SYLLABUS

GRADING SCALE Epiphany Essay: 30% Profile Essay: 10% Restaurant Review: 10% Friday Writing: 10% In Class Essay: 15% Multi-Genre: 5% MWL: 10% Participation: 10% Spring 2011 English 100-4 (CRN 31393) Mon/Wed/Fri 10:55-12:15 Mon and Wed Classroom Bldg DDH103G Fri Classroom Bldg WSL 5 Dr. Schmoll Office Hours: MWF 12:15 to 1:45 bschmoll@csub.edu 661-654-6549 The blog name for this class is http://english100spring2011.blogspot.com/ Dear Class, Welcome to this course. This quarter, we will enjoy numerous experiences together, traveling on countless mental journeys. To start things off, I have constructed a syllabus that will guide the class, hopefully answer many of your questions, and become the official constitution and law of this course. REQUIRED READING: Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart How is epiphany an important theme throughout this book? Elise Ballard, Epiphany: True Stories of Sudden Insight to Inspire, Encourage, and Transform There will be other readings, but these are the only required books. You may buy any edition of these books. Attendance: Just to be clear, to succeed on tests and papers you really should be in class. That’s just common sense, right? To pass this class, you may not miss more than two classes. Why is that? Does it sound harsh? Every class meeting matters. If you miss two classes that’s bad; how can you expect to do well doing that? Certainly your participation grade will suffer if you do that, but we’ll talk about that later. For now, if you miss that third class meeting, you are missing 10% of the quarter. You cannot do that and pass. So, here’s what we do. Do your darndest to not miss any class unnecessarily. Let’s say your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife calls and wants to take you to Tahiti this weekend, but you won’t be back until late Tuesday night. Here’s what you say: “Honey, I love you, but Dr. Schmoll seems to value my education more than you do, so we are breaking up.” Ok, that may be harsh, so don’t do that, but just make sure that you do not miss any class until the 8th week. What I’ve found is that it seems inevitable that those who miss two classes early for pathetic reasons like doctor’s appointments that should have been more carefully scheduled get to the 8th week and then have to miss for a legitimate reason (like a surprise meeting at work, a sick child to take care of, or a flat tire). If you get to that 8th week and then have to miss your third class, it’ll be bad. By that point, I’ll be kind, compassionate, a real shoulder to cry on, if you want, when telling you that you’ve now failed the course. Now, if you make it to the 8th or 9th week and you have not missed those two classes, then you have some wiggle room, so that if, heaven forbid, your cat Poopsie gets pneumonia and you have to sit up all night bottle-feeding her liquid antibiotics, you and I don’t have to have that ugly conversation where I tell you that Poopsie gets blamed for you failing the course. Let’s put this another way; do you like movies? No way, me too! When you go to the movies do you usually get up and walk around the theatre for 15% of the movie? Let’s say you do decide to do that, out of a love of popcorn and movie posters, perhaps. If you did that, would you expect to understand the whole story? Okay, maybe if you are watching Harold and Kumar, but for anything else, you’ll be lost. So, please, get to class. Being Prompt: Get to class on time. Why does that matter? First, it sends the wrong message to your principal grader(that’s me). As much as we in the humanities would like you to believe that these courses are objective (at what time of day did the Battle of the Marne begin?), that is not entirely the case. If you send your principal grader the message that you don’t mind missing the first few minutes and disturbing others in the class, don’t expect to be given the benefit of the doubt when the tests and papers roll around. Does that sound mean? It’s not meant to, but just remember, your actions send signals. Being late also means that someone who already has everything out and is ready and is involved in the discussion has to stop, move everything over, get out of the chair to let you by, pick up the pencil you drop, let you borrow paper, run to the bathroom because you spilled the coffee, and so on. It’s rude. So, what are the consequences of persistent tardiness? What do you think they should be? Remember that 10% participation? You are eligible for that grade if you are on time. Get here on time. And no, I’m not the jackass who watches for you to be late that one time and stands at the door and points in your face. One time tardiness is not a problem precisely because it is not persistent. It’s an accident; maybe Poopsie turned off your alarm. The Unforgivable Curse: Speaking of one time issues, there is something that is so severe, so awful, that if it happens one time, just one time, no warning, no “oh hey I noticed this and if you could stop it that’d be super,” you will automatically lose all 10 percent of the Participation grade. Any guesses? Cmon, you must have some idea. No, it’s not your telephone ringing. If that happens, it’ll just be slightly funny and we’ll move on. It’s a mistake and not intentional, and the increased heart rate and extra sweat on your brow from you diving headfirst into an overstuffed book bag to find a buried phone that is now playing that new Cristina Aguilera ringtone is punishment enough for you. So, what is it, this unforgivable crime? Texting. If you take out your phone to send or receive messages you will automatically lose 10% of your course grade. That means, if you receive a final grade of 85%, it will drop to 75%. If you receive a final grade of 75%, it will become a 65%. Why is that? The phone ringing is an accident. We laugh at it; we move on. Heck, my phone my even go off during class. Texting is on purpose and is rude. It, in fact, is beyond rude. It wreaks of the worst of our current society. It bespeaks the absolutely vile desire we all have to never separate from our technological tether for even a moment. It sends your fellow classmates and your teacher the signal that you have better things to do. Checking your phone during class is like listening to a friend’s story and right in the middle turning away and talking to someone else. Plus, the way our brains work, you need to fully immerse yourself, to tune your brain into an optimal, flowing machine (see Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s incredible book Flow) that can grasp and can let itself go. Students now tend to see school as a stopover on their way to a career. Brothers and sisters, that’s deadly! I wish that I could pay for you all to quit your jobs and just focus on the mind. I can’t yet do that but if I could I would, because it’d be worth every penny. Devoting time to the mind and to thinking deeply about your world will change who you are and how you approach your future, your family, your job, and your everything. Is that overstated? I believe it to be true. So, until my stock choices really take off so that I can pay all of your bills, promise me one thing. When you are in class or preparing for class, you have to be fully here. Oh crap, now it’s going to sound like a hippy professor from the 1960s: “I mean, like, be here man, just be here.” Maybe the hippies had something. Devote yourself fully to your classes by unplugging from the outside world for awhile. Laptops: The same principal goes for laptops, too. Remember, if you are taking notes on a laptop, something I think is great, you may not be on the internet at the same time. Yes, you may go to the course blog for the outline or to a document we are using in class, but you may not check email or facebook, or access anything else online. The reason why merits repeating; devote yourself fully to your classes by unplugging from the outside world for awhile. Class Climate: No, I don’t mean whether it’s going to rain in here or not. Sometimes I’ll lecture at you, but even then, your participation is vital. How can you participate when someone is lecturing? Any ideas? Turn to a neighbor and tell them the story of your first day at school in kindergarten. Now, if you are the one listening to the story, right in the middle look away, look at your watch, sneer at them, roll your eyes, yawn, wave to someone across the room, nudge a person next to you and tell them a joke, all while the other person is telling about his or her first day of kindergarten. If this happens in social setting we call it rude, and we call the people who listen in that way jackasses. They are not our friends precisely because we deeply value listening and do not put up with those who do not listen well. Right? So, there will be lecturing, and if you abhor what we are doing, then fake it. I used to do that sometimes too: “oh no, professor, I love hearing you talk about President Reagan’s supply side economics.” If we listen to psychologists, by faking interest you’ll be learning much more than if you show your disinterest. The next time you are sad force yourself to smile and you’ll see what I mean. So, sometimes there will be lecture. At other times there will be discussion of short readings that we do in class. During these times, it’s crucial that you do the silly little exercises: turn to a neighbor; find someone you don’t know and discuss this or that; explain to your friend what we just went over in lecture; pick something from the reading to disagree with; find two people on the other side of the room; throw cash at your professor…ok, maybe not that last one. This class is a bit unique in that it violates the normally accepted activity systems of college history classrooms. What we do in discussion will help solidify the concepts of each section of this course in your brain. If you are active in class, you will have to study less, and you’ll find yourself remembering much more. Mining: Have you ever wanted to be a miner? They do have those cool helmets with the lamp on top. Think about what miners do. They dig and dig, into the earth, looking for gold, coal, silver, or other valuable rocks. Sometimes all their digging amounts to nothing. They have to stop, change directions, and dig again. But sometimes they hit a productive vein. Our class will be a little like that. We’ll do some exercises that will amount to nothing and go nowhere. Who is the best judge of that? That’s right; you are! Sometimes we’ll do a written piece that will be fabulous and will produce beautiful golden prose. You will want to polish those pieces with your writing group and turn them into even more brilliant and shining jewels. Reading: How many of you love reading? I did not read a book until I was 18, so if you have not yet started your journey on this ever widening path, it’s never too late. In any course, there’s no substitute for reading. Jim Moffett says that “all real writing happens from plentitude,” meaning that you can only really write well about someone once you know about it. Reading is one way to know—not the only, by any means! I want you to have experiences with great texts. I can show you voluminous research proving why you nee to read more, but then if I assign a stupid, long, expensive textbook you probably will end up not reading, or only reading to have the reading done, something we have all done, right? The economy now requires much high literacy rates (see The World is Flat), and even though reading levels have not gone down in the last 40 years, it is crucial that you start to push your own reading so that your own literacy level goes up. For these ten weeks, diving wholeheartedly into the course reading is vital. Remember to read in a particular way. As reading expert and UCSB professor Sheridan Blau has argued, “reading is as much a process of text production as writing is.” Reading involves revision? Does that sound silly? As you read, think about the different ways that you understand what you read. Most importantly, when you read, think about the words of E.D. Hirsch, who says that we look at what a text says (reading), what it means (interpretation), and why it matters (criticism). Hey, but if you are in a history course, aren’t you supposed to be reading for exactly the number of miles of trenches that were dug in World War One, how many railroad workers died from 1890 to 1917, or what the causes of the Great Depression were? Anyway, the answer is yes and no. There are two types of reading that you’ll do in college. As the literary goddess theorist Louise Rosenblatt explains, there is aesthetic reading, where you are reading to have an experience with the text, and there is efferent reading, where you are reading to take away information from the text. You do both types all the time. Think about a phone book. You have probably never heard someone say of a phone book, “don’t tell me about it, I want to read it for myself.” Reading a phone book is purely efferent. In this course you will practice both types of reading. I have chosen texts that you can enjoy (aesthetic) and that you can learn from(efferent). I want to see and appreciate the detail in our reading, but in this course I’ll give you that detail in class lectures. In the reading, it’s much more important that you read texts that will live with you forever and to inspire you to think more thoroughly about your world. As you read, you should be working hard to create meaning for yourself. As Rosenblatt asserts, “taking someone else’s interpretation as your own is like having someone else eat your dinner for you.” Please, don’t let the numbskulls as wikipedia or sparknotes eat your dinner for you. Rough Drafts: To receive credit for any of the out of class essays this quarter, you must have a complete, typed rough draft in class for revision. If you are absent on the day we revise, you will not receive credit for the essay. Why is this? While many college writers see writing as something done at the last minute and only when the due date is imminent, the only way to improve as a writer is to put your writing through numerous revisions. That is why you must bring a complete typed rough draft to class. GRADED BUSINESS My Writing Lab: This is a computer-based program that will help you tackle your writing problems with exercises. While the best way to learn to write better is to write and read more, this program will give you specific assistance in your areas of greatest need. Participation: You do not need to be the person who speaks out the most, asks the most questions, or comes up with the most brilliant arguments to receive full credit in participation. If you are in class and on time, discuss the issues that we raise, avoid the temptation to nod off, to leave early, or to text people during class (the three easiest ways to lose credit), and in general act like you care, then you will receive a good participation grade! Just being here does not guarantee a 100% participation grade, since you must be regularly actively involved for that to be possible. Restaurant Review: Do you love to eat as much as I love to eat? Good. Go to a restaurant and take notes on the ambiance, the service, and the food. Write a review and post it to the website Bakersfield.com. Multi-Genre Writing: Multi-Genre Writing: For this assignment you must complete a writing topic in five different genres. The theme of your multi-genre assignment will be up to you, but I would strongly suggest using some of the writing that you have already completed this quarter. Use something that you or your writing group valued. In-Class Essay: We will write two essays in class. You will choose which one you want to have graded and recorded. To be eligible to pass this course you must earn a C- or higher on one in-class essay. Final Assignment: EPIPHANY: The culminating written work of the quarter, we’ll discuss this in class. Friday Writing: This course is partly being run as a hybrid, meaning that for the first few Fridays of the quarter we are going to meet online rather than face-to-face. There will be assignments on the blog that MUST BE WRITTEN ON THE FRIDAY WHEN THEY APPEAR. The blog will be checked each Friday. Your responses to the assignment and to fellow students will be recorded and you will earn 10% of your quarter grade by simply writing online. DEPARTMENTAL POLICY STATEMENTS: To advance to English 110, students must earn a grade of C- or higher in English 100. To be eligible for a C- in English 100, students must earn a C- or higher on at least one in-class writing assignment and a C- average on all other course assignments. Writing Workshop You are responsible for completing 15 MyWritingLab topics in conjunction with your English 100 class. This requirement is worth 10% of your overall English 100 grade. To receive full credit, you must (1) take the pre- and post diagnostics (Sentence Grammar and Basic Grammar) and (2) master approximately one and a half of the below assigned topics per week, for a total of 15 topics by the end of the quarter. To master a topic, you must earn a score of 80% or higher on both the Recall and Apply sections for each of the following MyWritingLab topics. Note that topics mastered through the pre-diagnostic will not count towards your 15 topics. You must master the below 15 topics through the Recall and Apply sections. Prewriting Thesis Statement Essay Organization Developing and Organizing a Paragraph Parts of Speech, Phrases, and Clauses Fragments Run-On Sentences Subject-Verb Agreement Pronoun Agreement Misplaced or Dangling Modifiers Commas Apostrophes Semicolons, Colons, Dashes, and Parentheses Parallelism Easily Confused Words You will be held responsible for these new skills every week in your writing. Since this is an online workshop, you can work on these topics outside of class at your convenience, so long as you master approximately one and a half topics per week, for a total of 15 topics. This means that if you wait until the end of the quarter to complete all fifteen topics, you will not receive full credit and your essay grades may suffer. You will need an access code, which is packaged with your Quick Access text and the following course identification number: Course ID#--#### A time will be scheduled during your first or second week of class to help you register to the site and create your user profile, and you will need your MyWritingLab code and course identification number to do this. If you have already registered to the site in a previous class, you do not need to register and create a new user profile. Instead, you will need to login to the site, click on “join a different class,” and follow the directions from there. For additional information on MyWritingLab, view the power points at the following Web sites: How to register for MWL http://www.csub.edu/mwl/updated mwlreg.ppt How to switch classes in in MWL http://www.csub.edu/mwl/mwlswitchclass.ppt How to get around MWL for English100 http://www.csub.edu/mwl/mwleng100.ppt Note: If you exhaust a topic before mastering it, let your instructor know, and he or she will have it “unlocked” for you. Note: Please let your instructor know if you are enrolled in Humanities/Behavioral Sciences 277, which also uses MyWritingLab, while enrolled in English 80 to avoid any confusion. COURSE SCHEDULE WEEK ONE Mon 3/28  Syllabus  Opening Exercise: “Bakersfield Brett”  Assign Restaurant Review  Explain First In-Class Reading (typed, presented to your writing group, fairly short) Wed 3/30  Make a List of what makes good writing  Profile Interviews  Stories and Meaning Exercise: “McDonalds and ‘Honey’” Story Told Two Ways When you start dating someone you tell them stories about yourself. Think of some of those and give them titles. Now tell one of those stories. Two other people will tell what it means. What’s the point? Look again at your list of what makes good writing?  Explain Writing Groups: you will meet with this group all quarter long. Before you read any piece to the group, you should tell the group what you want as feedback: just listen, look at word choice, does it flow?, is it funny?, is it worth pursuing and polishing? Is it too long? Is it too short? Also, no excuses from the reader: “this is no good.” The rule is simple; just read the crap! After you read the piece, someone in the group will say “thank you.” It seems odd, right? It’s a nice way to break the ice, and it really is nice to thank the author for having been so bold as to read something.  Meet with Writing Group Fri 4/1  Fridays online: WEEK TWO Mon 4/4  Rough Draft of Restaurant Review Due  Focusing Exercise (Start in the Middle)  Reading Groups Wed 4/6  Final Draft of Restaurant Review Due (due to turnitin by midnight tonight)  Dan Kirby Exercise: _____ at your age. _____ at half your age. _____ at twice your age. Observe the person from the outside. For each time period, take a picture of yourself in words. For each time period, start with a place: for example, “I am sitting on the hood of my 1981, dog dirt brown Dodge Omni, waiting for my bobbed blond haired 5 foot nothin’ tall girlfriend Beth Anne to finish working at the Wherehouse Music store on Columbus Street…”  Meet with Writing Groups Fri 4/8  Fridays online: WEEK THREE Mon 4/11  First Assignment/Profile Due  George Hillocks Exercise on Analyzing Evidence: Slip or Trip?  First In-Class Reading Wed 4/13  DISCUSS Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart  Poetry is Cool:  Barry Spacks: “let’s get some poetry in the air.” Yates: “every poem sings a little tune.” Everyone is a Poet Exercise: Think about the last time you were enraged, absolutely incensed, full of anger. Why were you so mad? With whom were you mad? Now, on paper write a description of the feeling, the setting, the reason for your anger, and how the whole thing was resolved, if it was resolved. Finally, circle key lines, words, or phrases in that piece. Write the circled lines in a row, in any order.  IDIOMS EXERCISE (linguistic collocations): Hit the Road, Air your dirty laundry in public, all hell broke loose, alive and kicking, backseat driver, keep in mind, par for the course, hit the road, got up on the wrong side of the bed, as sharp as a tack, piece of cake. kick the bucket…what do these mean? Draw them as literal statements. Fri 4/15  Fridays online: WEEK FOUR Mon 4/18  Crickets: http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/category/poet/aram-saroyan/ or try http://www.mtraks.com/artist/aram_saroyan/track/498707-crickets_1965/ by Aaron Saroyan (Is this poetry?)  Haiku: 5-7-5 Fall in Bakersfield Leaves change but heat will not cease Burn, infernally, summer  Crime Story (Porphyria’s Lover) R.J. Blick, Mrs. R.J. Blick, Porphyria Blick, Hubert Fenston, R. Emerson Chandler What kinds of writing would this crime produce? Wed 4/20  ESSAY DUE: Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart  Neighborhood Map  Creation Stories: Blood Clot Boy Write your own creation story, giving personality to animals or other natural forces. Explain some aspect of nature.  Meet with Writing Groups Fri 4/22  Fridays online: WEEK FIVE Mon 4/25  Ellis Island Photo Writing (with photos from Ellis Island, write a first person narrative)  Compare and contrast the following two videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lk1awSIang (outkast) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0FuMRHRCVY (hayseed) Wed 4/27  IN CLASS ESSAY #1 Fri 4/29  Fridays online: WEEK SIX Mon 5/2  Write Around with Quotes  Assignment #3: Look back at the “Everyone is a Poet Anger Exercise” as a Sample. For this assignment you must complete a writing topic in five different genres. Let’s start by making a list of genres: college essay, apology, bedtime story, movie script, description…. Next, decide on a written topic, either something you’ve already started or something new you would like to write about. Now, brainstorm a list of genres that seem to fit this topic. Think broadly here. For instance, even if your topic is Sen. Obama you can still write a speech, recipe, bedtime story, or telenovela (soap opera). Wed 5/4  Work on Multi-Genre Assignment  Meet with Writing Groups: Answer multi-genre questions. Fri 5/6  Fridays online: WEEK SEVEN Mon 5/9  MULTI-GENRE ASSIGNMENT DUE  Recall your favorite place to play as a child. Write about something that happened there. What was so great about the place?  Take three stories from around the room and answer the following questions: who do these stories have in common? taken together, what does it mean to play? Answer them in your group. Wed 5/11  Discuss the Epiphany book  Meet with Writing Group Fri 5/13  Fridays online: WEEK EIGHT Mon 5/16  Start the final assignment  making each other authorities assignment: interview a neighbor and incorporate their feedback into your own writing. Wed 5/18  Defining Academic Writing  Writing Groups  Deconstructing the English 110 Research Paper (as a class we are going to analyze the structure, through several good models, of the 110 paper) Fri 5/20  Fridays online: WEEK NINE Mon 5/23  Tone Joan: Who is she? What makes her Tone Joan? Wed 5/25 Writing about Art: Is this beautiful? http://wallpaper.travelblog.org/Wallpaper/pix/tb_fiji_sunset_wallpaper.jpg Is this beautiful? http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Gustav_Klimt/kiss.jpeg Is this beautiful? http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5448/198420afghan20girlhz1.jpg Now, define beauty without using examples. Is it possible? What does it mean to be beautiful? Fri 5/27  Individual conferences WEEK TEN Mon 5/30 MEMORIAL DAY SCHOOL CLOSED Wed 6/1  Individual conferences Fri 6/3  Individual conferences Mon 6/6  Final Assignment Due FINAL EXAM: FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 11 TO 1:30