Conference Week

ENG 107/Glascott

Viewing Notes: The Class. Dir. Laurent Cantet. 2008.

Due Monday, Oct. 24

As you know, we won’t have regular classes on Monday, Oct. 17 and Wednesday, Oct. 19 because I am meeting with students in the class individually during this time for mid-term conferences. In lieu of class you must both come to your individual conference and watch The Class and take viewing notes in response to the film. The film segues us from our initial inquiry into seeing to our post-midterm inquiry into seeing education.

The dvd is available at the library reserve desk. You may take it out for 3 hours at a time. There are dvd players on the 5^th floor of the library (PL- 5005). We will also screen the film in our classroom during regular class time on Monday and Wednesday, if this is more convenient for you. The film is 2 hours long. Please do not check out the dvd between 3-6 on Monday and Wednesday so we can use the copy for the class screening.

1. Why does the film open by showing us the initial teacher meeting? What does this set us up to see?

2. How does Mr. Marin see his students? How do you know? Does his viewpoint change? If so, why?

3. How do the students see Mr. Marin? Pick one or two of them and trace how they see him as the film continues. What do you notice?

4. How do the teachers see the work they ask the students to do?

5. How do the students see the work they are asked to do?

6. How do you account for any differences between the teachers and students and how they see?

7. Do the teachers all see the same? If not, what are the differences?

8. How do the parents see the school, teachers, and education?

9. How do the students see France?

10. What role does seeing play in the events that occur in the film?

11. Why does the film end in the way it does? What are we being asked to think?

While I am away

ENG 107/Glascott

On-Line Class October 12

We won’t be meeting in person on Wednesday, October 12. Instead, we will have an “on-line class.” There are two parts to the class, which is focused on informational literacy. Here are the three tasks you have for Wednesday:

1. Take the OLLIE Tutorial and Test. Sign onto Blackboard and select the OLLIE Text button. Follow the prompts.

2. Find either a review of or a journal article about one of these texts:

a. Annie Dillard’s “Seeing”

b. Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others

c. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing

3. . Read this review or article.

4. Write a summary of the review or article and post it on the Discussion Board on our Blackboard site. As part of your summary you should include a full bibliographic citation using MLA. The summary itself should be “meaty” enough to give people who haven’t read the review/article a good sense of what it says. Finally, write a brief analysis explaining whether you agree with the writer’s take on Dillard, Sontag, or Berger and why or why not. Do you think your colleagues should read the piece you read? Why or why not?

I sense disaster. . .

It all is going good until is isn't.

Actually, today was a good day, but I sense the messy time coming when things fall apart before they come back together. It doesn't help that we won't actually meet as a class for over a week because I have to go to English Council on Wed and we are having student conferences next week. We spent the first 25 minutes going over logistics.

Next, I asked students to get into groups of 3 to discuss Berger. The discussed what they saw as Berger's project, climax, and 1-2 other writer elements from our class writer vocabulary. Then we got in a circle and had a big conversation about what they found. I really wished I had more time with them and Berger. This essay is so complex and rich and I had to keep fighting my desire for them to understand it all completely.

Recognizing the students bring knowledge with them

Wed. Oct 5

This was a really good day. They turned in their project 1.1 assignment, so I started the day with a metacognitive qw (I explained why I ask them to do this writing about writing as well). The QW was: Describe the experience of writing this essay. How did you go about it? What was challenging and how did you meet these challenges? What are you proud of?

Next, we build a class vocabulary for discussing writing. I had already introduced "project" as the word I wanted to use instead of thesis or argument and I talked through this again. Then I asked students to come up with words they associated with writing or thought were helpful for thinking about writing. What really surprised me was that they mostly came up with New Criticism reading terms (rising action, foreshadowing, climax, etc). I had expected them to give me words such as voice, tone, etc.

For a moment I panicked. But then I told them that those terms were really useful and we often used them as readers. I asked them how we could imagine using them as writers. This worked really well. Foreshadowing has become signposting; climax is the stakes or so what of the piece.

Next I brought up some of the other terms I thought they would say and then we generated more terms. (We came up with class definitions for all of them as well).

Next, we read the Sontag piece aloud. We sat in a circle and talked about her project and the climax of the piece.

Monday, Monday

This ended up being a great class. Honestly, I find the Dillard essay a bit dull, but the students did a great job with it. This class has been really vocal. I'm not sure how much is just the luck of the draw and how much is my decision to have them in a horseshoe and stand at the board and write down what they say every class.

Here is my class plan:

QW (15): What struck you in what Dillard said about seeing? Why does she care about this? Have you had experiences that relate to hers? Pick a place in the text where we could go in discussion.

• Discuss Qw
• Reading as a writer
• · This is an essay

o How similar or different from what you know about essays?

§ Project versus thesis

§ Uses other texts

• · Why open the essay the way she does?

o What work does it do?

o How does it relate to what comes later?

o Why”sadly”?

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