Using Music to Teach Ethos :: Personal Narrative Teaching Essays

Using Music to Teach Ethos Introduction After teaching high school English reading and writing for four years, life led me to apply for a position teaching English at a state university. I was hired as an adjunct faculty member, but in my eyes, I was basically a utility man in the Major Leagues. The brief hour-long meeting with the adjunct coordinator was my first exposure to rhetoric and anything related to it. I knew what a rhetorical question was—don’t we all?—and I had heard people make comments such as â€Å"He might think he knows what he’s doing, but in all reality, his talk is all rhetoric.† Still, did I know how to teach this stuff to other people? On the college level? I sat down with the information the coordinator had given me and I found many helpful hints, ideas, and terms. I love terms. If I am given a list of terms, I can often use the definitions to find the common links and make the material teachable. I did an online search and found a Web site that broke down the various elements of rhetoric and included a list of terms. I was in heaven, rhetorically speaking. This first exposure to rhetoric was, I must admit, dull and dreary, much like Latin seemed to be where I used to teach. Dead languages, dead concepts—were the Ancient cultures good for anything other than art, stories, language, and great food? I decided that this seemingly dry material would have to be souped up a bit to attract college freshmen whose attention spans run between 10 and 15 minutes. Then, as Red Skelton might say, I had an apostrophe. I realized that the compositions my students write are comprised of sections, each an entity unto itself which contributes something to the overall essay. I remembered my senior year at UGA, taking â€Å"History and Analysis of Rock and Roll Music,† and the lessons we learned about the different sections of a song and how those sections are merged to create one complete unit. After reading a bit more about rhetorical appeals—ethical, logical, and emotional—I realized that the songs we listen to every day can be linked to this previously unknown, dry material.