Things That I'm Trying This Year

I'm trying several new and newish things this fall in my classroom, some that I've been thinking about for a while and some that I did a version or approach-like in my high school classroom that I've revised and rethought for a college classroom.

These adaptations and changes came out of several conversations I've listened to and read about the last couple of years.

• Grades. I want students to learn for the sake of learning. I want their learning to be based on their own interests. I want them to learn from the process, from feedback. Because I will be teaching comp and the early English survey and Shakespeare, I want the effort students put in to be enough to pass them. This last year I fell in love with grade conferences, so I'm continuing those. Below are the grade breakdowns for Comp and then my survey and Shax classes.

• Student Choice and Student Directed. In my survey (syllabus here) and Shax classes (syllabus here) students choose their own interests and use those as the basis for their larger assignments. I've done this in the past and especially with the final paper/project (or UnEssays) I've gotten great results. I try to use both classes to challenge why we study these things, explain how a lot of what we study is careful curation by white men hundreds of years later, and a lot is about sheer luck of what manuscripts survive. I ask the students to consider how they identify and how these identities are seen, or not, in what we study and what the reasons for that are. I also ask them to think of their research choices as ways to fill those gaps. For my composition courses though I wanted to try something different.
• The first week, my students will take this survey that asks them to choose the topics and genres we'll study.

• Now, I've roughed out the syllabus already. There are three major writing assignments, each will be one of the genres students choose. Each MWA has two low stakes assignments that are the parts and pieces of that MWA. So, for example, let's say the students choose a rhetorical analysis for one of their MWAs.
• LSA 1 would be to find an ad, or video, or text they want to analyze the rhetoric of. The assignment would be to print it out or provide a copy, and for them to annotate it for rhetoric.
• LSA 2 then might be them creating a draft of a poster or ad and annotating it for the rhetoric they want to make.
• Their MWA would then be to create the item.
• For this first assignment I'd give them the rhetorical situation. Something like, you've been asked by the university to create a text for a new campaign designed to get more local students to attend college. Find a model that you think has aspects you will use in your own text to sell the idea to your boss, then draft and create the text for consideration.

• I've been asked about logistics and work with this. So, here's the thing- I've taught all of these genres, so it's pretty each that first weekend to plug in what the LSAs should be based on the MWAs the students choose. Then I use their interests to choose mentor texts that are along those interests. It's pretty easy to Google profile, movie star so that's an easy hyperlink. It's not actually any more work than building the syllabus in the first place, and the choice, the input, means students are heard, and more likely to be engaged. Will everyone get their choice? No, but it's as fair as I can get. The Google Form for survey means it's easy to read the pie chart to see what genres and topics to plug in.
• I use the same type of Google Form to ask students when they'd like me to be available. I look at what my teaching schedule is, consider my personal limitations (Nehi), and then plug in times. I also added Skype as an option, and email, trying to get a feel for how students prefer to communicate.
• Because I teach composition by focusing on genre, getting students to see how tone, audience, and purpose dictate form and content and style, I like to have students do a creative writing activity the first week. I have found that while students may struggle with how genre and TAP work in abstract, they have no problem doing the work in this type of activity. It also lays the ground work for MWA 2 and 3 where we'll work towards them writing and designing their rhetorical situations.

Now, this is how I was taught to teach composition, and I continue to use it because I've seen it work. If you look at the schedule, there's not a lot of filler, and there are repeated patterns. So we always start with a mentor text, in class we'll discuss what genre it is, who the audience is, how we can tell, same with purpose, and we'll talk about what elements that genre does/should include. Students will then use that model for their own work. We have a workshop day for every assignment, so they can work in class when I and classmates are there to help, listen, peer edit. Then we grade conference in class. During these I usually give guiding questions and display the genre elements. I then ask what grade they think the assignment should get and why. If I they say A+ and I disagree, that's where the elements come in, and we revisit the mentor text. I will ask, okay, but this is an X, so it should have Y, can you show me where that is?

In my experience, with the first assignment and conference, students tend to grade their work as all As since they get to choose, but as we talk through it, most will see their work realistically and be real honest. And if someone still argues for an A? I don't care. 

So those are my main focuses for this semester. I'd like in the composition class to introduce writer's notebooks/daybooks, but honestly, even though I can't live without mine, I've never been able to get it to work in a classroom. I do share mine as a model of how they can stay organized, but I've never been able to formalize it. And while I have lots of examples and ideas about using the similar idea with commonplace books in the survey and Shax classes, this first semester with so much new, I didn't want to spread myself too thin with new stuff. I wanted to focus on the students.

One thing too I wanted to point out- you'll notice that my syllabuses (syllabi? I still don't know which is right, but Twitter will revive this battle the next few weeks) is that they are totally focused on the content. Kevin Gannon has a great post about how he did not become a professor to police behavior (by the way, if you Google Kevin Gannon, police behavior it tells you all about a serial killer studying detective, use my link). This post really changed how I thought about my classroom, both in the documents I gave students AND my whole perspective IN the classroom. It enabled me to let go of being bothered by things. And it has been phenomenal.

As a result of this, my syllabus and course policies and guidelines are separate. I go over the syllabus in class, because I focus on the content, but I do not go over the policies and guidelines. They are a reference, they are necessary, the information is important, but it is not what my classes are about. I link to them at the bottom of all syllabi, because the policies don't change in classes. 

Also, all of my syllabi are live Google Docs, and I tell students that, so they know not to print them. I hyperlink resources and lecture notes as we go. I lean towards open access materials for equity and accessibility, but also warn students about this as some/many may only have internet access on campus. I recommend Dover editions where I can, or provide the links. I am not a fan of super expensive books, and usually email students the syllabus with required books on it weeks before class to accommodate buying the used book on Amazon that takes 3-4 weeks to get here. This year I can't because I don't have institutional email/Blackboard access yet, but none of my classes require that (survey uses Norton, Shakespeare they use any, and Composition has a required textbook, all of which are included in their tuition? Which I don't quite get how that works yet).

I tend to lesson plan on Sundays, and will create a lecture notes Google Slide for each class, that students have access to. I have seen the cool syllabi that are brochures and such, but I am not convinced those are totally accessible, so I don't use them. I have in some composition classes had as a first assignment for students to create a one pager from the syllabus, that helps them research it, and helps me see what resonates and what doesn't.

So that's how I design my classes.

I will tell you that I roughed out the survey and Shakespeare classes months ago, and then have been tinkering. With the survey I cut a lot of stuff because I want to focus on the texts we are covering. With the Shakespeare class I revised it because I wanted the pattern to be- intro idea, discuss in concrete and real world ways, then spend a week discussing comprehension THEN analysis of play, then do same with a scholarly article for that play. Since this is the only Shakespeare class, I wanted to balance exposure to big ideas with coverage, that was also tailored to my students at an HBCU.