teaching – Page 2

Can Class Participation Data Help Us Teach Literature?

My wife, who teaches kindergarten, just started using a new web service called ClassDojo. On their website, ClassDojo claims to be a service for real-time behavior management: teachers input their roster, structure what kind of behaviors they want to measure, and then start using the service in the classroom by logging student behavior through a one-click action. The service catalogues the inputted behavior and creates reports for the teacher so that she can see how individual students or the class as a whole are performing in the various categories. To make it really easy for teachers, ClassDojo also has a mobile application that allows for quick and on-the-go recording of student behavior. This service is designed for K-12 educators and so it may not be all that interesting or useful for literature teachers in higher education. At least, I initially thought so. But when my wife was telling me how she used the service in her class of wild 5- to 6-year-olds to track behaviors such as class participation, I started to think differently. And, in that moment of contemplation, my wife turned to me and asked, “If the literature classroom is all about participation in discussion, how do you guys really keep track of it?” Good question.

My wife was right, the literature classroom is often structured around the discussion of a text—and class participation, either graded or un-graded, is important to the whole enterprise. Yet, the way we structure participation varies from class to class and tends to be potentially more assumptive than quantitative. Some teachers may reward students with daily participation points (which are generally somewhat nebulously defined); others may base student participation on the completion of daily assignments; and still others may encourage participation but may not worry about measuring it or keeping track of it in their grade books. However we assess participation in the classroom, there are often a few things that are easy to identify: namely, who participates the most and who participates the least. Students who fall on either end of the participation spectrum generally, for better or worse, tend to stick out. But what about the students in the middle? How do we understand their levels of participation? And further, can our current methods of assessing participation generate enough actionable data that can help us better understand our students and courses? Of course, participation data should not drive our literature classrooms, but it could help to enhance them. Continue reading “Can Class Participation Data Help Us Teach Literature?”

Twitter in the Literature Classroom? Part 2

Last week on this blog Kelli Marshall explained how Twitter can be used as a discussion tool in the literature classroom. Building on that, I want to look at the nitty-gritty of what to consider if you decide to experiment with Twitter in your course.

There are three main things you and your students need to know to have a good conversation on Twitter.

How to tweet.
How to @reply or @mention people.
How to use #hashtags.

Tweeting is pretty simple and is similar to SMS texting—though you may want to show students how to shorten links (through services like bitly.com) and provide them with rules for decorum. @Replying or @mentioning people is also really easy: you can either hit the reply button below a person’s tweet, or, in your own tweet, type in that person’s Twitter handle preceded by the @ symbol. Either way, that person will be notified of your reply and can then tweet back to you, a system that encourages conversation.

Using #hashtags is also simple but requires some initial setup. A #hashtag is something that you include in a tweet in order to categorize it. #Hashtags are commonly used in tweets that mention trending world or local events; they are also created for conferences and gatherings. Basically, #hashtags bring together tweets that are related by topic area. The easiest way to set up a discussion for your class is to create a course-specific #hashtag and have your students include it in any of their course-related posts. Then you can all search for the #hashtag on Twitter (or by using a service like hashtags.org) and find an up-to-date listing of all tweets that include it. Continue reading “Twitter in the Literature Classroom? Part 2”

The Shakespeare Sonnet Slam

Poetry is an oral as well as written tradition, and we are only doing half the work—and having half the fun— if we silently read a poem on the page. Unfortunately, I don’t always have the chance to emphasize this enough in the classroom. As I struggle for both depth and breadth in my courses, I often run out of time before I can focus on the performance of poetry.

At least a few times during the semester, though, I create opportunities for students to engage with the performance of written texts. This might seem like an optional activity that doesn’t have the substance of a lecture or in-depth discussion, but I would disagree. In fact, in-class recitations can generate real excitement among students, in part because memorization requires a slow, attentive reading that we wish for every time we assign a new text.

With this in mind, I recommend the Shakespeare Sonnet Slam as a classroom activity. In an English literature survey we spend a couple of classes reading sonnets by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, but because these sonnets represent one small unit out of many in a survey course, that’s about all the time we have for The Bard’s sequence. Even so, the memorization requires students to read their poem with a quality of attention that they wouldn’t ordinarily have. Even if our activity means that we get to spend less time discussing other poets, students quickly understand the power of a poetic sequence, and how it can convey a variety of emotional and intellectual struggles in innovative ways.

Here’s how it works:

First, I ask students to memorize one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. If students are anxious about the process of memorizing a poem, I offer them several strategies: they can write the poem, longhand, several times until they get a sense of how the lines fit together; they can photocopy the poem and carry it with them, memorizing it throughout the week; or they can memorize the poem by reciting it once through, then hiding the final word of the poem and reading it through, then hiding the final two words of the poem and reading it through, and so on until they’re reciting the poem with no words exposed.
Continue reading “The Shakespeare Sonnet Slam”

Not All Cows Are for Milking

Several years ago, a student of mine (we’ll call him James) stuck around after my introductory fiction-writing class because something was on his mind. This was around week three of the semester. He’d seemed highly engaged in the course so far, but today he was being quiet.

We waited while everyone else cleared out. I smiled reassuringly. He cleared his throat and looked at his shoes. When the room was empty except for us, I asked, “So what’s up?”

He told me that he would never be able to complete the exercise I’d assigned that day.

I had asked students to brainstorm some interesting details from their pasts, and to incorporate these details into a scene of fiction. The idea was to get students to use pre-existing knowledge as a way to give their work more authority.

I asked James what the trouble was.

He shrugged. “There’s nothing remotely interesting about any part of my life,” he said. Then, so I’d understand his dilemma, he elaborated. “I grew up on a farm, in a town of fifteen people, where everybody is related. The next largest town was ten miles away and there were only fifty or sixty people there.”

I told him that to me, a guy who grew up in densely populated New Jersey, his life sounded completely fascinating. Continue reading “Not All Cows Are for Milking”

Twitter in the Literature Classroom? Part 1

Twitter lends itself to discussion. It’s quick, easy, and—with its strict structure and economy of space—forces writers to condense their thoughts while maintaining coherence. Unlike other social networking sites, Twitter does not require you to follow (or “friend”) others in order to see their posts; Twitter allows you to read the conversations of anyone you’d like, mitigating some (though, not all) of the privacy issues that might lead us away from using social media sites in the classroom. There has been a considerable amount of discussion on various sites and academic blogs about using Twitter in academic settings (see the Profhacker blog: here, here, or most recently, here), Bill Wolff’s blog, the site, Emerging EdTech or here at Bedford Bits and Lit Bits. Some bloggers have discussed how to use Twitter for research and engagement among academics, while others have examined how and why to use Twitter as a classroom tool. Over at Kelli Marshall’s blog is a candid and detailed post on using Twitter as a discussion tool in some of the film courses Marshall has taught. She explains that while some students have resisted using the site, they have generally produced great comments about the course’s content and have participated in thoughtful conversations, even beyond the classroom. As Marshall also teaches literature courses, I asked her a few questions about her experience using Twitter and how it might be applied to a literature classroom.

Hetland: How might Twitter benefit our classroom / students / student discussion?

Marshall: Giving shyer students a voice. Continuing in-class discussion outside the classroom. Forcing students to get to the “meat” of their argument/opinion (i.e., the 140 character limit). Encouraging students to interact with others online, i.e., classmates, me (!), students in other parts of the US/world, celebrities, film directors, etc.

Hetland: How could Twitter be used in a literature classroom?

Continue reading “Twitter in the Literature Classroom? Part 1”

The Big Picture: Teaching Creative Writing to Undergrads

Every so often I find myself reflecting on the most basic pedagogical questions: What is this course for? What do I hope my students will walk away with? (Apparently my reflections tend to end in prepositions.)

The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) recently came out with its 2011 Director’s Handbook, which contains a document that helped me think through some of these questions: “AWP Recommendations on the Teaching of Creative Writing to Undergraduates.” The document covers an array of key issues in the teaching of creative writing.

While I wasn’t sold on 100% of its recommendations, I was nodding my head a lot as I read—particularly when reading the part about the different aims of a graduate workshop versus an undergraduate one:

Whereas the general goal for a graduate program in creative writing is to nurture and expedite the development of a literary artist, the goal for an undergraduate program is mainly to develop a well-rounded student in the liberal arts and humanities, a student who develops a general expertise in literature, in critical reading, and in persuasive writing. Continue reading “The Big Picture: Teaching Creative Writing to Undergrads”

Teaching the Literature of 9/11

Don DeLillo’s novel Falling Man (Scribner, 2007) begins with the main character, Keith Neudecker, walking out from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Dazed and slightly injured, Keith first appears to the reader emerging from the ashes of the terrorist attack, moving away from the destruction. But, DeLillo explains, as Keith moves away from the carnage of the World Trade Center he also enters into an entirely new world: a world created in the trauma and by the trauma of September 11, 2001.

DeLillo begins his novel by invoking the way in which 9/11 is collectively discussed in popular culture and media: as a day that we emerged from, changed; as a day we moved into a changed world. Like Keith, we’re told that we are moving away from the trauma and into a world colored by the political, social, and cultural aftereffects of that day. This emergent movement is detailed in DeLillo’s novel, and also in a growing body of literature that either directly or indirectly takes up the events of 9/11. These works of fiction, including Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Ken Kalfus’ A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, are increasingly being taught in literature classrooms across the country and are encouraging critical discussions about the pre- and post-9/11 world.

With the ten-year anniversary of 9/11taking place this semester, I would like to devote some space in this column to an ongoing conversation with those of you who have taught or who are teaching works of fiction that deal with 9/11. If you have experiences or thoughts on teaching a 9/11 text and would like to share them with your colleagues and peers, please post a comment or contact me via email (timhetland@gmail.com) or through Twitter (@timhetland).

How Should We Choose Texts?

As the fall is upon us and most universities and colleges have just started classes, I thought it appropriate to consider something central to the planning of a literature course: choosing what texts to read in a class.

Of course, there are many reasons that we might decide to have our class read a certain text: the text meets departmental requirements, it’s important to a particular field of study, it’s a part of a traditional canon or it’s distinctly outside of a traditional cannon, it’s trendy (though would we admit that?), it’s a personal favorite, or it reinforces one of the goals of the class. But these reasons, no matter how important, only indirectly consider the primary members of the class: the students.

So, the question is: how much influence do/should the students of a class have on text selection?

During the recent barrage of posts appearing on my social media feeds these past few weeks relating to crafting new syllabi for the upcoming academic year, one particular message really stood out and spoke to this question. The message was sent out by Donna Campbell, a professor of American literature at Washington State University; in it Campbell wrote that after seeing that her class was composed of a variety of students from all academic levels and majors, she decided to cancel a particular Henry James text.

I was curious about her decision to nix the text from her syllabus just days before class, based on preliminary information about her students, so I asked Dr. Campbell about her choice. Her reply? A striking example of student-centric pedagogy. She said, “I substituted another text because it seemed to me that with students at so many levels of preparation, beginning with an author as complex as James might tend to discourage some of them. We’d usually have some time to build up to James, but in this particular course he would have been nearly the first author they encountered, and I wanted them to have a more positive experience.” Continue reading “How Should We Choose Texts?”

Send Us Your Turkey-Day Assignments!

Holidays can be hard to write about. The “what you did on your summer vacation” prompt probably tops the pile, but tired sentiments about gratitude and world peace might not be far behind.

With Thanksgiving coming up, the Teaching Poetry blog wants to know how you approach this holiday with your students. Do you assign elegant odes or SPAMku? Do you avoid the topic altogether?

How do you get around clichés and get your students thinking for themselves?
What models do you use?
If you teach creative writing, what assignments work best for generating original turkey-day themed verse?

Send in your thoughts, your favorite assignments–or stories of classroom disasters. We’ll be collecting your insights over the next couple of weeks and posting your responses on November 16th, just in time for the holiday. Then, we’ll ask you to vote for the coolest activity!

E-mail assignments to: aflynn (at) bedfordstmartins (dot) com

Deadline: anytime before Friday, November 13
Vote on all submissions: November 16
Favorites go live: November 17

Stay tuned!

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Joelle Hann is a senior editor at Bedford/St.Martin’s who worked on the third edition of Helen Vendler’s Poems, Poets, Poetry, and originally created the Teaching Poetry blog in 2009.

Kay Ryan, Poet of the Month

by Andrew Flynn

Kay Ryan, the US Poet Laureate, turns 64 today.

Ryan is not a household name—not even a poet’s household name until quite recently—and her journey to the Library of Congress does not follow the course of a typical literary career. “It feels very unlikely,” Ryan told Charlie Rose in an interview last November. “I hadn’t ever expected this to happen to me.”

She grew up the daughter of an oil-well driller in the San Joaquin Valley in the 40s and 50s, in a working-class culture that did not welcome the pretensions of poetry. Her adult life has been spent teaching writing—but not of the MFA variety. Since the 1970s she’s taught remedial English classes at the College of Marin, her local community college. She lives in a house she shingled herself, is an avid runner, and has never taken a creative writing class. Carol Adair, Ryan’s fellow teacher at Marin and longtime partner, died earlier this year. Ryan wrote about their relationship and marriage in Salon.

Ryan’s success came later in life. Her early works attracted little notice. The first published essay on Ryan’s work appeared little more than a decade ago—but its author, poet and critic, Dana Gioia, proclaimed her achievements in no uncertain terms. “Over the past five years,” Gioia begins, “no new poet has so deeply impressed me with her imaginative flair or originality as Kay Ryan.” Gioia, who became Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, also became a champion of Ryan’s poetry. The last ten years have marked a rise to prominence for Ryan, with highlights including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2001, the eminent Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2004, and appointment as Poet Laureate of the United States in 2008.

It only takes one poem to show Ryan’s unique style. Her poems are short, sometimes funny, almost always accessible, yet rich and complex. Analyzing the internal wordplay of “Paired Things,” Dana Gioia picked out the hallmarks of a Ryan poem: “dense figurative language, varied diction, internal rhyme, the interrogative mode, and playful, which elusively alternates between iambic and unmetered lines.”

Paired Things

So many paired things seem odd.
Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground, a common crow?

“[C]lown suitcase” is her own description of her poetry. “[T]he clown flips open the suitcase and pulls out a ton of stuff,” she said in her Paris Review interview. “A poem is an empty suitcase that you can never quit emptying.” She’s balked at Gioia’s Dickinson comparison—“[H]ow would you like to be compared to God?”

Adam Kirsch wrote in praise of Ryan’s appointment as Poet Laureate, commending her “diffidence and self-sufficiency” and her “dark vision and metaphysical scope,” offering an incisive reading of Ryan’s poem “Chop”:

Here are the short lines, plain diction, and buried assonances—”sharp/chop,” “step/stamp”—that define Ms. Ryan’s verse. But once you ponder the miniature allegory of “Chop,” that homely music starts to look desperately ironic. For Ms. Ryan’s bird is an emblem of man in his arrogant mortality.

Something similar could be said about much of Ryan’s work.

The Library of Congress has aggregated the wealth of resources about Ryan available on the Internet, including essays, interviews, and recordings of readings. If you’ve never read Kay Ryan before, she’s worth discovering. If you don’t read much poetry, she’s still discoverable.

Activity:
Kay Ryan is noted for her frequent use of recombinant, or internal, rhyme. (See, for instance, “four-oared” and “afford” in “Turtle.”) How is the effect of internal rhymes different than traditional, end-of-the-line rhymes? Why does Ryan seem to use internal rhyme in “Turtle”? For example, how does internal rhyme add emphasis to certain images or change meaning?

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Andrew Flynn is an editorial assistant at Bedford/St. Martin’s. He graduated from Columbia in 2008, with a BA in history and philosophy. Before coming to Bedford he interned at the Paris Review.