jay's museum of college writing

Jay's PUBLICATION OF NEW CLASSROOM BLOG Post - Just in Time for Spring Semester - Monday, Jan. 27 - Sneak Preview of Writing Projects

Today I share my most recent classroom blog - Jay's Bloggin' in the Wind.

If you are wondering about the title, well, you will have to read the first few posts. 

Each semester I try to create a new blog to represent our work in the classroom - Below you will see posts that describe writing projects my students  can expect to see this coming semester. You will also see student writing from the previous semester.  My students in Fall 2024 engaged in the same assignments my students will see on Canvas,  Spring Semester 2025.

WHY DO I DO THIS?

My goal is provide my students with a vision for where we are headed.  NO SURPRIZES.  Let's eliminate these tired questions about WHAT are we doing? or WHY are we doing it?   I encourage my students  to read a few of my past student essays published on the pages of Jay's Bloggin' in the Wind.  Maybe they will pick up some ideas and/or understanding for what they will want to write about this semester.  I'm happy with my students' writing.  They write with PURPOSE and INSIGHT.  They have all chosen to explore topics that are important to them.

Here is the link to my blog:  Jay's Bloggin' in the Wind

Just in case here is the URL:  https://www.jaysbloggininthewind.org/

Jay's Blog Layout:

• I've chosen a blog style that allows me to publish excerpts of my posts.  This means to read my blog, you  will see the first 150 words or so before you are asked to "Read more." By clicking on the "Read more" link you will be taken to the COMPLETE post you have begun to read.  Here, I mark the "Read more" link with a red arrow.

 

• I've divided the Blog into FOUR pages - To navigate from one page to the next, you will need to look for the "Next" link at the bottom of each page.
• 
  

Each semester I try something NEW.  I mean, that's how you learn stuff.  Above, I share my Table of Contents.  If you are in a hurry, you can click on a link below the table of contents to find the page you desire.

PAGE ONE: 

• On Page One, I combine my instructor posts with my student essays.  
• My first Community Profile assignment is due Jan. 31 - For the purposes of this project, I decided to model an essay about Teen Pregnancy.  I once had a friend that had to drop out of school when she became pregnant.  I was able to incorporate HER EXPERIENCES  side-by-side with ACADEMIC RESEARCH.  I'm glad to see things have changed in 50 years for young mothers. 
• Jay's Note:  If you are reading this, and you are taking an ONLINE course from me, I will not be able to assign or collect your Project Binders.  Relax.  That's one less thing you will need to do. 

Here is a student writing sample:

• I'm HAPPY with this assignment.  This time it's PERSONAL.  I ask my students to look into their communities for an important story to share.  You will be responsible for the INTERVIEW with your COMMUNITY PROFILE.  That's fun.  Your grade will be heavily influenced by the quality of your supplementary research.
• Jay's Tip for his students:  CHOOSE YOUR SUBJECTS AND TOPICS WISELY - It's on YOU - If you need help, please contact me: [email protected]

PAGE TWO

• The COMMUNITY PROFILE project will take us FIVE WEEKS to complete.  Througout, I  teach important new skills STEP-by-STEP.
• Upon completion of our COMMUNITY PROFILE we will dive into our CLASSIFICATION ESSAY.
• I know, I know FEW of of my students  have ever been asked to write a CLASSIFICATION ESSAY, but that's what makes this assignment FUN. 
• From the beginning to the end, it will tax our CRITICAL THINKING and ORGANIZATIONAL skills.
• Here is the FUN part:  My students  CHOOSE their OWN TOPICS!

Here is a SNIP from one of my INTRODUCTORY ASSIGNMENTS - Before we GET STARTED,  we START BRAINSTORMING topics:

Here is a student sample essay from last semester: 

PAGE THREE:

• This is how this instructor ROLLS - Each week my students will see multiple announcements on Canvas that will help them SUCCEED with their assignments.
• I provide Step-by-Step Instructions, Graphs, Charts, Tables, Teacher's Models. Sample Submissions...
• Most often, it takes me longer to PREPARE a Canvas Announcement than it does for me to TEACH a class in real time.   Jaja.  TRUTH.  But it seems to WORK.  
• I try to eliminate problems before they start - I practice my own submissions to help me anticipate the challenges my students will face with each assignment.

• For example, I strive to help you format your quotations in your essays - We use a writing tool called the Quote SANDWICH
• I expect you to provide complete INTRODUCTION and ANALYSIS for your quotations - DON'T DROP YOUR QUOTES INTO YOUR ESSAYS - LIKE A BRICK.
• You will need to display PERFECT PUNCTUATION and SOLID DOCUMENTATION SKILLS - Don't Worry - Everyone does it - I mean, we will WORK TOGETHER.
• At the time I created this assignment, I was reading a memoir written by Deborah Harry, the legendary singer of the 70s group Blondie.    I found a FUN quote.  You can check me for my format and punctuation.

PAGE FOUR

• For our Final Exam, no one will  see a two-hour essay exam; instead my students will be asked to share their SEMESTER READING MVPs  and SOUNDTRACK SELECTIONS- It will require them to combine their  MUSIC and their READING PLEASURE - All I ask is for them  to display a few of the new academic skills we have developed over the semester.  QUOTE SANWICHES are GOOD.  MLA DOCUMENTATION is GREAT. 
• I'm not going to lie  - By the end of the semester we will have done our share of writing - Many of my students will be worried about your other exams - Some of them will be TIRED - I'm going to be WASTED! - This assignment provides them with the opportunity to WRITE WHAT THEY WANT TO WRITE ABOUT - Just as long as THEY  are able to DISPLAY their CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS for their  FAVORITE READING of the semester.  IT WORKS.
• Last semester, I chose a passage from Paradise Travel as my READING MVP - I searched the novel for an idea, scene, character, event that TOUCHED MY HEAD and MY HEART.  I followed up my MVP discussion with a Frank Sinatra song, "New York, New York."  You'll get it when you read it.
• Many of my students choose their music form Hip-Hop, Heavy Metal, Musica Norteña - IT'S ALL GOOD - but that's because they can JUSTIFY their selection - What makes it the PERFECT SONG to represent their MVP?

Here is my Frank Sinatra post from my previous classroom blog - Jay's Writer's Paradise.

You can find it here; https://www.jayswritersparadise.org/2024/06/jays-fall-2024-soundtrack-of-our-reading-post-frank-sinatra-the-statue-of-liberty-the-american-dream.html

Here is a sample Final Exam submission from one of my Fall students - She found her MVP in the very first story  you will read this semester - "Only Daugher" by Sandra Cisneros.

Jay's Note:  I refer to this Final Exam Project as a "CELEBRATION OF STUDENT WRITING"

I look forward to READING and WRITING with my NEW STUDENTS in SPRING 2025.

Let's All Plan to Publish our Best Writing in Jay's Next Blog - SUMMER 2025!

This is going to be great.  You will see.

Paz,

JL

Jay's BOB DYLAN THE AUTHOR Post - The Philosophy of Modern Song - Joyce Carol Oates - Elvis - Doc Pomus

   At my age I enjoy listening to the music of Bob Dylan more than ever – it’s been like fifty years now - but I have to admit I understand his lyrics less than I ever did before.  Take your pick:  the Old Stuff and/or the New Stuff.  I’m just not that smart to follow his poetry.  I know, I know if I was writing an essay in a music appreciation class, I would get it.  I’ve met the challenge for my share of Shakespeare and French Poetry teachers.  It’s a different story, though, when Bob’s voice comes out my car stereo.  I try and try, but I can rarely piece his songs together in my head so they make sense. His lyrics fly around my head like wrappers in the wind.  It's like I can't grasp hold of anything.  In one of my classroom discussions, I bring up the short story “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” because the author, Joyce Carol Oates, dedicated it to him after hearing this song on the radio.  I do my best not to lie to my students.  I don’t  explain to them I know much about the song, in the same way I let them enjoy the story without my analysis.  Who am I to say?  I do like Bob’s gravely voice.  I love his (changing) style.  He has lived his life and led his career like no one else before or since.  From the very beginning he shaped his own legend when he arrived in freezing cold New York City with nothing than a guitar and fifty dollars in his pocket. He was about the same age as most of my students are now. But at age nineteen, he already carried himself with  VISION.  AMBITION.  NO FEAR  People in the coffee houses and bars where he played in the early sixties must have felt they were looking at a YOUNG man from another planet.  He sounded so different from anything they had ever heard.    I don’t know who he is singing about in “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”  I doubt Joyce did either.  Everywhere I look, someone says something different.  His songs are EMOTIONAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, POLITICAL, WEIRD!  More questions than answers!   He’s a Sphynx.   Like a famous philosopher said in a famous movie I saw, he’s like "A Mystery Wrapped In A Riddle Inside An Enigma!” That’s why I LOVE him, I tell my students. In several of my classes, we write research papers on the sixties. I hope I can convince a few of my students to write about Bob Dylan.  Without him, the decade would have been a whole lot different.

Recently I read Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song.  Here Dylan writes like he sings. I’ve noticed he doesn’t like to explain his own music, but as a writer of prose, he sheds important insight for the songs of others.  He knows what to look for.  He gets to the heart of the music.  I doubt that I will ever see or hear a fraction of what he does, but reading his book, is like listening to his songs, I just want more.  Early in this post, I identified the Joyce Carol Oates dedication to Bob Dylan for her story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”  This is high praise coming from a Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction to a Nobel Prize Winner for Literature.  Joyce knows of what she speaks.  But who can Bob Dylan possibly look up to.  His passion for music precedes him wherever he goes, on stage and off.  From reading his Philosophy of Modern Song, it’s clear to me that he loves the music and craft of others as much as he cherishes his own.  Just thinking about it makes me recall the Jimi Hendrix cover of “All Along the Watchtower.”  You know, “Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.”  Bob released this song on one of his more obscure albums called John Wesley Harding.  When Jimi heard this song, he made it his.  He took a dense, complicated folk tune and electrified it the way he only can.  It just might be TRUE that more people identify “All Along the Watchtower” with Jimi than they do with Bob.  Jaja.  Bob might be included.  He has repeatedly credited Jimi for bringing it to life. For those who are counting, Bob has performed live “All Along the Watchtower” more than any song in his canon.  He plays it more in the style of Jimi than Bob.  It’s his TIP of the HAT to an artist he loves and respects.

This book, The Philosophy of Modern Song, goes out to all the songs and artists Bob Loves. When I was 14, I played basketball fourteen hours a day.  I grew up reading about North Carolina Tarheel Phil Ford and LSU Tiger Pete Maravich in Sports Illustrated.  These guys were my b-ball heroes.  I’m not sure if I remember reading much about their attitudes or their philosphies, but their dedication to their craft inspired me to leave the house early and not come back until dark.  At the age of fourteen, Bobby Zimmerman must have heard Elvis for the first time on late-night AM radio signals drifting up from St. Louis.  I have a feeling he put as much time into his music as I did my basketball, but he must have intuited a better understanding for the songs he listened to.  I mean, at this time in the mid-fifties, he may have had little support or confirmation for the music he chose.  He grew up in an all-white region of Minnesota’s Iron Range.  There was a reason he wasn’t hearing Elvis on mainstream radio stations.   To me, Phil Ford and Pete Maravich were basketball magicians.  There weren't enough hours in the day I could practice to be like them.  Bobby, however, was in a different place.  When he listened to Elvis, he heard things inside his head that no one else did. He felt the magic. 

In his Philosophy of Modern Song, Bobby Z analyzes everything from rhymes to syllables to the history and culture of each artist and songwriter in each essay.  For Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea,” he shares the French origins of the songs, the sub-context of the lyrics, and Bobby D's phrasing.  This is DEEP.  I would have never known or understood. But, Bobby Z doesn’t confuse me like a music teacher – instead, he can explain what he hears from the song in terms I can understand: “He [Bobby Darin] keeps it simple even when he’s singing about nothing.  The sea, the air, the mountins and the flowers.  It all floats.  It never touches the ground (89).  My favorite chapter in the book may be about the song “On the Street Where You Live” by Vic Damone.  Bob understands the story behind the song.  The lyrics convey a broken-hearted man who stalks the girlfriend who has abandoned him. I know Vic Damone from his marriage to James Dean’s girlfriend Anna Maria Pierangeli.  In one moment, James planned to marry Anna, and in the next he was sitting on his motorcycle across the street from the church where she married Vic.  Just like in the song,  James must have felt pulled down a street where he didn’t belong.   All the money and fame that came with is iconic Hollywood legend couldn’t compare to the loneliness of losing the Love of his Life.

The  Philosophy of Modern Song begins with a full-page picture of Elvis visiting a record store. From where his eyes are directed, he looks like he's studying a Harry Belafonte album. Just below, I can see A Tribute Record to James Dean. This seems very apropos.  Bobby and Elvis are kindred spirits.  If Bob was to choose an Elvis photo to lead off his first book in twenty years, I can understand why he shows Elvis in a record shop rather than on stage.  Without these types of visits, neither of them would become the world-changing legends as we know them today.

The book is dedicated to Doc Pomus.  THIS I UNDERSTAND.  My students are not going to know this name, but his influence on Bobby Z may have been on a par with Elvis.  Doc was born with the name Jerome Felder and grew up in Brooklyn.   Like Bobby, he was a Jew that changed his name to something HIP to to escape his dreary surroundings. At age six, sadly, he contracted polio.  This was before the invention/institution of polios shots – when a large percentage of young children either had their legs amputated or they died as a result of complications.  Young Jerry became a cripple and an outcast. He was bullied for being a Jew.  He was beaten for his defenseless nature.  He was ostracized for his love of black music.  Somehow, like a story in the movies, Jerry grew up to be one of the most influential songwriters of the fifties and sixties, for he turned his misery into beautiful songs that we all can connect with it.  This was a guy who for most of his an adult couldn’t walk without braces or crutches.  In fact, he spent much of his time writing his songs from a wheelchair.  Probably, he wrote his most famous song “Save the Last Dance for Me” at his own wedding.  Who takes the time to work at his own wedding?  That would be Doc Pomus because his disability prevented him from dancing with his own bride. 

Anyone who hears the song will understand the anguish of Doc watching his bride happily dance with one man after another, when all he could do was watch.  Sitting there at a table, he borrowed a pen and wrote out the song on the back of a wedding invitation.  It took him about a half hour, but when he was done he had written the story of his life.