Noteworthy

One of my Sports Literature students used a green highlighter to take notes in class this morning and all I could think was this: at least he's taking notes! I have students in there who haven't written a word down all semester except on exams--and not much there either. I'll be explaining some brilliant concept that will help them understand the literature and I'll notice that only one or two students have pens in their hands so I'll write a word on the board and say, "This is important! Write it down!" And they'll all immediately pick up a pen, write down that one word, and put the pen down.

I'm trying to help them move toward a more analytical approach to literature. So far, most of their written responses to literature take the form of review or reminiscence: "I can relate to Fences because my dad is mean to me too!" Today we started The Natural, and so far no one has called it "relatable," which is a good thing, but on the other hand, many of them simply didn't do the assigned reading because they didn't think it would be "relatable."

At this point I really don't care whether students can "relate" to the literature; I want to know whether they can read and understand and analyze it. Today I drove them crazy with an in-class writing assignment: choose one page from the first section of The Natural--any page at all--and write a one-paragraph summary of what's happening on that page--easy enough so far--except the summary should not include any evaluative comments ("Malamud did a lousy job making the story relatable...") or indicate any personal feelings about the material.

It was difficult but they did it. And they'll do more next week and the following week until eventually we'll be ready to make the big switch from writing objective summaries to writing effective analyses. I don't even care if they write them in green highlighter, as long as they're writing more about the text than about themselves!

I don't know about you, but I can relate to that.