I think about teaching a lot, as what I'll be doing soon enough, and because I'm at the point where most of what I'm taught is familiar to me so I start to notice the how. It seems teaching is a lot like parenting: both are crucial, seem theoretically impossible, involve failing every day in every way all over, yet in both any positive gain reverberates forever. What's better than a great class or a real moment with a parent? Not a lot of things.
Probably the thing that will put it together for you is the students. Where are they at, what do they need. If it's Honors and AP they're probably already awake to some big things. Wake them up more. We're doing Walden in both my classes (one of which your students would get credit for after taking yours, which is a bit of a nail in my loser forehead)...and I'm annoyed as much as I admire, having somehow never had contact with this book, but I think it would have been great for me at 17, it's a waker. Emerson's great for that too, especially early Emerson--and in turn early Whitman. I really like that about American literature, how it starts with this burst of youth, from the young--if you skip Hawthorne and Poe, or nudge them forward chronologically, which I kind of advise. That excitement about the world, that trust that something will be found trustworthy...Then all the complexity floods in with Melville and Dickinson and Hawthorne, or later Emerson, later Whitman: how to separate out what's yours and what isn't, in the world. Am I wrong to think that should be Round 2? September lit, then November. To whatever extent that applies in LA.
Teaching the margins, the issues...I wonder how it's best to go about that. So much is unreal to these rising generations that you do want to impress the context on them, give them the necessary American minima which they mostly lack, sketch out the basic material, ethical and philosophical conflicts that are the real heart of the modern world. You get a bit collaterally when you read deep in the major figures, the ones who push through to something both new and basic...but probably not enough. Some texts are helpful; Bartleby and Young Goodman Brown are somehow both humanly and culturally profound, hence their popularity. But past a short list, made shorter by each teacher's inevitable lack of affection for some portion of it, you must be in Sophie's Choice territory.
My 'advice' seems to be taking the same tone and wavering quality as your worries! What would/will I teach...
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 05:21 am (UTC)Probably the thing that will put it together for you is the students. Where are they at, what do they need. If it's Honors and AP they're probably already awake to some big things. Wake them up more. We're doing Walden in both my classes (one of which your students would get credit for after taking yours, which is a bit of a nail in my loser forehead)...and I'm annoyed as much as I admire, having somehow never had contact with this book, but I think it would have been great for me at 17, it's a waker. Emerson's great for that too, especially early Emerson--and in turn early Whitman. I really like that about American literature, how it starts with this burst of youth, from the young--if you skip Hawthorne and Poe, or nudge them forward chronologically, which I kind of advise. That excitement about the world, that trust that something will be found trustworthy...Then all the complexity floods in with Melville and Dickinson and Hawthorne, or later Emerson, later Whitman: how to separate out what's yours and what isn't, in the world. Am I wrong to think that should be Round 2? September lit, then November. To whatever extent that applies in LA.
Teaching the margins, the issues...I wonder how it's best to go about that. So much is unreal to these rising generations that you do want to impress the context on them, give them the necessary American minima which they mostly lack, sketch out the basic material, ethical and philosophical conflicts that are the real heart of the modern world. You get a bit collaterally when you read deep in the major figures, the ones who push through to something both new and basic...but probably not enough. Some texts are helpful; Bartleby and Young Goodman Brown are somehow both humanly and culturally profound, hence their popularity. But past a short list, made shorter by each teacher's inevitable lack of affection for some portion of it, you must be in Sophie's Choice territory.
My 'advice' seems to be taking the same tone and wavering quality as your worries! What would/will I teach...