Redesigning English 1101

Currently I organize my English 1101 course around writing projects, and the culmination of each unit is a finished project + a reflection. Quite a few scaffolding assignments lead up to each project. I have always taken for granted that my students were learning certain things about writing as we worked on each project, but I am becoming much less sure about that.

It seems like some students are kind of coasting into each project based on writing skills they’ve acquired previously, so they are not really trying to learn from the scaffolding lessons, and they may not do them. While other students, ones who have less experience with writing assignments and whose skills are not as strong, are intimidated by the projects and the reflections, since they are unused to doing this kind of work. Those students may not realize the value of the scaffolding assignments, since those assignments don’t look like “writing the paper” — so they may not do them either!

So when I create a unit based on a genre-project, like a Profile for example (evergreen favorite), my aim is to teach things about writing as we develop the project, but my students’ aim, quite understandably, is to write the Profile.

I want my students to learn about writing and about being a writer.

My students want to finish the project.

So I’m thinking about how to unravel this, so our aims are more congruent. I can set up the course so that my students practice more granular lessons about writing, and those lessons become the content of the course. I want to take the focus off the projects, which I think I’ve unintentionally reified. And I want to experiment with dividing the course into smaller chunks with lower stakes. It takes too many weeks to fully develop these projects. I think we need more short-term gratification these days. I’m thinking about all the pandemic issues that cause students to lose focus and momentum, and how a month-long project becomes an energy sink/suck.

I’m going to have to find a whole new rhythm to make this work, but I’m pretty interested in how it might look. I think I’m going to map out the course objectives against my ideas about what the lessons could be, drawing on Writing Spaces and The Writer’s Practice to begin with.

Profs, please cancel all your late work penalties

If there’s one thing I’m sure of after this pandemic year, I’m sure that professors should never penalize late work just for being late. Grade it, sure. Apply your points scheme, sure. But don’t apply any penalties based on when they turn in their work (up to whatever date you have reasonably said is the final day you can accept something and still have time to look at it, of course).

Make this policy clear up front so that your students do not have to make fraught, speculative choices about whether or not to approach you with a story about why their work is late. Just tell them, hey, 100% I am not going to penalize your work if it’s late. It doesn’t matter what the reason is, I don’t need to know anything about it. Please run your life as best you can. Let me know if I can help, but my judgments of your situation or your choices are not part of this equation.

Try, if you can, to imagine all the *real* reasons why a student might turn in work late, and the potential for shame or humiliation associated with your requirement to give them a reason. “Just reach out to me,” you might say. “Just let me know why,” you say, thinking you are a nice person, of course you will be understanding.

But think about the position you are putting them in, to decide whether to tell you the real reason or whether to make up something more palatable, or whether to just keep quiet and hope for the best. They may be taking the penalty on purpose because the conversation with you is not worth the pain it will add to the pain they are already in.

When a student hasn’t finished their work on time, there is a reason. They could be suffering from mental illness, disability or chronic pain/illness, housing or food insecurity, emotional abuse or physical or sexual violence, alcohol or drug addiction, or any number of other troubling problems. If you can help, such as by making referrals to campus resources, offer that, while respecting their privacy.

Please do not argue with me that students have to learn to turn in their work on time “because of the real world.” People, there is nothing not-real about the world in which you are teaching this class. In this-here world, students face difficult challenges and choices. Sometimes they break down. Sometimes they are harmed. And your late-work penalties are just more harm.

In this-here real world where you are teaching this class, where you are the boss, you can demonstrate compassion, humanity, respect, generosity, and care.

Office Hours: A User Guide

All 300+ members of COD’s full-time faculty are required to schedule 10 hours per week when we are accessible to students — we are either sitting in our offices, or hanging out online somewhere you can reach us. So most of the info below applies to all full-time (but not adjunct) faculty.

Through myACCESS, you can find all our office hour schedules. You can find them like this: first log into myACCESS, then find the Registration menu and click on this item:

You’ll see a search box that is also a drop-down menu. Find your professor’s name and select it. You’ll get a result like this:

(It’s important to know that R means Thursday.)

Now you know the days and times that I said I would be in my office or available online. What you don’t know is whether I’ve gotten sucked into a meeting vortex or had a family emergency – so it’s not a bad idea to check in with me before you go trying to track me down. Use that contact info, it’s there for a reason. Try calling me. If I don’t pick up, email me.

When you email me, let me know how to reach you. If it’s urgent, tell me. If you are not ok, let me know how I can help. If you have a question, write the question as clearly as you can, to make it easier for me to help.

Please know that my technical power is limited, so if you can’t connect to Blackboard or you lost your password, you are better off calling the helpdesk: 630-942-2999. You can always try both.

Although I am not a wizard, I am technology-friendly. I really enjoy using my Zoom account to video-chat and screen-share with students. Sometimes a few minutes on Zoom or a voice call can solve a problem that could take 10 emails to figure out!

You cannot text me. I do not give out my private phone number. But I am quick at replying to email, and you need to be comfortable with email anyway – it’s a primary professional communication mode. Practice on me. I won’t be critical, I’ll just be glad to hear from you.

Which leads me to my most important point: if you need my help, I’ll be grateful if you will let me know.

Dr. K’s Adventure Report

Last week, I asked my English 1101 students to write an “adventure report”* — a piece based on any experience that took them out of their normal routine. As luck would have it, I have the chance to write an adventure report of my own, since my husband and I have started working up to a Really Big Adventure we plan to take next summer, a month of bike- and car-camping.

This weekend, we challenged ourselves to do a ride on our tandem bicycle with a realistic load of the cargo we would need for an overnight bike-camping trip. We don’t have all the right equipment yet, as you can see in this photo — if it had rained while we were riding, our camping gear would have gotten soaked. If we are going to use this open cargo trailer for our Big Adventure, we will need a tarp or a waterproof duffel bag.

Heading out with the loaded cargo trailer

We had reserved a campsite at Warren Dunes for Saturday night, so that was our home base for our loaded test ride. We drove into the campground on a glorious sunny September afternoon, unloaded our gear, and packed up the trailer.

This area of southwest Michigan is perfect for cycling — get a mile or two east of the lakefront, and you can ride for miles of quiet country roads through farmlands and woods. There are some wineries tucked away here and there, and yesterday as we rode past the vineyards, I could smell the warm grapes in the afternoon sun. We passed one farm where a couple of llamas were sharing a barnyard with a horse and a donkey. At the doorway of the barn was an enormous squealing pig that seemed to be stuck trying to get outside and join its mates.

On the back of the tandem, I am the navigator. We were in familiar territory, and I was casually improvising our route on Google maps while enjoying the scenery and the sunshine, when Google sent us down a road with the dreaded construction barrier and warning sign, Bridge Out – Local Traffic Only. My husband, grumbling that you never know what “bridge out” really means, defiantly took us around the barrier. A mile down the way, we came to a narrow one-lane bridge that had partially collapsed over an irrigation ditch. The local authorities had put a big heap of mud on top of it to prevent vehicles from trying to pass. We got off the bike, and Doug pushed the tandem around the dirt pile. I let the rig go past me, then I lifted the back rail of the trailer to ease it over. And on we went.

This terrain starts out flat near Lake Michigan and gets only a little hilly farther east. We enjoyed some low rollers and just one real hill, noticing the pull of the trailer and the push in our legs. We felt great! But it was already late in the day, after all the organizing and packing and driving to Michigan, so we turned back west and hit the Greenbush Brewing Company for brisket and beers before we returned to the campground. Total miles for the day: 24, at 13mph average speed. Not bad considering the loaded trailer!

Our next challenge was camping…. We do not have much experience camping! We set up our little tent, put our pads and sleeping bags inside, and started trying to build a campfire. It took an hour just to get the fire really going, with crappy damp camp-store firewood, not enough kindling, and not enough paper — it smoked and smoked and did not want to burn. Finally we prevailed though, and I really did enjoy that fire. Doug kept trying to get me interested in watching sportsball or Netflix on his iPad, but I just wanted to watch the fire. I saw the moon rise, still almost full, as a few cotton-ball clouds started to spread over the starry sky.

In the morning it was raining, light but steady — not the best open-air breakfast weather. Standing under the raised rear door of our van, we made coffee on our camp stove and split a snack bar. We stowed all our gear, rolled up the wet tent into the back of the van, and headed for a local cafe.

Our whole adventure took less than 24 hours, but we accomplished a lot! We felt strong and confident pulling the trailer, learned more about the limitations of the gear we have, visited the best brewery in the Midwest, and stayed dry in the rain in our tent! I am getting more and more excited about our big trip next summer.

*The Adventure Report assignment comes from the book The Writer’s Practice, by John Warner, Penguin 2019.

After Developmental Writing: A Letter of Recommendation

It’s rare that I have the pleasure to write letters of recommendation. I don’t teach the kinds of “content” courses in which advanced students develop their sense of the discipline of English, imagine themselves as English majors, and ask me as their professor of British Lit or whatever to write something to help them transfer to a four-year school. Often, I teach developmental students who are sort of surprised to find themselves in college at all, or who are so un-savvy about what college is about that they wind up taking my class whether they need it or not.

In Fall 2011, I had a magical class. You know the kind, if you are a teacher – it had very little to do with me, just chemistry among the students. They were each others’ role models. They supported each other, gave each other feedback, did everything I asked them to do, tried new ideas and stretched themselves. A strikingly large number of these students boosted themselves over the barrier to English 1101 a semester ahead of schedule. Keith was one of them. He was just barely ready, but he passed his exit essay fair and square.

I remember one essay of Keith’s from that developmental class. Describing how he felt lifting weights, he wrote, “I don’t want to be a mean guy,” and explained how working out helped him work out his frustrations and keep his emotions on an even keel. I loved that line then, and I still love it now. It says so much about the person Keith is.

Keith spent the next two semesters fighting for a respectable C in his first-year comp classes. He took both classes with me – I think he was afraid to break the spell. I don’t blame him. His efforts were uneven and halting. He struggled to understand the readings, to catch onto the genres our writing projects were based on. Interestingly, I either don’t remember or never knew whether he had documented learning disabilities, and I don’t recall any particular story about why he was so unprepared for college-level literacy. I just remember what a hard time he would have as we started each new writing project – his early drafts undeveloped, his grasp of new concepts weak and partial – and how steadily and slowly he would work, pushing himself to do more.

Keith just never gave up. I always tell my students that if they come to every class and hand in every assignment, they can be pretty sure of passing the class. Keith is proof positive of this principle. Whether or not he really understood what was wanted, he attempted every assignment. So he was always building on something – never on nothing. By the time the paper was due, he always had something prepared that at least approximated the assignment.

This was never more true than at the end of English 1102, our “research paper class.” Keith’s final essay, an exploration of the relationship between childhood obesity and bullying, earned only 320 points out of 500. In the comments, I wrote, “I greatly respect the effort you have made here. You really tried to fulfill the spirit of the assignment, and you tried a lot of new strategies over the course of the semester. I think you have learned a lot, and I hope you will not be too discouraged by this grade. This class is a really big stretch for you.” Despite the low grade on his final paper, Keith earned a C in the course because he had doggedly accumulated every possible point, all semester, showing up for every class and completing every homework assignment.

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into Keith. I was really happy to see him – that patient, cheerful, not-mean guy I had spent three semesters with – and he asked me to write his letter of recommendation to Columbia College in Chicago. I had to do a little research and a little soul-searching to get this letter right. Keith is never going to be anyone’s academic star – but what a star he is in his own way. I wrote the letter and mailed it along with a prayer that I had done justice to Keith. Columbia College, please may you recognize something among my words that reflects the character of this young man.

More placement test angst: where does it end?

That student who was looking for the lucky break in my post from a few weeks ago – she found it. She went to our Testing Center and took the Compass test, and she passed with a score of 81, well above our cut-off. I was surprised, to tell you the truth. So much for what I think I know. She said that when she took the test, she applied what she had learned in my class. Hmmmm. Considering that I don’t directly teach how to succeed on a multiple-choice test of grammar and style, I guess I should be impressed that she figured out how to transfer the lessons I taught over to that different context. So now she jumps the second semester of developmental writing and goes straight into our first-semester composition course.

I congratulated her – sincerely. But I am left with many questions. This young woman may very well pass English 1101, depending on what teacher she has, and what standards or what level of attention are applied in her section of the course. Frankly, I am very ambivalent about forcing any student who has any basic level of literacy to stay in developmental writing for two semesters. And, considering how determined she was to get out of the second semester, it seems likely that she would have been a torture to whatever teacher she had next. (It could have been me.)

However, many faculty in our department are understandably frustrated with the very uneven batches of students in our composition sequence, and this story is emblematic for me. A student who is ill-prepared for essay writing passes a fairly difficult multiple choice exam which in no way resembles the actual writing tasks she will face in the target course. At the same time, students who don’t manage the multiple choice exam well are dumped into a writing task (the dreaded e-write, which I have written about previously), which cannot give us any useful results. Then there are the thousands (literally) of students who have completed the ACT with a composite of 20, which marks them as “prepared” for college coursework, and so we let them into English 1101, even though we have no way of knowing whether they have ever in their sweet lives written an essay. (Once upon a time, Illinois high school students did the essay portion of the ACT, but then they decided it costs too much. Never mind – I would rather have a student who had no instruction in writing in high school at all than a student who was trained only to pass the ACT essay.)

Welcome to open admissions. Placement is chaos. Placement seems nearly random. Placement depends on so many disparate factors that it seems impossible to sort them all out. Frequently – tragically – placement depends on a high school senior who never really planned to go to college, who arrives at our front door somehow and enrolls, who is sent to the Testing & Assessment Center (oooh, doesn’t that sound FUN??) to take tests in Math, Reading, and Writing, on the spot, whose mom/sibling/buddy is impatiently waiting to give them a ride home, who does not really understand what she/he is doing, who haphazardly completes high-stakes standardized assessments that he/she later will only have (maybe) one chance to re-take. Yeah – you get the picture.

It’s possible, I admit, that there could be some reasonable ways to parse all this out. But it’s not clear to me at the moment what committee should or would undertake to understand the experiences of thousands of community college freshmen entering their first semester of composition – what those composite ACT scores might really mean in terms of how well prepared they are for English 1101, which students do succeed there and why, which ones actually benefit from developmental writing, etc. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it. I’m teaching a 5-4 load of writing courses this year, and this does not make me yearn for any committee I sit on to take on the kinds of big sweeping questions we should really be asking.

Struggling with sources

My developmental students are currently working on a unit modeled on impressions I have gathered of how other faculty in my department teach English 1101. We are working with a set of three readings. The primary one is “The Writing Revolution,” an article in the October 2012 Atlantic Monthly. I first heard of this article on a writing program listserv – it’s about a high school on Staten Island called New Dorp, whose principal, upon realizing that her school was in danger of extinction because of poor performance, embarked on a challenging school-wide project of reform based on Writing Across the Curriculum. The article includes commentary about writing achievement at the national level, and in a smallish way, profiles a student who exemplifies the reasons for and the results of the reform at this particular school. It somewhat bashes/blames teachers for the school’s failings – but also portrays hard work done by teachers to develop the new curriculum.

I thought the article told a story that my students might relate to, and I was happy to see that the Atlantic website was also publishing a series of responses. I selected two of those, including an interview with Erin Gruwell, the real-life teacher whose work was adapted for the film Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank. I printed a total of about 15 pages of these articles and quietly made 45 copies of reading packets (back to back, of course) in our workroom, in three different sessions to avoid tying up a copier for too long and drawing unwanted attention.

I passed the packets out to my students with a lot of instructions for reading and writing responses. They have had opportunities to practice double-entry note-taking, to summarize, to paraphrase, as well as to develop comparisons based on their own high school experiences. As I keep saying, college courses frequently ask students to read and understand (and demonstrate their knowledge of) source readings, as well as to find their own ideas in response, to write from their own perspectives and experiences.

This is a somewhat different approach for me in developmental writing. In my writing courses in general, I dislike restricting students’ choice of topics and sources. In my developmental course last spring, wanting my students to work with readings, I experimented with a short research paper unit in which I gave students too much freedom to select their own sources. They found scholarly journal articles that they had no hope of understanding. They found junk websites and content farms, covered with ads, written for anybody by anybody, which they cited just as seriously as the journal articles. Honestly, the USA Today articles were golden – which did not seem to me a good sign of instructional quality.

I like this approach better. Luckily, my hunch that my students would relate to these articles was pretty good. The tie-in with Freedom Writers helped, but the main article caught a lot of my students’ attention. Many have strong opinions about writing instruction, especially what worked and didn’t work for them in high school. They have ideas of their own in response to the readings. Many of them are drawn to Gruwell’s defense of memoir writing, but they also see the value of the style of academic writing that took center stage in the reforms at New Dorp. They are still free to develop their own thesis statements and to use the articles as either support or contrast to their own points. So far so good.

Some of the problems that have come to light in their early drafts have fascinated me. For example, some students seem not to catch on to the “before-and-after” nature of the New Dorp story. Several of them were very drawn to a quote from a teacher who admitted that she thought students were lazy, that it was the students’ fault that they didn’t get it. I understand my students’ indignation at her comment, but without a sense of the story overall, my students used this inappropriately in their own drafts – as if all teachers at New Dorp, then, now, and forever, believe their students to be lazy. At a more technical level, in some cases, my students did not use verb tenses correctly to convey what HAD BEEN true at New Dorp, before the reform, in comparison to what WAS (or IS?) true, after the reform.

Interestingly, most students know how to quote. They use quotation marks and they copy a phrase, a sentence, or a short passage accurately for the most part. (I know – copy/paste – but I’ll take it, at least it’s accurate.) A few of them know how to paraphrase, or at least they can tell me that they are supposed to “write it in your own words.” This is easy to work with.

A larger problem for many of my students is the balance between using the sources and drawing on their experiences and observations from their own schooling. A large proportion of them want to do one or the other. Either it’s personal, or it’s source-based – it’s a struggle to imagine doing both. So we are looking at examples of drafts where I can see a little of both, and I point out the boundary lines, and show them where they could add an author tag or a citation to clarify what’s what. I show them problematic sentences that mix the writer’s comment with a fact from the article, such as “It’s crazy that 82% of the students couldn’t read at their grade level.” How should Michael revise this sentence to show what part of it is drawn from the article? Then, how should he express his opinion about that fact?

We’re also discussing the “drop your essay in the hallway” test. If you dropped your essay in the hallway in the BIC (our main classroom building), I ask, could someone pick it up, understand it, and be interested? Why not? And how could you fix that?

Looking for the lucky break – instead of doing the work

This semester, our English faculty agreed (quite willingly, and thank you) to a plan by which our students in the upper level of developmental writing will transition to our English 1101 class simply by earning an A or B in the developmental course. No exit exam. We created a provision for students who are passing with a C to have their portfolios read, and we also will read portfolios of very strong students from the lower-level class whose instructors believe they are prepared for regular first-year comp.

Both students and instructors in the developmental courses have long bemoaned the exit exam. As instructors, we felt that looming test undermining our teaching. While we determinedly emphasized the writing process in class, our students dreaded that all-or-nothing, make-or-break essay exam, and many of them cared little for what we offered in class that did not directly, obviously, prepare them for that. They also complained (rightfully, in my opinion) that it was unfair to make them take the test if they were succeeding in class.

When I announced this policy change to my upper-level developmental class, a number of those students reacted with obvious elation. I was happy for them in particular. They were doing their assignments, willingly trying out the unfamiliar strategies and approaches I asked them to practice, and they were doing good work. Some weaker students in that class are now motivated to step up their efforts – and some of them are. Overall this is a strong class. It’s a hybrid class, so we meet only once a week, and I give them very structured assignments to post in Blackboard between classes. The ones who are working the format to their advantage are doing very well, and I am delighted with their progress.

I’m also teaching a lower-level developmental class – which I have described in previous posts as a group of football players who behave as though they have never been in a classroom along with their 13 needy classmates. I love this class too – but in a different way – kind of like you love your really annoying younger cousins, because you have to (to make your mother happy), and because you really, really want them to grow up and do credit to the family.

In this class, I announced the policy change and the elimination of the exit exam, and I was startled when two particular students in the corner wailed in dismay. It turned out that they wanted to take that exam – to have that “hail-mary pass” opportunity. Of those two students, there is a decent chance that one of them would have aced it, but it’s the other one whose reaction interests me. She is in the right class. Her writing is floppy and indistinct; she has ideas, but no discipline or structure, and she does not want to take responsibility for developing new skills. She was hoping for a lucky break – to have a good day, to take the test and pass it just by the skin of her teeth, to get the ego boost that she beat the test. She is very outspoken, but I would guess that she is not the only one with this fantasy (and it is a fantasy) about taking an exam and suddenly being deemed smarter than you were the day before.

In a telling moment, this student remarked to me during class a week or so later, as she was supposed to be working with another student on editing final drafts, that she wanted ME to edit her paper. In her midterm conference, I explained why it would be wrong for me to do that. She seemed to understand – “because then I wouldn’t learn anything,” she said. Indeed. And the same with that exit exam. Good riddance. Let’s do the work, not look for the lucky break.

Our new contract – and how it hurts

This is our first semester teaching under a new contract. In English composition at College of DuPage, we now teach 15 hours per semester, instead of 12. Historically, the load for teaching composition (including developmental writing) was set at 12 hours per semester in consideration of the heavy load of responding to student writing. We also had (and still have) smaller class sizes than instructors in humanities, foreign languages, social sciences, and other possibly somewhat comparable general education classes.

For those who wish to compare apples to apples, here are the numbers:

• 22 students per class in first-year composition @ 3 credit hours per class.
• 20 students per class in developmental writing @ 4 credits per class.
• Our credit hours must add up to at least 30 hours per year, and we have to teach a minimum of 15 hours in the first semester.
• If we go over 15 in the first semester, we are allowed to “bank” the overload in order to reduce our load in the second semester.

Because it’s tough to make the numbers come out exactly right when you mix 3’s and 4’s and try to make 15 within the reality of what courses are available, and because 15 is the minimum for Fall semester, I have 17 hours – five classes. Two of them are developmental (at two different levels; the higher one is a hybrid and the lower one is f2f). I have three sections of English 1102 (one f2f, one online 8-week session, and one online 16-week session). I know better than to whine too much about this in a blog that reaches anybody beyond my best friends – I know, I know. English faculty members all over the country bear this kind of load, and worse. The part-timers known as “freeway flyers” cover this kind of load, or more, on several different campuses.

That being said (How do you feel about that expression? If I had a linguistics blog, I would be writing about emerging new expressions like “that being said,” and newer usage contexts for “anymore,” which I find compelling and fascinating – but I digress).

That being said, I would like to enumerate a set of “costs” associated with my new course load.

1.  In reality, I now have five preps. Every single one of my classes, even if some of them supposedly “deliver” the same content, is being delivered in a different format. (How you do feel about the verb “deliver” in relation to your teaching? Do you feel that it adequately describes what you are doing when an online students emails you at 11pm and you stay up past any suitable bedtime for a 50-something-grey-haired lady and answer her? Is this a subject for a linguistics blog, or an advice column for some badly needed Ann Landers of online teaching? Sorry – I digress.)

Having five preps means that I have no choice but to multitask constantly – and inefficiently. I have to shift gears for every single class meeting. I have to shift gears every time I switch to a different class in Blackboard to post a lesson plan or grade an assignment. Please note that credible experimental research has documented the efficiency cost of this kind of constant switching.

2.  As I have mentioned in this blog once already, I have several football players in my f2f low-level developmental class – all of whom act like they have never been in a classroom before. I love these students. Each of them has enormous potential. Each of them is deeply intelligent in his own way, and each is on an amazing and powerful journey of self-discovery and growing up. I could spend all my time taking care of them, along with the rest of their class – thirteen other profoundly interesting, profoundly intelligent, and profoundly needy students. In past years, I would have held individual conferences with each of them by now to review their placement scores and discuss their progress in Unit 1. This year – not.

I am looking at the length of this post and thinking, that’s only point 2. Shit. I can’t give up the next one, though.

3. This week, the 6th week of the term, I got to about 10:30am on Wednesday, and I failed. My energy crashed to some point below my ankles as I sat in my office and considered going to the class with the football players and the thirteen other needy students – for two hours – and having anything left of myself at the end of the day. I literally became ill at the thought. I called myself in sick, thus canceling the class. I went home, took Zicam, lay down on my sofa, and fell asleep for a while. I did some reading and watched an Altman movie on cable (very healing, Cookie’s Fortune – I recommend it). I felt better in the evening, went to campus the next day, taught my morning class, and in the early afternoon crashed again and went home and took an even longer nap.

Now it is Friday, and that was yesterday. I don’t teach in the classroom on Fridays, I got a little more sleep last night, and I feel better today. But I am left pondering the costs of the fifth class. It’s not even midterm. I am already working most of my waking hours. The 8-week class will end in a few weeks, but what will be left of me? Will there be enough for the football players and their thirteen classmates? And for my other developmental class, which I have barely mentioned? (I am going to write about them next week – I promise). I will STILL have two other sections of English 1102 – and if you have ever taught the dreaded “research paper” class in first-year composition, you know those students are plenty needy too. Everyone needs so much. I am a good teacher. I know how to take care of them. But this is too much, and they are too many. How much can I give, when I am already this tired, and it’s not even October 1?

Showcase Day – and its fascinating after-effects

Frequently, I just try things. I have been teaching for a lot of years and I have a lot of cred. I can experiment without worrying if I’m going to bomb. For one thing, I have tenure. For another, I trust myself to think on my feet – if I see that one of my ideas is going down, I know I’ll figure something out. What’s the worst that could happen? My students see me mess up? If I’m honest with them and say, hey, I was trying something new and it didn’t go so well, let’s talk about how we could do it better next time, then I’m just modeling adulthood for them anyway.  And really, how is that wrong?

I don’t know where this particular idea came from, but if you want credit for it, feel free to leave a comment. So, one day, a couple of weeks ago, I heard myself saying to my students, “Next week, we’re going to have a showcase. We’re going to print out all your drafts and post them around the room and read them and make comments.” Huh? Really?? My students, bless their hearts, did not react much. It was early in the semester. They were still getting used to me. They were not sure what college was supposed to be like anyway – so they played along.

When Showcase Day arrived, I had no idea what to expect. To my shock – and awe – every student who was present in the room that day (18 out of 19!) had prepared their two Showcase Drafts. Within about ten minutes, we had tabletops, whiteboards, and even a stretch of empty wall taped up with their drafts, printed out in 14-point type, double spaced, for easier reading. I passed out five post-it notes to each student, along with a handout with some mocked-up comments for them to imitate. I asked them to read as many drafts as they could, and write at least five comments, following the models in the handout.

It won’t surprise you, probably, that they ran out of steam before I did. In half an hour, they had had enough, but I was still walking around, reading and marveling. There were bright-colored post-it notes all over the place. (If you want to cheer up your icky drab college classroom, get some post-it notes and/or whiteboard markers in goofy colors and give your students a reason to use them.)

When we debriefed afterwards, they admitted that the whole idea had made them nervous, but they thought it was fun when we actually did it. (Whew.) I asked them if they got ideas for revision from the comments they got on the post-it notes, and/or from reading other students’ drafts, and they swore they did. This was the part that worried me – I wondered, if they just got a feel-good vibe, would they still revise and improve their essays, or would they think, oh, everybody liked my draft, I’ll just hand it in like it is now? (I know, if you’re a writing teacher like me, you’re cringing and thinking the exact same thing.)

So I’m grading the final versions of these essays now, and I have to say, I am happy with the results. Each student was supposed to bring two different personal essay drafts to the Showcase (which they all did, I love this class), but they only had to revise one of them, and they got to pick for themselves. It seems like they got a lot of ideas from the Showcase – it’s a somewhat mysterious alchemy from my point of view – I was quite startled to see how much revision they did between the Wednesday Showcase and the Monday deadline for submitting a revised/edited essay.

You know how hard it is to convince students to revise in any sort of meaningful way, right? How often do you assign revision and lecture on how to do it, and you give them your own comments if you are really conscientious, and even have them write goals in class for how they will improve their essay – and they hand in the same damn thing again – maybe with double spacing. Ugh.

I’m happy to say that I am seeing considerably more revision than that, and them some. Alchemy? Strategy? Why did this work? Comment here.