Small Successes I: Paper Activities

So I realize that I haven't had much to say in a while about my class, and in part, I want to record the successes that I've had along the way--things that I hope to repeat in the future.  I know that last time I checked in I was on the verge of despair.  *sigh*  I still have more moments of weariness than enthusiasm, but I haven't felt that bad since that week.  I have also been allowing myself to read for pleasure more, and not forcing myself to read along with everything I assign.  The latter makes me feel like a bad teacher, but it's not as if I'm lecturing on it, so I'll give myself a pass.

One thing that I feel I have done the right way is breaking the steps of the paper down for them and requiring students to "check in" (more or less) to demonstrate that they are working on the paper.  These assignments help them to stretch out the work on the assignment rather than saving it until the last minute.  They give me the opportunity to monitor progress--or not, because for the most part the burden is on them (which I'll explain).  Because they are wrestling with the paper over time, I do, in fact, hear more from them when things aren't going quite right, if they get stuck, etc.  This is definitely a success in an online course.  

What I'm proposing is something that was standard in composition classes--Topic Proposal Memo, Thesis Statement, List of Sources, Outline (maybe), Rough Draft, Final Draft.  Besides teaching time management and giving the opportunity for feedback along the way, we were also making sure that if a student was inclined to plagiarize, the supporting materials would have to be plagiarized, since a paper would not be accepted without them.  That's not really my rationale, since my paper is fairly unique and probably can't just be downloaded.  What is unusual is requiring these steps for a sophomore-level class.  Sophomores are supposed to be able to do these things on their own, right?  And sink or swim?  Well...  not really.  Not in reality. 

One of the amazing things about the online-only class is the opportunities I have along the way to correct what they're thinking about things, how they're interpreting things, how they are expressing their ideas in writing.  In class, if they don't speak, I don't know what they're thinking. Because the class meets every day, there are no assignments designed to let me know what they're thinking--whether they're getting it.  As a result, they don't necessarily get it, and I don't know until the test.  Heck--they don't know until the test.  In this case, I know.  And if we can have a discussion about it where other students can see, I'm actually teaching.  Yay!  This is how being a "guide" instead of a "sage" can still be an important function, requiring a teacher who is insightful and engaged.  

This paper was a beginning lit review, if you will.  My intentions (objectives, really) were to have them be able to write a research question, use it to do research, find scholarly sources on a literary topic, read and summarize, and begin to synthesize the sources in a very basic way in order to present the articles to an audience who wishes to know more about the literary topic in question.  It took a bit of wrangling to get them there, and I haven't graded the papers yet, but I know that learning has happened along the way.

Their supporting activities were:

1. A research question posted to a forum.  Each student had to post a question in order to see others' questions so that they were not influenced beforehand.
2. A bibliography submitted as an assignment to the instructor only.  This gave me the opportunity to check to see whether the sources were scholarly and whether the bibliography format was correct.
3. A rough draft/peer review wiki.  While it did not really function as a peer review, it could have.  Students posted their rough draft to a new page in the wiki.  They could also make changes to theirs (technically they could have to others' as well), and make comments on their and others' drafts.  If they wanted my feedback, they had to solicit it, and one did.  I could have forced each student to comment on another's draft, but feedback-by-coersion is not typically good quality stuff, so I let it go.

I had many questions during the first two stages.  Some were caught up in adhering to the question or making it perfect, so those people learned that research ideas do mutate.  Many, many students learned to construct better database searches.  And at least half of the remaining students had a rough draft in time.  All in all, a success--they did not drift away completely.

These supporting assignments were only worth 25 points each.  At first, I was going to roll these in to the daily grade equivalent--a pathetic 10% (which should be more given the effort).  Instead, I decided to reward their efforts by making the 75 points part of the paper grade, which is 15% of the overall grade.  I believe that the effort of staying on task and the learning activities involved deserve to be 3/7 of the 15%, because they are being rewarded, here, for the considerable effort of learning on their own, being engaged, and asking for assistance when they needed it.

Notes on Grading: Pacing Ourselves and Blind Submissions

In my current training position, I adminster two "certificate programs," which are a collection of classes that staff members take in order to develop a certain skill area.  The ones I administer develop basic competency in Microsoft Office and more general entry-level competencies for administrative professionals (software and soft skills).  The certificate program requires a final project which attempts to bring together and demonstrate the skills that were gained through the classes, while also providing an additional teaching opportunity, since unlike in the classroom, in the real world, a document is not finished until it is presentable.  Recently, speaking with the person who previously administered one of my certificate programs, I confessed to her that I was rarely ever busy, and she expressed a great deal of surprise:  she was always very busy with the certificate projects.  This puzzled me at first.  I don't get many projects at a time, and when I put my mind to it, I can get through the components and give feedback very quickly.  After all--there's no grade to put on the paper.  And then it occurred to me:  I am used to this.  Much more used to it than she was, since I taught writing, and had to give clear, focused feedback that stressed how to improve--even if the advice was never actually applied.

Thinking about grading, I remember it as the most odious task of teaching.  And yet, here I am, skimming quickly through these documents created for the certificate program, giving feedback, receiving resubmissions.  The one major difference is volume.  There are times, like now, when I do get all three parts of the project at one time, or components from three or four different certificate program participants.  But that's it.  And really?  It's not so bad.  I look through them.  I tell them what changes to make.  I send them back.  They get to them whenever they can.  This would be the ideal model for online distance learning, though of course I would have to assign grades at some point.  But then I wonder--if sitting back and giving feedback is relatively easy, what is it that made grading so odious?

The answer has to be the bulk of essays and the time pressure.  I hate to feel pressured, and yet it is necessary for me to feel pressured or I will accomplish nothing but blog posts or Facebook status updates--sad though that is to write.  So why not stagger deadlines or feedback sessions?  (Feedback sessions were my way of justifying particularly long turnaround times for graded papers.  Feedback on the previous paper and the grade would be given along with advice for the next paper during a session of office hours.  There would be a sign-up sheet.  Sometimes these would replace class for a couple of days.)

This stays with me.  Why do we grade papers in bulk?  It's the dominant method, but whom does it serve?  Not the instructor, who has this mountain of intimidation to face.  Even when I was interested in the topics, or looking forward to reading student responses to an assignment, anticipation of the grading marathon inevitably forced me to procrastination.

Does grading in bulk serve the students?  This is a harder question, because the grading inevitably becomes sloppier, the comments less helpful, the grades more arbitrary the deeper I get into the stack. And yet, I think one reason that we would not give out papers until everyone's paper had been graded was to maintain the semblence (illusion?) of fairness.  But their is always some bias.  The more workshops I attend on "subtle bias," and the longer I work in an office around people who are supposed to be aware of their biases, the more I conclude what I already believed--that bias is inevitable. Most of it, however, is personal.  There were students whose papers I graded harder, though I didn't mean to, because they were pushing my buttons in class, or because they thought they were smart, or because I knew (and I hated it when teachers did this to me) that they could do better.  Maybe I wasn't guilty of each one of these.  I certainly did what I could to avoid it, but sometimes perhaps only blind submissions would have prevented it.

Where I failed in grading was usually through the carelessness of exhanustion.  The last papers came after the previous papers, and looked either a lot better... or else a lot worse by comparison.  I was tired and weary of errors and repetition.  My handwriting got sloppy.  Inevitably, I had promised these grades by the next day and would catch hell or reproving glances if I did not deliver.  My feedback got thin or harsh.  And I probably didn't think as much about the grade, perhaps relying solely on my rubric to avoid the unclouded judgment that 2 A.M. (or 30 minutes before class) would not grant.

So given my insight, what would I do differently?  Well, for starters, I would like to see papers come in at a trickle rather than in bulk.  With a clear head and a clear idea of the objectives of the assignment and how to determine whether those objectives were met, I think the inconsistency of grading would take care of itself without having to "rank" papers and compare A to A and B to B and so on (which I never had time to do anyway, though that was the ideal).

But what about fairness and due dates?  In the real world, different people have different deadlines.  That's just the way of things.  You can't complain of fairness forever, because at some point it breaks down.  It could break down here, but there would be a lot of whining.  So let's randomize it.  Each student gets a number.  Numbers 1-5 turn in their papers on the first day.  Numbers 6-10 on the second day, and so on.  Numbers change with each paper assignment throughout the semester.

And while we're randomizing, keep your name off of your paper!  I'll record your name and number separately, and in the meantime, I will grade your paper blind.  I won't know whether you're a male writing a feminist paper, a light-skinned person writing about minority issues, a female writing a reactionary paper, and so on; I also won't know whether you're the one who sits up front with the sandals and the ingrown toenail or the smart-aleck who amuses me until you overstep the boundaries.  I won't know if you're the one who never says anything or the one who talks incessantly (to your fellow athletes) or texts while I'm talking.  And that will be for the better.  Unless you talk to me during office hourse about you're paper.  Then, I will know you--and that will be to your advantage. So really, it will be like an online class, or like the certificate projects.  I will grade gradually, as the papers come in, and I will know nothing about you, or will have forgotten everything I know.  So much for bias.

Now, about grading and returning papers--basically, workflow.  What would this look like?  Ideally, the grading would begin as the papers are submitted.  If 5 are submitted on Monday, those 5 should be read and comments written by Wednesday's class--or even by Tuesday.  If the grading stops, the papers pile up and the system doesn't work.  Since this system is based on an online process, it is well-suited to online feedback, though it could work with paper as well.  But stacks of papers bother me more than quantities of email, so I would eschew paper and opt for electronic communication.

And yes, classes go on, and someone still has to teach them.  But in between the classes are the office hours, when perhaps someone will grade me with their presence--but perhaps not.  And I will grade.  Because after all, when you're working 40-hours a week, you're pretty much expected to be productive while the clock is ticking.  There would certainly be additional opportunities for flexibility in an academic job as compared to an office job--grading/office hours in the library, for example.  The loss would be working in place.  The gain would be time to research or write, or do the more pleasurable parts of the job, like reading or prepping, or even *gasp* time to spend with friends and family outside of the grading-teaching time frame (whatever it might be).  This is how I would do it.

If it sounds rather like I would be tricking myself into doing work, that's probably accurate.  But might there be good pedagogical reasons for this approach?

Let's take grades.  So far, I have not mentioned them.  Grades could be assessed at the reading and commenting stage.  But why?  So that I would not have to read another round of the same papers? That is a compelling reason.  But it is not making use of the pedagogical potential of the writing assignment.  As I mentioned, the certificate projects are additional teaching and learning opportunities.  Because, while some people are able to make the leap and apply the concepts and use the tools that they have acquired--or even remember the information--most, in my experience, are not.  Why?  Because they are lost in their own minds, in their own obligations and job duties.  They sit through the classes.  They might pick up a thing or two.  But if, when they return to their desks, they do not use what they learned, they forget.  And so with students.  Particularly nontraditional students.

So let's make the first round a learning opportunity.  You submit.  I read.  I comment.  I make suggestions.  Corrections.  I am your boss.  This is what I want.  You comply, or you will not receive a good evaluation.  That is the bottom line.  But of course, you are expressing yourself, at least in part, so the liberal educator in me (liberal in the classical sense) will allow for that individual expression insofar as it represents a coherent part of the essay.  And then, you will show what you have learned.  And I will grade according to what I have seen and according to your final project.  I will assess your learning along with your paper.  You will move forward.  We will move forward together.  Ideally, you will receive your paper and your grade at a conference appointment, where we can discuss what else it might take for you to improve.  Outline goals.  Performance objectives.  Blending the workplace with the classroom.  Did you know that many human resources degrees are housed in education departments?

I've been working in a department under human resources for too long.  It may be that my ideas about teaching are becoming sanitized.  Certainly, I only have the leisure to think about this because I am *not* grading 75-150 papers at a time.  Undoubtedly.  But of the things that are wrong with teaching, I think the utter dread and resentment of grading is a big one.  Papers represent an opportunity to teach, and an opportunity to see into the minds of our students.  Everyone could stand to take them more seriously.  I also know that this model is better for those who are teaching 2-3 classes rather than 5-6.  But--isn't that true of every thorough, student-centered method?  Not the ones that are designed to take the pressure off the instructor under the guise of a decentered classroom.  You know the ones I mean.  And yet, I really am thinking about how I would like to do things.  I would make the workweek a little bit more like the 8-5 crowd, in order to get what I need to do done more efficiently.

Because you know what?  Right now, I would give just about anything to be sitting in an office grading 5 or 10 papers, preparing students for future successes and considering how their minds and their methods are developing in response to what I have set before them.  If I could fit that into my 8-5 day, and reflect at home on how I can improve the next day, or the next week, or the next semester... I would gladly be tied to an office 40 hours a week in service of my real vocation.

I AM, I am: A Rare Reflection on a Homily

In general, I tend to be slightly frustrated with homilies, even fairly good ones. The composition teacher in me wants to ask, "where is your thesis?"; to comment, "you introduce too many ideas in that paragraph" and "your composition lacks focus," "you repeat your point rather than elaborating" or "did you exceed the maximum word limit?" I generally prefer compositions that are too long to too short, as long as they remain on-topic with no unexplainable digressions. I do think there is some value in critiquing homilies, even in this manner, because it requires the ability to summarize or restate what the point or points were, with the possible result that we review and analyze the points of the homilies themselves, not just the possible structural imperfections! (Yes, we are paying attention to substance, too!--perhaps more than when I grade papers...)

This evening, the homily was given by a deacon who endeavors to stick close to and explain the readings, sometimes a bit too literally or pedantically, but I generally appreciate the effort to connect the readings to each other, to the particular feast day or liturgical season, or to the theology that they inform. He focused primarily on the first reading, from Exodus, in which Moses encounters the Burning Bush (a scene of Ten Commandments fame, and it's hard not to picture Charlton Heston--or, secondarily, Michelangelo's Moses). Particularly, he addressed the name by which Moses would call God as proof of his truth to the Israelites: I AM. In contrast the the great I AM, he recounted occasions on which no one answered "I am," occasions on which someone was asked to take personal responsibility for one's actions: "Who is responsible for the underwear up the flagpole?" "Who is responsible for moving the teacher's Volkswagon onto the sidewalk?" "Who is responsible for the mess in the kitchen?" He pointed out that society doesn't particularly like for us to answer the question, "Who is responsible?" with the response, "I am," particularly in the case of sins, which are increasingly explained as being something other than sin.

What he did not say was, I think, the most interesting point of the homily, the one which I would have tried to coax from the student writing an essay on the subject (in another life, when I have the occasion to grade a composition on a religious theme--my students would willingly write them, but I could not, in my current setting, fairly grade them because of the hogwash that they would offer for religious justification; in order to have an intelligent composition on religion, you likely have to have the ability to discuss religion openly in class as a valid topic, and to stress that religion and logic are compatible). The Deacon did not say, but I believe implied on some level, that by taking responsibility for our actions, by saying "I am" to the question, "Who is responsible?" we are able to participate in the Divine purpose in our lives, and in the Divine presence in the universe--by being the "I am"--the motivating force in our own lives, the moral agent that takes responsibility for our own actions--and doing so in accordance to our understanding of God's will, we are reaching for the "I AM." This can apply to any number of instances, and it has to do, at times, with participating in (or facilitating) the good that may come from evil and sin. Here, I clearly diverge from the homily, and I am thinking of two things--the "doing evil to undo evil" arguments for legalization of abortion, as a default argument, of sorts, and an extreme example to explain the point, and the co- or sub-creation within Creation that Tolkien portrays in The Silmarillion.

In The Silmarillion, Tolkien creates the Valar as sub-creators, whom Ilúvatar created in order to participate with him in Creation. Each of the Valar sings a part in the beginning melody, a song which brings about the actual substance of the universe. Melkor, the greatest of the Valar, seeks to challenge Ilúvatar (sorry for the oversimplification), and weaves discordant sounds into the melody in an attempt to take control of it himself, but each time, Ilúvatar is able to create still greater music and harmony out of the discord. This idea of creating beauty out of discord is extremely significant for Tolkien, and is a profound reflection on the Doctrine of Original Sin and the Incarnation. I understand the Great I AM, the underlying responsibility for the universe, in these or similar terms.

It is in reference to the personal "I am" that I invoke the problem of abortion. I invoke above, reluctantly, but because they are the most visible and dramatic example of the theology I am trying to invoke, the arguments that abortion should be permitted in the cases of rape and incest. The justification is typically seen by those who oppose abortion in all cases, on moral grounds, as seeking to "fix" an evil situation by acting in a manner that is intrinsically evil. In my terms, when asked, "Who is willing to take responsibility for this new life?" it is the refusal (or inability, in the face of the evil situation) to answer, "I am." The "I am" is not the answer, in these cases, to the question, "Who is responsible for creating this new life?" (The answer to that would be "I AM.") In this situation, the personal "I am" is having the strength (admittedly, such an act of responsibility would take considerable strength, and there is no way of knowing if any one of us would be equal to the task) to be responsible for transcending the evil, and participate in the Divine task of turning discord into beauty.

I am a strong believer in personal responsibility, and it is easy enough to recognize in perhaps the majority of elective abortions, the refusal, supported by numerous discourses, to take responsibility for one's own actions. But in the case of the usual exceptions, rape and incest, it is more difficult. The obvious answer is, "you can't answer evil with evil," but that answer is only partly satisfactory, and has always left me wondering whether there might be another way to answer this to address the injustice of making someone who is not, through an act of her own will, responsible for the situation take responsibility for the actions of another. (Notice I do not seek to answer the anticipated objection, "Well, is the Church going to support this child for her?"--The question is not relevant.) This is not where this post was meant to go, but it is, as I said, the most obvious example of being the remedy to a sin that is not one's own. Taking responsibility for one's own sins, the actual subject of the homily, is more straightforward. Furthermore, when one's personal sin yields a good result, it is not an excuse for the sin, but evidence of the turning of discord into beauty, and hence, a revelation of Divine goodness--the "I AM" behind the "I am."

It was a Lenten homily, and also a Spring Break homily, perhaps intended to save the priests time in the confessional before Easter listening to tales of Galveston. For me, it made sense of a puzzling passage--why "I AM," anyway? Was it just a Hebrew thing that didn't translate well?--and some puzzling moral issues, and provided a much longed-for excuse to blog about Tolkien. All in all, a successful homily!

P.S.--Part of the curse of teaching composition is that abortion is the ready-made example for EVERYTHING!