In contrast to a teacher-dominated literature classroom where authority rests with the one who has the power to grade, a classroom dedicated to cultivating the creative process breaks down the traditional hierarchies (such as theory and practice, text and reader, and organization and improvisation) and concentrates on the needs of the individual student in the context of the group. In such a classroom, the teacher's role is to discern with the students, through their collective responses to literature, the group's perceptions of the text and to relate those perceptions to the collective and subjective frames of reference from which they issue. The teacher functions as an expert in the sense of experience, and yet is just another reader whose interpretations are to be experienced and experimented with in the context of the group. This type of teaching requires students to recognize their act of creating meaning in what they read and demands the reciprocity of each class member to make it work. When a class learns to activate its own power to know and create, it becomes its own authority. (MAI)