[The Spring 2022 semester was in some ways more “normal” than the last few have been, but in many other ways just as difficult, if not indeed more so. But y’all know me well enough to know that I’m not going to focus on the challenges in this week’s series, but rather on individual discussions in each of my classes that reminded me of why we do what we do!]
No group of
students seemed to be struggling more with this challenging semester than the
first-year students in my two
sections of Writing II, and that’s sure understandable: these were the
students whose last two years of high school were so thoroughly disrupted, and
whose first year of college have been pretty damn strange as well. FYW classes
are extremely individual in the best circumstances, and in these far less great
ones much of my work was do what I could to help each student navigate not only
my class, but every part of this moment. But we had great discussions along the
way as well, and probably my favorite (in both sections) was the day we
finished watching
Fruitvale Station—I gave us all a
chance to decompress (ie, at least in my case, dry our tears) for a few, and
then we talked at length about choices and themes, formal elements and content,
contexts and effects. A number of students told me later they were so glad to
have had the chance to watch this film, and I was just as glad to have shared
it with them and (especially) gotten their responses.
Next reflection
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Spring semester reflections (in all tones) you’d share?
No comments:
Post a Comment