Day Two at SI

Today’s adventure at the SI writing project was a blast. I was surprised how much fun I had. We played a game that divided us up into corners of the classroom by various parts of our history; I.E. by which sibling we were (first, last, middle, only) or by the time that we decided we wanted to be teachers of writing. We then looked at the pros and cons of our backgrounds and the positions that they have put us in—it was a great exercise for perspective, and becoming familiar with the other people in the class. The next exercise, the nexercise, was one of my favorites. Lacy Manship held our hand on a “literacy dig,” in which we began with a word association for 3 terms: doctor, mother, and writer. We called out visuals or sayings that came to mind and Lacy would put them up on the board. All of this was a warm-up for the word teacher. Afterwards we looked and thought about various narratives of teachers in society and analyzed, talked about, or created new thoughts on teaching stereotypes in our writing groups. They were all posted in a community link on google docs which could be shared simultaneously. The doc would change while you were looking at it. This was fascinating, and very entertaining as I recalled and contemplated what media’s portrayal of teacher was. It was very complicated. There are so many narratives that vary greatly, and have bizarre connotations and implications that I’d never thought of before. We even found a musical that sexualized Ralphie’s teacher from “A Christmas Story,” which led to a flood of conversation.