Tuesday, May 11, 2021

May 11, 2021: Spring 2021 Moments: Fruitvale and Blackish

[The Spring 2021 semester seems to have been the most challenging for my students of any in my 20+ years of college teaching, and I know for sure it was the most challenging for me. I’m not gonna pretend I have clear reflections or lessons I can take away from it, but what I do have are striking individual moments that reminded me of why we do what we do in the classroom. So this week I’ll highlight a handful of those, and I’d love to share your favorite Spring 2021 moments—or other semester reflections—in a crowd-sourced weekend post!]

Yesterday’s post focused on an unexpected discussion that became a favorite moment; unfortunately, I have to admit that most of my planned discussions were more challenging and less fruitful than that. But not all, and one of the best planned discussions was when my First-year Writing II class watched Fruitvale Station and an episode of Blackish to model multimedia comparative analysis ahead of a paper on two such texts of their choice. Their great thoughts both engaged with these two texts, their respective genres, and their vital #BlackLivesMatter stories and themes and modeled comparative analytical lenses, exemplifying the combination of practicality and philosophy, form and content that can define first-year writing classes at their best.

Next moment tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Spring 2021 moments or reflections you’d share?

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