I refuse to teach it. I guess if I was forced, I would. I think it's boring, outdated, and just boring. So, I'll be teaching Night, Animal Farm, and The Human Comedy (also a little boring but it's Saroyan, and I know his neice, and it ties in with the Odyssey).
So, that's that.
This week I was quite sick, so I feel a little overwhelmed with grading. Tomorrow, I just have to plow through.
I don't know why we chose such boring examples of "racism" or whatever. I think my students will do fine not having read that book.
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I just got done teaching TKM and my students ended up really liking it. Yes, they are bored to tears with the beginning, but they loved the whole trial section. Many lessons I've seen online focus on the coming-of-age aspect of the story... but I avoided this entirely because I don't think most people really appreciate the whole 'coming-of-age' thing until they are adults. But since my students got SO excited about the bigger issues presented in Part 2, we got the opportunity to talk about class-race issues, as well as dialect, code-switching, and language-power relationships.
Of course, if you just can't stand the book, it'll be difficult to get them excited about it.
Regarding your question about my students' blogs:
I let my students know when I've posted new questions on my blog. They know that (at the very least) they have to respond to my prompt by a certain date, and then respond to one of their group member's entries (much like we do here). I let them know what I expect both in length, depth, and formality. So far, those who have posted have followed the instructions, and the interaction has been pretty effective. Of course, the students who are barely scraping by in my class are flaking on this assignment as well.
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