from Judith McDaniel
Alright! Now I am excited. My Introductory course for the literature and writing M.A. has just finished its first week and the conversations and the exchanges have been just excellent. I couldn’t be more pleased. I had to stop myself from jumping in every other post because folks were talking about subjects that matter passionately to me—like why do we read “old” literature? And how can we get high school students to read a play like The Crucible.
Yes! I said to my keyboard. This IS what I had hoped for.
What did I do? Well, I started with a very general question and a reading that was not too long to be intimidating (even M.A. students get intimidated) and a reading that was also slightly controversial and published 40 years ago. So they could have said, oh, that’s too old, not relevant, everything has changed. But it was the right article—it was about teaching poetry in an age of science and while many things have changed, the challenges in explaining why literature still matters have not changed with the advances of technology. On the contrary, the question has become even more important.
And while I am very pleased with my own course design, I also recognize that I was lucky this semester to have almost all teachers in my class. Many of them teach high school, some of them teach literature and writing. And several of them have commented on not having another place in which they can have conversations like these with grown-ups like themselves.
Oliver Parker's 1995 film of Othello, featuring Kenneth Branaugh as Iago, Irene Jacobs as Desdemona, and Laurence Fishburne as Othello
Next week our challenge is Othello and how we read and teach a classic that is, at base, racist. I’m excited about the possibilities and about the learning I am receiving here also.
Tags: developing a learning community, elearning, learning community
