Am I the only one who has come to appreciate instructors even more since trying to put together a syllabus and paper assignments?
I must confess that it has been much trickier than I thought it would be. Having had so many good paper topics in my educational career, I suppose I just never thought about all that goes into them. When I thought about teaching, I thought primarily about my interactions with students, classroom demeanor, and (to some degree) content. I did not think about how tricky it would be to decide whether attendance is mandatory or merely suggested, how to penalize late work, and how strict to be about academic honesty.
The syllabus was considerably easier to write than the assignments, though. I don't know that I've had writing assignments that I thought were so good that I needed to emulate them. In the end, I borrowed one from Jenn Albin (my first paper assignment) that I thought was evil but immensely useful and crafted the other two as best I could, given that I haven't decided about readings yet.
I'm curious what you all thought about the Bean chapter. I thought it was interesting, but not really as relevant to English 1000 instructors, given that our job is to teach writing. Have any of you thought of any way of implementing some of Bean's suggestions?
So, even though I was really excited about this assignment, it was not nearly as simple as I thought it would be.
--Bri
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2 comments:
Bri,
for me Bean's Chapter 5 appeared very helpful in finding what kinds of assignments I could make because I never took this kind of writing courses. I was being taught to write not in a university but mostly in secondary school, in language and literature classes.
I find some examples or, rather, ideas given by Bean are relevant to English 1000. Particularly, I think rewriting the same assignments several times (p. 74) for higher grades is a good practice because it helps students analize their own work and observe their progress. Asking students to submit their drafts (p. 84) is good too though it is harder for both students and a professor. It can be done once in a while in the class.
I also liked the idea of collaborative sessions where students have to grade essays (p. 86). It is analitical activity where proper argumentation is necessary.
The task of writing a mini-play is amusing. I would enjoy it. Even if it turns out to be not suitable for the whole class it can be offered as optional for extra points.
In general, it is really tricky to offer assignments. I think my approach here is looking for the samples of them in as many sources as possible and using those ones that seem to be suitable. Only actual teaching can prove if they are good enough.
I'll be more interested in Bean when he gets to the parts detailing exploratory writing and connecting it to the larger assignments. Drafting is important, but so is building up to an assignment slowly, especially for writers who aren't as strong to begin with. Not to mention these assignments could fill up the days you don't know what to do with.
Joe
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