What Team?!?!!

Out of all the ways to learn, the one that works the best for me is having to learn and explore with others. I might just have one idea, but someone else might have a completely different idea. Texts are able to have different meanings to different people-it's just the nature of wanting to interpret the meaning behind the words that the author chose. I find that getting to know what others interpret a text to mean can help me increase my own understanding of the text.

One day in English class, a few years ago, we were having a discussion on a certain poem. The poem starts out "Christ climbed down from His bare Tree this year." I had thought that the bare tree refereed to a Christmas tree, devoid of decorations, but this turned out not to be the case. Over the course of the discussion, someone mentioned that maybe the bare tree was the cross that Jesus had been hung from. This blew my mind. I would never have thought of that interpretation of that line, but someone else had. By having this discussion, I had a greater understanding of what the author was trying to convey.

By working together as a team to try and uncover the author's purpose in writing, I feel that more can be discovered. Something somebody else thinks can give me a new angle on the meaning. Talking out loud is a more informal way of sharing ideas, and what I think to be the best forum for discussion. Letting the ideas fly allows more interpretations to be brought to light which gives me all of this inspiration to improve my own thoughts on what the author was trying to convey.  But without discussing the material with others, none of this would be possible. As one of my favorite bands of all time says "and I'm thinking two is better than one."

Allons-y!
Emilie