Overall, my experience in the University of Delaware’s E668 has been very engaging and helpful towards the creation of my own E110 class for Newark Charter High School. The structure of the class eased the burden of creating the course by allowing me to read, sample, and respond to twelve college syllabi from prestigious universities around the country. After putting the finishing touches on my syllabus, I am extremely thrilled to begin the 2016-2017 school year with fresh yet tested methods which I feel extreme ownership over. E668 and Dr. Harris have been invaluable in the creation of E110, and it would really make a lot of sense for more teachers to experience such a course as there was no fluff, but instead insight, ingenuity, and inspiration towards creating the very materials which will serve as the heart and soul of the course.
Here is my syllabus:
Author: Mr. Jadick's E110
r6: Competing ideas and validation for writing in class
The final three essays of First Year Composition offered both great insight and worthwhile assignments. To begin, I had felt strongly about Villaneuva’s “Oral Report” as a research assignment since it would enable students to examine a problem with language (as I had referenced in my last blog response); however after reading Yancey, I am quite torn. Her evidence-based assignment also has a unique spin on language and research as she has students analyze artifacts such as postcards, greeting cards, or any language-based item in order to create inquiry to then be solved by argument and evidence. I feel both have true value; however, I will most likely adopt the one which lends itself toward more variety and opportunity. I like the current-event aspect of Villaneuva’s Oral Report; however, Yancey’s assignment could really work on anything ranging from an old love letter found in the attic to pamphlet from a vacation.
In contrast to Yancey’s evidence-based assignment, I really appreciated her inquiry assignment which uniquely focuses solely on “thinking.” So often as an English teacher, I find myself rushing students to make claims and find evidence, which I mostly blame on Common Core; thus, leaving little time for a focus on “thinking.” Yancey really sold me on this after her example using World War II stating, “students who have been rewarded for claim and evidence for most of their K-12 testing lives now need not to claim, not to argue, but rather to inquire” (329). However, I would heed her caution that students could become so engaged in exploring that they only want to keep investigating, so it would be my role to nudge them to “stake their claim.” I wish she would have provided a better example of this assignment, as I really want to move forward with it. I plan on using it along with a previous idea involving Vietnam since she has already modeled its use with World War II.
Wardle and Downs had an abundance of great ideas; however, two ideas really resonated with me. First of all, their dialogue about the use of models validated so much of my existence as an English teacher (no exaggeration intended). Elizabeth cleverly described how she “backs into models” and how using them at the beginning of an assignment could close off students’ thinking. Doug really made me ecstatic when he discussed the way he answers a student concern for how an aspect of a piece should be: “I most often tell them, ‘I won’t know that for sure until I see what you all write…’”(289). It’s not that I don’t know how to respond to students, but hearing such qualified professors use the same responses I use at times with a splatter of self-doubt genuinely gave me reassurance that I am doing what’s best: making the students work hard enough to figure it out for themselves with just enough feedback along the way.
Last, I thought the debate on actual time spent writing in the classroom was splendid. Doug made his point that talking about writing does take time and the most writing can be completed outside of class. However, Elizabeth’s point that “I make sure that the writing happens in class as well as out of class, because I’m just not sure the students would try some of the things I want them to unless we do them together,” (294) really aligns with how I want to run my classroom. Then she goes on to talk about the discussions that occur about the in-class writing activities. This hit home with me as I already force my students to have discussions about discussions where we look at amount of participation, interruptions, side conversations, and a discussion map to decide how it could be better. This is metacognition at its best, and the thought of incorporating more discussions about in-class writing is simply thrilling.
Although I am thrilled to finally be afforded the time to finalize my own syllabus, I could not be more thankful for all of the insightful and engaging ideas I have garnered through these twelve essays. Now I just need to fit the pieces and fragments I plan to borrow and modify to my own puzzle of a syllabus for E110. These essays have really raised the bar, and if my course can live up to these, I know it will be a sure-fire success.
r5: An affinity space for career pursuits
In The Activity of Writing, Alexander Reid offered a point not yet mentioned in any other essays which really helped me finalize my brainstorming for one of the final writing projects in my course draft. I really admire his move to assist students in finding their “affinity space.” Although I really crave the first type he describes Sirc’s account of how “students sat in the dark, burned incense and listened to Steppenwolf,” (199) the reality is that I also want to keep my job. Thus, his point about how “passionate affinity spaces update such practices by engaging the contemporary digital network to facilitate student learning and communication,” (199) really reminds me that students should not be made to write for the sake of writing but to engage them in writing that can “shift students away from their typical habits of seeking to be finished with writing” (201). Luckily, the course will be afforded the technology and online availability to make all of this occur.
As I was planning out the last marking period of my syllabus draft, I sought to have students write a unique piece applicable to their planned career path. All I had so far were two assignments named “Writing in My Discipline” and “Career Writing,” and to be honest, all I had was a vision that at this point in the course, students would be ready write meaningful pieces to bridge their writing affinity to their career affinity. For example I imagined a Biochemical Engineering major writing an email to an employee of Gore (or a similar company) to gain partnership, followed by a correspondence of the type of writing involved in their daily work. The student would then go on to compose this lab report or whatever it came to be followed by a metacognitive reflection on the process and systems used to write the piece.
However, this all seemed to need the affinity space mentioned by Reid so when I arrived at his Article and Magazine Project, all of the loose ends came together. Students could write one more piece only with the audience of their peers as the main focus. Reid notes this difference as he states, “However, magazine article writers, editors, and publishers realize they have to compete for their readers’ attention” (204). In relation to that point, these articles, written about the technical types of writing in a variety of majors would then be used to “produce an online magazine with images and related media” (204). Instead of using volunteers as the magazine editors, it would be a collective effort to form committees in the class with input and ownership for individual aspects of the project. If the final product lived up to my expectation, it would be worthy of a link on our school’s website.
Reid’s anecdote about fiction writing workshops really sums up what I don’t want students to come away from the course with as “all too often stories end with characters suddenly dying or realizing that ‘it was all a dream’” (201). This, too, is analogous to what I want students to leave the class with: not a means to an end, but a means where they understand that “when writing is successful, writers respond with writing; when it is a failure, they respond with writing” (202).
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah, and Ronald F. Lunsford. First-year Composition: From Theory to Practice. , 2014. Print.
r4: Primary research: the inspiration of true research
Research is inevitable in a course such as E 110, but as a realist, I know that students are often only motivated to research because they have no other choice. Mathieu, in “A Guiding Question, Some Primary Research, and a Dash of Rhetorical Awareness” provides a logical and cunning way to change this mindset of our students with her approach on primary research. Through implementing this move into my course, I feel I can give students a rationale for library research, as Mathieu states, “While each project is grounded in what might be considered personal, primary research, library research is essential in asking the right questions…” (120).
As I read through her essay, fragments of ideas for my course started to come together. I had originally wanted to incorporate Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried as it uniquely wavers between fiction and nonfiction, and I knew what I wanted students to get out of the assignment, but I needed to see an existent structure for a clear starting point. From what I’ve drafted so far in my syllabus, in the third marking period students would begin with an assignment similar to “Writing 3.1: Interviewing Someone Older Than You.” Only, instead of just interviewing a family member or friend, they would search for someone who has experience to provide on a historic event, such as O’Brien and his experience with fellow soldiers in Vietnam. However, students could find family, friends, or reach out to a stranger with experience ranging from a monumental event such as 9/11 or something more local such as the shooting which occurred in the New Castle County Courthouse in 2013.
From there, they would follow a similar assignment to “Writing 3.2: Interview Transcript” in order to organize and identify what specific aspect of that person’s life they would focus on along with additional questions for a follow-up interview and the background research similar to “Writing 3.3: Background Research” This would help them understand the context of the story they would be using in their final piece, and it would give them both motivation and purpose in getting a minimum of five sources to complete an annotated bibliography.
Though I give Mathieu credit for planting the seed in my head as to a starting point, the final piece was my own brainchild. Here, the students would take on the approach of O’Brien to use to tell the story they have gathered. Perhaps it was Harris’ analogy of “the cover song, in which one musician reinterprets a song associated with another, is a staple of rock and roll” (75) which really inspired me to have students use primary to background research to a final project where they get to take O’Brien’s mode and employ it to tell the unique story they have discovered. Overall, to go back to a comment made by a colleague in an earlier post, one way help students research and write is to work along with them, and for me, if the assignment gets me excited, it is guaranteed it will excite and inspire my students as well.
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah, and Ronald F. Lunsford. First-year Composition: From Theory to Practice. , 2014. Print.
Harris, Joseph. Rewriting: How To Do Things With Texts. U of Colorado, 2006. Print.
r3: To flip or not to flip?
Whether it was my ignorance as to the contents of the textbook, or just the notion that Anson mentions several aspirations I have recently had as an educator, I could not feel any more validated about the move of a flipped classroom. Recently during a long training run, a former colleague of mine, now turned principal, shared his affection with this approach which initiated my brainstorming about the idea. However, only having previously seen it as a tech-related endeavor, Anson shed profound light on its role in a writing class.
Though I do agree with him that, “Lecturing is a drug, and the more captive the audience, the more addictive it becomes” (10); I agree even more that in a core composition class class time needs to be “devoted to large-group discussion, small-group work, brief writing episodes, peer-group brainstorming and revision conferences, oral mini-presentations, poster creation and ‘gallery walks,’ problem-solving through cases and scenarios and other activities”(11). As much as I love to walk up and down the rows with my PowerPoint clicker in hand, dramatically pausing for effect after a dramatic or funny anecdote, I must question if this is really the most effective use of time.
Perhaps this move so greatly appeals to me as I value students’ class time, and when we see eye to eye on what effective class time is, there is a certain flow. In relation to the topic of this class, the intention is to get students to write and then teach through breaking down and building back up successive compositions. Conversation about text, be it assigned reading or writing, is what keeps the inspiration fresh at the forefront for students to always be in motion instead of idling with ideas stalled at a lectured-to-death intersection.
The one part of this he explains so nonchalantly is how the students watch the lectures and come to class prepared: “Whatever lectures would be delivered in class are created digitally and posted online for students to view as homework(perhaps low-stakes writing assignments for accountability)” (11). One truth about lecturing Anson does not mention is the inevitable less self-critical nature of live delivery versus digitally recorder. After bringing this up to my running partner more recently, he responded, “I do flipped faculty meetings, but being a perfectionist can make it take a really long time.” Thus, I feel there is a slight daunting nature about the workload involved as well as the creativity, not to mention the knowledge of technology.
This deliberate shift from an optimistic attitude to pessimistic hesitation about flipping E110 is more to inspire feedback. The class will only meet every other day for eighty-two minutes, so time is valuable. However, I know there is a reality that this would present a double learning curve in teaching the class the first time while incorporating a knew class structure. Yet, they just seem so complementary. Frost tells us to go “the road less traveled” but I know that once I “flip” the switch, there will be no turning back.
Coxwell-Teague, Deborah, and Ronald F. Lunsford. First-year Composition: From Theory to Practice. , 2014. Print.
r2: Rewriting Rewriting
Throughout Rewriting, Harris details four essential moves critical writers make in academic writing. From defining the project to forwarding, countering, and revising, most academic writers are able to lay the foundation for a successful and profound piece. However, in order to ‘re-write’ with due diligence, one must synthesize and blend sources to really sculpt and mold the fragments of what others have previously said. Along with that use, blending can also enable writers to see their project more clearly.
Synthesis, the critical reading, followed by blending, the critical writing, are inherently difficult for students as they often come into research lacking the ability to set apart ideas in a text from the single work itself. Thus, to appropriately fit the synthesis and blending in the right place, one may begin with the four moves detailed in Rewriting.
For example, a student has been assigned to write on a current issue in the U.S., however, the assignment specifies to “respond to prior views in order to move the conversation in a new direction.” He visits several reliable databases and news articles to first really understand the debate on the ground level. Focusing on public bathroom usage and transgenders, he is able to clearly identify the debate. A database article is useful in providing background on the history of the controversy; however, in order to really begin and use the other sources, the student must “come to terms” with this project. After reading a second article, the student comes across an entire section devoted to the cost of jobs and challenges of business to recruit workers based on the recent developments in North Carolina.
This very quote leads the student to come to terms and really define their project as their new direction will be looking at the repercussions of the transgender bathroom laws. As they begin to forward mainly through illustrating and authorizing, they return back to the database articles to delightfully realize that certain fragments of the foundational information blend smoothly with information from the sources which helped them originally understand the topic. After scrutinizing the database article, the student comes to find similar evidence about the effect of the law on public schools. This now fuels a transition from not only discussing the bathroom laws but the cause and effect relationship to his own school and the correlation to government funding.
As the student finds points which counter, he draws on these to allow him to push the idea even further then leading to taking his own approach, which he decides will be an essay that looks through the lens of cisgender person with just as much if not more to lose as the transgender who just wants the bathroom of identification. From here, not to oversimplify, the text goes to revising and is eventually submitted.
Overall, the move of blending enabled this student to not only achieve a framework for this project, but it gave him a better sense of the relationship between the sources, while also providing a clear definition of the project he wanted to pursue. Thus, students can develop their own assertions and organize their findings so that their own ideas are still the impetus for the paper.
r1: E110 Course Goals and Practices
After reading through the E110 Goals and Practices, the majority appeared to be what we as educators consider “best practices.” However, any teacher of writer would acknowledge that most academic writing is more complex than it sounds. The majority of the goals were clearly stated, thus, I will not mention them to save time; however, several could use more clarification or could be a bit difficult with my students.
In terms of goals, to “research the various perspectives on a question or topic and contribute to the scholarly conversation about it” could present a challenge to my students. As I read this statement, I automatically made a connection to the move of countering as detailed in Rewriting, since it is not enough to select one side of a debate; instead, the writer must look through a lens beyond the debate to uncover another perspective. Really, the challenge begins in instilling the significance of “various perspectives” in their research as they often fall into vacuum of what only fits into their thesis. In turn, they must use these perspectives to push beyond the debate in order to join the scholarly conversation. Unfortunately, too often is the case that choosing and defending a side is as far as students are pushed.
As for practices, “Write frequently, write for different audiences, and write pieces of varying length and complexity” seemed quite open-ended. For instance, it seems the generic high school English course is built around argumentative and informative writing thanks largely in part to the Common Core Standards, so in order to bridge the course, I want to make sure analysis and argument are included, and ideally, narrative writing could fit as a starting piece if it is not deemed too simplistic for such a course. In terms of planning, it seems imperative to begin with the writing pieces first; therefore, the expectation for type and amount will be helpful.
Next, for “Participate as a member of a community of writers,” I not only understand it, but I want to see it further. Although this practice seems more related to the process of group-workshop in class with collaboration and constructive criticism of peer writing, how much should occur online? Also, in our ENG 668, everyone is expected to read and respond to one another since we have three students and one instructor, but what is the expectation when there is a class of twenty-plus? In addition, since this is a college-level writing class, I would like to hold outside-of-class writing conferences as well since I can still remember the impact time spent conferencing during a professor’s “office hours” had on my own writing. However, what are the limits to this? Can I require each student to meet with me out of class a specified amount of time? Is it up to my individual school? What do you suggest?
Finally, “Reflect on your aims and strategies as a writer” seemed the most vague in terms of the expectation. However, after reading Rewriting, I envisioned this to be a meta-cognitive piece similar to when Harris expands upon “Coming to Terms” in “Projects” when the writer goes back through their own writing to see if they can write a paragraph or two in which they describe how the essay as it stands (Rewriting 32-33). Adding this new layer to the writing process will certainly challenge my students, especially since they will be forced to define their own project, which very few take the time to do or even consider. If there is more they need to do in terms of reflection, I would be open to additional ideas to consistently implement this reflective piece. My students already keep traditional portfolios; however, I believe more consistent reflection on past pieces could be helpful.
Though the majority of the document makes complete sense, feedback on these few questions will be extremely helpful as I continue to plan and lay out the course.
E688: Seminar in Teaching Composition 