Ruddy fire-eaters

Just as I thought. My second block Comp class are a bunch of ruddy fire-eaters (to quote from my favorite short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"). My first block just trudged through it. But this second block are taking charge of their writing. First they complained that they had to get it done in one class period. Tyler said, "Mr. Reynolds, someone from a college will be looking at this. I gotta put a good effort into this. This is serious." Others have hounded me for ideas about form and structure. Others still are bouncing ideas and words off on me all hour. What a contrast between the two classes.

Of course, I still have two or three who are clueless. Those who go right to their myspace page or to youtube rather than to their text program to write. What can you do? Next year when I teach Comp I again, I'm telling the students that if I even see the internet opened before they are finished writing, I'm kicking them off the damned computer and sending them back to the room to hand write their essay. Otherwise, their internet use grows and grows and grows. It's like a disease. Now it's rampant and it's far too late to do anything about it.

While they are writing their RU Ready essays, I am busy reading their fourth set of essays. This one deals with taking a favorite song, quote, or aphorism and either applying it to a specific time in their lives or analyzing why it is meaningful to them. So far I've gotten a powerful essay on a grandfather dying from lung cancer, a daughter bitter at her father for having her dog put to sleep because a psycho neighbor claimed it killed their dog, and a son who analyzes his relationship with his father through the lyrics of Garth Brooks's "The Dance" because his father once told him offhandedly, "I would like this song played at my funeral" and it caused him to ponder his father's mortality and to appreciate every second he has with him.

That's a hell of a way to spend a morning. Those essays woke me up more than any cup of coffee!