Teaching this Coming Semester

Next week we start with faculty meetings and the week there after classes start (Aug 31st). I've received my roster and have completed the basic syllabi for these classes.

I'm going to teach the following five modules:

• 19th & 20th Century American Poetry
• Special Topics in English Literature: Poetry in Music
• Basic English Composition (Introduction to Academic Writing)
• English Presentation (Public Speaking & Speech Writing)
• Intermediate Listening and Conversation (including note-taking skills)

The first two modules (the poetry classes) I am teaching alone. This means big classes with lots of preparation. The remaining three classes are language skills classes, which I also taught last year. Each class is taught by around three to five lecturers simultaneously. For these classes we use workbook-style textbooks which makes for easy lesson preparation. One merely divide the chapters and exercises into the available weeks and try as best you can to cover the appropriate amount of material for each week. Since all teachers ought to cover the same work (since we all use the same exam paper), there is little deviation and few surprises. The good thing about this system is that it opens up some time for the two literature classes that I will be teaching, which require much more preparation.

For 19th & 20th Century American Poetry I will be touching on 15 poets in only 14 weeks of class time. Of course, I will be grouping some poets together. When I studied English at university we focussed more on British poetry, and only looked at a few American poets like T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath and Maya Angelou. So preparing for this class has been a learning experience, which will certainly continue for both me and the students throughout the semester.

The other literature class, Poetry in Music, is going to be an interesting experience as well. It is an elective course for 4th year students, and it is the first time it is taught. I wasn't going to teach it at first, but then the professor that actually called for the class's creation suddenly felt overcome by the weight of all the classes she is teaching and begged me to swap with her one of my language skills classes. I gladly handed over Intermediate Reading & Writing. Last semester I taught a pretty tough reading course (British & American Essays), and as I am already teaching Basic Composition, I didn’t feel like teaching another writing course. I also prefer teaching literature classes over language skills classes.

After some deliberation with the department head and the academic office, we were able to swap classes, without too much timetable problems. But then the real anguish started – what exactly is “Poetry in Music”? The professor that was supposed to teach it has not prepared a syllabus and was also away for the summer break to America. Furthermore, it is a new module, so I have very little “history” to work with. I also couldn't find any textbooks on this specific topic: “Poetry in Music.”

After much reading from different sources I decided to make the class an overview of contemporary English music, with focus on the reading of the lyrics and how they are influenced by the genre of music they are part of. Basically it will be a poetry class, but the interpretation of the "poems" (the lyrics of the song) will include the "reading" of musical elements, such as melody, harmony, and rhythm.

The class will start with an introduction to some appropriate music terminology compared with relevant poetic devices, and then move onto the different genres. We will begin with Hymns, Gospels, and Spirituals. We’ll then look at how Spirituals formed the base for Blues (and later Rhythm & Blues), and how Blues developed into Jazz. That’s the first half of the semester.

The second half of the semester will start off with early Rock `n Roll; the groundwork for the cultural revolution brought in by Elvis Presley in the 50s and the Beatles in the 60s. From here on we look at different genres like Country, Blue Grass, Folk Rock, and Country Rock; Soul, Funk, Disco, and Dance; Rock, Alternative Rock and Grunge, Indie Rock and Punk Rock; finishing with Pop, R&B, and Hip-Hop. We will also spend a week on Social Comment and Protest Music. Preparing for this class have been lots of fun, as I navigated through all the great genres, trying to find representative songs of each and trying to find the links between them.

I will prepare blogs for both the American Poetry and the Poetry in Music classes, mostly for my students as an easy way to disseminate some class notes and announcements, and will also have links to sites or YouTube-videos of most of the poems and songs we will be covering. Let me know if you want to "sit-in" on these classes and I'll make the blog-links available.