The Response to Gertrude Stein

Karren asks how the post-presentation assignments went, and this brings to mind two ideas: one,that with blogging, an event  is never really over,that ideas keep tumbling along and that audience, performer, teacher, student, writer,can all engage in a discussion (or several) around specific ideas in a less formal, less time-driven manner. 

The second idea is that the students could have been encouraged to send their reactions to the presenter as well as to me,their professor.  I'm not sure why I didn't think to do that at the time since I did give out Karren's email address so that they could offer feedback about the presentation itself. 

That said, the reaction papers were good. One student did a fantastic job of imitating Stein's voice and re-vising bel hooks' essay--so good that she read it to the appreciative class. Only one student opted for the music video choice, but she came through splendidly.  Most of the class chose to write a response to the visit and to discuss whichever ideas struck them the most. I wish that I could think of specific examples, but I am too far ahead into the rest of the semester to remember.  Karren, I will ask the class to send along their responses to you.

One of the other benefits of this assignment was that it caused me to revise the course assignments so that I now get and respond to a weekly email from each student, discussing something about the class discussion that struck them as new, unusual, troubling or whatever.  This takes the place of three  quizzes that, in a class that meets once a week for two and a half hours, ate up too much time.  Also, because the class is so small, it affords me the time to give each student one on one attention to their ideas. 

Comments

[how to write a masters dissertation]

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!

[Masters Dissertation]

Whenever i see the post like your's i feel that there are helpful people who share information for the help of others, it must be helpful for other's. thanx and good job.