SHAPING THOUGHT

The question now comes to me: Should I mimic the semester structure I have offered before? Or, should I make changes?

I've never been one to simply repeat a course. It never works out like you expect. For the teacher or for the students. And it just gets sloppy. There are no surprises, no challenges. And if there are neither surprises nor challenges in a course, then I want no part of it. Neither, I suspect, do the students .

Still, replicating past performance is easy. You can accept its attractive argument, that you'll have less work to do, you can relax and focus on your own work, or tune into your students more intensely. But, while I have tried to replicate a course, I find I always make changes.

So I'm facing the need to construct a course schedule for Call to Service this Fall. I like the readings I've identified, and the websites, the films and documentaries, but there's something missing. A critical bite. So I'm going to work in Arundhati Roy's blistering critique of our 9/11 mindset and how it protects us from understanding our real global impact, and what else is happening around the world, from different perspectives.... I'm going to add Nelson Mandela's
account of surviving political exile, I'm going to add poems by Seamus Heaney and Marge Piercy and May Angelou.

I may add a few websites: mediathatmattersfets.org, Daily Kos, Mother Jones,

"The Real Rosa Parks"

excerpts from We wish to Inform You...

"The Big One...Battle of Algiers"
"Hearts and Minds"
"Year of the Pig"

So, now the hard part begins--trying to find a way not only to squeeze all of these into a semester, but how to squeeze them in thoughtfully, mindfully, intelligently, so that the semester has a texture, a shape.

I also want to tweak the assignments a bit.

I want to incorporate a variety of active groups and collaborative learning strategies into the classroom.

And I want to cut out one class session for group conferences.

And maybe allow some independent time for the development of the final project.

So get this done in 3-4 days!

Piece of cake.