Kate Dougherty's Week 9 & 10

I've just posted some comments to Kristen's posts and replied to a comment she posted on one of my posts.

Week 9:

Monday: It was the first day back from Spring Break so I needed to assess their progress (mostly internal) and make the remaining schedule and our due dates clear. I handed out calendars for April 2010 and May 2010 with the assignments written in their due dates. I think this helped students visualize the remaining weeks of the semester. On the Wednesday before break we'd discussed time management. They filled out weekly calendars -- wrote in the calendar the times they have class and work, time to transport, sleep, clean, eat, complete assignments, and socialize.

We also discussed their concerns for the essay and the holes or gaps they could identify in their research.

They had a dialogue due. For this assignment they create an informal dialogue that might occur if the authors of their sources were to have a conversation. I usually find this assignment quite successful -- they can really embody their sources' points of view.

Wednesday: Their Research Log 3 and Source Essay 3 were due on Wednesday. I usually have them briefly write up four sources they've found for each research log. And in their source essays, they explore one central idea or argument in one source and create a plan for how to use that source in their essay and what other sources it could lead them to.

I'd changed the length requirements for the polished Researched Discovery Essay, but I hadn't changed the source requirements. The research felt rushed this time, and I couldn't imagine them having time to find four more suitable sources, so for Research Log 3 they needed to find at least two sources that fill the gaps they'd identified in their research. And for their Source Essay 3, they wrote a detailed draft of an outline for their essays, including what ideas from each of their sources would support or help explain each idea or section of their essay.

I decided to require 6 sources instead of the usual 8 in the polished essay. I hope the research component of the essay feels complete. If not, the altered timeline to allow time to select speakers and prepare a speech might need rethinking.

Week 10:

Monday: Their first draft of the essay was due today: 7 pages and 3 sources. Many of the students pieced these 7 pages together from previous assignments. They are extremely rough. I find this is usually the case with the first draft, and I don't know if that's a necessity -- the messy piecing together of all the work they've accomplished thus far -- or if it's a waste of their time. Maybe I should schedule one Frankenstein draft before this first draft that asks them to piece together their previous assignments into an essay as best they can. Then I can require that the first draft be a smoothing and an adding to of this Frankenstein draft.

I've talked to some instructors who are having students complete polished essays throughout the semester, and the finished assignment is a smoothed compilation of these polished essays. How's that going? Does that seem like a better organization than what you've previously used, than what I'm currently using?

Wednesday: My class is extremely small this semester. I have only 9 students now; 3 have withdrawn for various reasons. The discussions I plan for the small groups end up happening with the entire class since we're so small, especially if anyone is absent. Students had written response letters after reading a classmate's first draft. They described their classmate's draft to the class and voiced praise and concerns. That opened up interesting brief discussions, and some of the students who hadn't read the draft (though they know about one another's essays pretty well) offered some ideas for their classmates.

We also looked back at the opening paragraphs of the essays/chapters we've read by published authors this semester. We discussed what's effective, what's ineffective, what they've learned an introduction should do, and what they like to read in an introduction. Drafts of two potential introductions are due the following class period.

Kate Dougherty's Weeks 7 & 8

Week 7:

Monday: We meet in the library. Students conduct research and/or work on a computer there. I conduct five-minute conferences to check in with students -- they have the conference schedule ahead of time and swing by for a chat during class. No, I'm not checking in on my students to see that they're using their time wisely. It seems that most do. And I figure some might be ready for a break -- a bit of relaxation to help them focus (hopefully!) later on.

On Wednesday, they hand in a second Research Log and a piece of writing that explores and establishes a plan to use one of their sources. On Wednesday, we discuss who they plan to interview for their essays. (They were to include someone they've contacted for an interview on their Research Log that'd due.) We discuss interviews they've conducted in the past and things that have gone well and things that resulted in mini-explosions. They then interview a classmate they haven't worked with yet and write brief profiles. (We didn't have time to read the profiles. Sometimes working with computers creates more hassle than they're worth. I'm in a computer lab, and it seems perfect for an in-class assignment like this. But they were having computer issues, and I had to run to get paper so they could print.)

Week 8:

Monday: A local author and journalist named Daniel P. Smith (author of On the Job: Behind the Stars of the Chicago Police Department) visits to conduct an interview workshop. I've had him visit before, and students seem to really appreciate hearing his experiences and insights.

He also shows them some clips of poorly conducted interviews -- a journalist interviews the founder of Facebook, and another where Oprah interviews Elizabeth Taylor -- and shows us his favorite TV interviewer, Tim Russert, with Barack Obama. He outlines for students what these interviewers do poorly and do well.

Wednesday: The second round of students will present their blog postings about Critical Encounters events they've attended. We will connect these events with students' essays and the larger conversation of Fact & Faith.

Kate Dougherty: through Week 6

During Week 6, students worked on a six-page assignment that expresses their personal connections to their inquiries.

Week 6 was a strange week -- lots of students and instructors were out sick, and that was true for my class, too. I only had six students on both Monday and Wednesday; five of those six were the same students each day. We took advantage of the extra time and had a long conversation about each student's topic and how the topics connect to one another. This group felt much more confident in the six-page assignment than students in previous semesters. I'll try to give the class more time to have conversations like these in future semesters. (It's usually something I build into Writing and Rhetoric I more than II.)

Kate Dougherty: my students' inquiries

Shalynn: Should the fight for gay rights be compared to African Americans' fight for civil rights?

Coop: Why are light-skinned blacks treated better than dark-skinned blacks?

Bobby: Why did the human species evolve to have emotions?

Anna: Are the media to blame when it comes to violence, or are people just weak-minded and easily influenced?

Alyssa: Why do some teenagers believe in cutting?

Serenity: Does your life control you, or do you control your life?

Vanessa: Is depression really an illness? If so, how do we know, and if not, why is that? Looking onward, why do anti-depressants not have a middle ground? Are they really considered a quick fix? Why are people for and against them?

Jazz: Why do we believe what we believe?

Victor: How can we question religion without being stigmatized?

La'Quan: Why is the hardest part of life making a decision? (How do we make decisions? What makes some decisions easier than others?)

Xochitl: Why do we believe in justice?

My students completed the same brainstorming assignment twice. With this assignment they list questions, select one or two, and explore what they already know or suspect about this question, who they could interview about the question, what questions they would ask, and what sources might provide insight into this question.

The first version was due at the beginning of Week 2. Professor and Critical Encounters Fellow Eric Scholl visited our class that day. They wrote their questions on the board. They were concerned that their questions didn't fall under the umbrella of Fact & Faith, but Professor Scholl discussed the questions with them and encouraged the students to pursue their questions with Fact & Faith in mind.

They read "The Falling Man" by Tom Junod (Esquire) and completed the same brainstorming assignment from Junod's point of view -- the process he'd undergone before and while writing this essay. (This is also an example of an essay that begins with a clear question that isn't perfectly answered at the end of the piece. "Who is the falling man? Well, turns out, he might be this guy.")

Then they completed the brainstorming assignment a second time, due at the beginning of Week 3.

They discussed both brainstorming assignments in small groups and wrote response letters to a classmate's assignments, responding to the 2-4 questions their classmate had written about thus far.

They've also read texts that have to do with my sample question, Why do we believe in race?: "Relations" by Eula Biss (from Notes from No Man's Land), the prologue to I'm Down by Mishna Wolff, and "Why Genes Don't Count (for Racial Differences in Health)" by Alan H. Goodman, PhD ( American Journal of Public Health). They've written in response to these texts, compared how they approach the question from different points of view, discussed where they fall on the spectrum from popular to scholarly, and how one might use these texts as sources in an essay that responds to this question. (more or less)

At this point, the beginning of Week 5, they've pretty well settled on the question I've typed above with their names, though some are working on how to phrase, narrow, or broaden their questions.

We've visited the library (information session with April Levy), and they are beginning their research logs and writing to understand and make plans for how to use their sources.