Most of my student papers for this module began with "Public spaces are everywhere..." and perhaps that is why they instantly connected with this module. I used Kunstler's video as a starting point to open a discussion on public spaces. We looked at the economic and social ramifications of a space and used local examples to further the arguments in class. Quite a fair number of my students took issue with Kunstler's rhetoric, they felt that bludgeoning an audience into complicity might be a tactic but its effectiveness was tenuous at best. A lot of the students are from the suburbs and that might have well been the reason why they also felt so strongly about his arguments.
In that same week we looked at the articles by Leinberger and Packer. It was evident that the length of Packer's article proved to be a huge deterrent for my students. In their freewrite on Leinberger they engaged with the ideas in the text as well as the rhetoric. A lot of them were drawn to the use of statistics and I saw them use the same in their proposals. Unfortunately, the same could not be said about their response to Packer, they clearly had not read the article and I was lucky that I had a contingency plan. I had found some videos to support the two articles and we briefly discussed the video supporting Leinberger before moving on to the videos on Lagos. Using the video as a springboard I was able to get them talking about the issues he raises in his articles. Though not ideal, it did get them thinking and talking.
I felt that the discussion of the two classes gave a lot of fodder for thought and I had them bring in photographs of one good and one bad public space to talk about in class for the next day.
I made two separate piles of good and bad photographs after they turned in the photographs with their names on the back. Then I shuffled the piles and the photographs were passed around the class so that each student had two printouts to talk about. What was interesting was that when they submitted the photographs, I did not let them demarcate the photographs as either good or bad, so each student could now interpret the spaces in any way they wanted. Each of them held up a photograph and gave reasons for why they saw it as good/bad and if anyone in class disagreed with them they raised objections. Given the volley of conversations it was a miracle that we managed to go round the entire class.
It was one of those classes when you walk out with your students and they continue as though the class never ended --- I love walking in that conversation bubble.
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