I really liked the idea of meta-teaching that C&D introduce in the Feedback chapter. Particularly, I think that written response to your written responses on essays would be really useful to assess what is going well or what isn't. I have been talking with one of my friends in another department who doean't really know what to do with marginal comments because she feels that the students are not addressing her suggestions. It reminds me of (I think it was) Bean's list of really resistant comments to teacher comments: one of them was something along the lines of the teacher said "you need to explain more" and the student responded "no you need to explain more."
Of course, the examples C&D provide of how or how not to use meta-teaching seem like there is a very fine line to tread. I guess the trick is not to use meta-teaching to make value judgments, but to reveal that you recognize something has gone wrong without placing the blame. I have seen this technique used very effectively in undergraduate- and graduate-level courses. (And I'm pretty sure meta-teaching is the reason we're now required to write one blog post per week.)
I don't know about anybody else, but I really plan to use MoCAT in my course. I had been discussing with some of you whether or not I plan to write out my entire schedule for the course, or whether I will hand out a new calendar when we reach a new unit/essay assignment. I see the benefits of waiting being that you can change what is working or not working, but I can also recognize that a student would feel a little apprehensive, like "my teacher doesn't know what we're doing in this course." Is there any way any of you can think of that would involve having a fully developed schedule that still leaves room for change if something isn't working? I'm thinking you could have the assignments and due dates all written out, but the lesson plans (which students wouldn't have to see) could change as needed.
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There is always the possibility of modifying the schedule on the syllabus. Quite a few of my profs have done that at one point or another. I always appreciate it when they give us new schedules when they do that, just so that we know where the class is going, rather than just telling us from class period to class period what we're doing next.
Also you could build in some "unassigned" days on the syllabus- leave blank in case you have to mess with the order of things, or schedule an emergency exercise on writing introductions, etc. I'd be leery of delivering the overall schedule piece by piece- students with outside commitments can't inform us in advance that they'll miss a due date if they don't know when the due date is. Even a sketched-out schedule would provide enough of a sense of structure for most students.
I like the idea of building in catch up days to the syllabus. Even though there's so much to cover in English 1K that it seems criminal to leave some days blank I think it's probably good in the long run. Students wouldn't have to know they were catch up days.
I like Katie's meta comment on the meta moment in our class. ;)
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