Q&A for the week of 27 January 2020

1/28/2020

Hello Folks--

Use this space to post questions and concerns you have about this weeks work or upcoming work. I'll do my best to respond promptly.

One question that I got an email about: What are we writing about in the reading journal/book club this week--or any week we aren't reading a novel.

Answer: You should write about whatever the assigned text is for the week. So, for this week, you are writing about Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, 7th Grade by Gary Soto (links are live). Last week, someone asked what I meant by "respond as you would for a 300 level English class. I repeat my response to that question here:

When you read Shakespeare you analyze it. When you read Poe you analyze it. When you read Joyce you analyze it. When you read Morrison you analyze it. What I don't want is people just reviewing the YA novels we read (I liked it or I didn't like it). And I don't want folks saying things like, well, it's for kids so what is there to analyze, it's too simplistic. I want you to analyze it like you've been asked to do in other classes--as a piece of literature.

4 Comments

1/29/2020 06:22:53 pm

I've gotten another question about what I expect from the 250 world reading journal/book club post to the google.doc pages that I sent out to the small groups this past Monday. I'm posting my answer here to be helpful to everyone.

I want to reiterate two points I made in the Monday update: 1) this is only 250 words; it is informal writing; and if you do it totally wrong you can revise it. Also, along with that, most students NEVER have to revise their reading journals because they do it right the first time. Most students who revise do so because they didn't finish the work in time and submitted only a partial journal the first time. HELP ME OUT HERE OLD STUDENTS. I get how students who don't know me might worry a lot about this, but if you've had me as a teacher, you know how this works. Maybe the rest of the class will believe you more.

And 2) I quoted a response to a question from last week's Q&A post from the syllabus about what I meant about responding like this is a 300 level lit class. I won't re-quote that here. But what I will say is this. I'm looking for you to do a close reading of the two short stories. If you want to pick one and really dig in to that one, I'm OK with that. If you want to compare the two (and there is a lot you can compare) go ahead. If you want to look at the stories thematically, that's a good way to go. If you want to look at a rhetorical trope or bit of figurative language, that would work too. If you wanted to look at how the pieces are narrated (the particular use of "you" in girl, for instance), that would work. Another version of "close reading" is to "explicate"--any of you who've taken Crowley's Shakespeare class surely know what I mean.

There's not a particular way I want you to do this or a particular point I'm looking for you to make. If this was a face to face class, you'd have a class discussion about our reading, and that is what I'm trying to simulate here. Your colleague who asked this question said that there wasn't an example of what I'm looking for and that's true. I'm resistant to posting an example because I fear that if I do that then every single post will look like a mad lib of that example--the same structure and sentences but with different words swapped in.

I hope you all take this response in the spirit that it is meant: I'm asking you to think broadly and originally about the readings and to think about these texts, texts sometimes relegated to "kid lit", as literature in the same vein as, well, as Shakespeare--or Ellison or Woolf or whoever is going to be the next.

And I'm also asking that you trust that my most sincere desire is for you all to learn something and enjoy reading and thinking about these texts. I really am a very easy grader as I said in the policies for this class. The last thing I want is to stress any of you out by a 250 word post. Really. The first time will be the scariest, after that, you'll see. This should almost feel fun.

Finally, even though I said I didn't want to do it, here is a sample reading journal that I wrote about 7th Grade by Gary Soto. It's actually too long--it's 347 words. I think I could cut it down by eliminating some of the quotes.

Seventh Grade by Gary Soto explores identity and how cultural forces, including race and gender influence identity formation. The main character, new 7th grader Victor, is at the start of adolescence. He begins the short story at a place of trying to make decisions about who he wants to be. His first decision: to take French. His reason: “He already spoke Spanish and English, but he thought some day he might travel to France, where it was cool; not like Fresno, where summer days reached 110 degrees in the shade. There were rivers in France, and huge churches, and fair-skinned people everywhere, the way there were brown people all around Victor”. Significantly, Victor identifies the ways France is different from where he is—it is cooler, for one, which will be more significant later in the story, and it is whiter. Later in the story, Victor and his friend “talked about . . . the horrors of picking grapes in order to buy their fall clothes. Picking grapes was like living in Siberia, except hot and more boring.”

Here we understand Victor is Latinx but we get the sense from that he does not value these things about himself. We should also understand that his is not an economically privileged life.

Another place where we see Victor trying to determine who he wants to be is in his encounters with his friend, Michael. In their greeting we see evidence of both Victor’s Latinx heritage and of burgeoning masculinity. “He had read a GQ magazine that his older brother had borrowed from the Book Mobile and noticed that the male models all had the same look on their faces. They would stand, one arm around a beautiful woman, and scowl.” Michael is trying on a persona just as Victor is—a particular masculine

Jess Rinker

2/1/2020 12:55:28 pm

I was having trouble posting a reply to someone's dicussion post because of the robot-blocker. It would allow me to select the images (of the cross walk, street light, motorcylce, whatever the theme was) but then would not let me click the "verify" button to proceed. Because of this, I was not able to submit a reply. (I did, however, sent it in an e-mail.) Is anyone else having this issue or know how to troubleshoot it? Thanks!

Nicole Costa

2/2/2020 08:46:05 am

Hi Jess,
I have been experiencing the same issue. I usually have to click out of the robot blocker box, and re select "submit" multiple times until I can finally see a verify button. One time it took six tries before i could see the verify button. I'm not sure how to fix the problem either!

2/3/2020 10:37:29 am

Hey all--

A number of folks were having this problem--and I've had it too in the past. I've had to blind click the down arrow key and the right arrow key until it won't go any further and then click enter. It usually works. But I realize that's not tenable. I've got an email into weebly to see what the issue is. I'll get back to you as soon as I know. In the meantime, you can always send me what you want to post and I will post on your behalf.

LT

Q&A for the week of 27 January 2020

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