jay's museum of college writing

Taylor Swift in the House

This week in my lesson planning, I transition from POETRY ANALYSIS to SONG ANALYSIS. I will ask my student to bring in their most meaningful songs to share. We’ll look closely at the lyrics and the artists behind them. The can choose from Hip-Hop, Classic Rock, Musica Norteña.  Whatever.  They decide.  We’ll be annotating once again. My hope is for my students to develop a greater understanding for the music they listen to and the stories they read.  What we see on the outside seldom even scratches the truth.  I practiced with Taylor Swift. “Taylor in the House” will be the first submission on the class discussion board.  

 

 

"Yesterday" from Haruki Murakami

Tomorrow marks the first day of summer session. I plan to mix a little bit of music with a lot of writing. In my preparation this week, I searched for a few short stories and/or essays that bring a certain beat or rhythm to the classroom, if you know what I’m talking about. Haruki Murakami finds inspiration to write from listening to American Rock ‘n’ Roll and Classic Jazz. He says, “Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work.” I just read one of his short stories, “Yesterday.” It’s based on The Beatles song. I don’t know if it will be a hit with my students, but I enjoyed the weirdness of the story. Starting tomorrow, I hope to have my students search their musical backgrounds for their own writing inspiration. Below is my first blog post of the semester.

Irony in M. Butterfly - by J. Lewenstein

In English 002, I’ve asked my students to contribute songs to the Soundtrack of Our Reading.  We dig deep into our musical archives to match lyrics with our text. This semester we read M. Butterfly.  At the end of the play, Rene acts out his favorite scene from the opera Madame Butterfly. This is when he says, “Butterfly, Butterfly…” This is when you hear the aria “Love Duet” in the background. It is so fitting that the voice behind the song comes from the throat of Maria Callas. As Rene suffers, so has Maria. Like Rene, she is was a Drama Queen. She was driven to destruction by her own ego. Maria may have been the perfect singer to interpret the tragedy of the story.  I select Alanis Morissette to voice the irony.

Below I share a post from our class blog:

"Over the Rainbow" in Girl, Interrupted

When you read, do you ever tap your foot? Does music ever spark an idea in your head? Can you come up with a song or an artist that blends music and literature? Joyce Carol Oates wrote one of her most enduring works of short fiction after hearing Bob Dylan on the radio.

At the end of each semester, I invite students to contribute a song to the soundtrack of our reading. They choose a song that best represents the ideas, characters, and/or events we have read and written about.  They bring Musica Nortena, Hardcore Gangstah Rap, current hits, golden oldies, beatles classics, show tunes, etc. – it all works.  They analyze the lyrics.  They research the artists.  In the end they make important connections between what they listen to and what they read.   Below, I put Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow side-by-side with Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted.  Through the sharing of their journeys, Judy and Susanna offer us a sense of hope.  It’s never too late to open our hearts and follow our dreams.

Writing to the Bottom of It

In a few of my classes, we we are reading a sixties novel. Along the way we discuss Cesar Chavez, Vietnam, The Moonlanding, The Women’s Movement. Our research papers explore civil rights, political upheaval, and drug abuse, among other important social and historical trends and events. Recently, I read to them something about the tragic death of Marilyn Monroe. Also, Janis Joplin. We discussed the scrutiny of women in the media – then, and now. We learn how history often repeats itself. Amy Winehouse’s name enters the discussion. The hypercriticism/scorn for Taylor Swift is mentioned.

My hope is for the reading to open my students to the world. To let the world in. I encourage my students to publish their best writing in their class blogs. Their reflections will lead to better understanding of whatever they are reading about.

Today, I share my most recent blog post. I went to my bookshelves and found my copy of Patti Smith’s Just Kids. What an awesome read! She created a stirring memorial for her first love Robert Mapplethorpe. She writes with emotion, ambition, and independence. Her prose evokes both power and insecurity. Near the end of the memoir, she meets Janis. For her, Patti ties the world together with one heartbreaking song.

In a Better Place

This week, I’m having my students design and develop their writing blogs.   I often regret that I didn’t have the same opportunity when I was their age.   I was so shy.  I didn’t talk very much.  Late at night, I often put my thoughts down in a notebook but I certainly didn’t share them with anyone.  Blogs turn passive learners into active learners.   They give students a voice in the class they many not have had previously.  Maybe, if I maintained a blog when I was their age, I may not have felt so isolated.

Today I’m posting my reading of a collection of essays about The Beatles.  I also talk about the night I grew up.  I was in college when John Lennon was murdered.   I was about the same age my students are now.  From then on, I saw things differently.   I wish I wrote about then.  But, here I’m writing about it now. 

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light...

When you read, do you ever tap your foot? Does music ever spark an idea in your head? Can you come up with a song or an artist that blends music and literature? Joyce Carol Oates wrote one of her most enduring works of short fiction after hearing Bob Dylan on the radio.   This week, I’ve asked my students to bring their music to class.   We’re creating a soundtrack for our reading.   Each of us is choosing a song and/or artist to best represent the novel we read this semester.  In this case it will be T.C. Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain.    We’re breaking down the lyrics and making connections to the text.

Some will choose Musica Norteña.  Others might come with hardcore gangsta rap, or even Taylor Swift.  It’s all good.  We are writing up a storm and publishing our soundtrack online.  Below, I go old school with “Hotel California.”

La Vida en el Espejo

This Is What I Believe:  Good teachers should know how to show a little  solidarity with their students.  I mean we should all value student experience.

It’s not about asking students to write about their background in an introductory essay;  it’s about asking them to utilize their background in everything they write.  I know, I know,  every year we are exposed to new cutting-edge learning tools, materials, and techniques to support student learning,  but  I just don’t think we should abandon the most important resource we have:  the students themselves. 

Mariposa del Barrio - R.I.P.

I live in Mexicali in a house full of books. When I’m invited over to my neighbors or friends, I don’t see too many.  Books, that is.  I have this sneaking suspicion that it might be that way for a lot of my students. I’m not saying they don’t read, but I don’t think they’ve grown up discussing books around the table either.  With the Fall semester coming up, I’ve developed a activity where students introduce themselves on the discussion board with a book out of their past.  They write of the experience - where they were, why they read it, what they got out of it – and then they respond to their classmates’ posts.  There is our house full of books, right there.  Here is mine.  I just finished it the other day.

We lost a good one when Jenny passed away.  She was a lover, and she was a fighter.   It would have been cool to see a few more chapters in her autobiography.  Here in this video is Jenny at her most “inquebrantable.”  

 

The Soundtrack of Your Life

In a year of political upheaval, I will encourage my students to explore complex social issues in their writing: civil rights, gay rights, gun violence, racism. In a few of my classes we are reading Sixties novels. We discuss Cesar Chavez and John F. Kennedy. We learn of the Moonlanding and the Vietnam War. Because the main characters of these two books I’m talking about are young women, I look forward to my students researching the Women’s Movement. They’ll read and evaluate what people were talking about. Here, I’ve decided to write about what they were singing about. Many of my students will want to compare the messages from past artists (like Aretha) to the present (Beyoncé).