Thursday, April 26, 2007

Three Beautiful Things 04/26/07: Out of It, Mandrake, Major Major Major Major

1. In our American Working Class Lit. and Research Writing course, I have been drawing upon the major themes of worker invisibility, worker intelligence, the power of collective thinking, and other ideas to help students frame their first research papers that will explore sources we have studied like Harlan County, USA or The Gospel of Wealth or other readings we've done looking at labor history. Jason, a partying student who is often late for class, has his head down often, and who hasn't been very attentive asked me a question that, in the context of this class, absolutely killed me off: "May I write about the merger between the ABA and NBA?" I nearly laughed my head off, but instead I asked him if he's seen the assignment sheet for this project and talked with him for a while about Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Maurice Lucas, and other players who came out of the ABA into the NBA and made a great impact. Too bad it had nothing to do with the course or the literature we are studying!!

2. My students' writing on Dr. Strangelove and our discussion in class tonight was terrific. What a pleasure that they enjoyed the movie so much and wrote about it so intelligently.

3. Likewise, our discussion of Catch-22 was fruitful. I think they are understanding satire at a very deep level. It's very gratifying.

1 comment:

Dubya said...

Hey, I like the sound of this Jason fella. I might have a job fer him in the Justice Department.