 |
Department of Philosophy TA 2004 Writing Workshop Preparation Material
|
You will find here preparation instructions for our workshop on Thursday, August 19, 2004, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Duncan Library, 3rd Floor in Benson Hall. The Dean’s office has kindly agreed to supply coffee and sweet rolls at 8:45. Contingent on satisfactory completion of the workshop preparation assignments (described below), compensation for the workshop will be $75. Given that this year’s group is split evenly between returning TAs and new TAs, I have divided the preparation assignments accordingly and will plan our workshop activities accordingly as well.
This packet will offer detailed instructions; you can also access a version of this packet and related materials on the College Writing Program Website: sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/cwp. In fact, some of your required reading is available only on the website: follow links for graduate students toward the workshop links.
To prepare for our meeting:
< read over the enclosed materials and the online materials
< read over examples of "How to Write Philosophy Papers" handouts produced for previous workshops: http://sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/cwp/philpapers (or navigate through the Reference Materials section of the site).
< follow the instructions on the TA Workshop Preparation sheet
< take a few moments to jot down any questions you have about the Writing Program in general or the particular teaching you will be doing in the coming year
It is particularly important that you remember to bring copies of your syllabus and/or preparation documents: we will spend some time working on them in small groups.
Reading (all online assignments are linked to the workshop website):
For first-time teachers: Essays by McHenry and Barnett on how to write philosophy papers, included here as hardcopy, and one by Hole, online only: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cwp/phil-hole.htm
Review the first three on-line memos listed under Syllabus Design on the CWP’s Graduate Student page: sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/cwp/graduatestudents. It is particularly important to read the Minimum Workshop Requirements memo. Recently, some Philosophy graduate student instructors have not understood that they are bound by these minimums. The requirement that you run at least two workshops is not a heavy one, but it is important. I also recommend the next two links, Model Requirements for a W Syllabus and Undergraduate W Requirements, particularly for new instructors.
Jeffrey Tlumak, "Teaching Through Discussion," in A Pedagogy of Becoming, ed. Jon Mills, included here as hardcopy.
Short talk by Ken Bruffee on small group collaboration, included here as hardcopy
Miscellaneous handouts: Rather than reprint familiar handouts each year, I’ve placed them on the CWP web page. Follow the workshop links for the following documents:
* Writing Academic Essays
* Some Important Writing Terms
* General Guidelines for Evaluating Arguments
* Some Step-by-Step Guidelines to Writing Academic Essays
* Some Ways to Implement Collaborative Learning Principles
* Revising Sentences
* Writing Problems: Symptoms and Causes
* Notes on Grading Papers
* Notes on Holding Conferences
* On Leading a Discussion
.
In the past I’ve sometimes required participants to produce their own writing guidelines sheet, using the first four documents listed above as possible models. I strongly suggest that you produce and use such a document — they serve to clarify your own priorities as a teacher of writing and to communicate those priorities to your students — but I will not require you to prepare one for the workshop.
Syllabus Archive: your department has been provided with a collection of past Philosophy 100W syllabi. I strongly suggest you read over a substantial number of these as preparation for designing your own.
Online Philosophy Archive: a small archive of Philosophy Teaching materials is on the CWP site (see under Reference Materials). It currently includes handouts on how to write philosophy essays and on promoting deep revision, as well as examples of teaching sequences and collaborative tasks, all devised by past workshop participants.
Read over the Workshop Preparation sheet carefully and contact me if you have questions: mark.wollaeger@vanderbilt.edu.
Philosophy TA Workshop Preparation, August 2004
First-time (at Vanderbilt) Instructors :
You will need to produce two sets of documents described below. Several examples of materials produced for a previous Workshop are available in the Philosophy Archives on the CWP site (sitemason.vanderbilt.edu/cwp); see under Reference Materials, or link from the online version of these materials. I suggest you look over these before designing your own.
1. Teaching Sequence Design: select one unit from your syllabus (a "unit" begins with the point on the syllabus where you begin working toward an essay and ends when class time reorients toward the next essay). Decide how many days you will devote to the unit, and then design a sequence of classes. For use in the workshop, I want you to produce three short documents.
A day-by-day description totaling no more than a page and a half (375 words) of what you hope to accomplish in your teaching sequence. Some of these goals will be primarily philosophical (e.g., to get students to understand what is at stake in X’s argument about Y). But one of your goals as an instructor of Philosophy 100W is to integrate student writing into the fundamental concerns of the course; writing done outside class should always feel closely connected to what goes on during class: as an extension of conversations initiated in class, as material to be reviewed in class by peers, as a demonstration of having mastered concepts discussed in class, as an exploration similar to those experienced in class, or . . . you get the idea. For students, writing should never feel like an activity that takes places elsewhere in a space disconnected from class, nor should papers feel as if they are written merely in order to be evaluated. For these reasons, at least one day in the sequence should include a description of class time devoted to the upcoming writing assignment. It might be that one or more of the required writing workshops (thesis/invention or peer review) would figure in here. Bring four copies.
A collaborative learning handout (one page max) that would structure an entire 50 minute class or a large portion of a 75-minute class within your sequence. Bear in mind that a 50-minute class tends to go quickly. The handout should be precisely what you would distribute to your students in class, and should be modeled on the tasks described in the Bruffee talk. This too might develop an idea in connection with the questionnaire. Bring four copies.
An essay assignment handout for the essay that will emerge from this unit. Again, this should be precisely what you would distribute to students. Paper topics can work in various ways: they can spell out specific steps the writer must take in order to write the essay and also specify the precise form the essay should take; or they can pose questions for students to confront as best they can. In my view, early in the semester students will need more guidance about specific expectations for essays — thus the guides to philosophical writing I’ve asked you to read on the Web — and by later in the semester they can be left more to their own devices (though they needn’t be). Most important: you should have a very clear idea about the purpose of the essay (what are you trying to teach them? what kind of thinking are they to do?) and a very clear idea of what would count as ideal responses. The design of a good writing class always begins with the writing assignments and then builds the rest of the course, including the reading, around those assignments. Bring five copies.
Questions to bear in mind as you design your sequence: Where and how is your sequence situated in relation to the rest of the course? What are you trying to accomplish at this point in the semester? How does your sequence help prepare students to write an essay? How do the classes build on one another? What passages from the text could be used to initiate close readings that would open out into broader issues? Does your sequence create opportunities for highlighting a particular writing strategy or a specific aspect of philosophical thinking ? What are your students likely to find most difficult in the reading? Most engaging? If you could ensure that your students would remember one thing about this sequence at the end of the semester, what would it be?
2. Draft of Syllabus or Expected Reading List and Sequence of Writing Assignments: if you are teaching in the Fall, you should bring four copies of your syllabus. You will have an opportunity to receive feedback on it in the workshop. If you are not teaching until the spring, it would still be a good idea to work up as complete a syllabus as possible in order to receive feedback. Short of that, bring in at least a list of expected reading and a sketch of your writing assignments. The account of your writing assignments should include the week of the semester in which they are due and (when appropriate) the week in which the revised essays are due. The more you can say about the kind of assignment (e.g., analysis of single argument; comparative analysis of two arguments; etc.), the more useful will be the feedback you receive.
Returning Instructors
As returning instructors, I would like you to bring two things to the workshop. During the workshop, your presence will also be particularly important to the new instructors, who will benefit from your response to their teaching sequence materials.
1. Draft of Syllabus. As I understand it, most of the returning instructors are teaching in the Fall, so it should be easy for all of you to bring in four copies of a complete draft of your syllabus. During the workshop, I will ask you to present and explain your syllabus to some of the new TAs, most of whom are not teaching until the spring, and to some of the returning instructors, who can offer feedback. I also understand that one of the returning instructors missed the workshop last year. That person should either produce a complete syllabus, even if it is for the spring, or complete the preparation for the first-time instructors, as described above.
2. One page (or so) account of your writing assignments. Devising a workable and productive set of essay assignments is one of the biggest challenges in a W class. Bearing in mind that your primary audience will be new instructors, I would like you to explain your planned writing sequence for Phil 100W. What kinds of essay assignments do you give? In what order? You might also want to say a few words about your experience from last year: What was your most successful assignment last time and why? Least successful? Bring five copies of a sheet that will be of use to new instructors.
|
|
