week two

Yay, good Beowulf class today! I tried a pair / small group activity that I invented for one of my other classes last year -- pulled about six provocative quotations from different critical articles, put them all on a handout, and told the students to get into pairs or groups of three and pick a quote to talk about -- disagree, agree, find other examples, wonder what the heck the critic meant, whatever. I usually like to do this later in the semester, when they've read a few more texts, but this class really needed a kick-start, and it seems to have worked.

And in the drama class, we watched YouTube, and it was good. I think YouTube might be the best resource ever -- I've already found clips from two interestingly different versions of Lysistrata up there, so I have another instant lesson plan.

And the bookstore finally got enough copies of the Norton Anthology in for everybody to have their own, and I got mine back from the student who borrowed it. I went back to my office (carrying the anthology under my arm because my shoulder bag is already stuffed with other books) and had the following conversation with the professor down the hall:

"Wow, that's a big book! What happened to it?"

"Oh." (I am used to looking at my anthology, so I rarely think about the fact that I have accidentally dyed it pink.) "Well, I was carrying it in a red canvas bag one time, and it started raining..."

"It looks like it's bleeding. Poor book!"

Right, I think it's time to get a new desk copy...