The Bean chapter for this week was one of the first ones I found directly applicable to English 1000 teaching — all the other ones seem very interdisciplinary, which is fine, but we Enlightened English Students know writing is important already.
Anyway, I've sort of been struggling with what types of readings I want to assign. I had started with the standard assumption I would be teaching a novel (most likely To Kill a Mockingbird, but maybe something more contemporary), but now I'm not so sure. Because I'm not guaranteed to have students who are yearning to blossom into wonderful literary analysts, who am I to "force them" to read a novel, which would be "just entertainment"? Of course, if I incorporate films into my class, that's even "less" academic.
All emphatic quotation marks aside, the two reading activities I have brainstormed are as follows:
1) This is a variation on the activity I brought up in one of my previous posts (incorporating Rogerian argument). I would ask them to write one sentence to summarize each paragraph of a particularly difficult (or simply a scholarly) essay, and then have them summarize the author's argument and personal biases (e.g. educational background, gender, class). I am not sure if I want to place such a heavy emphasis on negative biases (like racism or sexism), but I still want the students to learn that every author has a set of values that s/he cannot discard. This is primarily drawn from Bean's exercise on 140 about the Author's Frame of Reference, and Elbow's believing and doubting game.
2) I also really liked the idea of coming up with questions to guide readings. Not that I would want the students to get ONLY what I want them to get out of a text, but if the reading is something I think they're having difficulty with, I would rather they be pointed somewhere than left with everywhere to go and no idea how to choose. Incidentally, I think these guide questions come up a lot on assignment sheets and I don't think they should, because I would be confused as to which of the questions my paper should answer. Still, they are often important questions that can spark good thoughts. I just don't plan to introduce them in the context of an assignment.
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I’m in total agreement with you Katie. Though I initially though of incorporating a novel (Native Son) into my course to accompany the films I will be showing, it just didn’t quite fit. However, I have replaced Native Son with other readings—shorter articles and chapters that are just as pertinent as the N.S.
In addition, I am also struggling with the “less” academic brand of not operating such a “traditional” English course, however I think that I will get over these insecurities very soon. Due to the fact that I see about 4 out of 7 students a week in the writing lab that can’t compose a thesis, have no clue about the objective of their Eng 1000 class, and cannot see for how the life of themselves how they can relate (not to mention even comprehend) Wordsworth to their everyday life, thus I will be using films as my version of a T.A.
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