New site address!

I've changed hosting services -- please click the link below and visit Life in Pajamas at it's new site!

http://lynlepre.typepad.com
See you soon!

 

The ladies and their floam...

Hiatus

I'm taking a periodic hiatus as the new semester begins. If you are interested in seeing this semester's student work, please visit my new dedicated blog, "jem414.blogspot.com". Back in a bit!

My twins

Breakfast at Tiffany's?

I wish. . . but as having us all meet in NYC tomorrow morning might pose some logistical problems -- let's meet at Panera on the Strip at 10 a.m. instead. We'll nosh on some bagels and coffee and discuss the brilliant articles you have ready to turn in.
See you then!

To my intrepid students:

Hello all -- and my apologies for having to cancel class on Monday. No major problem -- just a babysitter with a broken-down car and a sick (and, sadly, cranky) husband. I hope you all enjoyed the "found time," as a former professor of mine used to call it. I look forward to chatting with you on Wednesday about your PE stories, which I enjoyed reading. I'm glad to see that your voices are emerging from the text, and with more polishing and shaping, I think you will all have stories to be proud of. For now, just read on in the textbook, and be prepared to "write outside the box" on Wednedsday!

Vivid detail and bringing home our theme

As I write, I expect that most of the students are working on their own personal experience stories, which are due tomorrow. It's often a harder assignment than they expect -- many go into it thinking, "hey, I can writing in first person, and no interviews, and no research! Easy!" But good personal writing is so much more than a series of paragraphs all starting with "I think." Good writing digs deeper -- and reaches deeper -- making the reader feel something.

We are in the midst of reading Erin Zammett's book "My (so-called) Normal Life" and having some great discussions both online and in class. Zammett is a former UT journalism student, which intrigues a lot of them, and offers up a detailed personal experience story. Each student has blogged about the first half of the book, which they read for Wednesday, and will again for the rest over the weekend. They raised some interesting points, and I am glad to see that one thing has emerged for most of them -- which is the way Zammett shows us what's going on as opposed to telling us. She shows us the moments and the bad and the happy. She describes scenes making us see, vividly. While I might even argue she could have given us more -- more about the hard parts, more about the lonely moments when it was just her, no cameras, no family -- each student can take her writing as a good example of how to capture the readers interest and hold them until the end. We should all be so skilled!

Up and running

It's official. The class weblogs are up and running, and I think that the students even enjoyed creating them. They are listed at left in the links section if anyone wants to check them out!

To my mind, any teaching technique (and I'm not even sure this counts as a technique as much as an activity that I thought sounded fun) that gets the students interested is a good one, especially in summer school.

I loved summer school; I took four classes the summer between my junior and senior years in college and think I may have learned more that summer than in all the other years combined. That summer I took a "Persuasion" course that I just adored and did quite well in. I had previously planned on spending my career working for a magazine as a journalist, but the professor in that class suggested to me that I might make a great communication professor someday, if I wanted to go in that direction. Who knew I'd take him so seriously? After that moment, the seed was planted, and sure enough, after a Master's degree and a few years at Martha Stewart Living, I was back in school at the University of Flordia working toward my Ph.D.

And I've never looked back with regret. I should write to that professor -- let him know how that one comment may have changed the course of my life and changed it for the better.