I Forgot How Fun Middle Schoolers Are...
Jun. 20th, 2022 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse Many of you have been following the saga of my class at the Loft in the access-only bits, but I think I can bring this story out into the light of day now, since I have mostly positive things to say about how the class went.
I am still very thrown by how casual the Loft has been, in general.
Like, no one met me when I got to Macalester, which is kind of amazing, given that this is the first time anyone from the Loft has used this venue. Similarly, there was no reminder sent with classroom information or a campus map or guide to parking. I ended up having to find all of that on my own, which... was FINE? But, kind of goes to my general complaint here.
I will say that despite some assurances by the Loft that I might actually see the program coordinator, I never did. She did, however, change the course description as I had asked, to be clearer about how the students' day will be structured. https://loft.org/classes/summer-youth-week-one-not-just-zombie-apocalypse-more (go to the very end.)
In fact, one of the students' parents pulled me aside and said, "It kind of looks like there are two different programs here? My son is really only interested in science fiction, can he leave halfway through?" I told this parent, "You absolutely can." Because I don't see why they couldn't? To be fair to this dad, I'm pretty sure that particular child will beg to stay because I noticed that he, in particular, seemed to be having a very good time? We will see what happened tomorrow.
But, okay, the class went pretty well. Like a lot of Loft classes, students kind of drifted in anywhere between a half hour PRIOR to class and a half hour after class had started. This is just how Loft classes are for some reason? But, that did dilute my ability to be super clear with everyone about how their day will go, but I think enough of them got it not only once, but twice.
After that? I just did what I normally do, which is wing it. I asked everyone to do introductions and pronouns and a conversation just naturally started around the question "Why are most protagonists actually the character you like the least? Like, why are they so stupid?" Because, narratively, there is a reason for that, right? Like, the main character is often the person who is introducing a science fictional or fantasy world to the reader and if they are an outsider or kind of dumb about their world, that's an opportunity for the readers to learn what THEY need to learn, but through the protag's eyes. I could see some lights actually going on in the room already at this point, so that was gratifying. I then played "a game" that I basically made up on the spot in which we talked about another problem that some main characters have, which is that they're kind of overpowered and how you can solve that problem in the design phase, if you consider the "cost of magic." So we listed superpowers on one half of the board and "costs" on the other and had fun matching them up in silly ways, and then I asked them to write a story either based on the prompts (or, as it happens, anything they liked.)
I floundered a bit after that because I really like the class to be self-directed and so it took us all a bit of time to figure out what else might be a fun topic to tackle. I tried talking to them about story structure, but that seemed to lose them a bit.
So, I hopped over to hooks. We came up with a bunch of different types of hooks: opening lines of dialogue, an action or an image, and a question. This was fun because some students went hyper specific and some went broad. This one seemed to be the thing that pulled them in the deepest. So, clearly what they like is coming up with story prompted based around some part of writing (like, in this case opening hooks) and then getting a chance to write on that topic. Since they were so deep into this one, I tried one as well. (At the ends of these classes I always end up with a ton of half-started stories based on various prompts.)
I ended the class with two rousing games of sentence stories (you know the one, where you build on the previous sentence), which everyone seemed to enjoy.
As for the make-up of my class, it's mostly young women. This has been an interesting demographic shift. When I first started teaching SF/F (almost *cough* 20 years ago), I was often the only woman in the room. Now, it's the men who are in the minority. Not surprisingly, a fairly large number of students also used they/them pronouns (though they all seemed surprisingly flexible? There were a number of she or they, for instance.) There were small number of visible POCs? At least two of the young women had Southeast Asian given and surnames and another had a typically East Asian surname. So, the Loft is diversifying a bit more than it has in the past, though it's still not doing great with only three out of twelve.
That's the other last thing of note. As is typical, I picked up two extra students last minute. So, I have an even dozen.
I met the other teacher at noon. I mean, she seems nice? I wasn't expecting her to be sprouting horns or anything, but, yeah, I have no idea how things are going at the end of the day here, but I'm sure it will be FINE. To be fair, one of the first questions one of my students asked me is, "Is this going to be like school?" And, I said, "Yes and no. I will try to impart some knowledge, but there are no assignments or quizzes and nothing I ask you to do is required." It seemed to be the general consensus, too, that what they wanted was more of a summer camp vibe, but that's still easy enough for me to provide.
The bonus of being an on-the-fly teacher who doesn't have any requirement to impart any real or lasting information is that I can just be like, "Games? Sure, let's just do games!"
I am still very thrown by how casual the Loft has been, in general.
Like, no one met me when I got to Macalester, which is kind of amazing, given that this is the first time anyone from the Loft has used this venue. Similarly, there was no reminder sent with classroom information or a campus map or guide to parking. I ended up having to find all of that on my own, which... was FINE? But, kind of goes to my general complaint here.
I will say that despite some assurances by the Loft that I might actually see the program coordinator, I never did. She did, however, change the course description as I had asked, to be clearer about how the students' day will be structured. https://loft.org/classes/summer-youth-week-one-not-just-zombie-apocalypse-more (go to the very end.)
In fact, one of the students' parents pulled me aside and said, "It kind of looks like there are two different programs here? My son is really only interested in science fiction, can he leave halfway through?" I told this parent, "You absolutely can." Because I don't see why they couldn't? To be fair to this dad, I'm pretty sure that particular child will beg to stay because I noticed that he, in particular, seemed to be having a very good time? We will see what happened tomorrow.
But, okay, the class went pretty well. Like a lot of Loft classes, students kind of drifted in anywhere between a half hour PRIOR to class and a half hour after class had started. This is just how Loft classes are for some reason? But, that did dilute my ability to be super clear with everyone about how their day will go, but I think enough of them got it not only once, but twice.
After that? I just did what I normally do, which is wing it. I asked everyone to do introductions and pronouns and a conversation just naturally started around the question "Why are most protagonists actually the character you like the least? Like, why are they so stupid?" Because, narratively, there is a reason for that, right? Like, the main character is often the person who is introducing a science fictional or fantasy world to the reader and if they are an outsider or kind of dumb about their world, that's an opportunity for the readers to learn what THEY need to learn, but through the protag's eyes. I could see some lights actually going on in the room already at this point, so that was gratifying. I then played "a game" that I basically made up on the spot in which we talked about another problem that some main characters have, which is that they're kind of overpowered and how you can solve that problem in the design phase, if you consider the "cost of magic." So we listed superpowers on one half of the board and "costs" on the other and had fun matching them up in silly ways, and then I asked them to write a story either based on the prompts (or, as it happens, anything they liked.)
I floundered a bit after that because I really like the class to be self-directed and so it took us all a bit of time to figure out what else might be a fun topic to tackle. I tried talking to them about story structure, but that seemed to lose them a bit.
So, I hopped over to hooks. We came up with a bunch of different types of hooks: opening lines of dialogue, an action or an image, and a question. This was fun because some students went hyper specific and some went broad. This one seemed to be the thing that pulled them in the deepest. So, clearly what they like is coming up with story prompted based around some part of writing (like, in this case opening hooks) and then getting a chance to write on that topic. Since they were so deep into this one, I tried one as well. (At the ends of these classes I always end up with a ton of half-started stories based on various prompts.)
I ended the class with two rousing games of sentence stories (you know the one, where you build on the previous sentence), which everyone seemed to enjoy.
As for the make-up of my class, it's mostly young women. This has been an interesting demographic shift. When I first started teaching SF/F (almost *cough* 20 years ago), I was often the only woman in the room. Now, it's the men who are in the minority. Not surprisingly, a fairly large number of students also used they/them pronouns (though they all seemed surprisingly flexible? There were a number of she or they, for instance.) There were small number of visible POCs? At least two of the young women had Southeast Asian given and surnames and another had a typically East Asian surname. So, the Loft is diversifying a bit more than it has in the past, though it's still not doing great with only three out of twelve.
That's the other last thing of note. As is typical, I picked up two extra students last minute. So, I have an even dozen.
I met the other teacher at noon. I mean, she seems nice? I wasn't expecting her to be sprouting horns or anything, but, yeah, I have no idea how things are going at the end of the day here, but I'm sure it will be FINE. To be fair, one of the first questions one of my students asked me is, "Is this going to be like school?" And, I said, "Yes and no. I will try to impart some knowledge, but there are no assignments or quizzes and nothing I ask you to do is required." It seemed to be the general consensus, too, that what they wanted was more of a summer camp vibe, but that's still easy enough for me to provide.
The bonus of being an on-the-fly teacher who doesn't have any requirement to impart any real or lasting information is that I can just be like, "Games? Sure, let's just do games!"
no subject
Date: 2022-06-20 11:09 pm (UTC)