The students shuffled in and were immediately given
five minutes to independently free-write/brainstorm some major themes, ideas,
symbols, and moments in the book they read over the summer. Stacy divided the
students into two groups and sat them in the desks grouped on opposite walls in
the class. She then, asked the students to pair up within their book groups.
Each pair was given a poster board, and marker.
For about 10-15 minutes, each pair described, in one
sentence, 2-3 themes, moments, ideas, or symbols from their novel and wrote
them colorfully on their poster board. Once the posters were made, the students
walked around within their book groups to read each other’s posters.
Each large book group was then given a skein of yarn,
scissors, some tape, small pieces of paper, and a few wire clothes hangers.
Using the yarn to unite the posters, students made connections, within their
text, to each other’s ideas, moments, themes, and symbols and wrote a sentence
explaining the connection, or a quote from the novel explaining the connection,
and hung these written explanations on each piece of yarn using the clothes
hangers. After about 20 minutes, spider webs of yarn and clothes hangers
started to form across the opposite walls of the classroom and Stacy stopped
work for a moment to give students their final task.
The students walked to opposite sides of the room,
with yarn in tow, to see the themes, ideas, symbols, and moments from the other
novel and make connections across the two texts. Using the yarn, clothes
hangers, and a lot of team work, the room slowly began to resemble a lazer
security beam maze from a James Bond film. The students were so engaged, time
ran out before Stacy could reconvene as a class and reflect, although I’m sure
they did just that the next time they met as a class.
—Danielle
I took this lesson as
inspiration for an assignment I gave while teaching a high school class on a
unit for Tim O’Brien’s The Things They
Carried. My students wrote a piece describing what we would find in their
backpacks (similar to a section of Things
where the soldiers discuss what they are carrying with them). In this piece,
the students were aiming to mimic O’Brien’s writing, including various listing,
heavy use of metaphor, and very specific content related words. By dissecting
O’Brien’s writing and trying to replicate it, students were forced to
understand his words on a much deeper level than if they had simply read it.
That’s why I think this lesson is so great in any setting – it taps into a
creative side while also encouraging literary analysis in a more unique way
than simple class discussion.
—Catherine
I can
distinctly remember during a segment on Of Mice and Men that students
who had points to make about Lenny and his relationship with George or George’s
relationship to society were asked to provide and recite a quote from the text
before offering their points. It is hard to define why her lesson was so
engaging for high school students but she was unanimously one of the favorite
teachers at the school. I think it has to do with a certain presence and
preparedness while not seeming prepared to Teach (with a capital “T”). She
would ask for free writes to spur on discussion but she wouldn't do this until
the class had been exhausted of unprompted discussion points. The free write
would happen in the middle of class only if the entire class was lacking in
energy.
The
reason why I believe this lesson was so effective was, again, because of the
teacher’s preparedness
that masqueraded as colloquial. It is strange that I was so consumed by this
method because since I have become a college student, I find it more refreshing
to have a lecturer who enforces that he or she knows more than I do.
—Tyler
Most of these classroom moments
were facilitated by a combination of group discussion, my own thoughts, and the
questions posed by the instructor. I cannot think of how I would have arrived
at my understand Ulysses, as a novel
which actively works on the reader, if it had not been for my own response as
well as the confusion frequently expressed by my peers. I doubt that I would
have been able to consider the narrative focus of Beckett’s Watt, a text with very little narrative
itself, without the class instructor drawing my attention to the things that
Beckett left out instead of the things he put in. Seeing the missing parts of a
text is as important as seeing the present ones.
Overall,
the things that seem to make a literature class better than individual study
are the opportunities to bounce ideas off of other people and to see the ways
that other’s perspectives help to create and evolve your own. It reminds me of
how much of a community project the study of literature is even when it does
not always seems so.
—Adam
One particular class day, we
were broken into groups of four. Our task was to choose one of the novels or
plays from the syllabus and illustrate it compared to either a song, movie,
poem, etc. which it was based on. We were to use poster board, magazines, and
markers the professor brought in to create a visual presentation of our musings
on the media piece as it related to the novel/play. My group chose Romeo and Juliet and compared it against
Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 exaggerated and operatic film of the same name starring
Leonardo DiCaprio. We didn’t have time to make a fancy, well thought out poster.
We really had to work as a team and think on our feet as we went through
magazines, laughing all the while, trying to find clippings that related to
Shakespeare’s tale as old as time. The whole thing felt a little ridiculous to
me at first; something junior high students would participate in.
However, we realized that it pushed us to focus on the
most important aspects of the play. Questions like: “What did we think
Shakespeare was saying about love?” or “Did we think their suicides were
justifiable?” We touched on themes and portions of the play I’d never given
much thought to before.
As a student learning, I believe this lesson worked
wonders. Not only did it teach me how to work well with others using limited
resources, but it also gave me insight into the play, a play I truly thought I
knew like the back of my hand.
—Jessica
During
this particular class–the one that sticks out in my mind as a great literature
lesson–we took a break from literature authored by Wilde and instead read
sections of the transcript from Wilde’s trial. I don’t accurately remember much
about the trial transcript, but I do remember that it was a very compelling
text, given our background knowledge on Wilde. The professor guided our
discussion of the transcript and led us to view it as a text of its
own–something with a specific language that we could parse and analyze, with
passages we could closely read, as if it were literature. It was fascinating to
go through that exercise and it was also very interesting to learn more about
Wilde’s life, and the cultural stigma he faced as a result of his sexuality.
After we read the transcripts aloud, we had a very animated class discussion
that touched on such a variety of topics–the supporting characters that
vilified Wilde throughout the trail, the language that was used to condemn
Wilde, how Wilde’s personal disposition has become sort of canonical itself,
how it informs our reading of him.
On
one level, this class was so great because it was truly fun. We discussed a
topic that was of great interest to us, and we were able to inform our
discussion with previous knowledge about Wilde and his writing. In addition,
the incorporation of an outside text–the transcript–made for a particularly
interesting class. Most of us would not have encountered the transcripts, even
in our own research papers, and it was interesting to delve into them in such
detail. Finally, the professor’s enthusiasm for the class and her wealth of
knowledge about Wilde–you could really ask her anything–made the discussion
vibrant and informative. She had left room for minor adjustments in the
syllabus because the course was a senior seminar, and she created the lesson
based on the fact that we wanted to know more.
Gemma
Full disclosure: I have to first admit
that while my favorite single class was where I was tasked with sharing my
analysis of a section of Paradise Lost
with my classmates, it would not have been possible without the previous few
weeks in which Dr. Archibald prepared us. Dr. Archibald was fairly new to the
University at the time and shared with us that our class was going to be a sort
of experiment for something she had never tried before. From here, she
explained the idea of hypertexting to us and gave us examples through writers
like Shakespeare. She explained that she was going to have us each choose a
section (10 to 20 lines) of Paradise
Lost. We were then going to close read and analyze our section,
hyperlinking words in the section with outside web sources, other sections of
the poem, or brief explanations or analysis of our own. She further intrigued
the class by telling us it was the first time she was trying this type of
project with a class and had hopes to continue it with other classes in the
future.
Dr. Archibald teaching the text in the
way she did to us not only inspired me to become more engaged with the text,
but sparked an interest in the text that I might not have had had it been
presented in a more traditional fashion. While I felt very familiar with the
section I chose for myself, by analyzing the other sections of the poem and finding
references from my section in other parts of it, I also felt much more
comfortable and familiar with the work as a whole. When it was time to present
my lines to the class, I felt a confidence I have rarely felt in the classroom,
and I attribute that entirely to the way I was taught the material. My comfort
with the poem also carried over to my classmates’ presentations, as we had all
become adept at seeing how the poem worked and referenced parts within itself.
Finally. Dr. Archibald managed to provide from a pedagogy standpoint, a
teaching method I had not been exposed to before that point, and a tool I would
love to use in the future as I saw first hand how effective it was in engaging
me in the material we were learning.
—Erik
The best
literature lesson that I can remember happened in the tenth grade. I was in Mr.
Pechinsky’s class. He was going off on another one of his rants. His hands were
in the air, a little spit flying out of his mouth as he talked, and he had
every girl in that class enraptured. He was tall, blonde, young, and
attractive. He was talking about Hamlet, not the play, but the guy, the man. We
had just started the play, and as most sophomores in high school, we dreaded
Shakespeare. But Mr. Pechinsky wasn’t one to let a class fall asleep. He said
he could go on and on about what the play was about, but he wasn’t going to do
that. Instead, he told us a story. I watched as everyone in the room leaned in
closer. He always had a good story to tell. I don’t remember much about what
his story was about now or who was involved, but I remember him telling us that
all Hamlet is is a story about a guy
who did stuff. I remember we all burst out laughing. And then Mr. Pechinsky
went off on one of his little rants about something or other, but what I
remember is the sense of ease that he created that day in the classroom. Here
we were about to tackle one of the most renown and revered plays of all of
literature, and he made us feel capable, even as ill-equipped as we were.
That type
of teaching cannot be taught, I believe. It’s an innate skill that you either
have or don’t. In order to recreate that type of safe environment in the
classroom, I think you have to be willing to open yourself up to students in a
way that allows them to see you as a person rather than just a robot drilling
out Common Core.
—Sarah
My favourite literature lesson was a day in a
class on Pacific Island literature. This particular class was looking at Albert
Wendt’s Sons For The Return Home.
What made it the best individual literature class I have had is the fact that
our lecturer, a Maori author, really engaged us with the circumstances around
the writing. Unlike my high school literature classes up until that point, we
were not just reading a text and considering scenes and bits and pieces, but
the text as a whole and what impact it had and would continue having in the
future. It was an all-encompassing course, touching on the implications the
increasingly westernised world was having on an entire culture and how the
artists in these cultures were reacting. This was par for the course in many of
the classes in that course, but in handling a single novel rather than a
collection of short stories or poetry we had the opportunity to focus more
narrowly.
Our lecturer wanted us to know the circumstances,
the social issues, the political, and the historical grounding of the novel. In
doing this, a particular understanding of the novel was reached, as a
commentary and reflection of Wendt’s own experiences as a Samoan in New Zealand
finding himself becoming westernised.
These elements of providing a background to the
text was what made it my most fondly remembered class. To do the same for
someone else, it would be about emulating this mini-history in the same
interesting and engaging way my lecturer did. He drew from the critical writing
of authors in the area, their extensive conversation around the common issues
they faced, giving us articles and essays written to read and consider. In
teaching us the text, he was also teaching us where the text came from.
—Tiril
The best course lecture that I have
ever attended took place during the Fall 2014 semester during Contemporary
Literature taught by Emilio Sauri. During this particular lecture, we were
studying 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Typically, class
time was spent trying to make sense of the dense theory that was given to us
each week alongside a novel or in juxtaposition with other, similar theories.
However, during the first lecture of 2666 we were looking at the novel
alongside a piece written by the professor. During the second half of the
discussion, we talked about the novel as a novel, not strictly as a commodified
version of a dying art. The class took a turn back to basics; we were
discussing the novel’s lack of sentimentality and I was able to compare the
novel to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s use of sentimentality, and how she uses it to
pull the reader in. Because we were not looking at heavy theory that we weren’t
confident that we grasped, almost every student in the class participated and
offered their own readings of the novel. We were also able to apply previously
studied theories because we did not have new material that we were studying, so
we were able to make connections that spanned the semester and showcased our
knowledge on contemporary literature. This course was one of the hardest
classes I have ever taken; it took me completely out of my comfort zone and
forced me to close read each writing more than once. During this lecture,
everything finally clicked in the class and it felt like everyone in the class
was feeling the same way. It was compelling to hear each of my classmates’
analysis of the novel and to truly delve into the nitty gritty of the novel not
just the theory. As cliché as it sounds, the discussion felt like grad school.
—Erica
The best literature lesson that I
ever had is, truthfully, one of the only ones that still haunts me to this day.
It was during senior high school English and the class had just finished Grendel by John Gardner. The lesson of
the day was announced a week earlier in passing but it was only the day before,
when my teacher explained the format that hopelessness kicked in. The class
would become a debate hall with two sides of one long table arguing for or
against the worldview of the dragon in Grendel
(“My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it”). The class would be split into two
teams before the debate started (the sides being picked at random) and the only
evidence that could be used were quotations and interpretations of the text.
The debate would move down the long table, ping ponging between for and against
and everyone had to talk. To further induce panic, a rebuttal of the other
sides points were needed before any new topics could be brought up. Also, the
participation grade of the debate counted as a full test.
A diagram
could not do the complexity of this format justice and by God we were all
terrified. I nervously reread Grendel that night and, for the first
time ever, underlined, wrote notes and painted the book with post-its. I was,
in any case, prepared as I could be. The true panic didn’t set in until I
walked into class and while I wholeheartedly disagreed with what the dragon
thought, I was picked to argue for him. The format required not only a though
knowledge of the text but an ability to synthesize the arguments that were
being presented by other students and the ability to formulate a response. This
single class, in hindsight, introduced my to the format of literary criticism.
The response to previous arguments and the creation of new arguments were
essential to surviving the class and understanding criticism.
The
stakes in that classroom were raised to a heightened level. I believe that
because of this fear, I interacted with Grendel
in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise. My teacher was an odd educator (my
final included him pouring a pitcher of cream into a clear glass of coffee and
me being forced to explain the significance in relation to each novel we’ve
read) but he got me invested in literature the way no other teacher had before.
—Christian
In my junior year at the University of Memphis I was taking a Victorian Literature class with my favorite professor, Dr. T. Dr. T relied heavily on poetry in the course saying was the only way to cover the large time period. I had never been confident in my poetry reading and analysis but Dr. T changed that for me. He told the class to think of poetry as a song without music; it is the poet’s job to create the music through the scansion on the poem. Just as there are swells in music the poet creates this through the stresses of the words. Dr. T then went on to explain that every word in a poem has been carefully placed and it is important to consider all the meanings of the word. Novelists have hundreds of pages to convey meaning and emotion to the reader but the poet creates the same with much less. I have had a deep love and appreciation of poetry since that class. Dr. T took a subject that is often greeted with a groan and not only made the class understand poetry but embrace it as well.
—Sarah Grace
In my American
Literature II course, which covered American literature after the Civil
War, we started reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark
Twain. Instead of having us read and come prepared, my professor
designated one of our classes to teach
a little about the history of race in literature and how to have a
discussion on a topic that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. I was a
senior and used to talking about more risque topics in class, but I had
never had a professor dedicate this much time
to making sure that their students were comfortable and felt educated
enough on the topic to actively participate.
My professor wanted to shock us at first to make us aware of how
willfully ignorant we were about racism and that it was still very much
an issue in our own day and age. We read some poetry about racism and
lynching, which emphasized historical topics that
are not usually taught due to their violence or brutality. She taught us
about the history of lynching, which she brought back to Twain and why
Jim, the slave in the novel, was so scared of being caught as a runaway.
After the poetry, she showed us a short video that was actually a
slideshow of pictures with narration on top of it and this video still
resonates with me today. “Without Sanctuary” (http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html)
is a slideshow of photos and postcards taken as souvenirs from
lynchings. Although we had read poetry and even some of Twain’s novel,
my professor knew that we were visual and audio learners and took
advantage of that. This slideshows narration was printed
off and handed to us. It read like a poem, hauntingly beautiful and
beautifully macabre.
This lesson on lynching and African-American history was one of the
singularly most memorable literature classes I have ever had. Using
multiple mediums, from poems to a video to an auditory reading, my
professor was able to teach an important history lesson
that really enlightened the work we were discussing. Although it was not
all about literature, no other class has given me such an insight into
the historical influence on literary texts and, also, illuminated the
prejudices and ignorance our own individual
history has imbued in us. She made us aware and stripped away any
safeguards or ignorance we used as such.
—Rebecca
I specifically remember a lesson during a unit on Macbeth. As I am sure is true in many
high school English classes, many of the students in my class were not
comfortable with Shakespeare, and had trouble making their way through or
understanding the language. However, in this lesson, the structured format that
Mr. C. had established throughout the year provided a level of comfort that
helped students push past their initial resistance or intimidation. As with all
of our previous lessons throughout the year, Mr. C made it clear that our
responsibility was simply to read and to engage with what we had read in some
way. We were not expected to fully understand everything we read, or to be able
to identify the key themes or issues right off the bat. It was fully acceptable
for a student's response to be as simple as "I don't understand what
Malcolm is saying here", or "I don't understand what is
happening" as long as we took a guess, or made some effort to respond to
what we were reading.
In class, as each student presented the passage they had
chosen, Mr. C would respond, pushing us to think more about what it was that
had caught our attention or caused a reaction, good or bad, and helping to
guide us to a deeper understanding of the words we had chosen. As we moved
around the room there would often be passages that multiple students had
chosen, and Mr. C would encourage us to respond to each other, to draw
connections between our individual reactions, to consider what it was about
that specific line, phrase, moment that allowed it to have such an impact, or
how these sections that caught our attention might relate to a larger theme in
the text. Every student in the class was welcomed and expected to comment, and
every one of us was made to feel that our comments were valuable. The group
discussion format allowed us to respond to and spark ideas in one another, and
Mr. C's thoughtful guidance helped us to move collectively to a place of
understanding that was much deeper and more lasting than anything we could have
gained from a traditional lecture.
—Robin
The most memorable Literature lesson I recall was one given during a
Comedy class, in which we read numerous plays that showed the
progression of Comedy as an art of Literature. This particular lesson
was being taught by the TA of the class. We were instructed to get into
small groups and reflect on the different comedic situations that the
characters of our plays had found themselves in. As a group, we were
instructed to relate on of our favorite or perhaps most relevant
situations to a modern situation that we would see characters in
contemporary plays, movies, or television shows in. I recall that one
group related one of the comedic situations we had read to an episode of
a bridal show, like “Say Yes to the Dress.” I think this lesson was
particularly successful because it caused students to not only connect
the historical importance of different comedy tactics we were studying
to modern uses, but it also punctuated the relevance of the genre as a
whole to our modern society.
—Deanna
