The other section, the section that’s a little more enthusiastic, boisterous, playful, they got it to the point of trying to get me to say something rather than talking about Bartleby where I had to break character and do a very brief redirect around minute 35, and I think both they and I were disappointed by that break, even though it was me just saying, “No; focus.” But that disappointment — there were a few seconds of silence — I think itself helped get discussion back on track, and got them into performing some genuinely wild interpretive moves by the end of class.

I think that connects to what Collie and Joanna are talking about, and what Rob’s asking. I didn’t have a plan B — or, OK, since this is Bartleby, a plan C. I felt bad that I even had to do that brief redirect, but I’m also lucky that I have cadets — and these are plebes — who are conditioned by their position in the Academy’s hierarchy to be very attentive to following instructions.

Which connects to another reason why I think the lesson was so successful, despite that break in one class. For plebes at the Academy, “Bartleby” is a very alien story, as is the notion of an instructor who breaks his role and refuses to tell them what to do. There was something exhilarating about skating out there on that pedagogical ice, for them and me.

They were amazed when I showed them the notes — five pages, single-spaced — I’d typed up as they were talking: “We said all that?” And, in fact, yesterday I had them go back to the notes in small groups and use them, along with quotations from the story, to support a reading they constructed for the text. They put their readings (”Bartleby is a martyr for capitalism”; “‘Bartleby’ is a story about individual isolation’”; “‘Bartleby’ is concerned with the responsibility people have for each other”) up on the board, and relevant quotations from the notes of what they’d said and from the story to support those readings, and they came up with some stuff that was just remarkable.

I had wondered if you set up guidelines for yourself prior to the class. To be specific, did you know at what point you would have ended your silence if things went wrong or became horribly sidetracked? What if the students decided they wanted to discuss something other than bartleby? At what point would you intercede? You asked the questions about how other students might have handled it, but I am curious to find out how you might have handled other students. I always enjoyed professors who took a different route and tried something new. Good for you, Mike!

What’s also cool is that you behaved unexpectedly and they rose to the occasion. They must have trusted you to have a purpose for disrupting your normal classroom roles. You mention obedience and motivation and the peculiarities of your institution. But it also seems like we can only successfully back away from overt leadership under circumstances of pretty deeply cultivated trust. Would this have worked the second week of the semester, even with these motivated, obedient students? Would you have trusted them to step into the authority void (if that’s what it was) before? What signs did you use to judge whether you all were ready to experiment in this way?

I use the opening paragraph of Bartleby in a dictionary exercise in my developmental class! I try to work in various methods to expose my developmental writing students to what they’ll encounter down the road. This semester, we are reading The Secret Life of Bees during the last month, and their final essay will be in response to an (unformulated) question related on that. On this count, my choice wound up being rather fortuitous for me because they’re making a movie next year starring, among others, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, and Dakota Fanning (as the protagonist). Can’t beat that for a selling point.