This past week my composition students presented/submitted their #Unessays. Students argued to choose their topics on anything they wanted and not just topics we covered in class. They created videos, dioramas, posters, board games, one student cooked. Overwhelmingly the creations were actual paper, markers, glue sticks. Their pride and pleasure in showing things off, seeing their work up on the walls. I always love to see it.
I do a version of the #Unessay every semester with ENGL 102. And fill my office and my classroom walls full of projects.
It's also the end of week 12, a month left to go in the semester, and students are registering for next semester. It's a weird time in the semester. Everyone is tired. Sometimes it's when students either stop coming to class or after seeing comments on progress reports they pop back up and ask what they can do to pass. It's also when the department is planning next year's schedule which adds another layer to everything.
I use the time to think about what worked this semester, what I want/need to tweak, both for next semester and next year. This semester/year I had a few objectives:
- Now that I have my own classroom, build on the independent reading I was able to start last semester
- Build on last semester's success and continue writer's notebooks in my composition classes
- Try TILT assignment guidelines in my class
Students like the independent reading, so I'm happy to see that.
Students really like the writer's notebooks. I want to make a couple of tweaks for next semester. One, I noticed that my lesson plans are more often than not doodles, so I'm going to try and keep my own writer's notebook for lesson next semester. I think I've resisted this because I keep reinventing my composition classes and it seemed silly. But this semester I graded the notebooks complete/incomplete and next semester I think I want to encourage students to have them, provide more models, but not grade them.
This semester I also had practice assignments as graded, incomplete/incomplete, and they just did not work out. Started okay, but something about it, couldn't tell you what exactly, did not work out. I still plan on doing practice, giving feedback, but I'm not grading it.
And here's the other reason why- post-COVID symptoms are worse. Students report more issues with brain fog, concentraion, tiredness, anxiety, depression, inability to focus, remember things. More students are out with COVID and then are out for weeks, and sicker when they come back. Extra work, if they're not there for it, is just one more thing. Universities are not designed for students to be out for weeks, back, then more likely to be out again. So I keep trying things.
Next semester, I'm going to just grade major assignments. Four of them, every four weeks. So by progress reports, midterms, progress report 2, they have a clear idea of where they are. One thing to focus on.
In the past I, and I'm sure many others, have built in scaffolding assignments and done different variations of ungrading. Some of my students have really enjoyed ungrading, and practice. But this semester, it all just seems frayed and not working. I think that with all the cognitive issues with students who, if they're first year freshman, spent grades 6-12 learning in COVID conditions. Never having entire class and teacher there for one day. School work about compliance with submission, not learning. Not making friends, learning social skills. Still losing people.
I think that what students liked and benefited from with these things was the care, the time, the focus, that teachers put into these approaches, into their students. I can still do those things.
In fact, that is the lesson my students teach me again and again each semester. They don't like my classes because of the content I teach. And it's not my BRILLIANCE as a lecturer. Or my scholarship. They like my classes because I don't judge them. I tell them to prioritize themselves, their health. I tell them it's okay to rest. I tell them to play outside. Touch grass. Eat their veggies. I help them choose their classes, balance their schedules, create planners. We draw in class. We cut and paste magazines. They like my classes because of the care built into them, around them.
The space I create in my classroom, this care, is what matters to them.
Oh, we'll have fun in the ENGL 103 class next semester where we'll watch Jordan Peele movies. But just as many will like the more generic one where we watch 13th and they create infographics, look at how to put together furniture guides and YouTube videos, and aircraft handbooks, and then tell US how to do something, then choose a topic they care about and persuade someone to their way of thinking.
I think I have to relearn this every semester because it's not what academia and higher education wants, demands. It's not something you can put in a marketing campaign. It's not an enrollment pitch. Caring and fruit snacks and doodles do not draw a line to "career readiness" and "return on investment." Literature, history, the arts, are valuable because they make us better humans, they are what MAKES us human. Art for art's sake. And valuing that, making time and space for that, is not fashionable these days. It's not AI or machine learning. It's not how much money you'll make it's what kind of life you want.
It's also not what professors are taught they're supposed to do. It's not the purpose we're not we're supposed to be serving.
My value here is not in a single way tied to what I know about the pre and early modern period. I don't teach those classes. Occassionally I teach Film and Literature, and in the fall I want to teach it along short horror- Clive Barker and Stephen King. And I'd like to build it like a class students can talk about, look forward to, not rearrange. I'd like to have us add a couple of film classes as electives. But my main job here is to teach Composition I and II. To serve my students. To do what I can to make the very steep learning curve of the first semester, first year, a little easier. To give them one safe spot.
But, and I can't say this enough, loud enough or often enough- I am a white teacher at an HBCU. And I should not be centering myself in any way. And I'm ashamed I need that reminder ever. But I do. I mix up advocating with centering myself. And hearing that is a hit to my ego to.
In general, ego is the center of everything I need to relearn, rethink. Ego that I am important. That my work is. That somehow it matters more than anything else. Academia tells us that all of that is true. Encourages a fair amount of arrogance to get through the process. Then we're cut loose, set loose, and none of the fiction is real.
What we get told about academia and teaching is not true, if it ever was. That it's not about me. It's about my students. And often that means my class is not important. That students prioritize other things. I'm happy if the think "Three Robots" or "Zima Blue" makes them think. Or if The Matrix encourages them have cool conversations about AI.
Students may take a class because it's me, and a lot follow me into the spring, but not because they have a sudden love of English literature, or the medieval, or Shakespeare or even film or pop culture. Or suddenly want to be English majors. Academia tells professors it's all about us. That our work, our scholarship, is the end all be all. It just isn't. For a million reasons.
I'm human. There are days I wish I had a full classroom of students who are absolutely RAPT and engaged talking about popular culture, analyzing folk figures in film. But that is not life. And if I'm being totally honest, that life comes with so much baggage, so much extra, that I absolutely have no interest in.
With weeks like this past one, I am so grateful for my students. So grateful to get to see them, have them share with me all the things they're interested in. They give me the space and grace I need, to recharge and rethink and reflect.
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