Gillian Parrish notes: “Communicate your exercises in an inviting tone that generates excitement so students want to take part in them. This is key.”
Parrish observes
A recent student’s final reflection captured the purpose of these seemingly small weekly exercises: “Instead of just sitting behind my laptop to get an assignment ready once or twice a week, poetry becomes a walk, an everyday walk and a way of seeing out in the world. Poetry is not something that just happens behind a screen—it is everywhere: in overheard conversations, in dreams, on billboards, out of the mouth of a homeless man or a soccer mom. It’s up to us to pay attention.”
One student recently remarked that while graded weekly assignments would sometimes “put me in completion mode, tackling it like a computer,” the jedi trainings “allowed me to move past [that]” so he could encounter the week’s concepts in a more process-oriented, immersive way.
I would challenge this computer/non-computer dichotomy — working with the computer is an equal method of tapping into eternal semiosis… Indeed working with a computer is a fine way of planning, playing, and reviewing (Thanks to Robert Delius who brought to my attention High/Scope (Plan-Do-Review) pedagogy. See https://dhhumanist.org/volume/33/817/ )
The question is always ever present — one must choose when to turn from the flow (to another flow).
Process is there with or without excitement.
And so for day 2792
04.08.2014