Deep observation, hands-on exploration, and genuine enthusiasm

Five Rows of Sunglasses by Wayne Thiedbaud link

I fed Claude the appreciation for Wayne Thiedbaud (my post from yesterday) and asked if it could give me advice about teaching English.

Wayne Thiebaud's teaching philosophy offers wonderful insights that can translate beautifully to English instruction. His approach centered on deep observation, hands-on exploration, and genuine enthusiasm - all powerful tools for any educator.

Cultivate infectious enthusiasm for your subject. Thiebaud's joy in looking at art was contagious and fundamental to his teaching. In English, let your genuine love for literature, language, and storytelling shine through. When you discuss a particularly beautiful sentence or a powerful metaphor, let students see your excitement. This enthusiasm becomes the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Encourage "copying" from masters. Just as Thiebaud had students copy masterworks to understand painting techniques viscerally, you might have students imitate the sentence structures of authors they admire. Have them write a paragraph in Hemingway's spare style, then try Virginia Woolf's flowing consciousness. They're not plagiarizing content but learning the mechanics of great writing from the inside out.

Make the invisible visible through close observation. Thiebaud taught students to see the full spectrum of colors in what appeared monochromatic. Similarly, you can train students to notice the layers of meaning in seemingly simple texts. Take a short poem or paragraph and spend real time discovering all the techniques at work - not just the obvious metaphors, but the rhythm, the sound patterns, the subtle word choices that create mood.

Use concrete, hands-on projects that blend memory and invention. Thiebaud's shoebox dioramas combined observation with creativity. You might have students create "story boxes" - physical representations of scenes from literature using everyday objects, forcing them to think deeply about setting, symbolism, and mood. Or have them write "memory pieces" where they start with a real experience but allow imagination to reshape it, understanding how fiction often works.

Create an inviting, curiosity-rich environment. Thiebaud's office was filled with interesting objects that sparked conversation and wonder. Fill your classroom with intriguing books, artwork, unusual objects, or thought-provoking quotes. These become natural conversation starters and demonstrate that learning happens everywhere, not just in formal lessons.

Focus on building literacy through discussion. Before critiquing student work, Thiebaud would discuss three different artworks, teaching visual literacy through conversation. You might begin classes by examining three different texts - perhaps a poem, a news article, and a song lyric - discussing what each communicates and how. This builds analytical skills while showing that meaningful expression takes many forms.

The key is Thiebaud's underlying belief that successful art "defined its own criteria for interpretation." Help students understand that great writing creates its own rules and effects, and that understanding comes through patient observation, enthusiastic exploration, and genuine engagement with the work itself.

I provide more detail fro Thiebaud and ask Claude for more info:

What a brilliant framework for an AP Lit class! The idea of art history as a "vast well of ideas" and "allies over the centuries" is particularly powerful for literature students who often feel intimidated by the canon. Let me help you develop this copying practice into a structured, daily routine.

The Literary Sketchbook Concept

Think of this as building a writer's toolkit through apprenticeship. Just as Thiebaud learned brushstrokes and color relationships through copying, your students will internalize sentence rhythms, narrative techniques, and stylistic choices. The sketchbook becomes their personal library of "moves" they can draw upon.

Daily Practice Structure

Each day, students encounter a short passage (2-4 sentences typically) from a master writer. They don't just read it - they copy it by hand first, then experiment with it. This handwriting component is crucial; it slows them down and makes them feel the actual construction of the sentences in a physical way.

The Three Types of Copying in Literary Context

Overt copying would be the most direct - students reproduce the exact sentence structure but with their own content. If Hemingway writes "The sun rose over the mountains, casting long shadows across the valley," students might write "The bell rang through the hallway, sending nervous energy through the crowd." They're learning syntax, rhythm, and the relationship between sentence structure and meaning.

Covert copying involves taking the underlying technique or approach without the obvious structural mimicry. Maybe they're studying how Toni Morrison uses fragments for emotional impact, or how James Baldwin builds momentum through repetition. Students practice these techniques in their own writing without copying the specific sentence patterns.

Intuitive transformation happens when students have internalized enough techniques that they begin naturally blending and adapting what they've learned. They might combine Morrison's fragments with Hemingway's restraint, creating something new but rooted in their studies.

Building the Sketchbook Over Time

Week 1-2: Focus purely on overt copying. Students hand-copy passages, then create their own versions using identical structures. They begin to notice how different authors handle similar situations - dialogue, description, transitions.

Week 3-4: Add covert copying. Now they're identifying techniques (like how Virginia Woolf uses parenthetical thoughts, or how Ocean Vuong layers images) and practicing them in different contexts.

Ongoing: Students begin creating "combination exercises" - taking a technique from one author and applying it to subject matter that reminds them of another. This builds toward intuitive transformation.

Practical Daily Structure

Monday: Sentence Architecture - Focus on syntax and structure Wednesday: Voice and Tone - How authors create personality through word choice Friday: Technique Spotlight - Specific literary devices in action

Students spend 5-10 minutes copying, then 5-10 minutes experimenting. Quick, low-stakes, but consistent.

Building Their "Allies"

As students work through different authors, they begin to identify which writers feel like natural allies for their own expression. Some might gravitate toward Baldwin's moral urgency, others toward Didion's precise observation. The sketchbook becomes a record of these discoveries.

Connection to AP Lit Analysis

This practice builds exactly the skills they need for AP analysis - recognizing how authors achieve specific effects through concrete choices. When they encounter a passage on the exam asking how an author creates tension, they'll have a vocabulary of techniques they've actually practiced.

Would you like me to elaborate on any of these elements? I'm particularly interested in how you might structure the progression through the year, or how you'd help students identify which techniques are most worth practicing.

I provide more details about copying and ask Claude to try again:

This interview adds such rich nuance to the copying concept! It actually strengthens and refines my suggestions in important ways. The key insight here is that copying isn't just about technique - it's about building relationships with literary ancestors and learning to see deeper connections across time and form.

Refined Understanding of the Three Types

Overt theft is now clearer as deliberate homage where the connection is meant to be visible. In literary terms, this might be students writing a clear response to a famous opening line, or consciously echoing a well-known structure. They're announcing their debt and placing themselves in conversation with the original.

Covert theft is the most sophisticated - taking the emotional core or thematic essence while completely changing the surface details. This is where students might capture the loneliness of a Hemingway scene but set it in a modern high school cafeteria, or channel the anxiety of a Kafka piece through social media interactions. The mood, the underlying human experience, remains constant while everything else transforms.

Intuitive transformation involves recognizing unexpected formal or conceptual connections. Students might notice that the way Dickinson uses dashes creates the same kind of suspension as Faulkner's endless sentences, or that a TikTok video's quick cuts mirror the fragmented consciousness in a modernist poem.

Implications for Your Daily Practice

This changes how I'd structure the progression. Rather than moving linearly from overt to covert to intuitive, students need to develop the ability to see multiple layers simultaneously:

Daily Exercise Evolution:

• Students still copy the passage by hand
• But now they ask: "What is this really about at its emotional core?" (preparing for covert theft)
• And: "What formal elements make this work?" (building toward intuitive transformation)
• Their experiments might include all three types in response to a single passage

The "Allies Across Centuries" Element

The interview's emphasis on acknowledging debt and declaring studentship is crucial for AP Lit students who often feel they need to have completely original insights. Instead, you're teaching them that great literature is always in conversation with what came before. Their analyses become stronger when they can trace these connections.

Practical Application:

When students encounter a passage on the AP exam, they're not just identifying techniques in isolation - they're recognizing how this author is participating in literary conversations that span centuries. A student who has practiced covert theft with loneliness themes across different authors will better understand how contemporary writers are updating classical concerns.

Building the Sketchbook with New Understanding:

The sketchbook becomes a record of literary genealogies. Students don't just collect techniques - they collect relationships. They might notice that three different authors from different eras all handle betrayal through similar imagery patterns, or that the formal strategy they practiced with one poet appears in unexpected places.

This approach transforms copying from mere mimicry into what Thiebaud calls being "a student of these great artists" - entering into apprenticeship with the tradition itself. Your students become part of that continuing conversation rather than outsiders trying to decode it.

The daily practice now serves not just skill-building but identity formation as literary citizens who belong to this great ongoing discussion.

I love this structure! Let me create a detailed two-week sequence that shows how this could work. I think the mentor texts should weave into your main curriculum - they become the foundation that makes deeper analysis possible, rather than running parallel.This structure creates a beautiful rhythm where students build technical skills Monday/Tuesday/Thursday that directly support deeper analysis of major texts. The Wednesday art analysis days strengthen their observational muscles in a different medium, making them better readers of both visual and verbal texts.

The key insight from the Thiebaud interview - that copying creates relationships with artistic ancestors - means these aren't just exercises but apprenticeships. Students develop personal connections with authors' techniques, so when they encounter those writers in major works, they're meeting old friends rather than intimidating strangers.

By the time students write formal essays on Fridays, they have a vocabulary of moves they've actually practiced. Instead of saying "Fitzgerald uses metaphor," they can write with understanding: "Fitzgerald builds his metaphor through accumulating rhythm, the way time itself accumulates weight" - because they've felt that rhythm in their own hands.

Would you like me to develop any particular aspect further? I'm especially curious about how you might structure the progression through the year, or how students might begin to identify their own "literary allies" as they work through different authors.

Literary Sketchbook: Two-Week Lesson Sequence

Building Literary Allies Through Daily Practice

Week 1: Introduction to Literary Copying

Monday - Overt Theft: Learning Sentence Architecture

Mentor Text: Opening of The Stranger by Camus

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure."

Sketchbook Exercise (8-10 minutes):

1. Hand-copy the sentences (2 minutes)
2. Notice: Ultra-short sentences, uncertainty, emotional flatness
3. Create your own version using identical structure:
   • "School ended today. Or maybe tomorrow; I can't tell."
   • "The game finished yesterday. Or was it today; time blurs together."

Class Connection: If you're teaching about unreliable narrators or existential themes, this becomes a foundational example. Students have now felt how Camus creates alienation through syntax.

Tuesday - Covert Theft: Capturing Emotional Essence

Mentor Text: From Beloved by Toni Morrison

"124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom."

Sketchbook Exercise:

1. Hand-copy, feeling the personification and compressed anger
2. Identify the emotional core: a place haunted by unresolved pain
3. Transform to modern setting, keeping the emotional truth:
   • "The locker room was bitter. Heavy with last season's defeats."
   • "Her Instagram was poisonous. Thick with yesterday's rejections."

Class Connection: This prepares students to see how Morrison uses personification and compression throughout the novel. They've practiced the technique before analyzing it.

Wednesday - Art Analysis Day

Artwork: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks Writing Prompt: Spend 10 minutes describing only what you see. Then spend 5 minutes writing about what feeling or mood the painting creates. What specific visual elements create that mood?

Connection: This builds the same observational skills they're using with text - seeing surface details, then deeper patterns and effects.

Thursday - Intuitive Transformation: Finding Unexpected Connections

Mentor Text: From The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Sketchbook Exercise:

1. Hand-copy, feeling the rhythm and metaphor
2. Notice: The way struggle and futility are built into the sentence rhythm itself
3. Find a completely different context that has the same formal quality:
   • Swimming upstream, scrolling through old photos endlessly
   • Walking up the down escalator of memory

Class Connection: When you later analyze Fitzgerald's use of water imagery throughout the novel, students will already understand viscerally how he builds meaning through rhythm and metaphor.

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Week 2: Deepening the Practice

Monday - Overt Theft: Voice and Tone

Mentor Text: From Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

"That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, counted and could not be taken back."

Sketchbook Exercise:

1. Hand-copy this long, accumulating sentence
2. Notice: How the sentence structure mirrors the weight of realization
3. Create your own "realization" sentence with the same building, comma-heavy structure:
   • "That was the semester, my junior year, when I was learning that not all friendships survive distance, that some silences are permanent and that it had mattered after all, every missed call and every delayed response, mattered and could not be undone."

Class Connection: Perfect preparation for analyzing Didion's essay style or any author who uses syntax to mirror content.

Tuesday - Covert Theft: Power Dynamics

Mentor Text: From Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

"I am an invisible man. No, I don't mean a spook or a ghost. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind."

Sketchbook Exercise:

1. Hand-copy, feeling the dignified assertion after denial
2. Identify emotional core: claiming humanity in the face of dehumanization
3. Transform to different power dynamic, keeping the essential movement:
   • "I am a thinking person. No, I don't mean just a student or a grade. I am a person with ideas, with questions, hopes and fears—and I might even be said to have something worth saying."

Wednesday - Art Analysis Day

Artwork: Kara Walker's silhouette installations Writing Prompt: What do you see in terms of shapes, composition, scale? Then: How does the artist use contrast (light/dark, size, positioning) to create meaning? What story is being told through visual elements alone?

Thursday - Intuitive Transformation: Layering Time

Mentor Text: From Beloved by Toni Morrison

"Time folded back on itself like origami."

Sketchbook Exercise:

1. Hand-copy, feeling how the metaphor enacts what it describes
2. Notice: How the image makes abstract time concrete and visual
3. Find your own way to make time physical:
   • "Memory stacked like old photographs, edges curling"
   • "The past dripped like honey, slow and inevitable"

Class Connection: This prepares students for Morrison's complex treatment of time throughout the novel, having practiced thinking metaphorically about temporal relationships.

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How This Builds Over Time

Week 3+: Students begin creating "combination exercises" - taking Morrison's time metaphors and applying them to Gatsby's themes, or using Didion's syntax to explore Ellison's concepts.

Integration with Main Curriculum: Rather than separate activities, these become the foundation stones. When you teach The Great Gatsby, students have already practiced Fitzgerald's rhythmic techniques. When analyzing Beloved, they've experimented with Morrison's metaphorical thinking.

Assessment: The sketchbook becomes a portfolio of techniques they can draw upon in formal essays. Instead of generic literary analysis, they write with an understanding of how authors actually create effects - because they've tried it themselves.

The "Allies" Effect: By semester's end, students have a personal relationship with dozens of authors' techniques. Literature stops feeling like a puzzle to decode and becomes a conversation they're prepared to join.

The "literary allies" concept is one of the most powerful aspects of this approach - it transforms students from outsiders analyzing literature to apprentices joining a tradition.

What Are Literary Allies?

Literary allies are authors whose techniques, voices, or approaches feel naturally compatible with a student's own emerging voice and interests. Just as Thiebaud found allies in Degas and Watteau who helped him express what he wanted to express, students discover writers who give them tools for their own thinking and expression.

This isn't about favorite authors or books they enjoy reading. It's more specific - it's about recognizing "I think the way this author thinks" or "This writer has a tool I need." A student might love reading Stephen King but find that Toni Morrison's way of handling time gives them language for their own experiences with memory. Morrison becomes an ally; King remains a pleasure.

How Students Discover Their Allies

Through the daily copying practice, students begin to notice which techniques feel natural in their hands. Some will gravitate toward Hemingway's restraint because it matches their own personality. Others will find that Baldwin's moral urgency helps them express their own convictions. Still others might discover that Didion's precise observation gives them a way to capture what they see but couldn't articulate.

The sketchbook becomes a record of these discoveries. Students might note: "Morrison's fragments work for me when I'm writing about confusion" or "I keep coming back to Fitzgerald's rhythm when I want to show something building up."

Building Relationships Across Time

The most profound aspect is that students begin to see literature as an ongoing conversation they can join. They're not just analyzing what dead authors did - they're learning from living mentors who happen to have died. A student might think, "How would Baldwin handle this topic?" or "What would Didion notice here that I'm missing?"

This creates what I'd call "literary citizenship" - students see themselves as part of the tradition rather than outside it.

Finished Pieces vs. Sketchbook

I think you want both, but with a clear progression:

The Sketchbook (Daily Practice):

• Low stakes, experimental
• Quick attempts, multiple tries
• Building vocabulary of techniques
• Discovering what works for each student
• Raw material and practice space

Finished Pieces (Periodic):

• Students choose their most successful experiments to develop
• Maybe once every two weeks, they take a sketchbook exercise and expand it into a complete piece
• This is where they consciously deploy their "allies" - using Morrison's time techniques in service of their own story, or applying Didion's observational method to their own experience

The Portfolio Effect: By year's end, students have:

1. A thick sketchbook showing their experimentation with dozens of techniques
2. A collection of finished pieces where they've consciously used their literary allies
3. Most importantly: confidence that they belong in literary conversations

Practical Structure:

• 3 days/week: sketchbook work
• Every other week: "Craft a Piece" day where students develop a sketchbook experiment into something finished
• End of each unit: "Allies Reflection" where students identify which techniques from that unit feel like natural tools for their own work

Assessment Implications: When students write formal literary analysis, they're no longer outsiders trying to decode mysterious techniques. They're practitioners who understand from the inside how authors create effects. Their essays become more sophisticated because they write from experience: "Morrison uses fragments not just for emphasis but to mirror the way traumatic memory actually works - I know this because when I tried her technique to write about my own difficult experience, the fragments captured something whole sentences couldn't."

The ultimate goal is students who see themselves as inheritors and continuers of literary tradition, not just consumers of it. They develop what you might call "craft confidence" - the knowledge that they have tools and allies to help them express whatever they need to express.

Does this vision align with what you're imagining? I'm particularly interested in how you might structure those periodic "finished piece" days, and how students might track their evolving sense of which authors feel like natural allies.