Maybe this is a stretch, but today’s post is based on my quirky thinking about The Hunger Games. Not to spoil anything, but one question in the novel is whether the participants should band together or remain apart. In the end, only one can survive, but the dilemma of working together or drifting apart runs through the novel and the film. Of course, how I teach is influenced by whether I put materials together or keep them apart.

In the past, I always lectured in a way that linked major themes with particular examples. This consisted of me joining together the broad themes (antebellum transportation revolution) with  particular statistics (how long it took to get from New York City to Chicago – which went from about 6 weeks in 1800 to about 2 days by 1860) and a human example (Charles Dickens describing railroad travels while visiting the United States).

This semester, I’ve tried something different. I separated out the examples of human experience (which I use from Major Problems) and lecture purely on those (with some discussion, although discussion with 160 students can be tricky … too many folks checking Facebook during class or the score of the latest SDSU softball game). This has meant that I now have two overlapping lectures on the same time period, one that moves through the main themes and one that moves through the primary sources. I think it’s working quite well – EXCEPT for one fact. I did not explain this approach to the students (I thought they would naturally pick it up) and so many have seemed to miss that when we discuss the primary sources, I’m offering the m the tools to think about their essays.

Later in the week, I’ll post about my second essay assignment, which asks students to address either nationalism in the early republic or the weaknesses of the government then. But for now, I would love to hear from anyone who has separated the primary sources from the lecture on main themes and whether you think it’s best to present the material together or apart.