Metacognition and the Hook

As of today, I have joined a new department at a new university, and as is often the case, the politics of the place are messy and daunting. And that was where my head was at after day one of orientation.

But as Hemingway once had one of his drunk characters say, "Never be daunted."

And in that spirit, I had a few beers, went on a dog walk, and sketched out part of the opening week in my advanced composition course.

I'm looking to get my students to break down some of the core concepts needed to talk about writing. I want them to use their experience and prior understandings to define terms like "discourse community," "genre," "rhetoric," "audience," and "metacognition."

But I won't pretend those are easy terms to define. Like any abstract concept, these terms will only take root if the denotative definition can be paired with concrete examples, right?

And that is what inspired me to start off a lecture with Blues Traveler's 1994 song, Hook.

Okay, I'll admit it; the song came up on a Spotify playlist, but it does work as a point of entry for a lesson on metacognition.

And it's fun to use a song from my freshman year of college to introduce my students to one of my course's core concepts.

Well, whatever prompted the song's use, it is shaping up to be a nice little intro to the idea of thinking about your own process.