On Thursday, September 8th, I asked everyone to spend a few minutes at the beginning and end of class to write out how they were feeling. This is part of a pedagogical practice I developed with my colleague, Bree Gannon, for a project/presentation in our Theory of Contemporary Rhetorics graduate course. I've split some of the pictures in two where students submitted obviously correlating submissions. Otherwise, they're just shown as they are and not part of a series. An important note: submitting and sharing was not mandatory.
To help with context, I want to quickly state what we worked on in class on this date. They had their proposals for their first project, the Unlearning Narrative due. I had them work in pairs to workshop their proposals by interviewing one another using a list of questions I came up with and places for them to add their own. After this, I gave them quite a bit of time to start freewriting their rough drafts of this project. Then, after a break, we all got out our planners (a required text in the class) and mapped out our monthly due dates, along with time for self care, fun, friends, eating, sleeping, work, etc. This helps explain why some of the comments here indicate they were stressed, organized, or feeling apprehension.
I also found it interesting that many of them come to class hungry and/or tired. Something tells me I need to bake them some muffins!
To help with context, I want to quickly state what we worked on in class on this date. They had their proposals for their first project, the Unlearning Narrative due. I had them work in pairs to workshop their proposals by interviewing one another using a list of questions I came up with and places for them to add their own. After this, I gave them quite a bit of time to start freewriting their rough drafts of this project. Then, after a break, we all got out our planners (a required text in the class) and mapped out our monthly due dates, along with time for self care, fun, friends, eating, sleeping, work, etc. This helps explain why some of the comments here indicate they were stressed, organized, or feeling apprehension.
I also found it interesting that many of them come to class hungry and/or tired. Something tells me I need to bake them some muffins!
stand alones
I received several nice notes on my teaching. Here's a last one. I had discussed that my pedagogy is such that I want to make sure my students know they can talk to me about my teaching practices and discuss what is working and not working for them. I suspect this helped initiate the kind notes. Regardless, they made me smile.