Monday's lecture went very, very well. It wasn't so much that I was comfortable, and that my ease in front of 75 students showed so well that it made it into my professor's letter (yay!) or that I was more prepared than I've ever been for class, or that I fielded student responses effectively (including one that identified Morrison's point as the need for the black community to stop complaining about external racism and take responsibility for its own problems…arg), or that I threw in some good ad lib stuff to keep it fresh when their eyes started glazing over–all that is a matter of style and frankly of having taught for four years at the college level. It's observation, practice, feedback. I'm proud of it, immensely, but gaining approval from colleagues is not why I teach.
I teach because students who can effectively analyze a novel or poem are not only able to enjoy and be enriched by literature but stand to learn some incredible things from it as well; they are in a prime position to have their thinking transformed by it. The process of close reading opens a student's mind to alternative ways of interpreting and challenging cultural practices. On Monday, I was able–I think–to offer them a way of reading The Bluest Eye that would confront a common mental framework regarding the way racism functions in our culture; I asked them to consider, as I believe Morrison does, a way of thinking about racism that goes beyond blame and demands, to the discomfort of every good reader, collective responsibility for and implication in what happens to Pecola. And they got it. I had a list of summing-up type statements with which I would end the lecture, but before I could get to them the students were coming up with eerily similar statements of their own. The close reading worked; they were realizing, on their own, with a bit of guidance, another way of looking at race. And because most of my students are white, it was most exciting, most gratifying.
I'm not a great teacher; at most I'm a good teacher trying to be great. All I do, really, is to read according to my training and come to class with that reading, prepared as if I were another student. For this class I had to be a bit more structured because it was a lecture. I did find that I was too directive at points. My professor suggested alternating the "fishing" type questions with more open-ended ones. As soon as she said it I could see that the rough and slow parts of the class could be explained by the lack of variety in the way I elicited responses. As I mentioned in my last post, it was this tension between structure and openness that I was worried about, and with good reason. No sweat, though; it was a good learning experience and I will be able to tweak my teaching accordingly.
Gotta go–date tonight with a handsome attic-dweller.
You are passionate about what you do, and you care about opening students’ minds to new/different ways of thinking. You have already achieved greatness.
I wish I was in your class!
I am really enjoying reading about your teaching and your thoughts on what you are reading with your students. I loved the Bluest Eye but it’s been a while since I had a good talk about it. Thanks!
What a great attitude! I’m glad the lecture went well.
I’m reading Richard Miller’s Writing at the End of the World now, and the section I read tonight dealt with, in part, The Bluest Eye. He’s looking at the reasons people might have for studying reading and writing in a world filled with so much violence. Your post touches on issues I’ve been pondering for a while now. Thanks.
And I love the new template–I’ve been reading via bloglines for a few weeks now and just clicked through again . I like the new look!
You go, girl!
Thoreus writes in his Journal I:
“I require of any lecturer that s/he will read me a more or less simple and sincere account of his/her life , of what s/he has done and thought,-not so much what s/he has read or heard of other’s lives and actions, but some such account as s/he would send to his/her kindred from a distant land…..”
You blog=such an account.
That’s Thoreau not Thoreus..sorry..juggling child while typing ;).