tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post4967753669242769974..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Festive Friday: Pedagogy Gone Wrong!Cord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-55466722712624658242008-02-02T16:36:00.000-05:002008-02-02T16:36:00.000-05:00This is more a story of wrong pedagogy gone strang...This is more a story of wrong pedagogy gone strangely right:<BR/><BR/>Once, as a TA, I returned from a conference late in the semester having lost my voice -- and I mean I had really, really, lost it. Public speaking of even a single sentence was out of the question.<BR/><BR/>This put me in a quandry -- I had cancelled classes while I was at the conference, but the students needed to cover that material. There wasn't enough time left in the semester to make it up later, and I couldn't find a substitute.<BR/><BR/>My solution was to write up a paragraph explaining the problem, and then write about two dozen questions about the material on note cards, including sentences of the kind useful to class discussion -- stuff like, "That's an interesting point. Can you expand on it?" and "Can you show us evidence of that in the text?" When class started, I called up a student from the first row and she read my paragraph. We two then sat at the front of the class and I "led" a Socratic discussion of the material by pointing at students to speak, and having the student sitting next to me read outloud the notecards I handed her.<BR/><BR/>About two years later I ran into a student from the class, who told me that the class was convinced that it was all a sham, and some sort of weird pedagogical experiment. No amount of insistence from me could convince her otherwise. As the conversation closed, she told me that it was the best class I'd taught all semester.<BR/><BR/>I'm sure she meant it as a compliment to my alleged pedagogical experiment, but what it really meant is that my classes are greatly improved if I don't say a word!Dr. Richard Scott Nokeshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01348275071082514870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-9479661583434304062008-02-01T16:50:00.000-05:002008-02-01T16:50:00.000-05:00This may sound like a friend-of-a-friend urban myt...This may sound like a friend-of-a-friend urban myth, but it's absolutely true. I have the proof, if it should be required of me.<BR/><BR/>An eminent (now retired) Professor of History at Glasgow lectured on the Norse invasions of Britain. When the exam papers came in for the course, it transpired that a goodly proportion of students had elected to discuss the Japanese component of this Viking expansion. There was an investigation. And you'll need to picture the following spoken in cut-glass artistocratic English tones, to an audience of largely lowland Scottish teenagers: 'so these chaps came over here in the 780s ... what you've got to remember about these chaps is that they were expert sailors ...'Rachel Robertshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09514816247989239714noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-75267149381773323952008-02-01T15:14:00.000-05:002008-02-01T15:14:00.000-05:00Well, it's not very innovative, but... I once orga...Well, it's not very innovative, but... I once organized part of my medieval survey class around students giving presentations on the essays in Rosenwein & Little's <I>Inventing the Middle Ages</I> (is that what it's called? I may have it wrong). Alas, my skimming of the book before I adopted it wasn't close enough for me to realize what would happen: the students COMPLETELY didn't understand the essays. Which became clear the first time we did this. And I had it woven throughout the semester. That was fun.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-84516340322452097512008-02-01T10:08:00.000-05:002008-02-01T10:08:00.000-05:00Thoughts of that candle are still making me giggle...Thoughts of that candle are still making me giggle. And, so, in honor of that honesty, JJC, I'll share my worst hail mary pass... my first teaching assignment was a survey of British literature, too. I was a grad student, all fired up to bring theory to my section of students. in a section on shakespeare's sonnets, I did a dazzling song and dance about the relationship between desire, the young boy, the dark lady, and the speaking subject, using Sedgwick's _between men_. We examined how the sonnets formulate queer desire for both young male and dark female bodies... or so I thought. Then the papers came in. Crikey. One of my students argued that ANY TIME a male author's work contains negative representations of women, the author was probably... gay. The student cited my song and dance as proof, and went on to conclude that, given the representations of women in Brit Lit, most of the authors in the Norton anthology had to be gay. using queer theory, I had made one of my students homophobic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com