Here is an exercise I use to encourage observation in the classroom, and one that I think might be useful since many of us seem to be doing TBA essays that focus on observation and interpretation/critical thinking and/or unpacking assumptions. Obviously, it can be modified or adapted for many purposes.
- Have students write down what they think you might carry in your bag. Sometimes, I give them background info, like, I take this everywhere I go, etc...
- Unpack your bag. Have students come up and spend a few minutes writing a list of everything they find in it.
- Send them back to their chairs, and have them, based on that list, write a list of interpretations of the person who carries that bag, based on what was inside of it.
- Discuss what challenged their original assumptions and why. Here, they move between specifics and abstractions, based on what they assume is true for a teacher, a graduate student, what they have seen of you before, etc... Discuss what WASN'T in the bag, and why they thought it might be.
- Discuss what assumptions those interpretations were based on.
- Sometimes, I tell them what assumptions/interpretations were true and which weren't, but not always. Sometimes, I just leave it at that.
I use this as an intro to the ethnography I ask them to write. Because it comes after the text-wrestling, I think it helps to get at the idea that we don't just read and interpret written texts, we read and interpret people, based on the cues we get. Obviously, you could do this with advertisements, with stuff in your office, with a friend's bag, or ???
You could do this exercise by "planting" stuff, or you could just go with what you really do carry (which is what I tend to do).
I would be interested to hear how it goes and if anyone tries any modifications to this exercise.
