- Made students read sprawling but spectacular novels: Straight Man by Richard Russo, The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. I would teach any or all of these novels again tomorrow just to have the chance to see students grow to love the works.
- Developed a unit on the mock-heroic genre for the comedy class, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, an excerpt from Don Quixote, Thurber's "Secret Life of Walter Mitty," and an excerpt from Fran Ross's underrated and out-of-print novel Oreo. Ross rocks!
- Assigned a Context Project in the honors lit class that sent students out exploring unfamiliar territory and reporting back on their discoveries to help us all understand difficult reading.
- Dropped the fourth out-of-class essay from the American Lit Survey and replaced it with an in-class essay requiring students to analyze a poem we had not discussed in class, which allowed my students to demonstrate their literary analysis skills instead of simply parroting back what someone else said in class or online.
- Find a way to keep students accountable for progress on major research projects so they don't treat research time as an opportunity to slack off.
- Stagger due dates for drafts so I don't end up staggering out of the building with my brain cells in a sling.
One thing I'll never do again:
- Miss Lonelyhearts. It's just too disheartening to be standing in front of class snorting at West's brutally sardonic humor while students sit and stare, looking as if someone has just bludgeoned their grandmother and eaten their dog for breakfast. Never again. Never ever.
2 comments:
That last paragraph made me laugh.
Happy to be of service. Now I need to get back to grading.
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