The first week

The first week is typically a time in which teachers present the syllabus to their students in order to provide an overview of the course (the objectives, the major assignments, and expectations).  I taught the first week generally in the same way that I have done it in the past.  However, instead of frontloading the first class session with my thoughts on the class, I foregrounded students' perspectives and input through asking questions that surfaced their history and interests. In approaching my first class in this way, I was attempting to conform, at least a little, to the democratic impulse that is associated with the critical perspective (see Ira Shor, When Students Have Power).  I also asked my students to choose five readings from our text that they found interesting.  I stressed that they did not need to read the texts from first to last, but they did need to acquaint themselves with the topic that the author was addressing and give a thoughtful reason for why they found the article worthy of closer scrutiny.  This assignment was given on a Monday, and they were to turn in their lists to me by Friday. 

I received their lists on Friday and I compiled the results.  Here are the "Top Twenty":

1.     "Shitty First Drafts," Anne Lamott

2.     "Cell Phone Weighs Down Backpack of Self-Discovery," Dalton Conley 

3.     "6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person," David Wong 

4.     "Becoming a Writer," Junot Diaz

5.     "Top 10 Ten Grammar Myths," Mignon Fogarty

6.     "Learning to Read," Malcolm X

7.     Taking Women Students Seriously, Adrienne Rich

8.     Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King, Jr.  

9.     Barbie-Q, Sandra Cisneros

10.  "What Should Colleges Teach, Part 1" Stanley Fish  

11.  "What is Plagiarism?” Tabetha Adkins

12.  "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me," Sherman Alexie

13.  "How to Tame a Wild Tongue," Gloria Anzaldúa

14.  "What They Learn in School," Jerome Stern

15.  "The Lanyard," Billy Collins

16.  "The Coming Apocalypse," Richard Miller

17.  "Inventing the University," Donald Bartholomae

18.  "Freshman Composition as a Middle-Class Enterprise," Lynn Z. Bloom

19.  "Studies Explore Whether the Internet Makes Students Better Writers," Josh Keller

20.  "Mark Bauerlein, Author of The Dumbest Generation: Why Youth are Failing," Joseph Cotto