policies ENGL301 Writing & The Teaching of Writing
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Need to be in touch with me?
LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com NOTE: All classes, student meetings, and open student hours (office hours) this semester will be held virtually via Zoom. Need to make an during a time that is not an open student hour? appointment? Let me know you want to meet by adding yourself to my google.doc appointment calendar here: https://goo.gl/3CqLf and I will send you a zoom link for the time you sign up for. |
Spring 2021 Open Hours for students (office hours):
T&R 11:00-12:30 W 11:00-12:00 F 3:00-4:00 and by appointment. Click here to attend ANY of the Open Hour for Students Zoom sessions listen above. HOW TO ATTEND ZOOM CLASS Click here to attend ENGL 301 Writing & the Teaching of Writing Click here to attend ENGL 344 Young Adult Literature Click here to attend ENGL 489 Advanced Portfolio workshop. |
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is designed to help prospective teachers develop a personal and professional sense of what they want their writing/reading classrooms to look like. To do this, the class will read and write together about current research and theory on the reading and writing process; about the reading/writing classroom, past and present; about the rules, regulations, and requirements placed upon you as teachers today; about the needs of all students as we help them become thoughtful readers and writers themselves. As we move forward with our understanding of all of this, we will remember where we all start: as students. Thus, you will examine your own personal writing/reading practices and your experience as a student as it impacts your future classroom as a teacher.
While we will explore various ways to theorize your teaching practice, my own classroom practice will identify the theories that I value. The classroom I construct will therefore reinforce particular theories of language and composition (and you should know this going in to the deal).
The experiences you will engage in this semester, are the kinds of reading and writing experiences I hope you will done day invite your own students to participate in: you will write informally and formally; you will work individually and as a group; you will present your ideas orally and in print. At the end of the semester you should have the beginnings of a set of documents that you can take with you into your professional career, and a theory/philosophy of their significance in your future classroom (that may or may not reflect what I value).
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course you will:
COURSE TEXTS
There are two text available in the bookstore for purchase (the titles are live links to the Amazon page):
Lives On the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles &
Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared
by Mike Rose
Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice & Clarity in High School Writing
by Penny Kittle
Other readings, videos, or podcasts are available on the syllabus either as a file to download or as a link. Including the .PDF of Asao Inoue's Anti-Racist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching & Assessing Writing For A Socially Just Future.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance. Our class will meet synchronously during our scheduled class time, T/R 9:30 to 10:45. While there may be some occasions when we have an asynchronous class, most classes will meet in our zoom space (see above for link). Because this is a 300 level class, I have the reasonable expectation that you want to be here and intend to come prepared to the best of your ability. I ask that you make every effort to attend as much of class as possible, and I will try to be as accommodating and reasonable as possible if you can not be in class. However, if you miss more than four classes--or two weeks of class--it will adversely affect your final grade in this class. If you miss eight classes--or a full month of class--I can not guarantee that you will pass this class.
Informal Writing and Participation. Informal writing clarifies what we are thinking about something and makes it possible for us to share those ideas with those around us. Thus, you will write informally almost every class in shared spaces like padlet and google.docs and even the zoom chat. I will take note of your contributions during class as evidence of your attendance and your preparedness for this class.
Reading Journals/Teaching Scenario Discussions Posts. In addition to the informal writing you do in class, you will also be responsible for reading journals in the form of discussion board posts. For nearly every reading we do in this class, you need to produce a reading journal. This is a 200-300 word post to our CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD that provides a brief summary of the significant points of our reading, and a brief analysis of the main argument. Be prepared to use your journal posts in class and to have other people in the class read and comment on them. More information about reading journals is available here on our class website, including information on what an acceptable journal post looks like and what you will need to do in order to earn a strong grade on this assignment. I will post the discussion board for any class directly after the class period that precedes it, giving you at least 24 hours to post. NOTE: You should probably check the CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD prompt in order to tailor your response to the prompt.
In addition, and also to be posted to the CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD on this site, we will practice responding to student writing using sample student texts. These Teaching Scenario discussions will be posted to our CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD. These posts will often happen during class with occasional out of class posts. Reading Journals/Teaching Scenario Discussion Posts make up 15% of your final grade.
Formal Writing. You will be responsible for four formal projects this semester. More information on each of these assignments is available on our class website, accessible by clicking on the title of each assignment below or as a link in the drop down menu under "ENGL 301 Writing & the Teaching. . . ". There you will find more detailed explanations of the assignment as well as all of the components of the assignment you are expected to complete in order to earn full credit and a strong grade for that assignment.
Interview with a Teacher. It's easy to have ideas about what it means to be a teacher, and a very different thing to actually teach. In this first assignment, you will be paired with a BSU alum who is currently teaching. As a class, we will devise questions designed to get at what its like to be a working professional in a classroom. You will conduct and write about what you learn and then, as a class, we will analyze these interviews for important themes about the joy and difficulty of teaching writing and reading. Interview with a Teacher is worth 15% of your final grade.
Mentor Text Flash Memoir. This very short assignment is a brief narrative—no more than 500 words—that discusses your life as a reader. This is a very specific kind of literacy history that asks you to think about the texts that have most affected you as a reader and writer. This is a course about teaching writing, but our teaching is always informed by our own experiences as students and as readers in and out of the classroom. This is an assignment that explores what our own experiences tell us about what our teaching experiences should probably be like. The Mentor Text Flash Memoir is worth 10% of your final grade.
Book Club. This assignment is a moment, in a class filled with theories of writing, to take time to understand theories of reading and the intimate connection between the two. Book Club is worth 15% of your final grade.
Research in Teaching Diverse Populations. This two-part project will involve doing independent research on teaching students who have historically been underserved in the U.S. class room as well as a group presentation about what you learn. Why this focus on underserved populations? Because the classrooms you will enter into will be filled with diverse students that will most likely not be the student you are (because a lot of folks who want to become teachers found solace and comfort in school and, thus, imagine that school is that same thing for most students—and are often flummoxed at why it is not). Further, students who begin to fall behind in literacy as early as 4th grade are statistically more likely to drop out of high school. Thus, it is important to consider the diversity of student needs because much is at stake. Research in Teaching Diverse Populations is worth 15% of your final grade.
Assignment Design. The final assignment of the semester asks you to develop a writing assignment that reflects the values you would want to bring to a reading/writing classroom. The design will be entirely yours, as will the assessment and the rational. I’m not an education professor, and I don’t have strict rules about how this information is presented. I just want to see a really great and creative assignment, how you’ll evaluate it, and why you think it is great. It should be the most fun assignment of the semester. Assignment Design is worth 15% of your final grade.
Final Portfolio. Revision is an important part of the writing process, and in an effort to make that clear to you I need to value it in the classroom. The way I do this is by the portfolio. At midterm, you will turn in a mini-portfolio of work that I'm calling a "midterm check in." At the end of the semester, you will turn in a final portfolio. That portfolio will include some revised work as well as a collection of informal work that will not require revision. Most importantly, you will do some reflection on what you've learned as a future teacher of writing. Portfolios are importantly tied to your evaluation in this class, as you will see in the “Evaluation” section of this document. Specific information is available online at the “portfolios” link on our class website.
EVALUATION
For each formal assignment you will receive fairly extensive written feedback in the form of a letter when you turn the draft in to me. I will discuss samples of these letters with you before the first major writing assignment is due so you have a sense of what this feedback looks like and how it is connected to your final letter grade for each assignment and the class as a whole. You can read actual sample draft letters for actual students from previous semesters--names changed--directly below.
This course is designed to help prospective teachers develop a personal and professional sense of what they want their writing/reading classrooms to look like. To do this, the class will read and write together about current research and theory on the reading and writing process; about the reading/writing classroom, past and present; about the rules, regulations, and requirements placed upon you as teachers today; about the needs of all students as we help them become thoughtful readers and writers themselves. As we move forward with our understanding of all of this, we will remember where we all start: as students. Thus, you will examine your own personal writing/reading practices and your experience as a student as it impacts your future classroom as a teacher.
While we will explore various ways to theorize your teaching practice, my own classroom practice will identify the theories that I value. The classroom I construct will therefore reinforce particular theories of language and composition (and you should know this going in to the deal).
The experiences you will engage in this semester, are the kinds of reading and writing experiences I hope you will done day invite your own students to participate in: you will write informally and formally; you will work individually and as a group; you will present your ideas orally and in print. At the end of the semester you should have the beginnings of a set of documents that you can take with you into your professional career, and a theory/philosophy of their significance in your future classroom (that may or may not reflect what I value).
COURSE OBJECTIVES
By the end of this course you will:
- Identify and interrogate the culture of the writing/reading classroom in the United States today,
- Compare and Contrast various theories of reading and writing,
- Identify the challenges and joys of teaching reading/writing to all students,
- Design meaningful reading/writing assignments that inculcate these theories of reading, writing, and inclusiveness,
- Design meaningful assessments of these assignments that demonstrate these theories of reading, writing, and inclusiveness,
- And, finally, begin to develop a professional persona in a reading/writing teaching portfolio.
COURSE TEXTS
There are two text available in the bookstore for purchase (the titles are live links to the Amazon page):
Lives On the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles &
Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared
by Mike Rose
Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice & Clarity in High School Writing
by Penny Kittle
Other readings, videos, or podcasts are available on the syllabus either as a file to download or as a link. Including the .PDF of Asao Inoue's Anti-Racist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching & Assessing Writing For A Socially Just Future.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance. Our class will meet synchronously during our scheduled class time, T/R 9:30 to 10:45. While there may be some occasions when we have an asynchronous class, most classes will meet in our zoom space (see above for link). Because this is a 300 level class, I have the reasonable expectation that you want to be here and intend to come prepared to the best of your ability. I ask that you make every effort to attend as much of class as possible, and I will try to be as accommodating and reasonable as possible if you can not be in class. However, if you miss more than four classes--or two weeks of class--it will adversely affect your final grade in this class. If you miss eight classes--or a full month of class--I can not guarantee that you will pass this class.
Informal Writing and Participation. Informal writing clarifies what we are thinking about something and makes it possible for us to share those ideas with those around us. Thus, you will write informally almost every class in shared spaces like padlet and google.docs and even the zoom chat. I will take note of your contributions during class as evidence of your attendance and your preparedness for this class.
Reading Journals/Teaching Scenario Discussions Posts. In addition to the informal writing you do in class, you will also be responsible for reading journals in the form of discussion board posts. For nearly every reading we do in this class, you need to produce a reading journal. This is a 200-300 word post to our CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD that provides a brief summary of the significant points of our reading, and a brief analysis of the main argument. Be prepared to use your journal posts in class and to have other people in the class read and comment on them. More information about reading journals is available here on our class website, including information on what an acceptable journal post looks like and what you will need to do in order to earn a strong grade on this assignment. I will post the discussion board for any class directly after the class period that precedes it, giving you at least 24 hours to post. NOTE: You should probably check the CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD prompt in order to tailor your response to the prompt.
In addition, and also to be posted to the CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD on this site, we will practice responding to student writing using sample student texts. These Teaching Scenario discussions will be posted to our CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD. These posts will often happen during class with occasional out of class posts. Reading Journals/Teaching Scenario Discussion Posts make up 15% of your final grade.
Formal Writing. You will be responsible for four formal projects this semester. More information on each of these assignments is available on our class website, accessible by clicking on the title of each assignment below or as a link in the drop down menu under "ENGL 301 Writing & the Teaching. . . ". There you will find more detailed explanations of the assignment as well as all of the components of the assignment you are expected to complete in order to earn full credit and a strong grade for that assignment.
Interview with a Teacher. It's easy to have ideas about what it means to be a teacher, and a very different thing to actually teach. In this first assignment, you will be paired with a BSU alum who is currently teaching. As a class, we will devise questions designed to get at what its like to be a working professional in a classroom. You will conduct and write about what you learn and then, as a class, we will analyze these interviews for important themes about the joy and difficulty of teaching writing and reading. Interview with a Teacher is worth 15% of your final grade.
Mentor Text Flash Memoir. This very short assignment is a brief narrative—no more than 500 words—that discusses your life as a reader. This is a very specific kind of literacy history that asks you to think about the texts that have most affected you as a reader and writer. This is a course about teaching writing, but our teaching is always informed by our own experiences as students and as readers in and out of the classroom. This is an assignment that explores what our own experiences tell us about what our teaching experiences should probably be like. The Mentor Text Flash Memoir is worth 10% of your final grade.
Book Club. This assignment is a moment, in a class filled with theories of writing, to take time to understand theories of reading and the intimate connection between the two. Book Club is worth 15% of your final grade.
Research in Teaching Diverse Populations. This two-part project will involve doing independent research on teaching students who have historically been underserved in the U.S. class room as well as a group presentation about what you learn. Why this focus on underserved populations? Because the classrooms you will enter into will be filled with diverse students that will most likely not be the student you are (because a lot of folks who want to become teachers found solace and comfort in school and, thus, imagine that school is that same thing for most students—and are often flummoxed at why it is not). Further, students who begin to fall behind in literacy as early as 4th grade are statistically more likely to drop out of high school. Thus, it is important to consider the diversity of student needs because much is at stake. Research in Teaching Diverse Populations is worth 15% of your final grade.
Assignment Design. The final assignment of the semester asks you to develop a writing assignment that reflects the values you would want to bring to a reading/writing classroom. The design will be entirely yours, as will the assessment and the rational. I’m not an education professor, and I don’t have strict rules about how this information is presented. I just want to see a really great and creative assignment, how you’ll evaluate it, and why you think it is great. It should be the most fun assignment of the semester. Assignment Design is worth 15% of your final grade.
Final Portfolio. Revision is an important part of the writing process, and in an effort to make that clear to you I need to value it in the classroom. The way I do this is by the portfolio. At midterm, you will turn in a mini-portfolio of work that I'm calling a "midterm check in." At the end of the semester, you will turn in a final portfolio. That portfolio will include some revised work as well as a collection of informal work that will not require revision. Most importantly, you will do some reflection on what you've learned as a future teacher of writing. Portfolios are importantly tied to your evaluation in this class, as you will see in the “Evaluation” section of this document. Specific information is available online at the “portfolios” link on our class website.
EVALUATION
For each formal assignment you will receive fairly extensive written feedback in the form of a letter when you turn the draft in to me. I will discuss samples of these letters with you before the first major writing assignment is due so you have a sense of what this feedback looks like and how it is connected to your final letter grade for each assignment and the class as a whole. You can read actual sample draft letters for actual students from previous semesters--names changed--directly below.
| sample.eval.letters.301__1_.pdf |
Comments on reading journals/discussion board posts shouldn’t be treated like evaluation but rather like an ongoing conversation between you and me: think of it as a talk between us, only in written form. If I'm not writing anything, I'm bored. Your only cause for alarm should be if you see this: "you aren't taking this work seriously," or some version of that. Included on the Reading Journal/Teaching Scenario Discussion Posts assignment page are specific details about what you need to do in a journal or post for it to be "acceptable" and how many acceptable journals will result in a strong grade in this class for that assignment. You can read about that here and summarized below. Because this is an online class, it's more difficult to get you the kind of one-on-one written feedback. Instead, I will typically give the class a "weekly update." In that update, I will highlight the good thinking of folks in our class. I may not mention everyone every week, but if you notice that I am never mentioning what you write, you might reach out to me if I haven't already reached out to you. And, of course, if you haven't posted, then I can't quote you anyway.
KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR "A"s & "U"s
Here is how I keep track of your reading journal/book club work & teaching discussion posts: Each week, after I've read through the blog posts and google.doc discussion, I will assign you either an "A" or a "U" ("A" for acceptable and "U" for unacceptable). If you earn a "U" on anything, I will make sure you know and know why in a private email directly and only to you, and you are welcome to revise that "U" into an "A" no matter how many times it takes to get it there as long as you've posted it initially by the before-class deadline.
I don't keep track of the date of the "A" or "U" received, and I don't keep track of what you turn in as a revision of a "U." I just enter marks into my book each week. At the end of the semester, I total up how many "A"s you end up with and that tells me what grade you've earned. So if you post by the deadline for all of the assignments and always get "A" for acceptable, great. If you post by the deadline and get all "U"s but then revise them to "A"s, that will be reflected in my book and you are golden too. If you have some "A"s and then, say, one post you keep getting a "U" on week after week, but you still have enough "A"s to earn you an "A" grade in the end, all those "U"s just don't matter.
But here is the thing: Once I've given you the "A" or the "U", my role is done until next week. I can't tell you which posts you get "A"s on and which you got "U"s on after the fact. All I'll be able to do is tell you where you are at in the "A" column. It's up to you to keep track of a "U" in need of revision.
But here is another thing: Most students in this class get "As" on their posts. The only reason you'd get a "U" is if you totally misread a text and/or you don't post something close to 200-300 words, depending on what I ask you to respond to in the prompt. Students worry a lot that they aren't doing the right thing in these posts, and what I'm trying to tell you here is that most students do this right--and I say this having taught this class for nearly 20 years.
Comments on Formal Assignments are typically meant to guide your revision process and/or prepare you for the next assignment. For each of those assignments (Interview with a Teacher, Mentor Text Flash Memoir, Book Club, Research in Teaching Diverse Populations, Assignment Design), there are several components that you must complete in order to earn full credit. They are specific to the assignment, but, generally, you are required to turn in drafts and revisions and participate in whatever workshop and/or conference required for that assignment. Read the specific assignment pages for the requirements for each assignment.
At midterm and at the end of the semester you will receive a “grade-so-far” and a “final grade” letter respectively that reflects your cumulative grades on assignments grade as well. Your midterm letter will coincide with the completion of the Interview with a Teacher. Your final grade letter will accompany your final portfolio. In these letters you will receive a letter grade and an overview of your performance in the class up to that point. That will include a review of your in-class preparedness, your reading journals, your work on formal assignments and/or presentations, and your reflection and revision completed as part of your portfolio. You can read sample midterm letters, names changed, below.
KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR "A"s & "U"s
Here is how I keep track of your reading journal/book club work & teaching discussion posts: Each week, after I've read through the blog posts and google.doc discussion, I will assign you either an "A" or a "U" ("A" for acceptable and "U" for unacceptable). If you earn a "U" on anything, I will make sure you know and know why in a private email directly and only to you, and you are welcome to revise that "U" into an "A" no matter how many times it takes to get it there as long as you've posted it initially by the before-class deadline.
I don't keep track of the date of the "A" or "U" received, and I don't keep track of what you turn in as a revision of a "U." I just enter marks into my book each week. At the end of the semester, I total up how many "A"s you end up with and that tells me what grade you've earned. So if you post by the deadline for all of the assignments and always get "A" for acceptable, great. If you post by the deadline and get all "U"s but then revise them to "A"s, that will be reflected in my book and you are golden too. If you have some "A"s and then, say, one post you keep getting a "U" on week after week, but you still have enough "A"s to earn you an "A" grade in the end, all those "U"s just don't matter.
But here is the thing: Once I've given you the "A" or the "U", my role is done until next week. I can't tell you which posts you get "A"s on and which you got "U"s on after the fact. All I'll be able to do is tell you where you are at in the "A" column. It's up to you to keep track of a "U" in need of revision.
But here is another thing: Most students in this class get "As" on their posts. The only reason you'd get a "U" is if you totally misread a text and/or you don't post something close to 200-300 words, depending on what I ask you to respond to in the prompt. Students worry a lot that they aren't doing the right thing in these posts, and what I'm trying to tell you here is that most students do this right--and I say this having taught this class for nearly 20 years.
Comments on Formal Assignments are typically meant to guide your revision process and/or prepare you for the next assignment. For each of those assignments (Interview with a Teacher, Mentor Text Flash Memoir, Book Club, Research in Teaching Diverse Populations, Assignment Design), there are several components that you must complete in order to earn full credit. They are specific to the assignment, but, generally, you are required to turn in drafts and revisions and participate in whatever workshop and/or conference required for that assignment. Read the specific assignment pages for the requirements for each assignment.
At midterm and at the end of the semester you will receive a “grade-so-far” and a “final grade” letter respectively that reflects your cumulative grades on assignments grade as well. Your midterm letter will coincide with the completion of the Interview with a Teacher. Your final grade letter will accompany your final portfolio. In these letters you will receive a letter grade and an overview of your performance in the class up to that point. That will include a review of your in-class preparedness, your reading journals, your work on formal assignments and/or presentations, and your reflection and revision completed as part of your portfolio. You can read sample midterm letters, names changed, below.
| midterm.evaluations.301.sample.pdf |
Different assignments carry different weight in any class, here is a break down of what percentage of your grade each assignment will contribute to your overall grade.
Reading Journals/Teaching Scenario Discussion Board Posts 15%
Interview with a Teacher 15%
Flash Mentor Text Memoir 10%
Book Club 15%
Research in Teaching Diverse Populations 15%
Assignment Design 15%
Midterm check in 5%
Final Portfolio 10%
I have never encountered a student who didn’t have a clear sense of how they were doing in my class based on this system of evaluation, but if you should feel that you don’t know how you are doing, come see me. We’ll figure it out.
Ultimately, your success in this class depends on the following:
I use this kind of evaluation because I want to be able to consider all the parts of your performance in our class, not just how good your final drafts of your papers are. I want to consider where you started and how much you improved. I want to consider how hard you tried (or didn’t try) in class. I want to consider how you contribute to class on a daily basis--not by being the one who always talks, but by paying attention, contributing when you have something thoughtful to say, helping to make your group work go smoothly, really giving your all to our reading journals and in-class writing. I have found that this kind of grading rewards hard-working students as well as students that are just naturally good at something. And, for that reason, I think it is the most fair way to run a writing classroom. Further, research indicates that this kind o grading--sometimes called standards based grading--in an equity-minded classroom, turns out to support students often disenfranchised by traditional grading policies in the US classroom. I hope you’ll come to agree.
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. How you could plagiarize in a class like this, I don’t know, but don’t try. I will fail you because the last person in the world who should be standing up and teaching is a cheater.
Students with disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented disability should come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the first week of classes. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time. I try to employ universal design in my classes; if you see a way to make the class more accessible, tell me. I want to know.
Electronics Policy. Well, it's zoom university right? Please see my statement on how to be present in an online class for details on my expectations for cameras and microphones and please know that if you need help getting access to technology I can and will help you.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at.
Other Resources on Campus. There are a wide variety of services available on our campus that you might want to know about but also might just be too inundated with information to remember you have access to, so I'm including links to a variety of places on campus that I think you might want to know about. First and foremost is probably the counseling center and the wellness center. Other places you can go if you want to connect with folks: the Center for Multicultural Affairs, the Pride Center, the campus food bank, and Commuter Services. Making a connection to this campus is the number one way you'll get from day one to graduation.
Title IX and Sexual Violence. The Office of Equal Opportunity and the Title IX Coordinator work to ensure that all members of the campus community flourish in a supportive and fair climate. See https://my.bridgew.edu/departments/affirmativeaction/SitePages/Home.aspx to learn more.
While this class will present you with many challenges, I believe it has its share of pleasures and rewards. What matters most to me is that you try to be the best student you are capable of being—that you try to improve as a writer and thinker. No good teacher wants to give a student a bad grade. Good standing in this class is yours to lose.
I. Love. This. Class.
SOME ADVICE ABOUT MANAGING THE WORK LOAD OF A 300 LEVEL ONLINE CLASS.
A word about asking questions and getting them answered: As this is an online class, it's useful if we function as a community of practice, and by that I mean that we all work together to make the class work and for everyone to do the best work they can do. To that end, rather than emailing me individual questions on any assignment, I'm asking you to post your question to the Class Discussion Board. Each week, I will post a new Q&A Discussion Board for you to post questions and get answers. I will check that Board every 48 hours and during office hours and respond as best I can to your questions. This will keep me from having to answer the same question 26 times, and, it is always true, that if you have a question it means that most other people have the same one or some version of it.
Also, after last semester, I've thought a lot about what I hope to have happen in synchronous sessions. I've put that information, also linked in the "electronics policy" above, together here.
Reading Journals/Teaching Scenario Discussion Board Posts 15%
Interview with a Teacher 15%
Flash Mentor Text Memoir 10%
Book Club 15%
Research in Teaching Diverse Populations 15%
Assignment Design 15%
Midterm check in 5%
Final Portfolio 10%
I have never encountered a student who didn’t have a clear sense of how they were doing in my class based on this system of evaluation, but if you should feel that you don’t know how you are doing, come see me. We’ll figure it out.
Ultimately, your success in this class depends on the following:
- Fulfilling all of the requirements listed above,
- The quality of your written and oral work,
- Your efforts to try new things and think in new ways.
I use this kind of evaluation because I want to be able to consider all the parts of your performance in our class, not just how good your final drafts of your papers are. I want to consider where you started and how much you improved. I want to consider how hard you tried (or didn’t try) in class. I want to consider how you contribute to class on a daily basis--not by being the one who always talks, but by paying attention, contributing when you have something thoughtful to say, helping to make your group work go smoothly, really giving your all to our reading journals and in-class writing. I have found that this kind of grading rewards hard-working students as well as students that are just naturally good at something. And, for that reason, I think it is the most fair way to run a writing classroom. Further, research indicates that this kind o grading--sometimes called standards based grading--in an equity-minded classroom, turns out to support students often disenfranchised by traditional grading policies in the US classroom. I hope you’ll come to agree.
OTHER THINGS
Plagiarism. How you could plagiarize in a class like this, I don’t know, but don’t try. I will fail you because the last person in the world who should be standing up and teaching is a cheater.
Students with disabilities. Students who need special accommodations due to a documented disability should come to see me with written documentation of the specific disability and suggested accommodations before the end of the first week of classes. We can discuss specific accommodations at that time. I try to employ universal design in my classes; if you see a way to make the class more accessible, tell me. I want to know.
Electronics Policy. Well, it's zoom university right? Please see my statement on how to be present in an online class for details on my expectations for cameras and microphones and please know that if you need help getting access to technology I can and will help you.
The Writing Studio. Located in the Academic Achievement Center, on the bottom floor of the Library, the Writing Studio is available to any and all students at whatever level of expertise you might be at.
Other Resources on Campus. There are a wide variety of services available on our campus that you might want to know about but also might just be too inundated with information to remember you have access to, so I'm including links to a variety of places on campus that I think you might want to know about. First and foremost is probably the counseling center and the wellness center. Other places you can go if you want to connect with folks: the Center for Multicultural Affairs, the Pride Center, the campus food bank, and Commuter Services. Making a connection to this campus is the number one way you'll get from day one to graduation.
Title IX and Sexual Violence. The Office of Equal Opportunity and the Title IX Coordinator work to ensure that all members of the campus community flourish in a supportive and fair climate. See https://my.bridgew.edu/departments/affirmativeaction/SitePages/Home.aspx to learn more.
While this class will present you with many challenges, I believe it has its share of pleasures and rewards. What matters most to me is that you try to be the best student you are capable of being—that you try to improve as a writer and thinker. No good teacher wants to give a student a bad grade. Good standing in this class is yours to lose.
I. Love. This. Class.
SOME ADVICE ABOUT MANAGING THE WORK LOAD OF A 300 LEVEL ONLINE CLASS.
A word about asking questions and getting them answered: As this is an online class, it's useful if we function as a community of practice, and by that I mean that we all work together to make the class work and for everyone to do the best work they can do. To that end, rather than emailing me individual questions on any assignment, I'm asking you to post your question to the Class Discussion Board. Each week, I will post a new Q&A Discussion Board for you to post questions and get answers. I will check that Board every 48 hours and during office hours and respond as best I can to your questions. This will keep me from having to answer the same question 26 times, and, it is always true, that if you have a question it means that most other people have the same one or some version of it.
Also, after last semester, I've thought a lot about what I hope to have happen in synchronous sessions. I've put that information, also linked in the "electronics policy" above, together here.