On 3+ Hour Class Periods

I am finding this semester's COM 112 class to be one of the most enjoyable group of students to have in class. Not all of them want to be part of the group dynamic and participate in discussions, but those who do consistently amaze me with the quality of their ideas and level of critical thinking.

Despite my enjoyment of our time together every Tuesday afternoon, I am finding the 3 hour class period exhausting. If that's true for me, it has to be true for them. So today I did something I rarely do. I cut an activity from my lesson plan and let class out early.

This semester, I am only teaching two days a week. Tuesdays, I teach COM (3-hour block), and Wednesdays I teach LIT (4-hour block). My work on Thursdays and Fridays in the Writing Center is very low-stress and I don't have to spend time prepping for it or grading afterwards. So I like that, despite my other duties on campus, my work week feels over in two days.

I still prefer classes that meet two days per week. This allows me to break up the work of the course in more meaningful ways. We can work on something the first day and revisit it the second when students have had time to think about that week's lesson(s), digest it somewhat and perhaps work with that concept through a homework assignent. For example, I can ask them to write me a shitty draft of an assignment from Tuesday to Thursday, then we can talk about a particular writing strategy on Thursday, and they have five days to revise and refine their draft, implementing that writing strategy as they do so, before the next class period. Meeting only once a week, just doesn't allow for that kind of a process.

For example, today we talked about tone--creating moods and adjusting the level of formality in writing. Students enjoyed the discussion and activities we did in class, but now we have to wait an entire week to revisit how they incorporate this into the two essays they are working on. By then, I can't afford to spend another week on this issue. We need to move on, so they can get started on their research for Essay 3.

I guess the 4-hour block works out nicely for Film as LIT. If this class period were split in two, we'd spend one day most weeks just watching a film. The 4-hour block allows us to watch a film and analyze it while it is still fresh in our minds. Since we spend half of every class period engaged in a relatively enjoyable (more or less so depending on the individual and the film choice that week) activity, the class is doesn't feel as tedious.

I try to break up the monotony in COM by interspersing fun videos with discussions and small group and independent activities. For example, today I used a PowerPoint to guide discussion. In the past, I've given students an electronic handout that was just hypertext. The PowerPoint allowed me more flexibility to create a dynamic discussion aided by illustrative graphics and videos, varying fonts and colors, etc. to generate a little more interest and hopefully excitement than my old, rather traditional text-based handout with a few hyperlinks. After discussion, we had a couple of hands-on activities, more discussion on a new topic, more visual illustrations and discussion. All of these strategies certainly help create a more engaging atmosphere that can withstand three straight hours of intense learning, but it doesn't completely alleviate the tedium, at least not for me.

Random Thoughts

I really want to start posting here weekly at a minimum. I don't really feel like writing, but I suppose now is as good of a time as any to start up again. I miss the great feedback from my students. So here are some random thoughts...

I registered for the Computers & Writing Conference today. It's exciting to see my name in the presentation schedule. I booked my room and the flight and a rental car. I signed up for a couple of very compelling pre-conference workshops. "Screencap Your Feedback" is a hands-on workshop demonstrating how to use screen capture to respond to student writing. This sounds very time consuming, but I'm thinking that expanding that to screen recording could be an innovative way to "discuss" my students' writing with them instead of writing my comments in the margins with Word's comment feature. It would definitely be something none of their other teachers are doing. My hope would be to engage them more in the revision process. They would all get mini conferences with me (granted, they wouldn't be able to respond immediately) for every essay. Maybe the tone of comments would come through better too. This could be a great tool if I ever decide to try teaching online again.

The other workshop I signed up for scares me a little, but I owe it to my students that are terrified of the new ways I ask them to think about writing to go to this workshop. Hell, I owe it to myself to face the fear. "The Sights and Sounds of ArchiTEXTure: Modeling Multimodal Composition" is another hands-on workshop teaching teachers to compose with audio, video, and images. We'll be experimenting with Google Draw and something called DoInk. I feel lost just thinking about it, but this too offers exciting possibilities for the future of my composition courses. I want my courses to be cutting edge. I may teach at a community college, but that doesn't mean students should be cheated out of cutting edge education. If I want my students to extend themselves beyond their comfort zones in their educations, then I must do the same.

Overall I'm very excited about the conference. I still have a lot of research to do before I even start putting my presentation together, but I'll pull it off. I always do. If you're interested in my presentation "iWrite Cool: Teaching Academic Writing through Conventions of Social Media Discourse," my proposal is just a few entries back. The center of my research is work by Jeff Rice who conceptualized the idea of the "rhetoric of cool." I'm hoping to extend his definition of that in some way.

On another note, I have three applications out for full-time positions. With gas prices rising the way they are, I don't know if I could take two of them, which would require me to drive 40-90 minutes to work everyday. I'm putting all my hope into the one at LLCC. I love that school, I love my students, and I really think I can make (have been making) a positive impact around campus.

I have a few teaching observations coming up--two in COM, one in LIT. I've never been observed in LIT before, so I'm a little nervous, but I'm really happy with the way that class is going. A couple students who were performing below expectations dropped, which means almost everyone left is in the A/B range or should be by the end of the semester.

COM is going well too. I think most everyone is still nervous about my system, but if they just invest themselves in doing the best they can, they should all be fine. So many are so resistant to radical new ideas about teaching and learning. How can they just want more of the same education they've been bitching about since grade school? I try to share things with them that catch my attention. I read part of an article from The Chronicle to them before spring break about Jeff Groom's digital storytelling class where the students really drive the course by writing the assignments each other will complete. A few students thought that was an awesome idea. The others sat in silence and would barely even raise their hands to vote on yes/no questions.

How do I get them excited? How do I get them to care? How do I get them to see how important their educations are to their futures? How do I get them to see that they're wasting it? How do I get them to see that the system itself is wasting their hard-earned tuition dollars on outdated, meaningless education? How do I get them to demand more of themselves, more of their teachers, more of their educations?

Maybe one day I'll figure it out, the secret formula to make the drones our public schools turn out wake up and give a damn that they're being programmed to not care. I know, I know, it's easy not to care. I'm asking them to work, and not just work, but work hard. Someday. Until then, I'll just keep trying every possible thing I can think of. A few get it, and that's enough...for now.

I'm thinking of giving my COM 111 students choices from a variety of assignments I've done in the past. Two essays for the entire semester, but they have to revise once a week until each essay is at least a B. I would think that could be very motivating to get students to invest themselves if the reward is they can finish the course early. I'd miss the better-prepared writers, but it would allow me to focus more attention on the less experienced writers who need more feedback. Something to think about anyway.

While spring break has all but killed my drive, I do look forward to getting back in the classroom. There's an energy in teaching, in reaching to the bottom of myself to put everything I've got into trying to motivate my students that I feed off of. There's no momentum to spring break. I feel drained, not rested. Maybe it's just because my daughter broke my heart for the first time today. Ah, teenagers. :/

Facebooking It!

For a long time, I have been adamant that I would not use facebook for classroom instruction. While I do accept student friend requests and maintain a page for Xtreme Writing that students can like and follow on facebook, I have felt strongly that facebook's purpose is not formal instruction. I do post a lot on both my personal and Xtreme Writing page about teaching and writing, but I do not teach, at least not in any formal way, on facebook. Like my students, I use facebook for primarily personal reasons. I don't particularly like it when the few students who have friended me send me class-related messages or attempt to monopolize my free time by holding conferences about essays or homework via chat. Facebook is my space. (lol)

However, I have decided to bring facebook into my teaching at least for a trial run. Beginning next semester, I will set up either a group or a page for each of the courses I teach. Use of and interaction on this page will not be a required part of the class, but it will provide students an informal space to connect with their classmates in order to help each other with questions about assignments, post class notes, or chat with each other in a semi-private setting. I want to remain mostly out of the scene, but I have considered making myself available via the chat feature of group pages for virtual office hours.

My hope is to create a stronger sense of community and help my students see the limitless possibilities for using the technology most of them use everyday to enhance other areas of their lives. I also want them to see that we learn everywhere, not just in the classroom. I fully support my college's mission of lifelong learning. I practice it myself, and I hope to instill that philosophy in my students. But I don't want them taking classes forever--unless, like me, they need to avoid student loan payments. No, I want them to see that knowledge and creativity are everywhere if we are open to the possibilities all around us.

I'm not sure how many students will actually utilize the facebook page for the course. I hope that many of them do. I would think that since most of them are already on facebook, they would be more likely to use a class facebook group than the currently unused discussion forums I have set up on Blackboard for some of my classes. Blackboard isn't a place students go to hang out. Facebook is. I want my students to have a place where they can hang out together. Even if they don't use the page for helping each other with homework or working on group projects, I would consider my experiment a success if they just got together to share links, watch YouTube videos, and chat. The sense of community they might build would certainly have positive effects that would carry over into the classroom. They would be more likely to engage in discussion with each other, contradict each other's ideas, and work productively in small groups.

At this point, I'd rather set up groups than pages. The groups feature has a unique chat option where all online members of the group can chat privately with each other. The only problem is that it appears I can only add friends to a group page, and I don't want all of my students adding me as a friend in order to participate in this. They wouldn't like that either. I would also want to automatically add all my students to the group. Of course, they could remove themselves if they wanted to, but the initial add is the step most of them would likely be hesitant to take--some out of a lack of desire to participate, others out of laziness or apathy. But if they were already added to the group and started getting notifications of group activity, I think they would be much more likely to join in.

I will be researching my options over winter break, and hopefully I come up with some viable solutions. All I can do is try it and wait to see what happens. I must admit, though, I have high hopes and will disappointed if I don't get positive results.

Computers & Writing Proposal

This is probably the fourth or fifth completely rewritten draft of my proposal for the Computers & Writing Conference. Proposals are due by the Oct. 22, but I really want to get mine in at least a couple of days early. If you have any feedback on content or presentation, I'd love to here your comments.

iWrite Cool:

Teaching Academic Writing through Conventions of Social Media Discourse

Up until this semester, I, like many of my colleagues, have taught students how to write for the web via the conventions of academic discourse. After four years’ teaching this way, I’ve concluded that this approach is backwards. The way to bridge the gap between the language of the academy and that of the Web is not by beginning with academic discourse. By merging conventions of electronic discourses with those of the academy we can more effectively teach students both communication styles.

Students don’t understand academic discourse. Their daily reading and writing are more grounded in the conventions of social media discourse. They recognize the value of hyperlinks. They don’t question Twitter’s citation style. They understand the ways in which images and symbols, communicate meaning. They understand the concept of audience because they are constantly adjusting the privacy settings on their facebook statuses. They don’t understand how MLA citation works or why they must adhere to its standards instead of just linking to a source, they don’t understand how to create mood in their writing without the symbols they’ve come to rely on, and they have a hard time imagining that they are writing to anyone other than their teacher or classmates.

When we talk about “cool” writing, cool cannot merely be the subject of the writing classroom nor the location where writing takes place; cool should be the very means by which we compose. This enhances the effectiveness of both our teaching and our writing.

Making the Grade

In my first-semester freshman composition course, the second writing project my students are assigned asks them to reconsider the purpose of higher education and present an argument in response to a pop culture "text" against the current condition of higher education. One of the issues my students sometimes choose to write about is grading. I always offer up articles I've read, some of which propose some pretty radical ideas about grading. What would college be like without grades, asks "Imagining College Without Grades", an article published in January 2009 by Inside Higher Ed.

College without grades? Preposterous!

Indeed, many view this as impossible but a lack of grades doesn't have to mean a lack of performance evaluation, and some educators are pushing for a move away from traditional letter grades for written performance evaluations. While I like this idea in theory, the amount of work it would add to already overloaded teachers makes it unfeasible as far as I can see. On the other hand, my beef with traditional letter grades, as they exist in the current system we all know and hate, is that they typically measure proficiency only and not the actual learning that is taking place. Thus, a student could earn an A in a class and not really have learned anything. Likewise, a student could earn a failing grade but have learned quite a bit. Where's the fairness in that?

Traditional letter grades don't have to be all bad, though. After all, it is a system all teachers and students alike are familiar with. We don't have to entirely redefine our grading system in order to make it work better to measure both learning and proficiency. What I propose is a tripartite grading system using the traditional letter grade we are all already familiar with that measures proficiency, progressive learning, and work ethic. I believe such a grading system would challenge all students to invest themselves more in their education and begin a shift in the students' focus from the end result--the degree--to the immediate and long term goals of learning.

This system could work one of two ways. The first is far superior, in my opinion, allowing for a much greater effect on students, teachers, and employers but would require significant changes at the university and possibly even the state level, making it incredibly difficult to implement. The second, though less effective, is more easily implemented as any teacher who wanted to adopt this practice could most likely do so simply by changing his or her grading policy in the course syllabus.

The most effective way to use this tripartite grading system would be for colleges and universities to adopt it as the means of calculating GPA, representing all three grades for each course on students' transcripts. Let's say Johnny Student works hard all semester in his freshman composition class. He reads critically, takes notes in class, meets with a writing tutor once, sometimes twice a week, revises his drafts multiple times, meets with his professor during office hours.... His writing skills greatly improve over the course of the semester, but it's still not enough. At the end of the semester, his proficiency with college writing is still 'D' work. I firmly believe Johnny deserves to be rewarded for his effort and the learning that took place. In fact, if johnny earned A's  for work ethic and progressive learning, he'll probably be more inclined to approach retaking the course with a positive attitude because he knows he is capable of improving his proficiency with this particular skill. If, however, Johhny simply eans a 'D' in freshman writing course, he enters the next course feeling discouraged, as if no matter how hard he tries, it will never be good enough. Johnny is much more likely to give up.

Of course, I often have students at the other end of this spectrum. Susie Pupil makes straight A's. She doesn't try very hard because she doesn't have to and, as a result, she doesn't learn much either. Students like Susie are often bored in class becuase they aren't being challenged as much as the rest of the class. My proposed changes to the grading system would likely motivate Susie to work beyond the minimum requirements for her target proficiency grade becuase she must demonstrate that she has progressed in her learning and exerted effort in order to achieve that learning. Students like Susie typically don't like to compromise their 4.0 GPAs, so while they might resent it, they will most likley put in the necessary work to succeed in this system.

Of course, I don't believe this system would work this way for every student. Some A students might sacrifice their GPA for C's in effort and/or demonstrated learning. That's certainly their perrogative. I do believe, though, that this system would work best for the greatest number of students, especially those that fall in the middle of this spectrum. This type of grading is the best way I can think of to combat the apathy of the C student who believes that is all the better s/he can do. Knowing he can raise his overall GPA simply by putting in more effort is likely to motivate many C students to try harder, which in turn will also likely improve those students' grades in proficiency and progressive learning.

While the potential of this grading system greatly excites me, I understand that its implementation isn't the most likely thing to happen any time soon, so I have been exploring ways of implementing it just in my classes by changing my grading personal grading policies. One-third of students' grades in my classes for each proficiency, work ethic, and progressive learning. It would essentially work the same way as described above except that only one grade--the average of the three parts--would appear on a student's transcript. This method could certainly motivate students while they are in my class, but there are two significant downfalls. First, students could pass the course and move on to the next level without demonstrating passing proficiency, which only sets them up for future failure. Second, if a student still earns a failing grade, there isn't the same positive reinforcement because the work ethis and progressive learning grade are not public, i.e. not published on the transcript. Seeing only that D or F proves just as defeating as the current grading system.

Because of the drawbacks, I do not feel comfortable implementing such a grading system in my own classrooms, at least not until I find a more productive means of implemntation; however, the power of this system to reverse the apathy of today's students is undeniable, and because of this, I think we owe it to ourselves as teachers to continue exploring alternate methods of evaluation.

The Problem With Teachers

Anyone who teaches writing, especially argument, knows the importance of ethos. In order to effectively communicate with an audience, one must evaluate that audience's values, beliefs, and interests and cater to them, build common ground--in order for that audience to be able to trust the author's credibility to inform, persuade, or entertain them.

One of the biggest mistakes many teachers make is assuming that they have no need to establish their credibility, that their audience somehow already owes them their trust and respect because they're the teacher and they have a MA or PhD. But that doesn't mean anything to students. All they see is another adult proving to be an obstacle to getting where they want to be.

If you want students to care about what you're trying to teach them, you first have to establish your credibility, which has little to do with what you know about the subject you teach. It has everything to do with what you know about your audience. You have to present the material in a way that takes into consideration your stduents' value systems and their interests. You might think that because they're in college that appealing to their desire to get an education and a "good" job would work. Wrong. They're in college because adults like you have told them their entire lives that college is the only option. How do I know this? My students spend weeks discussing this issue in class and writing about it.

My students have no qualms about laying out the truth in regard to this issue. They want the things a college education can get them, but they don't care so much about the college education itself. As far as they see it, college is a huge waste of time, a repeat of high school (shame on professors who teach this way and reinforce this unfortunate belief). If we want to change this, if we want them to value the learning and not just the diploma, we have to connect that learning to things they do care about, the everyday parts of their lives, the music they listen to, the movies they watch, the language they converse in, the hardships they face, the relationships they're in, the experiences they've had (sometimes traumatic).

Too often teachers' efforts to make class more interesting is to cater to their own interests instead of their students. You're never going to win them over that way. They need to experience you showing interest in what they care about and making an effort to connect what you teach to that.

I certainly don't consider myself to be the best at this, but I am aware of it and I certainly try--every day, every class period, every time I interact with a student. I do not expect their respect, nor demand it...I put in the effort to earn it.

Q: Why is it that most students feel entitled to grades they haven't earned?

We watched Adaptation today, and my students thought it was awful, which means they are still judging the quality of films entirely on how entertained they are and how well films measure up to their personal likes and dislikes. Hrmph! Frustration!

This film class I'm teaching this semester makes me feel like a complete failure, not because of the way I have presented the course content but because of my inability to reach any of my students in a significant way. It's just a gen ed requirement. I know they feel this way. I have always measured my success with any course I have taught in terms of making what my students might have initially thought of as a pointless class mean something important to them. At the very least, I want my students to learn how to be better students, but this semester I can't seem to break most of them from their entitled attitudes. Of course, it's always the teacher's fault, right? She grades unfairly. She just doesn't like me. Give me a break! Newsflash for all you students out there: Your teachers don't invest their time and energy in disliking you. They have much more important things to worry about.

This line of reasoning is completely illogical (which implies much more about any student relying on it than I ever need to articulate. If I were to award grades based on my personal opinions about students, wouldn't the students I didn't like be getting F's? The only students who have ever received F's in any of my classes suffered from a chronic inability to turn in their homework. In contrast, my favorite students would be getting A's. I only have two students out of three classes getting A's right now, and they have worked their asses off all semester. Great effort doesn't always earn great grades though. Students don't seem to understand this. One student might spend an hour writing a paper that earns an A while another student might spend fifteen hours on the same assignment and only earn a C. Grades don't measure effort; they measure the level of proficiency you demonstrate. For some students, being able to demonstrate a higher level of proficency requires much more effort.

I have broken almost all of my personal policies this semester in my efforts to help them succeed. Every student who has turned in the assigned work has improved his or her grades. Part of the problem is our public education system, which has trained our high school graduates to expect A's for C work. How is it that all of my students feel entitled to A's? Grades are not awarded for effort but for demonstration of mastery of the course content. Mastery. No one is there right now. How could they be when 75% of them admit to only "sometimes" reading the assigned material and 13% "never" read? According to the anonymous survey I conducted at midterm, 25% don't take notes on the assigned reading or during lectures, nor do they look up definitions of words they don't understand. The remaining percent do these things only "sometimes." Not one student has sought help from the campus' free tutoring services and only 13% have sought help from me. (This last percent has increased to 25% since midterm, but that's still only 2 students). Gee, I wonder why they aren't happy with their grades? Oh yeah, it's because I don't like them.

If you are one of my students or are considering taking one of my classes in the future, you should know this: It is not my job to entertain you, nor is it my job to like or dislike you. It is my job to show you how to learn. I cannot fill your head with right answers, not to the questions raised by this course nor those raised by life. No teacher can do that. Education is about interpretation, creating new knowledge, and forming opinions based on evidence not emotions and personal preferences. All I can do is show you the tools (critical reading, writing, research, analysis) and provide you with some guidance on how to use them. The rest of the work is up to you. You will never get more out of any class than what you invest in it.