Lesson Report:
Title
In‑Class Essay Completion and Metaphor-Driven Literary Analysis (Jamelia and Blue Haze)
This session prioritized completing and submitting final essay drafts, followed by a shift into analytical work connecting Jamelia with Mukhtar Maghuin’s Blue Haze. Students practiced moving beyond debate into metaphorical interpretation (bridge and archive metaphors), and contrasted literal and figurative readings to prepare for a comparative discussion.
Attendance
– Absent students mentioned: 1 (Murat)
Topics Covered (chronological)
– Opening: Time check and goal-setting for in-class essay completion
– Target announced: finish and submit final essay drafts by end of session (to grade at lunch and submit to Camelia before the third session).
– Time-needs poll: options given (20 min, 30 min, 45 min, full 70 min). Mixed responses; some already finished.
– Plan set: 30 minutes of quiet writing for everyone; students needing longer could continue while others moved to class activities.
– Class management and submission logistics
– Phone policy during writing: phones collected in a designated corner; students could retrieve phones once finished. Students who had already turned in final drafts could keep phones.
– Materials handling: essays re-distributed; students instructed to return final drafts to the instructor, with old drafts placed in a separate pile.
– Clarification: this is the first year the essay is required in-class; the usual private free-write was skipped to prioritize essay completion.
– Intermittent check-ins and acknowledgments as students finished and submitted final drafts.
– Quiet writing block (essay finalization)
– Approximately 30 minutes allotted for finalizing essays; students informed they could extend into the session if needed.
– Purpose: polish final drafts for same-day grading and submission.
– Transition to literature focus: Jamelia (metaphor lens)
– Objective: move beyond prior “who was rightâ€� debates; read Jamelia through metaphor.
– Focused rewrite prompt provided:
– “In what way can we understand Jamelia’s decision as building a personal bridge? From what and to what was she bridging?â€�
– Students given a brief timed writing to respond (emphasis on metaphorical framing).
– Communal reading: Blue Haze by Mukhtar Maghuin (translated by Christopher Baker)
– Text located in readers: page 264 (second-to-last page).
– Reading method: round-robin reading; instructor began and students continued.
– Key literal elements surfaced in the read-aloud:
– Characters: Ediga and Bakin.
– Setting/action: Ediga in a vast, disordered archive; realization about how to work within it; discovery of a small, previously unknown epic of high literary significance; begins copying and compiling.
– Archive imagery: multilingual manuscripts, varying inks and scripts, disarray, and the sense of a boundless, timeless repository.
– Instructor quick concept check: “Archiveâ€� defined as a curated collection (documents, manuscripts, images, etc.) preserved for the future.
– Analytical free-write: literal vs. metaphorical interpretation
– Two guiding questions:
1) What is literally happening in Blue Haze? Who are the characters, and what are they doing?
2) What is the metaphorical meaning? Why did Maghuin write this—what is the author trying to tell or convince the reader of?
– Students wrote for 2–3 minutes to address both levels.
– Final minute task before break: students bracketed one sentence/phrase from their Jamelia metaphor write-up and one from their Blue Haze response to share after the break.
– Break and next steps
– Ten-minute break announced (return at 10:50).
– Plan to begin post-break by sharing bracketed excerpts and moving into comparative discussion linking the “bridgeâ€� (Jamelia) and “archiveâ€� (Blue Haze) metaphors.
Actionable Items
– Urgent (today)
– Grade all submitted essays over lunch and submit grades/materials to Camelia before the third session.
– Ensure all final drafts are logged; confirm that old drafts and final drafts are filed separately for each student.
– Follow up with the absent student (Murat) regarding final essay submission and missed activities.
– Next class / next session
– Begin with student sharing of bracketed excerpts (Jamelia bridge metaphor and Blue Haze interpretations).
– Lead a structured comparison:
– How Jamelia’s “bridgeâ€� metaphor (from-to transformation) parallels Blue Haze’s “archiveâ€� metaphor (preservation, rediscovery, authorship, and identity).
– Map literal vs. metaphorical readings for both texts to clarify interpretive layers.
– Prepare a brief mini-lecture or guiding questions on how archives function as cultural memory and how personal choices (bridges) cross from inherited narratives to self-authored futures.
– Follow-up / housekeeping
– Verify bibliographic details for Blue Haze (author attribution and origin) and maintain translator credit (Christopher Baker) in course materials.
– Collect informal student feedback on the new in-class essay requirement and time allocation; adjust future writing blocks accordingly.
– Confirm phone collection protocol is clear and efficient for future timed writing periods.
Homework Instructions:
NO HOMEWORK
All tasks were to be completed in class, with the instructor stating, “I need to have these essays in by the end of this session” and “this is the first year where we’ve required that all students do the essay in class,” and no out-of-class work was assigned.