Pedagogy of Chautauqua: “Round the Campfire” Conversations about Irving’s Tour on the Prairies

This log has camped out near my office for the past week. (And yes, that’s Washington Irving decor in my office.) Photo by Tracy Hoffman

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

My Washington Irving class completed our reading of A Tour on the Prairies today. If some of you were working through the text along with us, congratulations! We made it to Chapter 35.

I would like to thank Cheryl Weaver for crafting two wonderful blogs during the Halloween season while teaching “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” She gave me a few weeks to catch up, and it was better to hear about “Sleepy Hollow” during October than Irving’s buffalo hunt. Thank you, Cheryl. You’re awesome!

In the next few weeks, I’ll try to touch on themes my class discussed on our adventure through Oklahoma Territory with Washington Irving, but for today, I want to focus on one overall idea we used in the classroom–chautauqua.

The class concluded our study with a Zoom chat featuring Dr. John Dennis Anderson, who performs as Washington Irving. Another special thanks goes out to John for spending time with us today. Thank you! Thank you! John told the class how fortunate they were to have Dr. Hoffman as their instructor, and I reminded them of how lucky they were to have John Anderson join them for a conversation.

Awhile back, after having my class watch John’s performance on YouTube, I decided to experiment with chautauqua in the classroom. As I told John later, he makes it look easy, but it’s not that easy. Despite the challenges, the experience was still a fun classroom experiment. I would highly recommend teachers of literature apply such a technique to their teaching repertoire.

At the beginning of our journey through Irving’s book, I assigned each student one of the following characters or people groups. Their goal was to focus on these folks during the readings and be prepared to report on the assigned characters for upcoming reading quizzes:

  1. Washington Irving, the narrator
  2. Swiss Count (Albert-Alexandre de Pourtalés)
  3. Mr. L (Charles Latrobe)
  4. Commissioner/Rangers
  5. Tribes
  6. Settlers
  7. Antoine (not Tonish)
  8. Tonish (Antoine)
  9. Pierre Beatte

I’ve done this sort of thing before, most often when I teach Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club. Following one of the four mothers or one of the four daughters works great for keeping up with the very detailed reading. Anyhow, beyond a close reading of characters, I added a chautauqua component.

Instead of giving students a quiz at the beginning of class to check their reading, I gave the quiz at the end of class, after we had chatted about the reading, from each character’s vantage point. It was uncomfortable at first, but I forced everybody to do their best to get into character, to have a conversation as if your characters were sharing “round the campfire,” like Irving and his companions spend their evenings on the prairies talking about the day’s events.

For a performance, John Anderson typically appears in character for the greater portion of his time and then steps out of character for the final part. However, my students and I were not able to stay in character for long. We found ourselves wanting to step aside and add commentary and ask questions, so we simply modified the process to flow in and out of character as needed.

For three classes, we followed a chautauqua-style conversation, which forced students to move their chairs, get out of the regular rows, and face me and each other. This shook a few of my “back row Baptist” students into a more significant role in the conversation. I really enjoyed hearing these students open up, and I hope they enjoyed playing a greater role in our chats.

For three classes in a row, I added to our makeshift “campfire.” At first, it was only an old Baylor popcorn can with construction-paper cut into flame-shaped shards of red, yellow, and brown.  I’ve heard tissue paper works better, but I didn’t have any of that on hand.

On Wednesday of last week, I exited my car, after arriving on campus, and immediately spotted a nice log—a branch which had obviously fallen during recent storms. I carefully lugged it to my office, where it sat in the hallway until class time. One of my colleagues passed by my office that day and said, “I like your log,” and kept walking.

One of my friends over the weekend said we needed smores, but I said no, since Irving had zero smores on the prairies. He did, however, have brown sugar with his black coffee. I scrounged up a canister of Folgers from the faculty lounge, but my personal coffee maker needed cleaning before sharing it with students. Next time I teach the book, I’ll be sure to reenact all the coffee drinking, which I appreciate.

My students told me we needed rocks to properly set up a campfire, so I “borrowed” a bag full of rocks from a lovely flower bed. (Hopefully, my HOA didn’t notice my digging in the flower beds on the security camera.) My students weren’t fans of the rocks I gathered, since they weren’t big enough to enclose a real campfire. Again, I have goals for the next time I teach the book.

It’s getting late, and I still need to return the rocks to their proper home, so I’ll stop for now. I’ll catch you next week for more debriefing about Irving’s Tour on the Prairies. Until then, you can check out one of John’s performances: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXCoEwa2dqk

Published in: on November 12, 2025 at 8:10 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Teaching “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in the High School Classroom

2025 Halloween photo of myself as Ichabod Crane with the AP U.S. History teacher as the Headless Horseman

November 5, 2025

BY CHERYL WEAVER

“Irving is really haunting the text!”
—11th-grade student after class

I was initially uncertain about how to teach this text. Irving’s work had never appeared in any anthologies my district provided, and I hadn’t encountered Irving—at least in my memory (a Rip Van Winkle moment?)—until graduate school. I developed three main instructional objectives:

  • Thematic: The story serves as part of the narrative of a new nation, emphasizing identity as beyond the individual and situated within societal constructs.
  • Comprehension: Focus on Irving’s detailed descriptions of characters and settings, helping students understand why he invested so heavily in these descriptions.
  • Vocabulary: After reviewing the story, I identified a few words that might require additional support for my students.

Here’s an overview of the short plan I developed, incorporating various activities:

Day 1: Students were tired from taking the PSAT in the morning, so to introduce the story, I showed the 1949 Disney adaptation. We used a short worksheet to explore questions about the post-WW2 context and what this adaptation reveals about the United States at that time.

Days 2-4: I gave a brief PowerPoint presentation on Irving and began reading the story with the students. Using an “I do, we do, you do” approach, I read and annotated the text on the first day, having students note brief subtopics for each paragraph. This helped them practice organizing their writing. On the second day, we annotated together, and on the third day, students read and annotated a section individually. We concluded with a 20-question multiple-choice assessment to gauge their understanding and identify areas needing review.

On the last day, Halloween, I read the story’s conclusion dressed as Ichabod Crane. To strengthen cross-curricular connections, this unit aligned with the students’ AP U.S. History studies; their history teacher dressed as the Headless Horseman!

To further engage students and assess their understanding of the text’s connections, we started two class days with a game I designed. Topics included natural imagery, real and fictional characters, settings, and vocabulary, specifically focusing on last names and the term “cognomen” from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

Overall, students enjoyed the unit and made insightful connections between Irving’s role in crafting history and identity for the newly formed nation. One student remarked, “Irving is really haunting the text!”

Now, I’m beginning to introduce “Rip Van Winkle,” aiming for a culminating project where students can choose between a creative writing option, a traditional analysis essay, or a visual design incorporating elements of Irving’s story and themes.

I eagerly anticipate sharing my students’ creations with you!

Published in: on November 5, 2025 at 7:23 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Diedrich Knickerbocker: “affronted at being taken for a school-master”

AI-generated image created in WordPress

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

I’m writing this blog, or starting this blog—in my garage, right before pulling away for the two-hour commute to Baylor. I’ll pick up the writing again at red lights, and then finish up at some point this evening after my classes finish at 5:15.

Yesterday, I had high hopes of getting ahead of this Washington Irving Wednesday. But alas! It was 90 degrees in my office, up five degrees from the usual setting. After chatting with a student around 5 p.m., I put a “gone fishing” sign on the door, packed my bags, and headed home—to work. But alas! Yet again, it wasn’t meant to be.

After cruising the I-35 corridor for about 45 minutes, the freeway was shut down by some reason I never discovered, perhaps an accident or a construction-related matter. Anyhow, I graded two batches of quizzes while stopped, and I also learned through texts and phone calls my sister was in the hospital. After the 30-minute delay of sitting on the freeway, and after visiting my sister at the hospital, who will hopefully be home soon, it was 9:15 by the time I finally got home. I needed a shower after sweating through my clothes at the office and after collecting a variety of germs at the hospital. I needed dinner. I needed to work on my blog. But sadly, no work was done.

Fortunately, though, storms woke me around 4 a.m., so I went ahead and got up for coffee and Washington Irving. I decided to read the texts I had assigned from The Sketch Book: “The Wife,” “A Broken Heart,” “Account of the Author,” and “To the Public.” It’s Sentimental Irving Day in my Washington Irving class, and I was ready to chat about our occasionally sentimental “man of letters.”

On Monday, our class tackled satire and persona as I guided them through pedagogy genre. After sharing definitions for satire and persona, we created Billy Bob “Bubba” Cowboy Jones to tell our satirical History of Texas. Personally, I think Cowboys owner Jerry Jones should be honored that Gen Z students think him comparable to Diedrich Knickerbocker. Perhaps one day we’ll have a Texas team called the Jerrys or the Joneses, like New Yorkers have Knickerbockers.

In our conversations about Diedrich Knickerbocker, the passages comparing him to a teacher jumped out to me. For instance, Seth Handaside in the “Account of the Author“ first describes Knickerbocker as: “a small brisk looking old gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few grey hairs plaited and clubbed behind, and his beard seemed to be of some four and twenty hairs growth. The only piece of finery which he bore about him, was a bright pair of square silver shoe buckles, and all his baggage was contained in a pair of saddle bags which he carried under his arm. His whole appearance was something out of the common run, and my wife, who is a very shrewd body, at once set him down for some eminent country school-master” (373).

The first description we ever see of Diedrich Knickerbocker suggests a teacher. We learn five paragraphs later, in an effort to help Knickerbocker pay his bills, Mrs. Handaside suggests he “teach the children their letters” while she offers “to try her best and get the neighbours to send their children also” (375). However, Knickerbocker “took it in such dudgeon, and seemed so affronted at being taken for a school-master, that she never dared speak on the subject again” (375).*

In class, we spent a little time comparing Diedrich Knickerbocker to Ichabod Crane, and as I’m digging into genre pedagogy and new ways of considering Ichabod, this comparison seems worth pursuing. We watched film clips of both Ichabod and Diedrich, and Irving clearly overlaps physical qualities and character descriptions.

Today, we built upon our conversation from Monday about persona and satire, by adding a sentimental spin to our recent development, Billy Bob “Bubba” Cowboy Jones. We decided his lady should be a New Yorker, so we went with Eugenia, since that’s the name of Jerry Jones’ wife. Bubba falls for Eugenia Knickerbocker, an outsider visiting Texas. She is bitten by a rattlesnake and smitten by Bubba, when he rescues her from the rattler’s venom.

My students also spun yarns about their own research projects, and I look forward to sharing their ARGs (alternative reality games) with you, later this semester.

As this semester progresses, please know we have much going on behind the scenes, beyond my daily angst with commutes and temperature. Cheryl Weaver, who teaches in New York, is working with me on Washington Irving Wednesdays as an unofficial secretary to the Washington Irving Society. Of course, we’ll make it official when we vote for officers at our next 2026 business meeting in Chicago. Cheryl and I met in Boston at the 2025 ALA conference.

Along with Vice-President Sean Keck, Cheryl and I will be putting together our 2026 call for papers. You can probably guess we plan to have two panels on teaching Washington Irving, tentatively titled Pedagogy and Washington Irving Panel One and Pedagogy and Washington Irving Panel Two.

Please watch for the CFPs and also some blogs from Cheryl.

This is Tracy Hoffman, president of the Washington Irving society, signing off until next Wednesday.

Mug Shot

*Irving, Washington. History, Tales and Sketches. Library of America. 1983.

Published in: on September 24, 2025 at 8:19 pm  Leave a Comment  
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