we talked about this during Orientation...

but: would you be willing to open up the blog to people who started teaching this semester at two other universities, Florida Atlantic and Kent State? Those graduate students have also been blogging about the new classes they are teaching), discussing similar issues and concerns about their particular students and the classes they are taking.

This would be a way to hear how different (and similar) teaching and course structures are at other schools. You would be able to hook up with others, to share with and learn from them. You'll know other people when you go to conferences (always a good thing) and have people from other schools with whom you can put together conference proposals (also always a very good thing; conference panel proposals that where all the panelists come from one school tend not to be as well regarded as panels with people from a mix of schools).

This is a way to talk about how teacher communication helps with teaching. (Which could be the subject of a conference panel proposal, as could the use of blogging in starting to teach a new course.)

Opening up the blog this way should require no new additional writing, but some new reading, and perhaps some responding to others.

I think this would be a good thing all around -- but the decision has to be yours.

Please respond to the blog with what you think.

Many thanks....

the carnival of teaching

a fine sampling of blog posts on the pleasures, distractions, and figurings-out of teaching.

no comment

"Economic growth is crucial to reducing poverty, but the effect of tax rates is less clear. In 1993, President Bill Clinton raised taxes on upper-income families, the economy boomed and poverty fell for the next seven years. In 2001, President Bush cut taxes deeply, but even with economic growth, the poverty rate has risen every year since.”
—Jason DeParle, "Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate," New York Times, October 11, 2005

The cat...

is stretched out along my leg here in bed, and she is purring and warm, and it just might be time to sleep, finally.

on responding to student work and still having time to breathe

Remember our talk about rubrics and being very clear in an assignment what the goals of the assignment are?

The purposes of using rubrics and being very clear about an assignment's goals are for your benefit as well as for students' benefit.

When you make clear to students the goals of an assignment, you are helping them understand what it is they are to learn. This not only helps them focus clearly on what matters in an assignment, but helps you help them develop the metalanguage that is necessary for reflection on learning and hence necessary for learning itself. When students cannot only demonstrate that they can (for example) do a rhetorical analysis of a speech but can also state what the qualities of a solid analysis are, then they can choose awarely to use the tools of rhetorical analysis in the future. Also, when you state very clearly the goals of an assignment -- and tie your responses and grading to those goals -- you are being fair to students: you are letting them know that you will not base their grade on something they didn't know they were supposed to attend to.

When you make clear to students the goals of an assignment, then how well they achieved those goals is all you need comment on. Really.

You can stick to commenting on what is in your rubric, what you specified in the assignment. You can use the rubric to figure out grades, as we discussed back in Orientation, if you are grading individual assignments: each column in a rubric has a numeric equivalent, and you average out the numbers to get the grade. (Students here at Tech, as you may have noticed, often like numerically determined grades.)

And when you use rubrics, you can use a filled-out set to focus on attending to the class's learning. By looking across the patterns of rubric feedback, you can ask: Was most of the class able to learn what you hoped? To what depth? What do you need to continue to emphasize? What can you depend on them knowing, following an assignment, to carry into the next assignment?

Responding to student work is hard, but it does get easier over time as you develop the habits and phrases that work for you. One way to learn what works is to ask people in your classes to write responses to your feedback. Ask them how they interpret your feedback, and what they see (based on your feedback) they need to focus on in upcoming assignments (or in a revision). Asking them to write such reflective responses helps *them* think about what they need to do in their own learning but also helps *you* learn how students are understanding and benefitting from your hard work.

how do students come to be...

the people they are? How do we come to be the people we are?

How do we learn to empathize with what is distant in time or place? How do we come to understand material links between the conditions of others and ours?

I am thinking here of Kathryn's observations about a student's response to Katz's essay. How does one grow up to think that the Holocaust has nothing to do with one's current existence? Is it difficult to grow up thinking that? Is it weird to desire one's life to be easy and uncomplicated?

Under what conditions does one grow up to be socially active or to understand that there are connections between, say, the governmental response to Hurricane Katrina (or, say, Hurricane Stan) and job loss in the manufacturing sector?

And what are our responsibilities as teachers of a communications class to persuade students that making these connections -- both in order to empathize and to understand material conditions that cause what we think is evil or bad -- is not only worthwhile but a foundation of a life lived morally with others?

for giving feedback

Last week in 5931 we touched on phrases to use in giving feedback to student work. So I've pasted in below phrases that have worked well for me in the past for shaping a response. [Notice that some of them depend on having asked students to write reflectively about the work they are turning in, so that I can respond to questions or concerns they've raised.]

Please add your favorite and most useful phrases in the comments -- then we'll all have a good base of comments to draw on. Thanks!

• "Your work shows me that you listen carefully to what we discuss in class and to the readings, and that you really do think about how to apply those discussions; if you want to deepen those applications, you might try…"
  
• "If you want to strengthen the work you are doing in this class, what I’m seeing is that you could stand to stretch your thinking so that you have more, and more detailed, ideas top work with. Your writings tend to be pretty short: it looks like you put down your first ideas and responses, and let it go at that. If you can get into the habit of pushing on your ideas in your writing this will not only help your writing improve, but will help you develop your ideas in your writing. To do this, try asking more questions about what you have read in class (we talked in class about how to ask questions); don’t stop writing until you are satisfied you understand an idea completely…"
  
• "It is clear to me that you think well about this work, as your class comments show. Now push yourself—by giving your work the time it deserves—to develop your ideas. There’s solid potential here…"
  
• "Your desire to do this work well and in interesting manners shows through in all you have turned in. Based on all that I see, I have two recommendations for how you can continue to strengthen your work over the semester…"
  
• "I want to encourage you to attend to the various levels of the rhetorical more in what you do."
  
• "Your writing really could benefit well from a re-read to make sure your sentences will make sense to others…"
  
• "Your arguments would be more compelling with more concrete examples and even more facts and figures, I think -- and as you've suggested in your own thoughts about this."
  
• "You have a strong and wonderful opening… but I start running into trouble, though, after the third paragraph."
  
• "All the comments and questions you wrote about your paper on Tuesday during class make good sense: Yes, you do need to check your spelling and grammar because right now their oddities do too often make it hard for me to get easily to your meaning. Yes, you do also need to add all your citations. Yes, you do need to work on the introduction and conclusion and the order of all your facts and examples. Right now the facts and examples are arranged simply to accumulate, which means they don't have any particular order -- which also means that it is therefore hard as I read to understand why one paragraph follows another… That might sound like a daunting list, but it's really that you've gotten to the fun part of arrangement of writing (well, from my perspective, anyway, given that I like to write)."
  
• "What you have so far is quite nice. Be sure that before you turn in your final draft you get someone else to proofread for you -- but otherwise you are developing an okay argument here with your direct and conversational tone of voice and clear signalling of transitions from paragraph to paragraph."
  
• "What you turned in as your first draft is generally fine so far. There's not tons I can say in response, until you have more, but the ordering seems to make sense, and I like how you are using a narrative structure to build the argument because it adds an appropriate level of emotional connection for your readers."
  
• "Hmmm... given the required length of the final version of this paper, you've got a problem, hey? What are you going to do to fill the pages you need to fill?"
  
• [at the end of the feedback]: "Let me know if you have any questions on any of this, or want to talk about any of it."
  
• "You've got a passionately written draft in which you accumulate a considerable weight of information. The passion can result in a compelling ethos, because your audience will pick up on your passion -- but it also means you need to be very careful: passion can sometimes make the writing seem biased, perhaps making judgments that are a bit too strong. If you are going to keep the same tone of voice as you revise, be careful with your word choice, in order to keep the passion from seeming biased and hastily judgmental."
  
• "Come talk so we figure out how to build a stronger structure -- and overall argument -- out of all you have so far."
  
• "Your thoughtful and conversational tone of voice is a real strength in your essay. Here's how I think you can strengthen the writing still more.."
  [when you are really at a loss of what to say:] "Please come talk. I think my responses might make more sense in discussion than in written comments." [Then ask the student what s/he thinks really needs to happen in the writing, and build on that.]
  
• "After I read your draft, I'm left mostly with questions. I know that you know what you are talking about, but here's some questions you might need to address in order to help your audience understand…"
  
• "You also need to think about the order of your arguments, in terms of your audience and purpose. What you've written in your design plan lays out possible arguments, but without yet considering why different orderings of your points might be more or less effective with the different possible audiences you can address."
  
• "Before I comment on your design plan, I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your presence in class. Your dry sense of humor always makes me laugh, and you give thoughtful responses to others. It would be nice if you were happier in speaking in the large group; you might think on this as something to work toward in the future, because you have so much to bring. Meanwhile…" [this is followed by specific comments]
  
• "Your design plan looks good to me. You've described your various audiences very well, and you've done your research, which is crucial, so that you know the reasons given by those who oppose [your position], and can bring up statistics and observations by credible sources to counter their claims. Here are the questions raised for me by what you have so far:"
  
• "Let me push you a bit on your argument..."
  
• "You've found some very good sources to use. I'm not worried in any way about the base of facts and figures you have to draw on, and I'm not worried about your ability to discuss the general policy decisions of the US toward global warming, such as the Kyoto protocols. Given that you've got those sorts of issues under control, what I'd like you next to focus on are some of the issues Chris raised in his feedback to your statement of purpose."
  
• "You need nothing from me at this point except encouragement. Your design plan is smart, detailed, and thoughtful. What I particularly mark in it is your sensitivity -- as a writer and thinker -- to positions your audience members might hold (*their* sensitivity about their religious beliefs, *their* sensitivity to any suggestion in your writing that all Christians might be deemed immoral), which helps you think of the kind of careful path you are going to have to thread as you compare the morality of Christians with that of atheists."