Month: October 2012

Helping students engage with lectures and other content

In addition to teaching literature and writing courses, every fall I teach a course that develops skills for student success.  Recently we worked on note-taking. The exercise I used reminded me that when we give lectures, we need to make sure that our students connect with the material we’re presenting.

The exercise is this: Students watch a brief video lecture (I like Liz Coleman’s TED talk from a few years ago, “Call to Reinvent Liberal Arts Education”); they take notes and then compare and discuss their notes.  However, what I discovered recently is that when my students watched Coleman’s brief lecture (18 minutes!) they began to get tired and stopped paying attention, the longer the talk went on. This really defeated the purpose of watching Coleman’s lecture, especially because she presents her most essential points toward the end of her talk.

My students missed the big point.  They got information, but they couldn’t do with it what they needed to.

Continue reading “Helping students engage with lectures and other content”

Unpublished, but Non-Perishable

Some of you may have noticed that my author bio reveals that I’ve recently changed my institutional affiliation—I have left Chowan University in North Carolina and accepted a position teaching creative writing and literature at my alma mater, St. Lawrence University in upstate New York.  I’ve written before (though not for this blog) about my undergraduate years and the vital role that my professors played in turning me into the writer and thinker I am today, so you can probably understand that I’m quite excited to be back, teaching alongside the scholars and artists who inspired me when I was an 18-year-old, flannel-clad Gen-Xer who had a vague idea that he wanted to be a writer, but didn’t quite know how he was going to get there.

I’ve been thinking a lot about 18-year-old Bradley these past few weeks.  Part of me almost expects to run into him, walking across the quad or coming out of the dining hall.  Part of me feels like I already have run into him—or run into his doppelganger from 2012, at any rate.  I’m teaching two creative writing classes and one literature class this semester, and these students are—for the most part—really enthusiastic about what they’re reading and writing.  I’ve taught thoughtful and ambitious students before, of course, but never so many at one time.  So it’s been an exhilarating experience.

One thing I’ve noticed about the undergraduate writers I’m teaching this semester is that many of them seem savvier about things like publishing opportunities and grad school programs than I was when I studied here.  I’ll be giving a talk later this semester to the students who work on the campus literary magazine, and one thing that the student who organized the talk told me they’d definitely be interested in hearing about was how I got editors to pay attention to my work, and what advice I have to give about getting creative work published. Continue reading “Unpublished, but Non-Perishable”

The Greek Chorus: Or, You Will All Have to Participate

When teaching plays, I can generally find a handful of students who are very willing to read parts, though I usually have to wait rather patiently to find enough students to read all the parts (and patience is not a strong suit of mine).  But, of course, I want all students to participate.

I’ve found that Greek tragedies provide a good opportunity for participation. They feature a number of characters – and always have a chorus.  Everyone can be in the chorus. There are some ways to approach Greek tragedies that could lead to some discussion of how the plays were themselves performed.

First, it might be useful to talk about the fact that, in ancient times, the individual characters of the play were originally performed by three actors who wore different masks.  This means that actors would have played more than one role, since most of the plays have more than three characters – Antigone has seven characters and Oedipus Rex has eight, plus various guards and children.  In an effort to think about how the actors might indicate the different roles, it might be useful, then, to have the students bring in props – or better yet, make masks – that signal each character. Continue reading “The Greek Chorus: Or, You Will All Have to Participate”

Web of Truths: 5 Sites for Creative Nonfiction

This is not a proper blog post, I admit, but it seems to me that some teachers of creative nonfiction might not be aware of all the resources that are out there on the web, free of charge, that might be useful in a creative nonfiction classroom.  Here are five of my favorites. By all means, include yours in the comments—especially if you edit or read for a magazine with a significant online presence that instructors and students ought to be aware of.

1.  Brevity. Edited by Dinty W. Moore, Brevity is an excellent online magazine of brief nonfiction, from some of the best writers in the field.  From Brevity’s description:

“For more than a decade now, Brevity has published well-known and emerging writers working in the extremely brief (750 words or less) essay form, along with craft essays and book reviews. Though still committed to the mission of publishing new writers, Brevity has enjoyed an embarrassment of recent riches, including the work of two Pulitzer prize finalists, numerous NEA fellows, Pushcart winners, Best American authors, and writers from India, Egypt, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia, and Japan. Authors published in Brevity include Sherman Alexie, Lia Purpura, Terese Svoboda, John Calderazzo, Steven Barthelme, Mark Yakich, Ander Monson, Caitlin Horrocks, Jon Pineda, Brenda Miller, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Robin Hemley, Lee Martin, Rebecca McClanahan, Robin Behn, Abby Frucht, Barbara Hurd, Bret Lott, Ira Sukrungruang, Rigoberto González, Judith Kitchen, Michael Martone, and Diana Hume George.”

Work from Brevity has been anthologized and reprinted in venues including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Utne Reader, the Short Takes anthology, the Best Creative Nonfiction anthology from W.W. Norton, and many recent writing textbooks.

2. Brevity Blog.  For news and commentary about the form, nothing beats Brevity magazine’s blog, which is updated frequently.  Any time there’s a debate in the world of creative nonfiction, you can count on some smart blog posts from a variety of contributors. Continue reading “Web of Truths: 5 Sites for Creative Nonfiction”

Letter to Lauren (Who is Freaking Out, Who is Feeling Underprepared, Underread, Under Everything), On the Occasion of Her Entering Graduate School

I am telling Lauren in Texas (and Anna in Ohio and Emily in California and Colleen in Chicago) to take a deep breath. (I’m not telling them the feeling of being unprepared, under-read, behind never really goes away.) I’m telling them what Jerry Stern told me when I similarly freaked: develop a subject. To enter graduate school with a passion or two, your own little corner where you maybe don’t exactly reign, but you know your way around, a bit, gives you a place to be.  A thing you can be known for.

Lauren will read all of Carson McCullers, and everything she can find about Carson McCullers. Every letter, every blog, every journal article. Every biography. Brochures from the house tour. If it’s Carson, Lauren (who has wisely named her dog Carson) reads it. Meanwhile, over in Ohio, dear Ann’s on her 18th-century-unmarried-American women kick—good, good—and Emily’s making her way to California, torn between short story cycles, Hemingway, and the graphic novel.  Good!  Good. That’s all you have to do.  Don’t even try to keep up with the new Eggers, Franzen, Chabon, Munro.  Don’t worry: Moby didn’t happen then and it’s not going to happen now. Forget about the vow to do Russians in winter. Keep up with your courses.  And fall in love: with your subject. One author. Part of a period. Japanese pillow books. Mine your tiny patch of land to its deepest depths. And you’ll be fine!

When you get to graduate school, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed. You constantly feel dumb. You didn’t read enough in undergrad, and the books you read were the wrong books! Don’t worry. Go narrow. Stay put. Continue reading “Letter to Lauren (Who is Freaking Out, Who is Feeling Underprepared, Underread, Under Everything), On the Occasion of Her Entering Graduate School”