tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post5700179261734214489..comments2023-07-30T07:20:00.952-05:00Comments on Say Something Wonderful: Guilt, Grading, MacDiarmidE. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post-35115261610807007542008-12-09T21:34:00.000-06:002008-12-09T21:34:00.000-06:00Ah! I have used the same sort of rubric in my act...Ah! I have used the same sort of rubric in my acting, playwrighting, and directing classes... In those courses, I worked under the notion that students need only buy into the process and do the work- and the rest would take care of itself as best it could. Unfortunately, at the sixth and eighth grade levels, we teachers are held responsible for making sure our students know a state-prescribed set of terms and can do a state-prescribed (or fed required- thanks NCLB) set of skills. Fortunately, I have enough freedom to reward students as much as I can for hard work. Aw. Now I feel bad.... sorta....<BR/><BR/>By the way- the code word I have to type in to prove I'm not a spambot: undisses.Danielle Filashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17559045917532735660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post-2829659386371357602008-12-06T15:59:00.000-06:002008-12-06T15:59:00.000-06:00To be fair, I suspect that "delusion" is actually ...To be fair, I suspect that "delusion" is actually the result of some previous training, deliberate or accidental. Someone, somewhere probably rewarded the student for his or her hard-work-as-such, building the expectation. <BR/><BR/>In the past, when teaching gen-ed courses, I've built my syllabus around rewarding effort, on the theory that students from other majors who don't know how to write English papers should still have a fair shot at an A. The courses were "contract graded," with each assignment on a pass-fail basis. If you did passing work on a certain number, you got an A / A-, and so on down. I reserved the right to assign the plus or minus portion of the grade, but right in the first week each student signed a contract with me to do X amount of passing work and receive (within a plus or a minus) a particular grade. <BR/><BR/>The great advantages of this were:<BR/><BR/>1) pre-med students with desperately ungraceful prose could still get the top grade they so desperately wanted; and,<BR/><BR/>2) slackers who were taking the course as a requirement could contract for a C, do the minimum amount of assignments, and not clutter my desk with listless, unmotivated work.<BR/><BR/>I've never tried this at DePaul--this was ages ago, at George Washington U.E. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post-31516007637954193302008-12-06T15:30:00.000-06:002008-12-06T15:30:00.000-06:00I don't know whether to be relieved or alarmed tha...I don't know whether to be relieved or alarmed that students pull that kind of grade-mongering in college as well at the level where I teach... middle and high school. They seem to labor under the delusion that working hard guarantees a top grade. Just this week I found myself saying to a student, "No matter how hard I train, I would not necessarily be able to beat Michael Phelps in a 50m freestyle race. I should train to become a better swimmer in order to become a better swimmer- not necessarily to get the best time. You may not obtain the top grade, but I would hope you're working to become a better writer... not merely for a letter grade."Danielle Filashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17559045917532735660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post-37629078502214886892008-12-04T16:56:00.000-06:002008-12-04T16:56:00.000-06:00Hi again, Professor Selinger!Your economic predict...Hi again, Professor Selinger!<BR/><BR/>Your economic predictions make me feel as though I'd just been awarded an A+ when I'd been expecting a B+ . I'm so glad to know it's my patriotic duty to read lots of romances and then write lots more essays about them.<BR/><BR/>Yours,<BR/><BR/>Laura<BR/><BR/>P.S. I'm glad to know you'll be keeping Shemp's memory alive in poetry and prose.<BR/><BR/>P.P.S. We did study at least one Hugh MacDiarmid poem at high school, I think. We worked our way through quite a lot of poems in an anthology called <I><A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gallery-Poets-Past-Present-Blackburn/dp/0050033239" REL="nofollow">Gallery: Poets Past and Present</A></I>, edited by John Blackburn. Looking through the contemporary poets in the volume, though, the poems we studied by Betjeman, Edwin Muir, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Edwin Morgan and Norman MacCaig ring more of a bell. And I'm fairly sure we got to hear one or both of Edwin Morgan and Norman MacCaig in person. Definitely Edwin Morgan, because we got to learn about cottaging and I think I can remember (very vaguely) him reading a poem about his lover and strawberries. It's a bit odd that I must have been there when a poet read out, to an audience of school children, a selection of works which must have included at least one really quite explicit poem, but did so in such a boring way that it only just stayed in my memory.<BR/><BR/>I've no idea what they study at Scottish High Schools now. That must have been about 17 years ago. I didn't study English at university, so can't offer any information on which poets get taught there.<BR/><BR/>P.P.P.S. Am now bracing myself for the deluge of work that's likely to be heading my way now that you've got back to the Crusie work. Nothing but good times ahead, I hope.Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post-22715737085207826722008-12-04T16:13:00.000-06:002008-12-04T16:13:00.000-06:00Dear Dr. Laura,Many leading economists have said t...Dear Dr. Laura,<BR/><BR/>Many leading economists have said that a truly impressive book on Jennifer Crusie might spark a new round of consumer spending, with shock waves (of joy, natch) rippling throughout the markets. <BR/><BR/>Clearly more than a few jobs are on the line, and I'd best get cracking!<BR/><BR/>(Worked on the introduction today, and will broach the essays themselves tomorrow. Over the weekend I'll drink myself maudlin and compose dedications to Shemp, although your Wordsworth parody will be hard to top!)<BR/><BR/>So tell me, what do you all think of MacDiarmid in Scotland? Is he grade-school fare? Dismissed? My students found his "synthetic Scots" only slightly less difficult than Pound's untranslated scraps of Greek.<BR/><BR/>Yours,<BR/>EricE. M. Selingerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11921782.post-41808569103018436142008-12-04T15:54:00.000-06:002008-12-04T15:54:00.000-06:00Hi Professor Selinger,I'm just wondering if, in th...Hi Professor Selinger,<BR/><BR/>I'm just wondering if, in the light of the current economic climate and the <A HREF="http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/12/03/more-publishing-layoffs/" REL="nofollow">cuts</A> and <A HREF="http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/12/03/random-house-reorganizes-and-consolidates-imprints/" REL="nofollow">reorganisations</A> taking <A HREF="http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/12/04/more-depressing-or-encouraging-depending-on-your-pov-publishing-news/" REL="nofollow">place</A> at a <A HREF="http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=167" REL="nofollow">number</A> of publishers, whether this would at some point start to affect academic publishing too. I was anticipating high sales after carefully editing my essays and attending to every detail, participating in the romance scholar community, and rarely leaving a romance unfinished once I'd started it.<BR/><BR/>If you could let me know where and why the economy went wrong, I'd appreciate it. Will it affect our final sales totals? Would it be wise to delay publication a few more years, until the economy is in better shape?<BR/><BR/>Yours, looking on the bright side of procrastination,<BR/><BR/>LauraLaura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.com