Irwin Weiser

English 505A: Practicum in the Teaching of College Composition

 This is a fairly informal practicum in the teaching of college composition. Most of our time will be spent discussing the material you'll be teaching, talking about sample student papers, and working on evaluating student writing. In addition, we’ll be reading and discussing material from Connors and Glenn’s The St. Martins’ Guide to Teaching Writing and White’s Assigning, Responding, Evaluating and articles I will occasionally assign. During the last third of this semester, we'll also begin preparation for English 102. The practicum exists to benefit you, and I'll try to be as responsive to your concerns as possible, but to do so, I'll need you to let me know what those concerns are.

 I will visit your classes at least twice this semester, the first time in about three weeks, after you've had some time to get to know your students and establish the tone of the class. I'll visit again towards the end of the semester. I will schedule these visits in advance--I won't just show up unannounced--and I'll ask you to give me a brief written description of what you'll be doing a few days before. After the visit, we'll get together and talk about how the class went.

 I also want you to visit each other's classes. At the very least, you should sit in on three classes each semester. You'll find it helpful to see how another person covers similar material and how students other than yours conduct themselves. After the visit, talk with each other about what you saw. The person being visited should use this as an opportunity to get non-evaluative feedback; the person doing the visiting should be looking for reflections of his or her own teaching. I'd suggest you begin these visits fairly early in the semester and that you tell your students at the outset that occasionally other instructors will be sitting in on the class.

 Also, at least twice each semester I will ask you to give me samples of student writing you have responded to. I want to see at least three papers each time--one strong, one average, and one weak. I'll review your comments and give you some feedback on them. I'm also happy to look at any problem-paper you get at any time.

 Around mid-term, I’ll give you an opportunity to reflect, through a self- and course-evaluation. At the end of the semester, we'll do three additional kinds of evaluation. Your students will have an opportunity to evaluate the course and your teaching, using a special set of questions designed for English Composition courses. These evaluations include both computer-compiled responses and open-ended comments. You'll also receive a written evaluation of your work from me. The third evaluation will be yours of the practicum and of me as instructor. The last two evaluations--mine and yours--are probably most helpful. Student evaluations are notoriously unreliable and erratic, and most of the research on them suggests that the highest correlation is between the evaluation and the grade the student expects to receive. However, you'll find that patterns of response from students may offer you tips about making changes in your teaching.