Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Day 72 - Stories

I spent a part of day 72 looking for stories.  I've asked my students to write narratives about their own pandemic experience.  I want them to incorporate research to help explain and investigate their experience.  And I'm trying to find exemplars for them.  I want them to focus on the world and their world, to reflect, to question, to analyze.  I'm fascinated by the ideas related to COVID-19 that they are considering:  

  • Mental health and self-isolation
  • How will we prepare for future pandemics?
  • How will the pandemic affect places of entertainment such as amusement parks, movie theaters, concerts, etc.?
  • Disney
  • The pandemic’s effect on the environment worldwide
  • How do the lifestyle and risks of the pandemic relate to service in Iraq?
  • Anti-lockdown protests
  • Socializing via Zoom
  • Life during quarantine
  • How people will interact in the future
  • Baseball and the pandemic
  • Effects on health care workers
  • Scientific evidence in Covid-19
  • Working in a restaurant during the pandemic 
  • Coronavirus stigma
  • Grocery shopping
  • Video games
  • Ramadan
  • Baseball
  • Shutdown
  • Small businesses
  • Controlling the virus in communist China vs democratic America
  • Relation between Bible and pandemic

It makes me think about my story.  What is it?  I guess I try to tell a little bit of it every day here on the blog, but what will it look like when I shape it up and revise it?  Shouldn't I try to do just that if I am asking my students to do so?  I've always liked writing about things as they happen.  Sudden memoir appeals to me.  But how will I shape these memories into a coherent narrative?  How will any of us?

And what am I expecting from my students? That's a great question.  I should be able to present them with some kind of clear rubric so that they know what they are supposed to be doing.  I keep trying to find a perfect example of what I am imagining, but I'm struggling.  Partly that is because all of the current published narrative writing is so immediate that it doesn't include a lot of research.  But partly that is because I want to be flexible, to allow students to investigate their own authentic experience.  I'm curious to know how they are making sense of their current experience.  I'm curious about their curiosity

I have a whole master's degree in this kind of writing, but I don't think I have ever asked my students to do it before.  It's hard to distill three years of study into one short paper.



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