I have been out of the advertising profession for five years now and yet that was where my writing process began and I cannot seem to shake off the habits and methods I learned then. Mind-mapping or the version of what I did was and is still a useful tool in my writing process. I shared the same with my class to great effect. It worked brilliantly as a thesis writing exercise. I had students write down one word that they would use to describe the article and then connecting words which ultimately led to that ‘light-bulb’ moment and the point where they could begin formulating their thesis.

Another exercise that worked to help students recognize tone and formal/informal voice was a letter writing exercise that I did in my high school. I told them the story of “The Lady and the Tiger.” And I asked my students to write a letter to the princess as the lady behind the door, commenting on her decision which is unknown. Students responded very well to this exercise and wanted a similar one so I asked them to write a letter from the princess to the lady behind the door. Both versions threw up funny, intense, and sometimes downright dark results but it showed them the ways in which a point can be tied up or a story finished. They were perceptive about language usage and many, when writing from the perspective of the commoner, used colloquial terms than when they wrote from the princess’s perspective.

As most of you are aware (because I’ve been talking about it half of the semester) one of my classes thought it was a brilliant idea to tattoo people who are HIV positive. This idea came from one of my students in the Epstein essay discussion class. Very quickly, it was picked up by the majority of the class. The driving force behind this thought was that people will ALWAYS lie about their STD status so it is better to have a little plus sign tattooed on their bikini lines so people are aware that they are about to have sex with an HIV positive person.

I experienced a precious few seconds of brain fart. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I did manage to speak after a 10-15 second pause where I am pretty sure I resembled a goldfish. I spoke about the history of tattooing a specific section of society (Nazi shitheads) but to no avail. My students were quick to disavow any similarity of their idea to that one.

I faced another hurdle when we read Dan Savage and Urvashi Vaid. The topic of bullying and the same class said that the issues were grossly exaggerated because they had never seen any bullying in their schools.

I turned to the LGBTQA resource centre for help and I had someone come in and talk to my students about stereotypes and the dangers of relying on a single stereotype. She also discussed empathy vs sympathy and used this video. It’s a good video.

But, the big question: where do I separate my ideologies from my students’? We want them to express their opinions but am I not deliberately changing their opinion here? Is it okay? I mean, I know it is okay because they need to know the whole picture about their idea but is it okay from a pedagogical perspective? Am I making sense?