Trenchwork

This week’s readings:
1. Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine”;
2. excerpt; Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks;
3. student blogs.

Every class is different, and this one is no exception to that rule. There are 17 students, it’s a fully online class, and there were 133 posts to the introductions forum alone. They’re an eclectic group, with a surprisingly high percentage of psych majors, and I’ve been really impressed with their willingness to tackle the questions and topics. They may not always like a text, but they’ve been exceptional about preventing that dislike (or conversely, like) from blindsiding them into groundless opinion without foundation or even comprehension of the text. That’s unusual. Many students decide they don’t like a text—often because it doesn’t meet their expectations of what “story” should be—and automatically shut it down without seeing whether it has anything to offer.

This group is working hard to avoid that.  I’m impressed.