I just left my Advanced Exposition classroom after 50 minutes of creating "life maps." For those of you reading this who are unfamiliar with life maps, this is a topic generating exercise in which you make a “map” of your life with various icons depicting important people, places, events and things in your life; Ray Bradbury writes of something similar in The Zen of Writing (his was a “neighborhood” map; he maintains every idea he has ever had for his writing can be traced back to some neighborhood adventure he had when he was 8-10). I have used this exercise, or variations thereof, in my writing classes since I discovered it. I also tied it in to the reading for the day as it had talked about making discoveries through your writing, and I discovered how important the “prairie” was to my life when I did mine as an example.
There was some groaning and “I can’t draw!” at the beginning, but I assured them that the drawer was the only one who had to understand the significance of the icon—so what if you can’t tell that “Fluffy” is a dog, cat or gerbil. However, once the markers were set to paper, the tone changed and There was a flurry of “How do you draw X?” and “How do you draw Y?” as well as much laughter, bonding, and discovery. Some minds went blank for a while, and then the stories became even wilder.
The students had a blast if noise is any indication of their enthusiasm. It helped that the classroom has been reconfigured so there is a table in the middle (although the table is not big enough for 15 students and drawing paper). Some of the quieter students worked by their computers. The maps are now displayed on the walls with blue painters’ tape (so as not to ruin the recently painted walls), and the walls are more cheerful and less sterile now there is a bit of color on them.
I told my students the first day this would be nothing like their ENG 101 class; I think they are convinced.
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Great exercise! Very visual. It is actually very similar to one of the components of the first module you will be completing for this class: cultural maps. I assign this in every class I teach, not just the viz rhet class. You'll be introduced to this module next week. Interesting, too, putting the maps on the walls. Are all students open to sharing these maps in such a public space (where others outside of class can view and interpret their maps, i.e. the classroom wall) or are names omitted from visibility?
ReplyDeleteI've not had any students complain about putting the maps on the wall; I try to frame it as "claiming some space" plus when I introduce the assignment, I tell them about Ray Bradbury's neighborhood map that he describes in The Zen of Writing, and I think that gives the assignment some credibility (the students may not know me, but a fair number have at least heard of Bradbury). Most of the students use only their first names on the maps; there's a certain anonymity in that. Most of the comments I've received over the years about the assignment have been positive--the students like it as an idea generating exercise, and they sometimes get ideas off of their neighbors' maps as well. As I was leaving the classroom today, a student asked if my class was the one who put up the maps, and when I said yes, he replied with "Awesome!"
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