QUESTION: Experiences in teaching freshmen comp using "The Wire"?

[Chris Remple]

I'm designing a college introductory expository writing course using "The Wire" as the primary text. Any experiences doing something similar or any ideas about doing this would be very helpful. Original idea was to focus on one season - for example the season dealing with the schools - and use a number of the episodes to explore issues of race and class, urban decay and resiliency, etc. The goal would be for students, through writing informative reports, with and against the grain essays, comparative essays and so on, to engage with the issues in the series. Most of my students come from a midwestern background, frequently small town, and their personal exposure to issues in "The Wire" can be minimal. Engendering real discussions that build on their visual literacy is a central goal of the class and they are the foundation of the writing we will do.

[Michael Moore]

Chris
It's ambitious and might lead to some censorship issues; however, I think to go along with your unit doing a cooperative learning group project on the history of a school or even a history of the road in front of a school would work well with the wire. I imagine such a project is open to all kinds of multigenre and multimodal experiences for kids and might lead to some public recognition too. I can see using film, oral histories, community artifacts, and public documents might allow kids to see how urban blight is a process. Anyway, just two cents.

[Brett McKersey]

Used Season One & Four with seniors this year in NZ. So pretty far from the issues too. Came at it more from an English persepctive (well it was for an English class). Focused on Season One by comparing characterizations of McNulty and D'Angelo as individuals finding themselves at odds with their respective institutions. I like the idea of resiliancy - Season Four would be good for this - exploring how the boys cope. My students wrote comparative literature essays - exploring texts with similar themes. For developing visual literacy, we also explored the visual motif of surveillance in Season one, and how verisimilitude was created. All studets loved the series, though most found it tough going for the first few episodes. Heaps of resources around.

[Cynthia Nearman]

Hi Chris --

Several instructors at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC (including me) teach season 4 of The Wire as the major text in ENG 102: College Reading & Writing.  Some of us teach it in conjunction with the "education" and "equality" sections in Rereading America, a comp reader from Bedford St. Martin's.  Some also use (or use instead) They Say / I Say from WW Norton. 

 

We have lots of students here who've not traveled far from their NC hometowns, or who've never left the American Southeast at all.  We also have a sizable "non-traditional/adult student" population.  In the past few years, the majority of students in Wire-focused sections of ENG 102 say (on course evaluations) that they LOVED working with the show itself & with the issues/ideas it raises.  

 

In my version of ENG 102, we first view & discuss a couple clips from season one: the opening scene of the entire series (the death of Snot-Boogie) and the scene where D'Angelo explains the game of chess to Wallace & Bodie.  Then I ask students to read/study the summaries of seasons 1-3 on HBO's website & on Wikipedia.  I also give a few low-stakes quizzes on selected characters--folks from seasons 1-3 who play important roles in season 4 (Prez, Bubbles, Bunny, Carver, etc).

 

This seems to be sufficient in terms of preparing the students to dive into season 4.  In terms of major writing assignments, I ask all students to focus their "analysis papers" on The Wire, and our discussions of the episodes focus on preparing them for this task.  (assignment instructions attached). 

 

For their final "creative project," they have the option of writing two "missing" or "supplemental" scenes from The Wire season 4, along with a brief (make-believe) persuasive cover letter to David Simon explaining why (given the show's arguments) the scenes they've scripted should be filmed & included among DVD extras.  In prep for this, we view those little "webisodes" (on amazon.com) that feature Omar & Prop Joe in their younger days.

 

Another option for the creative project is for students to prepare a "Parents' Guide to Violence in The Wire."  This option asks students to imagine that some parents have expressed concern/alarm over the use of the show in first-yr comp classes b/c of the show's violence.  If they choose to create a "Guide," students are to explain the connection b/t the violence in the show & the overall argument of season four.  In the "body" of the Guide, their job is to provide quick overviews of several super-violent scenes, and to account for the relationship between that violence & the "big ideas" of the show.  (fyi, no one's ever chosen the "Guide" option, but my goal here is to give them a way to practice performing a the tricky rhetorical situation---one where they must acknowledge the shocking violence of the show while trying to persuade readers that the violence is necessary/worth it).

 

Hope this isn't T.M.I.  I'd love to hear how your experiment works out, and to discuss further my experiences if you like.

 

good luck!  ~ cynthia

[Chris Remple]

Cynthia,

Thanks so much for your input/experiences in using The Wire. As of now, my syllabus is very much in the category of something I want to do, but which falls outside the program of the first-year writing course. I'm a grad student at Kansas State and the program hear relies heavily on each first-year student getting the same course experience. Hence, not much room for a lot of experimentation. I like very much your approach and the spelled-out criteria and expectations for the analysis paper in the attached .pdf file.

Again, thanks for your time and if I make any progress in actually getting approval to teach this course, I'll let you know.