Assignment 5: The Semester Learning Reflection
The most frequent concern that I hear from teachers about Assignment 5 is this: “How can I encourage students to go deep in their reflections? To move beyond repeating course content or, worse, listing the grades they received on each assignment?” This issue is further complicated when we introduce or augment an anti-racist curriculum in the class. How can we and the students measure, or even follow, their growth in awareness of social inequities? How can we tease out the story of their learning? Here are a few approaches I have tried; I look forward to hearing some of yours.
- Feel the stretch. At the beginning of the semester, we have acquired the conceptual tool of learning zones: the comfort zone where things are easy and familiar; the stretch zone where we are uneasy but (or therefore) learning; and the panic zone where we are too overwhelmed to continue. One invitation I extend is for students to look through notes and assignments to find moments when they were comfortable, stretched and overwhelmed. What happened? What growth came out of it? What did they do next? A slightly deeper version of this prompt could involve reading about Carol Dweck’s fixed vs. growth mindsets, and writing about times during the semester when one of the other predominated. What were the results?
- Follow the journey of your Inner Writer. Inspired by a presentation given by our former colleague Eric Hood, I began each class by asking students to make a quick thumbnail sketch of their Inner Writer on the Table Tent displaying their name. While Eric offered us wild possibilities like, “Draw your Inner Writer jumping out of a volcano,” I chose to follow actual events of the semester: “Draw your Inner Writer preparing to do an interview” or “Draw your Inner Editor revising the first draft.” Then I’d invite
a few students to comment on the emotion expressed by the sketched figure. Thus, at the end of fifteen weeks, students had up to thirty sketches of their moods throughout the semester, in which they may find a story. I don’t push them to a standard narrative of increased success and self-confidence: it may be just as useful to examine the moments of confusion or discouragement. And in this activity, as in the previous one, I don’t insist that they write only about anti-racist concepts. Their increased awareness in this area will be part of an overall growth in self-awareness, both as a writer and as a community member.
- Climb the pyramid. I also (re)acquaint students with Bloom’s Taxonomy, recalling to them moments of the course when we acquired new information; put it in relation to things we knew already; analyzed; synthesized or, finally, created new ideas (for example, when Iejaah Richardson responded to the film “Talking Black in America” by building a sculpture expressing the idea that celebrities and others with social capital can get away with “talking black” a lot more freely than she can.
Whether students choose one of the above frameworks for their semester learning story, or find another way to tell it, I ask them to answer the same questions as for each of the previous Assignment Learning Reflections, based on those in Bump Halbritter’s 5-Assignments Shell: what did they set out to do and learn? How did the actual activities and learnings compare and contrast to their expectations? What went well and less well? What goals and means did they set for themselves? How did these succeed, or not? How have they revised their goals and means in response? Answers to these questions constitute the Claims of their reflections; Evidence must be given from various drafts of assignments, peer review and revision plans, and feedback from the instructor and classmates.
So, as I do my own Semester Learning Reflection on my anti-racist innovations to the course, I would do well to answer some of these questions myself.
What did I expect? I feared that at least one conflict would erupt in the class at some point: a microaggression towards a student of color; a white student feeling attacked over the concept of privilege. I also wondered whether the binary system of writing interspersed with multimodal expression would confuse the students, who would wonder why we didn’t just spend all our time writing college essays.
And what actually happened? Neither of these situations transpired in spring semester 2022: indeed, to judge by Semester Learning Reflections and SIRS, students’ biggest concern was getting grades back faster. To address this desire, I plan to implement contract grading more fully next year: not only going over the grading rubric checklist with the whole class, in peer review and during the individual student conferences, but actually inviting students to grade their own assignments with this checklist, then giving my own response to their assessment during our individual meetings.
What were my goals? I aimed to keep the experiential-learning practice and the 5-assignment arc from our First-Year Writing program, while foregrounding critical thinking about social inequality and racism. I wanted to help lead students into their stretch zones, where learning occurs, while maintaining a safe space in our learning environment.
Where was I successful? What were my challenges? The anti-racist theme was a success, judging by the semester learning reflections and the SIRS. (See Appendix.) So was the alternate format of written text / multimodal project.
My major challenge appears to have been getting the grades back to students quickly. This was the most frequent comment on the SIRS. I realize that I was much more focused on helping students revise and improve their writing before it was graded, than on grading the final drafts. I also had many other university and community projects going on.
How will I address these in future semesters? I could move even further in the direction of contract grading. Already, I furnish a rubric in the form of a checklist: we go over it in class, then do peer reviews and revision plans using it, then refer to it during individual conferences. But I could ask each student to go ahead and grade herself before our one-on-one meeting, then note where I agree and disagree. This would give students a better idea of their grade even ahead of submission. I don’t like making our work all about the grade, but if this reassurance would help the students in their writing and revision, then let’s try it.
What about you? What are your goals for implementing an anti-racist curriculum in your writing class? What are your expectations about the rewards and challenges of such a move? If you have already made such an innovation, what were the successes and challenges? What will you keep the next time around, and what will you do differently?
Appendix: SIRS comments.
What concepts, class readings, discussions, assignments, etc. did you find most interesting and/or relevant? Why?
WRA 195H:
Out of 7 comments left, 4 mentioned the anti-racist curriculum:
Assignment 2 where we had to discuss our linguistic identities. I really liked this assignment compared to the others as it was interesting seeing everyone’s backgrounds.
Discussions and concepts like power and privilege, race, bias, etc
I found discussions about privilege most relevant because this class was supposed to be about power and privilege. I liked hearing from my classmates about their experiences with privilege or lack thereof. It widened my perspective about things that I did not even know were privilege, like speaking English.
I found our first assignment about power and privilege very relevant on a larger picture but the rest of the assignments were much more relevant to each individual student.
(The remaining three responses focused on activities, like discussions and group work, rather than concepts.)
WRA 101 (2 sections):
I liked my personal narrative. language privilege
Learning about the different languages of the United States was my favorite part.
Making visual projects were super interesting since typically you just write papers in writing classes. It was good to do something different.
The concept of institutionalized racism because its a current issue.
I found the topics about stereotype and the wheel of power/privilege the most interesting
I LOVED A2 and the option to branch of into multimedia projects.
I think what I found the most interesting and prevalent was how we use different languages, bias, and etc.. This is very important in todays social climate and can help us become well rounded people for the future.