Open Friday Thread: Storytelling, Teaching Experiments, and Private Threads

And an exciting new venture with friends

Photo by Sergei Sushchik on Unsplash

First, I want to celebrate the official launch of Inner Life, the collaborative that I’ve created with Mary L. Tabor, of “Only Connect” and Sam Kahn, of “Castalia.” You can read all about our new project at the link below, and I hope you’ll consider joining us as a free subscriber.

Why We Are Launching Inner Life

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I was a little grumpy Tuesday morning because there was a glitch in Substack, and I ended up distributing my regular column twice by mistake. If you read the first email, the comments link didn’t work, and I didn’t want to spam you again with an explanation. If you missed it, here is the original post. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The first question for today’s thread is inspired by a comment from K Srikrishna, who teaches entrepreneurship at Northeastern University. Sri wrote that my discussion of folk ballads brought back memories of storytelling in India, and he shared a very moving account of his grandmother’s storytelling during mealtimes. As Sri suggests, the craft of storytelling can be meaningful beyond its more traditional forms within our family or the arts. Do the memorable plot elements in “Tennessee Stud,” “John Henry,” or “Long Black Veil” trigger any surprising connections to your work life or to fields outside of the arts?

The second question comes from my essay’s central premise, which is that embracing strangeness in teaching is one way to maximize the impact of a lesson or concept. This can be true with more controversial subjects that unsettle preexisting beliefs, but it is also true of more pleasurable surprises. I’ve discussed a few examples recently of unexpected experiences as a student, as well as occasions when I’ve challenged my students’ thinking either by presenting them with a different perspective or by going out on a limb with my guitar. What memories do you have of teachers who got your attention through elements of surprise? Are those mostly good memories, or have you experienced other cases where a teacher’s risk-taking (or your own experimentation) crashed and burned?

Finally, I have a question for paying subscribers. I’ve heard from a couple of you (not a lot, but enough to pursue this further) that there is interest in the occasional private Friday thread. By which I mean that we would have a few conversations limited to about 40 of us. One suggestion so far has been to talk about reasons for declining satisfaction in academic life. I’d be glad to share some of my personal experiences on that subject, if it would be helpful for others to process in a smaller group. If you are a paying subscriber, but don’t feel comfortable commenting publicly, might you answer a couple of questions in this Google Form? That would help me better gauge how much interest there is in this and what other topics we might pursue in a more private space. I think we’d need at least 5-10 participants for this to be meaningful.

I’m hard at work editing the February podcast, so stay tuned for my guest, Dr. Sarah Trocchio, next Tuesday! Happy weekend, everyone.

Dr. Sarah Trocchio, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rider University and creator of The Square Peg Club, LLC. Source: Rider University.