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Play in the City 028

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Playing Differently

            The purpose of visiting a city is to experience something new, or to experience something familiar in a new way. If our course Play in the City was itself a city, then our hometown must be our everyday experience of academia, in secondary school and in our other Bryn Mawr classes.

In many ways, this class is exactly what I’ve been hoping for since my days at an alternative elementary/middle school. At that school, we practiced being critical thinkers. To do this, we had a comfortable environment: we called teachers by their first names, had a lot of classroom discussions, and sat in circles so we could see each other’s faces. I’ve found that this class, Play in the City, is also set up to be a comfortable environment. Unfortunately, I still have lingering thoughts from high school running through my head, usually along the lines of Is this relevant? Will people care about what I have to say? and, of course, the ever present Is this a stupid question/remark/thought? I’ve been getting over that, though. I’ve become more comfortable talking in class, saying what I believe. Everyone in this class listens to what other people have to say, and there is usually a way to bring the comment into the discussion and build upon it.

this talk by neil gaiman caught my eye (because i'm teaching one of his graphic novels in my critfemstudies course).
two things he says i think are relevant to our work:
"the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers"
and
"I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure.
It's not one to one: you can't say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations...."

I wrote my Common App essay on how I managed to adjust to French teaching styles upon moving to Geneva at nine years old. It was quite the leap for younger Tessa. I have always been rather fascinated at the range of teaching styles I can benefit from. Anne’s style is no exception. It’s very college professor type-y. Exactly how I expected a prof at a respectable school to look and act like. She treats us like the fledgling adults we are, while maintaining a fair level of command. She’s both formidable and heartwarming. Obviously she knows the ins and outs of teaching. She gives the best feedback on my writing that I’ve ever recieved. She is meticulous about structuring each class so we get the most out of the time together. I can feel my writing evolving up into Bryn Mawr’s standard of essays, albeit slowly thanks to this class. That being said, I feel that Anne can be too professor-y on occaision. Her high expectations for us and our writing make it difficult to talk to her less than professionally. This might be why starting conversations in class can be rather awkward. Part of the problem might be that none of us want to be the first one to say something. I can only speak for me, but I find it hard to join in the conversation because I’m afraid what will come out of my mouth will sound stupid to Anne and everyone else. I noticed that Anne asks all the questions and doesn’t volunteer her own relevant experiences or personal thoughts much.

Samantha Plate

Play In The City

10/17/2013

Playing in the City and in the Classroom

I can’t quite remember what I expected this course would be like. It seems like so long ago that I was scrolling through the Emily Balch Seminar choices and the one entitled Play in the City caught my eye. Whatever it was that I did expect I know I was nowhere close to imagining the amazing experiences I have had this first quarter.

While I came in knowing that we would be playing in the city, I did not realize that we would also be playing in the classroom. From the first day, when we spent time exploring the physical classroom, I knew this Emily Balch Seminar was going to be a different experience than the other seminars that had been options. This thought has only been enforced over the past few weeks. Our unconventional assignments have really encouraged the idea of playing in the classroom and I have enjoyed every minute of it. One of my favorite assignments was when we created a mosaic out of the reading. Not only was this a nice break from writing responses and other dull assignments I had in my other classes, but I also really connected with the reading and this assignment helped me to view it in a different way. These assignments have helped me to read in different ways and view readings from different angles.

Thus far this course has taught me so much in terms of gender identity, feminism, defying binaries and hierarchies and exploring self-representation, including my own. In terms of the course material solely, I have been fascinated, scared and amazed by the texts we have read. I like the variety of the texts and the forms in which they are presented, they stem away from the usual formats I read in school and this has made it easier and more exciting to read them. They are engaging and eye-opening for me. Our discussions around the texts are eye-opening as well.

I thought the exercises that we did on Thursday were really interesting....but also completely terrifying.  I was getting particularly frustrated with myself when we were completing the second exercises because I wrote a whole paragraph in my response explaining why I would not be an expert on this topic.  Part of me really wanted to resist justifying my response with a flimsy background story but the other part of me had too much anxiety about putting my opinions out there.  I got more and more comfortable as people started to read out their responses because it was clear that most people were just as concerned with sharing their opinions as I was.  But what this exercise made me realize is that I, and maybe others in the class, didn't feel like they could share their opinions in any discussion format without receiving some kind of a judgment.  It was helpful to hear Anne say that students don't have to have all of the answers, that's why we are students.  Still, why does it often seem like we all have something to prove in a classroom?   

By 5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 20 (the day we return from fall break), please post AS A COMMENT HERE your mid-semester course evaluation of what's working and what needs working on in this class: what have you seen?  what have you done? what's your interaction been (with texts, with your classmates and prof)? what are you (still) hoping for?...then we'll spend some classtime, in the week when we return, discussing needed adjustments.

By midnight Sunday, October 20th (the day we return from break): please post a 3-pp. mid-semester course evaluation here. Imagine that this course is a city in which you've been playing: what have you seen? what have you done? what's your interaction been (with the city, with texts, with your classmates and profs)? what are you hoping for? Think about form-and-content; how are you structuring this account? How can you organize your essay so that it illustrates what you want to say? What data have you to report, to illustrate your claims-and-ideas?