Tag Archives: Class Notes

Class 18

Hi all–I’m excited to get you talking about your books. There were some great blog posts today and I don’t want to spend too long at the top of class doing anything other than getting you going.

Overall, you’re all doing a great job drawing out big issues:

  • mental health
  • police violence
  • racism in/and interracial relationships
  • the long tail of colonial violence and control
  • the adolescent experience to this age of changing schools/social environments

So much is enmeshed in these texts and you guys do a great job addressing these from different angels . There are also big questions about care here from a few different angles. We see these care questions in Diaz, who weaves the Baby Lollipops story with the relationship between Diaz and her mother, between Diaz and the much older Chris, and between Diaz and her mostly absent father.

Laymon and Talusan also engage this idea of what care means, as often in social contexts with his peers as in family contexts with his mother. Rosalio’s blog about Jabari is a great example of that. And of course in Fairest, Meredith Talusan has to reorient herself to a new country and a new culture, namely the elite campus of Harvard. Reading Fairest alongside Laymon and Diaz, it’s easy to wonder if Nanay Coro’s hope for the US as a place where life was “better” is misplaced.

Class 14

Today, Essay 2 is due. Thursday we launch our book groups. It’s pretty much official: we’re halfway through the semester in all kinds of ways.

Pat yourselves on the collective back for getting here. It’s been a slog, I know, but I’m so proud of all of us who have been persisting and doing good work despite everything.

Enough rah rah sis boom bah. Today’s class balances some looking backward (at Essay 2 through “hacking Zoom” and at our earlier informal work) and forward (to the book groups).

To the Chalkboard!

Class 09: Cultural Artifacts and Us

Welcome to class! Today we have an in-class activity centered around the cultural artifacts you brought in. It will involve some writing, some discussion, snd some sharing of “accessible selfies”  to a set of Slides posted on the “Chalkboard” Doc. 

This task will help us do two things, one old, one new: first, this activity will allow us to abstract and concrete language (which we last discussed in the “expectations” posts). Second, this activity will also help us introduce a key concept of social scope writing (especially ethnography): the position of the narrator. 

We see that in the Pollack and Epstein piece you read for today. We also see it on the Alvarez-Alvarez source you will read for next Thursday . 

Not much is due today except the reading, which we’ll talk about. Please make sure you set up a Commons site of your own and send me the url. (The form for that is, you guessed it, on the “Chalkboard”). You will use this site to compile work for Essay 4 (your self-assessment) and to house the “artifacts” in your end of semester portfolio.

One way we’ll work with the reading is to post reactions and questions to it as replies to this post. So — reactions/questions? Go for it.

(This is one of two digital alternate modes for this class; the other is the Accessible Selfies activity.)

Class 07: Scrolls

We’re doing a fun in-class activity today. It’s about essay organization!

Things we learned while cutting paper bags and editing in crayon:

  • The paragraph is “the basic unit of composition” (so says the author of Charlotte’s Web)
  • Whether digital or analog, “tags” help us categorize and then organize work
  • Categorizing is about “this thought”; organization connects it to “other thoughts”
  • Without categorization organization of things you’re reading or writing gets very hard
  • Paragraphs help us identify, focus, revise, or understand and engage with the thesis

See the chalkboard for more!

Class 04: Face to Face!

Welcome to our first in-person class. We’ve got a lot on our “Chalkboard,” more than I expect us to get to on this strange, happy, rainy day.

Thanks to those of you who have already turned in your library assignments, and who have been participating in the Hypothes.is conversation on “La Otra” and “Quick Feet.” We’ll try to build on that a bit in class today and between now and Tuesday (on Zoom.) 

The main focus of this post will be the expectations blog posts and replies. Remember that in contract grading, your work is assessed as “complete” or “not-yet-complete.” To be marked complete, you needed both a post that followed instructions for content and format AND a reply to at least one peer who had not received at least two comments. 

Examples of posts that are complete include: 

  • Kevin (Weiting, Ashley) — “Hope for something different”
  • Yingrong (Zoe, Kevin) — “ENG 210- New Beginning”
  • Fatou (Rachel, Luis) — “Indicative Expectations”
  • Demetri (Fatou, Panagiotis) — “My Expectations”

There may be some others that have gone up or been completed since I checked this morning. 

Examples of work that needs an additional commenter: 

  • Zoe (Rachel) — “Hopeful Expectations”
  • Panagiotis (Yingrong) — “New Year, New Goals”
  • Weiting (Zoe) — “The Promises for ENGL 21002”
  • Spencer (Kevin) — “Pressed for Time –  My Course Expectations”
  • Yaminah (Demetri) — “Expectation Letter”
  • Ashley (Yaminah) — “Main Expectations”

And some work went up very close to the start of class, so has no comment trail yet, such as:

  • Luis (no comments) — “Expectations”
  • Rachel (no comments) — “Expectations for ENG 210”
  • Ashanti (no comments) — “My expectations in Learning”
  • Diana E. (no comments, published privately)

If you’ve posted and commented, then your work is done. If you have not done this yet, you can complete it within the next 24 hours. For now, there’s not a penalty. In general, this is the sort of thing that would lead the work to be marked ‘late’. We’re all still learning how to do things in this class so I want to be fair until we all get oriented. 

***

The class wrote a number of blog posts describing their expectations for the semester from their instructor, from each other, and from themselves. Many students commented on how stressful and unsatisfying emergency remote instruction has been. Quite a few expressed nervousness about being able to improve their writing. Most were excited to return to campus in person; no one expressed nervousness about that (though I wonder if some people are nervous). A few students set particular goals related to their field of study or to academic habits. Less than half the class completed the task on time. [This is an example of summary. Why?]

I was “moved” (to borrow the phrase from one student’s comment) by the honesty of these notes. At moments, students examined themselves (one called their work habits ‘lazy’), and at others they critiqued the attidues and approaches of their instructors. Most have high hopes to connect with their peers and with the material. I’m hopeful (to use another frequently deployed word) that our work will be fruitful as more voices join the conversation. [This is an example of response. Why?]

Two other great quotes that we’ll talk about over the next few class meetings:

  • “That is why I chose to have a class that is a hybrid because I am a very visual learner and I need in-person time to keep my head in the game.” This is an example of metacognition AND positioning.
  • “aspects of writing such as preparation, organization, and time management.” This is an example of concrete language
  • “I think all of us as writers have amazing ideas, but we don’t flesh them out.” This is an example of a claim. We’ll talk about that on Tuesday.

Class 03 (Sept 2): It’s always something isn’t it?

Good morning, all. I hope the big storm that has closed campus today has not affected you, your homes, or your loved ones in any major way. We had a big leak in our apartment but nothing a baking sheet and a garbage can couldn’t handle.

Anyway … today’s class continues where we left off Tuesday. That day, we introduced a reading practice (previewing) and a technology we’ll use to perform that practice (Hypothes.is). I asked you to broaden the evidence you’ll draw on to make your “Pick a Book” arguments in a few weeks by reading and annotating “The Cover of My Face” by Meredith Talusan. For Sept 9, you’ll read two other pieces, “La Otra” by Jaquira Diaz and “Quick Feet” by Kiese Laymon. These “group reads” give us a shared context to explain our individual arguments. More on this over the next few classes.

Campus is closed today due to the storm but we also have some scheduled days off coming up. There is no class due to holidays on Sept 7 and Sept 16. In campus-being-open news, though, our first in-person class meeting is scheduled for September 9, next Thursday, in NAC 5/108. Hopefully the city won’t experience a plague of locusts, a meteor strike, or a visit from the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man between then and now…

I look forward to hearing your reactions to Talusan, and to reading the blog posts you’ve included for today. You’ll respond to each other between now and the 9th.

If you’re not on our course site, please email me ([email protected]) from your Citymail account so I can invite you. If you’re not on Hypothes.is, please follow these instructions (https://web.hypothes.is/quick-start-guide-for-students/) and join our group (https://hypothes.is/groups/qwY42A5B/engl210-fall-2021).

As always, I’m around on Zoom before and after class, and on email whenever possible (replies within 24 hours, but faster at this time of semester). See you soon!

Class 02: Some last logistics and some first looks at our books

Good morning. We’ll spend today wrapping up the introduction to our course — going over the rest of our syllabus and schedule, signing up for grading contracts, and doing a test run of Hypothes.is and the Commons blog before using them in earnest.

The big details, as always, are on the “Chalkboard” Doc. Readings and the like are making their way into the Commons Group library. And all the other details are under course information, the landing page of our Commons site.

See you in a few