It’s been awhile since I’ve given you a teaching update, so here goes.
Overall, I’m still delighted. The newspaper has been appearing every Wednesday, right on cue, and the kids are rightfully proud of the job they’re doing. Of course, things would be even smoother with a little more computer memory. I’ll work on that.
Classes are going well, too. Everybody is making good progress, and those concepts seem to be sticking.
Still, there’s the occasional snafu. Case in point:
My Newswriting and Reporting students have been learning the difference between first-day hard news stories and follow-up/feature reports. Their Friday assignment? Write a hard news story about the first Presidential debate.
I got about 45 versions of Obama-McCain stuff with varying degrees of editorializing — and one report on — are you ready for this? — the 1858 Presidential debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.
It’s been a very interesting semester so far, and I have a feeling that trend will continue.
I would publish that one just because… and I’m sure it might interest people to know about the very first debate!
I would, but unfortunately, it wasn’t all that good. Oh, well.
I want to take your class. Or if you’re ever allowed to hire an assistant I’ll apply for that. Then we’ll be able to hang out together and drink coffee like the good old days.
Wanna grade my papers? Then I could just do the fun stuff!
Literal is right! Oh my! I thought we got to quit giving very explicit, overly explained directions once they got to high school! Guess I better rethink that! LOL
I have to say, I’d love to hear about the “first” presidential debate between Lincoln & Douglas. Did they actually debate the issues (I bet they did), or did they stand there taking stabs at each other and never really answering the moderators questions?
The 1858 debates (there were seven of them) were centered primarily on slavery. Douglas said Lincoln was an abolitionist (perjorative then like the “L” word is now), and Lincoln was critical of both the Dred Scott decision (slaves are property, not citizens) and the Missouri Compromise (adding states to the Union would maintain the balance between slave and free).
Two interesting things to note here: first, the debates were between candidates for the one of the Illinois US Senate seats, not the Presidency, and second, despite the eloquence of the “House Divided” speech that was part of the series, Lincoln lost the election. Go figure.