[Previous entry: "Trip Part II"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "State College"]

05/14/2005 Archived Entry: "Five?"

Five
John asks:

CALLING ALL TEACHERS: I'm asking all the teachers who read this blog to identify the five most important issues or concerns you face when planning a writing course.

Lesseee....

For meme's sake...I'll borrow Steve's list of questions (since he just got a little Inside Higher Ed linkage):

1) How does the course in question fit into the "big picture" of the program?
No clue. I'm suspicious of "big picture" goals anyway. Too Taylorist. There is a middle ground between Taylorism and anarchy, of course, and so I note that "goal" as the general teaching of rhetorical production, typically for new media. That said, I identify a problem (problematic!) and try to work around that for a semester with usually 10-20 students.

2) What do other people do who teach the course, and what do they expect out of the course?
Sometimes I look for analogy. Most time, because I never feel anybody's doing the "idea" like me, I don't. That's true for my great passion, first year writing, as well. Invention is appropriation, but often I appropriate from unlikely sources (the uncanny!) as well as sources that have implicit (not explicit) ties to digital culture and rhetoric.

3) Where do I want students to be at the end of the term?
Ready to wow others with the great linking/mixing skills they just earned their chops on.

4) What's the basic "point" or "argument" I want to make in the class?
Except for MLA interviews, no need to limit yourself to a basic point. We don't need no basic points! Rhetoric is too complex for such things. We look to encounter ideas, and to develop those encounters into writing.

5) How is it all going to fit and what will I have to cut?
If I cut a book, it's usually because it went out of print. Never much for assigning tons of reading, I like the model I learned from my mentor, Ulmer, four-five texts which teach us instructions for how to work with the problem the course poses. Reading for invention, not analysis.
As for assignments, one solid piece of writing is plenty. Folks who assign 18 and 19 year olds four-five essays are kidding themselves. I write professionally. If I can get one essay written in 16 weeks, that's great. And you think a freshmen writer can do four? Sure, she can. Four crappy essays. I seldom have to cut an assignment.