students

December 1, 2013

Stories Was Everything and Everything Was Stories

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.

ChildhoodOn 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.Knockemstiff

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.

-Eric

November 21, 2013

Teach Me Something!

lisa-simpson-grade-meMy 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.

-Christine

November 14, 2013

An Interesting Thing Happened on the Way to Discussing Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”

white-elephant-gift-exchange2Eric 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.

-Christine