Help Me Find Columnists for My Rhetoric Course

I'm teaching Foundations of Rhetoric, and I'm mixing it up.  We're reading contemporary theorists (Foucault, Scarry, Haraway, Butler) in the first unit.  For their major assignment, I want students to take the theories we've read and apply them to the work of one newspaper/magazine columnist who writes regularly.  I want them to read that person's work for the last couple of months and develop an argument about the extent to which they are an effective rhetorician using the theories we've discussed.  For example, Frank Rich was the first one who came to mind.  But, obviously, I want to get a range of people with some diversity.  Students will choose one, and I want to give them some real choices.  Politically, there is George F. Will. There's Mona Charen and Maureen Dowd.

I will fully admit my embarrassment at not being able to think of racial or ethnic diversity. Maybe Ta-Nehisi Coates?  I don't know if I can get over my personal anti-Andrew Sullivan bias.  Yes, I'm still holding a grudge about the whole barebacking, magic glutes things from the 1990s.

So, when you think of columnists writing regularly today, who comes to mind?  Any and all ideas appreciated.

My Grading Process

I have been teaching for almost twenty years, and I have learned a lot in that time, including how little students know about the work professors do.  That is partly where this post comes from.  When I assign a piece of formal writing in my classes, I tell students that it will take me one to two weeks to return papers to them.  Occasionally, I get asked why it takes that long.  I try to explain quickly, but it often doesn't feel right.  So, I am creating this post so that students can understand how I grade.  And I do not mean how I decide what gets an A, B, or C; my general grading rubric does that.  This is the actual process I follow when I get papers from a class.  It's not that amazing or interesting, but I just want to make visible something that is generally invisible.  Too much happens behind closed doors, and it does not have to be that way.  So, if you are in one of my classes, and you write an essay for me, here's what I do next.

First, I download all of the essays I have received, giving them clear names so I can distinguish between clean copies and copies that will contain my comments.  That way, I do not return the wrong essay to a student.  Because I use Dropbox as my storage system, all of those essays get backed up immediately, too, so there is no chance they will get lost.

Next, I count how many essays I have to grade.  Then, I look at my personal schedule and see what is coming up for me over the next couple of weeks, how many meetings I have or other deadlines I must meet.  At that point, I decide when I want to have these essays returned and how many I need to grade each day to meet that goal.  For me, grading several essays in a row is a bad idea because I get tired, and the essays I grade last end up with fewer comments and less feedback.  That is not fair.  Therefore, I came up with this method.  If I only have five essays to grade, I can grade them without feeling rushed.

Then, I start grading.  I always grade essays in the order in which I received them.  I open up the document that is supposed to contain my comments, and I start commenting.  As I do this, I keep a copy of the prompt for the assignment close by so I can remember what the exact requirements are.  Depending on the assignment, grading can take from ten to thirty minutes.  Usually, I grade three and take a break.  As I grade each essay, I write down the student's name, their grade, and a couple of words about why they received that grade on a legal pad I keep next to my computer.  This helps me keep grades consistent.  If I gave a student a B- because of lack of evidence, then I know that other essays with the same problem should get the same grade unless there are other issues are play, too.

After that, one of two things happen.  If it's a small class of twelve students or so, I will grade all of the essays.  Then, I review the grades to make sure I have been consistent.  This means opening up some of the essays to review my comments or just checking my list of grades to see if anything seems odd.  In the past few years, making sure I am consistent has not been an issue.  After grading writing for almost twenty years, I know what I am doing.  I just like to make sure.  Also, this is when I develop the list of general issues that I plan to review during class.  After this review, I email all of the essays back.  In a class of about twenty students or so, I may email back the essays by students who turned them in first once I have completed about two-thirds of the grading.  That is usually more than enough to ensure consistency and clarity on my part.  And, if you have the chance to revise, it gives the students who turned in their work first a few more days, maybe, to think about those revisions.

When I grade formal essays, I attach the graded essay to a reply to the email the student sent that contained the essay.  I include a generic message that describes how to find my comments and understand the marks on the page.  I then hit "Send."  If I am grading a revision, I generally do not comment within essays since students have already gotten such feedback from me on the first draft.  Instead, in my email replying back, I will write a paragraph that states the grade the essay has earned and why.  I will always be glad to go over revisions for any students who are thinking of revising them again for writing samples to go with graduate school or job applications.

If any essays are late but still within the time I will take them, which is stated on the syllabus, I will grade those after I have returned all essays sent on time.  If I have multiple classes that all have essays due around the same time, grading late work can take even longer.  I do not comment on late essays, but I do send an email back saying what grade that essay has received.  As I say on the syllabus, we can review these essays in my office, especially if you have the chance to revise.

I should add that I do almost all of my grading at home where I have a big desk, large computer screen, and comfortable chair.  Sometimes, I have the TV on playing some marathon of America's Next Top Model or Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, shows I have seen many times before and that function as white noise, blocking out anything that might disrupt me.  Sometimes, I'll have the radio on, usually B96 on iTunes.  Complete quiet makes too aware of every creak in floors or car driving by outside, which does discombobulate me.  I always try to create a space and time where I can focus until I have met that day's quota.  I know some professors who light candles and others who make sure they have certain (non-alcoholic!) drinks or snacks nearby.  I stick with water.


If there is anything else anyone wants to know about my grading process, just ask.  I really do think professors should make more of what we do clear to students. 

Grading Rubric

This is a general grading rubric that I use in all of my classes.  I have another post where I describe my actual grading process in terms of what I do first and last when grading, but this post focuses on the general framework I use to assess student work.

Grading is a part of the course in which I do not necessarily find pleasure. While I enjoy responding to your formal assignments and helping you improve your work and deepen your thinking, having to put a letter at the end as sort of a final act is not fun. Still, grades are a necessary part of a college education, and after teaching for several years, I do have a clear sense of how to grade particular essays. It is my responsibility to be as clear as possible to you about how I grade and what you need to do to receive the grade you want. This rubric is meant to stimulate discussion between us about what makes strong writing. Let's go over your assignments together and talk about what to do to improve them. Use this as a starting place for learning and a guide as you revise.

As you look at the list that follows each grade range, notice the order in which I present each item. This reflects how important each item is when I make decisions about grades. In other words, the most important thing when I grade any assignment is whether or not you complete the assignment itself. After that, I look at the other elements in order. I start with an essay in the "C" range since that's what a typically average essay earns.

A formal assignment in the "C" range:

• Meets the basic requirements of the prompt,
• Follows a clear organizational plan,
• Centers on a controlling purpose,
• Uses concrete and specific details,
• Provides supporting reasons and information, and
• Displays few grammatical and stylistic errors that do not impede meaning.

A formal assignment in the "B" range:

• Meets the requirements of the prompt fully,
• Follows a clear organizational plan that does not feel rigid or confining,
• Focuses on a specific and clear controlling purpose,
• Uses concrete and specific details that address almost all reader questions,
• Provides a range of supporting information, and
• Displays strong sentence styles and structures.

A formal assignment in the "A" range:

• Goes beyond the requirements of the prompt;
• Exhibits an original, clear, and insightful perspective;
• Includes rich and vivid details that do not feel extraneous or overbearing;
• Flows freely and never causes the reader to stumble or pause;
• Explains ideas completely yet succinctly; and
• Follows rules of grammar while also using a variety of sentence styles and structures.

A formal assignment in the "D" range:

• Generates text without much connection to the prompt,
• Jumps around without following a clear pattern of organization,
• Follows tangents and irrelevant points,
• Uses few details or only keeps things abstract,
• Provides little support in terms of evidence, and
• Exhibits a disregard for sentence structure and grammar that impedes meaning.

A formal assignment in the "F" range:

• Does not meet the general requirements of the prompt including page length,
• Uses little or no detail or support,
• Does not display a clear plan for organization, and
• Exhibits a clear and obvious disregard for sentence structure and style that impedes meaning. 

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Social Media and the Teaching of Writing

These links are for a presentation I am making later this afternoon at my university's Creative, Artistic, and Research Symposium.  I am part of a panel talking about technology and pedagogy, so come by the Henry Roberts Room at 1:30 PM if you are on campus.  And check out these links if you can't make it.

The Wayback Machine

Blogger

Brian Croxall on teaching with Twitter

Dawn Gilpin's use of the MCO494 hashtag

Wikipedia entry on The Perfect Storm

Chuck Tryon's Wikipedia Project 

Julie Almeida (RPW grad) and her work with Examiner.com (Twitter | Facebook)

I have an article that should be out this summer where I talk about the role that shame has played in my teaching. It's basically about why I did not choose to come out to my classes. Though it would have exploded my argument, I wish I'd read Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity before I sent that article out. Sedgwick writes a pretty compelling argument for why shame is not always a negative thing. In fact, it's pretty integral to shaping our sense of self, which in turn means it's integral in how we relate to others. Here are some quotations of hers that are pushing me to rethink shame.

"In fact, shame and identity remain in very dynamic relation to one another, at once deconstituting and foundational, because shame is both peculiarly contagious and peculiarly individuating" (Sedgwick 36).

"That's the double movement shame makes: toward painful individuation, toward uncontrollable relationality" (Sedgwick 37). 

"The conventional way of distinguishing shame from guilt is that shame attaches to and sharpens the sense of what one is, whereas guilt attaches to what one does" (Sedgwick 37).

"The forms taken by shame are not distinct 'toxic' parts of a group or individual identity that can be excised; they are instead integral to and residual in the processes by which identity itself is formed" (Sedgwick 63).

"If the structuration of shame differs strongly between cultures, between periods, and between different forms of politics, however, it differs also simply from one person to another within a given culture and time" (Sedgwick 63).

"Shame interests me politically, then, because it generates and legitimates the place of identity--the question of identity--at the origin of the impulse to the performative, but does so without giving that identity space the standing of an essence. It constitutes it as to-be-constituted, which is also to say, as already there for the (necessary, productive) misconstrual and misrecognition. Shame--living, as it does, on and in the muscles and capillaries of the face--seems to be uniquely contagious from one person to another" (Sedgwick 64).

"Survivors' guilt and, more generally, the politics of guilt will be better understood when we can see them in some relation to the slippery dynamics of shame" (Sedgwick 64).

Yes, I'm posting a lot of quotations lately. I'm spending this first part of the summer doing a lot of notetaking, which is why I'm finding a lot of amazing quotations and presenting a few here now and then. If they inspire you, I'd love to hear how in the comments.  Oh, I have written about this book before on my personal blog.