Critical Lenses

 Introducing critical lenses in my classroom can help me meet my teaching goal of creating more informed world citizens. In order for students to become what bell hooks calls “enlightened witnesses” of the world around them, students must first understand the workings of ideology. ELA teachers have the task of making ideologies in text visible to students, and literary theory helps readers uncover these ideologies where they may be hidden in the text. Teaching multiple literary theories also helps students to learn the power of multiple perspectives, and providing students with many perspectives and exposing them to new perspectives is another goal of my teaching.

When students learn critical lenses, they practice skills needed to critically view the world around them. Studying theory also helps students evaluate the ways in which the texts they have consumed have shaped their own world view and perspectives. The concept of using multiple perspectives can be introduced by having students tell well known stories (like nursery rhymes) from a different perspective. 

During my experiences as a learner in ELA classes, the reader-response framework was most often used, even if I didn’t realize that my teachers were utilizing it. In higher grades, teachers brought in other ways to respond to texts. Most often, the lens we used in the class would largely depend on its relevance to the themes in the text. Additionally, my teachers often contextualized texts before we read them, preparing us to better understand the issues of class, race, and gender within them. 

In my own teaching, I see myself most likely to begin by utilizing a reader response framework, then gradually including other lenses, especially those of class, gender, and race. This helps students understand their own relationship to the beliefs present in the text. In using these lenses frequently, I can ensure students have the opportunity to explore issues of social justice within some of the texts we read and connect these issues to the state of the world in the present day.