Learning, Writing, Teaching, Marking . . .

Still too busy to write much. Weeks 6 through 9 of term are always crazy, head down, keep marching.I handed back assignments this week only to pick up another batch, and will do the same next week. Weekends and evenings for the next two weeks, I’ll be moving from my big leather armchair to my office desk to my kitchen table, trying to bring some variety to a seemingly unending task.

There will be a pause, though, and once the next batch gets handed back, I anticipate two relatively free weekends before the final papers, and then the exams, demand their time. Being familiar with this rhythm after so many years makes it manageable, but I still have to take care pacing myself — it’s surprisingly hard on the body, is marking, especially if one normally wears her shoulders up around her ears at the best of times. My elbow begins to complain, my neck stiffens, I get back twinges that remind me of the full-on spasm that locked me down for days several years ago.

I’ve had some lovely moments in my teaching lately that balance the tedium of marking. My 1st-year Literature and Culture students have been working our way through Richard Harrison’s collection of hockey poetry, Hero of the Play. It’s exciting to see them tentatively gaining confidence and competence in unpeeling a poem, working at its indeterminacies to construct a reading that can be shared convincingly. I’ve also found the emerging conversation about culture very satisfying, listening to their constructions of nation and nationalism, to their personal and collective histories of pop culture, their awareness (or not) of larger narratives that I’ve assumed as shared but that they’re cut off from, generationally.  Names that continue to resonate for me, a non-sports fan with limited understanding and awareness of hockey, pass by most of them without a flicker of recognition, although the few hockey players in the class have at least heard of the most iconic players.

Equally interesting are the reactions of the several International students in my class — with no knowledge of hockey whatsoever, they are nonetheless perhaps more ready than my Canadian students to associate it with our country, our flag, our nordicity. To appreciate the poems, some have even viewed the documentary on Rocket Richard, loaded up Youtube videos of historic games. Who would have thought this might be an outcome of teaching poetry?!

I’ll leave you with my favourite teaching moments of the past week:

in one, the class was divided into groups, each group working on a set of approaches to an assigned poem. One small group comprised two young Canadian women and two young men whose English was their second language and who were studying here, far from their home country. The four were discussing a poem that foregrounded women’s roles within the masculinist culture of hockey, and one of the young men was explaining that a certain female ambition or behaviour would not be accepted in his country. The other fellow agreed that it was the same where he came from, and both the young women were alternately incredulous and amused. Much laughter, animation, and fellowship marked the conversation, and I felt quietly gratified to have a small part in setting up the circumstances that allowed it. Despite the mountains of marking, much of what I do is truly a privilege.

The second moment happened outside of the classroom in an on-line discussion forum I set up on Moodle (a software teaching-learning platform) to allow students to ask questions and exchange ideas for an upcoming assignment. I check in from time to time, and last Tuesday or Wednesday was thrilled to note a conversation in which one student was recommending to her classmates that they check out the Writing Handbook’s section on punctuation. She claimed it was brilliant for helping her edit her paper. Another student chimed in on behalf of the same handbook’s pages on eliminating wordiness. Another answered that using it had helped her cut 94 flabby words from an 800-word paper. Independent, focussed learning — I love it!

And finally, what a joy yesterday afternoon to meet with a tiny group of International students, European and Asian, to read and discuss the first of Thomas King’s Massey Lectures, from the book collection The Truth About Stories. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a volunteer activity I initiated, and it can feel like a real sacrifice to drag myself back to campus on one of my work-at-home days. But reading King’s words aloud, watching the students reading to themselves in accompaniment, waiting for them to recognize how the lecture’s various elements begin to coalesce, enjoying their delight in King’s wry humour, the way he moves from the apparently silly to the movingly relevant. . . What a way to finish my week, what a privilege!

And you? I hope your work week brought you some happy moments. I’m craving three days, even two, in which I could put work aside completely, but until that happens, I’m trying to remember that the busy-ness has its pleasures. I wish those for you as well.

Added: Thanks to reader/commenter/neighbour Liz H-K (who blogs here about Weaving on my Island) for providinga link to the CBC archives where you can listen to Thomas King reading the Massey lectures. I’ve heard these on CD and they’re wonderful; didn’t realize they could be accessed for free.