Elizabeth Boeser returned to the University of Minnesota in 2002 to pursue her Master's of Education in Communication Arts and Literature and receive her teaching license. Her teaching career began at Jefferson High School in 2003.   You can visit her teaching website with this link: Boeser, E

The Literature Workshop piqued my literary taste buds, like the description of Indonesian Peanut Saute at Noodles & Company makes my mouth water.  I wanted this book to be all that it says it is going to be and more.  But like the Nooldes dish, I was sadly disappointed and a little turned off.  Sure, all the ingredients for a literary workshop are listed, but I took a bite and had to spit a little out into my napkin.  Something had turned.  I was waiting for something exotic and fabulous, but it was just a plate of mush.  The book does include some good ingredients.

Sick of the food metaphor?  Me too.

It says it is The Literature Workshop, not A literature workshop.  The back of the book says it is “groundbreaking.”  I read the book in its entirety and am still waiting for the ground to be broken. I don’t suppose I see how different his workshop is from any other reading or writing course I have taken.  The book claims, for example, to invite readers to  “participate” in such topics as how to deal with interpretations of text that vary from the norm.  This is the best part of the book.  The re-creations are fun to read, even when he admits he took some liberties with the retelling of all events.  The literature he chose to represent is also interesting.

What happens, however, is that after a lively discussion, Sheridan Blau includes reflections on what has transpired.  His reflections are rather didactic.  The also seem to contradict his main goal, which was to teach students how to find information the same way that teachers learn information.  He ends up trying to summarize and evaluate the content of the discussion instead of letting the readers gather their own interpretations of the events that transpired.  During the discussions with his students, he seems to have the same modus operandi.  As much as they discuss, he always gets the last word.  That’s, I guess, major benefit of writing one’s own book, though.     

I believe his intentions are good.  If The Literature Workshop works as well as Sheridan Blau claims it does, I’m right on board.  I just don’t want him there with me.