I have to dedicate a whole post solely to one of my English classes because, well, it's just pure magic.
It's called: "Enlightenment Literature and Culture."
When I originally chose it, it was only to partner with another module here to equate to a module back in Liverpool that I would have taken, so I wasn't really too excited about it, but oh my... I'm SO glad I took it; below I'm just going to list some hilarious things and interesting teaching styles this teacher has incorporated into our classes!
1) We studied Narrow Road Through the Backcountry, by Matsuo Basho, it's a travel narrative with interspersed haiku's throughout. So this teacher decided to make us each write a haiku on a page about literally anything and pass it on to the next person for them to write a continuation. This happened twice and then she collected them all in.
2) Mrs W. also made us do something similar but not a haiku this time, only rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter (!) ; she also gave us prompts this time: U.S intervention in Syria, an Elegy or satirical views of UIUC. She made the room dark and said this would be what it would like during the Enlightenment, limited lighting and for fun, people would compose poems and would socially add verses together on the spot!
With both of these exercises she took away our efforts and then arrived to class the next day with print outs of them all grouped together like an Anthology, it was so cool reading everybody's and seeing how everyone has creative capability within them.
3) When talking about the character Macheath in the Beggar's Opera, she ACTUALLY said in class: "the actor who plays Macheath is meant to have a crotch-melting tenor" YES. She said those words. I almost died.
4) When depicting the scene of a theatre and theatre goers during this period she had us sit in a semi circle, enclosing a picnic blanket on the floor which represented the pit/stalls. She made some people sit on the floor there and basically cast them as commoners and prostitutes. She gave them a big bag of rubbish to demonstrate how people would throw crap at the stage during the performance to drag down the playwright's reputation if they didn't like them! She then also gave burger king crowns to two people casting them as royalty. It was hilarious.
5)She wheeled one of those old TV sets into class, the one that makes your heart jump at the thrill of a film lesson. Then she played a clip from one of the texts and handed out oranges, since these apparently were the equivalent of our theatre snacks of popcorn/ice-cream. T'was a good, since we kind of got a film lesson, plus the perk of a sweet nutritious treat!
6) One of the texts we've studied is called The Love Suicides at Amijima it is a Japanese drama which is actually performed with puppets really intricately. To demonstrate how difficult if is to realistically portray the story with puppets, what did she do?
Of course she nominated people to act as puppets and puppeteers.
One poor guy had to sit down at the front of class and then two other people had to control each half of his body whilst another student narrated the play, I hope you can imagine of course how insanely funny this was, to see three people who know each other fairly (?) well, (perhaps only from class) standing at the front and manipulating another person in relation to the story... I nearly cried.
7) The moments when she chooses to use curse words to question what is going on in the text always makes me giggle. A personal favourite: "It's like WTF Kant, what are you saying?"
8) Final thing (so far!) the fact she quotes Death Cab for Cutie, and sends links to the class of The Who performing Baba O'Riley.
C.
It's called: "Enlightenment Literature and Culture."
When I originally chose it, it was only to partner with another module here to equate to a module back in Liverpool that I would have taken, so I wasn't really too excited about it, but oh my... I'm SO glad I took it; below I'm just going to list some hilarious things and interesting teaching styles this teacher has incorporated into our classes!
1) We studied Narrow Road Through the Backcountry, by Matsuo Basho, it's a travel narrative with interspersed haiku's throughout. So this teacher decided to make us each write a haiku on a page about literally anything and pass it on to the next person for them to write a continuation. This happened twice and then she collected them all in.
2) Mrs W. also made us do something similar but not a haiku this time, only rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter (!) ; she also gave us prompts this time: U.S intervention in Syria, an Elegy or satirical views of UIUC. She made the room dark and said this would be what it would like during the Enlightenment, limited lighting and for fun, people would compose poems and would socially add verses together on the spot!
With both of these exercises she took away our efforts and then arrived to class the next day with print outs of them all grouped together like an Anthology, it was so cool reading everybody's and seeing how everyone has creative capability within them.
3) When talking about the character Macheath in the Beggar's Opera, she ACTUALLY said in class: "the actor who plays Macheath is meant to have a crotch-melting tenor" YES. She said those words. I almost died.
4) When depicting the scene of a theatre and theatre goers during this period she had us sit in a semi circle, enclosing a picnic blanket on the floor which represented the pit/stalls. She made some people sit on the floor there and basically cast them as commoners and prostitutes. She gave them a big bag of rubbish to demonstrate how people would throw crap at the stage during the performance to drag down the playwright's reputation if they didn't like them! She then also gave burger king crowns to two people casting them as royalty. It was hilarious.
5)She wheeled one of those old TV sets into class, the one that makes your heart jump at the thrill of a film lesson. Then she played a clip from one of the texts and handed out oranges, since these apparently were the equivalent of our theatre snacks of popcorn/ice-cream. T'was a good, since we kind of got a film lesson, plus the perk of a sweet nutritious treat!
6) One of the texts we've studied is called The Love Suicides at Amijima it is a Japanese drama which is actually performed with puppets really intricately. To demonstrate how difficult if is to realistically portray the story with puppets, what did she do?
Of course she nominated people to act as puppets and puppeteers.
One poor guy had to sit down at the front of class and then two other people had to control each half of his body whilst another student narrated the play, I hope you can imagine of course how insanely funny this was, to see three people who know each other fairly (?) well, (perhaps only from class) standing at the front and manipulating another person in relation to the story... I nearly cried.
7) The moments when she chooses to use curse words to question what is going on in the text always makes me giggle. A personal favourite: "It's like WTF Kant, what are you saying?"
8) Final thing (so far!) the fact she quotes Death Cab for Cutie, and sends links to the class of The Who performing Baba O'Riley.
C.
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