Exercise 1.2.b asks me to talk about a moment when I was going through the motions, dead to my work...

Exercise 1.2.b asks me to talk about a moment when I was going through the motions, dead to my work...

I think this moment hit me hard about six or seven years into my teaching career.  Students were dropping my class in the first week because I handed out a 27 page syllabus, with complete reading schedule and complete assignment sheets for the semester.

It was, at its core, an attempt to circumvent students complaints about my classes.  Every time they complained that something wasn't clear, I produced a document clarifying it.

The end result was threefold.

• Students were frightened and overwhelmed by what I was demanding in my classes.  
• I was losing enthusiasm for what was happening in my classes.  I had fallen under the sway of rubrics, but was finding that rubrics only told students what I wanted from them.  As a result, students gave me what I wanted before I met them.  There was no openness to what they brought to the class.
• So teaching became a process of learning more and more how to tell students what to do.

That third bit affronts me on so many levels, and it happened slowly, subtly.  I didn't really notice at the time.

...

When I write, only very, very rarely does someone hand me a rubric.  Most of my writing is an exercise in "applied psychology," in recognizing that there is another person (a reader), and that the reader has needs and expectations that shape what I can offer them.

In hyperdetailed assignment sheets, I robbed students of the possibility of being writers, instead turning them into imitators and direction followers.  And slowly, I stopped caring about the results of these directions.

That was several years ago.  I'm better now, I promise, though many, many students wish I gave out rubrics.  The best ones, though -- the best ones seize the opportunity to surprise, delight, impress me and themselves.