But more than an over-quoted line from Hamlet, you’re reading a joint blog by Eric Kennedy and Christine Gill (us) about our experiences as instructors of First Year English at Marquette University. The blog more specifically recounts our true-to-life interactions with our students, recounting our struggles to better understand how our students participate and what we have tried in class to energize our students to speak up and share. We have chronicled both our victories and our failures here for you to peruse.
Okay, that sounds like a thing. Why, then, should I read this thing?
Well, we could go into a used car style sales pitch, but we prefer to be more honest than that. This blog is here, first and foremost, for us. It is a way for us to think about how we have been interacting with our students and classes. But, in doing so, we hope that visitors to this site will be able to take something away from our self-indulgent musings that they can use in their own classrooms. If you are a fresh, baby faced teacher, a grad student serving as a TA, or someone considering the field of teaching in lieu of lucrative career choices, we hope that you can find something on this site that helps you better understand what to do with those students as you face them in the eye and they face their smartphones instead of responding.
Cheeky. So you two are like experts or something?
Not in the least! Excuse us while we chuckle at this.
Okay. Reposed.
We are not experts by any means. In fact, we are those fresh, baby faced teachers that we mention in the previous answer. But, in between episodes of Breaking Bad and Duck Dynasty, we’ve done our homework. Our Research pages will attest to that.
What you’ll find in the blog is what we have done with our research and ideas in our own, actual, real classes (yes, they let us teach). Like those in our target demographic, we are stumbling through our first year of teaching and learning a lot along the way. We have put some of best and worst experiences here for those like us to consider, and those who have been there before to snicker in recognition.
I showed the above clip of Harry Crews telling stories from the 2003 film Searching for the Wrong Eyed Jesus to my class at the beginning of this final unit on narrative analysis. The clip is a great introduction to the unit, showing quite directly how we use stories to understand the world we live in. The class responded pretty well to it, and I decided to use a selection from Crews’s memoir, A Childhood: the Biography of a Place, to discuss the elements of non-fiction narratives.
On the day that they were to have read the Crews selection, I separated them in to 4 groups and gave each group a theme to discuss together and then share as a group. (The themes in question were: storytelling, gender, difference and race, and class.) The responses I received from this analysis was underwhelming. While most of the students said they enjoyed reading Crews, they seemed less than thrilled to have to dig deeper in the piece and think about these ideas. But, more than that, I think the group dynamic caused more distraction than constructive thought.
My classroom is not very large, and I can hear every conversation that goes on from any spot in the room. I heard more conversation about what students did over the weekend than conversations about thematic elements of the reading. When they shared their thoughts, the examinations were hardly more than surface level; students simply pulled out examples of the themes in the reading, exact quotes, and offered little or no evaluative thought concerning these examples. I spent the remainder of the class trying to push them further in their thinking, but they just weren’t biting.
So, for their reading the following class period, I tried a different approach. I gave them a story, “The Fights,” from Donald Ray Pollock‘s collection titled Knockemstiff. I offered them nothing ahead of time concerning how to read the story or what to think while reading. I simply gave them the task of reading.
When class began on Wednesday, I first asked whether or not they like the story, to which some responded positively, and others said they were confused, that nothing happened and they didn’t understand why they were reading it. When I got a few personal responses, I told the students to take out a piece of paper and they had the next 15 minutes to complete a shortwrite in which they would write freely about the cultural and ethical elements of the story by examining the characters, setting, plot, and theme. They wrote diligently and we spent the remainder of the class discussing what they had written and what exactly was going on in the story. I got a number of excellent responses from this exercise and a few students showed a true understanding of what this type of analysis can do for a reading. I think that even a few of the students confused as to why we were reading the story were won over to the complexities of Pollock’s work by the end of the class.
In the course of this project, Christine and I have read a number of pieces that showed the benefits of group work to students. Participants in our student survey remarked about the benefits of group work in their classes. So I remain a bit baffled when I think about the differing levels of productivity demonstrated by the two activities described above.
The group work activity with the Harry Crews reading was less than fruitful. Often times, it proved to be a bumbling mess. Meanwhile, the quite, individualized activity with the Pollock story offered a much stronger response and level of thought, resulting in a stimulating full-class discussion.
I wonder is the timing of the readings had an effect on the students’ receptions of the activities. Were they less enthralled with the Crews activity because it was a Monday and the lethargy of the weekend had yet to wear off? Because the Crews selection was to be done over a weekend, did less students read it, and is that why the responses were weak? Did they not like being given the themes they were to discuss? Or do the group discussion really act as a distraction, offering the students a chance to socialize when they think the teacher isn’t listening?
I don’t honestly have an answer to any of these questions, but thanks to the results of these two exercises, I am more apt to do individualized activities when it concerns reading like this in the future.
If anyone reading this has some suggestions or responses to these answers, I would love to hear from you in the comments section. It could be a great conversation to get started.
Thanksgiving came late this year, so last week we only met once for FYE, and my class period was taken up with a peer review for the Unit Four paper. My students have become very adept in peer reviewing, and they usually can get done prior to the class period ending. Since it was two days before a long holiday weekend, I assumed that they would finish quickly and take off, but many of them stayed and asked me what I was doing for the holiday. We spent some time before class ended sharing stories of each other’s holiday traditions, and I could tell they were homesick and couldn’t wait to take a break and reconnect with their families again. I have become a bit of a mother figure to them, and they love hearing about my children and grand children, and what I was making them for Thanksgiving dinner.
Because I am making the effort to get them to be more independent when it comes to conferencing with me before their papers are due, I have seen an increase in visits to my office hours, and several stopped in the following day to connect with me one more time before their papers were due. I even received two emails on Thanksgiving Day with papers for me to “go over at my leisure” as they understood it was the holiday and didn’t expect me to give them advice right then and there. I think they just wanted to connect again.
I have come to love teaching first year English when I didn’t think I would, being a staunch student of literature not rhetoric, and I thrill at my students’ interest and successes. I am going to miss this group of students so much when this class ends next week, and I am thrilled that several have asked me when I’m teaching Rhet/Comp 2 next semester so that they can take my class again.
I feel that being aware early of the problems involved with getting students to participate as a whole has taught me many valuable lessons that I can take with me to future classes. I believe that always being aware of learning from my students as they learn from me, and adjusting every class accordingly, will help me become a better professor as time goes on.
I was blessed to have this particular group of rag tag pre-med, pre-dental, and biomedical engineering students and feel that through much effort on both sides that we have become a unit, and this first semester was a great success for all of us. I will miss them and wish them all the best in their very bright futures.
My class’s favorite activity is to break up into groups, take a piece of the day’s material, and teach it to the class. I even have one group of young men who happened to go to the same high school that put on a full presentation, including funny PowerPoints and parodies. I’ve learned that there is safety in numbers, and when allowed to pick their own herd, students really seem to enjoy getting up in front of the class. Surprisingly enough, my students are very thorough, and rarely do I have to supplement their content to make sure the lesson is given in it’s entirety. Friday is our last opportunity for them to “Teach Me something,” and I’m very proud of how far they’ve come and how much I have learned from my wonderful inaugural freshman writing class. It’ll be a bittersweet day.
This past Friday, as I stated in my previous post, I dedicated my class to allowing the students to share personal narratives in a format similar to that of The Moth. The reasons for this exercise were two-fold:
First, I wanted to reinforce the lessons from previous class periods concerning how biographical narratives are constructed and how we analyze them. I had hoped that each student who chose to participate and tell a story would effectively use character, plot, and setting to relate a personal event that mattered to their lives.
Second, I wanted this exercise to create a strong sense of community among the students. My classroom has had a healthy level of camaraderie all semester, but I am always looking for a way to strengthen the students’ relation to one another. Ideally, by sharing their stories, my students would get to learn something about their peers beyond their general chatter concerning sports teams and music.
So, did it work out that way? Were the stories related strong narratives? Did students learn more about each other?
The answers: kinda, not really, yeah.
The students aren’t the best storytellers, and that’s not through any fault of there own. Storytelling is an art form that not everyone exceeds at, and none of these students are creative writing majors (or English majors for that matter). I wasn’t expecting gold in these stories, but I was disappointed in the lack of detail that most of the stories exhibited. Given 5 minutes to talk, most participants blazed though their tales in 3 minutes or less. They rushed, excluding details and focusing mostly on the action of the stories than the set-up. I think a lot of this can be attributed to nervousness about sharing a personal story with a roomful of people that are not far removed from strangers.
On the positive side of this experiment, the students were able to learn a little more about their fellow classmates beyond trivial likes and dislikes. I like to think that this exercise helped to build a stronger sense of community in the classroom and grew each storyteller’s confidence.
All in all, the Moth experiment widened the sense of community in the class. In coming semesters, I would like to try this exercise earlier in the semester when the freshman are…well, fresh. It would be interesting to see what types of tales and how many volunteers I would get in a room full of people who have not had the chance to interact with one another as much as my students have after three months together. I think the tales would end up mostly on one side of the spectrum of openness or the other, but hopefully they will involve a little less aimless fluttering.
As a reward for some vastly improved papers that my class wrote for Unit 3, I baked them home made chocolate chunk cookies. They were still warm when I got to class. Let me assure you, this was not a condition for writing a good paper, and my students were surprised and pleased by the treats.
So did the cookies actually facilitate greater participation? While it wasn’t my intent, it did have the effect of bringing them together as a group. When students feel they are part of a group, and one that they are accepted in and have an equal stake in, they do tend to open up more. Given a common ground like the class’s steady improvement in writing unit after unit, and a common love of treats when far away from home and Mom, my students were in the mood to share and learn. What could be better than comraderie and free treats? For me, as their teacher, it was watching them share insights and be able to mirror back concepts on a non-fiction narrative I presented. The cookies weren’t bad either.
Not far from campus, on the first Thursday of each month, The Moth holds a live storytelling event. This event allows for those in attendance to put their names in a hat and, if selected, they have five minutes on stage to tell a true, personal story that relates to a theme provided for the event.
I went to my first Moth even last month and told a story that related to the theme of Creepy. The whole process of sharing a personal tale with a room full of strangers was exhilarating.
So, as I was thinking about my class this Wednesday about autobiographical narratives, I started to think about ways to use the Moth in class. I had thought of simply using one of the many audio recordings on the Moth’s website, but I have used audio recordings in class this semester, and while the discussions that followed got the students involved, I really wanted to do something a little less passive. The question that I had to face was whether or not the students wanted to be less passive.
After the straightforward lecture on autobiographical narrative on Wednesday, I presented the class with these options: 1) They could do the reading listed on the syllabus for homework and we could discuss them on Friday, or 2) we could hold a mini-Moth in which they would get up in front of the class and share an autobiographical narrative in 5 minutes. They unanimously selected the latter option and as a demonstration and to make them comfortable with the process, I shared a personal story with them.
The fact that they selected this type of activity shows me that they would like to be actively involved in class rather than go through a much more passive class. I am excited to see the results and how far out of their shells they are willing to go. I shall report back with the results after class on Friday.
The assignment for Friday is described below:
Write an outline or summary paragraph of an autobiographical narrative that fits into one of the themes below:
Creepy
Trust
Nerve
During Friday’s class, those who wish to share their stories will put their names into a hat and they will be drawn randomly. Those people chosen will tell their story to the class using the elements of narratives that we have discussed this week (plot, character, setting, theme). Storytellers will have 5 minutes to tell their stories. Those who tell a story will be able to add .5 points to any unit essay grade.
I did something this week I was not supposed to do as a TA in the first year English program: I taught a piece of fiction to my class! Shocking, I know. The final unit of this class is on analysis of non-fiction narratives and the parameters of the program discourage the use of fiction in the classroom. But, when I was preparing for the unit, I decided that the best way to teach my students the elements of literary narratives was to have them read and discuss a tightly constructed piece of fiction. Also, I presented the option of reading fiction to the class and was met with a resounding positive response on the matter (i.e. They wanted to read fiction).
So, this past Monday I reviewed the elements of literary narrative analysis to my students and then had them read, in class, Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants.” Not only was this a great class for me as a teacher and as a lover of fiction, but my students had one of the most stimulating conversations we’ve had all semester. They were clearly engaged and as they or I made different points regarding Hemingway’s story I could see the gears turning in the heads of my students as they encounter new ideas and ways of reading an analyzing. They were so into discussing this story as a group, in fact, that we ran out the clock on the class and had to cut things off midstream to make way for the class occupying the room after us. This class showed that giving the students a task that they not only want to do, but also challenges the way they read and think can result in a stimulating classroom discussion in which they are eager to participate.
Eric shared with some of the TAs in First Year English that Heminway’s Hills Like White Elephants was a great piece to demonstrate the difference between looking at a text literally or literarily. For Unit 4, students must write a rhetorical analysis on a non-fiction narrative focusing on textual, cultural, and ethical elements.
I chose to present the piece from a well-acted YouTube video, and explained to my class that movies were a visual text medium. As a class, we discussed the surface literal meanings behind the text, and I had intended to break them into small groups, something they are bored with by this point in the term, but something told me to offer them a couple of different options. I offered them the small group dynamic with each group discussing and then presenting a different aspect of the text including plot, them, character, setting, etc. Their second choice was to continue discussing the piece literarily as a class with the stipulation that ALL students must participate in the class discussion, and that is what they chose to do.
It was probably the best and most animated discussion I have experienced with them yet this semester. They were really excited about the piece and even got into a bit of a debate about the male versus female perspective. Quiet students who I know from their papers are very intelligent happily joined in, and those I never hear from seemed to feel free and safe enough to participate.
I decided to push my luck, and offered them the option of writing their papers on a fiction short story that has meaning for them with my pre-approval. Although it means more work for me, as I will have more to read at the end of the semester, it was worth it to see their reactions and happy animation at the idea of having a choice.
…and that was the key. Giving students some choice in the classroom to have control over their own learning fostered a more animated and participatory classroom, something we all benefited from. By going with the flow and reading students’ reactions, I was able to foster the participation in my classroom I have been yearning toward all semester.
Because we are struggling to find ways to increase participation in our classes, we have both been focused on trying different avenues to foster participation among our students that we are discovering through our research.
Recently, my class wrote a research paper on a global health issue. This unit’s portfolio was worth 25% of their grade. Because of the hard work they put into their papers, and because some did not achieve the grade they had hoped to, I encouraged them to present their papers to the class in the form of a Power Point presentation. I offered to give them a one half grade raise if they did so as incentive.
Interestingly enough, the majority of the students who participated were the high achievers. Several students, for example, raised their grades from an AB to an A. Just less than half of the class took me up on my offer. I allowed a maximum of three presentations on any given class day. I also stipulated that they have them finished by the end of the next unit in an effort not to stray too far away from the original assignment.
All in all, I feel that it was a successful experiment. The students really did a great job, and everyone both enjoyed and learned something from the presentations. It gave the presenters a chance to get up in front of class and speak, something I feel college students can’t do enough of. It also gave the rest of the class the opportunity to ask questions, see their classmates’ work, and interact with each other. As the semester moves forward, I can see them forming a unit and becoming more comfortable with each other and me, their teacher. Along with utilizing group work and group discussions at least one a week, I will be incorporating the new techniques we discover into my classroom to foster greater participation.
![Ernest-Hemingway-boxing[8]](https://raisetheirhands.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/ernest-hemingway-boxing8.jpg)
Raise Their Hands 