Category Archives: teaching

Context

I face something of a double bind in my teaching career, because generally English instructors at the college level are expected to focus on one particular area of English, such as composition, or business writing, or creative writing, or some field of literature.  There’s no question that I get the most enjoyment out of teaching creative writing, because it’s basically an excuse to hang out with all of the coolest students on campus in an atmosphere where we meet as fellow artists.  At the same…

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An Open Letter to Retail Stores

Dear retail store manager: Hello.  My name is Sean Shannon.  Although you probably don’t know me personally, if you have a retail store in the Toledo area, chances are I’ve shopped in your store.  (Unless you manage a Wal*Mart, in which case I will never ever ever set foot in your store, you union-busting, community-destroying, worker-neglecting, discriminatory pieces of crap.)  I like to comparison shop so I get the best value for my money, so throughout the course of a year I visit dozens upon dozens…

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Written by the Winners

Texas board adopts new social studies curriculum (AP via Yahoo! News) I didn’t blog about this controversy when it first erupted a couple of months ago because I was trying to sort through some other stuff, but I did mention it to my students at the time, and we talked a bit about it.  Like me, the inclusion of Confederate generals and statesmen as “examples of good leaders” seemed to hit my students the hardest, if only because the Confederacy lost.  I still wonder if…

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Satan Enters Through Your Loins

Ohio Christian school tells student to skip prom (AP via Yahoo! News) Just when I thought this part of the country couldn’t get more bad press after dealing with "Joe the Plumber" for the past six months, something like this has to pop up. In all seriousness, this is a news story I would expect to see in a newspaper from forty or fifty years ago, not in 2009. I’m not trying to be disrespectful of religious beliefs here, but at the same time, there…

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Fads Fade Fast

Because the majority of my students fall between the ages of eighteen to twenty, I spend a fair amount of time on YouTube and Websites oriented towards that young adult demographic, so I can get a bit of a handle on what is popular in that age group. I’d watch television, but I just can’t stomach American Idol and its ilk, and the radio on my stereo — like so many parts of it — just isn’t working that well right now. I really need…

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