English 1539 (Friday, Sept. 16)

Nichole began Friday’s English 1539 class by talking about the coming week, which is something that is incredibly useful to many of her students (who probably find organization to be difficult). She focused most of the class on the episodic descriptive narrative rough drafts that are due next Friday and spent time discussing “shitty first drafts.” I liked that she read the Anne Lamott essay of the same name to her class (and found it interesting that many of her students responded positively to the title). Nichole emphasized that next week’s rough draft must be a minimum of two pages and that her students will “come with two pages and we work from there.” I found it especially comforting that she repeatedly told her students that it’s OK for the first draft to be bad (because it’s supposed to be). Honestly, I wish that someone had told me this sooner in my college career. For this reason, this will be something that I pay a lot of attention to in my own English 1550 class next semester (and beyond). Nichole also talked about some of the elements of the episodic descriptive narrative, including transitions (which she defined as “movement”), the thesis statement, emotional appeal and adjectives. Through the use of student examples (“Do you know what you’re writing about?”) she spent some time discussing the importance of showing, not telling. I particularly like that Nichole will offer as much individual feedback as possible for this draft. Aside from the peer review/workshopping that will occur on Friday, Nichole will also look over the drafts and give them back (complete with comments) on Monday. This, to me, demonstrated Nichole’s commitment to her students.

COMMENTS:

* Guy Shebat: You are right that it is important to tell your students "that it’s OK for the first draft to be bad (because it’s supposed to be)," but at the same time you want your students to meet certain specifications for the draft. In other words, 'bad' can't mean only two sentences get written (otherwise, you won't have much to work on for peer review). I like to give them a word length requirement, plus a couple of other basic "to-do's" related to what I will eventually expect from a final draft. At the same time, though, I encourage the students not to worry about things like grammar and editing (for sure), or even things like final structural concerns. Now that I think of it, maybe there is a better to term to use for the draft than 'bad,' but I see what Nikki was trying to communicate there. [Sure, there's 'shitty,' I guess, as Lamott uses in her title, but maybe we don't want to go exactly there on an official basis.]