Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Curricula Updates
Creative Writing: Entering into a three-week unit on creative non-fiction, we have started by sampling from the title essay in DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which the students have greeted with confusion in some cases, laughter in others.
American Novel: This is a new course I'm creating as I'm teaching in which we're looking at stereotypes of the American South in both literature and popular culture. We're starting with this great Bravo special "The 20 Best Things About Being from a Red State," and will segue shortly into Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and excerpts from the film version of Deliverence.
English I: I've decided to go for it and teach The Catcher in the Rye. Given the correlation between specific pocket of time we'll be reading it and the setting of the novel's main flashback, it was too irresistable a chance to pass up (although I've never taught it before, have no real lesson plans, and am sorta freaking out). I'm considering having the students fill out a MySpace profile for Holden Caulfield; with the website's controversial status in The School's culture right now, I'm not sure how that'll fly with the administration. It feels oddly good to read the words "crap," "goddam," and "get a bang out of" in a classroom setting.
Creative Writing: Entering into a three-week unit on creative non-fiction, we have started by sampling from the title essay in DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, which the students have greeted with confusion in some cases, laughter in others.
American Novel: This is a new course I'm creating as I'm teaching in which we're looking at stereotypes of the American South in both literature and popular culture. We're starting with this great Bravo special "The 20 Best Things About Being from a Red State," and will segue shortly into Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and excerpts from the film version of Deliverence.
English I: I've decided to go for it and teach The Catcher in the Rye. Given the correlation between specific pocket of time we'll be reading it and the setting of the novel's main flashback, it was too irresistable a chance to pass up (although I've never taught it before, have no real lesson plans, and am sorta freaking out). I'm considering having the students fill out a MySpace profile for Holden Caulfield; with the website's controversial status in The School's culture right now, I'm not sure how that'll fly with the administration. It feels oddly good to read the words "crap," "goddam," and "get a bang out of" in a classroom setting.
