I’ve been a bit slow letting you know my underground activities this week—things have been busy, though actually a little less busy than last week, when I was finishing off the Discovery Class.

I’m in a really wonderful mood this afternoon—even though my class wasn’t ready to discuss Henry James, we had a really productive session looking through their four page papers on Dead Poets Society. We didn’t get through all of them, but looking at two really in-depth was good. Once again things are being re-arranged—we’ll look at some short papers tomorrow, as well as hopefully the last two Dead Poets responses, and then look through Daisy Miller on Monday. I’m hoping to free up Tuesday and Wednesday for class peer-reviewing, and I’ve given the students extra options with their portfolio: if, having written their four original papers, all around 4 pages, they really hate one, they can discard it and turn another paper into an eight page piece of writing. I told my class, too, about some of the pedagogical articles on the teaching of writing, because I found them useful to thinking about my own writing. They’re really interested in reading them—and the reason I think that this is something very helpful for students is that they make even more explicit the degree to which writing is a process. To teach something, you have to be able to break it down in those process-steps.

Earlier this week I read a draft of my friend Carolyn’s thesis. She’s writing on pedagogies of writing, and one of the things that interested me most what her writing about how experts in other fields approach their work/become experts, and how that may be applied to the writing process. One of her central analogies was to the musician: obviously, with my training, this would appeal. The thing that rang true is the fact that the amateur musician plays a piece from start to finish. Even if they stop to go over where the mistakes might lie and practice those tricky passages a few times, they still “start at the top.” The expert musician will tend to go straight to the problematic parts, and work at the technique. I remember, oh so many times, starting with long tone exercises for maybe half an hour, then an hour or so on the technical parts of playing the flute before maybe allowing a quarter of a two-hour practice session on playing pieces of music… and still rarely from start to finish. I’m less disciplined when I do pick up my flute now, but I have that training, and I know what it means to play at a high level, and I still play through to find where the problems lie and then attack those sections. It’s so interesting. So I talked to my students about this idea, how getting these fundamentals in place allows you to do all the other things: if I can’t get the technique of the flute, putting “interpretation” and “style” on top won’t cover the failure in fundamentals. The basic form of an argumentative essay is, to some degree, a fundamental—getting that in place gives you the opportunity to then have fun with the piece of writing.

I feel like things have been going well, even in the very small class. It doesn’t feel like as much hard work—I’ve gotten better at asking questions, and when we workshopped the longer papers today, I could see the two students whose work we were looking at begin to voice the feedback I would give before I was giving it. I’m really loving this class.

Earlier this week we’ve look at two short stories and the opening portion of a novel. The first story we looked at was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” One student came in and asked why everything was so repetitious, but said too that The Great Gatsby was his favourite book. I told him to go home and read “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” and think about if this was Daisy’s set, 6 years before the action of Gatsby. He came in the next day and said he loved the story. We looked then at two really recent pieces of writing—Nell Freudenberger’s “The Tutor” from Lucky Girls, and the opening chapter of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, to think through what kind of things are set up in the beginning of a story, and how contrasts and oppositions (here, class, race) are set up at the outset of most works. I feel like each student responded to different work, though with such a small number of people it was hard to keep the conversation going all the time. Still, I loved it when a student came in to discuss “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” and said, “It’s just like Mean Girls.” Now I haven’t seen Mean Girls yet, but the trailer told me a lot, and judging by the trailer I agree…

In other news, one of the Baked and Wired boys, Taylor, invited me to this poetry group last night. So I wandered up to Columbia Heights and found myself having such a great time: reading poems, writing poems. (I feel like my poem is a good basis for a poem, but it is, at the moment, a little too “neat.” Sometimes I think my endings resolve too quickly—like it used to be with my music. I’ve gotten much better with the poems, but it takes work, and twenty minutes last night wasn’t enough. Also, I feel like a bit of research will add something to the mix.) It was such a relief to talk about poetry. I feel like I’ve been so ensconced in teaching, that some of my fundamental activities—reading, writing—haven’t had as much attention as they otherwise would, or as they should. So, I’m going to try to get some more bits of writing happening in the next week, even before class finishes. Then I’ll have another ten days or so to think and laze about and maybe get out of town for a day or two before my parents arrive.

Did I mention that my mother and father are coming out? I haven’t seen them since early January, and Skype conversations don’t quite make up for it. In three weeks I’ll be in the Australian fold. I’m a happy, happy Miss Kate.

Gosh! Is it Wednesday night already?

I’ve always known that teachers read student work, and grade student work—but as a student I don’t think I ever understood how much thought and work that process of commenting on student writing takes. To be sure, you get a really varying degree of response—from no response, to red marks over every mistake, to a full page of comments on the writing. I try to give response both in a timely fashion (I fail at this sometimes… I mean, when I say “sometimes it takes me a week to get work back,” it doesn’t seem bad—but we’re meeting every day. To me this seems too long, and I certainly don’t want to get buried under student work…) and in a way that is constructive. I suppose I will see how this is working when I start to see new work from students after they received their initial feedback, as well as revisions. I think it worked in the Discovery Class—at the outset I told students I was happy to regrade any work they wanted to rewrite, based on feedback, outside of class time, and the few that have rewritten have improved a lot. I don’t know if they’re putting a lot of time into the revisions, whereas our class time is restricted, or if it’s about as much time again, just with a little guidance. I suppose as I teach more I’ll be able to see what kind of progress is being made.

And speaking of my Discovery Class—tomorrow is my last day with them. I’m pretty sad. I’ve had some really good days with them, as well as some when I’ve felt that they haven’t responded. I think since I did start getting their work back to them very punctually that has also helped break the ice a little too. It’s over so quickly! I’ve taught 13 classes with them, and tomorrow is the 14th and final. I asked them what they wanted to do—they asked to watch Clueless. I tried to find a copy on short notice, but didn’t. I’ll take a few things in so they have the option on what we watch/do. And I’m bringing strawberries. But before that, there is still about half an hour of writing left to do.

And speaking of watching movies, we ended up taking a day in between watching the first two thirds of Dead Poets Society and the last section in class—between my returning it after class in the late afternoon and returning the next morning not long after the library was open, someone else came and borrowed it! I ended up buying a copy last night, since I’m using it in both classes. The most interesting thing, though, was that we talked for about forty minutes in class on yesterday about where the narrative had taken us so far, and talked about narrative conventions—almost none of the students had seen the film before, and I asked them to make guesses based on what they had watched on what would happen to the characters. There were a lot of the “types” we had already seen in our trailers exercise—rebel, shy kid, new kid, lovelorn, nerd—and based on those types and the narratives we’re all familiar with, they were able to make some pretty good guesses. They then wrote responses to one of two different quotes from Mr Keating in the classroom—and it was the best batch of writing I had received from them.

Today we finished watching the film in my morning (Discovery) class, and we started watching it in my afternoon class. I cried in the morning class—I’m afraid it’s going to happen again tomorrow! None of the students wanted to talk about the film immediately after we finished it this morning. I understand that. It’s hard to take in, and then voice an immediate response (beyond: wah! Neil!) really.

I still thinking through commenting on student work. I think my comments have been getting longer—I don’t mind writing very detailed comments, but I also don’t want to overwhelm students. When Joe Harris ran a workshop at Georgetown last year on responding to student writing, he said he tended to err on the side of brevity. At the same time, I feel that the students in my Expository Writing class want all the feedback I can give them—they are really keen to improve their writing, and think about academic forms. I feel like some were a little disappointed with their first grades—but they are all provisional. Every piece can be revised, and I’m happy to talk to read another draft before they submit their final portfolio. I know they’re all capable of doing really well—and their papers all show that they’re heading there. It’s actually exciting to see, for the first time, the full process of students going through these stages, and at the same time, reformulating their ideas about what it is to write an academic paper.

Fingers crossed I don’t cry too much in class tomorrow. I might have to warn them in advance I’m a big sook over sad movies.

I’ve entered my last week of two classes a day, and from next week I’ll have more time in the mornings. I’ll be able to get to the gym and do all my grading day to day. I’m looking forward to it.

I was disappointed to find out today that one of my students has left the university—my small class is even smaller. Another student has been having some health problems, and so I’ve had a couple of classes with only three students. When it gets down to that number it can be hard to keep the conversation going—hard to keep the interest moving along.

I came in today with my movie trailer exercise for the expository writing class. I was interested that the students picked up on exactly how much was being replayed in the trailers very quickly. I had a long list of trailers—and I’d emailed the list to students before class so they would have them to refer back to—and we didn’t get through them all. I feel like the exercise fell a little flat this time around—I’m wondering if it’s that they felt the repetitions were so overt? It strange—watching them not as texts, as a form on their own, has been really interesting for me. Perhaps the students have already got the point about representation and types. Are they one step ahead of me? It’s possible.

I think it’s the smaller classroom. In the discovery class, students who hadn’t previously spoken in class made links between different films. None really started to get into the more mechanical side—the fact that the introduction of the music that sees out the trailer (and makes the viewer excited, supposedly, that it’s “coming soon”) basically adheres to the golden section. I tried to point out the post-MTV changes to the trailers—each seems more like a video clip than they did before MTV. We talked about some of the basic stories. How certain things “signify.” Maybe I’ll bring in a piece from Barthes’s Mythologies to see how his writing helps us think through the trailer. Teaching trailers I certainly find that I’m more interested in them as a form. I don’t know if this translates to my students suddenly being more interested. I do wonder if I’ve chosen too much that might be considered minutiae? I’m interested in everything—but I know that doesn’t necessarily translate. Hmm.

This morning class was watching Dead Poets Society. At the 85 minute mark the real drama is yet to come. I asked students who hadn’t seen the film before to think about the films they’ve seen before, the stories they’ve read before, and what they expect to happen next. To experience the narrative in an accumulative fashion, and think through the conventions. What I think of, after last semester, as a “Ragussian” method.

Grading. Let’s talk about grading for a second.

How do I grade a class where I can’t give the students homework? I’ve been grading on the high side for the discovery class, because in a classroom setting you can’t assume everyone (anyone?) is going to be able to write a high quality essay. I mean, the environment doesn’t work for some people. No-one has access to a computer, and some people do work that way. People work at very difference paces, and don’t have access to all the resources (I’m think of EFL students) they might need to do their best work. I try to make the OED online available, but students rarely want to come to the front of the class to check things. I ask them to peer review, but not all students are able to give the kind of feedback that helps. I put a list of questions on the board for last week’s peer reviewing, and when students wrote reflections about how they might rewrite their paper, they would comment that their peer thought they’d done really well, and they just had to fix some grammar mistakes. It’s difficult to gauge how to approach it.

Mostly I have been emphasising participation, responding the peer reviews in the format required, and making sure students quote and analyse sources in their papers. And I’m really pleased that somehow all the assignments are working on an analytical level.

So, the last couple of days have seen me ready to fall asleep as soon as I get home, but having to stay up to get some things done. It’s been slow.

This week seems to be less exciting for the students in both classes. In the morning (discovery) class the week started out with advertising, and then moved to poetry. (Obviously the two belong together… ?) While students seemed to be entirely confused about why I might want them to look at the ads I was giving them—and, let’s face it, the more magazines you flip through, the better you are at tuning out those pesky pages—they all did a good job at them. First I broke them into groups and asked them to brainstorm together, and present to the class what was happening in their ad.

I set the assignment as first a straight description, followed by an analysis/interpretation, based on the central question: “why might the advertiser have chosen to include/portray that element.” After speaking in front of the class, and having the rest of the class make occasional extra observations, I asked the students to write a one page analysis—no introductory paragraph that tells me advertisements are used to sell clothes, just getting straight to the point. Description, detail, interpretations and analysis. I do find it interesting that the students seemed to think it was a silly exercise, and then, comparatively, they were really very good at it. I was talking to Samantha Pinto, a member of the faculty at Georgetown, about this, and she said that students she teaches in her general writing classes also really respond to the visual. Is it to do with our attention span?

And then on to poems. We looked at three poems, one by Gwendolyn Brooks (‘We Real Cool’—it definitely fits the class theme…) and two by Seamus Heaney—‘Digging’ and ‘Clearances #4.’ Pretty much anyone who has ever met me has heard me rave about the latter. It ended up being a line by line activity—yesterday I think I probably did too much of the reading myself. In part I was demonstrating, I guess, the types of questions/difficulties you encounter when reading a poem, but in part I was just giving into the urge to fill the silence. Not absolute silence, but that waiting for someone to speak up.

Today we spent nearly an hour on ‘Clearances’—fourteen lines, and we went into it in real detail. I got a bit more sleep last night (and woke up with so much to do—was off in a rush again…) and decided I was happy to stare them out. So—it was on the quiet side, but somehow it didn’t feel bad. I had students answering that hadn’t answered before. I asked a couple of times who normally don’t contribute to the discussion to answer or read parts of the poem, and answer very simple questions. I asked people to paraphrase sentences, to tell me what words were repeated. I got answers to most of my questions, even if it felt like the answers came on delay. The last half hour was handed over to writing: I asked the students to choose one of the three poems and write an analysis of it. I told them I expect a page, or more—not all students are writing the amount I’m asking for. So—I’ll have to figure out how to approach that. Besides via grading. I mean, yes, I can’t expect everyone to be equally engaged, but when I see a student staring off into space instead of writing, see them having written a third of a page and telling me they’re finished—then I’ve been going and asking questions. Oh wise ones out there, is that pedagogically sound?

Then there are my afternoon students. Perhaps I’m back to confusing them. This week is meant to be print media—so a lot of it is dry compared with what we were looking at last week. I got a greater sense of engagement from the students when we were looking at narratives than this week when we’ve been looking both at narrative essays and more theoretical/historical writing.

Monday they managed to distract me altogether—by distract me, I mean to say that I taught a class I had been going to leave for the final week. We looked at some websites, including my Facebook page. I wanted to look at social networking as a means of representation—two of my students showed the class their myspace pages and we talked about the ways people use these to create an online identity for themselves. It was interesting.

Yesterday, though, we got back to the plan and looked at some reading on sociology, as well as David Brooks’s article “The Organization Kid.” Most weren’t particularly interested in the sociology—one student found it really interesting, but others were resistant to it. It was very much on the “introducing concepts” side. Plus, I guess in part since I’m not trained in sociology I found it difficult to know how to approach it, given their lack of enthusiasm. Then we talked through the David Brooks article—I was initially expecting the students to be really resistant to this piece from the Atlantic that depicted them as incredibly goal-oriented, to the extent that the writer portrays a concern with character and moral integrity lacking. That the writer is basing a large series of generalisations—in which he isolates some features of the students attending Princeton, and then writes these features can be read across the “younger generation” in some measure—on the conversations he had with a few dozen students. Especially since these are students he found from having their professors send their details to him, rather than making contact himself.

I had my own reaction to this as a piece of writing, and the surprise came when the students probably recognised more of the piece of writing than I did. Assume nothing, Kate. Outside the Writing Center, I haven’t spoken to a lot of current undergraduate students in America—it was an interesting discussion. I wonder if it was more interesting for me than for them? I was mostly surprised that no-one really seemed to want to argue against the assertions that Brooks made. They thought some were exaggerated, but didn’t have a lot to say.

Then today I asked them to read a section of No Logo that talks about the rise of youth as a demographic to target, marketing-wise, but also to commodify. Unfortunately, not everyone had read it in full. Still, I had some other things ready, and they know I expect them to have the chapter read for tomorrow. While going through some of the things Klein points out, I was able to sprinkle in more of the visual, as well as an article from last week’s New York Times—from the style section. I started the discussion with the product placement segment of Wayne’s World, and asked them to think about what was going on there. Yes: they’re making fun of product placement, they’re making a point that to allow it they’d be selling out—but they’re still including it. Yes, it’s funny. But more than that, it’s a great ad. Some slogans are repeated even as they’re made fun of. The products are still being worn or held by the “celebrities.” How do you read that?

The New York Times article was about the sudden market for designer sunglasses. (Honestly, I thought that had been big business since Tom Cruise put on his Raybans in the 1980s.) There were really varied responses. A couple of students admitted to going out and spending some pretty serious money on sunglasses, and to having the brands named in the article. Another student said the whole thing was a waste of paper. There’s a fine line there between a report on a fashion trend, and the creation of hype for certain brands and certain shops—the article starts with a high-end sunglasses emporium. Name the shop. Name the brands and styles of the moment. Name the price, just in case anyone knows their friend has a pair, but never found out how much they cost. The debate that started up (and led, somehow, from sunglasses to crocs) was quite vigorous—but was also still on the surface level. How to dig in?

We ended by looking at some advertising images online that I found, and talking through the types of strategies that the advertisers were using. Tomorrow we’ll do some work with the print advertisements I distributed.

Oh, and because it made me happy, I also showed them the Sesame Street 1234 video that’s coming up on the new revamped Sesame Street—this was sent to me yesterday, after I’d just read in the newspaper that Sesame Street is revamping its website, to make it more attractive to its demographic—yes, the under 5 set have a lot of power. And those of us who watched Sesame Street well into our teens and twenties…

I’ve got to forge the link back to representation, and the “so what?” critical questions that were lacking in looking at the images and videos today. Fingers crossed. Next week it’s back to fun stuff, but there’s still some work to get through this week.

Weekend report:

I finally made it to West Virginia—K and I went to Harper’s Ferry today. We took her family’s truck, and she has a GPS that her mum called Molly. As we were starting to head back I realised I was living the dream: I was finally truckin’ with Molly in America. Now, if only I could do that for a few months without feeling constantly guilty about the environmental impact, then I could write the books I’ve always wanted to write…

So, Harper’s Ferry. It started pouring with rain about 20 miles out, so it wasn’t the best day for a trip, but it was still pretty. We both took a good number of photographs—mine were with my old school Pentax, so it’ll be some time till I see them. I don’t expect great things as the light wasn’t very good, but… it was nice to have the camera out. We wandered across the bridge by the railway and climbed over a few things to get to an abandoned building. Always fun. Oh, and we were most impressed by the number of churches for such a small population.

K also gave me a cultural experience on the way there: my first stop at a Waffle House. It was very classy. We stopped in Urbana, and I took a few photos first (the roadside diner thing fascinates me) and when we were in the staff immediately asked me where I was from. They don’t see many Australians in Urbana, so they fussed over us, and, for some reason, gave us paper Waffle House hats, which of course K and I wore through our meal. K also scored a Waffle House mug to take back to her dad.

Beyond that, I got a feel for how much I’ll treasure weekends for the next few weeks, while my fulltime teaching continues. I’ve still got some student work to comment on today, and hopefully I’ll get through some tomorrow afternoon as well.

After class today I was talking excitedly with my friend Lauren about the class I taught today. Lauren has just graduated from the English Masters program and is teaching in a reading program at the moment. She took Randy Bass’s class “Approaches to Teaching Writing” the year before me, and so we ended up discussing teaching (it really is all that’s on my mind at the moment…) and learning.

During the course of talking Lauren said, “It’s usually the classes you don’t do as well in that you learn the most from.” (Or something like it.) I’m not saying that’s true for everyone—and when something really engages someone, it’s often the case that they do better. But I’m a bit slow really. So—the classes where I’ve gotten an A minus instead of an A tend to be the ones where there’s been enough complexity in the material or approach that I am not finished with it by the time I hand in my final paper. I’m fine with this—I realised quite a long time ago now that I can’t synthesize all this material quickly. I work intuitively, and sniff out connections—and that happens slowly. The reason I mention this at all (in, yes, a convoluted fashion that might also function as a confession—I figure things out in my own time… unfortunately that doesn’t always match semester deadlines) is that I feel like now, both in and out of the classroom, I’m making all the connections I began to learn about in “Approaches to Teaching Writing.” For the first month or two of that class, though, I was mystified—I was adjusting to America, I’d never really heard anyone discuss pedagogy, and I hadn’t even figured out yet that there are different conventions for writing an academic paper in America as opposed to Australia. Now I feel like it’s all starting to become clear. After a few days of seeing things changing in front of my eyes I’m excited to go into the classroom. I feel like teaching is something I could be good at, could really enjoy.

Anyway, another class today: minus a couple of students (one was sick… the other I’m not sure about, though he emailed me a paper.) And, a new student. So, when everyone shows up I’ll have six. That seems like a really nice number—that we can do a lot of really productive work as a whole class.

Today three students brought in work to the whole class. (I had hoped this would be all five.) I asked them to email me a one page response to The West Wing, and I brought copies to the class. We started with a general conversation about the episode, and went into the papers. Each student read their paper aloud and we discussed them—located the central questions, the thesis statements. Discussed transitions, where ideas didn’t seem one hundred percent unified… The students were so supportive at the same time as being critical. And they each got a round of applause after we discussed their paper. Each of them had already done in this second response what I had hoped the students would be able to do at the end of five weeks: they had gone past the “character” stage of reading, and begun to investigate what was represented. Each of them had located a potential point of difficulty, and asked a question that had no definitive answer. Some had started to work toward an answer—I’d let them know this wasn’t a primary goal for me until they wrote a longer paper. The critical question was enough—but still, some were on their way to the next stage. Honestly, I was so impressed. I feel like they’ve travelled as writers in only a couple of days—I feel like talking about writing for audience and writing conventions are one of the most helpful things. When I’ve talked with students in Liberal Studies, this has helped them too. In a sense, now the subject matter can take an equal footing with the writing, and we can look at both aspects really critically because I don’t feel like I have to nitpick through the nuts and bolts. They’ve all demonstrated they can think and they can respond to each other’s writing. After discussion all the students were able to discuss what they would work on to move this particular piece to the next level as a piece of writing—so, another goal (understanding writing as a process) enters the frame. The fun begins.

Incidentally—I think I mentioned that I wasn’t sure what teaching The West Wing would be like. I think they really took to it—and that the fact of having young adult characters in an adult drama, contributing ideas, was something that really appealed to them. A few asked more questions about the series as a whole, and were interesting in watching more.

Oh, and I thought I would post the links to the movie trailers I used in that exercise. (I also let my afternoon students know that that was coming up in a week or so…) I found it really productive—seeing patterns, looking at the “form” of the movie trailer over 50 years, especially trailers for the audience of teenagers, getting a context to view current trailers critically.

So, here’s a lovely list. I didn’t get time to use them all, but whether it’s for your own sake or because you think there’s some chance you might ever teach movie trailers, I personally think they’re interesting. But then, I think most things are interesting. Common themes? Cars. Romance. Sports. Rock'n'roll. Generational conflict. Rebellion. Gosh! How surprising!

Some teen trailers:

Rebel without a Cause (1955)
Gidget (1959)
American Graffiti (1973)
Grease (1978)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Karate Kid (1984)
Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Teenwolf (1985)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
The Chocolate War (1988)
Say Anything (1989)
Dead Poets' Society (1989)
Heathers (1989)
Flirting (1991)
Clueless (1995)
Romeo and Juliet (1996)
Varsity Blues (1999)
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
Save the Last Dance (2001)
Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Crazy/Beautiful (2001)
Igby Goes Down (2002)
Mean Girls (2004)
Step Up (2006)
Charlie Bartlett (2007)

I’m juggling all the things I do: for instance, during the week poetry is on the backburner. I’ve managed, for the most part, to write my intended Independence Day entries (and, after announcing a few independence days to my discovery class, to prompt one student to ask how I know that… I was surprised that the fact that I write a blog is actually considered cool. When did the bloggers become the cool kids?) Poems have been on hold. Reading large slabs of my “whatever I want” pile has been on hold… hopefully I’ll get some of that on the weekend. This isn’t necessarily a complaint: I’m adjusting.

When a class has seemed to be a little flatter than usual—not as responsive, not sure what the hell I was talking about—I have been really affected, mood-wise. I asked a friend—who’s done a lot more teaching than I have—if that’s “usual.” I don’t know about everyone else out there, but apparently it’s at least not unusual for the first-time teacher. It gets easier. At the same time, I don’t think I’ve had any disasters so far, and when I’ve described what I’m doing in the class each day to other friends who are also starting out their teaching, they sound interested.

I was a little concerned that the fact I’ve kept the syllabus a little loose would be a problem. I asked Maggie Debelius, who both runs the Writing Center at Georgetown and also teaches a section of the “011” first year writing course. She said that it’s not a problem—that students don’t get terribly traumatised by it, for instance. That it has advantages and drawbacks: the drawbacks? Spending more time each day thinking through what the class will be doing the next day. The advantages? Flexibility to spend time on what seems to interest the students more—or even, in my case, to include two articles from yesterday’s New York Times that I happened to come across, and the cover and editorial from the issue of Vanity Fair that arrived in the mail last night.

I was worried that the subject matter might seem a little too—diffuse. There’s a common thread there—representations of teenagers. But I guess it jumps all over the place—cultural studies, sociology, politics, cinema studies, literary studies. At the same time, again, this is seen as something on an advantage: not every kid coming into university is going to end up being an English major. (Like, oh my god, they’re not?) So, again, there’s no rights and wrongs—no one way to do it.

Last night I went out with friends for a drink and a late-night burger. (My first in well over a month… what kind of pop culture fiend can I be? I don’t have a television, and I never eat fast food.) Pretty much all grad students, and a lot of them doing their first teaching as well. Nicole, who’d just finished her course, reminded me of another major thing we discussed in “Approaches to Teaching Writing.” Again, thanks to Randy Bass…

When you teach a course, it’s important to have some core goals. What are the things you really want every student to walk away with? For me the core goals are two-fold: I want, first, my students to understand the conventions of writing for an academic context. (And yes, I mean conventions… the mechanics of it, but also that the same subject matter and argument can be presented in different ways for different audiences.) And secondly, I want my students to be able to go beyond the “character” stage of reading, and get to the “representation” stage.

So, yesterday’s class. Once again I broke the 90 minute class roughly in half. For the first half of the class, thinking about the notion of “making writing visible in the classroom” I brought in the introductory paragraphs from two of my own response papers, as well as some other writing. I had copies of these examples of writing for everyone, as well as putting some of it up on screen. I read each of my own paragraphs (making the point that in my other life, when I’m not way too into pop culture, I know an awful lot about Victorian literature…) and we discussed them. One didn’t provide a thesis, but asked the types of questions that went straight into representation: in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. (Anyone who’s interested, I am fascinated by the fact that Lizzie and Eugene pretty much disappear from the narrative, and definitely disappear as a couple, for a quarter of the text. They’re a cross-class-lines match—a radical possibility for Dickens. Is he shying away from what he’s set up?) and the students picked up straight away that there was no thesis. But they were interested in the types of questions I was asking. The second, also on Dickens (thanks to Leona Fisher) was about Bleak House, and it did state a thesis. The students criticised where they thought I had used to much context/overview. They discussed the way I framed my questions. They saw that I’m not a perfect writer, but that I’m writing to conventions. I showed how I picked up on the language of the text (weaving “bleak” through the paragraph, for instance) to make Dickens’s language work for my argument. They got it. Happy teacher.

Then I turned to non-academic writing. I used two examples of blog writing, that make an argument. The first was from Matthew Yglesias—who I’ve just discovered. He’s not always putting forward an argument (more comment with occasional analysis… there’s so much on his blog that it is often one of the “take a look at this” style… but he’s great.) I asked the students to read each paragraph—going around the class, everyone had a “turn.” We discussed his strategy—he in fact moved between casual language and what was highly academic terminology. We pulled up the OED online and looked up a word they hadn’t come across. (Not too many people come across eschatology on a regular basis… I know it care of Bernard Muir.) One of my students picked up on the fact that he called it a “philosophical rant” and moved between the more casual language associated with the rant, and enlisting Aristotle, Kant, etc, in supporting his argument. I was so happy!

Then I read a post by from Angryblackbitch: not at all framed as an academic paper, and not the type of writing they're used to encountering in the classroom, but pretty fantastic as a piece of persuasive blogging. I asked them to try to reframe her argument in terms of a more “conventional” thesis statement… and they did. Honestly, I’m so happy with these students.

And then we watched the episode of the West Wing that they’re responding to for today’s class. I wasn’t sure how this would come across: I was upfront about this, saying that I hadn’t taught it before (the My So-Called Life I used on Wednesday I’d already used with the Discovery class, as well as having the reassurance that Robyn had used it in a community college class to good effect). Today they’re sending me all their pieces of writing, and as there are five students, we’re going to workshop each response as a class. Wish me luck.

Well, I’m getting used to having places to be during the day. I need more sleep, though—I must get to bed earlier tonight! Two classes tomorrow, then only the one on Friday. Also, today marks the beginning of my second full week standing in front of a classroom.

I got through the rest of the movie trailers this morning, and then the students began writing—most of them looked like they were concentrating. Marvellous! Still, there were a few who weren’t writing at all, and just staring off into space. I don’t know if this is lack of interest of not understanding—I’m going to have to follow it up. I emphasised at the beginning that participation is really important to me, and so when I write up my feedback on the piece of writing they’ve just given me I might have to write a few comments on the participation aspect of the class—both making an effort to contribute to discussion, but also writing when there is a writing exercise in class.

I’ve been collecting articles and blog pieces and other bits and pieces in the last few days. Next week wanting to look at print media—mostly opinion pieces and essays about youth, but also advertising that targets youth and essays analysing the commodification of youth. As it’s all high school students I don’t want to get into heavy theory, but find more accessible articles that still isolate some important terms.

My first session of peer reviewing. At first the comments they gave each other were “yeah, it’s really good. Oh—your spelling is wrong on this word.” So talking to each pair I asked each student to state their partner’s argument, and point to where it occurred in the paper. Then I asked them to describe the structure and if they had any comments or ideas for that aspect of the writing, and finally I asked them to look at the evidence that was provided supporting the central argument and other examples or interpretations that could be given. Following this discussion I asked each student to write a reflection of what they would do next to develop this piece of writing further, based on our class discussion and on the peer reviewing. They’ve each handed in the piece of writing they did out of class time and the reflection I asked them to write in the last twenty minutes or so.

And my pen exploded. I ended up with ink all over my hands and, unwittingly, on my face. Well, not unwittingly. I just decided I could live with it.

Oh, and, apparently, “All you need is love.” Good to know.

When I was doing the subject “Approaches to Teaching Writing” (with the guru of pedagogical theory, Randy Bass) last year, the section that made the deepest impression on me was when we were discussing the differences between “novice” and “expert” writers. In these studies one of the keys to progressing in writing expertise was to acknowledge at the outset your status as a novice. (I’ve felt like a novice more than a few times since I’ve been a grad student—I hope that realising this in myself has helped me gain some expertise… especially since I’m teaching now.) Then, to move forward, another common factor among students who developed as writers was that they found something to write on that they felt a personal investment in. As seems perfectly obvious when you say it out loud (or write it on a blog…) students do much better when they care about what they’re writing. And now we have the studies to prove it.

Last year I designed a syllabus specifically around representations of Australia: it didn’t have to do with a particular age-group, but moved through a number of different media to draw a picture of historical and contemporary ideas of “Australia” and “Australians.” Now that I’m teaching this class I’ve chosen representations of teenagers: there’s “insider” knowledge, and the provocation to respond, but there’s also “outsider” perspectives my students will be responding to. I haven’t given much theory/criticism to read—I will. But I want to do a fairly direct reading of pop culture in the first instance.

I occasionally feel like the students are looking at me as though I’m teaching this so they’ll think I’m hip. (We, here, all know I’m not.) All I’m trying to get across that teenagers are represented everywhere—but the representations are limited. I think this is starting to come across.

My morning class went well this morning. (They both went well, but I was nervous about the morning.) I came up with the idea of looking at a series of movie trailers the other day. Thanks to the wonder of technology, I put together a series of links to “teen” films from Rebel Without a Cause through to Mean Girls. Today we looked at a series of eight trailers. (We’re going to do a few tomorrow.) For the first couple I asked them to describe what they were seeing—cars, generational conflicts, stereotypes, rock’n’roll… Yesterday students were nearly silent—today most people said something, and made connections between trailers, made guesses as to what kind of expectations the trailer set up, what types of “tags” were used to hook you in… We finished on Dead Poet’s Society, and suddenly one of the students who had written well but hadn’t participated in the discussion piped up in excitement—and immediately linked it back to the episode of My So-Called Life.

Tomorrow there’ll be more, and then a writing exercise that will most likely carry over to Friday. I do feel like it’s been a good exercise to get the students thinking critically. I suppose I’ll see how well it’s gone when we get to the writing… Fingers crossed.

So, I’m a teacher of writing. How much do I focus on the nuts and bolts of an argumentative essay, and how much do I focus on the type of class discussion that could generate a piece of writing with a central thesis? I mean, you’re writing about something—discussion allows a student to try out ideas, ask questions, hear the possible arguments that attempt to refute their own thesis. All good, right?

I taught two classes today—after despairing when it looked like the enrolment in my expository writing class had fallen to one, my spirits were definitely lifted when, arriving this afternoon, I had seven students in the classroom. After some general introductions (and answering some questions about Australia) we got started, and the discussion was lively. I used part of the following quote from Mark Davis’s essay “Turf War” to start our discussion of youth representation:

“Ten years after the first edition of Gangland was published, young people continue to be economically and culturally marginalised in Australia, pilloried in the media, valorised only insofar as their youthfulness can be commodified, but too rarely sought out for their ideas and opinions.”

Shifting it to an American perspectives, I asked a lot of questions—and I’m really glad that I didn’t just get answers that the students thought I wanted to hear. From talking about the political system, to the education system, to media saturation, we got a discussion going on how young people are treated and represented, and after an hour of talking the students wrote for half an hour, responding to the Davis quote, and to the discussion we had just completed. I’ve still got them to read—but I came out of the classroom feeling really energized. I had a real sense that the students wanted to be there, and were keen to voice their opinions.

After my morning class, though, I was feeling a little bit drained—a lot of silences when I asked a question, then a student would answer. A few friends teaching from the same program said they had real trouble getting kids to work today—said they wanted to chat, and they ended up feeling a bit defeated. I didn’t get that far, but it wasn’t exactly discussion. Tonight I’m going to look at finding a short piece of writing that we can analyse as a piece of writing, and that I can ask them to respond to. I have to figure out which pieces of the longer syllabus I have I can really adapt. I get the sense that the students have only ever responded to a set question, and that in most cases they write to an expected answer. Suddenly there’s this confusion of watching television—familiar—and being asked to think critically about it, and its potential “meaning” or impact—an unfamiliar action. I’ve been tinkering with my syllabus day by day, and I think this is going to continue.

In other news, first I experienced (very lazily) my first 4th of July—including a 4th of July party, and a somewhat obscured view of fireworks as I was making my way to the party. I didn’t realize that the fireworks would be at 9pm—I associated fireworks with new years, I guess, which makes me think midnight—or at least late at night. But of course families watch 4th of July fireworks. Anyway, I didn’t make it to the party to watch them from my friend’s balcony, but I kind of liked running into this crowd on a bridge in Arlington watching what they could see above the treeline. Something about being there, but not quite being there seemed right to me. The party was nice too.

And then Saturday I got to see a friend from home—Peter E., who I’ve known half my life now, was in DC to give a paper today at George Washington University. Saturday night he invited me to a dinner party at the apartment a friend of his (he and the friends we ate dinner with are all based in San Francisco at the moment—I think its coincidence that they were all here at the same time.) So, a lovely meal, a bottle of wine, some serious punning, and someone else with the Australian accent. So good.

Two nights out led to a quiet Sunday—writing Independence Day entries, reading, watching some of the shows I’m thinking of using clips from in class (an “intellectual” excuse to watch teen drama! Fab!). The usual.

I have a lot of responses to student writing to write tonight and tomorrow—the Renaissance class I’ve been working with meets on Wednesday, and I’ll have a set of blog entries and a set of essays to comment on. Gosh! So busy!

I think the next five weeks will settle into a pattern as I figure out this whole teaching thing. The good: I got the technology working. I got to show the students the episode of My So-Called Life that I wanted them to see. I broke them up into groups and they started talking about it. And nothing was bad—but I think I’m confusing the students a little. Part of it is that I have to figure out common ground—not only between myself and them, but between the students themselves. They vary from 15 years to 18 years, and they come, as mentioned yesterday, from six different countries. I already know that in different cultures essay-writing is approached and structured differently, and so I’ve been talking about an argumentative essay and addressing it for the US context—but I think I need to start being more explicit.

I’m also trying to find texts/shows that open up a lot of questions—I think, for instance, there were questions in the episode of My So-Called Life (“The Substitute”) that were quite clear—and a couple of students mentioned how much they agreed with it. I don’t know if they’re reluctant to ask their own questions, or if they simply aren’t used to the kind of questioning I’m trying to elicit. So, on my part, I need to be more explicit.

After watching the episode, I was interested in the fact that the students went for the obvious “issue”: censorship. (The episode, for those in the dark, has a substitute teacher come in, use unorthodox methods to “wake up” the students, and the result is a class lit magazine with writing that’s submitted anonymously and reflects what’s really on students minds, rather than what they think they should write for a “literary” magazine. Inevitably there’s a piece that meets with objections from the principal and the lit is pulled: the protagonist, Angela, decides to go against school rules and reproduce and distribute it on her own. In the mean time we learn that the teacher who is a hero to a lot of the students is morally ambiguous—he himself has abandoned his family and failed to pay child support. There’s a lot of other stuff going on—and it’s the details that make it work instead of seeming a typical “issue-oriented” show—but that’s the basics.) I don’t think I was very clear with the writing I asked them to do after we finished watching it: but we didn’t have a lot of time after the 45 minutes or so of the episode. I broke the students up into groups of three and four, and first asked them to discuss the show in light of their reactions to the “theme,” but also (more) to the relationships portrayed—cross-generational and among the students. I then asked them to write a short response about one of these relationships. I was hoping we’d be able to move from the overview to some level (even a smidgen) of analysis. I’ve only looked very briefly, and I think they students did start to approach that analysis—I am pretty pleased with that.

There is a group of about three or four that don’t seem as engaged in the class. Out of eighteen (I realised this morning that the roster listed one student twice, so eighteen is the total) I suppose that’s not bad. And they’re not being disruptive, they’re doing the writing and handing things in. I am not sure if they just don’t want to be there, or if there’s a language barrier, or what is happening. I’m hoping to be able to draw them into the conversation. Still, I feel like a lot of the other students are responding.

We didn’t get enough time with the episode, and I want to return to it—I’m not sure if we should come straight back to it on Monday, or if we should take a few days to look at a lot of different representations of teens and then come back to a more sustained narrative. I’m leaning towards the latter—in part for technology reasons. I haven’t been able to get internet in the building I’ve been in this week, and I’ll be back for the final two weeks of the class. Next week, though, I know the building I’ll be teaching in has internet, and I want to go through some online material. I especially want to look at a series of movie trailers, from Rebel without a Cause through to this year's teen movies and look at both how they’re trying to attract/sell to a teen audience, but also how recognisable “types” crop up again and again.

I was talking to my lovely friend Maureen yesterday, and she talked about wanting to teach a class like mine that has enough time for you to mess up, figure out what went wrong, fix it a little while probably messing up something else and—finding what works, what doesn’t. I hope between this and the class that starts Monday I can start to get a feel for how much can be covered, what works with different age groups, what—doesn’t work.

I've also got to spend the next few days getting ahead on the Independence Day Project. Gosh! I will be keeping busy...

Teaching: day one.

I didn’t end up getting the information for my class at all yesterday. I didn’t know how many students, and wasn’t absolutely sure they would be in high school (as opposed to junior high). I had been given the details of my classroom—but they were wrong. (Not even the same building… It’s a good thing I was early for class.) I also didn’t have a contact phone number to get the information I needed—but Lisa, who’s staying at my place at the moment, and also teaching, did have a contact. So, it got sorted. I got to my classroom, I had 17 high school age students (there will be 19 in total I believe) and, though the topic is essay writing, we talked less about writing essays than the theme for the class. Now, I think I will have to adjust it a little: only two of my students are American—others are from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, Spain and Taiwan. So, instead of representations of American youth, I’m hoping I’ll be able to bring in more general youth.

So: I asked a lot of questions today. People were initially shy with responses, but they warmed up, and I think a third of the class was pretty active in their participation. We talked about people that are seen to represent “America” (their suggestions varied from Obama/McCain to Harrison Ford, Donald Trump and Hugh Hefner.) I then asked them to think about young Americans (teenagers, or under 25) and compare the types of media that different figures attract. I asked them to think about the types of stories they read that involve young people—the Lindsay Lohen burnouts, the warnings about how the internet poses a threat to young people, the assumptions that youth culture is all sex, drugs, alcohol, hiphop (in lieu of rock’n’roll).

I got them to do only a little bit of writing—a brainstorms, then a personal response to the questions the class had raised. Tomorrow I hope I’ll have access to some technology—I want to show an episode of My So-Called Life and get them to start working on an analysis. There’s a chance the technology won’t come through, and if that happens I’ll have to find some articles about youth and some ads—I’ll play it by ear, I think.

Still, it was rewarding. And hard work! I hope that I’ll be able to draw more people into the conversation, get them thinking through the implications of the media they consume, think about reading everything. (I’m hoping to show them my Facebook profile at some point and ask them to “read” that—the groups I’ve joined, the fact that I’ve added Scrabble and iRead, my Penguin of the Day photos, that I’ve added two travel maps.)

I think they may have been a little confused by just how much I wanted to get them talking about youth culture today—this is an essay writing class. Aren’t I just meant to give them a question an watch them write? Apparently that’s what the person who substituted yesterday (while they were hiring me) did—gave them an essay to read that took them an hour to get through, then told them to write. But recognising the questions and doing the analysis—and talking it out—is definitely part of it, and something I want them to see is part of the process. Fingers crossed.

Whether or not my other class goes ahead next week, I’m definitely taking on a class starting tomorrow for the Summer Discovery program at Georgetown—it will be very similar to the course that I still hope will start next week, as it’s focus is also essay writing. I’m going to adapt the syllabus I already have—it feels kind of crazy. They were meant to start yesterday, and still hadn’t found someone to take it on, and I got the email this morning—responded within moments to say: yes! I’ll do it. It will be high school students, which I think is a good opportunity, since I haven’t ruled out teaching that age group when I get back to Australia… Australia. I miss home some days!

If the other course does go ahead, I’m going to end up incredibly busy for the next month. But it will also give me the money to go somewhere in August if I want to. (My impulse is road trip… since I haven’t driven a car, except a few times at Christmas, for a year, am I allowed a few weeks of high gas comsumption? Seeing America while I’m here is a good cause, right?)

Now I have to get into gear and finish my syllabus. Obviously this will be a three week version, but I think I know where I’ll be able to cut down…

It’s quite exciting! Expect reports…