| ENGLISH 2235 |
| ENGLISH 2235 |
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TO General Grading |
GO
TO Makeup & Extra Credit |
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Welcome again to the course! The most
important thing you can do in this course is to participate fully.
Participating fully means much more than just attending class and doing the
assignments. It also means actively putting your mind, heart, and guts
into learning in this classroom. It means talking, listening, responding,
thinking beyond the text, and being interactive with the instructor and other
students. It means that if you find the assignments easy, you still won't
get a good grade unless you learn and participate beyond what you now
know. It also means that if you struggle to do the assignments and have
difficulty getting good grades in them, you can still get a good, strong grade
in participation just for trying hard, working hard, asking questions, and
seeking help.
This part of the grade generally is based on the average of what you have done for attendance, weekly papers, and the term paper. If your grade is on the line, it could go down or up because of your participation, amount and quality of your revision on the term paper, and your hard work. In general, the best thing you can do to assure yourself a good standing in this part of the class activities is, simply, to get a good grade on everything else. Beyond that, here are some other ways to establish a better standing in this part of the class activities:
(a) Participate very verbally by "talking" actively in the bulletin-board classes, sharing your ideas, responding to others, and asking questions. It also helps to ask questions at the museum visit and to ask me questions after you've already checked the FAQs pages and still don't know something.
(b) get 1/2 hr. or more of tutoring help from IHCC Writing Center tutors, Smarthinking online tutors, me, or someone else qualified in tutoring writing when you are revising and editing your final project paper,
(c) show significant extra effort on assignments--by extra length of writing or, clear for me to see, extra time,
(d) Attend the individual consultation in person or by phone between you and me that is planned as part of this course, or otherwise get help from me when you need it, and
(e) Show respect, kindness, and care for the opinions and feelings of others on the bulletin boards, and
(e) demonstrate significant attention to - and good attitude about - learning, to both me and everyone else in our class.
How can this part of your grade go lower? You can keep quiet; in the bulletin boards, offer few, poor, or overly short or overly simple answers and responses; avoid me, individual tutoring assistance, and the individual consultation; be negative or cynical about learning to other students; leave work unfinished; have poor attendance; resist doing much of anything to revise your final term project; and, especially, earn very low points (X's) on attendance, weekly papers, and your final term project.
The great majority of students who take this course demonstrate good to excellent behavior, the all of those who finish the course also work hard. I look forward to great behavior and hard work from each of you.
I enjoy teaching, and I want everyone to enjoy their learning. If you are having some kind of significant problem, I hope you will come talk to me about it so that together we can seek a possible resolution. All information I learn about you in this regard cannot be reported to other teachers without your permission, and I would never tell other students in any way that would identify you personally. I've had students tell me quite a bit over the years--a wide variety of sorrows, problems, and many other things--and my normal policy is to keep everything I hear to myself, even if minor laws have been broken or past mental or physical health compromised. I only reserve the right to seek help from a counselor or dean if I am strongly concerned about your future health and safety or that of others around you, or if I believe that a major legal problem may exist. If you are worried about what I do or do not keep to myself, ask me more about this before speaking to me of your problems. Otherwise, I hope you will feel free to talk with me about problems that may keep you from learning.
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Talking as an Academic Community |
Required reading: Developing an academic community--and maintaining a positive, balanced, objective tone in class, emails, bulletin boards, and other communication--is very important. To see more details about this, please go to "Talking as an Academic Community."
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Most recent update of this page: 25 Dec. 2008
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date of publication: May 1, 2004 |
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