Two or three of my honors students have barely skated upward into final grades they probably shouldn't have gotten, due to an extra-credit option I gave everyone early in the semester. I calculate the extra credit as simply another daily work grade, but I don't increase the total number of daily work points when I calculate final grades--so it's possible for 1) a student with a poor daily work score to bring it up a bit; 2) a student with a close-to-perfect or perfect daily work score to have more than the maximum. One student who should have had a D got a C, barely; two who should have had C's got B's, barely.
Several different factors play into the final grades, of course; I maintain one never passes or fails my courses because of one thing only. But I will admit it is possible to hover close to the borderline for the whole semester and have a daily work grade in the form of extra credit bump you over.
So philosophically, I think I'm done with it. It's rather high-schoolish, isn't it? And it probably distorts a student's overall grade profile. I've had the option more often than not in all my teaching semesters, but as the estimable Dean Dad says, it rewards the wrong things. Extra credit may reduce the value of the other grades, too. What does it reward? I would say motivation, mostly; less writing or thinking skills.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Wednesday odds and sods.
Too short to write an essay on, too long to tweet:
--End of the semester is upon us. As always, hoo and ah, in that order. See previous post for my disappointment with my honors class. Haven't graded their finals yet, but I will with much trepidation (and a glass or three of wine).
--Every year I swear I won't watch American Idol again, and every year I give in. A definite feeling of "blah" has crept in, though. The remaining few are rehearsing their perfect moves over and over, and I'm a little tired of it. I actually enjoy reading Entertainment Weekly's next-day snark more than watching, if truth be told. Do I have a prediction for the winner? Why, sure. I say Scotty McCreery will be our first country American Idol. He's rather endearing when he isn't trying to convince us so hard of his endearing-ness.
--I'm having dinner Friday with my fellow colleagues on the search committee I chaired this spring. Loveliness to come, and a few margaritas.
--I have sent five poems to a small press who takes open submissions; no entry fee, though I did stumble-fumble my way through a short proposal letter. I dunno: how do you write a proposal for a book of poetry? If I had a theme or concept, it probably would have been easier--though I did try to concoct one. My real theme, of course, is me me me me.
--My wife and I are going to Virginia wine country and Pennsylvania at the end of the month--an actual car road trip, which we don't do many of. Then my brother-in-law's wedding, followed by a short-ish trip to L.A. Yes, Virginia, there is wine country in Virginia.
--Can't add much to the post-bin Laden fervor, other than: time to move on, folks.
--End of the semester is upon us. As always, hoo and ah, in that order. See previous post for my disappointment with my honors class. Haven't graded their finals yet, but I will with much trepidation (and a glass or three of wine).
--Every year I swear I won't watch American Idol again, and every year I give in. A definite feeling of "blah" has crept in, though. The remaining few are rehearsing their perfect moves over and over, and I'm a little tired of it. I actually enjoy reading Entertainment Weekly's next-day snark more than watching, if truth be told. Do I have a prediction for the winner? Why, sure. I say Scotty McCreery will be our first country American Idol. He's rather endearing when he isn't trying to convince us so hard of his endearing-ness.
--I'm having dinner Friday with my fellow colleagues on the search committee I chaired this spring. Loveliness to come, and a few margaritas.
--I have sent five poems to a small press who takes open submissions; no entry fee, though I did stumble-fumble my way through a short proposal letter. I dunno: how do you write a proposal for a book of poetry? If I had a theme or concept, it probably would have been easier--though I did try to concoct one. My real theme, of course, is me me me me.
--My wife and I are going to Virginia wine country and Pennsylvania at the end of the month--an actual car road trip, which we don't do many of. Then my brother-in-law's wedding, followed by a short-ish trip to L.A. Yes, Virginia, there is wine country in Virginia.
--Can't add much to the post-bin Laden fervor, other than: time to move on, folks.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
I couldn't have lived without you, part 3.
Continuing to plot points on the graph of my likes. No, not likes, but works that have made me who I am, somehow, someway. Ideally, with luck, this will eventually take in other forms: dance, painting, sculpture...
Music:
Allman Brothers: “Jessica,” “Ramblin’ Man”
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, Bringing it All Back Home, John Wesley Harding, Love and Theft, Planet Waves, other single songs to come later
The Proclaimers: Sunshine on Leith
Go-Gos: "Turn to You"
TV:
SNL (For better and worse. I know so much effluvia about this show, I could ace an SNL trivia night.)
Match Game
MTV, '80s (First video I saw after we got cable: "Sharp Dressed Man.")
NBC Nightly News, '70s and early '80s (I miss David Brinkley and his bemused opinions on the political arena. What would he make of the Tea Party?)
Late Night w/ David Letterman (before the jump to CBS and cranky affability)
Books, stories, poems:
Richard Hugo: Making Certain It Goes On
Robinson Jeffers: “The Purse-Seine,” “To the Stone-Cutters,” “Hurt Hawks”
Frost: “Mending Wall”
Plath: The Colossus
Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings, High Windows, “Aubade,” “Love Again”
Emily Dickinson (I adore her work; however, I can only read a dozen or so of her poems at a time. After reading something on the order of “I felt a Funeral—in my Brain—“, I too feel like the top of my head has been taken off.)
Kay Ryan: The Niagara River, Say Uncle
David Kirby: The House of Blue Light, The Ha-Ha
Music:
Allman Brothers: “Jessica,” “Ramblin’ Man”
Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks, The Basement Tapes, Bringing it All Back Home, John Wesley Harding, Love and Theft, Planet Waves, other single songs to come later
The Proclaimers: Sunshine on Leith
Go-Gos: "Turn to You"
TV:
SNL (For better and worse. I know so much effluvia about this show, I could ace an SNL trivia night.)
Match Game
MTV, '80s (First video I saw after we got cable: "Sharp Dressed Man.")
NBC Nightly News, '70s and early '80s (I miss David Brinkley and his bemused opinions on the political arena. What would he make of the Tea Party?)
Late Night w/ David Letterman (before the jump to CBS and cranky affability)
Books, stories, poems:
Richard Hugo: Making Certain It Goes On
Robinson Jeffers: “The Purse-Seine,” “To the Stone-Cutters,” “Hurt Hawks”
Frost: “Mending Wall”
Plath: The Colossus
Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings, High Windows, “Aubade,” “Love Again”
Emily Dickinson (I adore her work; however, I can only read a dozen or so of her poems at a time. After reading something on the order of “I felt a Funeral—in my Brain—“, I too feel like the top of my head has been taken off.)
Kay Ryan: The Niagara River, Say Uncle
David Kirby: The House of Blue Light, The Ha-Ha
To workshop or not to workshop?
I am toying with the idea of abandoning peer workshop altogether in my comp 1 and 2 courses effective this summer. Above many items that have remained constant in my 10-plus years of teaching comp, workshop has been one of the constantest constants. If I do abandon it, understand I am not abandoning the idea of peer workshop. I have seen students profit from peer comments before, and I remain committed to the idea (perhaps in theory only) that if we aspire to do more than write in our journals solely for ourselves, we don't know what effect our words have until someone else takes them in. Abstractly at least, I still believe that's true--for someone who's committed to working with language and honing it to best possible effect.
But.
It's clear that too many of my students don't take their peers' comments seriously and perhaps, in the rush of the last minute, forget what their peers say and don't look at the feedback sheets again before turning in essays. It's also probably true that many of them don't give a fig what their peers have to say (which, perversely, I kinda cheer them for, at least their skepticism). And maybe this has to do with how the review groups work; maybe the problem is not workshop per se but who works with whom.
Trust is so hard to develop among students, but then again, trust is a double-edged sword. One kind of trust ensures that peers will review each other's work honestly and fairly, whereas another kind ensures that a group of friends will work in the same group and offer nothing but praise--if that. I wonder if there's research which attempts to measure the value of workshops in more than theoretical terms, that shows how much a student revises based on peer feedback (or other feedback, say of a writing lab or an instructor) and how much he revises out of his own convictions. And peer feedback can help *clarify* a writer's convictions, I suspect, but again, how to measure this?
Sometimes I pick group membership myself, and sometimes I let them pick--and I'm not sure which method works better. Is a relative stranger's feedback as valuable as a close friend's? I'm also starting to wonder if workshop isn't sometimes just a way of filling class time. Could those three or four days per semester be put to better advantage--more time on the research portion, more time spent on how to construct argument?
I write this and I realize I will start to address the issue this summer in my comp 2 courses. Out of time challenges more than anything else, I have taken out the workshop for all but the last essay, the research assignment. Several years ago, workshop was not part of my comp 2 course for a few semesters; then I put it back in. Now I'm taking it out again. I could foresee doing this for comp 1 as well. Is this throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Part of me also believes I owe it to stduents to at least introduce them to the idea of peer feedback, thus maybe making workshop mandatory for one or two assignments and optional for the others. (Which ones?)
If the overriding goal is improvement in student writing--more facility with language, more ease in revising toward a communicative goal--workshop should (ideally) show some influence on that. I just don't know how to measure that influence.
Obviously, more questions than answers here. Any of y'all teachers reading this who use workshop in some capacity, do you harbor similar doubts? Have you ever removed or reduced or changed the nature of your peer workshop sessions? To what effect?
But.
It's clear that too many of my students don't take their peers' comments seriously and perhaps, in the rush of the last minute, forget what their peers say and don't look at the feedback sheets again before turning in essays. It's also probably true that many of them don't give a fig what their peers have to say (which, perversely, I kinda cheer them for, at least their skepticism). And maybe this has to do with how the review groups work; maybe the problem is not workshop per se but who works with whom.
Trust is so hard to develop among students, but then again, trust is a double-edged sword. One kind of trust ensures that peers will review each other's work honestly and fairly, whereas another kind ensures that a group of friends will work in the same group and offer nothing but praise--if that. I wonder if there's research which attempts to measure the value of workshops in more than theoretical terms, that shows how much a student revises based on peer feedback (or other feedback, say of a writing lab or an instructor) and how much he revises out of his own convictions. And peer feedback can help *clarify* a writer's convictions, I suspect, but again, how to measure this?
Sometimes I pick group membership myself, and sometimes I let them pick--and I'm not sure which method works better. Is a relative stranger's feedback as valuable as a close friend's? I'm also starting to wonder if workshop isn't sometimes just a way of filling class time. Could those three or four days per semester be put to better advantage--more time on the research portion, more time spent on how to construct argument?
I write this and I realize I will start to address the issue this summer in my comp 2 courses. Out of time challenges more than anything else, I have taken out the workshop for all but the last essay, the research assignment. Several years ago, workshop was not part of my comp 2 course for a few semesters; then I put it back in. Now I'm taking it out again. I could foresee doing this for comp 1 as well. Is this throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Part of me also believes I owe it to stduents to at least introduce them to the idea of peer feedback, thus maybe making workshop mandatory for one or two assignments and optional for the others. (Which ones?)
If the overriding goal is improvement in student writing--more facility with language, more ease in revising toward a communicative goal--workshop should (ideally) show some influence on that. I just don't know how to measure that influence.
Obviously, more questions than answers here. Any of y'all teachers reading this who use workshop in some capacity, do you harbor similar doubts? Have you ever removed or reduced or changed the nature of your peer workshop sessions? To what effect?
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