Uncategorized – Page 4

Fundamental and Powerful Concepts

One of the sessions that I attended at this summer’s International Conference on Critical Thinking was about “Fundamental and Powerful Concepts,” which is, itself, a fundamental concept in the Paul and Elder critical thinking paradigm.

First, a note on the Paul and Elder paradigm, which I’ve written about before: the paradigm divides the basic processes of thought into eight “elements of thought.” For every thought we have, we actually engage in all eight, whether we’re aware of it or not – that is, I’m always thinking from a point of view and making use of assumptions, consciously or unconsciously, whenever I solve any problems, whether it’s what shoes to wear or how to untangle a complex idea in an article that I’m trying to write. Concepts are, well, concepts. They’re the big ideas that we use to collect disparate pieces of information into groups. As we advance to further levels of expertise within a discipline, those concepts become more specific and more rarified. For example, in introduction to literature, one of the fundamental concepts we deal with is “literature,” but when we move towards more expertise, we can begin to think about “genre” as a concept or even a specific genre.

In every field, there are myriad concepts – and we certainly cannot get to them all when we teach a single course. That’s what this particular session was about: trying to focus on the most important, the most fundamental, the most powerful concept within a particular course. The session leader, Gerald Nosich, suggested that fundamental and powerful concepts are those that, should a student understand them deeply, he or she would understand a great deal of the rest of the course. If a student begins to understand the concepts, the rest of the material of the course should fall into place, as the student refines her or his understanding of the material and the information. Continue reading “Fundamental and Powerful Concepts”

The Agony of Defeatism

Part of leading a discussion in a creative writing workshop involves encouraging students to give rigorous feedback and criticism to their classmates, while also fostering an atmosphere of respect and friendship. Hank Devereaux Jr.—the narrator of Richard Russo’s academic satire Straight Man—observed that, in the creative writing classroom, “tough, rigorous criticism is predicated on good, not ill, will.” As teachers, it’s part of our job to create an environment where student writers feel comfortable receiving—and giving—detailed feedback and constructive criticism. The workshop, after all, isn’t going to work if the only thing the student author hears is “great job” or “I really liked the words you used to convey your ideas.”

Creating an environment of friendly and well-intentioned critique is difficult in any creative writing classroom, but it’s particularly difficult in a creative nonfiction classroom. As writers, we’re frequently defensive when it comes to our work, but as creative nonfiction writers, we sometimes wind up feeling defensive about our experiences and ideas as well. Once, as a student in a workshop, I had to listen as a classmate explained that she didn’t like the piece I had written because the “narrator” was so whiney and self-absorbed. And while I like to think that I have thick skin … come on. That hurt.

I try to be particularly conscious of the student author’s feelings and protectiveness of her work even as I ask my students to talk specifically about what isn’t working in a piece. Still, even with my attempts at sensitivity, some students are stressed out and even hurt by the entire workshop experience. Who can blame them? They’ve just revealed themselves—exposed their realest, innermost selves—without the safety net of a fictional narrator or poetic speaker, and now they’re getting criticized for their efforts. That can be disheartening, even infuriating. Continue reading “The Agony of Defeatism”

Groups of Three

Recently, I attended the International Conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform in Berkeley, California. My primary purpose in attending the conference was to bring back ideas for my institution’s Critical Thinking Program, which I coordinate. But I also spent a good bit of time thinking about my own classroom, and particularly how I can better engage my students. As I process the various things that I learned at the conference, I will share some of them with you in this space. So this is just the first of what I hope to be several posts.

Unlike other academic conferences that I attend, this one is particularly oriented towards practical workshop exercises, where participants engage in some of the activities that might work in the classroom. One of my workshop leaders divided us up into groups of three, assigning each of us a role: questioner, answerer, and observer. We were then tasked with defining a major concept (in our session, they were concepts like education, schooling and leadership). The answerer had to define the term, the questioner then asked questions for clarification and precision, and the observer took notes and then explained back to the others in the workshop what had just occurred.

I’ve read about this sort of discussion technique, but I’ve never really been a part of it. I found it incredibly effective, particularly because I found myself having to clarify my own thinking on certain concepts. And so I’ve been thinking about ways that this might be productive for the literature classroom.

Continue reading “Groups of Three”

A Conversation with Maureen P. Stanton

Periodically, I’ll be posting short discussions with writers and teachers of creative nonfiction whom I admire. The first of these discussions is with Maureen P. Stanton, who happens to have been my dissertation director at the University of Missouri-Columbia and whose book Killer Stuff and Tons of Money—now available in paperback—was called “a treasure-trove of a book” by Kirkus Reviews.

William Bradley: What would you say is the most challenging thing about teaching creative nonfiction?

Maureen Stanton: I’d say that the most challenging aspect of teaching CNF is to help students write works that readers will care about, and to understand that it’s not enough to just relate a story—after all, everyone has a story but why should readers choose to read this piece of writing among all the options available? This is not something that I emphasize too much with undergraduates, who are just trying their hands at the genre and gaining practical writing skills, and who generally aren’t ambitious about publishing their work or even thinking about publishing. But with graduate students, it’s difficult to raise this subject because mentioning the “Why should I or anyone care?” question feels like a personal criticism, or at least is sounds harsh. I should add that I don’t express this thought in those blunt terms exactly —“Why should I care what happened to you?”—because that is destructive and difficult criticism to hear about one’s own work. But it is the central question of creative nonfiction, especially memoir, and sometimes it is the only question left to ask in an otherwise accomplished piece of writing. The good news is that there are many ways to make any individual essay or memoir reach beyond being a well-written conveyance of an experience, even though dealing with the “who cares” aspect may also be the most difficult thing to learn as well as to teach.

Continue reading “A Conversation with Maureen P. Stanton”

Local Theatre

Although many do not recognize it, local theatre is the cornerstone of the dramatic arts. (By local theatre, I mean what people watch in their own towns.) While metropolitan centers like New York City exert influence, what really counts is the theatre that people see. A theatrical production is often unavailable either in print, film, or other media: it is experienced only by those who gather to see it; and, since most individuals stay close to home, close to home matters. While famous plays have impact, the effect is diffuse when compared to print-centered writing or to film. The effect of non-local theatre works only along the lines of a “trickle-down” influence, rather than the direct impact of other forms: people read a story, but read about a theatrical production.

Given the importance of local theatre, one would think that such performance would be thriving — unfortunately, it is not. This is especially true for local playwriting. Because local theatres have no obligation to present new, local work, they typically turn to renditions of familiar plays that audiences have seen before. While productions of such plays may be comfortable for audiences and for the theatre makers involved, they create minimal opportunities for local dramatists. Though most regions of the country — even far-out, rural places — have some local theatre, they do not often have local dramatic writing. Such a situation hurts local writers and theatre as a whole by inhibiting regional diversity in a form that, of necessity, must be regional. Continue reading “Local Theatre”

Shakespeare in Another Form

I am not a purist when it comes to film adaptations of Shakespeare. I love Orson Welles’ truncated versions of plays; I love Akira Kurosawa’s loose adaptations of Macbeth and Lear; and I cannot recommend highly enough the dark comedy of Scotland, PA (four words: Christopher Walken as Macduff). I’ve written before about my use of the president’s speech in Independence Day and Peter Sellers’ Richard III speaking “Hard Day’s Night.” I think that it’s important to share some of these films with students – not just for the experience of seeing the work of great filmmakers, but also for the opportunity to discuss Shakespeare’s central role in much of our culture.

The last time I taught my Shakespeare course, I developed a movie night assignment for my students. I offered six movie nights over the course of the semester, and students were required to attend one movie and write a commentary on it. (They could earn extra credit for an additional movie – and several of the students enjoyed the films so much that they attended all of the screenings, which were also open to the whole student body.)

On the assignment sheet, I explained that the assignment had three primary objectives:

to encourage students to consider the implications of viewing a Shakespearean play, rather than reading it
to encourage students to consider the assumptions underlying directors’ interpretations of plays, either through a fairly straightforward rendering of the text or a radical reinterpretation of the text
to encourage students to appreciate that at the core of the study of drama is the need to recognize the role that performance plays in our interpretation of a play as an audience

Continue reading “Shakespeare in Another Form”

Film in the Classroom

Many of us use film clips in the classroom when we teach plays, especially when we teach Shakespeare. This makes a great deal of sense, as we’re teaching something that’s meant to be seen. But how do we actually use these clips? Or even full films? And why are we doing this, from a pedagogical standpoint?

I’ve used portions of films so that students understand what’s happening in the play. For example, watching the ending of A Doll’s House has more emotional impact on students than only reading it, which increases their appreciation for the play. So, there’s utility there. But sometimes this method feels almost like a cop-out to me. I worry that I’m showing students a lengthy (30 minute) clip just to avoid having to actually lead discussion.

So I’ve been working on using film in other ways – beyond simply making sure that students understand the plot.

Plays are, of course, highly collaborative in nature. That collaboration continues well after the playwright is dead, since the plays continue to be performed and re-imagined by various and varied directors. This is especially true in Shakespearean plays; each director imagines a different version of Shakespeare, each actor brings something different to the role, and the filming can draw our attention to different aspects of a scene or soliloquy. I’ve found it useful to compare these collaborations, and thus far I’ve attempted this sort of comparative work with Hamlet (in intro to lit) and King Lear (in my senior-level Shakespeare course). Continue reading “Film in the Classroom”

Teaching with Aristotle’s Poetics

The past few semesters, I have used Aristotle more and more in the playwriting classroom. His writing, I believe, has a place even with beginners. After all, it is difficult to talk about theatre in the Western world without mentioning this great thinker. Western drama shows a great reliance—some might say, too great—on this ancient Greek.

The Poetics, thankfully, is a short book. But it’s also very obtuse. I ask the students to approach it “scripturally.” By comparing the Poetics to holy writ, I suggest that it deserves constant study and re-reading. Also, much can be skimmed—for example, discussions of specific Greek word choice or authors no longer extant. These sections can be treated like the genealogies and census reports in the Hebrew scriptures—skimmed over without worry. This comparison works extremely well in Bible Belt Arkansas, where I teach, though it would likely work elsewhere.

The Poetics is filled with valuable lessons. I usually focus on one Aristotelian insight in particular: his six dramatic elements, I find, are especially useful for teaching different dramatic approaches. Aristotle divided drama into six components, often translated as Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song, and Spectacle. While Aristotle prioritizes Plot above all else, he sees these elements as necessary cogs in the mechanics of scriptwriting. I use the elements, not to suggest commonalities among plays, but rather to show how different authors use different approaches. Continue reading “Teaching with Aristotle’s Poetics”

Listening In

Young writers often get the advice—and sometimes the assignment—to eavesdrop. I’ve always found this a little funny, since after all, don’t most of us spend large portions of our lives in conversation? Why do we need to listen in on somebody else’s conversation in order to learn about conversation? I wasn’t sure of the particular value of being outside of the conversation. So I decided to try it.

Like many a writer, I often find myself in coffee shops. But I also happen to live in a town that is a prime destination for people in recovery programs, who also naturally find themselves in coffee shops. And so one of the first things I heard was one highly caffeinated young guy saying to another, “It was a tell-tale sign when we did free hugs and Ted wouldn’t hug anybody.”

A few days later, walking out of the gym behind a young woman and her probably four-year-old son, I heard this exchange:

Toddler: I want a snack.

Mom: I have something in the car for you.

Toddler: What is it?

Mom: Juice.

Toddler: What kind of juice?

Mom: Orange juice.

Toddler, with outright exuberance: Hallelujah, baby!

Later, sitting in a Barnes and Noble café near the customer service counter, I heard this:

Female customer, probably sixty-something, brandishing the bondage bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey: Do you think this would make a good gift?

Customer Service Rep: Well, I wouldn’t give it to someone you didn’t know well.

Next customer, a very thin woman around seventy in a denim mini skirt and high-heeled sandals: I need a ride home.

Customer Service Rep: But we’re a bookstore.

Continue reading “Listening In”

Shock Value

I have to confess that I take a great deal of delight in teaching “A Rose for Emily” to my introduction to literature students. It’s a wonderful story to talk about sequence versus chronology, foreshadowing, and concepts of time. But it’s getting to the shocking ending that’s most fun for me.

It’s one of the few stories where I walk students through everything piece-by-piece, mapping out the major plot points on the board. I do this, in part, because it’s helpful to have all those disparate plot points in visual form (the students figure out that the arsenic and the smell are connected once they see everything written up on the board). I also do this because I typically teach the story at a time in the semester when the students are worn out and class participation has dropped off.

We walk through the sequence of the story, and then we read the final section of the story aloud (okay, I read it). I love to pause at the line “The man himself lay in the bed.” And we get to that closing sentence about the iron gray hair. Continue reading “Shock Value”