Pluots in space

I wanted to start off with a psa about a really great organization which distributes organic vegetables within South Florida. It's not too expensive, and the variety is great. Here, have a Web site: http://www.anniesbuyingclub.com/

We just started getting it every other week. The best part is figuring out what to do with ingredients we've never cooked before (I say we, but really you know I mean Bobby).

All the vegetables must be helping my brain because teaching has been going wonderfully so far. I think the kids are really into reading the stories. It's such a difference after teaching Composition.

Now this isn't to say I dislike teaching Comp, actually I quite enjoy it. It's interesting and challenging and rewarding watching students learn how to write and find their own voices. But I must say, fiction is a lot of fun. We have debates. It's easier to get them to talk. They seem to care about what we're reading.

The two classes have ended up having two quite separate dynamics. My technology class is quiet, it can be more work to get them to speak (although I can usually accomplish this; it involves a lot of jokes and moving around. I find that if I stand in the same place, they get bored). The other class, the late in the day, dingy classroom class, is far more passionate and talkative.

I know that there are many factors which contribute to their behavior. Sure, technology is an issue, but then so is the class time, the student population in the class, and my own energy level.

This is actually the first time I've taught more than one class at a time, and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. I feel like I learn more and teach better.

The silly thing about the organic vegetable buying club thing, if you'll allow me to spin back to where I started, is that we just got a half share on Tuesday. Do you know what that means? It means we have to move with all these vegetables. I like to picture a U-Haul full of them, broccolini and asparagus rolling around and around the pints of strawberries and pluots (no joke, the Frankensteinian plum/apricot is delicious).

I think, and someone else mentioned this to me, that the key here, the solution to my moving troubles, is to get my kids to do it. That's, like, 50 people! Imagine the breath-taking speed. Vegetables flying into boxes, boxes flying onto U-Hauls, pianos zipping through the air....

It is a beautiful dream, isn't it?

Running just as fast as we can

We found a new place to live. Maybe I didn't mention that we're moving, but we are. It's just about a mile south, but it's oh-so-nice to have everything set in stone.

What is not, however, oh-so-nice, is moving in the middle of the semester. I've done it before and so I know. I know I know I know how difficult it will be. Moving is, as I'm sure we all know (although most would probably rather not), one of the absolute worst things a person can do. No one should ever move. It is a terrible, terrible affair.

Plus I have a piano.

Anyway, so I need to be extra special organized this semester. The kids seems to be doing well so far, but I think I'm going to have to give them more quizzes. One kid admitted today that he didn't read the story. I called on him in the first place because he was sitting with his head resting on his hands, nearly asleep. "What do you think about this?" I asked. "I'm sorry, I didn't get a chance to read the story," the student said.

So I continued, trying to appear unfazed. At least the kid was honest, right? After the lecture I informed them they'd be having a reading quiz next class. A good move, I think, but I hate to do it. It seems so high school.

Then again, this is a 2000 level course. Probably this is to be expected.

The fiction of fiction

I've had my kids read two short stories which are accompanied by interviews with the authors in which the authors say, basically, that people read too much into their stories.

One of my classes, the technologically advanced one, ps, is okay with this. I've stressed to them that authors are people, and that unless they are super-brilliant-geniuses, there is no way they could have planned every theme and metaphor.

The other class, the one which has actually turned out to be more talkative and involved, was less impressed with these authors' statements. "Why do we do this then?" A student asked me. "It's a waste of time, none of this is real. We're reading too much into it."

We got into a discussion of literature and the nature of literary endeavors, but I'm not sure I've convinced them. This one student in particular seems to feel quite disenfranchised with literature at the moment.

I've been trying to think of other ways of approaching this problem. Other ways of getting to the students. I want them to see the authors as people, for sure. I think it's important to look beyond the idols we have made of authors and see that at heart we are more alike than different. Kind of like my special snowflake rant.

Although, of course, brilliant genius authors exist. I just don't think students should be taught to blindly venerate them. I want to have them question authority, literature, the cannon... But perhaps this is too radical a challenge for people new to literature. Maybe the questions should be reserved for people who are really steeped in the academic culture. These are sophomores, mostly, and many of them definitely are not readers.

However, I somehow just can't stomach the idea that I shouldn't challenge them because they are, in the parlance of our times, newbs. I want to pull down curtains and all that. And I want them to come to love literature despite its origins. Or perhaps more honestly, I want them to love literature because of its origins. I feel as though if I can take literature down to them, to the level of real-human-people-like-us, then they might in the end feel its force all the more powerfully.

A girl can dream, right?