On the inspirations I have received and hope to continue receiving from the
student projects in my Ethnic American Literature course.
I wrote at length in
this post, and at even greater length in this article for
the online journal Teaching American
Literature, about my creation of a new Ethnic American Literature
syllabus, with a couple main innovations (at least in my own teaching): reading
two works at the same time, to make cross-generational connections within
similar ethnic or racial communities (between the autobiographies of Frederick Douglass
and Richard
Wright, for example); and having the students produce not essays or
analyses of the readings, but multi-generational family timelines and analysis
projects. My goal for the latter choice was to have the students treat their
own identities, families, and heritages with the same analytical rigor we’d
bring to our readings; and thus, at the same time, to help them connect themselves
to the “others” about whom we’d be reading all semester.
I’ve taught this new Ethnic syllabus three times now (this spring’s section
will be the fourth), and I would say the projects have definitely helped us
achieve (or at least move closer to) those interconnected goals. But they’ve
also had an unexpected and not at all unimportant side effect: they have
provided all of us, and most definitely me, with complex, varied, and
thoroughly inspiring American stories. Every project has included such
inspiring details, and in many cases they have helped the students themselves
connect much more fully with (or even learn about for the first time) their
inspiring ancestors and family histories. But without question some
particularly noteworthy individuals have stood out among that impressive cohort,
including: the student’s grandmother who immigrated illegally from Mexico,
worked in the worst conditions for many decades, and through that effort funded
her daughter’s college education and now works instead at the company that
daughter founded; the student’s mother who escaped an abusive marriage,
received a nursing degree while working two jobs and raising her three children
by herself, and inspired her twin daughters (two of my best students) to pursue
nursing as well; the student who was raised in foster homes alongside her three
younger siblings and who has become a role model for each of them, with all
four (at that time) attending or about to begin college.
The students share some of their project’s stories and analyses in
end-of-semester presentations, and I’m quite sure that these and many other
inspiring individuals have impacted everyone who has heard about them. But
again, I can’t overstate how much I personally have been impacted by them, and
by realizing how much these students are the culmination (or rather
continuation) of such histories. I’ve danced around it long enough in this
space, so I’ll just come out and say it: I’m in the midst of getting divorced,
and am, among many other emotions, so uncertain about the future, for myself,
for my boys, for my family. So neither can I overstate how much I will depend
on such inspiring stories, and on the reminders they provide of the importance
of perseverence and strength, of responding to the toughest times and
circumstances with the best of what we—we Americans, we humans—can be. My
students have given me numerous inspiring examples already, and I hope and
believe I’ll get many more in the semester to come.
Next spring
hopes tomorrow,
Ben
PS. So what do
you think? Thoughts on this course and these projects? Hopes of yours for the
spring you’d share?
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