thinking toward rcf spring semester...

sasha, sara, and hayley,

Here are some thoughts about our upcoming semester at rcf:

We’ve talked about running the book group (reading and writing group?) every fri., 1-3 pm, from jan. 24 to may 2.  Anne and jody would be there alternate Fridays, and the other Fridays Hayley (if you’re staying with this-?), sara, and sasha would teach the class.  BUT I just realized in an exchange with Anne that if sara takes our 360, you won’t be available on those alternative Fridays either--?  And this might be a reason to get a (strong!) student from Multicultural Ed…

Anne and I did a brainstorming session via skype yesterday.  We talked some about rafay’s claim (from radical teacher article) that prison ed should be ‘the best of the best,’ not necessarily tailored to prison experience per se, so you’ll see that in the list below we’re not going for prison-related books this round (though of course this is negotiable!).  also we talked about the Larson piece also in radical teacher that focuses on his writing workshop… and came up with these ideas:

We want to focus on themes of agency, and make writing (as a form of agency) a serious part of what we’re doing.  A tentative title for this work:

Taking control of our lives:  reading, writing, transforming

We talked about starting each class with writing, and having some kind of vision/goal about where the writing will go over the semester/at the end.

In terms of readings, here are our thoughts at this point:

Open session on jan. 24:  Use phenomenal women first day – pple could also write poems about themselves

Hand out Dorothy alison’s memoir, two or three things I know for sure

Then House on Mango street (maybe along with a few of her other writings)

Drama?  We have emails out to our theater friends, asking for suggestions…

Persepolis (graphic novel)

Sula by toni Morrison

If we did each of these for 2 weeks, maybe adding a third week for one or two, that’s almost a semester right there…

Megan Sweeney (reading is our window) has another book out:

the story within us –

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44spp2tf9780252037146.html

some parts of this might be good to copy and read together… 

so we’d of course love to hear what you think! Compelling enough to keep the women’s interest and also ambitious enough to push them intellectually?  Too ambitious?  Other ideas welcome!