(no subject)
I'm really quite excited about teaching film studies at the moment. I lead three seminar groups (each with about eight students) on the basic film history module - which is a core course for all first year undergraduates in the film and tv department. At first I was very nervous, and got by with pre-determined questions, nods of agreement and jokes; but I think that now, especially as I know each student pretty well (and have marked some of their written work), we're really starting to get somewhere, and are having productive and interesting discussions. I really really hope that at least some of them think so too.
Over the past week, we've been working on Sciuscia, a De Sica film from the mid-1940s. One of the pre-arranged discussion topics was 'the other boys in prison', on which two students had a short conference and presented their ideas to the group. From there, the rest of the group picked it up and managed to hammer out a really interesting observation about Pasquale's cellmates, which I think is an important point about the film in general. I hadn't thought about it before, but we managed to get there together - and I brought the point up in the following two classes. It was brilliant.
But then there were also places where I tripped over my words, or struggled to bring out the important points. In the third seminar I was observed by a senior member of staff and was quite nervous about it, which caused my mind to go blank at two specific points. I wanted to take these home and think about how they could've been better achieved; I so want to be better at it for next week. I love the idea that you have the potential to constantly improve how you do things, if only you make the effort at it.
Over the past week, we've been working on Sciuscia, a De Sica film from the mid-1940s. One of the pre-arranged discussion topics was 'the other boys in prison', on which two students had a short conference and presented their ideas to the group. From there, the rest of the group picked it up and managed to hammer out a really interesting observation about Pasquale's cellmates, which I think is an important point about the film in general. I hadn't thought about it before, but we managed to get there together - and I brought the point up in the following two classes. It was brilliant.
But then there were also places where I tripped over my words, or struggled to bring out the important points. In the third seminar I was observed by a senior member of staff and was quite nervous about it, which caused my mind to go blank at two specific points. I wanted to take these home and think about how they could've been better achieved; I so want to be better at it for next week. I love the idea that you have the potential to constantly improve how you do things, if only you make the effort at it.