Second Class - big thrills

This seemed to be the effect of the first quiz on one disciplined student who didn't even flinch when the flash went off from my camera. After the quiz (are we guessing how well this student did?), we had a fairly lively discussion about the people students have chosen to get to know; one Vietnamese woman selected a radiantly smiling African American male who works in the cafeteria, and as she gave his physical characteristics, another young woman jumped in saying, "Hey, I know him. He's the guy with the long braids in his hair, right?" Another African American woman chose her white step mother to study, and a tall, lanky older African American male has chosen a young Cambodian man at his work place. I think they all seem to be on board and getting the scope of the project. In the spirit of the project, I told them that I'd seen my homeless friend at the corner of 17th and Callowhill this morning, jumping up and down on the vent to keep himself warm, grinning his big toothless grin and babbling a mile a minute about how times were tough for him. He was hungry, and I knew I had my peanut butter and banana sandwich in my bag, but told him that I'd bring him a sandwich on Tuesday instead of giving him mine. I felt selfish and told my students how I felt.

After class, a quiet young woman came up to me and said, "You didn't have to give him your sandwich. You could have bought him one from one of the trucks down there." I was grateful but shamed. It was the obvious solution, a lesson I learned from a more humane, compassionate soul.

At the end of class, I ask students to write the "one minute essay" in which they identify the most important thing they learned in class and ask one question. Here are some of the results:

"The most important thing in class I learned today was the worked I missed and the work that's due." Ah, this is an aha moment if ever there was one!
"The most important thing I learn in class today was when you talk about the things we did wrong in are essays." I can tell by the specificity of this response that the student was not quite all there.
"The important thing that I learned today is grammar and the one about excess." I love the one about excess...
And the best one, "Today in class I learned about being able to have a heart and thinking about people's feelings." One wonders.

Questions? Those that follow are best:
"My question is how long have you been a professor?" Oops, was it something I said?
"Will we ever read together in class?" I love this and promise I will follow up on it.
"Will we have trips to any banned book libraries?" I mentioned a Vietnamese author who was banned in her country, and I suppose this student believes that because WE live in a free country, we must have a special place to house all our banned books.
"I would love to learn how to write a perfect paper?" I love the statement followed by a question mark, but more than that, I love the whole concept of "a perfect paper." HA!
Finally, in our environment of give it to me now, I received the following:
"One question I would like to know is, will I be able to apply myself can I pass." Hmmm, this raises some real possibilities.

The first formal description essays come in next week. Stay tuned.