Teaching By Example

i was scanning through some of the exam prep. provided by some profs as i (finally) started studying for the final finals. my Canadian Lit. prof asked us on the last day of class (after ice cream) to grab a piece of paper and write down a good compare+contrast essay topic that we would like to see on the final. she would pick 4 to post online, and then pick 2 to put on the final, from which we'd choose 1. i was busy eating ice cream (chocolate with chocolate chips), so my mind was slow and i couldn't think of a good topic off the top of my head. the rest of the class was spent talking about the topics students suggested. it wasn't that interesting so i zoned out and focused on formulating a good topic; i got one. we handed in our pieces of paper. a few weeks later (today) i checked the posted topics and mine made it onto the shortlist as 4th. i will paste it here for posterity.

A number of texts we have studied this term focus on individuals who intervene and try to understand and/or “cure” supposedly mad people. (Note: sometimes the person who intervenes and the mad person are one and the same!) Choosing two or more works, compare and contrast how these texts portray healers and the cures that they promote. Be sure to discuss the implications of the texts’ portrayals of the various healers.

of course, i worded it much less eloquently, and called them observers instead.

anyway, it got me thinking about those other times, through university and high school, that i contributed to a teacher's lesson through some instance of work.

the Good:
at the beginning of my English program, i had to take 4 introductory courses: Writing about Poetry, Writing about Narrative, Thinking about Narrative and Thinking about Poetry. i took the poetry ones over the summer and in the Writing class, my instructor asked me to send her my essay for future example, which i posted about a few years ago. the following semester, in the Writing class again, my essay was requested by the instructor for future example. this essay was much more ambitious and was essentially 3 essays mashed into one 14-pager. in high school, most of my essays rarely eclipsed the 16/20 mark. these two were given nearly the same grade, but apparently that means more in university.

the Bad:
grade 12 English class had a poetry segment, and we were required to study a long poem or two short ones by a poet of our choosing and present it to the class with some visual component (collage, sketch, etc). i choose Shakespeare, but i didn't choose his sonnets (i thought they were too short). i chose, instead, The Phoenix and the Turtle, which told of a love that could not be. i drew a coloured sketch of a phoenix enfolding her wings around a turtle as they gazed wistfully into each others eyes whiel the phoenix perpared its funeral pyre. what i was not aware of until i was about 2/3 into the presentation was that 'turtle' is Elizabethan English shortform for 'turtledove.' my teacher nearly fell off her chair with laughter, and nearly died again when i showed them the sketch. i thought it would've been more tragically romantic had it been an actual turtle. i visited my teacher a year later and she told me that she still had the picture to show to her classes.

the Ugly:
the grade 9 boys gym class was required to do a Health component (i.e. sex ed.). so to start us off, our gym teacher handed out the standard diagram of the male reproductive system (the profile view) and asked us to label it the best we could. he collected them all and after going through them, sort of exploded (he was the explosive type). being grade 9 boys, we were all not the most mature (contrary to what the grade 7 girls thought), so there was some reprimand about the slang. there was also a shot at one guy who actually labeled the penis as 'scrotum' and the scrotum as 'penis'. that was totally me.