Journal 5

Thoughts on the class thus far.

So far I have enjoyed this course and what we have read. I must say that I am not a hug fan of a lot of young adult lit. but the selections so far have varied and have made us think. The great part of only spending a week on each novel is that if I do not like one of them, we will soon be talking about a new one.
I think the class has done a good job with discussion, especially with students leading those discussions. In a lot of classes I have seen professors ask questions with no body in the room wanting to respond. These discussions are obviously dry and uninformative. The atmosphere in this class is such a way that everyone should feel comfortable with sharing their views and the leaders have done a good job of getting participation from most of the class. The fact that we have new students leading the discussion each time means we will always be discussing the books in different ways. Each quiz isn't the same and neither are the discussions. With a class full of future teachers however, there are a lot of talkers so this helps.
My one criticism is that on Thursdays the book talks can get long. We do this for the first forty five mins hearing about several different books. Those leading the book talks don't want to spoil anything so we can only go so deep into those novels. I like the idea of the book talks but would rather have a few on Tuesday and a few on Thursday to split up some of the time. Otherwise I have enjoyed this course and I look forward to when I lead my own discussion and book talks.