reading lately: everything by mark twain, HANDMAID'S TALE by atwood, TONTO AND THE LONE RANGER FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN by alexie, and a book about american girls and their bodies which i think is called THE BODY PROJECT by someone i can't remember and am too lazy to google for. also, lots of student papers.
i've been thinking about how i feel about how my classes went this semester and if i would teach 1033 again the same way. there are definitely some alterations that i'd need to make, but overall, i think it went really well. yeah, it was boring for them to have to talk about writing and to have to write about writing (their own and others'), to have to re-think how they were taught to write, to have to remember all that stuff about paragraphing and grammar and audience and voice and evidence (CDs, concrete details, one student kept calling his quoted material--a nicely trained brain there) and all. but i think it helped. i tried to make them dredge up all those old lessons and think critically (a favorite teacher phrase) about why they were taught what when. what does the public school system have to do with why you speak and write the way you do? why don't you speak up? when you do speak up, why do you? is it because the situation is right? why is it right? why are you comfortable in certain groups, in certain linguistic situations? how does the concept of Otherness play into your study of writing, over time?
all that stuff is fascinating. i'm such a socratic method fan. it accomplishes so much more. it inspires frustration and curiosity. we want life to be lined out and numbered and ordered and explained. impossible. your reality is multiple. don't fight it. learn to work within it; learn to negotiate with everything and everyone you interact with. to do this, you must think critically--which, if you really want me to explain the phrase, means to think about origins. original reasons. original causes. of objects, of people, of products. of contentment, of disappointment, of resignation. of frustration, of intolerance, of violence. of repetitive prepositions. lawf.
why is a question inaction? i see questions as little worlds, spherical venn diagrams, all interconnected. discourse. back and forth. poly-volleying. they aren't stagnant; yes, too many words can equal procrastination, paralysis, but that doesn't mean we should not value concise argumentation. but you have to use words to teach words, and that's what turns people off. but you have to enter the conversation somewhere in order to understand it.
here comes the old cold-swimming-pool-water analogy. do you jump in to the Other all at once or work your way in slowly?