English 1002-118: Issues in Education, Adventures in Service-Learning

download the course manual (including this syllabus) in Word
    
Instructor: Jennifer E. West • Louisiana State University • Spring 2005 • Stubbs 218 • T/Th 10:40-12:00            
Office: Allen 43 • Phone: 578-6289 • E-mail: jwest22@lsu.edu • Website: http://www.writingclassroom.com/
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 9:00-10:30; additional hours available by appointment

Course Description
This course fulfills the requirement for the second of two semesters of first-year composition required at LSU. This course is a bit different than some writing classes, in that you will participate in service learning. Our service will involve tutoring at Polk Elementary School as a means of learning by doing. We will focus our discussions, research, and writing in this course on issues in education; your service will provide a hands-on way for you to engage in critical thinking about education both in general and in the Baton Rouge community specifically. The primary purpose of this course is to develop your writing skills in order to prepare you for the kinds of writing tasks you may meet in your academic, professional, and personal lives, but along with those objectives, we’ll also work to become more informed and more engaged citizens of the various communities where we live, work, hang out, attend school, worship, etc. We will use writing in this course to develop our ideas about what it means to be educated, about how education functions in our society, and about how we feel about both the values and the problems of institutional education (or school).

What Will You Need?
1. Internet access and access to Microsoft WORD, either where you live, or in one of the college computer labs.
2. A PAWS account and email account that you check regularly.
3. Access to a printer. We won’t have a traditional textbook, but you’ll be expected to print all of our class materials from the website. (If you use your Tigercard, you can print for $.05 per page in the on-campus labs. The second floor of the library is the one nearest the building where we’re meeting).
4. A 3-ring binder in which to keep course materials.
5. An opening in your afternoon schedule, two days some weeks, and one day other weeks.
6. Transportation to and from Polk Elementary School. Carpooling with one another is a great way to build accountability and only lose one parking spot.
7. Commitment to your writing and to your writing community (this class!)
8. Commitment to the students you tutor.
 
How the Course Will Work?
1. This course is designed to integrate hands-on learning through service to the community with writing in the classroom. As such, you will be required to complete a total of about 6 hours of service outside of class by tutoring at our partner school, Polk Elementary.
2. We will use your out-of-class experience for discussion, reflection, and research in your writing process.
3. Some of our written assignments will be submitted electronically, and you are responsible for retaining “back up” copies of all submissions. As a precaution, you should copy yourself on all emails you send. TigerBytes is also a useful place to back up your documents.
4. This class is primarily structured as a writing workshop. You will read and respond your peers’ writing, and they will respond to yours. You will also participate in large and small group discussions. In each case, you will be expected to work to the best of your ability, offering your best thoughts, and listening carefully and respectfully to others.
 
What Will You Write?
You will turn in four completed writing projects: an educational autobiography, a letter to the editor of a newspaper about an issue in education, a researched argumentative essay, and a portfolio of reflections that represent the kind of thinking you’ve been doing over the course of the semester. You will also give an oral presentation as part of the larger research project and lead class discussion with a group of your peers. Other writing during the course will include peer responses, reflective responses, blog entries, and responses to your reading.  
 
How Will You Be Evaluated?
  • 20% PARTICIPATION: Your attendance is essential to your success in this class. To encourage you to take me seriously when I say that, I will assign some activity for which you’ll earn participation points every time we meet, in the form of in-class writing, quizzes, etc. If you aren’t there, you don’t earn the points, and they can’t be made up. Participation points will also be earned for homework turned in on time.
  • 80% WRITING: Each of the 4 essays is worth 20% of your grade. On the assignment sheet for each essay, you’ll receive a rubric that will show you how you earn points. Part of your assessment will be the finished product, of course, but you’ll also earn points for having drafts in on time, participating in peer review in a meaningful way, etc. I will give you detailed written evaluations of each finished piece of writing you submit; these evaluations are intended to help you see what you are doing well and what you need to work on. All four major essays/projects MUST be submitted to receive course credit.
  • GRADING SCALE: A – 90-100; B – 80-89; C – 70-79; D – 60-69; F – 59 and below

What Other Things Do You Need to Know?
1. Attendance is mandatory. Since this class is a workshop, the other writers in the class will be depending on your contributions for their own writing, not only on your presence in class, but on your thorough completion of the assignments. If an absence is unavoidable, please notify me at least a day in advance, preferably by email. If you miss more than four classes, I will urge you to drop the course and retake it when you will be able to attend more regularly.
2. You are responsible for keeping up with in-class and out-of-class assignments. The schedule of due dates and homework assignments can be located on our class website. Announcements and new assignments will be regularly posted; you are responsible for checking it on a regular basis. From time to time, I will also send out email reminders; you should get in the habit of checking your email regularly as well.
3. Plagiarism: Academic honesty is required in all courses at Louisiana State University.  Plagiarism cases are reported to the Dean of Students for action.  The punishment for a plagiarism at Louisiana State University is given in the Code of Student Conduct, Section 5.1.  Students should acquaint themselves with the Code of Student Conduct.  Plagiarism can result in dismissal from the university or a failing grade in the course. If you have questions about using borrowed material in an essay or how to properly acknowledge sources, please check with me before the essay is submitted.
4. All work must be completed and submitted on time. If you turn in a paper after it’s due, it will earn only 80% of the grade it would have earned otherwise. All work must be submitted no later than December 7 to earn any credit at all.
5. No cell phones or pagers should be used in class, nor should they be openly displayed. If yours rings during class, or if you are using class time for text-messaging or game-playing, you may forfeit your participation points for that day Laptops also are for in-class work only. I will ask you to close yours if you are using it to IM or do un-class-related things.
6. Learning to write is a collaborative activity. You are expected to fully participate in group activities and to respond to your classmates’ work as if it were your own. Reading other students’ work will help you become more fluent in revising your writing; your suggestions will also help your fellow writers to see things in their own writing they might not otherwise see.


Where Can You Get Help?
1. The LSU Writing Center is an excellent resource that offers free, individual peer-writing tutorials for all LSU students. It is located in Coates B-31; online information is available at The Writing Center.
2. If you feel technically challenged or would like to brush up on your computer skills, START offers many free workshops for students. The schedule is posted on their website.
3. I am available during my office hours and by appointment. If you would like a conference with me, please let me know by email; I am happy to meet with you.
4. The University is dedicated to making reasonable accommodations for all students with documented disabilities. Students should notice the Office of Disability Services located in 112 Johnson Hall and their instructors of any special needs.

When Will We Do What?
The course schedule on the class website will keep you posted on what’s happening when. I’ll update it frequently, so be in the habit of checking it. All of your homework assignments will also be posted there.

What Are We Trying to Accomplish?
Course Objectives:
  • Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating, particularly about issues in the realm of education.
  • Explore the relationships among language, knowledge, and power.
  • Respond appropriately to different kinds of writing situations, keeping in mind the expectations and needs of different audiences by making careful decisions about voice, tone, and level of formality.
  • Learn to engage in writing as a process, developing useful skills for generating ideas, gathering information, drafting, revising, and editing.
  • Develop a variety of research strategies, including the primary research you’ll be doing through your service.
  • Learn to evaluate and analyze secondary source material, with particular attention to the claims authors make, the positions they adopt, and the assumptions they take for granted.
  • Learn to reply to others’ arguments—situating one’s own writing within others’ writing—and to integrate source material skillfully into your own writing, making conscious use of paraphrase, quotation, summary, and proper documentation.
  • Learn to think critically, both by reflecting on your experience and by gathering and synthesizing outside information.
  • Apply both new and improved skills in an organized service activity that meets identified community needs and reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility.
  • Learn by doing
  • Apply academic concepts to meet community needs
  • Meet course objectives by serving outside the classroom
  • Deepen understanding through reflecting on real life experiences
  • Integrate service into the academic curriculum to reinforce learning



 

 

“I believe that the truth about any subject only comes when all the sides of the story are put together, and all their different meanings make one new one. Each writer writes the missing parts to the other writer’s story. And the whole story is what I’m after.”

             --Alice Walker