Excerpts from my observation at the school I didn't pick

It's long so I included the highlights for you below.

Class Title: Graduate Fiction Workshop
Location: CCA - SF
Class Instructor: Miranda Mellis
Date Observed: Monday, March 8 (4-7pm)
Class Size: 11 + Instructor


The room was a small-medium square, bare white walls, black carpet, a window at the ceiling that let in light but did not afford a view. An exposed steel beam ran diagonally along the wall beneath the window. Thin gray tables were arranged in a square, and beneath them black metal chairs without cushions, formed for sitting upright. Two fluorescent ballasts hung from the ceiling. A white board hung on the wall opposite the steel beam. The room presented a heavy echo, the HVAC system rumbled loudly. Housed in a building that sits under an overpass, the space did not seem conducive to creativity.

***

The instructor was young; she told me later she had been teaching for six years. She had the wild hair of a writer, and the diction of a literary critic from Brown (where she got her BA). The square of tables had at one end a single chair, which is where she sat. She talked with the students as they trickled in, and from the content it was obvious that she was friendly but not necessarily familiar with them. She displayed a sense of humor and (perhaps) an attempt to connect with the students in terms of age, saying “When I have a teacher rolly-bag, I’ll know I’ve grown up.”

Every person in the room (instructor and I included) was White, some with various “other” heritage half-hidden, revealing itself most often as dark, curly hair. The class was not overly chatty, pretty quiet, some whispering. All in the room were likely under 35 and definitely under 40.

***

The class began with a lecture and boardwork on the three stories they’d read from The Best European Fiction 2010 (an anthology apparently of authors little known in the U.S.; authors from countries widely read in the U.S were not included; for instance, Germany was not represented). Most students had seated themselves with their backs to the board. The instructor mentioned passively as she announced board work that they may want to move; they did not.

***

She spoke using technical terms, and continued to train the discussion to the list as the students spoke. They jumped into the discussion pretty easily, though not all participated. Only a few of the students were speaking and she began to fill out the list herself, then included “feeling” words among the technical terms. The purpose of making the list was not stated.

She then read from one of the stories. Her enthusiasm for the material was evident in her performance. She read for a surprisingly long time, a page at least. She summarized the students’ comments into concise phrases with lingo, and they verbally agreed to her interpretation when asked. For the most part, the students spoke to her, and she back to the speaker. She reviewed the terms on the list, and presented the elements as a way of layering meaning, creating density in the work.

At this point, she tied the exercise to student work, saying “we’re not layering as much as we could be,” and proposed a writing assignment, acknowledging that this activity was outside of the “normal” operation of the workshop. The assignment was to write a story incorporating as many elements of the list as possible: instruction, digression, repetition/recursion, reflexivity, intertexuality, quotation (use of someone else’s language), a drawing/image/schematic. She asked them to, “play with this toward this notion of dense description.”

***

At this point, 45 minutes in, the first cross-table student discussion began. Three students still had not spoken: two guys, one girl. The class turned their questions to translation and what is lost. It was an even-keeled exchange; they were not overly agreeable or confrontational. They were hyper-sensitive of silencing, suspicious of the info source. The instructor suggested a reading, exhibiting her prowess with a language besides English. She mentioned that the next book would be by an Iranian author. She asked if there was anything else about the anthology they wanted to discuss, and added, “I can say as an editor, it’s a fraught and flawed process.” She repeatedly mentioned her work during the class, and displayed personal acquaintance with published authors. It strikes me that CCA students expect that/are impressed by that/are looking for that connection as a part of their education.

***

She then announces the start of workshop. No break, and we’d been sitting in those metal chairs awhile (she did break after the first person was workshopped; they workshop three pieces each class). She has taken an approach to workshop that excited me with its novelty. A student facilitates the discussion about another student’s work using an interactive presentation technique. This process is modeled and informed in the first few classes; she then turns it over to them a few weeks into the semester.

The student facilitator demonstrated a knowledge of workshop terms and etiquette, using the phrase “engage with the work,” and a familiarity with the freewrite process, saying “wrap up that sentence,” when five minutes had passed. She suggested the class write a note from the perspective of a character in the story to analyze whether or not the character was developed enough to do so. I was impressed with the idea, though she exited the exercise with a leading question that squelched discussion rather than opening it. The students provided their opinions rather than attempting to adhere to question.

The instructor played the role of student during this portion of class. She did not use literary lingo during while acting as a student, and entered the discussion quite early, speaking 3rd in the process. Though she was playing the role of student, she still carried the authority of teacher, and the class deferred to her comments. The students give attentive advice. The author spoke intermittently throughout the discussion “to clarify” her objectives and intentions, seemed passively defensive. The facilitator seemed to disappear mid-way through the discussion, as more voices join in and instructor asks questions after commenting. A student who had not yet spoken joined the discussion and spoke with authority and attention.

***

When the class reconvened, the instructor did some housekeeping, reviewing due dates, etc. The second student facilitator didn’t have an activity planned. He suggested going page by page. The instructor reoriented the discussion to a more productive manner of engagement, taking a close look at one passage in the story. One guy still has not spoken, and has been writing the entire class period. A student says what she “likes” but then adds, “not that that matters.” The instructor takes the opportunity to pursue the comment, saying “Why doesn’t that matter?” The student says that she has been trained to think that her opinion doesn’t matter as opposed to what the work is doing in the world and to the world. The instructor asks the class if anyone else was affected by the passage the student “liked” and got a positive response; she used that to show that the passage was a strength of the text and as such the student’s opinion was valid.

The instructor demonstrated a good balance between keeping the boat moving and keeping it steady; she was not afraid to call a description “incoherent.” She recommended a revision technique and described the process. She closed the discussion asking the writer if he had “any questions for us or any notes we didn’t hit on.” He declined and the third piece was brought up for discussion. The scheduled facilitator was sick, so the instructor took the role. She directed their attention to a textural element of the piece and used it to demonstrate the layering aspect she wants them to achieve (tying the lecture/list into the workshop discussion). One student looked back at the board to use one of the terms in her analysis. There did not seem to be rules about speaking or taking turns as a one student dominated the discussion for the second half of period.

There was no clock in the room, but three hours is a long, long time. Too long to hold anyone’s interest. Though I don’t know how one would fit a reading lecture and three fiction pieces to workshop into a shorter time period. The story subject matter included the supernatural, magic, and pornography. There is no way for me to tell whether class discussion gets incorporated into story making. The participants seemed attentive to each other’s work, and the class seemed successful in that respect. I did observe lengthy written notes on the papers handed back. There were regular discussion participants, but the class and classroom had a subdued atmosphere. The students seemed to grasp the discussion topics well, and presented their ideas well. The quality of student seemed to play a larger role in this assessment than the quality of instruction.