Reading Responses

Students are responsible for four different Reading Responses that they initiate. Everyone will do the first RR in the first week as practice. Thereafter, the class will be divided into three groups. Groups will write and post responses by Mondays at 8:00 p.m. The other two groups will respond to these posts as soon as possible, no later than Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m.

Reading Responses should be about 500 - 600 words (2 - 3 double-spaced pages if you were word processing them) and should be posted to students' individual blogs. Because we are using an open-source technology (Drupal) for our blogs, students should keep back-up copies of their responses should the technology break during the course. One recommendation would be to type your responses in Microsoft Word or Notepad and save copies on your computer; then copy and paste the text into your blog.

Responses should be formatted in one of the two following ways:

1. Impact on Teaching: Think of what impact the ideas or concepts in a particular article/chapter/essay may have on the teaching of writing or on teaching more generally. Explain as articulately as possible how this impact might occur. You might also talk about the problems and/or possibilities this concept or idea creates for the teacher/student. You should reflect, at least a little, one how your own experience(s) in classrooms and courses rub against the concept(s) or idea(s) that you're responding to.
2. Synthesis: Looking at two or more of the text you read for the week, attempt to synthesize a concept or idea that you noticed moving through the texts. Your goal should be to highlight the idea or concept as the writers understand it and then explain how you see these concepts connecting or disconnecting in a productive way.

Assignment Sequences

Part of being a successful writing instructor is developing successful assignments, finding ways to structure your class time so as to allow your own students practice and adequate success as they move toward a clearly articulated final product. In order to give you some practice with developing assignment sequences, you will draft two plans for assignments. One sequence will be based on an assignment from the English 1100 standard syllabus; the other will be based on an assignment from the English 1200 standard syllabus. For the latter project, you should remember the goals for English 1100 or 1200 and attempt to construct your assignment sequence in such a way as to connect to those outcomes. Both assignment sequences should be connected to explicit outcomes from the Writing Program Administrator's Outcomes Statement.

For these sequences, you should envision two to three weeks worth of class time that will need to be covered and connected to the assignment product. You should prepare at least four days worth of class work, but you should not take more than six days. (I don't want this to be an excessively taxing activity!)

For your finished project, you should begin by stating the assignment so that students will understand the written product that they will be developing (you might also discuss how this assignment connects to a previous assignment or how it meets specific course goals). After the stated assignment, you should offer a time line that accounts for each day of class and what activities will be part of that class period. Finally, you should write a two page reflection that explains why this assignment is relevant to teaching either English 1100 or 1200 and how each successive activity builds on the previous activity toward the goal of the final product/project; you might explain these connections both philosophically and practically in terms of skills that your students will practice.

Check the schedule for specific dates.

Essay Evaluations

One of the most difficult parts of teaching writing is "grading" or "evaluating" writing. Most of us who teach writing would love the job a lot more if we didn't feel we had to constantly stick a grade on a written product. If we could just write responses and generate feedback, encouraging writers and making suggestions for revision, we'd be infinitely happier at work. But students and the academic system demand a grade, so we're stuck.

In order to give graduate students a chance to practice the acts of responding, evaluating, assessing, and grading, we will look at real student papers from first-year composition courses and you will be asked to construct responses to the writing in various modes (response/feedback, assessment, evaluation, grade). Our goal is to explore what happens when we respond to writing or evaluate it, how our position changes and shifts, how we perform identity and how we construct student identity, and ultimately, what value any of this will have for the student who receive our commentaries/grades.

Much of this work will occur "in class," although there may be some at-home work you're asked to do. Check the schedule for specific dates.

Class Observations

One of the central components of "action research" (we used to call this "teacher research," but apparently, that wasn't cool enough!) is careful observation. Growing out of an anthropological/sociological tradition of "thick description" (Geertz) involving specific sites of observation, "action research" relies on social science-type methodologies, like (participant) observation, and qualitative research reportings, such as the case study or mini-ethnography. One component of being an effective teacher is being an effective classroom researcher: teachers must hone their skills of observation so that they not only notice what's going on in their classrooms on a superficial level, but also what's going on at a deeper level, and how their position(s) as teachers affect/effect what's going on — and why and to what purpose. This "reflective turn" (Yancey) matters to teachers because it helps move them from the various myths/mythologies of teaching ("Oh, this just works!" or "Oh, that never works! I've tried it" or "Students don't really want X; they want Y — they just don't know how to ask!") and into reclaiming the classroom as a space of careful and articulate research, a space where teachers can learn the art of teaching, as well as the science of teaching, and can justify revisions to "traditional" practices where necessary and can justify doing things "the same way" because they will have research to support their claims about the classroom.

Therefore, students in English 6625 are responsible for conducting six (6) classroom observations of first-year composition courses (English 1100 and/or English 1200). Three of these observations should be with the same teacher; three should be with three different teachers. As pre-service teachers, you should see as many classrooms as possible as you prepare to teach, as many classroom organizational structures and teaching strategies as possible.

Your observations should involve careful notetaking (not unlike the notes you've been taking in class as practice) and make use of the Observation Grid I've supplied you. When you turn these in, you should attach a one-page letter to the teacher of the class that describes what you saw (in a summative way), offers a reflection on what you thought worked and why, and asks questions that this observation has made you think of. (I will share with you some observation letters I've written in the past — you needn't think of them as models, but they might be useful to think in terms of tone or how to describe a classroom observation experience.)

You are encouraged, though not required, to share your letters with the teachers whose classrooms you visit. These teachers will find these letters useful to include in their annual review materials, especially if you describe their classroom practices as that sort of information is so often lacking when teachers hectically put together their annual review materials. In this way, you have the chance to return the favor they offered you in letting you visit their classrooms.

Check the schedule for specific dates.

Digital Storytelling Project

Focusing on teaching theory and pratice, English 6625 is a unique course in your graduate careers. This course offers you the chance to think through what it means to teach writing, even as you practice (and reflect on) the sort of writing you might ask first-year writing students to engage in. To that end, I have chosen to simulate a series of activities not unlike the way I'd do them for an English 1100 class . . . but with a little twist. In order to push the boundaries of what it means to "write" in the 21^st Century, we will think through the work of the "literacy narrative" assignment from the common English 1100 syllabus and then create a Digital Story of those narratives.

As part of these literacy narratives, we will map our literacy experiences, reflect on various artifacts in our literacy portfolios, and begin a series of essay-drafting assignments that grows from those first activities in order to create a "script" (of sorts) for our digital stories. We will use class time, primarily, to construct these digital stories, although some time outside of class may be required, particularly in order to create the audio texts of our stories. We will use software available on our USB-drives for much of this work, as well as Windows Movie Maker, a "free" program that comes with Windows XP.

Once these stories are finished, student will write (or digitize?) reflections on the experience, exploring what ways, if any, this assignment encouraged them to (re)think concepts like "writing" and "narrative," as well as how this experience has (re)shaped their understandings of the relationships among various types of texts (image, music, words, etc.).

Check the schedule for specific dates.

Teaching Statement

Any teacher seeking a job at a community college or college/university will undoubtedly be asked to articulate a "philosophy of teaching." Sometimes, these are very short, one page documents that are requested with other application materials; other times, they are lengthy discussions about the ideas or concepts that are central to a teacher's understanding of teaching and learning, often involving references to influential texts/thinkers that have impacted the teacher.

For this class, I'm asking you to create, essentially, a teaching portfolio, and this statement is but one of many texts that are standard-issue to such a portfolio. Over the course of the semester, we will draft a statement of your teaching philosophy. You will create both an "summary" and a lengthier "discussion" of your ideas about teaching and learning.

Check the schedule for specific dates.

Final Exam

TBA

Format:
Length:
Style:
Rough Draft 1 Due:
Rough Draft 2 Due:
Final Project Due:

Teaching Portfolio

For your final Teaching Portfolio, please arrange items as follows, keeping in mind my suggestions for each section. While some of these sections, obviously, would not be part of a "real" teaching portfolio, they will help me as your teacher for this course to view the work of the semester as well as get a picture of who you are/will be as a teacher.

The Teaching Portfolio should be turned in to me. Do NOT hand it in to anyone else. Check the schedule for the times I'll be available. If you want to turn it in early, that's fine, but e-mail me to set up an appropriate date/time that I might get your portfolio "in person."

Check the schedule for specific dates.