The third in the series of "Overheard in the Classroom" posts. From the Fall 2016 semester at Rogers State University. To see the 2015 edition and Spring 2016, click on the links.
8-15, Literature for Children and Young Adults -
"Chasing the ball is his goal in life," Dr. Dial-Driver says about her dog Max. There were lots of amusing soundbites and interesting discussions from this course, partly because of the material, and partly because five of the eight of us knew each other.
8-17, Children's Lit -
Things we as a class agreed should NOT be pickled, ever - eggs, pig's feet, watermelon. This came about because I mentioned John Tobias's wonderful poem "Reflections on the Gift of a Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity."
Dr. Dial-Driver's grandpa said swearing was "pasture talk," and that there were different rules for cussing depending on whether you were outside or inside. In the pasture, that was fine. Anywhere else? Probably not... His favorite adjective was "goddamnsonofabitch," all one continuous word. He also had a palomino named Honey who would help with cattle drives and make small Emily look good whenever she would "help out" with moving the cattle someplace. Honey the palomino LOVED Grandpa, and stole his hat whenever she could. She also liked to snack on peanut butter sandwiches.
Lewis Carroll coined the word "portmanteau," in his novel Through the Looking-Glass.
An "ichneumon" is a type of wasp. None of us had ever heard the term before coming across it in a poem by Alice and Martin Provensen. (Yep, the Maple Hill Farm people.)
8-17, Creative Nonfiction -
A story-scrap to remember based on one of Erin's rambling tales - as adults, strangers find out they're half-siblings.
8-18, Audio Production -
Apparently the Snow Patrol song "Chasing Cars" signals an impending death in Grey's Anatomy.
8-24, Children's Lit -
Children's lit is reckoned as beginning in 1744 with John Newbery's primer A Pretty Little Pocket Book. And Mary Wallstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley, is considered the first feminist.
Jack Taylor is a British mystery TV series about a drunk detective. It sounds worth looking into.
Dr. Dial-Driver is telling stories about her grown son that half of us had heard a couple times at least. "My son went to Thailand and got a girlfriend. I don't know if those two things are connected..." "Your son sounds like the greatest person in the whole world," Trevor says. (He hadn't heard any of these stories.)
Dr. Dial-Driver also read a picture book out loud to us, Jon Sciezka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by A. Wolf.
8-25, Humanities Seminar -
Dr. Oberrieder, talking about my proposed capstone project of examining country music as a form of literature: "It's definitely the most unorthodox project this year..."
8-29, Children's Lit -
Today's random topics under discussion: Bewitched, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, versions of Little Red Riding Hood (the actual topic of the day), J.R.R. Tolkien's essay on fairy tales, Tom Clancy and submarines, Buddhism and the ethical quandary of trying to help homeless people.
8-31, Children's Lit -
Emily Arnold McCully wrote a picture book called Marvelous Mattie about the inventor of the paper bag.
8-31, Creative Nonfic -
Eric led a rabbit trail about the awfulness of monkeys raping and murdering each other, and Alex elaborately wondered why everyone hates the French military. Cole told a hilarious story about staying awake all night to kill a mouse in his bedroom. "Maybe it was a French mouse," Dr. Mackie comments.
9-7, Early American Lit -
Dr. Mackie kept cussing her violent case of hiccups. It was funny.
9-12, Children's Lit -
"Remember all those Stop, Drop and Roll safety drills they taught in school? When you're an adult, nobody catches on fire as often as you'd think," - Trevor.
Today's topics of general interest were the Interest as a new Wild West, "Shut up and go to sleep!" lullabies, and sobriety tests (one of which is saying the alphabet backwards, which we then had to try - and failed at.).
9-14, Children's Lit -
The play version of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, short stories from L. Frank Baum, Rudyard Kipling, E. Nesbit and one of Jon Sciezka's Time Warp Trio books. In miscellaneous topics, Lewis Carroll had good advice on writing letters well, and Japanese suicide forests.
9-14, Early American Lit -
"Dory," I say to a cheerleader named Taylor after she forgets something. She shrugs and grins, "It's true..." After a bit of silence, Dr. Mackie turns to me: "Did you just call her 'Dory'?" Loud snickering from classmates.
There was also a debate over what the word "propaganda" means.
9-19, Early American Lit -
Dr. Mackie is drinking her hot tea out of a Frozen mug. When I point out how oxymoronic this is, she chuckles. "Yeah, I totally hadn't connected that, but it really is...."
9-21, Early American Lit -
Class was canceled today because one of Dr. Mackie's cats died. It was a sad and somber day in the English Department.
9-21, Creative Nonfic -
"I never thought I'd say this, but I agree with Eric!" - Dr. Mackie.
9-26, Children's Lit -
"My son is visiting Angkor Wat. He said it's very more expected than impressive. And very ruined," - Dr. Dial-Driver.
9-26, Creative Nonfic -
About Eric's essay, "The word count was 666. That seemed appropriate..." Cole said. (It WAS dark.)
"I don't really have critiques for this. More like....questions," Alex commented on Brandon's essay. (The rest of us grin and explain that it was a Brandon project - everyone feels that way after reading his stuff.)
9-28, Children's Lit -
"The trouble with moving is that you always take yourself with you," - Dr. Dial-Driver.
"At this one school I went to, there were twelve and a half white kids. I was the half," - Trevor.
Dr. Dial-Driver's family was too poor to afford stainless steel, so they used Mother's sterling silverware as their common eating utensils.
"My cats have this game they like to play called 'Gravity Works.' They just like to check every once in a while," - Dr. Dial-Driver.
9-29, Seminar -
Nancy kept mispronouncing Hotspur, from Henry IV, Part One, as "Hotstuff."
10-3, Creative Nonfic -
We all had a much harder time in this course that we expected. Critiques, especially, were awful, because we were all feeling so uncomfortable. That led to lots of awkward discussion during feedback sessions. After one particularly incomprehensible Sage essay, I wrote down in my notebook, "So much metaphor and abstractions! Swirly Riley Matthews." (Riley is Cory and Topanga's daughter, star of the sequel series Girl Meets World)
10-8, Children's Lit -
Today's random topics were bullying, domain/copyright issues, and first-aid horror stories.
10-10, Creative Nonfic -
"Your grandpa's my daddy's age," Debra says to Alex. "Oh. Well....that's interesting, I wasn't expecting to hear that..." was his flustered response.
10-12, Children's Lit -
We're studying Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess this week. "This little girl is SO DAMN ALTRUISTIC!" - Trevor, about Sara Crewe. We all liked Melchisidec the rat.
"I tried to kiss my mom goodbye, and her ugly dog Ginger tried to eat me through the car window!" - Dr. Dial-Driver.
Also under discussion: the merits of QuikTrip food.
10-12, Creative Nonfic -
I got some of the most scathing feedback I've ever received from my profile essay about Jessica's nursing-school experiences, which was too journalistic in tone and not "creative nonfictiony" enough. A sort of highlight is that what pissed everybody off so much was that I became invisible, and they wanted to see me telling them this story.
10-18, Audio -
"Music isn't divided into just rock and Mozart..." - Tyler.
Someone mentions the role of celebrities who do voiceovers for commercials, wonders what they think of them once they record their lines. "I think they're not sitting in a room analyzing production elements of the spot...." - Tip.
10-19, Children's Lit -
DD on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus: "Medea meets Hannibal Lecter."
Today's rabbit trails were about prescription drug abuse and cereal.
After Johanna gives recap of Twilight, a general discussion of other dreadful books is sparked. "There are very few books that I've started but never finished. Fifty Shades was one of them." - Dr. Dial-Driver.
10-19, Creative Nonfic -
"From Claremore to St. Louis, the Mulan soundtrack can play exactly 37 times," - Dr. Mackie.
10-24, Children's Lit -
This was a bad day for everyone. The book under discussion was Andre de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince, which defies explanation, in a bad way. Rabbit trails were George Washington Carver, the Donner Party, cannibalism, a debate over the difference between "forest" vs "jungle" in a translation, and the cat parasite toxiplasmosis.
10-26, Children's Lit -
"Poets never grow up," - Dr. Gary Moeller, an art professor at RSU.
10-26, Early American Lit -
"I HATE MOST FORMS OF PRECIPITATION!" - Kelly yells.
10-26, Creative Nonfic -
In school orchestras, saxophones are substituted for violins.
10-28, Audio -
Classwide conversation while waiting on Tip to show up, we came to a general consensus that Next Generation is by far the best Star Trek TV show.
10-31, Creative Nonfic -
"I have an idea for a research paper, but it's starting to bore even me...." Debra frowns.
11-1, Audio -
"You'll need a lot of time at remotes," Tip pauses. "But I don't mean the herb."
11-2, Children's Lit -
Random Girl in Hallway to her friend - "Yeah, you smell like, um, barn mice."
Dr. Dial-Driver's little sister was once attacked by a bantam rooster.
The merits of wearing clothes repeatedly, the difficulty of wringing out denim by hand, a deep love of Wendell Berry-style farming were what was talked about today. Also, I led discussion of Charlotte's Web. And we agreed that pigs are weird and buffalo are scary.
11-7, Children's Lit -
The book this week was R.J. Palacio's Wonder, and rabbit trails were transgenderism, stories about Vinita's mentally-handicapped population and embarrassing things we said in public as kids.
11-7, Creative Nonfic -
Sparked by Cole's essay about a Dinseyland attraction called "The Haunted Mansion," we speculate what a version of Walt Disney in the 1700's would have looked like. Also lots of unsuccessful debate over the difference between creative nonfiction and historical fiction, because we didn't quite figure out an answer.
"I learn something new about about Hitler every day in this class!" - Sage.
11-9, Creative Nonfic -
"The first thing I did today was post a picture of a kitty on Facebook." - Debra. Considering that it was the day after the presidential election, the world needed all the cat pictures to calm down.
"I melted a hamburger on the grill last summer," Eric mentions.
We all love Bob Ross the spacey painter, but agree that as wonderful as Mr. Rogers was, his puppets from the Land of Make-Believe segments were terrifying.
11-10, Seminar -
"Ducks are rapists!" - Jeff. This started a surprisingly long and detailed rabbit trail about duck genitalia, with six or seven people (out of fifteen) participating. I think this conversation says more about how much we all hated this course (and the instructor) than anything else, but it certainly stood out.
11-14, Children's Lit -
We all wished to kill Sutter Keely, protagonist/narrator of The Spectacular Now, by Tim Tharp. Once we finished complaining about how much we disliked this book (while at the same time recognizing that it was important to read), the discussion turned into an exploration of what makes a good marriage.
"Everyone's connected with technology - at arm's length" - Anonymous.
"They always remember, children do. They're like elephants." - Dr. Dial-Driver.
11-14, Creative Nonfic -
Baylee wrote about sharks, so naturally most of us wished Lauren were part of this class so she could critique it thoroughly and excitedly. (She LOVES sharks.) Mainly, this essay needed to be more persuasive, so somebody suggested the following theme to build around: "Don't Fuck Around With Sharks!" That is persuasive.
No one understood what Sage's essay on minimalism in interior design was trying to say, because of her natural ethereal writing style and the unusual structure she used here. We all hated it. "I AM NOT A CLEANING LADY!" Eric screams. "What the heck did I just read?" Alex wonders. Cole thought it might work sort of like Inside Out.
11-16, Children's Lit -
Today we listened to heartbreaking stories about Dr. Dial-Driver's time as a social worker. "If you don't know you have a choice, then you don't have a choice."
We also love The Breakfast Club.
11-16, Creative Nonfic -
Debra apologizes for her "train wreck"' of an essay. "If this is a train wreck, then it's the most organized train wreck I've ever seen," Sage replies.
11-17, Audio -
"Today's lesson: Facebook stalking media professionals..." Tip mutters to himself. We were supposed to have a guest speaker come in and lecture, but the guest speaker had forgotten he'd agreed to talk, and so he never showed up. Pre-class movie conversations dealt with the Pirates of the Caribbean and Planet of the Apes franchises.
11-22, Audio -
"Oh, he's early! It's 1:02!" Tyler says about Archer (who was usually fifteen minutes late every day).
11-30, Children's Lit -
"Y'all can at least write your way out of a paper bag with a sharp pencil. My other class can't." - Dr. Dial-Driver.
I can't remember if this was supposed to have really happened or if it was just a story-scrap idea, but a high-school aged guy starts dating a nurse who is taking care of a girl in a coma, who was kicked in the head by a horse.
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