Mark Kramer has taught narrative journalism since 1980 as writer-in-residence at Smith, BU, and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, and has founded ongoing NJ conferences in England, Holland and Norway--as well as this one in Boston. In the first part of this session he'll describe the curriculum he's worked out in nearly four decades of teaching. Discussion will follow on such topics as: how to get a running start on the semester, how to encourage intensive reading of the greats, the usefulness of modeling in class close readings of exemplary texts, how to manage site- and topic-selection for assigned reporting, why students should never write about their cousin the surgeon, what sorts of editing are instructive, what editing precepts help writers, are there words and usages we should recommend that writers should almost always omit, how to handle varied skill-levels and non-native speakers in a seminar, suggestions about what to do for a final exam.
