ENGL 3400 Mar 29

This is my reflection email to Dr. Insenga on teaching--March 29th. I really didn't prepare as much as I would've like to for this class, mostly because I was out of town at the CEA conference. It's hard for me to really stay on track with work while I travel. I felt ok about class, not great but not bad. I am happy that we geared the conversation toward justification of teaching methods--context.

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Hey Dr. Insenga,
So I gave them an extension on their papers until Wednesday the 31st. I told them that I'd put a box outside my office and to turn them in by 5:00. Class went ok. A couple of people--Jess, Maegan, Zhirine, Heather--were really engaged, but I think most of them had not started reading. More than a couple didn't have the book and those who did seemed to kind of look at it like they'd never seen it. We talked mostly about representations of race, the disconnect between cultural assumptions about Native Americans and Alexie's representation of Indians. We first generated a list of characteristics of Native Americans that we gather from popular culture--the expectations that most students have of Indians. Then I asked them take a couple of minutes find textual representations of Indian culture in the opening of the text, kind of the first stagings of race. Since most of them had not read at all, they didn't really come up with much. I said that I was still in the middle of the book, too, but we are still capable of discussing the ideas that we've encountered in the novel this far. I guess I was expecting them to have started reading more than they had.

We did have a really discussion about bringing in context. Since most of us and our students don't have experience with Native American culture, we talked about when and how to bring that into the classroom and why. I'm happy with that part of the class. Overall, I think I wanted to talk more about the text than they were prepared for.

I'm planning on--ideally--getting the papers graded this weekend. I thought it would be good to meet with you to talk about the papers before I give them back. Hopefully, that will be Monday, but it might be Wednesday.

Have a good one,
Jessica

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This is a rough lesson plan
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Talk about paper: Extension until Friday?
How do they feel about it?

Alexie:
List of popular assumptions about Indians: look to popular culture. How do we collectively imagine them?

How does Alexie represent them?
Close reading exercise: First two-three chapters and find examples of how Alexie represents race.
How does humor fit in here? How do the drawings fit in? Does the humor work like his drawings, everyone understands?

What is Alexie up to here? Is he revising assumptions? Does his work stereotype Indians? Why? Why not?

How do we teach race, especially a race that is most likely not represented in class? How do we avoid the exclusive “them” conversation? Or, how do we avoid just sitting around making assumptions of our own?
How does the absence of Indian students affect teaching Indian literature?

Because there’s most likely no Indian students in class and we know such insufficient info about Indian culture, do we go in and talk about Indian culture in introducing the book?
I have lots of experience with students like Arnold, should I have given you a bunch of information about that? What would the effect be?

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