advice from experienced faculty

assignments

I found my own interactions with the Fellows very helpful. Their questions about my goals for the students’ papers helped me formulate the assignments better and be clearer about my own priorities (e.g. organization, grammar, etc.). – Patricia Rosenmeyer, Comparative Literature 554

This time I solicited input from the Fellows on both paper assignments, which made me more aware of the rhetoric of these assignments and how students read them. – Susan Bernstein, English 460

I allowed too much choice [in assignments]; more structure was needed. I needed to integrate [Fellows] better and make students more aware of my expectations. – Ed Friedman, Political Science 505

timing

Timing is always a little tight. It might be useful to remind Fellows that they should try to schedule their appointments so that students have at least 3 days or more after the appointment to do revisions. – Heather Dubrow, English 215

communication

It was particularly helpful [to students] to have Fellows visit class early in the semester and explain what they do. – Jocelyn Johnson, Philosophy 341

If several Writing Fellows are working in one course, encourage one of them to be pointperson when scheduling meetings with the professor. [One of my Fellows] did this and saved me lots of time. I really appreciated it; he made sure meeting times worked with the others and then he e-mailed me a confirmation or alternative time/date. Very helpful. – David Zimmerman, English 609

I met with [my Fellows] and also corresponded with them by e-mail, providing them all handouts provided to students. The Writing Fellows responded quite well to what I was looking for in terms of the writing. – Matthew Turner, Geography 565

writing comments

I read the Writing Fellow’s comments first, then the first draft, and then the final draft. So to some extent this was more reading, but then the students had more direction in their rewrites. My responses often took the form of asking students why they did not address the Writing Fellows’ comments. – Diane Lindstrom, History 222

Often, suggestions registered by the Writing Fellows reconfirmed my assessments of the respective texts. This enabled me to establish common objectives in consultation with the Writing Fellows. While we were not looking for a model or ideal paper, we had similar reactions to the variety of good papers. This experience allowed me to respond to student texts by often reiterating both the strengths and the weaknesses that the Writing Fellows had pinpointed during their conferences with students and in their written commentaries on student papers. – Dena Mandel, English 593

dealing with skilled writers

I have worried in the past that students who come in as good writers might get ignored. This semester the Fellows and I actively decided to push those students to take some risks, to be bolder than they might ordinarily be. This made it a little scary for the Fellows, who, not knowing the subject matter, worried they might encourage the students to go into inappropriate territory. It was a little scary for the strong writers, too, since they were used to their writing being a safety net. But it was marvelous for me to read papers that were exciting, if flawed, rather than safe and boring. – Linda Hunter, African Languages & Literature 306