Teaching on the brain

This past two weeks I’ve been planning my teaching for the rest of the semester and trying to get things ready for next semester, so that I don’t spend all my time working on teaching next semester–I’ll have an exam to take and a husband to miss!
Teaching The Awakening as the book on which my students write their final paper has some interesting consequences.  Yesterday and today I met with each of them for 1/2 an hour (15 students, you do the math–that’s why we’ve been particularly silent here) to talk about their paper ideas.  Four Nalgenes of water each day and I’m still a bit ticklish in the throat.  Guess that means I do a lot of talking during a conference in which they’re supposed to be doing the leading.  *sheepish*  A good half of my students are writing about the conclusion of the novel, which means that they and I are teasing out the intricacies of the heroine’s suicide.  How do you read that?  What do you bring to the book in making a judgment about the novel’s end?  Is there a way to resolve the various (and, sometimes, seemingly contradictory) readings of that conclusion?  And, as these discussions are often held in a hallway nook, I’m always hoping no one will walk by and catch half a sentence of our conversation.  No need to be disturbing the Cornell campus with our literary analysis.

Erin

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