I've been teaching a course for first-year collegiate black men now for nearly 20 years. I've learned quite a bit doing so.
Among other materials, we regularly read short stories, and I've enjoyed thinking about the ways the guys think about the stories. Or put another way, I enjoy considering the minds of collegiate black men reading short stories.
A few things that stand out.
Connections. One of the most amazing neurological processes that occur in human brains are the connections. Consider this: "Each neuron can make connections with more than 1000 other neurons, thus an adult brain has approximately 60 trillion neuronal connections."
So it's in that spirt that I like to get the guys talking about how various parts of a story connect and form the full composition. And, we spend time talking about how one story links to another story or poem or film or something else.
Analogies. The other concept that's emerged are analogies. We talk about how reading about a situation in a story prompts us to think about how it might apply to something else, a challenge we're facing out in the world. Analogies assist folks when coming up with novel solutions to various problems. So I'm glad we have these various stories to draw on.
Related:
No comments:
Post a Comment