critical approaches to teaching catcher

WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Wed, 10 Dec 1997 19:07:02 -0700 (MST)

first and foremost is that each reading is individual...but that
interpretation's validity rests on textual evidence...then I guess
salinger takes over...I might nudge students with q's like what advice
holden needs, or encourage stories written in holden/salinger dialects,
it's funny but most students enter the fictive space of catcher so clearly
that I've always had classes easily discuss it...maybe the trick is that I
teach a lot of freshmen courses--my senior level salinger seminar students
tend to prefer the 9 stories and 4 longer ones--maybe another trick is
creativity--students have fun writing fictional journal entries--this year
I used catcher's educational thinking and some thinking from nyu's John
Mayher about _Uncommonsense Learning_ to encourage students to analyze
some of the learning concerns for holden and themselves in light of
mayher's idea that school doesn't offer enough real learning modes.  I
like what I read plus I think (with a lot of help from mr. salinger and
prof mayher) I got a very "young" group of eng 101
students thinking critically about their own learning modes.  I collect
final portfolios tomorrow! yippee, school's almost over! will