Upon Reflection...
A few notes to self, on the inaugural edition of the "Jazz, Blues, Slavery & Voodoo: Reading & Writing in New Orleans" class, to ultimately be passed on to the academic committee.
This course can’t be done as a 2 credit course unless you reduce the teacher’s role to little more than a tour guide/ticket broker and the students to mere tourists.
Originally designed as a “critical reading & writing” fiction course, and a cultural immersion course simultaneously, it was still a delicate balance at 4 credit hours. The majority of the readings, text discussions, and cultural background materials would have been completed in the classroom in the five days before we departed. That would have freed up more of the students’ time for the activities and journaling once we arrived.
Only a couple weeks before departure, word came down that the course was being cut from four credit hours to two. I was encouraged not to eliminate any of the three aspects - the reading, writing, or cultural immersion activities - just trim each of them, and cut my time with the class in half. Back to the drawing board for a vastly different syllabus, all the while knowing there was no way to discuss the readings, share the writings, do lectures and present background materials, lead the class in activities, keep up with reading their journals, pass the best daily blogs on to the Columbia website, and handle the tickets and changing event schedule (it’s NOLA, nothing ever truly follows a plan) in “2 or 3 hours a day, on 9 or 10 days” of the 12 day trip. That was alright. Maybe I could do it in 4 or 5 hours a day. NOTE: I don’t mind working unpaid overtime in a town I like with students I enjoy. (Of course, 4-5 hours a day was a silly dream, too, but see note above.)
Later still came the news
that they had not instituted one of the major ground rules in my proposal - establishing firm prerequisite requirements that would virtually guarantee all of the students would be at least 21: but since the final approval of the course came so late that the course wasn’t listed in the (printed) course catalog, it would be easy for the academic advisers to steer the older students toward it and the younger students away from it. This made me nervous.
And even still later came the news that the powers that be were interested in opening the course up to other disciplines - an idea I embraced whole-heartedly! Even though it meant yet another significant revising of the curriculum, since nearly half of the new class roster had never taken a fiction writing course, much less a “critical reading and writing” course, I was certain that the interplay between different artistic and academic disciplines would create a more stimulating and well-rounded experience. And it did.
Last came the news that a lot of the students had signed up for the course on their own, having spotted it in the online catalog, without speaking to academic advisers, and some of them were perhaps significantly under 21, and so, I really couldn’t require those students to participate in the music club activities of a course whose name begins: “Jazz, Blues….”
I’m not saying that the students who were underage didn’t do fabulous work. They did. Their contributions to the discussions were excellent, their participation in activities was as enthusiastic as any of the older students. They were a great pleasure to have in class.
However, having 4 students under the age of 21, a couple significantly so, did call the musical options - the stuff that was going to make up almost half the course - into question. I knew accommodations could be reached to deal with that challenge on Bourbon Street: at the very least, the doors (making up half the walls) are always thrown open so you can easily watch a set from the street, until you have a chance to find the right musician, bartender, doorman, or owner who would agree to bend the stated rules of “No one under 21” if those “kids” were escorted by a proper guardian. What I couldn’t be certain of, however, was whether such accommodations could be reached at neighborhood clubs outside the French Quarter. Clubs where I had hoped to expose them to bands and music not geared toward tourists, where musicians were held to a higher standard by the neighborhood crowd. Clubs in neighborhoods too far away to be comfortable with breaking the group in two, sending part of the group through the door and turning part of the group away. Clubs with return routes passing through areas that shouldn’t be walked by a small group of female students, whose return cab fare would be out of most of their budgets.
So those clubs all got crossed off the agenda, with the exception of Tipitina’s, which has an 18 and up admittance policy. I told myself it would be okay. That Bourbon St. bands might water things down sometimes, they might play to the tourists and coast when it was clear everybody was too drunk to really pay attention, but it would still expose the students to styles of music they weren’t familiar with and the musicians would step up and play their A-material when they realized there folks in the audience who were truly listening. I’ve seen that happen time and time again.
Then we arrived on Bourbon St. to the weakest musical performances and band line-up I’ve encountered in 18 visits. Even the hard-core, seasoned veterans who could, in the past, be counted on to give an excellent, authentic blues, or jazz, or R&B or Cajun performance - once they realized there were people in the crowd who were really, truly listening - even they were changing their acts to disco, to dance music, to nasty, trash-talk vamping.
I’d never been to New Orleans this close to Mardi Gras before. I’d been told that the music quality generally goes up the closer you get to Mardi Gras, but perhaps that’s only out in the neighborhood clubs. Maybe Bourbon St. has a directly inverse relationship. The “real” Mardi Gras doesn’t happen in the Quarter, that’s just where most of the drunken crowds are diverted to. Maybe, from experience, the Bourbon St. bands change their act to accommodate that, since playing music is their job, not just their passion, it is their art, but it’s also their income which pays the rent and buys the groceries. A wise man, the owner of Evelyn’s Place, told me that he always talks to young aspiring artists: tells them that half their work has to be their passion, their true art, and the other half has to be aimed toward their potential customers - has to be paintings they can hang up on the fences around Jackson Square and sell to the tourists, ’cause you can’t do the stuff you’re passionate about if you haven’t got a roof over your head and food in the cabinet. And if you can do both at the same time - art you’re passionate about that is also art that can easily be sold - Bully for you! Ain’t you the lucky one!”
Final note to self: I can’t be this long-winded when I present these details to the academic committee and the dean. Significant editing of tangents has to be done.
But what remains are two principles that must support the foundation of this course, if it is to continue: It has to be a 4 credit hour course, and it has to be restricted to students who can show an I.D. that says 21.
This course can’t be done as a 2 credit course unless you reduce the teacher’s role to little more than a tour guide/ticket broker and the students to mere tourists.
Originally designed as a “critical reading & writing” fiction course, and a cultural immersion course simultaneously, it was still a delicate balance at 4 credit hours. The majority of the readings, text discussions, and cultural background materials would have been completed in the classroom in the five days before we departed. That would have freed up more of the students’ time for the activities and journaling once we arrived.
Only a couple weeks before departure, word came down that the course was being cut from four credit hours to two. I was encouraged not to eliminate any of the three aspects - the reading, writing, or cultural immersion activities - just trim each of them, and cut my time with the class in half. Back to the drawing board for a vastly different syllabus, all the while knowing there was no way to discuss the readings, share the writings, do lectures and present background materials, lead the class in activities, keep up with reading their journals, pass the best daily blogs on to the Columbia website, and handle the tickets and changing event schedule (it’s NOLA, nothing ever truly follows a plan) in “2 or 3 hours a day, on 9 or 10 days” of the 12 day trip. That was alright. Maybe I could do it in 4 or 5 hours a day. NOTE: I don’t mind working unpaid overtime in a town I like with students I enjoy. (Of course, 4-5 hours a day was a silly dream, too, but see note above.)
Later still came the news
that they had not instituted one of the major ground rules in my proposal - establishing firm prerequisite requirements that would virtually guarantee all of the students would be at least 21: but since the final approval of the course came so late that the course wasn’t listed in the (printed) course catalog, it would be easy for the academic advisers to steer the older students toward it and the younger students away from it. This made me nervous.
And even still later came the news that the powers that be were interested in opening the course up to other disciplines - an idea I embraced whole-heartedly! Even though it meant yet another significant revising of the curriculum, since nearly half of the new class roster had never taken a fiction writing course, much less a “critical reading and writing” course, I was certain that the interplay between different artistic and academic disciplines would create a more stimulating and well-rounded experience. And it did.
Last came the news that a lot of the students had signed up for the course on their own, having spotted it in the online catalog, without speaking to academic advisers, and some of them were perhaps significantly under 21, and so, I really couldn’t require those students to participate in the music club activities of a course whose name begins: “Jazz, Blues….”
I’m not saying that the students who were underage didn’t do fabulous work. They did. Their contributions to the discussions were excellent, their participation in activities was as enthusiastic as any of the older students. They were a great pleasure to have in class.
However, having 4 students under the age of 21, a couple significantly so, did call the musical options - the stuff that was going to make up almost half the course - into question. I knew accommodations could be reached to deal with that challenge on Bourbon Street: at the very least, the doors (making up half the walls) are always thrown open so you can easily watch a set from the street, until you have a chance to find the right musician, bartender, doorman, or owner who would agree to bend the stated rules of “No one under 21” if those “kids” were escorted by a proper guardian. What I couldn’t be certain of, however, was whether such accommodations could be reached at neighborhood clubs outside the French Quarter. Clubs where I had hoped to expose them to bands and music not geared toward tourists, where musicians were held to a higher standard by the neighborhood crowd. Clubs in neighborhoods too far away to be comfortable with breaking the group in two, sending part of the group through the door and turning part of the group away. Clubs with return routes passing through areas that shouldn’t be walked by a small group of female students, whose return cab fare would be out of most of their budgets.
So those clubs all got crossed off the agenda, with the exception of Tipitina’s, which has an 18 and up admittance policy. I told myself it would be okay. That Bourbon St. bands might water things down sometimes, they might play to the tourists and coast when it was clear everybody was too drunk to really pay attention, but it would still expose the students to styles of music they weren’t familiar with and the musicians would step up and play their A-material when they realized there folks in the audience who were truly listening. I’ve seen that happen time and time again.
Then we arrived on Bourbon St. to the weakest musical performances and band line-up I’ve encountered in 18 visits. Even the hard-core, seasoned veterans who could, in the past, be counted on to give an excellent, authentic blues, or jazz, or R&B or Cajun performance - once they realized there were people in the crowd who were really, truly listening - even they were changing their acts to disco, to dance music, to nasty, trash-talk vamping.
I’d never been to New Orleans this close to Mardi Gras before. I’d been told that the music quality generally goes up the closer you get to Mardi Gras, but perhaps that’s only out in the neighborhood clubs. Maybe Bourbon St. has a directly inverse relationship. The “real” Mardi Gras doesn’t happen in the Quarter, that’s just where most of the drunken crowds are diverted to. Maybe, from experience, the Bourbon St. bands change their act to accommodate that, since playing music is their job, not just their passion, it is their art, but it’s also their income which pays the rent and buys the groceries. A wise man, the owner of Evelyn’s Place, told me that he always talks to young aspiring artists: tells them that half their work has to be their passion, their true art, and the other half has to be aimed toward their potential customers - has to be paintings they can hang up on the fences around Jackson Square and sell to the tourists, ’cause you can’t do the stuff you’re passionate about if you haven’t got a roof over your head and food in the cabinet. And if you can do both at the same time - art you’re passionate about that is also art that can easily be sold - Bully for you! Ain’t you the lucky one!”
Final note to self: I can’t be this long-winded when I present these details to the academic committee and the dean. Significant editing of tangents has to be done.
But what remains are two principles that must support the foundation of this course, if it is to continue: It has to be a 4 credit hour course, and it has to be restricted to students who can show an I.D. that says 21.