Bob Blaisdell
Biographic Data
| ID | 5719124 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bob Blaisdell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bob |
| FAMILY NAME | Blaisdell |
| SIGNATURE | BLAISDELL B |
| AFFILIATIONS | City University of New York |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 28 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Antigone Aloud Allowed
This is an exploration of what can happen when a rich, complex, challenging text is read aloud in class, of how students make meanings and connections with their own lives (and of how mysterious these processes often are)
Seryozha’s Education
This is discussion of one of Leo Tolstoy’s fictional dramatisations of aggressive but dull-witted pedagogy. In Anna Karenina, two adults badger a lively, deep-souled, active-minded boy, Anna’s son Seryozha, to learn his rote-lessons
Vampires and a Moco Jumbie
Vampires and a Moco Jumbie is a narrative-essay about teaching Basic Composition in New York City in the early 1990s. To the surprise and delight of the teacher, the students describe in class discussions and in their writings their beliefs in the supernatural
Writing Someone Else's Diary
I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine. (Oscar Wilde [5 October 1
A Stroke of Language
The author reflects on foreign-language learning by his EFL students as well as his own foreign-language learning. He concludes by musing on the possible and fantastical devastation on language-ability wrought by strokes
Learning the Alphabet
Я начал изучать русский язык когда мне было сорок‐пять лет. (‘I began to study Russian language when to me was forty‐five years.’) – The opening sentence of my Russian Lessons monologue. When I sta
Lingtong the Model
We all have our favourite students. I usually fall for the contrary sorts – the ones who don't believe me, the ones who don't try to please me, the ones who make me work harder, the ones who make m
Getting to Know Marvin Mudrick
Defects 101
An English professor at a community college in New York City argues, by analogy with contentions made by the neurologist Oliver Sacks about some of his patients, that the testing his university system uses to evaluate his students' writing is only good at exposing deficiencies, not strengths; he claims that students write under constraints that no professor or professional writer would accept. He concludes that it is less important for his studen…
Shto eta ? – learning Russian, teaching English
A further tale of language and education in New York City
Further tales from New York City
Life in the classroom
Tarzan of the Russians
Life among the language bugs. Further tales from New York City
Advice on a rough draft
The author discusses a scene from Dickens's The Pickwick papers wherein the novelist describes and dramatises an inexperienced but earnest and determined young man writing a Valentine's letter under the tutelage of a confident yet incompetent tutor, his father. The author, presenting Dickens's marvellous comic scene, compares Sam Weller's difficulties and satisfactions, as well as his weary trailing off, to those of the author's students at a com…
Some notes on teaching myself Russian
A teacher of EFL takes up RFL, and all on his own
Putting themselves together
The author describes a semester teaching basic composition to a class of New York City women college students on public assistance. His narrative dramatizes how the students write in powerful and impressive ways on a variety of themes and have original and interesting responses to the short stories they read and to a guest author they meet
Shoes on the streets and byways of New York
The author describes his experiences helping to teach a writing workshop for the patrons of a Manhattan soup kitchen. The participants are, he learns, less migratory in some ways than he and the other teachers, yet they all share ideals about the Big Apple as well as experiences on the streets of New York City. The author quotes with permission from the participants' writings and presents the classroom routines by recreating one of the typical me…
I fall to musing
This is a narrative of the author reading—with his students in a remedial English class at a community college in Brooklyn, New York—a story by Leo Tolstoy about a shoemaker's awakening through reading. As it recounts the students' reactions and the instructor's remarks, it quotes the story ‘Where Love Is, There God Is Also’ piece by piece. For the instructor, Tolstoy's story is problematic, for the story is patently religious (and his students a…
The Soup Kitchen Writing Workshop
A tale from the streets of New York. In the main story I focus on two people in particular as an example of the ways in which a writer's workshop helped awaken me to the lives outside the workshop of the participants
Death Sentences
more tales from a new york writing class. the axe split two ways: half of us against the death penalty, half for it. this i found out by asking the remedial writing-and-reading class to explain on paper how and when they arrived at their current opinion on capital punishment. with most of the students being from overseas, i thought it was important for each to explain his or her culture's or religion's or country's views on the death penalty. the…
On my heels
The fall of 2001 was the worst semester I've had as a community college teacher. I work in New York City, albeit the far reaches of Brooklyn, but 9/11 was our second day of class, and we never real
Talk shows
The third in a series of true tales from a city university following on from ‘The jockey and his horse’ in ET 75 (Jul 03) and ‘Shame’ in ET 76 (Oct 03)
So what's in a book
Three linguistical tales from New York
The jockey and his horse
It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate-street, by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct othe…
The Rewards of Teaching 1
Around the World with The Odyssey
No prominent works on this page.
Oedipus, Still the King
Hercules for Young Readers
The jockey and his horse
It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Aldersgate-street, by youth between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these stories should consider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of his horse. Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct othe…
The Rewards of Teaching 1
Around the World with The Odyssey
Shame
Neville thought of showing Kate's letter to Miss Mellerby, but when he read it a second time he made up his mind that he would keep it to himself. The letter was all very well, and as regarded the expressions towards himself, just what it should be. But he felt that it was not such a letter as Miss Mellerby would have written herself... He was a little ashamed of his Kate, and he thought that Miss Mellerby might perceive her ignorance if he shewe…
On my heels
The fall of 2001 was the worst semester I've had as a community college teacher. I work in New York City, albeit the far reaches of Brooklyn, but 9/11 was our second day of class, and we never real
Talk shows
The third in a series of true tales from a city university following on from ‘The jockey and his horse’ in ET 75 (Jul 03) and ‘Shame’ in ET 76 (Oct 03)
So what's in a book
Three linguistical tales from New York
Putting themselves together
The author describes a semester teaching basic composition to a class of New York City women college students on public assistance. His narrative dramatizes how the students write in powerful and impressive ways on a variety of themes and have original and interesting responses to the short stories they read and to a guest author they meet
Shoes on the streets and byways of New York
The author describes his experiences helping to teach a writing workshop for the patrons of a Manhattan soup kitchen. The participants are, he learns, less migratory in some ways than he and the other teachers, yet they all share ideals about the Big Apple as well as experiences on the streets of New York City. The author quotes with permission from the participants' writings and presents the classroom routines by recreating one of the typical me…
I fall to musing
This is a narrative of the author reading—with his students in a remedial English class at a community college in Brooklyn, New York—a story by Leo Tolstoy about a shoemaker's awakening through reading. As it recounts the students' reactions and the instructor's remarks, it quotes the story ‘Where Love Is, There God Is Also’ piece by piece. For the instructor, Tolstoy's story is problematic, for the story is patently religious (and his students a…
The Soup Kitchen Writing Workshop
A tale from the streets of New York. In the main story I focus on two people in particular as an example of the ways in which a writer's workshop helped awaken me to the lives outside the workshop of the participants
Death Sentences
more tales from a new york writing class. the axe split two ways: half of us against the death penalty, half for it. this i found out by asking the remedial writing-and-reading class to explain on paper how and when they arrived at their current opinion on capital punishment. with most of the students being from overseas, i thought it was important for each to explain his or her culture's or religion's or country's views on the death penalty. the…
Advice on a rough draft
The author discusses a scene from Dickens's The Pickwick papers wherein the novelist describes and dramatises an inexperienced but earnest and determined young man writing a Valentine's letter under the tutelage of a confident yet incompetent tutor, his father. The author, presenting Dickens's marvellous comic scene, compares Sam Weller's difficulties and satisfactions, as well as his weary trailing off, to those of the author's students at a com…
Some notes on teaching myself Russian
A teacher of EFL takes up RFL, and all on his own
Defects 101
An English professor at a community college in New York City argues, by analogy with contentions made by the neurologist Oliver Sacks about some of his patients, that the testing his university system uses to evaluate his students' writing is only good at exposing deficiencies, not strengths; he claims that students write under constraints that no professor or professional writer would accept. He concludes that it is less important for his studen…
Shto eta ? – learning Russian, teaching English
A further tale of language and education in New York City
Further tales from New York City
Life in the classroom
Tarzan of the Russians
Life among the language bugs. Further tales from New York City
Lingtong the Model
We all have our favourite students. I usually fall for the contrary sorts – the ones who don't believe me, the ones who don't try to please me, the ones who make me work harder, the ones who make m
Getting to Know Marvin Mudrick
Learning the Alphabet
Я начал изучать русский язык когда мне было сорок‐пять лет. (‘I began to study Russian language when to me was forty‐five years.’) – The opening sentence of my Russian Lessons monologue. When I sta
Writing Someone Else's Diary
I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine. (Oscar Wilde [5 October 1
A Stroke of Language
The author reflects on foreign-language learning by his EFL students as well as his own foreign-language learning. He concludes by musing on the possible and fantastical devastation on language-ability wrought by strokes
Psychology (20 works) · Art (15 works) · History (14 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Linguistics (11 works) · Literature (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Mathematics education (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (6 works)