MY SITE
Teaching Shakespeare
The following syllabus was constructed with the Book Creator App. Click the link below to see the full syllabus and assignment guidelines.
As I built this course, I tried to keep the graduate students from my MA program in mind. Many of my fellow graduate students were teachers or librarians with full time jobs who were getting their Master's degree as part of their professional development. Other graduate students were young and had moved directly from undergraduate program into the MA program, seeing it as a way to gain a leg up on the job market or as a way for them to extend their college experience while figuring out what they wanted to do for a career. I wanted to design a course that could benefit both groups of students.
One of the major skills that English majors are assumed to have when they graduate is the ability to teach the content knowledge that they've gained. (I can't remember how many times as an undergraduate student I was asked if I wanted to teach, as if that was the only career option for an English major.) Yet there are few places in many programs that focus on best pedagogical practices. My goal was to build a course that would introduce course participants to pedagogical thinking while allowing them to use their content knowledge to create a portfolio of items that could help them in their future careers.
You will notice that my definition of teaching is broad. I don't believe that teaching and learning happens only in the traditional classroom. I believe that learning happens in a variety of ways. Just about everywhere really. We are always teaching others, and I wanted the portfolio project to reflect that. I also wanted to make sure that participants could customize the assignment to fit their individual learning and / or career goals. No matter what products participants eventually produce, my goal is for them to see how teaching is rhetorically situated and that their awareness of their rhetorical situation (covered by content in the portfolio's critical introduction) can make their teaching more effective.
The potential diversity of participants' goals is why the portfolio is based on Asao Inoue's labor based contract grading model. If the participants produce the required work, they receive an A or a passing grade. I believe the contract grading model gives participants the necessary freedom to produce the work they want to do. The contract grading model makes the instructor's expectations explicit and negotiable. I believe this model can help alleviate many graduate students' anxieties regarding instructor's expectations and how those expectations a translate to the A-F scale. But I also recognize that while contract grading as a practice removes fear of not knowing what to expect in terms of a letter grade, if this practice is not supported with extensive constructive feedback on proposals and drafts, then graduate students often feel the same anxieties of not knowing where they stand with the instructor and how they are being judged. I want to recognize that the lived practice of the course must also support the structure that can be seen through the syllabus and assignment guidelines.
One of the major skills that English majors are assumed to have when they graduate is the ability to teach the content knowledge that they've gained. (I can't remember how many times as an undergraduate student I was asked if I wanted to teach, as if that was the only career option for an English major.) Yet there are few places in many programs that focus on best pedagogical practices. My goal was to build a course that would introduce course participants to pedagogical thinking while allowing them to use their content knowledge to create a portfolio of items that could help them in their future careers.
You will notice that my definition of teaching is broad. I don't believe that teaching and learning happens only in the traditional classroom. I believe that learning happens in a variety of ways. Just about everywhere really. We are always teaching others, and I wanted the portfolio project to reflect that. I also wanted to make sure that participants could customize the assignment to fit their individual learning and / or career goals. No matter what products participants eventually produce, my goal is for them to see how teaching is rhetorically situated and that their awareness of their rhetorical situation (covered by content in the portfolio's critical introduction) can make their teaching more effective.
The potential diversity of participants' goals is why the portfolio is based on Asao Inoue's labor based contract grading model. If the participants produce the required work, they receive an A or a passing grade. I believe the contract grading model gives participants the necessary freedom to produce the work they want to do. The contract grading model makes the instructor's expectations explicit and negotiable. I believe this model can help alleviate many graduate students' anxieties regarding instructor's expectations and how those expectations a translate to the A-F scale. But I also recognize that while contract grading as a practice removes fear of not knowing what to expect in terms of a letter grade, if this practice is not supported with extensive constructive feedback on proposals and drafts, then graduate students often feel the same anxieties of not knowing where they stand with the instructor and how they are being judged. I want to recognize that the lived practice of the course must also support the structure that can be seen through the syllabus and assignment guidelines.