Update on Jeff’s Seminar

Jeff has met with his seminar four times in its Tuesday/Thursday slot. He is teaching several sections I believe. Of course, I steered clear of intruding during those delicate early days of a semester when relationships and expectations are forming, and Jeff went dark as I knew he would. He is focused and disciplined, scheduling himself tightly. I’m known to be helpful with minor suggestions, but I have a tendency to throw monkey wrenches.

He texted me on Wednesday, August 30, and I don’t think he would mind me sharing it:

Hi Terry,

I’m off and running, and with a new bounce in my step, with much thanks to you. The whole orientation feels different and good, and I’m sensing that from the students, too. I’ll try to provide a more detailed update soon.

This weekend Jeff is traveling but will have odd hours to text and email. He left a voice message saying that he’d given the first flipped quiz, a twist on the pop quiz tradition of right answer questions to test whether you read the assignment. He liked what happened.

Here, Jeff is choosing passages for the flipped quiz that will be part of a future reading assignment. All of these assignments present recurring challenges and difficulties taken cold, sight reading as it were, well beyond vocabulary and coherence, though getting unstuck from quicksand without knowing the precise meaning of a word can be tough. What do you use and do? What can you assume or infer? The flipped, no-assist quiz as a self-assessment tool will indicate whether students are improving as readers of ancient and medieval literature.

We have much to talk about, and I hope to have another podcast with Jeffrey before too long. Also, if you haven’t listened to Sandy Murphy’s podcast, set aside some time if you can. Her voice is important in this era of AI because she has absorbed and reflects sunlike the enormous value of great writing teachers in the development of young people. Humans en mass underestimate their value.

I’ll take this opportunity to share with you a recording of a song I wrote some time ago titled “An American Dream.” Jeffrey is singing, and his wife, Jill, and I back him up with faint echoes of a chant influenced by one sang in chorus by indigenous Americans centuries ago. In contrast to Jeff’s more nuanced and less edgy style on “Leonardo and the Tyger in the Looking Glass,” in this dream, which turns out to be a nightmare, he puts the pedal to the metal, channeling his inner Jim Morrison wrestling with Tom Waits.