Day 2: Brave New Ways of Reading/Writing

First, I begin with the end. The very last thing to happen in class was an interchange I had with a student who had hung around until everyone had left. Student: I'm really confused and nervous. Me: Why? Student: I'm one of those who has always been taught just to write what the teacher thinks and now you're saying it's what we think. Me: It's okay. It's a process of learning how to do this. The whole term is about developing this.

I am so excited about this reaction (I feel like what I was trying to get done today seems to have happened) but I am also grieved again to think about the limited, highly schooled ways some students have been taught to interact with texts. The anxiety around trying to approximate what the teacher thinks. The disjunction between your real life, really meaningful things and schooled literacy.

What I did today:
Starting with a 40 minute in-class essay about 2 things (1. write your autobiography as a reader and writer and 2. put these experiences in conversation with what B and P say about reading and writing in the intro). We then talked about what they wrote, broke out the different types of reading B and P describe, discussed the uses of writing from B and P, and talked about how to deal with difficult texts.

They all meet for the first time . . .

Today was the first class. I was less nervous than I usually am on the first day, partially because of talking about teaching at the TA camp yesterday and partially because I've only been not teaching for six weeks. What is always so strange on the first day is looking out and wondering who you will discover all these people are: Who will take risks in writing? Who will be competent but stuck in the 5 paragraph form? Who will talk? Who will be most likely to check out?

It was a good class. The students did "writer interviews" of each other and introduced their interviewee. One student wants to move to Ohio, which took me by surprise . . . I had to ask if he had ever been (I mean, really, who *wants* to move to Ohio?) The students then interviewed me -- they wanted to know where I did my grad work, if I was from California (when they found out I wasn't, they wanted to know what I thought. Told them I thought Californians are friendly. They seemed surprised.)

I incorporated some things my colleague Mary does: asked the sophomores, juniors, and seniors to tell the freshman what to expect in college, explain how it is different from h.s. They emphasized the adult relationship with the professor, claim professors respect you more than h.s. teachers but won't look after you as much (i.e. read your syllabus).

Finished by going over the syllabus.

Lots of students trying to sign in. Told them to watch the on-line roster and get active about funding.