One of the best things about teaching is that we get to finish something, no matter how flawed our performance, and recharge for another attempt.
But my many years of teaching have taught me that many of our grand plans have been compromised at this point in the year and that I always experience a mix of satisfaction ("hey, that was quite good") and remorse about missed opportunities or ideas/lessons/assignments that seemed so attractive months ago but that just never connected as I hoped.
And so I, and many other instructors in many disciplines, will be doing some reflection in the coming weeks about focusing on what is truly important, what could be added or subbed in for existing content, or writing assignments or technological tools that might benefit everyone.
Many college courses traditionally suffer a bit from opting for breadth over depth, but there is a trend among professor types to consider going a bit "smaller," as I often hear it discussed. As is often the case, secondary teachers have been choosing more depth over more breadth for decades, but this past year or so, in particular, has reminded post-secondary teachers that nothing can be on "autopilot" any more.
Instructors are often given basic ideas about how many "major" assignments a particular writing course should contain. I honestly don't know how to define "major," though I suspect for most institutions the measurement is in total pages (a research course might require a 12-15 page final paper, for instance).
In the Composing Arguments class I am just finishing, "major" tends to mean an essay over 600 words -- but that is MY interpretation. I find that my responses to students are much more targeted and specific when I don't have to wade through thousands of words.
Who is to say whether an essay of 800 words is less work than an essay of 1,200 words?
I hope to continue thinking about the end of term and how we measure writing skill throughout this week's blog entries.
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