I don’t know how I feel about the idea that I have a “career,” but I also don’t know what else to call my job, teaching English at a small college.
At any rate, I’m pretty much smack in the middle of my career. I’ve put in enough time that I basically know what I’m doing, but not so much that I’m ready to ease off the gas and coast into retirement. Sometimes LLMs make me wish I qualified for the latter category.
My point is, if I’m going to continue to be of use to my students and my institution, I’m going to have to find some way to function as a teacher as more and more students invariably offload their writing work to their future AI overlords. I can’t go on, running computers’ writing through other computers, and I didn’t become a teacher so I could be a cop.
I’m thinking of this academic year as a “rebuilding year,” to use a sports metaphor. I’ve decided to push myself to experiment with a few new practices. Some of these experiments won’t work, and I may very well have a “losing season,” but I’m hoping to lay the foundation for better years down the road.
Most of my experiments are not groundbreaking and I’m sure you can find plenty of other teachers writing about Blue Books and oral exams and reducing the point values of final paper drafts and resurrecting participation grades (I added a fourth item to that list, lest anyone accuse me of using the accursed machines myself).
It will be absolutely important for teachers to figure out teaching practices that might offer some insulation against the long, cold, AI winters of our futures.
But I also think it will be at least equally important to think about the nature of teaching and learning itself, and try to align the “content” of our courses with what we come up with.
So back to my experiment.
This semester, I’ve been tasked with teaching a 200-level “Intro to Short Fiction” class, an option for the Aesthetics requirement in our Gen Ed. In other words, the class will likely be populated with students who must take it, rather than students who desire to take it. It is one of those old-school courses that practically beg students to use LLMs for the written work they submit.
And honestly, if I designed the class as a predictable survey of literature I think they should read before they die, I wouldn’t necessarily blame them if they went straight to ChatGPT without passing Go or collecting their $200.
So here’s the experiment I’ve decided to run with this class this semester: what if we studied short stories because creativity is an important part of what makes human lives worth living? What if we emphasized the actual creative choices that writers wrestle with as they struggle with language? And, most importantly, what if we assume that our students are themselves creative beings, and that studying some literary works from this perspective might help them develop the capacity of their own genius?
In pursuing this goal, here is how I designed the class:
Each student will write a short story, with the goal of making it around 2000 words by the end of the semester. The first draft will be due in the second week (this week!). The final draft will be due at the end.
In between those assignments, students will study the works we will read (more on that in a second) with the idea that each story is a little model kit they can steal things from. As we discuss each story, I will try and emphasize authorial decisions about POV, plotting decisions, etc…you know the drill. In each class, I will try and leave time for them to reflect on elements from each story that give them an idea for how to revise the one they submitted in week 2.
The reading list. I really tried not to think too hard about this. The main idea I have is that there are two phases of readings: the “classics,” then “the currents.” For the first month, I defaulted to a bunch of stories that I personally love and know well. There may be some ego in that idea, but honestly, the idea is to make it easier for me to go into some depth about each story with them, to help them see small details they might have missed. This is “the classics.” An attempt to establish a habit of close reading.
Them comes “the currents.” The idea here was to reach out on Substack Notes and ask for volunteers. Published writers who might be willing to video into our class to discuss one of their stories (that we will have read together beforehand). In these chats, I hope that the students will come with questions about particular artistic decisions, inspirations, etc… And my hope is that they will do this because they want to make their own stories as beautiful as they can.
Along with the final draft of the story, the students will submit a short reflection that details the specific inspirations that shaped their revisions.
I was honestly blown away by the responses to my call for writerly volunteers. I’m humbled and excited to moderate these conversations in the class. I’m also thrilled to introduce students to writing that is being created right now, as well as helping them meet some of the writers that are doing this good work.
Hopefully I’ll follow up with good news about this experiment later this semester. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you; about your thoughts on my experiment, and about some things that other teachers are doing to make the next decade of teaching humane and meaningful.
I did this with high school students and it works.
Brilliant approach, Danny. So worthwhile. Really hoping it inspires.