Today is the first real day of class in my course on Hispanic poetry that I designed in lieu of a traditional language course. We will be reading Roque Dalton, the great Salvadoran poet.
I can’t believe I developed the whole course, readings and everything in under 3 hours. I’m going to approximate the class environment to that of a bunch of friends getting together to talk about poetry. This is why we won’t even be staying in the classroom.
I’m really excited, and I haven’t been excited about a language course in years. Possibly, decades.
Sounds amazing, tell us how it went.
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Just finished the first section. I dragged the students out of the classroom (that was freezing cold even for me) and into the warm, cosy lounge. They seemed a little shell-shocked because this is unlike any other language course they’ve had.
But I’m general, it went as well as I could have hoped. In the end, everybody composed their own poem Roque Dalton-style. And the resulting poems were actually quite profound.
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Tell me more! I’ve always wanted to simulate that atmosphere
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I realized that I should have led with the activity that I put at the end, which was to create their own poem on the basis of one of Dalton’s poems. That one really worked.
I have a smaller group and a larger group, and the smaller one I took to our lounge to create a homier environment. It will take some time but I feel like it will work.
I’m also planning to take them to Starbucks during class once they feel more comfortable with the language.
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