It is nearly three months since my last post. In the intervening time, I have been teaching and consumed by teaching a course on memoir at Beacon Hill Seminars, a private adult education program in Boston. Our last class met Monday, November 30.
Now it's time for an assessment. What did I learn? What would I do differently next time? (I may be asked to teach again, perhaps the same course next fall.)
My class was mostly older than me (64) and all female, with one brave exception. The group was bright and very active in our group discussions. It was a dynamic, stimulating, enjoyable course for me, the teacher, and I have received a few comments by e-mail suggesting that the students enjoyed it too.
What I Learned
1. It is easier to get people to read than to write. The course was planned as a combination of reading (short excerpts from published memoirs) and writing (short homework exercises directed by me and read in class the following week). While attendance fluctuated from 60 to 100 percent, it appeared that everyone read almost everything; and our in-class discussions of readings were lively. On the other hand, the writing (at least the writing that the class was willing to share) was as sparse as it was excellent. That is, those who were inspired to write and to read us what they had written had some interesting breakthroughs toward better understanding their lives and presenting incidents in a telling and entertaining way. What I must do, if I teach again, is come up with more better "prompts" or writing exercises, to encourage more of the same.
2. I have a certain flair for teaching, and I enjoy it. That might not seem like much to you, but it matters to me. It encourages me to do more.
3. People love learning about lives—and reading memoirs—that they know nothing about. We have a hunger to know the other, the stranger, the way we have not yet walked.
4. Norman Maclean is still the best nonfiction writer I know. We started off with his eight-page mini-memoir "Retrievers: Good and Bad," and I don't think the class discussions ever got better than they were in that first session. Another relatively unknown memoir that drew active discussion was Bob Smith's "Hamlet's Dresser."
5. I felt obliged to use as many women's memoirs as men's (including Dorothy Day's "The Long Loneliness" and Domenica Ruta's "With or Without You"), but my mostly female class responded as strongly to men's stories as to women's. Perhaps that's because I respond strongest to men's stories and passed on my own passion for them.
What I Would Do Differently
1. Next time, if there is a next time, we will read all different memoirs. And after advertising Ulysses S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs" and not using it (!), I definitely will do so next time. New memoirs will keep the class fresh for me, and several students suggested that they might take my course again if we read new pieces.
2. Next time, if there is a next time, I will assign longer excerpts; and perhaps I will choose and assign one complete book, to be spiced by short weekly excerpts that reflect aspects of the longer work as we read it.
3. Next time, if there is a next time, I will work harder to develop exercises to elicit more writing. If I fell short, it was here: I need to be a better writing teacher. I told the class how impressed I was by several of their pieces, and I would like to provide a better process to generate more such work. I left my final class thinking that two or three of the stories I had heard, written by my students, were the tallest feathers in my teaching cap. But the honor is all theirs.
I want to thank Paul Sullivan for inviting me to teach the course and to Linda Berger, a member of the curriculum committee, for encouraging me during the course.
No comments:
Post a Comment