Teaching Freshman Comp - Week 11 (+ Thesis Report)
Things have calmed down enough to let me feel like I can afford to read a book solely for pleasure, and to that end I picked up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao since Junot Diaz is coming to speak on campus on Monday. I am not all that far, but at the rate I was devouring it last night (and had to force myself to close it up and go to sleep) I don't doubt I will be done by then. So far, I love it. Not only do I love the voice Diaz uses to tell the story of the socially-awkward physically repulsive Dominican nerd with an unhealthy obsession of all things fantasy/sci-fi, comics and the like, but he uses footnotes as a way to disseminate information simultaneously that tickles my love of notes and marginalia. Those handful of people who have read my memoir and my novel (both bad) and those who have read my longer academic papers know that I am obsessed with footnotes, and Diaz's footnotes are of the variety that are so long they can take half the page and continue to the next! It is the only way I know to present that simultaneity I want to convey and that I sense in all things around me. The section I just got to seems to shift to Oscar's sister's point of view. . . I am eager to read more.
On the thesis front I am finally making serious headway (thus my feeling that I don't need to spend every spare moment pouring over books on comic book and narrative theory and the philosophy of 'authenticity' and can read something else). I wrote 13 pages on the competing narratives of gentrification and how they trace out the identities of characters - in particular Isabel Vendle and Rachel Ebdus - which will form the main part of one of my chapters. In meeting with my advisor on Tuesday, she was actually able to read what I wrote and explain it back to me correctly, which caused us both a good amount of relief, I think. However, she reminded me several times of my need to shorten both my paragraphs and my sentences. "Shaping like that is a later step," I explained to her. "I chop the hell out of my writing, but first I need to get all that long convolution out in the process of figuring out what the heck I am saying." For me writing and thinking are often simultaneous - the page (or in this case the computer screen) is an outward manifestation of my internal workspace. On Wednesday, I wrote two painful pages for my introductory chapter breaking down Charles Taylor's views of authenticity, the dialogical nature of identity and how the choices we make only have meaning against a "horizon of significance." This was necessary in order to make a connection between those horizons of significance and the act of collecting, which I characterize as the construction of linear narrative - that is, collecting is the process of making the story that gives meaning and context to the things collected in a world that is a lot more simultaneous and complex than any "model of linearity" (my term) can convey.
Collecting is all over the text, and while comic books and music are the primary literal forms of collection, there are other modes of collecting - people, places, history, street lore - all with the goal of making meaning/constructing identity.
So yeah, they were painful to write, but fruitful. I finally feel good about writing this thing. I made a breakthrough. I look forward to writing more this weekend.
TEACHING:
Tuesday: We discussed the essay "C.P. Ellis" by Studs Terkel. The oral historian presents us with the story of a poor white southern man who found purpose and meaning for his constant struggles in his hatred of blacks, and a feeling of belonging and power in the Ku Klux Klan - but eventually he becomes a community leader and labor organizer with a black constituency once he starts to 1) realize that he and his kin suffer a lot of the same economic problems as blacks and it's political leaders and businessmen who actually run things and use them both, and 2) actually meet and associate with blacks and people of other groups (like Jews and Catholics).
I then had them write letters to someone they feel harbors racial prejudice and use specific examples from Ellis' story to as a way to convince the addressee that it is possible to change and benefit from it. As usual when I handed them back two days later I admonished them for not being specific in their references and examples from the essay and/or not explaining why the example should function to accomplish what they were using it for. Be specific! Be specific! Be specific! Be specific!
Sigh.
Thursday: Before class I got the two copies of my observation report, one of which I was to sign and return to the department and the other for my own record. For the most part it was very positive, with things like "Mr. Oyola is an effective communicator," and "Mr. Oyola has a good rapport with his students and is able to lead them from simple to more complex question with ease." It also complimented the actual lesson and how it "provided valuable practice at close interpretive reading as well as, via the example of advertising, consideration of the nature of textuality more generally and its social and economic contexts."
However, in the question about whether my performance as instructor was 'satisfactory' and what suggestions would he give for improvement I was kind of thrown for a loop. Sure, he wrote "Mr. Oyola is an adept instructor and his performance in the classroom is certainly satisfactory," but then he went on to write that I should consider providing some clearer historical and intellectual background to the issues I am asking students to address. "For example, in regard to this day's lesson, he might have introduced the class to the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism." Is he kidding? I know, he is not kidding, and I assume that when we meet for our post-observation conference he will tell me that I can introduce them to such ideas without necessarily using that kind of jargon. . . But as much I personally love theory, it is my experience with this particular class that whenever I try to lead them down that road they disengage almost immediately. I always felt it was better to expose them to more general ways to critically examine the assigned reading and what that might suggest, and hope that some of it sticks in order for it to be later associated with that kind of thing when they get to more advanced classes. His other criticism I find to me much more right on, if only because I thought nearly the exact same thing right after that particular class. He wrote, "I feel that the discussion could be conducted in a manner that would require students to move rigorously beyond their initial responses and feelings towards the material." It struck me the next day (as I wrote up my weekly report that you all so desperately love to read) how I might have gotten them to consider the sexual underpinnings of the idea of "innocence" when it came to discussing whether children are sexualized in advertisements. (See Week 9), which is exactly the example he used in the observation report.
Oh well, overall it was a positive observation report, and so I don't think there will be an obstacle to my getting hired on to teach another class next semester. I am hoping for English 2 (which focuses on writing a research paper), which traditionally has a theme. My theme will be feminist theory. When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues she said, "That's great because I think it will be that much more meaningful to the students to have a man exposing them to such issues." There is just a bit of bitter irony there, though - because to me her statement just reinforces the sense that an idea has more traction when presented by a man, since it might seem like a purely emotional and self-serving interest when done by a woman.
As for class itself, we discussed an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X called "Learning to Read," as our module on race and ethnicity continues (having started with the "C.P. Ellis" essay). The excerpt described his process of self-education in prison and we connected it back to the module on education we did at the beginning of the semester. We commented on the irony of his having finally gotten access to what he needed to "improve himself" while in prison, when if the education system were not such an utter failure for so many young black men, he might not have ended up in prison to begin with. After that I had them break up into groups to review each others profile essays, while I went around and talked to them about how to synthesize the answers to their interview questions into an essay.
I also handed back their graded essays and expressed my general disappointment with them. "Anyone here know the expression 'phoning it in'?" I asked, and of course I had to explain it to them. In general, the essays and other things they handed in (remember, this was a freebie, they could write whatever they wanted, I even got a few poems) felt slapdash and written at the last minute with a minimum of thought and effort.
The semester is drawing to a close and soon the hardcore preparation for the exit exam begins. . .
On the thesis front I am finally making serious headway (thus my feeling that I don't need to spend every spare moment pouring over books on comic book and narrative theory and the philosophy of 'authenticity' and can read something else). I wrote 13 pages on the competing narratives of gentrification and how they trace out the identities of characters - in particular Isabel Vendle and Rachel Ebdus - which will form the main part of one of my chapters. In meeting with my advisor on Tuesday, she was actually able to read what I wrote and explain it back to me correctly, which caused us both a good amount of relief, I think. However, she reminded me several times of my need to shorten both my paragraphs and my sentences. "Shaping like that is a later step," I explained to her. "I chop the hell out of my writing, but first I need to get all that long convolution out in the process of figuring out what the heck I am saying." For me writing and thinking are often simultaneous - the page (or in this case the computer screen) is an outward manifestation of my internal workspace. On Wednesday, I wrote two painful pages for my introductory chapter breaking down Charles Taylor's views of authenticity, the dialogical nature of identity and how the choices we make only have meaning against a "horizon of significance." This was necessary in order to make a connection between those horizons of significance and the act of collecting, which I characterize as the construction of linear narrative - that is, collecting is the process of making the story that gives meaning and context to the things collected in a world that is a lot more simultaneous and complex than any "model of linearity" (my term) can convey.
Collecting is all over the text, and while comic books and music are the primary literal forms of collection, there are other modes of collecting - people, places, history, street lore - all with the goal of making meaning/constructing identity.
So yeah, they were painful to write, but fruitful. I finally feel good about writing this thing. I made a breakthrough. I look forward to writing more this weekend.
TEACHING:
Tuesday: We discussed the essay "C.P. Ellis" by Studs Terkel. The oral historian presents us with the story of a poor white southern man who found purpose and meaning for his constant struggles in his hatred of blacks, and a feeling of belonging and power in the Ku Klux Klan - but eventually he becomes a community leader and labor organizer with a black constituency once he starts to 1) realize that he and his kin suffer a lot of the same economic problems as blacks and it's political leaders and businessmen who actually run things and use them both, and 2) actually meet and associate with blacks and people of other groups (like Jews and Catholics).
I then had them write letters to someone they feel harbors racial prejudice and use specific examples from Ellis' story to as a way to convince the addressee that it is possible to change and benefit from it. As usual when I handed them back two days later I admonished them for not being specific in their references and examples from the essay and/or not explaining why the example should function to accomplish what they were using it for. Be specific! Be specific! Be specific! Be specific!
Sigh.
Thursday: Before class I got the two copies of my observation report, one of which I was to sign and return to the department and the other for my own record. For the most part it was very positive, with things like "Mr. Oyola is an effective communicator," and "Mr. Oyola has a good rapport with his students and is able to lead them from simple to more complex question with ease." It also complimented the actual lesson and how it "provided valuable practice at close interpretive reading as well as, via the example of advertising, consideration of the nature of textuality more generally and its social and economic contexts."
However, in the question about whether my performance as instructor was 'satisfactory' and what suggestions would he give for improvement I was kind of thrown for a loop. Sure, he wrote "Mr. Oyola is an adept instructor and his performance in the classroom is certainly satisfactory," but then he went on to write that I should consider providing some clearer historical and intellectual background to the issues I am asking students to address. "For example, in regard to this day's lesson, he might have introduced the class to the Marxist concept of commodity fetishism." Is he kidding? I know, he is not kidding, and I assume that when we meet for our post-observation conference he will tell me that I can introduce them to such ideas without necessarily using that kind of jargon. . . But as much I personally love theory, it is my experience with this particular class that whenever I try to lead them down that road they disengage almost immediately. I always felt it was better to expose them to more general ways to critically examine the assigned reading and what that might suggest, and hope that some of it sticks in order for it to be later associated with that kind of thing when they get to more advanced classes. His other criticism I find to me much more right on, if only because I thought nearly the exact same thing right after that particular class. He wrote, "I feel that the discussion could be conducted in a manner that would require students to move rigorously beyond their initial responses and feelings towards the material." It struck me the next day (as I wrote up my weekly report that you all so desperately love to read) how I might have gotten them to consider the sexual underpinnings of the idea of "innocence" when it came to discussing whether children are sexualized in advertisements. (See Week 9), which is exactly the example he used in the observation report.
Oh well, overall it was a positive observation report, and so I don't think there will be an obstacle to my getting hired on to teach another class next semester. I am hoping for English 2 (which focuses on writing a research paper), which traditionally has a theme. My theme will be feminist theory. When I mentioned this to one of my colleagues she said, "That's great because I think it will be that much more meaningful to the students to have a man exposing them to such issues." There is just a bit of bitter irony there, though - because to me her statement just reinforces the sense that an idea has more traction when presented by a man, since it might seem like a purely emotional and self-serving interest when done by a woman.
As for class itself, we discussed an excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X called "Learning to Read," as our module on race and ethnicity continues (having started with the "C.P. Ellis" essay). The excerpt described his process of self-education in prison and we connected it back to the module on education we did at the beginning of the semester. We commented on the irony of his having finally gotten access to what he needed to "improve himself" while in prison, when if the education system were not such an utter failure for so many young black men, he might not have ended up in prison to begin with. After that I had them break up into groups to review each others profile essays, while I went around and talked to them about how to synthesize the answers to their interview questions into an essay.
I also handed back their graded essays and expressed my general disappointment with them. "Anyone here know the expression 'phoning it in'?" I asked, and of course I had to explain it to them. In general, the essays and other things they handed in (remember, this was a freebie, they could write whatever they wanted, I even got a few poems) felt slapdash and written at the last minute with a minimum of thought and effort.
The semester is drawing to a close and soon the hardcore preparation for the exit exam begins. . .