Literacy for the iGeneration

This semester I’ll be blogging about my experiences teaching the Language, Literacy, and Diversity in American Schools course. This is the first time I’ve taught the course, and I’m a little nervous about it. The course was designed by Kenny, who’s taught some iteration of it a lot. It’s tough following in his footsteps. I’m using his syllabus with minor adjustments and while there’s a comfort in that, it’s also a little disconcerting because I want to make sure I’m true to the intent of the course yet realize that I interpret things and present things differently than Kenny does. He’s gracious about sharing his thinking with me, so it’s not like I’m in this alone.

Plus, as I told the students, we’re in this together. We’re figuring this thing (not the course – the ideas) together.

Last night we started out with going over the syllabus or more precisely me going over the changes I made since it was originally sent out and answering questions. I actually like doing it better this way – and having changes, because it forces the students into the syllabus and to make sense of the class on their own instead of me just going over it point by point. I don’t like doing that. These are intelligent people I teach, I don’t need to read the syllabus to them. Just provide clarification.

One of the biggest concerns was the chapbook. It’s a collection point for student thinking throughout the course. Because of problmes in the past, Kenny designed a very clearly deliniated set of requirements for what needs to be in there. That of course intimidates the highly conscientious student. So I hopefully made clear that the intent of the chapbook is for them, as a place to collect their thinking. That yes, I will be using it for accountability purposes (to make sure they’ve done the readings), but more importantly to provide them with a place to work through their thinking about the readings.

We then listened to the Toni Morrison Nobel prize speech and I gave them about 10 minutes to discuss it. I struggled with how much time to spend on the speech. I thought it important that they hear her read it (especially since they’ll be doing their own reading at the end of the semester). But I wasn’t sure how much time to spend discussing it. 10 minutes seemed to be sufficient although we could have spent the whole night on her speech really pulling it apart bit by bit. It’s such a rich and multilayered piece. At the same time, I’m hesitant to do so because it can take away the beauty of a piece. So what I intend to do is return to it throughout the semester. Prehaps select salient pieces from it as framing for a night’s discussion.

The next activity was the “I am from” poem. I seems Joellen used that poem as an icebreaker in her 634 class. Sigh. Next time I teach the class I’ll have to come up with something else. The intent of doing the poem was yes – introductions, but it was also to start the discussion about class/cultural/ethnic, etc. markers. I didn’t do much with it except to introduce the idea. I wasn’t happy with the way it went. Not because of the students – because I really didn’t ask them to do anything with it. I’m hoping to pull it back in when we meet again.

Next week we won’t be meeting because of the AIDs Rochester presentation.

I need to be deliberative in this course about returning to things that are started in previous classes. I need to keep the spiral path in mind. This course isn’t about marching through content – it’s about the exploration of ideas and self and self in relation to ideas and to others.

We ended with a discussion of the readings. I was quite pleased with that. The students seemed to dig into the readings and made good sense of them.

Thus ended the first class. I’m feeling pleased because I have what appears to be a great set of students who are willing to dig into the texts and think. I’m still feeling uncertain about my own facilitation of the materials. I’m glad my students are all teachers because that means they understand the challenges of teaching and that just like love, the course of teaching never does run smooth.