Hope I Didn’t Expect to Feel…

This is, perhaps, not the right place for this. It’s a blog about writing, sometimes about reading, sometimes about the writing community and the issues that affect us. And this post is about teaching.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been teaching college writing classes since 2008, first as a grad student, then as an employee of a SUNY university.

Mostly, I love my job. I love my co-workers. I couldn’t ask for a better supervisor (my department chair). My students are very often very awesome. During so many class sessions (especially upper levels), I laugh so hard my stomach hurts, all while staying more or less on topic. Being with my students, in the classroom, is when I am the best version of me.

But, things shifted for the worse last semester. AI “written” assignments started to become the majority. I got AI submissions even from students I knew and trusted, who had taken several classes with me. Who knew me, I thought. Who knew I hated LLM AI, I thought. Who knew I could probably, often at least, tell when that’s what I was reading, I thought. Even when the assignments weren’t very challenging. Even when I’d made sure to scaffold my asks in class, really prepare them, really build up toward an assignment.

I will not soften this: it absolutely broke my spirit.

The depression spiral was steep. I felt hopeless, and pointless. How else could I have felt, when students were SHOWING me that the thing I care about most in this world (after my loved ones) was so cheap and insignificant that it was beneath their time and attention, even when they’d signed up for a class on it?

When I could, I turned my brain toward solutions and mitigations. How could I create a class that discouraged AI use in more than just a punitive sense? A classroom environment that didn’t just punish a student for using AI instead of their own brain, but made them actually want to apply their own creativity? How could I lessen the temptation of AI for young people still SEVEN YEARS away from complete brain development? Young people who are having AI shoved down their throats by big tech companies and even some of their other professors?

And, just as importantly, how could I salvage some of my love for teaching? Some of my love for my students, because all of my positivity had been overshadowed by resentment and hurt? Because even on the worst days, I knew I never wanted to become a student-hating teacher. I didn’t want to be someone who dreads every second of their workday.

So I did what us real human writers always do. I brainstormed.

And here are the things I’m changing this year, in no particular order. I acknowledge that some of these create way more work for me. But I am hoping the extra time and effort is worth it–that it will replace time I would have lost to discipline issues, reporting academic integrity violations, dealing with the hearings, etc. I also acknowledge these aren’t perfect solutions, and that students will be resistant, at least at first, to some of these practices. Many of these ideas are experiments, and whether or not they will be successful is a question I can’t answer now. BUT. While I can’t say I’m “optimistic,” really, I can say I feel a little bit of hope for the coming semester, and that is not something, back in May, I thought I could feel.

-I’m bringing back student contracts. I did these years ago–had each student sign a contract of understanding, stating that they had read the syllabus and understood the course policies. My hope is that I can refer back to these if I have to, and should an issue arise for which I need to report to the Office of Student Conduct, I can prove, with a document, that the student indeed did understand whatever policy they blew off.

-We’re going lo-fi/low-tech for our learning environment. Students will write in composition notebooks, by hand, and these will be collected and graded each week. No cell phones in class. No laptops or tablets, unless a student has an accommodation requiring the use of tech, which I will of course respect. My hope is that if we are free of screens, we are free of the temptation to multi-task with ten tabs open, free of the distraction of pop-up notifications, free of the lure to use AI. I know this is the one students will be resistant to, but I plan on being transparent with my motivations and detailing for them the proven benefits of handwriting over typing. I also bought a cart, the kind elementary art teachers wheel around, because I cannot carry 40 composition notebooks at any given time. (And yes, I’m buying a few of those notebooks to give to anyone on the first day who just joined the class and so didn’t get the email.)

-I’ll be assigning more reading. If you haven’t yet read Walt Hunter’s article “Stop Meeting Students Where They Are” in The Atlantic, oh boy are you missing out. Students will need to read quite a bit to keep up in my classes this semester. They will be better students, better writers, better readers, and better humans because of it.

-Attendance is worth more of their overall course grade. Because we are moving so much of our writing into the classroom itself, being present mentally and physically is even more vital than it was. Attendance used to be worth ten percent of their grade. Now it is worth twenty percent. To help students understand its importance, I’ve posted this quote in our class materials, and I’ll share it here with you, too:

“College is about being part of an academic community and also showing up for others. This is hard to do if you are [mentally] checked out [or] not present. Not every job or commitment in this world is self-guided, self-gratifying, or transactional. You aren’t a customer buying a grade. You are a student, and if you don’t contribute what you’ve learned toward bettering society, you’ve failed a basic tenet of your education.” -Tamara Cedre, award-winning artist and educator

-No more “cheat sheets” for quizzes. For the past few semesters, I’ve let students bring small pieces of paper to class, filled with anything they wanted to write down from the readings/material each quiz was on, of which they were notified in advance. I viewed this as a kindness. Students (not all students, but many students) used it as a way to by-pass doing the actual reading, just copying their friends’ notecards or even using their friends’ actual notecards who were in a different section of the same course. From here on out, they need to read the material, then read it again, making sure they comprehend what the words on the page amount to. Reading is part of the course’s workload. They must do the readings if they expect to pass the course.

-No big screen, cell phone, or laptop for me during class. I will practice what I’m preaching; I will participate in this experiment. If I want their full attention, I must give them mine. When we read in class, we will read from our books (no ebooks allowed). When I refer to the syllabus, I’ll refer to the paper copy I’ve printed. (I will also recommend to them that they print a copy.) I will bring a kitchen timer and use that instead of using my phone for writing sprints. I will bring my CD player from home with some instrumental CDs to play quietly during focused activities. The CD player will live on my cart.

-More tactile, hands-on activities. I used to be a fun teacher. I had all kinds of writing prompts that involved dice, or playing cards, or pictures I’d hand out. I used to have a bag with 20 pairs of scissors in it. A big basket of crayons. I’ll be bringing back those activities, and those items, this semester.

-For my lit class, a group conference will take the place of a presentation. Last time I taught American Fictions, groups of students presented their projects to the whole class. These presentations were awkward and didn’t add to their learning, understanding, or engagement. They were something for all of us to get through. This semester, I’ll meet with each group and have them explain their project to me, and I’ll ask them questions about their sources, their findings, their ideas, and their processes. My hope is that this will be more comfortable for everyone, and more valuable for the students. I’ll get to learn things, too!

-Quiz and Reader Response makeups will be offered once a week, with a specified time/day/location. Instead of students popping up willy-nilly and me having to keep track of who was giving me what late work, there will now be a “make-up session” each Thursday at noon in the Writers’ Lounge, a comfortable student study area in my building. I shall be there each week at the appointed time, and if any student missed an in-class reader response or quiz on Friday, Monday, or Wednesday, that’s their opportunity to make it up. They can take it or leave it.

I’m also thinking of offering a tutoring hour every week, though I haven’t made up my mind on that yet. Essentially, my idea is to once again schedule a day and time to be in the Writers’ Lounge for anyone who wants to go over course material they don’t feel confident or comfortable with just yet. They can ask clarification questions, I can explain things another way, look at examples, etc.

I’ll try to remember to write a follow-up blog post at the end of the semester, recording my thoughts on how these experiments went. If you are a teacher who has other ideas I could try, or ways to make some of these implementations easier, I’d love it if you’d reach out.