Requirements and Grading
On the schedule, below, you will see three categories of assignment for
each of our class
meetings: Teaching Prep, 800 Prep, and Presentations. In the final weeks
of the semester,
Presentations will take the form of Conference Papers and Spring Syllabi.
- Teaching Prep simply lists the main things you will need to
have done before
teaching English 3 that week. (For those of you teaching MWF, this
obviously will need to be
done before our class even m.)
- 800 Prep refers to the additional materials that you should
prepare for our discussion.
I have kept these assignments light, out of recognition that teaching a
good English 3 will in itself
require much of your time and energy this term. But keep in mind that
English 800 is a two-CU
graduate seminar, most likely the only seminar you will take on pedagogy,
rhetoric, and
composition studies: very important fields to have gained some mastery
over before you enter the
job market.
- Presentations will be chosen by sign-up sheet the first or
second class meeting. Each
of you will do one 15-minute presentation during the first 10 weeks of the
semester. These
presentations are geared to the upcoming week in English 3, and you should
aim in them to
provide background information, bibliography, handouts, and any other
materials that might be
helpful to your fellow teachers. The idea is to share the labor of
preparation by assigning one
student each week to do most of the library research and other legwork for
that week's teaching.
Keep in mind that these presentations do not need to be flashy or
impressively sophisticated; they
should be down-to-earch, classroom-oriented, helpful.
In addition to your teaching-materials presentation, you will also be
presenting a 15-minute
conference paper on any topic hat could fit under the typically broad and
vague rubric
"Controversial Approaches to Pedagogy / Pedagogical Approaches to
Controversy." You should
treat this as an actual conference paper; pursue a topic that genuinely
interests you, and don't
worry too much about achieving a perfect fit with the putative conference
title. My hope is that
most of you will present these papers at actual conferences over the next
year, thus gaining some
useful professional experience and a line on your CV that reflects your
serious engagement with
pedagogical questions.
Your final presentation of the term will be a quick run through your
spring syllabus. It is difficult
to prepare a spring syllabus when you are in the midst of your fall
teaching, but this is what we all
have to do as teachers. Everyone will profit, I think, by seeing what the
others are planning to do
in their courses.
Grades for English 800 will be based on how well you accomplish all of
this required work as well
as on my assessment of how responsible and effective you have been as a
teacher of English
3.
Books, Films, Bulkpack
- BOOKS FOR ENGLISH 3 have been ordered through the Penn Book
Center. You
should receive desk copies of these:
- Bolton, Richard. Culture Wars New Press.
- Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Norton.
- Newman, Leslie. Heather Has Two Mommies. Alyson.
- Pinney, Thomas. A Short Handbook. Harcourt Brace.
- Rushdie, Salman. Satanic Verses. Holt.
- Santiago, Danny. Famous All Over Town. NAL/Dutton.
- BOOKS FOR ENGLISH 800 have also been ordered though the Penn
Book Center.
You should purchase these:
- Gless, Daryl, and Barbara Hernnstein Smith, eds. The Politics of
Liberal Education.
Duke.
- Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.
- Nelson, Cary. Manifesto of a Tenured Radical. NYU.
- FILMS for English 3 will be shown on ResNet at the locations listed here:
- BULKPACKS for both courses will be available from Wharton
Reprographics.
Schedule
Note that while the five units of the course as indicated below correspond
to those on the English 3 syllabus, our own readings and
preparations for English 800
tend to run ahead of this schedule by about a week. This is especially
evident in the early weeks
of the term, since we will be meeting twice--on Aug 29 and Sept 2--before
the English 3 semester
officially begins.
You can take shortcuts to: unit 1, weeks 2-3
(Conrad) | unit 2, weeks 4-6 (Heather, Culture Wars) | unit 3, weeks
7-8 (Kids, Right Thing) | unit 4,
weeks 9-10
(Santiago) | unit 5, weeks 11-13 (Rushdie)
Introductions: Aug 28, Sept 2
Aug 28 (2:15-5:00)
- Teaching Prep:
- Modify the master syllabus as
appropriate for
your class. (Note that
it is a Tuesday/Thursday syllabus. If you are teaching MWF, you will
need to decide how to
space assignments, discussions, and workshops across three sessions a
week.) Use the
first class meeting, Sept 4 or 5 to go over syllabus, grading and
attendance policies, goals and
expectations, portfolios, and email/listserv/web page basics. Some
suggestions and guidelines
can be found on the master syllabus.
Establish some
ongoing writing
assignments -- e.g., listserve posts (1/2 class every Monday by 5PM, 1/2
class every Wed by
5PM) with a 300-word maximum, in response to some discussion question(s)
that you provide
each week. You can save these posts in separate file folders for each
student and review them
with the final portfolios. Set aside 15 minutes of the first class
meeting for a diagnostic writing
exercise such as a one-paragraph self-characterization focusing on
literary or artistic background
and interests. Use these to get a rough sense of where your base line is,
as well as to learn
something about your students and to begin matching names to faces. Get
started reading
Heart of Darkness.
- 800 Prep:
- Go through all the pages of this syllabus and make a list of questions
or concerns. Make a
note to put Satanic Verses on your 50-book list. Read
through the writing handbook and diagnose your own weaknesses regarding
grammar, syntax,
and punctuation. Do you know whether commas and semi-colons go on the
inside or outside of
single quotation marks? double quotation marks? Do you know when to use
"whom"? Do you
know the difference between "that" nd "which"? Can you identify a
dangling participle or
misplaced modifier? All of these problems, and many others, will come up
in your students'
papers. If you are shaky on these sorts of things, as I certainly was
when I started teaching
freshman English, now is the time to start working on them. Jack
Lynch's Resources for
Writers and Writing
Instructors and his
Grammar and Style Guide can be useful references for you as well as
your students.
- Discussion:
- Goals and agenda; master syllabus and individual modifications; things
to do in your first
class meeting; diagnostic writing and two paradigms of composition
pedagogy (correcting errors
vs fostering confidence and creativity); striking the right balance of
freindship/professionalism.
- Presentations:
- None
Sept 2
- Teaching Prep:
- As above. Read Heart of Darkness
- 800 Prep:
- As above.
- Discussion:
- Heart of Darkness; teaching literature and teaching writing.
How to get started.
- Presentations:
- None