Taking the Time to Breathe

We had a busy, confusing week last week due to a library snafu (both I and the library share guilt on the snafu!). So, I wanted to calm things down a little today.

Their Field Notes 1 were due today, and do to the snafu, they had to peer review each other's rough drafts over the weekend and email comments. This was mildly successful because not everyone did what they were supposed to do. Shocking!

I love when I'm reminded how nice it is to sit back and breathe in class, to just talk about how things are going, to ask questions, to reflect. It's nice to not rush through something like we've been doing (too many ingredients to get chopped into the pot at once).

So, we did a great free-writing exercise today so that they could talk about fact & faith and their topics. The first day of class we made a list of the possible topics that could fall under fact & faith. Today, I wanted to really dissect what "fact" and "faith" could mean. I wrote "Fact" on one side of the board, then "&" in the middle, and "Faith" on the other side. Then i drew a dotted line down the middle.

For "Fact," they came up with:

meaning of life
realistic
statistics
logic
science
evidence
real
absolute truth
perception
permanence
stability
concrete
assurance
doubt

For "Faith," they listed:

mysterious
meaning of life
unrealistic
belief
conceptual
intangible
interpretation
individual
subjective
evidence
fact
trust
hope
religion
science

And under "&" in the dotted line/in between:

evidence
perception
assurance
doubt


Then, I asked them to write "Fact" "&" "Faith" again to start a new page. I asked them to do the same thing for their topics. How does {your topic} break down under "Fact" "&" "Faith." What are the evidence, truths, perceptions, etc. of your topic? What are the beliefs, intangibilities, hopes, etc. of your topic?

A few shared their brainstorming, and I reminded them that their topics should look large and complex and complicated. How will they take a few of these and explore in detail in their research and writing?

A brief note about the readings:

Their readings the past few days were centered around different academic approaches: literary, psychological, and sociological. The students really reacted strongly on Oasis against the sociological, the language used, the statistics. I brought this up and asked/urged/implored them to not turn away from a source just because it's language is different than what they use. What's the audience for the source? If they are writing for other sociologists, doesn't that language make sense? It's so easy for students to turn away from great academic sources because they are intimidated. I'm hoping they challenge themselves/I challenge them to look for a wide variety of sources, not just the easy to read in 5 minutes.


PS. The student who got so upset at me two weeks ago, "I didn't sign up for a religions class," withdrew.