August 2008

this was a little strange.

A woman I’ve never seen before, but will remember for a while, walked into my class and said, “Excuse me. I have a message from the dean.”

Certainly, of course. Speak your piece.

“This class may be ended. If you have a message in your email by noon tomorrow, you will know not to come back.”

I’m staring at her. The students are too.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news.”

Dang.

I’ve been let go by someone whose name I don’t even know. Does she know mine? Or did the dean just say, “Go tell the adjunct in 512 West that her class isn’t going to make.”

And, yes, I would rather know this before I come back for class and I am sure the students would too. But I have their phone numbers and emails. I could have let them know.

Oh well. It was efficient.

And I won’t be driving in traffic after all.

for students.

They are predicated on full-time school, no-time work, and a residential college.

They certainly miss the boat with many of my students, who are parents and working.

But it’s a fun and different approach to campus life.

It was not that long ago (perhaps five years) when I was at a conference where someone said that academics didn’t respect science fiction. Apparently science fiction academics are changing that, with a fortieth annual conference. (That’s pretty high up in numbers to be un-respected.)

If you have an interest:

The website says the conference is:

Engineering the Future and Southern-Fried Science Fiction and Fantasy
June 11-14, Atlanta, GA (Wyndham Midtown Hotel)
Guest of Honor: Michael Bishop
Special Guest Authors: F. Brett Cox, Paul di Filippo, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Jack McDevitt

The deadline for proposals is April 1, 2009 at midnight EST.

I love the idea of southern-fried sci fi and fantasy… But I don’t know that it is what I read.

I’ll have to think about it.

If we propose, and we both get in, let me know and we can meet up.

Find an angle.

It is all too easy to find the text, offer the info in the text, do the writing assignments in the text, and nothing else. The text is supposed to offer the students something amazing. (They’re paying $100+ for it after all.) But it shouldn’t be all there is. If they could just read the text, then you aren’t adding anything to the course.

So what can you add?

Find the things you are interested in and do those. My students are doing online writing. I think it is a great way to get a real audience and so I’m assigning that. If I were really into motorcycles, I might look for ways in which bikes are used in pop culture and introduce that during our readings on pop culture. I need to teach literature analysis, so I use fairy tales to introduce literature.

What does this do?

It makes your class unique and it keeps you interested in it. That, in turn, helps hold your students interest.

Offer an example or a visual aid.

I am a big story person, so I try to find, cull, borrow, or cadge stories from life that fit what we are going to be talking about in class.

Today, introducing writing, I talked about the man I knew who lost a $100,000 promotion (It was really $43K, but it was 30 years ago.) because he couldn’t write well.

Next class we are talking about audience, and we’ll be writing on the net, so I will remind them to be careful about the information they publish on the net with the true story of the police investigator who found and followed a local fifth grader to her home. She hadn’t published her name or her hometown or her address. But she said what her team was and the name of the practice field and her number. The police officer knocked on the door and talked to her parents. (Do you think she was ever allowed to use the computer again?)

It’s a story.

But if you’re better with visuals, bring those in. Bring in a real love letter you’re willing to share and a piece of junk mail and compare the audiences. Bring in a dirty smelly trash can and have them describe it. Bring in an old picture (buy one at a flea market) and have them narrate about the people in the photograph based on what they are wearing.

Bring something that is not written words to the class. Not everyone deals with words as well as English teachers tend to. They need something else, too.

Make it relevant.

This goes back to my angle issue, and the stories, but let the students see that what they are studying is relevant to their lives.

I clip cartoons, comic strips, and letters to the editor when they reference a literary work I might be teaching someday. If I get a few on one topic, I copy them and pass them out before we start reading. I have the students look at them and we discuss how much we don’t get about the discussion underway because we haven’t read the book or the poem. It’s an interesting attention getter because students often assume they will never again reference any work they read in college.

In business writing, I talk about the need to be clear about what words mean. I use the Challenger explosion and the problem with the secondary O-rings to illustrate it. The engineers said, “There is a problem with the secondary O-rings at such and such temperature.” The managers heard “back-up O-rings.” Since there wasn’t anything wrong with the primary O-rings, they sent the shuttle off. And an entire school filled with children watched their teacher blow up. And families all over the nation were left grieving. Because of a vocabulary issue. Words matter.

I talk about how a spelling issue, a single one, will push a resume into the trash can.

I discuss revision and how it is important. Then I bring in 15 or so versions of my curriculum vitae. I show them where I started and where I am now. And I show them all the steps in the middle. Revision is important and I show the students that I don’t just say it, but that I believe it. They are more likely to believe it at that point.

If information doesn’t help them, don’t give it to them.

This is kind of an answer to “is this going to be on the test?” If it’s on the test, teach it. If it’s necessary for their homework, teach it. If it’s not something they are going to use in your class, don’t. Yes, it may be cool and interesting, but if they’re not going to be able to use it, then there’s not a lot of point in them hearing about it right now.

You are probably wondering why I tell stories, and bring in cv’s, since those aren’t on the test. I don’t test them over my stories, but I do expect them to learn the principles the stories emphasize. That’s part of why I tell stories, because it gives them something concrete to hang the theoretical knowledge on long enough for them to learn and use it.

If you still want to teach them something, go ahead. But make sure they have a chance to use it in your class.

Sometimes when we are teaching we forget to present writing as a skill that is necessary for more than school. This is a short video on how to use writing to make your personal life better:

Personal Growth And The Significance Journal from Ron Davis on Vimeo.

Disclosure: I am related to the speaker.

Ruby Payne’s works on education and communities. They’re on hold at the library.

I’ve read her first book already. It can give a lot of insight into our students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and values.

An old song says “Do what you do, do well, girl.” I’d say, “What you do well, do.”

Sometimes we have to work with what we are given, but we can still find what we do well in that area and teach with it in mind.

Example from composition and literature
In comp and literature, the adjuncts at one of my colleges are allowed to pick a novel from a list of ten that the full-time teachers have chosen. We are not allowed to pick any other novels. So, from that list of ten, I picked the one I thought I could teach the best.

I chose Frankenstein, which is now one of my favorite novels, because it was short and because the students would have some familiarity with it because of the movies. I didn’t know anything about it other than that.

But, when I began preparing for my class, I went looking for the things I care about and the ways the book fit my interests.

I love genre issues, which Frankenstein clearly fits. Is it a science fiction novel? a fantasy? a romantic novel, since it was written during the Romantic period? a gothic novel?

I’m a strong proponent of biographical and historical criticism.

Frankenstein is perfect for this. Mary Shelley put a lot of the scientific and literary knowledge of the day into her novel. There are jokes that we don’t get without historical criticism, such as Columbus and the egg, that add to the reading. There are references to the Ovid and Milton’s Paradise Lost. The novel has also been a fruitful field for biographical criticism in areas delving particularly into Shelley’s childhood experience of motherlessness and paternal indifference.

I have a lot of modern friends who are Goth, so I even delved into the gothic-ness of the novel. The exotic settings, the gloomy weather, and the scary supernatural (the living creation) are all part of the goth experience.

I went looking for those aspects of the work to introduce in class. And, because I did, my introduction to the book is strong. I am using my strengths (in this case my interests) to teach the book.

The critical articles in the class edition didn’t deal with the things that interested me, but I still pulled those things in anyway, using them as I do the textbooks- to hit the high points as an introduction. The students can go back to the works later if they are interested. Also the critical articles give the students a fast (but inaccurate) view of what is out there on the novel. That’s good since they have to write a research paper over the literary criticism of the novel.

Example from business writing
Another example is from business writing. I love stories. I like to hear stories and I like to tell stories. I think people can learn a lot from stories. In business, we call them case studies, but they are still stories. I collect stories that relate to points I want to teach and when I am teaching, I use those stories.

These include stories about the Challenger explosion and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident. They are things that catch the students attention. Sometimes it shocks them. (We had a nuclear accident in the US?)

Example from freshman composition
I use stories in all my classes.

When I give students their narrative assignment, I tell them not to confess any crimes. (They usually laugh.) Then I tell them about a teacher in Illinois, who spoke at a conference I was at, who was given a process paper in which the student described how he murdered and buried someone. I tell my students that she spent days wondering what she should do. “I won’t. I’ll call 9-1-1 as soon as I start reading your paper.”

They are very caught up by this story. It makes the narrative more real to them.

What if my strengths aren’t supported in the text?

The texts I’ve usually taught from do not have case studies. That’s okay. I find them and supplement the text that way.

These stories make my teaching stronger because I am using my strengths to help my teaching.

I don’t know what your strengths are, but I am sure you have them. Use them in your classroom.

You can’t always ignore something because it isn’t your strength though.

I have found that the best thing for me to do is use the text or supplementary material to shore up my weaknesses.

There may be things that are done well in the text that you don’t do as well in on your own. Use the text to help.

When I am talking about controversial issues, I don’t always remember what the best arguments are for both sides. But one of the texts I was required to use had readings that were in pairs: one for, one against. We would read those essays and, using them, begin a classroom discussion of the pros and cons of the issue.

It was a good use of the text (Tip 8 ) and it helped me do well at something that is one of my weaknesses.

Tip 3 also has a discussion on doing what you love.

My mind is going a million miles an hour and though I am tired I cannot sleep. So I had some caffeine and am in here typing.

I’m not really totally freewriting. I’m not writing, per se. But I am freewriting. This is not free association, though everything in my head seems associated right now. This is freewriting because in looking up multimodal I found a journal and read a wonderful multimodal piece on freewriting and they said none of us teachers do it anymore.

I do it often. Or I do something like it. I have a topic and I write and write and write anything I can think of on the topic or related to the topic. So I guess it is directed freewriting.

If it were undirected freewriting I might tell you that my beagle is lying beside me with her eyes closed. I don’t think she’s asleep yet, but she will be soon. But this is directed freewriting so I am writing on writing, because that is what I have been thinking of and it’s what my mind has been going at the speed of sound about.

What does multimodal mean in a classroom and why should it mean that? I am at the cutting edge, maybe even on the sharpener at my college, while we are leapyears behind other schools. Did you see that great combination class on English literature and computer web design? I still think that would be great.

Could I suggest it to Cindy? Or something like it?

It might be a great way to do the online freshman comp class.

I was thinking about Jing. I need to make a jing for how the students sign in to Davis English. It needs to be up by Monday. So I could do it tomorrow, but today would be better.

I wrote a whole paper, but I can’t find it, on the topic I am submitting to CCTE. I am ready to revise it now, but I can’t find it and I want to go and look it up right now and see if I just saved it somewhere else accidentally, like in Documents or something. But I haven’t. I need to later, but right now I am writing about writing. That’s not writing; it’s research.

I submitted a paper to be published to XXX and I hope it is accepted. I want it to be, but I am afraid it won’t be now that 4C’s has turned me down. (My heart isn’t broken, but my hope is stubbed.)

I still haven’t heard from PCAACA and I won’t hear from TCEA till later. SB is supposed to tell me about the state of the profession paper, but it sounds like it is a wasted effort. (I haven’t let go of hope, yet, though. It’s stubbed, not dead.)

And “massive action” this summer was writing four to eight papers, how many ever there were, and sending them out to see if I could present and get them published. But I can’t control other people’s response to my massive action, so I decided that for each rejection I get (and there will be many) I need to send out a new proposal, a new paper. It might be that some of them can be the old one with a new venue, but I need to keep this ball rolling downhill. I need to be applying and applying and getting accepted.

I need that. Next year I need to have a full-time job so I can send my son to full-time college. And I want to have a full-time job, after fifteen/sixteen years away because I have missed it.

There’s no school like X around here. There was one, but not anymore. I want to teach, with some research, just enough to keep me fresh. I was a bit jaded.

I love teaching at the CC. They have 5 classes for full-timers though. I thought that might be too much. And I wonder if I have lost my chair’s respect because I did say I was getting bored with the class. My dad, a manager, says you should never tell your boss you’re bored. Oops.

This is the year of the job search extraordinaire. And this is the year of all the writing. So I can do a freewriting. And I can share it with the world.

And the beagle is now snoring, so I guess she is asleep.

The article that started this all is “Where Ideas Are Garbage and All Writing is Free: Doubting and Believing in Freewriting.”

Who does extra credit?

Early in the semester the people who do extra credit are the A students. Towards the end of the semester, if you are giving grades out regularly, more students who actually need it will get involved.

But most of the time, the students who need it the most won’t do it. So be prepared for that. As a teacher invested in the class, it can be a bit disheartening.

Why give extra credit?

There are many different reasons, but a big one is to get students to do something that is outside the normal parameters of your classroom.

One of my schools only allows extra credit to encourage the students to attend campus events. Obviously in an English class, they then have to write about it.

What if you want to give a new assignment, but you are unsure about its usability?

Give extra credit. The better students will do the project, whatever it is. If they do it well, you will know it can work. If they do it poorly, you will know it needs to be restructured.

What if you had a great assignment, but you can’t integrate it into the class?

Give extra credit. Over the years I have developed some learning units (as Blackboard calls them) that are very good, fun, and cool. [And, yes, I am reading The Rhetoric of Cool.] But as I get new texts, which don’t have the sections those assignments were created for, I drop them out of my class. But I still like them. They are still good and useful. There was a point to them and, if I liked them all that much, I received well-written papers. So I give them as extra credit.

How can I argue for extra credit?

As a writing instructor, the more students write, the more they learn. That’s one argument for it.

Another argument for it is that extra credit assignments can be given which involve the students in campus life and getting students involved on campus increases student retention. (That’s always a big deal with colleges.) You can send them to see the school play and they can write a critique. They can go to the campus art show and discuss their favorite and least favorite works. If you have multiple school eateries, they could try them out and write a compare/contrast paper. There are lots of assignments you could create to get the students involved on campus and writing.

How should extra credit be given?

I usually assign the easier projects as extra credit early in the semester. Then as the semester progresses, the extra credit assignments become more involved. That means that the students who need to do more work to improve their grade will be doing the equivalent of an extra day or two in class.*

The only exceptions to this are for
1) new projects I want to try out and
2) projects which get my students involved with the campus (as an aspect of student retention).

How should extra credit be graded?

Don’t spend hours grading extra credit. Think about what you are looking for ahead of time. Determine to what part of the grade it will be added, assuming your assignments have different weights. And decide, for yourself, how many points it is worth. I don’t always say how much it is worth. I do say something like, “This will go towards your homework average.”

And I give more than 100% averages if the student earned them. If I have a student who does all the homework and the homework extra credit, that student might end up with a 115 on that part of the average. So they have 115 on 20%. I find that it is an encouragement to the students to let them know that you will go over 100, if they make that.

Then when you receive the assignment, read through it. Is it exactly what you were looking for? Give the full number of points. Is it adequate? Give 3/4s. Is it done but not very good? Give half. Is it awful? Give 5-10%. (I don’t ever give 0 on an extra credit assignment unless it is plagiarized.) Is it exceptional, far beyond what you were looking for? Give 110-125%.

How should extra credit be weighted?

If I want the students to do something I meant to get to in class but didn’t have time for, I offer “on the spot” extra credit. It usually goes towards their homework average and I don’t say how much credit it will get because it will depend on how much the student produces.

If the assignment is fairly straightforward (go here, read this, write a narrative paragraph of your experience), then it should be weighted lightly. If the assignment has a few pages of reading or requires a few pages of writing (but still fairly straightforward), then I give 100 points in the homework section.

I have thirty to forty-five assignments that go into that, so that helps their grade a little, but not a lot.

If the assignment is involved, then I will give credit towards a major grade. For instance, we have six journal assignments that are 10% of the grade this semester. If the students find someone in their discipline or field and interview them about the discipline/field, using questions we came up with as a class, and write up a two to three page paper discussing what they learned and how it effects their attitude or future, then I give more substantial credit. It is usually enough to replace half of a journal assignment that got left undone.

What are some sample extra credit projects?

This example of a project is something you couldn’t do in a class unless you are in a computer lab. So it is perfect for extra credit.

Read Murphy’s Laws of Teaching.
Write down three that you have experience with. Write a one paragraph description of your experience with each.
This extra credit will add to your homework average.

I have thousands of total points in homework. Again, if someone did an outstanding job, I would give them outstanding credit. Usually though it’s 50 to 100 points.

Schedule an interview with a teacher or someone who works in your major area. Call to get an appointment. The interview must be completed within two weeks. Keep the appointment, ask the questions, listen, take notes or tape the interview, and write up the interview.

This is the assignment that I wrote about earlier. It follows our discussion of interviews in class where we come up with interview questions as a group.

Read Killian Advertising.
Comment on which of the reasons for terrible cover letters you think is most likely and why.
Pick two of the bloopers that don’t have editorial comment [The parts in green italics in square brackets.] and tell what is wrong with them. Please copy the two bloopers, too, so I will know what they are.

This one is fun and makes them think about the audience reading their papers more.

The following is an extra credit assignment during the research paper section:

Pick a good argument on the side you agree with. State the argument in on or two sentences. Then refute the argument; that is, tell why the argument is problematic. In other words, why might the argument not convince someone? (1.5-2 pages)

They have read articles on both sides of their issue by this time and should have a good grasp of their situation.

Do I have to give extra credit?

Absolutely not. But I find that structuring it ahead of time (except for on-campus events) lets me know that students can do better if they want to. This eases my conscience when they aren’t doing as well as they (or I) know they can.

*I believe that writers become better by understanding what they are trying to do and then doing it. A lot.