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.