posted 2005/08/31 at 23:12
Since everyone else seems to be doing it, I might as well: As of my drive home from school tonight, $3.09 regular unleaded. At this rate, my planned trip to Dayton next week to see Mary Timony might not wind up happening after all. ;.;
I was hoping today's comp class would go better than it did. As I discussed earlier in the week, today I had them try to look at different literacies in a critical way. We talked about how their generation gets their literacy from popular music and television (I never thought I would ever utter the phrase "skeet skeet skeet," let alone at least half a dozen times in an hour), then we looked at automobile literacy (I'd had them read instructions on how to change the oil in a car during Monday's class) and I tried to get them to see how people in the auto industry use a lot of jargon to try to confuse people (and reap in the profits through "Authorized Repair Centres"), and then to see how "proper" English is a construct of people in power to try to separate themselves from those they consider "uneducated" and thus maintain their positions of power.
A few people in the class seemed to understand what I was getting at, but I was still getting a lot of vacant stares. I think my mistake here was trying to combine the first chapter of our fetid textbook -- a discussion on literacy -- with an introduction to critical thinking skills. I need to get these students thinking critically, but chances are that these students have never really done critical thinking exercises before, and having them apply critical thinking skills for the first time to a topic as vague as literacy was likely asking far too much of them. Thankfully we're only two weeks into the term here, so I still have plenty of time to right the good ship Comp I again.
Or did I just confuse you all with what I just wrote? :/
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon