Monday, September 17, 2018

A sticky (but delicious) lesson

Some of my students who are studying Appalachia had never tasted pawpaws before, so today I brought some, picked from my woods, and peeled them right there in class so they could get a taste of a treat that grows wild all around them. I've encountered many other gaps in students' knowledge, but rarely can they be repaired so easily--and deliciously. 

I had more trouble this morning trying to teach a student how to save a document as a Word file and attach it to an email message, but I was hampered by the fact that I was trying to explain the process via email. For the first time I have multiple first-year students who are a  shaky on email use and who claim they've never used Word, so I'm getting documents in all kinds of crazy formats and often with filenames like "Document 1" or "Untitled." Wish I could give them a magic pill that would endow them with word-processing and emailing skills because I can't spend a lot of time on that in first-year composition, or how will we ever get to semicolons? 

Poor semicolons! Don't even get me started on the dying art of punctuation.

On the plus side, my postcolonial students were enlightened enough to spot the rampant sexism in a clip from a James Bond film today, so if they don't know how to use a semicolon, at least they know how to spot creepiness. Which skill will be more practical in real life? (Man shall not live on semicolons alone--or woman either.)

I'd like to lament the loss of skills that seem to be slipping away before my eyes, but who has time to cry when there are papers to grade? Instead, I'll grab a pawpaw and carry on, repairing the gaps I'm able to fill and trusting that others will fill the rest.

1 comment:

jo(e) said...

I'd say spotting creepiness is a pretty important skill. Now if we could just figure out how to get rid of creepy political figures ....