For a 9th grade intro to lit. course I would focus time on projects that had one eye on college prep work. One suggestion is to have students write concise summaries of each work, while also encouraging them to research and understand historical and social context. These don’t have to be massive tomes; they could be just a few paragraphs long. Journals are a good way to encourage thought while also building their writing muscles. A good intro to lit course will also focus on a variety of genres (poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama). I like to highlight and have students identify those parts that are unique to that particular form (ex. character, description and plot in fiction). Another idea might be to have students read what other writers have to say about literature. G.K. Chesterton does this often in a great deal of his own work (I’m thinking Orthodoxy). Learning how to think about literature is what leads to being able to write about it well. Hope this helps a little bit:)

In grad school many of us used group projects in class because we were inexperienced and didn’t really know how to lecture for long periods. It was a well-known way to eat up time! My attitude about group projects hasn’t changed much since then. As I became more experienced as a teacher, I moved away from group work because I didn’t find it to be the best way to use the limited amount of class time given. I believe that class time should be spent mostly with the students and teacher working together to discuss the readings for that given week. Group work—although I do think it has a place in college—should be utilized informally between students outside class time, not during the precious time that the professor and the students have together! In the English classroom I don’t think group projects work that well. I do understand that it could have a place for certain kinds of assignments (like a group proposal or presentation), but I don’t assign that kind of work in my writing or literature classes.

If the MOOC’s came into an ideal, democratic educational environment, they would be another excellent tool to engage students and to bring content to wider and wider audiences. The real benefit of online education is its ability to serve those populations who have been underserved: adults and other non-traditional students who aren’t able to access an onground campus. Unfortunately, online education has come to an educational industry in severe crisis. Schools are underfunded, the administrative machine has bloated, and 70% of faculty in higher education are part-time or non-tenure track (this causes a whole host of other issues that affect student outcomes). Used properly and sparingly, the mooc could be a good supplement, but most administrators will look to it as an opportunity to further the trajectory of the all-administrative university that downplays faculty involvement and treats college like a cash-cow factory. I’m sure some university leaders have even conceived of a future where only a handful of star professors actually teach. Why hire 100 tenure track faculty when you can just hire 1 to teach all the lectures? The reason small classes are good is that a teacher can actually get to know on a personal level his or her students. That means the teacher can assess the student holistically by looking at the entire person, not just one sliver. When a student and a teacher get to know one another, lots of great things happen (which is why we homeschool). The major flaw with the MOOC is that there is no personal interaction. A student will essentially have to become an autodidact—which is fine—but we all have to learn from our mentors first before we can learn to teach ourselves. To be truly democratic, online education needs to bring more and more expert teachers into “close†contact with more and more students in ratios that are reasonable, say, 1:15 (or something like that). I’m sure what most big universities envision is a MOOC taught in sections by contingent faculty, and this only repeats on a larger scale the same issues plaguing academia right now: too few qualified faculty teaching too many students.

It really depends on the field; for example, if you were going into nursing, getting a BA at an accredited for profit school probably wouldn't hurt. However, if you were going into teaching at the college level, getting an online degree might not be as favorably viewed. My understanding is that the stigma of online education is slowly changing, especially as traditional schools like Penn State or Stanford are getting themselves involved. There are "for profits" who have online degrees and then there are traditional schools that have an online arm. Either are decent options but again it depends on the degree and the school. As mentioned before, you want to make sure the school is accredited by one of the regional accrediting bodies like SACS or Middle States; otherwise, credits wouldn't transfer to other accredited schools and the degree wouldn't count toward MA work later on. I used to teach at the traditional university; now I teach almost completely online (which works better for my wife and family), so I can let you know what I know about specific schools and programs if you ever needed help.

Your comment about Carver reminds me of that story "Cathedral." I always loved that story. I'm wondering, though, if I'll chicken out and not introduce him to my kids since he can be a bit much sometimes with the presentation of all of those desperate lives. I'm worried too about some of those commonly anthologized contemporary stories that may not have great content. Off the top of my head, I don't think Cathedral was too bad, but it's been a while since I've read it.

A fairly standard creative writing course would go something like this: the entire first half of the semester would be devoted to reading example short stories like the ones listed on this thread. Normally, creative writing instructors spend more time on contemporary literature (post 1950’s) than on the classics. Analysis of the stories is important because students need to begin to think like writers. What are the different parts to a short story? How do these parts relate? What kind of effect does the writer want to have on the reader by utilizing these various parts? During this part of the semester, you might start with short writing exercises that develop one aspect of story telling, whether it be plot, setting, character, description, etc. The last half of the course normally would be devoted to a workshop where different students critique each other’s work. That’s harder to pull off for homeschooling. Snag a copy of Gardner’s book next time you are in the bookstore and rob some of his ideas. Here are some from page 205: --Describe and evoke a simple action (for example, sharpening a pencil, carving a tombstone, shooting a rat). --Write an honest and sensitive description (or sketch) of (a) one of your parents, (b) a mythological beast, and © a ghost. --Write a prose passage that makes effective and noticeable use of rhyme. The main idea of a creative writing course is to learn to both write and analyze short fiction. These two activities can’t really be done apart since writing good fiction requires an understanding of what it is. Let me know if I can help more.

In addition: I have a pretty interesting copy of No Fear Shakespeare Hamlet which is a graphic novel. It's put out by Spark Notes.

I taught creative writing at the college level, and here are some classic stories that they will probably encounter at the university (at least in America) in no particular order: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber The Lottery by Shirley Jackson The Enormous Radio by John Cheever The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry To Build a Fire by Jack London Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving No Name Woman by Maxine Hong Kingston (creative non-fiction) Ideally, you should teach the modern writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. I would also make sure to address Flannery O’Connor and Joyce Carol Oates as exemplars. For examples of current short stories check out the “Best American Short Stories†series. And as an aside, check out John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction. It has a long list of fun writing assignments at the end. Another classic creative writing text is Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (although may not be appropriate for high school if memory serves). I hope this helps.:001_smile: