In any semester you--it's a trajectory 
of you're starting here and you,
you're starting where the students are also
and you hope to take them
where you want them to be. 
So we're about week four, 
week five now in the semester,
and the first several weeks were building
understanding of the concepts.
I chose the lesson on "dude" because
I think it's something that students are
familiar with. It's something that
if they don't use themselves
they know somebody who does. 
-This is interesting in that how
this creates, you know, this word
use is indexing a particular type of masculinity.
I think it really allowed students to
think critically about the language that they use
and that their peers use, 
and they were able to take
this instance of "dude" that maybe is not
so widespread, maybe not so popular anymore,
but you hear students talking about, like,
what are substitute words
for that, and what are different words
that different groups are using,
and how people claiming their social identity. 
Wow. If we can get people to think about these
abstract concepts, I mean, 
then they can start to understand
where problems lie. Right? If they can
understand the problems
in society in terms of the practices
that lead to those problems,
and many of those problems
are expressed through language,
If we can get them to understand that, then what can't they do? It's great.
