Every spring, (is it necessary to ground this piece with a time element? evidently) I teach an upper-level writing course every spring, and this time, it turned out to be pretty challenging grueling for students who ended up writing the bulk of our weekly campus newspaper.
They certainly had a lot of material to work with with which to work.
What means “some level” of executive immunity?
What means a “gag order?”
And that’s just in the Trumpiverse. There is a bigger world out there, and the students are paying attention.
A couple of the students had never written a news story in their lives before, but all I had to do was say, “We have a news hole that needs filled,” and the ideas would start flying around the room. Someone had an idea, someone could finesse that idea, and someone else knew the perfect source.
We studied editorial writing (no one cares about your opinion if you don’t back it up) and interpretive writing (you get to insert yourself into the story! yay!) and these students took to the lessons like a duck takes to water (cliche) nobody’s business (if it’s nobody’s business, why is that a good thing?) they’d been doing it all their lives (better but not great and shouldn’t it be “as if?”). A handful of these students turned in 20 articles this semester when the requirement was four, and these were solid stories that needed little editing.
For our last class, I brought in my world-famous (that’s a lie and how would you prove that, anyway?) cinnamon rolls and a few other snacks while the class rather quickly devolved into became a karaoke party. As it turns out, we have two really good singers, a few students can sing loud, and some talented chair-swayers. I had my phone up and lit like a torch. I was a swayer.
To give this last time together some semblance of a learning environment, I asked students to take a Post-it and write one thing they learned this semester (write one thing they learned this semester — even if it wasn’t in this class — on a Post-it note. and it didn’t have to be in this class. They didn’t have to sign their names, but I asked students to affix their notes on the white board up front.
I wrote “You cannot save everyone,” a lesson I must relearn every damn semester (more detail? no?). One student wrote that she was a better writer than she thought, and another wrote that she learned there are no limits to her ability to learn new concepts.
I mean, come on. How cool is that?
There remains massive grading and award ceremonies and graduation day way off in May. But for me? I’m just going to carry these Post-its around as a reminder that though parts of this semester sucked gerbils through a bendy straw (is there a less-gross way to say this?) were challenging, I also got moments like today, when an entire class is yelling the lyrics to “Dancing Queen” because why not?
It lifts my spirit to know you are finding such joy in leading these young people to discover and offer their best. Being an a journalist and an educator binds two high, noble vocations. Go, you!
I was fourteen when I read “The Population Bomb” and started worrying about the “next” generation. Over fifty years later I’m still worried and then I read something like this. Do I worry too much?