Students' perspective

I asked my students to give me their perspective on my feedback.  Two of my students sent me a paragraph to describe how they feel about comments/feedback to their writing.  I thought it would be enlightening to hear directly from them.

JEF:
"The response I get in regards to my writing are very helpful, and serves a role in its evolution. Without your corrections and comments, I would still be confused over tense and subject agreements, and placed commas in awkward spots (and I most likely still do). The only problem I have is that you are often not strict enough with your feedback. Sometimes, I would notice errors in my work, and often feel that my writing is scattered and nonsensical. I would like to see more comments into how I can improve my writing not only with grammatical/spelling corrections, but also as a whole. I may be taunting the lion here, but please do not hold back."

AR:
"I was always told that I had a knack for writing. I let that comment feed my ego. I always thought I could out write everyone around me. My experience in college has been a very humbling one. It's the first time a college level English Instructor has critiqued my work and proofread my writing. I never saw my writing any other way until now. I discovered throughout my professor critiques that I had a habit of using too many filler words. I caught myself doing it in later assignments and corrected myself during my first and second drafts of the writing assignments. Now that I'm writing at a college level, I welcome all and any critique of my writing. It has helped me improve myself as a writer. I write much more efficiently as a result."

Kinder, gentler feedback

My manuscript is getting read by editors, and so far, the rejections follow.  The last two rejections included some helpful suggestions, so I have shortened the manuscript, taken out some characters, and added a scene to clarify the identify of one character.  A list of characters, both historical and non-historical, is now available.

But let's face it - rejection hurts.  As I have read the notes written by editors, it occurred to me that the feedback I provide for students is similar to the feedback I have been receiving.  Recently the editors are not writing the generic "this is not a good fit for us" but the more specific "the number of characters is daunting. As times shift, it’s hard to keep anchor. "  I admit 45 characters may seem overwhelming, though some of my favorite Charles Dickens' books have more characters.  I'm not comparing myself to the indomitable Charles Dickens - but sweeping historical novels often need many characters to populate the space and time. 

As I read the notes from editors like "it's definitely a 'no' at this point," I think of the notes I write on my students' work.  Do my messages encourage them, or discourage them?  Do they inspire students to work harder, or hurt their feelings?  I'm thinking a lot more about what I'm writing, and how I'm communicating in the feedback I give students on their written work.  I hope that by examining myself, and the way I communicate how students can improve their writing, I will become a better teacher.  And as I seriously consider the feedback I receive, a better writer as well. 

Students' Learning Styles

A year has come and gone, and I'm back to blogging once again.  Join me as I ponder how to teach writing well, how to write well, and how to enjoy literature.

During the summer I spent two weeks on a fascinating seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities on Slavery in the American Republic.  I'll be blogging about some of the things I learned during that trip in future blogs.

For now I will focus on learning styles, and how to reach students with varied learning styles in the writing and literature classroom.  One of my colleagues recently discovered his first-grade daughter may have dyslexia.  As he processed all that a diagnosis might mean, I began to think about how I teach students who don't learn best by traditional reading methods.  I found a helpful exercise as I was searching online for a way to teach Oedipus the King in my World Literature class. Here is what we did.

http://teacherblog.evan-moor.com/tag/kinesthetic-learner/

I presented four scenarios and had students move to the corner of the room representing their view.  The first question was "who or what determined Oedipus' fate?"  They could choose "the gods," "Oedipus himself," "fate," or "no one.."  A majority of students congregated at "the gods" corner.  Then a spokesperson from each corner of the room had to articulate why he or she chose each position.  Students had an opportunity to move to a different corner, and some did.

This is a simple exercise, but the students seemed to really enjoy it.  They got to get up and move around -- so it kept them awake.  They had to articulate their position, so it involved speech and persuasion, and there was no reading involved.  I will definitely use this exercise again, and I encourage you to try it in your classes.  Let me know how it goes!

To blog or to tweet . . . that is the question

Ah well, it's been two months since I have blogged.  But in the meantime, I have tweeted.  Many people choose to tweet and blog, or to limit themselves to one or the other form of expression.  I disdained tweeting when it first became popular (tweeting is so similar to Sweeting, I just noticed!) but now I find a timely tweet is just the thing.  At 42 tweets, I am by no means an avid tweeter.

My discomfort with tweeting is in its brevity, which usually lead to fragment sentences, which really annoy me!  But I have found if I can communicate something, and still write in a complete sentence, I'm satisfied.

My mom and I met at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon this summer.

Katie Sweeting @kosweeting · Aug 6

#osfashland The Great Society is a Great play - covers LBJs tenure from '65 - '68 - highly recommend

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We saw a few plays together, namely The Great Society, Cocoanuts and The Tempest, and I saw a few plays by myself, Richard III and Comedy of Errors.  They were uniformly wonderful.  The acting was superb, the settings were unique and creative, and I was transported.  But I didn't have the time nor the energy to blog about them.  So I tweeted.  Short and sweet, I told the world I had seen the plays and loved them.  So there is a place for a tweet.

When should one blog, instead of tweeting.  Read my next post to see what I think, and please post a comment to tell us all what you think.

Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe

Nigeria is a country rich in natural resources, people, and literature.  Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe (1930-
2013) wrote "Things Fall Apart" in 1958, and since that date 12 million copies have been sold, and it has been translated into over 50 languages.  Why is the book so popular?  Achebe offers a realistic portrait of what happened when the indigenous Nigerians were confronted with missionaries and colonial governors, and it offers a more human, a more realistic portrayal of Africans than the portrayals offered by earlier European writers like Rider Haggard and Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness).  The book offers a peek into African culture, beliefs, traditions and practices.

This was the last text we read and discussed in World Lit 2, and it was one of the best.  The language, the proverbs (see below), the description of traditional practices, and the dialogue all coalesce in a brilliant snapshot of African life -- then the missionaries and colonial rulers arrived.  Having served as a short-term missionary in Africa, in Kenya in 1979, I appreciated the perspective of an African who held on to traditions, and though his parents converted to Christianity, he never did.  Achebe thought missionaries did more harm than good.  It should probably be required reading for missionaries to Africa, even today.

Take a look at some of the proverbs taken from the book, and ponder their meaning for yourself:

"A man who pays respect to the great paves the way for his own greatness."  1611
"You can tell a ripe corn by its look."  1613
"Looking at a king's mouth, one would think he never sucked at his mother's breast."  1614
"Those whose palm kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be                        humble."  1614
"A chick that will grow into a cock can be spotted the very day it hatches."  1632
"When a mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth."  1634
"If I fall down for you and you fall down for me it is play."  1636
"When a father beats a child, it seeks sympathy in its mother's hut."  1663
"Living fire begets cold, impotent ash."  1671
"The clan was like a lizard; if it lost its tail it soon grew another."  1677
"A child cannot pay for its mother's milk."  1676
"As a man danced, so the drums were beaten for him."  1683

Modernism

I will confess at the outset, Modernism is not my favorite genre/time period.  In addition, I tried to do too much during this class, so we rushed through the texts.

Sigmund Freud

  First we tackled Freud - enough said, right?  

My students read Freud's essay on the Interpretation of Dreams.  After a good opening discussion about dreams, the meaning of dreams, the importance of dreams, we looked closely at the text.  We needed to define terms like "manifest dream content," "latent dream thoughts," "condensation," and "free association."  We learned that what we remember when we awake is not the most important part of the dream.  To get to the most important part of the dream, of course a psychoanalyst is required to free up the hidden thoughts and desires of the dreamer.  


We moved on to some surrealist writings - the first by a Japanese author, Abe Kobo.  His short story, The Red Cocoon begins with a man wandering the streets, wondering where his house is, and ending up at a woman's house, questioning her - "how do you know this is your house?"  "Maybe it's my house."  It is an odd encounter, but not as odd as events that will soon transpire.  The man learns that he cannot sleep on a park bench, because such benches belong to everybody, and nobody.  The tone of isolation, homelessness, lack of identity and longing for belonging is potent.  The man then feels part of the heel of his shoe unwind, possible enough, but shortly thereafter he has become entwined in a cocoon.  In fact, the man IS now a cocoon . . . surrealism at its height.

Gabriel García Márquez 

Finally, we turned to Gabriel García Márquez' , "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings."  Many of my students are Latino/Latina and one of my students is from Colombia, so I was glad we were able to study this short story.  A student in my ESL class informed me recently that Gabriel García Márquez recently died, so it was even more fitting to honor him by reading his story.In "The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," the man of the title is found in a couple's backyard.  He becomes an instant sensation, and the couple sells tickets, charging the villagers to come and look at him.  His wings are dirty, with very few feathers, andt he speaks a language unknown to anyone.  When the priest tries to engage him in conversation in Latin, and the man/angel is unresponsive. the priest concludes that he cannot possible be an angel!   

All the modernist writings convey a sense of hopelessness, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment - again, not my favorites.  For our final week we read and discussed 'Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe.  Stay tuned . . .

x

"The Cherry Orchard"

One of the most intriguing aspects of teaching world literature is learning about the authors.  I have discovered an unexpected trend -- many of the authors studied medicine, and some were practicing doctors, before they turned to writing.  Anton Chekhov is one example.  He wrote "medicine is my legal wife . . . literature is my mistress."  An unfortunate similarity among authors is their early death  - Chekhov was only 44 years old when he died (slightly older than Jane Austen at her death).  Another common thread is many of the authors had parents who read to them, or told them fabricated stories.  One can usually find glimpses of the adult author in the child.  As a child, Chekhov spent all his money on tickets to the theater!

Chekhov wrote,“you say you have cried at my plays…But this is not why I wrote them, it was Stanislavsky [Russian actor and director] who turned them into cry-babies.I simply wanted to say to people honestly: “Understand, how bad and boring your lives are!” People should understand this and…create themselves another and better life. What is here to cry about?”

In "The Cherry Orchard" an impoverished noble family is forced to sell their orchard and their home.  They are in denial and do not take the measures needed to hold onto the land -- basically develop the land for cottages (in today's vernacular it would mean selling the land to build condos).  The play shows the rise of the bourgeois middle class and the collapse of the upper class.  It has been viewed as both a drama and comedy, though Chekhov himself viewed it as a comedy, and there are many funny, eccentric characters populating the play. At the end of the play, the family is moving out and they have locked up the house.  Unfortunately, they locked the old butler in the house, and as he decides to "take a nap" since he can't get out of the house, the sound of the cherry orchard being chopped down can be heard.  Is this funny or tragic??

My class enjoyed the play.  The hardest part was learning the many characters' names, so I simplified the names and provided nicknames:

Lubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya - Lou  (Generous and loving)

Ermolai Lopakhin - Lop   (Peasant turned businessman)

Trofimov – Prof Trof (Eternal student)

Leonid Andreyevich Gaev – Gaev (the Big Baby)

Boris Semyonov-Pischik – Piss (Begging landowner – comic relief)

Semyon Epikhodov – Epi  (2 and 20 troubles – comic accountant)