Checking In

I was happy to see Itzel yesterday at my office hour. We reviewed her second essay, on Graffiti, which was much better than her first and she gave me a revised copy of her essay, Women in Hip Hop. Itzel is a great student; she turns in her work on time, she schedules appointments with Writing Tutors to help her with her essays and then she called (rather texted) me to see if I was on campus and met with me. She is on her way to an A in the class.

On all her presentations, she has gotten an A. She prepares visuals to augment her discussion and illustrate her key points. The way you earn an A in this class is by demonstrating growth in your writing, research and documentation. At this level, you are scholars, scholars synthesize material to develop new or innovative interpretations or ideas on familiar topics. Scholar seek to challenge the norms, and with hip hop as a theme, there are many directions you can take your arguments. We are looking at hip hop culture which has a lot to recommend it, but then again, it has its detractors.

I hope you like the theme this semester, but at this point, whether you like the theme or not, you are here and I hope there is something that grabs your attention and motivates you to complete the tasks.

Itzel, I hope you don't mind my using you as an example, but I don't have many other students, sadly to talk about regarding their writing process. In Itzel's first paper she didn't use enough scholarly sources, so for her second essay she made certain she used scholarly articles, one I gave everyone. What I hope she learned yesterday at my office hours was how to check her sources, to read her paper aloud in its final revision stage, to pay attention to details when siting sources and doing MLA, to use signal phrases and transitions and to check the logical progression of one idea to the next.

Another great writer whose papers I have read is Eugene, who also presented last Thursday. He arrived late the week before and couldn't present his essay on Graffiti and Advertising. I spoke about Eugene already in earlier posts. These two students met with me, Eugene caught me late one evening, I think it was about 5 or 6 PM and we spoke about poetry and hip hop. He ran some ideas by me before he wrote his paper on Graffiti.

Each essay has shown improvement, which means when I look at his body of work at the end of the semester, we can measure his development. Ilene is another student whose revision was a marked improvement over her first draft. She wasn't able to present her paper, Women in Hip Hop...she was sick I think that day. But she got her assignment in and then met with me in my office to review it. We also spoke about the paper in its planning stages.

Jose ran by my office yesterday also and asked about the hip hop dance paper. I told him it was due last week. I don't hold the dates in my mind but a successful student is organized and plans. Don't let the dates slip up on you. Bring your essays to class for the peer reviews. Keep up with the reading. We will be writing an essay in class next week, if my memory serves me correctly on Poetry and Hip Hop.

This English 1B class is set up like a lab, that is, students take responsibility for their work, everyone is not doing the same thing at the same time, which means assignments come in when they are due, which varies. Other assignments, like the cyber-essays are for everyone and are due when stated. Only two students did last week's assignment from Total Chaos. Assignments aren't due when students feel like getting them in, they are due when assigned.

If you are behind we need to have a conversation. I have let many of you have extensions, this does not mean that my answer will be yes, each time you ask. Many students have not turned in any work, not one essay. Does this mean that the essays you are writing haven't been assigned or does this mean that you are procrastinating?

Remember, we meet in A-205 on Thursdays, and this Thursday, October 22, we have a guest. Come on time.