[As another challenging but rewarding semester comes to a close, I wanted to reflect on a handful of moments that particularly surprised me (in good ways). I’d love to hear some of your Spring reflections in comments!]
As I
mentioned in my
semester preview post, the new addition to my Sci Fi/Fantasy syllabus this
time around was Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata
Witch (2011). I like Okorafor’s novel a lot, but we can never know for sure
how a reading is gonna go the first time we teach it—and, as I’ve highlighted
in this space before, I’m always particularly uncertain about assigning longer
works like novels in our fraught and challenging current moment. And to add one
more variable, we read Akata Witch
after four weeks working with only short stories, meaning in the two weeks we
spent on Okorafor’s book we have significantly more pages in front of us than
had been the case. So I was definitely surprised and really impressed with how
fully the students got into Akata Witch,
in both senses: getting through the novel across those couple weeks of classes
and conversations; and connecting to it on many different levels, making those
discussions consistently thoughtful and fun. Think this one is staying on the
syllabus!
Next
surprise tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Spring semester reflections you’d share?
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