We had a terrific discussion in my FYC section today, and I’m still excited about it, to the point where I feel guilty that my students so greatly exceeded my expectations: how could I have dared to underestimate them so?
We wrapped up Essay 1 and they turned in their final drafts with letters to me reflecting on the process of writing the essay. One student, whose classroom adversarial stance makes me grin every day and warms the vile, burnt and stunted little spleen in my chest that passes for a heart, accepted my offer and addressed me in the salutation of her letter as “Dear Needlessly Cruel Pedagogical Oppressor,” while another — OK, I’m embarassed to admit how much this pleased me — opened the letter with the Dead Poets Society standing-on-the-desk appellation (see the comments: the name rather than the act) the students gave to Robin Williams.
I love this job.
It was a wretched iron-gray thunderstorm of a rain day, and I’d expected to spend the last forty-five minutes of class on a dull plod-through of definitions of “text” and “difficulty” and the productive intersections of such, using the first section of Gertrude Stein’s “How Writing Is Written” as an applied model of such analysis, with me being the note-taker and facilitator and recording the discussion on the whiteboard.
They collaboratively knocked it out of the fucking park.
In ten minutes, we had a wealth of terrific material from them up on the board plus totally unexpected brilliant analyses of stuff that I’d (rather stupidly) thought was gonna take thirty minutes of teacherly guidance. In twenty minutes, we had an insightful class-authored summation and critique of Stein’s argument regarding contemporaneity that I’d put off until Tuesday on the syllabus (PDF). And by minute thirty, I had to put a halt to their fantastic riffing on Stein and pop music in order to give the homework.
I love this job.
That’s a spectacular good teaching day! Standing on the desk?! Carpe diem! You the man, Mike.
Um, actually, I was unclear in my description. It was just the textual reference, not the act (which would actually be kinda scary, I think): student Q (I’m blushing hard now) addressed me in the letter as O Captain My Captain. No standing on desks or any of that foolishness, but they’re a great bunch.
I wondered about that after my interpretation but I didn’t want to second guess. You are a good teacher, Mike, and your students reflect that because they respond to you.
ARGH! It should be O Sergeant My Sergeant. You work for a living and don’t forget it! lol
Nice to hear that everything is going well in your classes.
Nice to hear that you haven’t jumped on the furniture. And that your classes are going well.