Hi Class,
First of all, I would like to apologize for letting class out so early. Briefly, I would like to explain why I did so.
My goal for today’s class was to collect Essay 1 and then move into a new part of the semester: poetry. This fairly short section of the semester was designed to be both content rich and also fun and engaging. I had designed this handout for today:
How to read poetry-spring 2016
I thought that this handout would make poetry something approachable and knowable, not some mysterious thing beyond reach.
I also wanted us to read three poems in class. And here they are:
- “How to Be Perfect” (an excerpt) by Ron Padgett: How to Be Perfect-Padgett
2. “Where I’m From” by Willie Perdomo:Where I’m From-Perdomo
3. “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/17315
And so when I found half the class empty, many students without Essay 1, and many students strolling in 30 minutes late, I sort of froze. Some students had done the freewrite, many had not. Some students had turned in the essay, many had not. I felt the entire lesson had slipped away from me. I felt that I had upheld my side of “contract” of the teaching of ENG 1121, but that too many students had not performed their side: be on time with the work completed.
The simplest remedy is this: in the future, please be ready at 6:00. In return, I will provide you with the writing and reading tools that I think every college student needs in order to succeed.
I will give a quiz on Thursday that begins at 6:00 and ends at 6:10. The quiz will be over the poems on pages 1-13 of 101 Great American Poems (not including Edgar Allen Poe). On this quiz I will ask three types of questions based on our “How to Read Poetry” handout:
- How is the speaker of this poem?
- What is the setting of this poem?
- What happens in this poem?
I encourage students to focus, in particular, on these three poets: Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This is a reading quiz, and so if you have read the poems carefully and considered the speaker, setting, and plot of each poem written by Bradstreet, Wheatley, and Longfellow, you will do fine.
Best,
Prof. Scanlan
ps. Please bring your poetry book to class on Thursday.
