Catering to the Interests of the Students...

I had a really good class period today. Well, maybe I should re-phrase that: I had what felt like a good class period today, whether it was or not. For some reason, whether it be this strange bout of flu that is taking over the campus or just sheer laziness, only a little over half of my class showed up today, the day before their first drafts of the Critical Analysis is due. And I know that the Critical Analysis (along with the articles from The Presence of Others that they are supposed to be analyzing) is the least favorite of all papers they are doing this semester, but come on. So, as kind of a reward to the students that did show up (and to myself), I gave these students the option of writing a different kind of Critical Analysis: they could analyze a movie instead. Any movie would be fine as long as they actually analyzed it and didn't write a paper that just told me why they like this movie so much. The students really seemed to come alive (which I've found to be VERY rare for an 8:00 am class), and had all kinds of questions about how they could tackle this, as well as suggestions on how to approach watching their movie without bias so they could get an accurate analysis of it. It felt great to not have to give direction to the class, but to rather take a position more akin to a springboard for their ideas. And their excitement about doing this project also excited me for them (if that makes sense). I really enjoyed the class and felt like I might get some papers with a little more personality in them now.