E's inspiring and hilarious blog entry about useful things learned from student "how to" papers prompted me to lovingly recall some favorite "how to" lessons from my own students. As the communicationy folks among you know, the "demonstration speech" assignment is common in many public speaking courses. This was a required assignment at the University of Maine, where I did my MA and began my teaching career. Apart from the unfortunately all-too-common condom-on-a-banana safe sex speech (we've all been there, no?), my other most memorables have about them a certain, I don't know, geographic quality...
how to build your own outhouse
how to bait a lobster trap
how to dress a deer (this one I got multiple times)
Unlike E., I can honestly say that I have never been able to use any of these practical skills and don't anticipate that I will anytime soon.
Did you ever get a "how to build a hockey rink?" Both B & M did that one!
Posted by: Lu | 04 April 2007 at 10:12 AM
Ha! That's funny. Good topic for Minn-uh-snow-ta. I never got that one, but maybe that's because most of the Maine kids didn't actually play very much hockey. Maine had/has a great hockey team but most of them come from Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Canada. Of course.
Posted by: caraf | 04 April 2007 at 01:57 PM
Of course!
ps. The best part of E's blog entry for me was the response from the "boys". After she slammed them for the misspellings and such - they replied "Your welcome". Priceless. Do you think it was intentional?
Posted by: Lu | 04 April 2007 at 05:00 PM
We had an assignment like this in Grad school. "Pick anything" the professor said. Many in the class picked things that related to the education field, being we were all educators. The first seven or eight presentations were on Special Education. I presented "How to play Fantasy Football." The professor thanked me because she never understood what her 23 year old son was doing. I think she just liked the fact that my intoduction included the Monday Night Football theme song.
The guy who went after me thanked me as he started his presentation on "How to hunt and kill a deer."
Posted by: Scott Springman | 04 April 2007 at 11:06 PM
I've never done a "how to" speech, but one of my favorite writers, Lorrie Moore, has a great series of "how to" stories in her book Self-Help. Stories include, "How to Talk to Your Mother," "How to Be an Other Woman," etc. A great book.
Posted by: groo | 06 April 2007 at 01:44 AM
Lu: that misspelling was totally intentional, its author informed me. the sad part is i didn't immediately notice it; he had to point it out. who's the english teacher? (hint: not him.)
Posted by: E! | 09 April 2007 at 06:40 PM