carolyn kellogg

I’m teaching for the first time — Composition — and I’ve reached the post-terror stage where everything seems like it could be a lesson.

Errol Morris on war photographs? I’m thinking about assumptions, stepping back from a text (or inherited wisdom about a text) to see it with fresh eyes. A little bit of authorial intent thrown in just for fun. How can I get those photos into class? Projecting from my laptop is possible, but the resolution is awful. Can I find the pictures in books at the library? How do we pass them around?

I imagine that, someday, I will not pick up the (internet) paper and see classroom applications on every page. But for now I am a newbie teacher dork.

I’ve been thinking of how to get my students to get actual scenes in their writing. Like many beginning students (I’m told), they tend to be vague and generalized — “Every day, I would go for a run” instead of “Tuesday, October 18, when it was bitterly cold, I put on 2 pairs of sweats and a wool hat and went for a run.” I’ve asked them to tell me more, include details, set a scene, but how can I show them?

Enter Epicurious. See, in the comments of a recipe, I found this:

Very tasty, low fat, quick and easy to make. My husband hates soups because he hates foods that float. He loved this.

Dude: he hates foods that float? That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. Does he have some kind of a sink test? (Hmm, this apple floats – nope. This can of chili – down like a stone. Yum). And soup is just a fluid — it wouldn’t float, it would dissipate. Maybe he doesn’t like fluids? Things that appear to be floaty? That might have objects floating in them? I’m totally in love with “hates foods that float.”

So I will bring this quote to class and ask them to write a paragraph that shows the guy who hates foods that float. Then we’ll take one sentence from one of their paragraphs and write again, in more detail. Detail detail detail. Drill down detail. Until we see the stuff in his bowl, hear his angered bowels, see his flushed face as he shouts at his wife in frustration. “No floating foods! My first wife never made me eat foods that float!”

And then it’ll be 1:50pm, and I’ll be thinking hmm, maybe I should go look for those Fenton photos at the library.