Engl 203 and Core 101, 8/30

The lit. class went well today. After asking students if they had questions regarding the syllabus, I divided the class into groups of 3 and answer questions on either Frost, Blanco, or Hughes. These questions concerned the tone of the poems (optimistic, angry, passionate, etc.), what "America" meant for each author, and whether the poems were hopeful. As I mentioned in the last post, Blanco's poem is very inclusive ("e Pluribus, Unum) and celebrates the unity in diversity. Frost's poem is more ambiguous, especially since it ends with the word "become" (suggesting America is a work in progress, as Blanco's poem also does), but the "we" in the poem certainly seems to be European settlers, and the poem seems to connect to ideas of manifest destiny, that God gave Europeans this land to cultivate and "civilize." Still, it's not straightforward that Frost thought of the settlers as all positive. That we've given ourselves in war rather than in more spiritual/ artistic ways could perhaps be read as a criticism. Hughes poem is powerful in its angry and indignation. Whereas Blanco's poem includes everyone (a bit like Whitman), Hughes angrily speaks for all those who have been pushed to the margins, who see America as a land of hope and opportunity only to be crushed or turned away. Hughes "I" is multiracial.

To get students involved, I divided the class into groups of 3 gave each group about  20 minutes to come up with answers in their groups. The discussions within the groups seemed to go well, and the discussion went well once we came back together as a class.

Core 8/29

Quick post today. Classes were relatively non-eventful, in a good way. I started each class by asking if anyone had questions regarding the syllabus, or more general questions about the class. In the 3 o'clock class, several people did ask about the length of the essays, since that isn't something listed on the syllabus and I've yet to put the assignment sheets on D2L. I usually put the assignment sheets and accompanying handouts on D2L one essay at a time, an attempt to minimize confusion. Organization isn't my strong point, and I've found that students are easily confused and often don't ask questions to clarify.

One of the questions on the first day questionnaire asked students to name 2 aspects of writing they are good at, and at least 3 they need to work on. I plan to make a chart and keep track of these things throughout the semester, so that students feel they are improving on whatever they listed as needing improvement. I also plan to give the first day questionnaires back to the students on the last day of class, when I have them complete a final reflection/ review of the class. That way they can assess how much they put into improving whatever they mentioned on day one, and they can think about the ways the class did or didn't match their expectations, in positive or negative ways.

After collecting first day questionnaires, I had students divide into pairs and interview one another. After the interview (15-20 minutes), I had them stand in front of the class and introduce one another. I put a list of questions on the overhead (do they speak any other languages, how many states/ countries they've visited, what they're good at, hobbies/ interests, etc.). My reasons for doing this were: 1) to help them get comfortable speaking to each other and in front of the class, 2) to get to know them a bit more and work on learning their names (I'm bad with names, but knowing names is a sign of respect; it's important to earn students' respect early in the semester), 3) related to two, ice-breakers like this can seem empty, but I think it's important to create an atmosphere of trust and openness. I often think of teaching as being like coaching. A team can have great individual athletes, but if the overall dynamic of the team doesn't gel, they will not achieve success. Obviously teaching is similar in that the dynamic of the class--something hard to pin down--can be relatively set in stone over the first few weeks. It's important to establish expectations, but also to create the right atmosphere.

I'm admittedly not great at that. I spend a lot of time in my own head. I enjoy literature in part because it's an activity that rewards that type of borderline solipsism. Somewhat paradoxically, teaching literature (and writing) requires the exact opposite personality. I continue to work on balancing teaching as a performance (which it always is, and I'm not great at performing) and being the type of casual, laid back person most people seem to enjoy being around.

In my 3 o'clock class, everything I did above took the entire 50 minutes. In the 5 o'clock class (an hour, 15 minutes), I also assigned a "Where I'm From" poem to dovetail into the first essay assignment, the personal narrative. I suppose I did not have to include the personal narrative as an assignment this year, and it barely meets any of the goals/ objectives for Core 101 (new objectives settled on this past semester), but I've taught it for a long time, and I enjoy teaching it because it's more like creative writing than the argumentative essays we write later.

I borrowed the "Where I'm From" poem from George Ella Lyons, an Appalachian poet. It's a fun (I think), easy assignment, in part because there are templates (similar to madlibs) that allow students to just fill in the blanks and create a pretty interesting poem. The goal or objective of the assignment is twofold: one, it helps me and the students classmates get to know each student better; two, it leads into the personal narrative, where using strong verbs and precise description is important. I use the poems to talk about how interesting, specific details that appeal to the senses and describe what is happening instead of merely telling the facts or listing the actions draw readers into the story. 

These details help provide the reader with a clear understanding of why an experience is meaningful and help the reader to visualize the experience. Readers may vicariously experience the feelings of the characters (and the narrator) and even feel like they are there. As a result, readers connect with the writer’s personal experience and reactions to it. Or at least that's the hope. 

Here's my sample poem (I grew up poor in Fries, VA, a small Appalachian mill town that basically died economically when the mill shut down in the 80's):
Where I’m From

I am from
RC Cola and moon pies.
From the banks of a mountain creek
Threading through
a dark hollow, cold and clear and strong.
I am from morels breaching ground
after spring rains, from the chinquapins
My grandmother gathered
in Dollar General bags.
I am from factory towns and calloused hands,
from Orpha and Ocie.
I am from “life is but a veil of tears”
and “‘til the good lord calls me home.”
I am from a cinderblock church
on a gravel road, a garble of tongues
I never understood.

I’m from the Line-berries and the Burchettes,
Englishmen turned mountain settlers.
I am from creasy greens sprinkled
bacon grease.
from the finger my dad lost
to the drop clipper at Chesnut Creek veneer,
and from the will it took to rise each day
and toil for next to nothing.

I am from the rough-cut cedar chest
in my father’s room (a storehouse
of memories)—a leather belt
imprinted with flowers and my father’s name
that his own father made while in prison, his only gift to his son;
a tattered fragment
of quilt his grandmother stitched by hand;
photo albums filled with faces I never knew,
but are part of my blood.
In one, my great-grandfather stands
In front of an elderberry bush—
A solitary moment that will never come again,
and yet
he stands, hands on hips, neither smiling
nor frowning, eyes straight ahead
as if staring across a gulf of years
to witness who I am becoming
and tell me who I will always be .

ENGL 203 and CORE 101, 8/28

English 203 (3:30)--Back in Young 406 for this class. I've already mentioned some of the reasons I don't think Young 406 is the best room for teaching, so no reason to re-iterate that. For this class, I started out with a biography of myself--my degree and background, teaching philosophy, and a few hobbies. I then went over the syllabus. This took about 30 minutes of the class. Following the intro to the syllabus, I went over the first day questionnaire (see photo) and discussed how the study of "American" literature has changed over the last few decades, and, like political arguments about what it means to be "American," that study is an area of controversy. I discussed the idea of a literary "canon," basically a body of books, narratives, and other texts considered to be the most important or influential, and the "canon wars' of the 1980's / 90's, which pitted the traditionalists (teach mostly dead white men) against  multiculturalists (teach a more diverse body of authors).

In my course, I start out with the typical literary periods--Romanticism, Realism/ Naturalism, Modernism, then we read novels by an African American (Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye), contemporary Native American (Sherman Alexie), Canadian (still American?--Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), and what I see as a critique of white man as victim, I guess (Palahniuk's Fight Club).

In any case, one of the questions on the first day questionnaire is "What is American literature?" I invite students to think about this broadly, and--more specifically--to apply it to three poems: Richard Blanco's "One Today", Robert Frost's "The Gift Outright," and Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again." My objective with having them read and respond to these poems is at least two-fold: one, to discuss what makes literature distinctly "American" and to point out that it is complicated and fraught (and perhaps to work together to find some questions/ issues we can apply to other things we read over the course of the semester); two, to see how well they do analyzing something relatively short and straightforward.

Other poems could be used, but I chose these three poems to provide 3 different viewpoints. Blanco wrote and recited his poem for Obama's second inaugural address. He was the first immigrant, first Latino, and first openly gay poet to be named Poet Laureate of the United States. His poems is optimistic, hopeful. Obviously his definition of America includes diversity, not just racially or ethnically, but in the types of work people do, etc. His poem echoes Whitman's "I Hear America Singing."

Frost's poem is more ambiguous: the "gift outright" is America itself, the land/ geography. Like Blanco, he recited the poem for an inauguration, in his case JFK in 1961. He had written another poem, but the glare of the sun made it difficult for him to read (he was 87 at the time), so he recited "The Gift Outright" from memory. In Frost’s poem, the “we” he includes are white settlers from Europe. In many ways the poem can be read as an expression of “manifest destiny,” the belief held by American colonists (and throughout American history) that God pre-ordained white settlers to spread across the land (and perhaps some whites feel that lofty position threatened today?). The dark side of that, of course, is that Native Americans were already here, and already had art, stories, creation myths, etc., that Frost ignores. So, the type of American identity that Frost expresses may be quite a bit different than what Blanco expresses. After all, Blanco was the first openly gay inaugural poet, and his parents fled Cuba and he was born in Spain. The unity that Blanco expresses no doubt includes people of different cultures, ethnicities, and sexual orientations.

Despite this, there’s an attempt in both Blanco and Frost to tie the literal facts of existence to larger spiritual/poetic forces. Also, the endings of both poems suggest that we are continuing to define what “America” might mean…that it’s an un-ending task. I think this is important in terms of an American lit. class because—at this point—literature is fragmented in so many directions that it’s impossible to pin down what a truly “American” literature might be.

I'm not trying to leave Hughes out of my exposition here. I've started my American lit classes for the last 3 or 4 times with this exercise. I added Hughes poem last semester, both to include an African American voice, and just to add more complexity to the overall idea of what "America" might mean. I like using the Hughes poem because it exposes the darker side of life, the illusion of the "American dream," but it ends on a hopeful note, that America as an ideal is still possible.

In any case, we will see what the students have to say about the poems on Thursday. I hope to use their responses to questions about what makes literature "American", etc., to create a memo that I can share with the class.

Core 101, Monday 8/27

Today was the first day of classes. I started class by introducing myself and letting students know a bit about me. I mentioned my background--B.A.'s in English and Philosophy and M.A. in English (American Lit, with poetry as a Master's thesis), classes I've taught at RU (Core 101 and 102, poetry writing, professional writing, American lit, and British lit). After that I went over the pertinent information in the syllabus, including office hours, grading, classroom policies, assignments, et cetera. I finished class by having the students state their names and a little bit about them (major or interest, where they're from, and last good book they've read). The assignment for Wednesday is to read over the syllabus and bring questions and to complete a first day questionnaire.

3 o'clock class: not all that happy with Young 406, but will make do. It's an extremely wide room with the computer against the wall directly beside the main entrance door. This means if you do a lot of teaching from behind the computer (I often do), it's hard to make eye contact with all the students. If you get out from behind the computer and walk around, of course you no longer have access to change slides, etc. It can also be difficult to get students on the far side of the room to actively engage.

Hard to have too many initial impressions of the students. When going around the room talking about themselves, most didn't seem too enthusiastic. However, I did have two students stay after class to tell me they write poetry and ask if I'd be willing to look at their work. So the class ended on a positive note. Given that I've been teaching for well over 10 years now, I was a bit more nervous than I would've liked to be when the class started. A big part of getting off to a good start, in my opinion, is being approachable and appearing to be a "chill, normal"--but capable--person. Too much nervousness can undermine that. I strive to sound casual rather than mechanical. On the first day, first class, I was semi-successful with that.

5 o'clock class: Went somewhat better. I think having one class down and having gone through all the material I planned to cover helped me feel more at ease for the second class. The room, Davis 142, is also more suited to a small Core class. The computer and screen is directly in front, not off to the side as in Young 406, and there's a table where the teacher can sit directly in front of the class. I covered basically the same material, but felt more at ease talking. This seemed to make the students feel more at ease, as they were more talkative in this class. For instance, I had a decent small discussion with two local students when using the Mountain Valley Pipeline as an example of an issue that could be covered for the "Approaches to Argument" assignment, where the goal is to examine opposing arguments from at least two writers on the same issue. At the end of class, two students stopped to tell me they were looking forward to the semester and excited about the class. Always nice to hear.