This is my first semester teaching at Green Mountain College and I am teaching a section of Voices, the equivalent of freshmen composition, but themes around the ideas of community. My class is reading post-apocalyptic fiction, which fits right into this theme. P.A. fiction, at its heart, is about individuals who are seeking communities in which they can survive in a world that is vastly different than the one they knew. The books are a good read, not too heady, and offer a lot of variety for class discussions.
The first day, I covered the syllabus and my expectations, of course. I am structuring the course in a way similar to Peter Elbow in that I am trying to do away with traditional grading schemes. I want to separate the writing from the grading, but this is difficult in that 1) I have to evaluate them in some way and 2) they are very much accustomed to a traditional method of grading. I'm giving them some grades, a check system for their daily writing assignments, and whole letter grades for their papers, but the majority of their grade will be based on a portfolio they will turn in at the end. I used the whole-letter grade system for papers last semester in my work at the University at Albany. It went pretty well. I also struggle in that I want them to take the assignments seriously, so there are clear expectations as to what an 'A' in my class would look like and what they should be doing.
The other big experiment this semester is with badges. I am awarding badges to students who select writing goals from a list I provided them. They can be the "Sultan of Style" or the "Tyrant of Transitions," or the "Royal Feedback Bestower." So far, they seem to like this idea.
Class is structured with 'writing days' on Tuesdays and 'reading days' on Thursdays. I like the rhythm this schedule offers and I hope it goes well. Tuesday we will be discussing the importance of audience and genre, as well as how to write a research question, as they are completing their research papers at the beginning of the semester rather than at the end. The paper is an examination of a natural resource, scaffolded into parts to make the 15-page assignment more manageable. It is my hope that they will create a similar habit for themselves when they write for other classes in the future.
“An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us.” ― John Dewey, Experience and Nature
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