policies ENGL 344 Young Adult Literature
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LEE TORDA 310 Tillinghast Hall Bridgewater State University 508.531.2436 [email protected] www.leetorda.com CLICK HERE TO JOIN MY ZOOM SPACE. |
Fall 2022 Open Hours for students (office hours):
MW (in-person or Zoom) 12:00 (noon) to 1:30 T (Zoom only) 4:00-5:00 And by appointment (in-person or on Zoom) Make an appointment, either face to face or on zoom, during office hours or at another time: Let me know you want to meet by adding yourself to my google.doc appointment calendar here: https://goo.gl/3CqLf. If you are meeting me on zoom, Use the zoom link to the left on this page, repeated every page of this site (and in my email signature). |
COURSE DESCRIPTION
The catalog description for the LIBR420 version of this course reads as follows: Survey of literature and audiovisual materials for adolescents. Includes applicable principles of adolescent psychology, a brief history of the development of this literature, criteria and aids for selection, techniques in motivation and reading guidance and skills in reading, listening and viewing. Designed for teachers, librarians and media specialists working with junior and senior high school students.
Here’s what that says to me: I believe the goal of a course like this is to help folks that will work with young and still-growing readers figure out for themselves why—why one text rather than another, why one approach to teaching it over another, why bother thinking this much about reading and young people at all.
While the answers to those questions might seem obvious, I think that it is one thing to have nice ideas about how we help young people read, but the reality of the work of that, the labor of it, is very, very hard.
And there is a great deal at stake. Students who fall behind as readers have a far higher chance of dropping out of school, and this is particularly true for some of our most vulnerable students. Here’s something else I believe: literacy is life-changing. I mean that seriously and deeply not like, oh, reading, saved me from my sad adolescence. I mean like it means serious, material changes in a person’s actual lived in life.
So, this semester, though we will not meet at one time or face-to-face, we will still, as a whole group and in small groups and as individuals, read together and write together. And most of all, we will theorize about and then develop good teaching practice. Because all this only works if we have ways of bringing texts into classrooms in ways that help students to read deeply, create meaning, and articulate what they believe about their worlds
COURSE OUTCOMES
The Carnival at Bray, by Jessie Ann Foley
I’ll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson
March: Book One, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, & Nate Powell
Marcello In the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork
The Orange Houses, by Paul Griffin
And
COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
For the online components of our class, we will use this, my teaching website, and email. You will also need to sign up for dropbox in order to submit the Pecha Kucha and Final Assigment for the class.
REQUIREMENTS
Reading Monday Updates. It might seem silly for me to put this in the requirements, but I noticed when I taught this class last time that many students didn't read the Monday updates that I both emailed to the entire class and also posted on the "Monday Updates" page of this website. So now I'm including it as a requirement.
Attendance. We only meet four times face-to-face. You should make every effort to come to class at those times. An absence will count the same as a failure to post by online deadlines. Online “meetings” are not synchronous. The syllabus will indicate when material is due to be posted and/or turned in to me. Typically, posts require responses from classmates and so failure to post doesn’t just affect you but affects our class mates. Failure to meet the deadlines more than three times will adversely affect your grade. Failure to meet the deadlines more than 6 times will jeopardize your ability to pass the class.
Book Club. You will participate in an elaborate group-making project during our first meeting. This will be your “book club” group, both in and out of class. In the online setting, you will read and respond to reading journals emailed to your book club group and to me. In addition to you will discuss these texts as literature.
FORMAL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
What follows is a brief description of the major assignments in this class. More information can be found on the course website.
A Personal Theory of My Reading Life. This is a very short assignment that we will draft largely in class on the first day. You will workshop it online later in the week with your book club groupmates, and you will turn in a hard copy to me the following class. I am asking you to simply tell me a story about yourself as a young adult reader--one story--and then to explain to me what that story has taught you, made you think about, helped you to understand, about reading as a young person. It's only 500 words.
Teaching Scenario All-Class Discussion Board Posts. Each week, there will be a prompt that you will respond to face-to-face in class (that just requires you to be here in class to discuss) and on-line. These prompts provide you with information about a class you could teach--information about size, location, demographics, etc.
Theory-to-Practice Pecha Kucha. A pecha-kucha is a 6-minute presentation created by creating 20 PowerPoint slides, 20 seconds of talking per slide. Using the record function in PowerPoint (can't do it on an ipad or using google's version of PowerPoint) you create what amounts to a short video that you can then upload. You will sign up to create a pecha-kucha to explain a theory reading in relationship to a specific YA text from our class texts of your choosing and you’ll talk about what this means for teaching that YA text specifically and YA texts generally. Folks will post their pecha-kuchas to our drop box shared folder and we will watch and respond in class.
How We’d Teach This Book. IYou will work with your book club group to develop and present a YA text you think would make an excellent addition to a classroom with an emphasis on the supporting materials you would bring in to augment that reading—other complimentary texts and multi-media. For this assignment, you will be given an example scenario class to teach your book to. You and your groupmates will be responsible for selecting a text (can be one we are reading or one you'd all agree you'd like to teach) and presenting in one of our face-to-face meetings on 1) research you will locate on teaching the population your example scenario class focuses on; 2) how you’d teach that book, and 2) what multi-media and/or supporting materials you would bring in as part of teaching that text.
Final Project: Assignment Design. The last assignment of the semester is to develop a unit on YA on your own. You will have great freedom about how to teach and what to teach. Your unit should draw on all of the work of the semester: low-stakes writing, high-stakes writing, multi-modal learning; research; supplemental materials. You will be challenged to think about how we teach canonical texts (sort of) to non-canonical loving readers. You will post this Assignment Design during out last class (that has to be held on-line) and then respond to at least three of your colleagues as a kind of final wrap up to the class.
EVALUATION
Typically, I use portfolio evaluation to determine grades and provide feedback, however, in a summer class, it is very difficult to make this work--it is hard on you and it is hard for me to return materials to you in time for you to include them in a portfolio. I will be using a combination of spec grading and contract grading for each of the major assignments and book club. How that will work is explained in the details for each assignment available on this our class website. You will still receive extensive written feedback on formal writing assignments in the form of a letter. 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. You can read actual sample draft letters for actual students from previous semesters--names changed--here.
Comments on discussion posts and/or book club related writing/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 "you didn't really read" or "you need to analyze this text as a piece of literature not just react to it as a reader." Included in the assignment page are specific details about what you need to do in a journal for it to be acceptable and how many acceptable journals will result in a strong grade in this class for that assignment.
Comments on Formal Assignments would typically be meant to guide your revision process and/or prepare you for the next assignment. As I said, because this is summer class on a shortened schedule, my comments will not necessarily address revision but focus more on the strengths of the piece and what you should think about as you tackle the next assignment.
There are several components for each assignment that you must complete in order to earn full credit--or a B grade. The requirements for an A and C grade are also spelled out (that's what makes it a grading contract). They are specific to each assignment. Read the specific assignment page for the requirements for each assignment either on this website .
Different requirements require different kinds and amounts of effort; therefore, different assignments have different weight in terms of evaluation. Here is a rough breakdown of how things are weighted this semester:
Discussion Board 20%
Book Club 20%
A Personal Theory 10%
Theory-to-Practice
Pecha Kucha 20%
How We’d Teach. . . 10%
Final Project:
Assignment Design 20%
Ultimately, your success in this class depends on the following:
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. As a hybrid course, this only applies to our face-to-face meetings. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. I don't like competing with your phone for your attention. If we are using our computers--and you are welcome to use them to type your in-class writing--please use them for what we are supposed to be using them for. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. The first time I catch you using technology inappropriately, I will make fun of you. The second time I catch you, I'll count it as an absence. That is how deadly serious I am about wanting your attention.
The Writing Studio. You will meet your writing fellow in the Writing Studio in the Academic Achievement Center every week. 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. Even though this is a hybrid course, we are a brick and mortar institution. 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.
FINALLY
As a summer class, I am always up against the need to provide you with the same material that I would cover in a 15 week class. But I am not oblivious to the fact that there is only so much you can actually get done in a day or a week. I've trimmed some of the reading and tried to use class time as effectively as possible. That said, this is a 300 level English class. It is a lot of work. But I believe I am fair, and I am supportive. If we find that we need to make changes to the class structure we will. Most of all, it is always my goal to help students do their best work in one of my classes.
Complicating all of this: parts of this class are online. My most recent experience of a hybrid class is that students tend not to look at what is due during the online sessions until the day it is due. This is not good practice. You need to treat the online meetings with the same care and attention as the face-to-face sessions. Finally, my best suggestion to you to get through the next five weeks is to read ahead. The books aren't hard. You can read these in a couple of hours--some even less than that. But you need to do the reading. I will know if you don't. It will show in your work. So get the books early and start reading. It will make everything easier.
The catalog description for the LIBR420 version of this course reads as follows: Survey of literature and audiovisual materials for adolescents. Includes applicable principles of adolescent psychology, a brief history of the development of this literature, criteria and aids for selection, techniques in motivation and reading guidance and skills in reading, listening and viewing. Designed for teachers, librarians and media specialists working with junior and senior high school students.
Here’s what that says to me: I believe the goal of a course like this is to help folks that will work with young and still-growing readers figure out for themselves why—why one text rather than another, why one approach to teaching it over another, why bother thinking this much about reading and young people at all.
While the answers to those questions might seem obvious, I think that it is one thing to have nice ideas about how we help young people read, but the reality of the work of that, the labor of it, is very, very hard.
And there is a great deal at stake. Students who fall behind as readers have a far higher chance of dropping out of school, and this is particularly true for some of our most vulnerable students. Here’s something else I believe: literacy is life-changing. I mean that seriously and deeply not like, oh, reading, saved me from my sad adolescence. I mean like it means serious, material changes in a person’s actual lived in life.
So, this semester, though we will not meet at one time or face-to-face, we will still, as a whole group and in small groups and as individuals, read together and write together. And most of all, we will theorize about and then develop good teaching practice. Because all this only works if we have ways of bringing texts into classrooms in ways that help students to read deeply, create meaning, and articulate what they believe about their worlds
COURSE OUTCOMES
- Read deeply a wide variety of young adult texts
- Consider various theories of reading and writing that could inform teaching practice for YA lit
- Develop strategies for selecting texts grounded in theories of reading and writing
The Carnival at Bray, by Jessie Ann Foley
I’ll Give You The Sun, by Jandy Nelson
March: Book One, by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, & Nate Powell
Marcello In the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork
The Orange Houses, by Paul Griffin
And
- Selections from popular YA texts that you’ve already read
- Selected readings about YA Lit, Reading Theory, & Literacy Instruction
- Selected YA multi-media, short texts, etc.
COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
For the online components of our class, we will use this, my teaching website, and email. You will also need to sign up for dropbox in order to submit the Pecha Kucha and Final Assigment for the class.
REQUIREMENTS
Reading Monday Updates. It might seem silly for me to put this in the requirements, but I noticed when I taught this class last time that many students didn't read the Monday updates that I both emailed to the entire class and also posted on the "Monday Updates" page of this website. So now I'm including it as a requirement.
Attendance. We only meet four times face-to-face. You should make every effort to come to class at those times. An absence will count the same as a failure to post by online deadlines. Online “meetings” are not synchronous. The syllabus will indicate when material is due to be posted and/or turned in to me. Typically, posts require responses from classmates and so failure to post doesn’t just affect you but affects our class mates. Failure to meet the deadlines more than three times will adversely affect your grade. Failure to meet the deadlines more than 6 times will jeopardize your ability to pass the class.
Book Club. You will participate in an elaborate group-making project during our first meeting. This will be your “book club” group, both in and out of class. In the online setting, you will read and respond to reading journals emailed to your book club group and to me. In addition to you will discuss these texts as literature.
FORMAL WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
What follows is a brief description of the major assignments in this class. More information can be found on the course website.
A Personal Theory of My Reading Life. This is a very short assignment that we will draft largely in class on the first day. You will workshop it online later in the week with your book club groupmates, and you will turn in a hard copy to me the following class. I am asking you to simply tell me a story about yourself as a young adult reader--one story--and then to explain to me what that story has taught you, made you think about, helped you to understand, about reading as a young person. It's only 500 words.
Teaching Scenario All-Class Discussion Board Posts. Each week, there will be a prompt that you will respond to face-to-face in class (that just requires you to be here in class to discuss) and on-line. These prompts provide you with information about a class you could teach--information about size, location, demographics, etc.
Theory-to-Practice Pecha Kucha. A pecha-kucha is a 6-minute presentation created by creating 20 PowerPoint slides, 20 seconds of talking per slide. Using the record function in PowerPoint (can't do it on an ipad or using google's version of PowerPoint) you create what amounts to a short video that you can then upload. You will sign up to create a pecha-kucha to explain a theory reading in relationship to a specific YA text from our class texts of your choosing and you’ll talk about what this means for teaching that YA text specifically and YA texts generally. Folks will post their pecha-kuchas to our drop box shared folder and we will watch and respond in class.
How We’d Teach This Book. IYou will work with your book club group to develop and present a YA text you think would make an excellent addition to a classroom with an emphasis on the supporting materials you would bring in to augment that reading—other complimentary texts and multi-media. For this assignment, you will be given an example scenario class to teach your book to. You and your groupmates will be responsible for selecting a text (can be one we are reading or one you'd all agree you'd like to teach) and presenting in one of our face-to-face meetings on 1) research you will locate on teaching the population your example scenario class focuses on; 2) how you’d teach that book, and 2) what multi-media and/or supporting materials you would bring in as part of teaching that text.
Final Project: Assignment Design. The last assignment of the semester is to develop a unit on YA on your own. You will have great freedom about how to teach and what to teach. Your unit should draw on all of the work of the semester: low-stakes writing, high-stakes writing, multi-modal learning; research; supplemental materials. You will be challenged to think about how we teach canonical texts (sort of) to non-canonical loving readers. You will post this Assignment Design during out last class (that has to be held on-line) and then respond to at least three of your colleagues as a kind of final wrap up to the class.
EVALUATION
Typically, I use portfolio evaluation to determine grades and provide feedback, however, in a summer class, it is very difficult to make this work--it is hard on you and it is hard for me to return materials to you in time for you to include them in a portfolio. I will be using a combination of spec grading and contract grading for each of the major assignments and book club. How that will work is explained in the details for each assignment available on this our class website. You will still receive extensive written feedback on formal writing assignments in the form of a letter. 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. You can read actual sample draft letters for actual students from previous semesters--names changed--here.
Comments on discussion posts and/or book club related writing/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 "you didn't really read" or "you need to analyze this text as a piece of literature not just react to it as a reader." Included in the assignment page are specific details about what you need to do in a journal for it to be acceptable and how many acceptable journals will result in a strong grade in this class for that assignment.
Comments on Formal Assignments would typically be meant to guide your revision process and/or prepare you for the next assignment. As I said, because this is summer class on a shortened schedule, my comments will not necessarily address revision but focus more on the strengths of the piece and what you should think about as you tackle the next assignment.
There are several components for each assignment that you must complete in order to earn full credit--or a B grade. The requirements for an A and C grade are also spelled out (that's what makes it a grading contract). They are specific to each assignment. Read the specific assignment page for the requirements for each assignment either on this website .
Different requirements require different kinds and amounts of effort; therefore, different assignments have different weight in terms of evaluation. Here is a rough breakdown of how things are weighted this semester:
Discussion Board 20%
Book Club 20%
A Personal Theory 10%
Theory-to-Practice
Pecha Kucha 20%
How We’d Teach. . . 10%
Final Project:
Assignment Design 20%
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.
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. As a hybrid course, this only applies to our face-to-face meetings. I'm not against technology at all, but there is a time and place for it. I don't like competing with your phone for your attention. If we are using our computers--and you are welcome to use them to type your in-class writing--please use them for what we are supposed to be using them for. You don't need to turn your phone off, but, should you get a call, be thoughtful about whether or not you should really answer it. Also, no texting in class. The first time I catch you using technology inappropriately, I will make fun of you. The second time I catch you, I'll count it as an absence. That is how deadly serious I am about wanting your attention.
The Writing Studio. You will meet your writing fellow in the Writing Studio in the Academic Achievement Center every week. 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. Even though this is a hybrid course, we are a brick and mortar institution. 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.
FINALLY
As a summer class, I am always up against the need to provide you with the same material that I would cover in a 15 week class. But I am not oblivious to the fact that there is only so much you can actually get done in a day or a week. I've trimmed some of the reading and tried to use class time as effectively as possible. That said, this is a 300 level English class. It is a lot of work. But I believe I am fair, and I am supportive. If we find that we need to make changes to the class structure we will. Most of all, it is always my goal to help students do their best work in one of my classes.
Complicating all of this: parts of this class are online. My most recent experience of a hybrid class is that students tend not to look at what is due during the online sessions until the day it is due. This is not good practice. You need to treat the online meetings with the same care and attention as the face-to-face sessions. Finally, my best suggestion to you to get through the next five weeks is to read ahead. The books aren't hard. You can read these in a couple of hours--some even less than that. But you need to do the reading. I will know if you don't. It will show in your work. So get the books early and start reading. It will make everything easier.