This assignment ?will explain the theoretical basis for your syllabus, assignments, and schedule including policies for assessment/grading, attendance, late

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Student A

Dr. Costello

ENGL 5541

21 April 2024

Rational Essay

Introduction

In my teaching philosophy I went over why I teach as well as certain aspects of the

classroom that I hold in high regard. This includes flexibility in the classroom, a focus on process

over product, the power of metacognition, multimodality, and giving students the choice of

topics to circumvent the bad history that Standard American English presents. Staying in the

world of theory, as the teaching philosophy does for the most part, can teach us new things.

However, practically applying these things to a syllabus as well as a series of assignments

provides a clearer view on how I put all those ideas listed into actual practice.

Polices

The course policies included in my syllabus are best practices. Many of them have

asterisks attached that show they were copied from other professor’s syllabi. Specifically, Dr.

Costello and Dr. Cartright’s 1101 equivalents. I understand that if the university I’m applying to

be a teacher at has different standard policies, I will change the syllabus to reflect those policies.

After all, the syllabus is an ever-changing document due to a variety of circumstances. There are

a couple of exceptions, however, and these are my attendance policy and AI policy. Both policies

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are typically not university wide standard practices, with attendance being up to the professor

and AI being a new and constantly evolving field.

I do not give out an attendance grade. I believe that if students are attending class, are

leaving partway through class, or not participating, that it will affect their grades down the line.

In fact, grades in this course reflect that mindset. Major assignments net the most points, minor

assignments net enough to bump up the students’ grade, and extra credit opportunities (while not

outlined in the syllabus) give that extra boost to go from a B to an A. There’s also the flexibility

angle of attendance. A 2023 study involving 2.9 million students shows that 78% of them

mentioned “long commuting hours” as part of the reason why they chose to skip some classes

and believe that mandatory attendance should not be applied to the classroom (Kaushik, p. 129).

The only issue with this study is that it was in India and not in the US, but I’m sure anyone in the

U.S. who commutes to class can agree that traffic makes you late to class sometimes, even if

you’re a straight A student who’s the best at planning, and I believe that you shouldn’t be

punished for that.

My AI policy mostly comes from the “MLA-CCCC Join Task Force on Writing and AI

Working Paper: Overview of the Issues, Statement of Principles, and Recommendations.” This

paper outlines the positives and negatives that AI can have in the classroom and was integral to

formulating my stance on AI. For example, AI has biases that support, “dominant racial and

economic power structures” (Byrd, p. 7). However, AI can give those who aren’t native speakers

a voice in a culture that’s dominated by Standard American English. Even from these two

statements alone we can clearly see that AI is not a black and white issue. Because of this, the

solution is also not black and white. I’ve outlined that AI can be used for various things,

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including multimodal uses within the final research project, but that if any student chooses to use

AI, then they must cite it. The current general practice for this, outlined in Dr. Costello’s

syllabus, is that the student should write a paragraph at the end of any assignment stating what

the AI was used for, and a link or copy that shows evidence of the chat log. So, it’s a give and

take between the teacher and student to maintain academic honesty. Unfortunately, systems to

detect AI in papers have not yet yielded any useful results, and until then this is the policy I seek

to maintain.

Grading Policy

There is a great introduction video on contract grading by the Metro College Success

Program YouTube channel titled, “What is Contract Grading?” See below:

This is the type of grading that I’ll be introducing students to in the class. This type of grading

allows students to choose what grade they’d like to receive in any one of their major

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assignments. Some students really want to excel in their first-year writing course, and as teachers

of the course we love these students’ passion for the craft, but some students are okay with

getting by with a C, and we should provide that option for them without the embarrassment of

marking off points of an essay that they turn in knowing that it isn’t an A. So, once again the

benefits are both for the student and the teacher. The student can pursue the level of academic

achievement they wish to attain, and the teacher grades accordingly to what the student chose,

eliminating the frustration of late-night grading sessions where the teacher wishes they saw more

passion in a student that just wants to get by, and saving some red ink along the way.

My approach started just how Lynda S. Radican did her approach in her essay titled,

“Contract Grades: An Agreement between Students and Their Teachers.” In it she states, “I had

students maintain a portfolio, and if their portfolio contained the core assignments to satisfy

basic course requirements, they were guaranteed a C.” (p. 286). I designed my C-Rubrics in

much the same way. These have the basics covered and that’s it. If the student is satisfied with

the C, then they sign the rubric and hand it to me. Lynda S. Radican concludes in her essay that,

“at least 90 percent of my students like the freedom of the contract grade.” (p.286). Freedom is

the key word here. Much too often do we restrict the ways students approach their learning

journeys, and contract grading gives some of that freedom back to the students.

But how do I assess these grades? The grades for major assignments end up being what

the student signed up for, or a D. Now, I can see how this can seem like an intimidating decision

at first, but this is the core of contract grading. Roopika Risam does much the same in her essay.

“Reframing Grading, Rethinking Rigor.” She states that, “All assessments are graded on a

‘complete’ or ‘incomplete’ basis.” And goes onto say, “I walk students through exemplars of

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assignments, so they understand what is expected of them for ‘completion.’ Students also have

the opportunity for a revision of an assignment on which they received an ‘incomplete.’ (p. 49). I

am following both practices in my own classroom. Of course, I may have to design my own

examples at first, but eventually student examples will take over, and students need to be offered

a second chance at revision. This exemplifies my idea that writing is more about the process

rather than the product. The major assignments are not a one and done scenario, but rather a

process that’s meant to be iterated upon if the student doesn’t succeed the first time.

Minor Assignments:

The minor assignments collectively represent a point total that can help a student who

chooses a B-Rubric for one or two of their major assignments turn their final grade into an A.

That’s mathematically what minor assignments represent, but they also represent a check for

understanding of material right as the student is learning the material. I seek to do more with

checking students’ understanding, however. In a 2023 paper titled, “Concept Questions and

Alternatives: Easing Check Understanding” authors Délcio Jacob Felicidade and Tweuhanda

have outlines that help to design concept question and diversify the tools teachers can deploy

when checking for understanding in minor assignments. Among these are to, “always have a

purpose for your questions, […] ask for information you don’t share with your learners, […]

contextualize your questions and make them as learning based as possible, [and] do not let

questions and answers become only one-way activities.” (p. 80). These are general pointers, but

the paper goes onto explain types on how to write effective concept questions. The paper itself

has to do with in person discussions in a foreign language classroom, but I believe that their

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advice can be used in the broader sense of minor assignment questions that check students’

understanding.

The Literacy Narrative Assignment

The literacy narrative assignment is the first major assignment of the course, and as such

its purpose is to introduce students to engaging in rhetoric without being overwhelmed by the

nuances of rhetoric. A literacy narrative assignment was chosen because of the many benefits

that literacy narratives have. These include, as J. Blake Scott writes, “[they] can help validate

students as authors” (p. 111), they can help, “students expand their definitions of literacy and

writing” as well as help combat the ideology of individualism (p. 112). This paper, written in

1997, teaches literacy narrative as a reflection on the process of writing itself, but I’ve taken a

different approach that comes with the hindsight of ever evolving technologies. As I state in my

“Some Background” section of the assignment, being literate does not just mean being literate in

writing, and so if a student would prefer to talk about how a movie, game, or song that changed

them in some way, they should feel free to do so. This also incorporates multimodality by letting

the student choose the medium they wish to talk about. The goal of the assignment remains much

the same as what J. Blake Scott had in mind in his essay as well, both of us agree that the

assignment should have the students who feel they write academically and those who write

creatively both reflect on the process of writing itself (p. 112). The step-by-step document in the

assignment sheet helps scaffold the project out so students don’t feel overwhelmed by the writing

process.

The Analyzing a Text Assignment

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The analyzing a text assignment comes after the literacy narrative assignment, and the

goal for this assignment is get students to engage directly with the rhetoric concepts we’ve been

learning in class. This includes media, genres, discourse, ideology, and rhetoric. Students will

have smaller assignments to help them engage with each term individually before this

assignment is introduced. There are a couple of similarities to this assignment and the literacy

narrative. The choice for the student to talk about a different medium is here once again, but the

student must engage that medium all the same. The “questions to ask themselves” helps in this

regard. The other similarity is the scaffolded structure, except now we include a step for

research. This assignment assigns a reflection to all rubrics as I want to engage in Jackson’s

concept of metacognitive strategies (p. 35). These strategies help students reflect on their own

writing process, and because the literacy narrative assignment was all about this process, I

decided not to include a reflection for any rubric except for the A-rubric.

The Research Project

The research project for the course asks students to engage with all the concepts that

we’ll be discussing throughout the semester. This project will be assigned in the beginning of the

semester and is scaffolded more than most. I understand that this can be intimidating to some

students, but most of our minor assignments will incorporate work that students should be doing

on their research project. So, by doing a little bit each week students will eventually have most if

not all the work completed for the research project before they even know it. The second goal for

the project is to instill good writing habits in our students. They’ll be given much less time in

other classes to do research, so this research project gives them a safe space to make mistakes

and learn the ins and outs of what to do. Once again, students are allowed to choose their own

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topic, but they can also present their project in a variety of ways. This, and all other mentions of

multimodality go back to Kitalong and Miner’s research on how multimodality helps engage

learners. The pair used multimodality to help engage students in STEM learning, and I’d like to

do the same here with all my major assignments, but most prominently in the research project. A

reflection letter is required for this project as well and should be more detailed because students

will be turning it in by the end of the semester, and as such will have more to reflect on than in

other assignments.

Workshop Etiquette

Every major assignment includes a section on workshop etiquette. I included it in every

assignment because it’s important for students not to forget how our workshops function. I run

these workshops using ideas from Jackson. He states that teachers should include a discussion

about discussion in their syllabus (p. 133), but I find it easier to include the more formal notes on

discussions in our assignment sheets themselves, as all other discussions in the class will be

informal. For both I use his method titled, “Write-pair-share” the write part is our student rough

drafts, the pair is the groups of around four, and each student reads a draft that isn’t their own

and response to it both in writing and with discussion (p. 137). Of course, rough draft reviews

won’t be the only way my students engage in workshop, as in class prompts will be given the

same treatment. I find that it’s important our students engage with each other as much as they

engage with myself. It helps build a positive environment. Jackson also includes advice on how

to deal with the potential negative aspects of discussion, which I will implement if they are

needed.

Conclusion

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Flexibility in the classroom, a focus on process over product, the power of metacognition,

multimodality, and giving the students choice of topics to circumvent the bad history that

Standard American English presents… all these ideas are the fuel that drives my classroom. I

have demonstrated specific ideas in this essay that detail how all those ideas will be put into

practice. Metacognition is in the assigned reflections, multimodality is given as a choice for

students through their choice of topics, and in the research project students can present their

project in several mediums. As stated in my teaching philosophy, I understand how impossible it

can seem to want to become the light that sparks students engagement with writing, but not only

do I believe that there's no harm in trying, I believe that the way we try is by giving as much

freedom and choice to our students as possible, because it is our job to show students that writing

is just another tool of expression, and everyone can benefit from learning how to engage with it.

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Works Cited

Byrd, Antonio, et al. MLA-CCCC-Joint-Task-Force-on-Writing-and-Ai-Working- …, July 2023,

hcommons.org/app/uploads/sites/1003160/2023/07/MLA-CCCC-Joint-Task-Force-on-

Writing-and-AI-Working-Paper-1.pdf.

J, Blake S. "The Literacy Narrative as Production Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom."

Teaching English in the Two Year College, vol. 24, no. 2, 1997, pp. 108. ProQuest,

https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/literacy-narrative-as-production-

pedagogy/docview/220949662/se-2.

Jackson, Brian D. Teaching Mindful Writers. Utah State University Press, 2020.

Kaushik, Asha, et al. “Effect of Partial Compulsory Attendance on Academic Performance of

Technical Education Students.” Innovations in Education & Teaching International, vol.

60, no. 1, Feb. 2023, pp. 124–33. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2021.1948440.

Kitalong, Karla Saari and Rebecca Miner. “Multimodal Composition Pedagogy Designed to

Enhance Authors’ Personal Agency: Lessons from Non-academic and Academic

Composing Environments.” Computers and Composition 46 (2017): 39-55.

Metro College Success Program. “What Is Contract Grading?” YouTube, YouTube, 3 Sept. 2022,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=28i4FFvYJu8.

Radican, Lynda S. “Contract Grades: An Agreement between Students And …” Contract

Grades: An Agreement between Students and Their Teachers, California State

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University-Sacramento, wac.colostate.edu/books/tchudi/chapter22.pdf. Accessed 21 Apr.

2024.

Risam, Roopika. “Reframing Grading, Rethinking Rigor.” University of California Press,

University of California Press, 1 Oct. 2022, online.ucpress.edu/esr/article/45/2-

3/49/194546/Reframing-Grading-Rethinking-Rigor.

Tweuhanda, Delcio Jacob Felicidade. “Concept Questions and Alternatives: Easing Check

Understanding.” Education Quarterly Reviews, vol. 6, no. 2, June 2023, pp. 78–

86. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.31014/aior.1993.06.02.739.