Three Beautiful Things 05/19/13: Pentecost Lector, Beef and Pilsner, Looking Back at WR 122

1.  It was really fun being this morning's lector and getting to read Acts 2: 1-21 at the Solemn High Eucharist today, a celebration of Pentecost Sunday.   The most fun was reading the prophecy from the Book of Joel that Peter delivers to the throng, after assuring the crowd that it was too early in the morning for the strangeness of the moment to be a result of too much wine, of drunkenness.  It was also fun to prepare this reading and look up all those names of places and to pronounce them correctly, to be true to their poetry. 

2.  The Senior Warden and I sat together during the service and afterward decided a little lunch would be nice, so headed up to the Bier Stein.  I savored my roast beef dip sandwich and beer cheese soup. I brought half of it home for the Deke.  I drank some really tasty EKU Pilsner from Germany with the sandwich.  Jolene and I tried to place what class she took from me at LCC and I succeeded in figuring it out when I got home.  I hope to see her at the Bier Stein again to tell her.

3.  I got to thinking about the section of WR 122 that Jolene was in and it occurred to me that it was nearly the last time I taught WR 122 exactly the way I wanted to, without the intrusion of (please forgive these next two words) Information Literacy.  The class wrote about personal work experiences, read (I think) Thich Nhat Hanh as a way of enhancing critical thinking through the concept of non-duality, played with the idea of copia by reading Robert Grudin, and then read Mike Rose and Hickam's Sky of Stone, and watched the documentary Harlan County, USA.  I enjoyed future WR 122 students and enjoyed discussions we had, but shoehorning research into the course always felt forced, always felt like trying to put twelve pounds of flour in a ten pound bag.  Dealing with databases, MLA format, secondary sources:  it was too much for a single course, especially the one I enjoyed teaching.   I felt the same way about WR 121.  So, today, in looking back at that last time I taught WR 122 the way I not only wanted to, but most believed in, I had a specific pleasure in teaching writing rekindled that I hadn't felt for a while.  I never lost the pleasure of teaching writing, but it was never the same, or as good, once I did my best to conform my course to the dictates of powers outside my classroom, and integrated (sorry, here these words come again) Information Literacy into my syllabus.  (I should note that I loved the WR 122 class I taught with Working Class Lit. alongside M. Bayless in W09...it was in a league of its own.)