jays community profile

English 110 Students Take the Research Plunge

     

I was happy to see the variety of topics discussed in our student community profiles.  Under normal circumstances – face-to-face classroom instruction – I provide an in-class workshop focused upon invention and research strategies.  That didn’t happen this time, nor will we see it any time soon during this Covid era.   Instead, students were asked to write about any local topic as long as they applied the research skills presented in my Canvas assignments.

• Here are some examples: Immigration Reform,  Fieldworker Rights, Police Brutality, Gender Discrimination, Teen Pregnancy, Anxiety and Depression, Alcoholism and Drug Abuse.

• To access student writing, please go to our left-hand sidebar to "Community Profiles," and CLICK on the topic of your choice.

In Jay’s Community Profiles, we strive to open a greater discussion of social and political import.   With first-hand research of an uncle’s minimum-wage job experience in the fields, for example, a student  can better address the issue of worker rights.  An interview with a former teacher can lead nicely into an insightful paper about educational reform. 

Here is our goal: to provide our own commentary, questions, interpretations, clarifications or even feelings of what we have read and heard.  In other words, we take possession of our source and establish our presence in our papers.  I want to deepen my students’ involvement in their own education.  I want to give them their voice and a larger audience.  I want them to feel more a part of this campus.  The writing here reflects the diversity of student interest and concern regarding important issues in our community.

The Tortilla Curtain: Holding Up a Mirror to Our Nature

CONGRATULATIONS to US.  

  

 This semester in conjunction with the development of our community profiles, we read T.C. Boyle's  The Tortilla Curtain.    This novel was written more than twenty years ago, but its themes and ideas resonate today.  It is about our nation's immigration controversies. It's about Race and Racism.  Sex and Sexism.  A lot of it is about Money and Hatred.  Sadly, what we read in the novel, we see in today's  headlines.

Ten pages into the novel, many of us thought we  knew  all we  needed to know about the the novel's main character Delaney Mossbacher.    He´s white, liberal, successful and a closet racist.  Arroyo Blanco. That´s where he lives.  Wouldn´t you know it?  White Canyon.   Delaney lives a charmed life, in an isolated upper class L.A. suburb with a beautiful and ambitious wife and an ADD stepson, but on  a drive to a recycling center, Delaney practically flattens a Mexican – like a tortilla? - walking along the roadside.   

Here is where Delaney's  true colors come out.  He seems like a nice guy.  He´s really passionate about saving  the planet, but when  it comes to his choice helping an illegal immigrant lying flat on his back across the pavement... Nada.

A note to my students:  Were you surprised to see Delaney transform right before your eyes? Did you feel for the plight of Candido and his young wife America?   I live in Mexicali and cross the border everyday.   I often see bits and pieces of  The Tortilla Curtain wherever I go.  Can you connect much of what you have read to what you see today?  What do you have to say about what you see taking place all around you.   Take a look to this site's sidebar for Jay's Peek Behind The Tortilla Curtain.  I give you your chance.