Bringing Superman Into the Classroom

I just had what felt like a very productive 110 class this morning. Maybe productive isn't the right word, how about participatory. Although is was productive as well. I am on of the few GAs, it seems, that still does the Critical Analysis paper early on in the semester, and so I was not able to share the "Writing What We Teach" paper that we did for 603 with my students while they were in the midst of writing their own critical analysis papers. Now that my own paper is completed, while my students are getting close to a Final Draft of their Research papers, I decided to bring my paper in and use it as a jumping off piece to talk a little bit about the position paper.


I should tell you now that my paper was about Superman. I had come across this article by Lawrence Watt-Evans that suggested Superman has many deep personal issues, mostly based on the fact that he wears his baby-blanket as his suit and that he must be lonely because he has to keep his real identity a secret to everyone that he knows and loves. I found it an interesting read and a fun article to analyze. I brought my paper into class and asked them to take a few minutes to read it and then write at least 1 page on whether they agreed or disagreed with the issues and points made in the paper, using quotations when necessary. I was only going to give them 10-15 minutes to write, but every student was still heads down, pencils flying at the 15 minute mark, so I let them contine for another 15 minutes. Even after 30 minutes had passed, I had to ask at least 3 students to go ahead and find a stopping point, so that we could have some class discussion.


Usually when I start asking questions to the class as a whole, I get blank, staring faces and eyes that say "Are you freaking serious? Do you really expect me to give you an answer?" But today, (whether it was because Spring Break was upon us or they just wanted to appease me, I don't know) they all had an opinion about Superman. Most decided that they felt sorry for the guy having to keep such a big secrect, having to keep all his friends at a distance, and not being able to go have a beer and slap a good friend on the back like everyone else does. Some even brought up instances that probably should have been added into Watt-Evans' original article to help make the argument a little stronger, like how Clark Kent must feel watching Lois Lane swoon all over Superman while treating him like a nobody. Two students even went back and forth adding facts from the Justice League Unlimited Animated Series that proves Superman is a lonely creature and that he can be broken emotionally.

As time wound down, and I tried to wrap things up all nice and pretty, I told the class that they had just verbally written their next paper. And I explained that my plan was to bring in a few more articles for them to read and that the paper would be arguing for, or against, a stance taken in the article, using a little bit of research as support of course. And it was nice to see the light go on, and maybe even a cloud of knowing that they already Know how to write their next paper. At least that's the story I'm telling myself.

Learning a New Language = Academic Writing

I've been intrigued this semester with Alice Horning's theory of Standard Written English as a Second Language. And although I feel that her theory has some major holes in it, I've found that it has really helped me in relating to my student's writing as we moved from the Memoir to the Critical Analysis and now on to the Research paper. A lot of GAs have mentioned that they have moved the Memoir later in the semester because they feel it takes a stronger grasp on writing to be able to sucessfully complete the Memoir with a significant amount of reflection built in, and I agree that that may be the case, but I still like to do the Memoir first, and get those frist drafts right off the bat, so that I can get a sense of the student's storytelling voice, first and foremost, before jumping into a further academic sort of writing. The first draft on this paper, for me, could truly be called a 'rough draft' in that I ask that they do not make any corrections or edits on thist first draft until after it has been workshopped by me and the other students. This would ideally let me see the most raw form of each student's writings and kind of get an idea of where they are. And it works up to an extent. There are always students that surprise you going both ways, either they take to the critical analysis very well or find it to be almost intrusive to their lives. This latter is where Horning's theory usually can come in to play. By allowing these students to do the Memoir first, I can show it to them when they are having difficultly on the Critical Analysis and tell them, 'yes, you do know how to write, it's just a different kind of writng now.' I try to get them to see the authority with which they wrote their Memoir and try to rediscover that when they are writing the Critical Analysis. It's hard, and most of them never believe that they should have the authority to say whether a text is achieving it's goal or not, but usually they will come around. Even if it means writing the Critical Analysis as an 'I' paper ('I' paper being "in my opinion" or "i think") first and then going back through and removing all of those I's. And perhaps, even in my teaching I haven't fully conveyed Horning's theory to my students, it helps me to remember a little bit about taking that first step into academic writing, gives me a little more sympathy.

Pedagogy

I thought that the exercise in 603 to draw our teaching pedagogy was really very interesting. It was nice to see and hear that most people are still in the middle of trying to find their own specific pedagogy to adhear to, and that I'm not the only one "peeking" into different pedagogical stances and stealing little bits of morsels here and there, wherever I find them to be useful. As simple as most people assumed their drawing were (mainly because almost none of us consider ourselves artist in the literal sense of drawing/painting), everyone had a very succinct reason, it seemed, for every little detail included on their picture.

And, as was pointed out in class, I found it funny that most of the drawings were theorists-centered (myself included) rather than student-centered. But I have a theory on that as well: I figure that with most of us GA's being first-year teachers at any level, let alone at the level of a State University, we are put in a position where we feel that we have to 'know' everything about the subject, as well as the act of teaching, before we feel that we can effectively teach our students. And one way of attaining this information is to really look at and apply some of the things were hear from theorists and the approaches that they tend to profess at us. So, at the earliest stage of becoming a teacher/professor, we are trying to gather as much information as possible from all different angles so we can, hopefully, be ready to handle, or have an answer for, any given situation. And until we utilize this approach enough in our classrooms to become comfortable with our own teaching, we will continue to run through theorist after theorist, asking "Am I critical or progressive? Do I believe in error reduction or error elimination?" and so on and so forth. It seems like a logical, healthy way of discovering who we are as teachers by imitating and learning from the teachings of those that came before us.