aware of.  I remember after reading this that I thought for the longest time that his friend was his grandmother, not his cousin.  Therefore, this story introduces readers to the fact that different family members can have strong emotional connections with one another, and they can take this knowledge and run with it in order to find a deeper meaning in the relationship between Buddy and his elderly friend.  The structured act would have the reader find the meaning of a text based on how the perspectives of the text have guided him.  This means that the reader is going to take what they know in life and bring that to the story.  Based on what they bring, the text is going to mean different things to different people because their perspectives are going to be different.  A young boy might connect with Buddy in the story and see the friend as his grandmother while an elderly woman is more apt to connect to the cousin in the story and view Buddy has her grandson or possibly her neighbor boy.  Also, one has to take in to account that various people are going to be educated differently and be at different maturity levels.  The young boy who reads the story is going to find more meaning in the fact that Buddy and his cousin are playing together and spending time with one another.  While the elderly lady who reads the piece is going to be more apt to see the deeper meaning and connection that Buddy has with his cousin.  They are both lost souls who are found when they are with each other, so when the cousin dies at the end Buddy feels like he has died as well.  That is why he looks up to the sky as if he is going to see two kites sailing to Heaven.  It all depends on what type of perspective a person brings to the story as to what type of perspective they get out of the story.  I think that it is also important to know what each type of reader will bring to the story as I have demonstrated here.  Readers not only have to show how they will react to a piece, but they should also know how other people will as well. 

Stanley Fish’s context falls in closely with this as well.  It all depends on what the reader brings to the text as to how much they understand it and what they get out of it.  If someone has a close relationship with an elderly family member like Buddy does, then they might be able to see the connection that the two characters have.  Likewise, anyone who has experienced the hustle, bustle, and excitement of Christmas time would be able to connect with that aspect of the story and find some meaning in the fact that Buddy and his cousin are participating in the festivities together.  There has to be a least one aspect of the story that each reader has some experience in, and that way they are able to connect themselves to that part of the story and find some meaning from the piece overall.

Using historical criticism and reader-response criticism together on a piece literature has a very positive effect in my eyes.  I believe that bringing in outside sources connected to the life and times of the writer as well as having readers bring in their own experiences to connect to the piece allows for a better understanding overall, and when readers understand a piece of literature they are able to get to its deeper meaning.  Using my literary approach, I have found that I can connect parts of the writer’s life with parts of my life in order to find true meaning in pieces of literature.  Therefore, I believe that my approach works because it brings forth two literary theories that involve cognitive thinking and bringing in aspects of the outside world.  The y-axis on Keesey’s chart is the right place to be because readers are able to make connections and reactions that will help them in discovering the true meaning of every literary piece that they read.

Works Cited

• Capote, Truman.  A Christmas Memory.  New York:  Random House, 1956.
• Fish, Stanley. “Is There a Text in This Class?”.  Is There a Text in This Class?:  The Authority of Interpretive Communties.  Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 1980. 678-693.
• Hirsch, Jr., E. D.  “Objective Interpretation”.  Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Ed. Donald Keesey. Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003. 17-33.
• Iser, Wolfgang.  “Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader”. Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Ed. Donald Keesey. Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003. 140-147.
• Keesey, Donald.  Contexts for Criticism:  Fourth Edition.  Boston:  McGraw Hill, 2003.

Was Blind, But Now I See: I've Been Called to Make a Difference

I just got back from Revive, a Thursday night worship service at The University of Findlay, and I had such an intense experience that I just have to write about it. I didn't really want to use this blog for personal reasons, but tonight's experience relates to my future as an educator, so I believe it belongs here.


As the people close to me know, I have had struggles with my faith in the past. I grew up in a United Methodist church, but I strayed away from it during high school and lost God and all religion during a five year span of my life. I experienced with a variety of different religions, but I felt like something was missing. Two years ago, I went on my first mission work trip with Habitat for Humanity to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and during that week I was so overcome with His glory due to our crew leader Bryan's devotional that I accepted Him back into my life. It's been a long run since then, but I've been trying my best to grow closer to him. I joined a wonderful church in Findlay, I started diving deeper into the Bible, and I decided to live my life for Him in every aspect. Many who knew me in high school and the early years of college found this to be a drastic change, but I had finally become part of the fellowship of the unashamed, and I wasn't afraid to admit that I was finally, once again, a Christian. Things have gone better in my life since that mission trip, but I know I have so much more to do in my journey with Christ. Tonight was another chapter in that story.


Even though I have grown a lot stronger in my faith, I'm not ashamed to admit that I should be doing a lot more. I've joined a great church within such a loving community, but there are times--naturally in my busy life--that my mind drifts off during sermons and other aspects of my longing to know more about Christ. I know this isn't right, but I'm only human--it happens to the best of us. Things changed tonight though. In the middle of the music worship Pastor Matt stopped the music team and allowed us time to distance ourselves from our friends in order to sit and chat with God. He opened up our eyes to the fact that we were singing the words of the songs, but did we really mean what we were singing? Were we literally or spiritually falling on our knees for Jesus? Were we ready to wholeheartedly grow deeper with Him tonight?


I've been struggling a lot with a variety of situations in life in which I won't go into, but one of those areas is my future. Even though I have a degree in education, I've still been trying to figure out what I want to do with my life. I knew that I wanted to do something meaningful in which I could make an impact in the lives of others, but even this summer I was looking at ideas all over the career spectrum, at times branching away from education altogether. I just recently started graduate school to earn a master of education degree in reading because it felt right, but I went in blind not knowing if it was truly where I was supposed to be, where I was called to be.


Tonight I was reassured that I am truly following my calling, that of teaching others to read. I swear that God was there with me and He touched me with His presence tonight. I know that may sound crazy, and I've never experienced this before so it sounds crazy to me as well. However, I opened my heart to Him and laid everything on the line. I asked for guidance on where I was going and if it was right, and He showed me that I have been called to work in the area of reading, that my graduate degree was the perfect choice. I didn't get specifics on if I should be working in a school setting, with a non-profit, or even in another country, but I'm sure that will come in due time. I just know that I was made to help children develop the wonderful and amazing power of reading, and I will now do this through Him.


After experiencing this moment, I was overcome with emotion. I'm a very sentimental guy; I have cried during about every chic flick I've ever watched, but tonight was a different kind of crying. I sat there in the auditorium just weeping after receiving my call. I couldn't believe God was actually putting me in these shoes in which I would be able to help thousands of children develop this ability that will help open doors to adventure, doors to knowledge, doors to Him. I kept asking God, "Are you sure about this? You really want me to do this?" And He reassured me after every question that I was truly being called to make a difference. I feel blessed and honored that I'm heading in a direction that not only I want to travel in, but that he wants me to go towards as well. I can't wait to start fulfilling this dream, but until then I will continue to grow deeper with Him, to give myself over to Him, and to allow Him to use me and place me where He wants. It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally in his palm, and I'm so ready for the ride.

I Found My Future Through the Eyes of Holden Caulfield

     Life has been an ever-growing and changing process for me, but not until I spent some time at The University of Findlay did I finally realize who I would [be] in the future. I transferred to Findlay after one semester at The University of Toledo and started taking classes in the physician assistant program. Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted a career that involved helping others, but I hadn’t quite figured out the right fit yet.  I started working at Washington Intermediate’s after school program, helping students read, and attending The University of Findlay Ohio Student Education Association (UFOSEA) meetings with my sister even though I wasn’t in the College of Education, and after helping Findlay’s youth one-on-one and experiencing the family-like atmosphere among all the students and faculty in the COE, I knew I was home.

     After one semester at Findlay, I got out of the physician assistant program and declared my major as Adolescent-Young Adult Language Arts/English and English-Teaching Emphasis. I was put into the classroom right away with the Van Buren LAMP program, and every consecutive year I learned more and more about the field of education.

     It felt unreal that I was actually going to be a high school English teacher, following the footsteps of my mother, until I had my junior block experience at Van Buren High School. There was a student named "Damien" in one of my classes who turned himself off when it came to learning. Nothing seemed to interest him, and his motivation and grades reflected that. Before I even started teaching my classes, I began to talk with him and encourage him to do his work in ways that would interest him. I found out that he really enjoyed military events and history, so I suggested books for him to read and gave him ideas to write about for a short story project the class was working on. I also encouraged him to read leisurely whenever he had his work completed. This turned out to have a larger effect than I imagined.

     That year Van Buren was having a book tournament in which books would be matched up against each other; students would read the books, pick the best one, and move on to the next match. By the end of the year, the favorite book of the students would be picked out. Students were asked to volunteer to be in this program and provide money to purchase copies of the books. When the day came to sign up for the program, it came to my surprise that "Damien" was the first student to sign up to be in the reading program. When I started my experience, he wasn’t interested in anything related to English, but through my encouragement he began to enjoy the wonderful world of reading.

     I have been able to share my passion for reading inside and outside of the classroom, and this brings me joy because this passion has been growing for quite a long time. My Grandpa and Grandma Midtgard were the first two people to really encourage me to pick up a book. My parents both had busy schedules during my youth, so my grandparents would watch my sister and me during the daytime. Each day they came, they’d have a brand new book for each of us. When we were really young, they would read to us, and as the days went by, we finally grew into reading to them.  Little did I know that this would be the foundation for my reading addiction today, where I have a two thousand book private library.
     When I look back through the years, there was hardly ever a time when I didn’t have a book in my hands. To this day, I still use dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other books of information to look information up. There is something about actually holding a book, smelling a book, and connecting with a book that makes the whole reading experience worthwhile. My grandparents’ teaching me how to read, has led to my passion to teach others how powerful and intoxicating of an experience reading can be for them.

     My love for reading sprung up again this past semester with my analytical writing class.  We were asked to complete in-depth research projects centered on our future careers. At this point in time I knew that I loved reading and teaching, but I hadn’t put the two ideas together yet. The day I thought that I might be able to include reading in this project, I decided that this paper would be the decider on whether or not I would want to concentrate on literacy and reading as an aspect of my future career. My paper was titled “’One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish’ to ‘Lord of the Rings’: The Importance of Parental Involvement in Regards to Reading with Their Adolescent Children.”  Research had shown that children’s love for reading tended to dim around grades four or five, and this happened to be the time in which most parents stopped reading with their children. Therefore, I suggested that parents’ continuous support in their children’s reading lives would encourage the students to stay motivated and passionate about reading.
     After typing up this report, I knew that this was definitely the field for me.  I worked on this research project throughout the whole semester bringing in my knowledge of the DIBELS, MASI, and various other assessments that I’ve conducted in the past. I interviewed literacy scholars in the field, and I developed a plan to put my theories into practice. After presenting my findings to a field of colleagues, my professor said that my ideas were very credible and that I had encouraged her to work more with her teenage son when it comes to reading. This comment, along with all my interesting findings, encouraged me to go back to my roots and bring my passion for reading into my future career.

     I would like to get a master of arts in education with a concentration on reading. With this degree, I would have even more knowledge on how to connect with my students and encourage them to read. After teaching high school English for many years, I would like to become a reading specialist, and, finally, a college professor. My life has been ever-growing and changing, but when I have stopped to reflect, two things have stayed constant: reading and teaching. Reading and teaching have been involved in every facet of my life, and I would like to see that continue in the future.
     I decided to go into teaching so I could share my passion for reading with the youth of this nation. Oddly enough, a classic American literature book, The Catcher in the Rye, encouraged me to do this. In the novel, the main character Holden Caulfield states this, “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."  I couldn’t have spoken these words better myself. I look at all of the students I’m going to encounter in the future in this way. They’re all playing on the cliff and struggling in their own way near the edge. I want to be there to provide a helping hand along the way. It is my goal to not let any student near the edge of the cliff. If I can share my passion for reading and learning with them, and if I can connect to them in way that is individualized for them, then I know I can be a catcher in the rye, and that is a part of my life, along with reading and teaching, that is never going to change.