Week 6

Managing the Classroom 1

Still From the move "Blackboard Jungle" - 1955

HOMEWORK

For the next two session, classes six and seven, we are going on adventures in cyberspace! Each participant leads the class in discussion of either a fiction or non-fiction work which all will have read. The works are chosen because of their potential to arouse varied opinions, ones which you will become aware of as you read and think of questions which you feel would make for good discussions. If we plan for 15 minutes of discussion, followed by a 10 minute debrief, we can have three sessions per class.

Please read the fiction piece: “Story, With Bird” (Kevin Canty, The New Yorker, October 6, 2014.)

And please watch the video: “Reshaping How We See Identity” (Zahra Dry) Our culture is rapidly transforming our views of identity and Dry offers some new and interesting insights.

A piece of advice, which you can ignore at your peril: take notes and use them to help formulate your questions. Teaching requires a very solid grasp of the material you are working with.

MECHANICS OF CLASSES 6 & 7

The mechanics of this exercise:

      • Allow each participant to lead for 15-20 minutes.

      • Assume that each of you will have prepared, in advance, a series of questions based on the fiction or non-fiction piece you chose to lead.

      • As participants, prepare questions for both Story, With Bird and Reshaping How We See Identity. That is practice for being prepared, just the way you would be in your own class, where it is always good to have more questions than you anticipate using.

      • Attempt to have a lively, student-centric discussion

      • The goal will be that the discussion is dynamic and salient, not necessarily that you have answers to questions.

      • You might also keep tally of who sides with which point of view

      • Explore being flexible when you run into difficulties and keep track of those moments for later commentary when the breakout session ends.

      • Try to remember what works well.

      • Please fight the tendency to lecture and instead, using your study questions and various techniques, try to draw the participants into a spirited discussion.

      • Ollie and Quinn will participate in the sessions, playing both observer and agitator roles.

Please remember that we are conducting our classes on Zoom where we can’t have fist fights or throw spit balls or place chewing gum on the underside of our chairs as in Blackboard Jungle. Ollie and I won’t be the kind of a nuisance as the students in Blackboard Jungle, but we hope our “distractions” are as motivating as the 1954 movie where the rebellious, talented Sidney Poitier made his debut. If you are old enough, that piece of information probably stirs up discussable material, given the times we live in. And whatever Ollie and I do, it will be for your own good (as our parents used to say).

One last point. If Taking the Plunge is not fun, if you don’t feel we are in touch with you, and if you don’t tell your spouse and friends about what it is like to take this course, then Ollie and I need to go back to the drawing board!