In other news, a new semester has started at school, and I'm teaching two sections of ENG 114, which is our Research & Professional Writing class. Honestly, the "professional writing" part of it is kind of boring to me...business letters, memos, emails, etc. But, I think I'm going to spice it up a bit this semester by making my class a business (maybe we'll own an animal rescue or something), and making all the correspondence we learn tie into the running of our business.
However, I LOVE the research part of the class. This semester, I'm teaching the research paper first, so I'm diving into early with my students. I hope this helps them in other classes. Last time I taught this class, I did the research paper last, and I had so many students say, "I wish I'd had this information earlier! It would have helped in (fill in the blank) class!" So, this semester, I'm doing the paper first...hopefully giving my students the tools they need for research papers in other classes.
Now, this also means that I'm doing research. I write alongside my students; when I assign an essay, I also write one. So, I do a research paper as they do theirs. This way, I join in discussions and show them what I'm doing - it's incredibly valuable for them to see that I struggle with the process just as much as they do. I think that opens their eyes to the fact that there IS NO SUCH THING as the perfect writer...that mythical creature that sits down at a computer and churns out perfect prose every single time.
In my last ENG 114 paper, I researched George Price, an American scientist who gave his entire life up to pursuing the idea of a genetic basis of altruism. His life (and his work...the questions he was asking) is fascinating. This semester, I'm spurred into research by another person. This time, it's Margaret Tobin Brown, better known in our culture as The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Her life has been distorted in popular culture to an outrageous myth (that has NOTHING to do with who she truly was)...but the REALITY of who she was and what she did is much more interesting than the myth ever could be (especially if Brown is played by Debbie Reynolds...what a horrible choice)! She was on the forefront of nearly EVERY influential, progressive movement of the early 20th Century - the suffrage movement, fitness, literacy, reforming the treatment of juvenile delinquents, miners' rights, immigrants' rights. She was a powerful voice in all of those...oh, and she also just happened to have survived the sinking of the Titanic. Her life is fascinating, and I'm interested in looking at her connections to all those political/social movements. I'm also interested in asking questions about why our early renditions of her life resorted to such caricatures...were those early writers frightened off by Brown's strength and intelligence? Were they unsure of how to present such a woman? Are those qualities "scary" in women? Good stuff...
I'll let you know what I come up with. Right now, I'm devouring the biography of Brown, Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth by Kristen Iversen (which was a major influence in the tours and information given at the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver, which Jim and I visited last month...which started this whole inquiry for me).
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