This
Journal

October
1999

I guess I'm out of practice. I need some patience. I need more regular practice.

I'm talking about whole class discussions, conversations around what has been read. In recent years I've drifted away from it, tending more and more towards the informal discussion which way too often becomes a single-voice rant (my own). After today's cautious attempt, I'm moderately encouraged yet uncertain. In two out of three freshman classes it went pretty well.

I was particularly good at it in the years after my work at St. Johns College in Santa Fe. All of our classes there were roundtable discussions; they paid particular attention to a sort of socratic method, but there was frequently nothing too methodic about it. A question would be posed by the tutor (St Johns term for "teacher", "professor"), and the group would jump in ....sometimes quite gingerly, given the particular tutor. You often got the sense that the tutor had been pondering this question for several months or years. At other times it seemed to hop most casually from his/her brain...these were the most dangerous openers, the ones for which the answers seemed completely obvious. There was always something deeper going on.

In Houston I had a particularly sharp sophomore Short Story seminar, but I think my most satisfying use of group conversation occured during my first year as a teacher at Joliet Catholic. They were juniors; we were reading United States literature...or we were supposed to be. I had just landed in this all-male bastion after nine years of co-education in Texas. The "jags", as they called themselves, were having their way with me. Nothing worked, except the syllabus...and at first even that seemed to go nowhere. Grades were my only ammo. So by the end of first quarter quite a few of these guys were failing.

If I remember correctly, a small contingency visited me after class one day, begging for extra credit work to shore up their miserable grades. I proposed a weekly evening discussion of short readings that I would provide. They would not go for this; I was certain. But they did. So each Thursday throughout the next quarter we gathered and talked about Hawthorne, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau...all those guys...and a few more modern types. I was astonished that the very same fellas who'd been lobbing spitwads and attitude were coming prepared to these evening sessions and actually contributing. Some accidentally revealed intelligence.

As we begin To Kill A Mockingbird in the freshman classes, I'm hoping to use large group conversation to uncover some of the bigger issues of the novel. Am I a fool? Time will tell.

As anyone can see, school things are all over my brain. There is no world outside of high school. I still haven't got the grade program to behave itself...maybe tonight.

All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that not being a dog I can't bite them.
Lord Byron