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.