You've Gotta Read This

I've had a stroke of genius that just needs to be shared. This is a great assignment for a comp class working on literature analysis and could be applied to short story, poetry, essay, film, plays, songs, etc. It could even be applied in just about ANY discipline in which evaluative analysis is used. I would love to hear what other teachers think of this or other ideas that this might spur.

Okay, truth is, I'm not the genius. Ron Hansen, the editor of You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe. Essentially, the book is an anthology of the stories selected by the contemporary American writers, each of them introduced by the writer. The introduction is really a kind of analysis, telling stories about the writer's response to the story, how it affected them and why. Each includes, inadvertently, an analysis of the elements of the story the writer felt were most worth mentioning.

So, when coming to the literary analysis section of class, and facing yet another year of stories in our textbook, which I'm a bit tired of reading, and even more tired of reading the same old tired responses and analyses of them by students (bless their hearts), I was hit with a brainquake. This is what I came up with:

Give the students literary journals of contemporary writing - I just happen to have copies to share with students, but the students in larger areas could find these at their local bookstores and in library stacks. I would use the NewPages Guide to Lit Mags as the check for quality: if it's not on the list, clear it with teacher first.

Have the students sample read around until they find a story that really knocks their socks off. Then, have the students write an intro to the story, just like in Hansen's book. By doing this, they are able to relate a personal (reader) response as well as make a close analysis of all or select elements that they felt were well developed in the story with examples to support their writing. I also required them to include SOME comment about the author of the story, encouraging them to search the author on the web, but since most are brand new, there may not be anything on them at all. At the very least, I know there are contributor notes in the journal, and I've told them they can use those as long as they put it into their own words and weave it in well with their writing.

Further, I encourage the inquiry approach to research, and they may include other relevant information they find out about the author and historical, geographical, etc. information that appears in the story. We do read shared stories for class, and a good example of this inquiry approach is Chinua Achebe's "Civil Peace" - one of the questions that always comes up is "What war was this?" By following this inquiry, students are able to learn a great deal more about the culture and thus have deeper understanding of and appreciation for the story itself.

The students have agreed upon a common formatting for their writing, and will submit their writing along with a copy of the story (which I will copy to control quality). All of these will then be compiled into our own class anthology - which students have yet to name - but each of them will leave the semester with a copy of this. I have agreed to create a source page for the back of the book - a works cited page. They have to type up their own entry, MLA format, and give it to me on a disk or e-mail it to me, then I will compile the page. As far as copyright, I'm pretty sure we're okay as a one-time educational use on these. Ideally, it would be way cool to get permission for reprint and make something like this to distribute wider than just our class - or sell it as a fundraiser for some student activity - but that's much further down the road.

We've been studying stories and discussing the elements of fiction, writing brief analysis papers and doing worksheets for a couple of weeks, so I think the students are ready for this. They seemed receptive and even excited about the project. None expressed any reservations about sharing their writing with others to walk out of class, and this even seemed to pique their interest in the activity.

Can't you also see the applicability of this to other areas? Art, music, math (yes, math - select your favorite problem from the semester...), history, business - the possibilities are endless! It helps in literature that the authors are contemporary as it eliminates the possibility of students getting canned essays off the web. But, at the same time, the assignment, just by virtue of being such a personalized response practically eliminates the ability to copy and paste - at least a whole essay start to finish.

I am so excited about this idea. It's risky as a new assignment - especially with my not having read the stories, but at the same time, that's what makes it so fun for me as a teacher. And the students added their own challenge for me: they want me to do the assignment with them, because they want to see what kind of a story I would pick. I moaned to them about that, saying, "Oh no, now I'm going to have to read..."

Actually, by the end of the day, I had my story all picked out. Now I just have to do my homework.

My Nomination for Pope

Back from an exhilarating weekend in Vancouver, B.C. the activities of AWP still swirling about in my head will need several journal sessions to sort through and coalesce into focused bits I can elaborate on here. More on the surface of my thoughts recently has been the death of the Pope. Not because I much care about the Pope. I don't. Not in any deeply emotional way, anyhow. He was old. He died. And now a new pope will take his place. The news reports told of the "ritual" acts needed when choosing a new pope. It was funny - and I do mean ha-ha - to listen to the process and hear how much it sounded like the guidelines in our faculty contract for replacing vacant positions. It's not a ritual, it's and administrative process. The pope is an administrator, no different than any other hired/elected official. There's no mysticism to the process - it's political. The U.S. cardinal won't even be considered, and I'm doubtful the world is ready to embrace a black pope, so Cardinal Francis Arinze can count himself out, and for similar reasons, I think Cardinal Norberto R. Carrera of Mexico City can prepare to stand aside. It's not really about being chosen by God, now is it?

To that end, I have my own nomination: Sinead O'Connor.

Back in 1992, she shocked the nation by ripping up a picture of the Pope John Paul II during her performance on Saturday Night Live to raise awareness of child abuse in the church, among many other issues she denounces within the Catholic church. For more information on this, a great web site to visit is The File Room Chicago Cultural Arts Center - an illustrated archive on censorship which you can browse, as well as add cases to. Sinead O'Connor has her own page for this particular action.

The folks at SNL were bombarded with over 6,000 complaint calls to the network, not to mention that Tim Robbins took his own cowardly bastard stand in not thanking her at the end of the show. Then what? Suddenly the US erupts in the "scandal" of the abuses of children within the Catholic church. Priest after priest after priest is yanked out of his cassock into litigation for child abuse. Relocations, denunciations, removals all follow. Can we say Sinead was right? No. Not a single soul or souless source ever came forward to admit that. The network that shunned Sinead and refused to let the episode of SNL be repeated, those who booed her off stage in performances that followed, Tim - HELLO?! - Robbins... Not a one stepped forward to say, Gee, maybe Sinead was on to something that we were still not ready or willing to believe. Yeesh! Okay then, in this be it ever so humble blog, let me be the first: Sinead - you were right.

And before you go all holier than thou on me - I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic - went through CCD classes and was confirmed (my confirmation name is one of my deepest darkest secrets) - I've done my fair share of Stations of the Cross, when business people enjoyed a noon - 3:00 break at the bar, I was kneeling and kneeling and kneeling. And I've had my fair share of taunting over the ash mush that was to resemble a cross on my forehead those long, long Wedesdays. So, back off. Like many Catholics who openly admit: "I love the Pope. I didn't agree with everything he said, but - " Okay, wait. What's the but? In Catholicism, either you agree or you're scorned, you're bad! You'll burn in HELL! Or, at least until confession. In any case, don't play me on this one. I've got just as much say as the next claim-to-be-Catholic-when-it-suits-me.

Sinead O'Connor is not anti-God. Anything but. Repeated interviews with her reveal that she is deeply spiritual, though she then claimed to not support organized religion. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sinead, she says: "i lived in hell for a long period of time. the only thing that saved my ass was god."

Yet, in 1998, she was informally ordained a priest by a Catholic "splinter" group. Of this act, she humbly commented: "I am now a Roman Catholic priest and I intend to fulfill that office to one hundred and million per cent the best of my ability. The Church was dying and I think I'm a very good and loving person that I've been prepared to take the crucifixions, which I will now have to put up with for doing this, so as to bring people back to the Catholic Church. I think it's very wonderful of me that I've been prepared to do this - to give publicity to the Catholic Church. I don't need any publicity myself. What I've done is resurrect the Church and saved its life - and I hope the Church will be strong enough to see that."

Good enough for me. And that she has a tremendous voice to boot only works in her favor. So, crucify me if you'd like, but I'm sticking (pun intended) to it: Sinead for Pope!