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| Countryside, North Macedonia _________________________ |
I retired from Academia in
2010, after closing my teaching career in Skopje, North Macedonia, where I taught for a year, so this site has been sorely neglected.
For the past
week (May 2024), I have been going through my various websites, trying to decide what to
keep and what to delete.
No way
will I delete this site; I have enjoyed revisiting the creative work of my former
students from Introduction to Literature, African-American Literature, and
Creative Writing who produced fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and drama.
I pushed them to do their best, and they delivered – big time.
The Introduction
to Literature students surprised me the most. These students, from various
majors, were often the most reluctant scholars, so I decided to add in an optional
creative writing component, certainly going against the overall mission of the
course (so sue me – the statute of limitations has long passed).
Some students,
not all of them English majors, took me up on it. Their resulting writing used literary
works from our textbook as springboards, for example, writing sequels or
prequels to famous (and not so famous) works. I figured if they could write a
decent prequel/sequel to a work, then I knew they were reading the assigned
work.
Sneaky, eh?
Some students
decided to rewrite stories as poems and poems as stories.
Some garnered
ideas from essays to write their own personal essays.
There are
also some “graphic” representations of known works, long before the graphic
novel and non-fiction trend in publishing.
The quality
of their work really surprised me, so this is why I started this site – to offer
them a chance to showcase their work. This, too, was optional; after all, these
weren’t publishing courses. Some bowed out of publication and one writer wished
to remain anonymous. I was fine with this.
Just a note:
for the literature courses, I was not grading “quality” (whatever that means)
of the creative aspect of their work, but, rather, how well they demonstrated their
understanding of the original work. In that sense, I was accomplishing
the original mission of the course – but through the back door.
The biggest
surprise: how well some students wrote in their timed essays – 75 minutes or
fewer. I marked these posted pieces as such. They were on fire!
So, if you
come across this site, take a few minutes and dive in; if you are a teacher/professor,
you might want to think about using this approach for your intro to lit
courses. You might be delightfully surprised.
Retaining the
students’ work intact, I have made a few minor changes in this site; I have
added a gadget that lists each writer’s name and a link to their work(s) and
deleted outdated announcements. I have also deleted my own work because I now have
other sites where my work and links to my work appear.
To my former
students: if you find this site, give me a shout-out in the comment section (you
will need a gmail address) or email me at Jennifer [at] BanMyBook [dot] com.
I’d love to find out what you’re up to these days!
I’d love to
hear from you!
My home page:
Although I’m gray-haired and retired from teaching, I’m still quite active, writing and working in the digital space.
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