One of the things I noticed as an English professor is that the curriculum for developmental and basic english comp courses is very pie in the sky. There are a handful of big concepts mapped out in a way that provides us with a lot of academic freedom. I like it. However, when I look at it in comparison to math or science I see that we can learn some things from those areas as well. I’m coming into this as someone who is really trying to step back into the mindset of being a creator–not just as a fiction writer but as a teacher as well. I want to create environments that are conducive to learning and in such establish some clear markers that students can follow that let them know they’ve really walked away with something useful.
But what is useful? The developmental courses in my course bank are all called Preparatory academic writing, and I think it is pretty clear to students that academic writing is not useful outside of academia. That is something that academics know to be false, but how do you get a kid who doesn’t want to be in your class in the first place to grab on to concepts they cannot readily see as translating to their work and social worlds?
No answer to that big one is coming tonight, but I do believe the key is to tear out the key concepts that scaffold up to the ability to create a clear and engaging piece of writing (academic and otherwise) and be able to show the students how all these things come together. Personally I’m thinking about extending my focus on Logos, Pathos, Ethos, and logical fallacies. Add to that purpose, audience, topic, and circumstance and that could be 8 distinct class periods in which the students dissect work and come up with a deeper understanding of how to use the rhetorical contexts in a way that extends beyond the classroom and towards their future as writers.
Some Thoughts:
- Christmas is coming… When I say it that way it sounds ominous. Maybe I should’e written Krampus myself…