The first time I assigned NourbeSe Philip's Zong!, a book for which I practically needed a trigger warning the first time I heard of it, I did not want to get it wrong.
I'm hardly a perfectionist as a professor. My pedagogy hero is Count Leo Tolstoy, who once wrote:
Still, back in 2017, considering the teaching of Zong!, I conscientiously gathered my notes and proceeded to read the truth to the youths. I got the students to read, then made them write to several prompts that would turn into a -- yes -- a paper. They had to get it, and they had to get it my way.
But at the end of the semester, a few of the students who came to my office hours regularly were still puzzling over their papers -- or simply trying to ensure As. One afternoon, four of them had gathered and we began reading the poem together. We were in a large adjunct bull pen at the Bronx campus that sits in the middle of the Economics department. One fellow read, then another, then we decided to read it in pairs, then to split it up and read it in columns, overlapping, singing, really. An athlete, a musician, a philosophy major, and a senior who just needed an English credit to get out raised their voices. There were no adjuncts around, to my dismay, because the result seemed to me very beautiful, but when a few of the Economics folks peeked over the safety glass that encaged us, I was proud.
This semester, I'd learned my lesson. Rather than "teaching" Zong!, it's been all reading. Little chunks at first, then larger chunks, and, yesterday, the passages at the end, the part from the printer foul-up.
At first three of them were reading downward--one for the left column, one for the right, and one for the center. Some admiration, some complaints. (Fine.) Then we were all reading--one third of the room to the left column and so on. After we'd done a page it was as if we'd emerged on a new beach. Some of the students still were not happy with the text--not clear, not connected--but others were joined to it, intrigued, excited. when I suggested we record ourselves and send it to MNP herself, they were thrilled.
Et voila.
The next morning, I'm not sure this is good enough for her. Not yet. But posting here and will start digging around to reconnect to her on Twitter, where we once followed each other, or to get her email another way. Maybe we will revise--I guess, a la Tolstoy, I should let the class decide.
I'm hardly a perfectionist as a professor. My pedagogy hero is Count Leo Tolstoy, who once wrote:
To teach, to bring up a child, why, it is a chimera, an absurdity, for this simple reason, that the child is much nearer than I am, or any grown man, to the true, beautiful and good to which I undertake to raise him.I take comfort here, especially when discussing complex texts that are meaningful to me with a room of nineteen-year-olds. I was never confident about explaining Emily Dickinson and James Baldwin and James Joyce and Helene Cixous, anyway. In my class, you don't have to like anything, but you have to know the general facts and you have to have a grounded opinion on what a text is, have to be able to connect it to a few other things you know.
Still, back in 2017, considering the teaching of Zong!, I conscientiously gathered my notes and proceeded to read the truth to the youths. I got the students to read, then made them write to several prompts that would turn into a -- yes -- a paper. They had to get it, and they had to get it my way.
But at the end of the semester, a few of the students who came to my office hours regularly were still puzzling over their papers -- or simply trying to ensure As. One afternoon, four of them had gathered and we began reading the poem together. We were in a large adjunct bull pen at the Bronx campus that sits in the middle of the Economics department. One fellow read, then another, then we decided to read it in pairs, then to split it up and read it in columns, overlapping, singing, really. An athlete, a musician, a philosophy major, and a senior who just needed an English credit to get out raised their voices. There were no adjuncts around, to my dismay, because the result seemed to me very beautiful, but when a few of the Economics folks peeked over the safety glass that encaged us, I was proud.
This semester, I'd learned my lesson. Rather than "teaching" Zong!, it's been all reading. Little chunks at first, then larger chunks, and, yesterday, the passages at the end, the part from the printer foul-up.
At first three of them were reading downward--one for the left column, one for the right, and one for the center. Some admiration, some complaints. (Fine.) Then we were all reading--one third of the room to the left column and so on. After we'd done a page it was as if we'd emerged on a new beach. Some of the students still were not happy with the text--not clear, not connected--but others were joined to it, intrigued, excited. when I suggested we record ourselves and send it to MNP herself, they were thrilled.
The next morning, I'm not sure this is good enough for her. Not yet. But posting here and will start digging around to reconnect to her on Twitter, where we once followed each other, or to get her email another way. Maybe we will revise--I guess, a la Tolstoy, I should let the class decide.
