Webb-Chapter 7

After reading Webb's chapter on testimonial and autoethnography, I found it an interesting approach and somewhat outside the norm of a traditional English classroom. I'm used to reading mostly about different novels and the theories behind each. Instead, I see varieties of novels that can be looked at through a testimonial or autoethnography way.
Webb states, "In my experience, teaching testimonial narratives leads students to ask challenging questions about the priorities of literature classes and their everyday schooling experiences" (137). Webb has had amazing responses throughout his teaching from students that we've been able to see throughout his book. Although this gives me hope for the future, I still want to know how he gets such thorough responses, especially using some of the novels that I did not read until college. As my internship soon approaches, and my career of teaching is right around the corner, I worry that although this is my ultimate goal as a teacher that I may never reach this mark. I want to be creative and touch on different aspects of literature like autoethnography and testimonials, but I feel that because the way I have been taught that these things will be overlooked based on the curriculum I am to go by. So how to I allow myself to break free of these barriers and incorporate things like this into my classroom in order to enhance the knowledge of my students, and enable them to leave my classroom with an honest learning experience? I think what Webb has done a great job throughout this entire book and has additionally been inspiring and amazing. I hope I can have the kind of impact he has had on his students along with the variety of experiences he has encountered that has made him a better teacher because of it as well. Overall, testimonials, autoethnography are only the gist of what I am interested in using from this text by Webb. I plan on saving this text and using it as a resource to guide me into become a great educator who teaches many young lives the meaning of literature and how to incorporate literature into one's own life.