ENGL 514 – Fundamentals of Teaching Composition
Western Carolina University, Fall 2010
Instructor: Nate Kreuter
Email: nakreuter [at-sign] email [dot] wcu [dot] edu
Website: Blackboard
Alternate Course Website: www.natekreuter.net/courses
Office: Coulter 207
Office Hours: W 9-11, R 9-10, and by appointment
Meeting Time: R 6-8:50
Class Location: UNCA, Karpen Hall 103
Separate from our readings and in addition to a final assignment, there are two assignments that are due every week in this course. This document explains both of these recurring, weekly assignments.
First Component:
The first component is intended to generate our class discussions, and is very short. Each week, students are expected to email Nate a brief response to the readings. This response may address elements of one of our readings, all of our readings for the week, or something in between. It should be between 100 and 300 words. The “response” is a forum for students to steer our in-class conversations. It is a space for questions, comments, reactions, impressions. Virtually any considered thought based upon or relevant to the readings is fair game. The responses are due to Nate via email no later than 2pm on days that the class meets.
For example, on the day that we are reading the John Dawkins article (9/14), students would be expected to send Nate their responses by 2pm. Take this deadline into account when planning your reading. If you can’t compose and send the responses during the day on Tuesdays, you may want to take care of it the night before. Again, this is intended to steer our conversations toward those topics and concerns that most interest you, the student. (These responses are not intended to police you or to check to see if you did all of the reading. [Though, you should do all of the reading.]) Each class day Nate will select excerpts of each student’s comments and paste them into a unified document. The contributions will be anonymous, though you may claim yours during our class discussions if you like. Then, we will begin each class discussion by reading through the compiled comments, which will be provided by Nate. The compiled documents will launch our discussions each week.
While it is expected that students will fulfill these contributions each week, missing an assignment occasionally will have no bearing on students’ final grades. Habitual failure to contribute responses (and on time) may indeed affect students’ grades. The individual responses themselves are not grade. However, the completion (or failure to complete) this task contributes, along with the assignment described in the next section of this document, to 30% of students’ final grades.
Second Component:
Over the course of the semester Nate will compile a list of the top 50-100 assignments generated by the enrolled graduate students. These assignments will be posted to the privately maintained alternate course webpage and will remain online indefinitely. The intention is to create an online resource accessible to all of us (and instructors at other institutions) where assignments can be downloaded for use as-is or for modified use. The assignments will be posted only with individual permission and under a Creative Commons license. Students can choose whether or not they would like to be named as the author of an assignment when it is posted. Students may revoke their permission at any time, and their decision whether or not to allow their authored assignments to be posted will have absolutely no bearing on their grade in the course.
Whether or not students choose to have the assignments they write posted publicly, they are expected to generate an assignment each and every week.
Because our readings deal with theory and issues raised in composition courses, but rarely offer tangible, practical teaching strategies, we will be generating useful, practical classroom assignments and exercises ourselves. Students will generate an assignment every week, which they will share with their fellow students that same week. The assignments could be small (ex: an in-class exercise, written or verbal), or large (ex: a multi-week writing project), or anything in between. The individual assignments should address, respond to, be inspired by, or in some way directly relate to issues raised in at least one of our readings. Other than that, this is free form, and students should be as creative as possible.
Because we don’t have to deploy these assignments in actual classrooms unless we choose to, students are encouraged to be creative and take risks. In short, don’t be afraid to “fail” to generate a perfect assignment. Even in “failure” we learn important things, so please feel free to be as conventional and safe, or as edgy and risky, in writing these assignments as you vary. Over the course of the semester, you should probably vary those strategies.
At the end of each class students will share their assignments with one another. Some weeks we may not have time to get through everyone’s assignment, but we will always try to. The assignments will not be graded by Nate, but students will receive brief feedback from him on each of the assignments that they compose. Like the reading responses, it is expected that students will fulfill this requirement each and every week, but a few isolated lapses will have no negative consequences. Habitual lapses will have negative consequences. Like the responses, these are due to Nate via email by 2pm on class days. As with the previously described assignment, while these student generated assignments will not be graded, their cumulative completion contribute to 30% of students’ final grades.
As always, please email Nate if you have any questions, either now or down the road.
