creative minds
I thought the 204 class came up with some really deep questions about the
Narrative. We talked a bit about LaChandria's question - what would have happened if Mrs. Auld had continued to teach Douglass? - and about Thelma's question - why does slavery exist? We also talked about what motivated Douglass, what kept him going, whether he got to a place where he didn't feel that despair he describes...the pain of knowledge. Would be amazing to have a whole course just on Douglass ... he wrote and acted at such a crucial time, and he left so much for us to read and ponder.
203 rubric/peer review process
OK, I know that a good number of students really don't like doing the peer review or using the rubric. Someone said that students shouldn't have anything to do with grading papers and that I should be the only one responsible. I don't know if I can address all that right now, but I need to do the blog assignment for this week -- let's see if I can just comment on the rubric and the peer review process: what do I like and dislike?
I really like that the rubric is a teaching/learning tool, not just a place to record a grade. But I'm not sure the rubric is really working. I'm not sure the categories are effective. That's one reason for this blog assignment -- I need to know what's working and not working with the rubric. I guess it's not so much the categories but the different criteria under each category that I wonder about. For instance, I've got mechanics as the last category and then I've got a list of things like comma splice, fragments, tense ... many reviewers just highlight the whole box, so I have a sense that this box may not be really helpful. There are other things that I comment on papers, like "introduce quotations" ... and there's nothing on the rubric on how to use supporting evidence from the text.
It's so quiet in class when we do the peer reviews, which is pretty cool, because it means reviewers are paying attention to their peers' writing. I like that students look at each other's papers first. I really think that writers are more conscious of a broader audience and their writing improves. I dunno...it's one thing to write an essay exam for the teacher; it's quite another to write an essay exam when you know the first reader will be one of your peers. What's the shift? Writers are more concerned about their writing when peers read it; writers are more concerned with grades when the teacher reads it. That's what I think. I'm hoping y'all will enlighten me if you agree or disagree.
I still don't think the rubric and peer review process are helping writers to really focus on their strengths and challenges. For instance, when the writers respond to the peer review, most writers seem to try to get through this part as quickly as possible. I don't think writers really look at the highlighted sections on the rubric and think about whether or not they agree with the reviewer. I think writers tend to read reviewers' comments and respond to those. Does that mean that a more effective rubric would be a letter? more writing by the reviewer? Again, these are all questions I can only answer with a lot of input by the writers in class.
204 questions on Douglass
I've always wanted to know more about Douglass as a newspaper editor/founder/writer. I'd like to read those papers and get a better sense of him as a writer/thinker when he was older. I also know that he supported women's rights and that he influenced law. I'd like to know more about both these areas.
204 today
We had another good discussion today. Lots of keen thinkers in class. Jeffrey asked this intriguing question when we were talking about the incident Douglass describes in which Colonel Lloyd is riding somewhere in the woods and sees a man walking. Col. Lloyd stops the man and asks him who his master is. The man replies, "Colonel Lloyd." Never disclosing his own identity, Lloyd then asks the man if Colonel Lloyd treats him well. The man says they work too hard, and for that impertinence, he is yanked off the land in two weeks and sold off to a trader in Georgia. Jeffrey's question: Why would Colonel Lloyd care at all what his slave thought of him as a slaveowner? Good question.
Really made me think about the perversity of slavery. I mean, here's Colonel Lloyd, supposedly a god-fearing man, and he has no trouble lying to others, beating them, selling them off. He wants his slaves to think well of him, but if they don't...he sells them. Utter capriciousness and evil of power. What does it mean to be a "good" slaveowner? That's the kind of perversity I'm talking about. That even such a question (What is a good slaveowner?) can exist.
blog glitch & Antigone readings
The links to student blogs on the right of my page stop right after Melony H.'s blog, and then there's a huge gap you have to scroll through until you get to the rest of the blogs. I checked my template and everything seems ok. Chris volunteered at 10 o'clock to take a look at the code and he couldn't find anything. Dunno what's up. [Looks like everything's working ok now. There was a weird glitch with the tag for the
Mobile Register link. Don't know if that was affecting the sidebar somehow.]
Two interesting readings of
Antigone. First of all, someone mentioned that Creon did not follow Tiresias' suggestion of going to the vault and freeing Antigone first, then burying Polynices. As someone else said, Creon was bullheaded again and buried the body first, then went to the vault...and it was too late. The other interpretation came with these lines of the Leader: "The king himself! Coming toward us, / look, holding the boy's head in his hands. / Clear, damning proof, if it's right to say so -- / proof of his own madness; none else's, / no, his own blind wrongs." Some read this to mean that Creon carried Haemon's head in his hands and that proved Creon's madness. Someone else had seen a movie of
Antigone and said that Creon just held Haemon's head while Haemon was on the bier. I'd never thought of these two readings. This is when I'd love to know the original language and see the original script. Otherwise, interpretation is up for grabs -- dependent on the translator's skill and the reader's insight.
what i forgot [read repressed, blocked out] about class
Fascinating that I completely blocked out one thing we talked about in class during our Douglass discussion. A student mentioned that recently in Mobile, a young African American man was found hung -- supposed suicide, but a possible lynching or "hate crime," as the paper calls it. I mentioned that the height of lynchings was late 1800s to early 1900s and that it's still happening a century later. When I wrote about class later on in this blog, I completely blanked out on this part -- most of us would rather not remember the things we'd prefer to forget. But memory won't be quieted. I wish the world were a better place. I wish we were better beings. But that doesn't mean I get to rearrange reality.
I just googled "lynching Mobile" and got a lot of hits on history. Then I googled "suicide hanging Mobile" and got this link from the
Mobile Register. 15-year old Woodrow Riley is the name of the deceased.
204 discussion - Douglass
Last Thursday we had a great discussion on the first two chapters of Douglass'
Narrative. We used the SmartBoard in Library 118 to pull up some blog entries and to see if others related to the writers' thoughts. Thelma was a bit resistant ("I didn't know I'd have to show the whole class...") but volunteered to go first anyway. We ended up talking about Toni Morrison's
Beloved (great continuum...Douglass to Morrison) and about how we might have acted in Douglass' place. The only light in the room came from the SmartBoard...I wonder not having bright overhead fluorescent lights made it easier for some folks to speak out...?
