Funny in Farsi - 2009 First-Year Common Reading Experience

Florida International University has long realized that the first few weeks of college, the first semester, the first year, provide an essential foundation upon which our students build success and establish the patterns and behaviors that will see them through to a timely graduation.  To that end we provide a meaningful orientation experience, required academic advising, a First-year Interest Groups (FIGs) program that reaches over half of our new students, and a first-year seminar that is a required component of the University Core Curriculum.

The first-year seminar course, SLS 1501, helps students make the transition to a new learning environment, and this year it became the home to our pilot common-reading program, which we "test drove" at BBC last year with Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory.  This year's book, a memoir written by the Iranian writer Firoozeh Dumas, is Funny in Farsi, which not only is a propitiously timely choice, given the prominence of Iran in the international news, but it works exceptionally well with our particular student population, many of whom know first-hand the difficulties encountered when trying to understand the nuances of a new language and a new culture. 

In one instructor's class, several students noted that they identified with Dumas's having to translate for her mother, as they, too, translated for parents in a variety of settings, many of which now seem comical for a small child to be mouthing the words of adults.  Students who themselves are immigrants observed similar experiences as those of Dumas, simple things like finding the bread of "home" or realizing all too late that their diet in American had quietly put many unwanted pounds on them.   
SLS instructors using the common reading this summer all agree that student engagement is on a high level, and the essays they wrote, for many their first university-level assignment, made for wonderfully insightful reading into their deep lives.

In addition to the particular learning connections of these two books, our common-reading program hopes to model intellectual engagement and introduce students to the world of the mind;  create a sense of community, especially important as students settle down in a major urban research institution with over 30,000 undergraduates; encourage reading and textual exploration; provide students an opportunity to understand diverse perspectives; and promoting self-reflection on the transition to college.

During the month of October, we were quite thrilled to have Ms Dumas visit both FIU campuses to give our students and faculty the opportunity to interact with her.

If your student is a Summer B or Fall Semester freshman for the 2009 academic year, the common reading also is a opportunity for you to support your student's success by sharing the experience.  Read the book too, and discuss it.  Being the parent of a college student can have some pleasant effects.  There's probably more to talk about than you would imagine.

By: Jeffrey Knapp, Director, Academy For the Art of Teaching;
Lidia Tuttle, Associate Dean, Undergraduate Education;
Larry Lunsford, Associate Vice President of Student Affairs;
Valerie Morgan, Assistant Dean, Undergraduate Education

photo caption: 2009 Peer Advisors reading Funny in Farsi