Today’s Plan:
- Quick Reading: Inoue’s grading contract
- Assessment Exercise
- Discussion: Inoue
- Break
- Syllabus Review
- Paper 3 Final List (let’s just add final 2 and 3 together)
- Homework
Exercise
After we have read the grading contract, I would like you to break into groups of two. Groups should discuss the following talking points:
- What elements of our course line up with Inoue’s prescriptions for an anitracist writing class?
- What elements of our course don’t line up with Inoue’s prescriptions for an antiracist writing class?
- After reading Inoue, what is one thing you will change the next time you teach this class (or even something you will change this semester)
- Do you think eng 122 could work if it awarded grades based on *labor* and not *quality*?
I’ll give everyone 20 minutes to discuss each of these talking points, then we will reconvene and compare answers.
Inoue Discussion Points
- How does structural racism show up in writing assessment? To what evidence does Inuoe point?
- Pg 9. Assessment & pedagogy
- Seven elements of assessment:
- Power (questions for students p. 123)(power, in light of Foucault, explicit p. 125)
- Parts (artifacts, intro labor p.128, counter arguments to labor p. 131)
- Purposes (negotiate explicit purposes p. 134, from grading, ranking, evaluating to description, response, dialogue [reflection]
p. 135) - People (people reflecting treat people like people pg. 141, suggested texts, pg. 141, student counterarguments to labor pg. 144, how place shapes performance/being-as pg. 147, student desire for grammar 149,
- Processes (why post-process leads to labor over evaluation 153, anticipating teacher resistance to labor 153, how to make labor visible,
- Products (portfolio evaluation & how grades as labor changes feedback 156,
- Places (interesting angle on public assessment and de-individualization 160, “learning requires us to be uncomfortable and safe” 165, borderlands to challenge hegemony 166, 170-171, more questions for students 171
- Activities (not assignments)
- Reading
- Writing
- Reflecting
- Labor Journaling
- Assessing
- Projecting
- Sample rubrics (221)
- Heuristic 284-291
Syllabus Review
We really only have one day to worry about, and that is Monday October 23rd. On the original syllabus, we were slated to work on “Pathos and Apology.” Reviewing those course notes, I’m not sure that is one that will fit into this course–it worked really well when students were writing blog-like posts each week. It doesn’t really work as a medium.com essay.
So that leaves us with what amounts to an open day. I can’t imagine that it will be too difficult to fill–we have the Williams and Bizup article that we can use. You might still have not done the analogy workshop. There’s the logical fallacy workshop. You can always do more work on logical fallacies (maybe a quiz like this and/or this). If you have had your fill of logical fallacies and analogies, then you could do some kind of revision activity with the final papers. If you want to start thinking ahead to the final paper, then you might help them read an academic article (how to find a thesis, how to identify a literature review, looking at methodology (in humanities this might mean what theorists are central to the argument, in sciences this is probably a more “traditional” methods section). If you do this exercise, then I would pick one humanities article and one science article to work with. Do an article you are comfortable with, one you have command of, one you have to read for one of your classes. You could even contrast the Elbow and Danielewicz I’m asking you to read for homework with this qualitative article on grading contracts.
Paper 3 Final List
Let’s combine the Paper 2 finals and the Paper 3 finals into one list. I also want to talk a bit about moving toward the final paper and how we can use the medium drafts to help facilitate that process.
Homework
For next class, please prepare a 122 syllabus for how you would teach the course the next time you are assigned it. You do not have to include a calendar. I would like you to include a grading contract, although you have freedom to make that contract whatever you wish.
Readings for next class:
- Shipka, “Negotiating Rhetorical, Technological, and Methodological Difference”
- Elbow and Danielewicz, “A Unilateral Grading Contract to Improve Learning and Teaching”
- Inoue, TBD
