Samantha Plate

Play In The City

10/17/2013

Playing in the City and in the Classroom

I can’t quite remember what I expected this course would be like. It seems like so long ago that I was scrolling through the Emily Balch Seminar choices and the one entitled Play in the City caught my eye. Whatever it was that I did expect I know I was nowhere close to imagining the amazing experiences I have had this first quarter.

While I came in knowing that we would be playing in the city, I did not realize that we would also be playing in the classroom. From the first day, when we spent time exploring the physical classroom, I knew this Emily Balch Seminar was going to be a different experience than the other seminars that had been options. This thought has only been enforced over the past few weeks. Our unconventional assignments have really encouraged the idea of playing in the classroom and I have enjoyed every minute of it. One of my favorite assignments was when we created a mosaic out of the reading. Not only was this a nice break from writing responses and other dull assignments I had in my other classes, but I also really connected with the reading and this assignment helped me to view it in a different way. These assignments have helped me to read in different ways and view readings from different angles.

Thus far this course has taught me so much in terms of gender identity, feminism, defying binaries and hierarchies and exploring self-representation, including my own. In terms of the course material solely, I have been fascinated, scared and amazed by the texts we have read. I like the variety of the texts and the forms in which they are presented, they stem away from the usual formats I read in school and this has made it easier and more exciting to read them. They are engaging and eye-opening for me. Our discussions around the texts are eye-opening as well.

I thought the exercises that we did on Thursday were really interesting....but also completely terrifying.  I was getting particularly frustrated with myself when we were completing the second exercises because I wrote a whole paragraph in my response explaining why I would not be an expert on this topic.  Part of me really wanted to resist justifying my response with a flimsy background story but the other part of me had too much anxiety about putting my opinions out there.  I got more and more comfortable as people started to read out their responses because it was clear that most people were just as concerned with sharing their opinions as I was.  But what this exercise made me realize is that I, and maybe others in the class, didn't feel like they could share their opinions in any discussion format without receiving some kind of a judgment.  It was helpful to hear Anne say that students don't have to have all of the answers, that's why we are students.  Still, why does it often seem like we all have something to prove in a classroom?   

By 5 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 20 (the day we return from fall break), please post AS A COMMENT HERE your mid-semester course evaluation of what's working and what needs working on in this class: what have you seen?  what have you done? what's your interaction been (with texts, with your classmates and prof)? what are you (still) hoping for?...then we'll spend some classtime, in the week when we return, discussing needed adjustments.