I want all who join our class community to do well, to learn and to grow, and to finish this class as more adaptable writers and effective communicators. I have tried to build a course that helps this happen. The class involves labor, by which I mean that you’ll need to put in the work and the time it takes to do that work. (Even for accomplished writers, improving takes time and effort.) Each week, we’ll have assignments and routines for reading, writing, research, watching and listening, drawing, and more. 

• • • Get going during Week 1! Students who have not logged in to our Canvas course and participated in our “Welcome Week” module and activities will be dropped after the first week to make room for others.

      • • Our orientation materials and early assignments are essential to succeeding in this course. Students who have not completed Week 1 and Week 2 activities by Week 4 will be dropped from the course. 

I ask that the work you do for this course show two crucial ingredients: effort and thinking. I invite you to have fun and do genuine figuring-out work, intellectually exploring the ideas and subjects at hand. I want to challenge each of us to actively seek out what I call “SPARK”: Be intellectually curious. Find ways to connect. Make choices about your work that make it meaningful, personal, worthwhile for you and your classmates. Look for the spark!

I hope some of our work will challenge you, much of it will help build your writing practice, and some of it will (I hope) even be fun and inspiring. Look for the spark!

To grow and improve, we must practice using language and rhetoric with others. Doing things with words, together, takes time—something many of us struggle to find enough of. Our access to time can be uneven and also unfair: some of us have many more demands on our time than others. 

This course requires your time. Focus on consistent, regular interaction. Expect our 6-unit, 16-week condensed course to require an average of 20 hours of your time each week. I believe that if you commit to this work, you’ll learn and grow. But it is a commitment! 

If you suspect you will have trouble fulfilling these time demands this semester, I encourage you to consider taking this course at another time. The decision to join the course is yours, but once you make that choice, you’re joining a community of learners, and you take on responsibilities to all of us. 

• • Please don’t disappear if you are behind or feeling stuck. Let’s work on it. (Come to GSD!) Get help by engaging, trying things out and figuring through, and asking questions—you’ll learn more and get more done in the end.

    • • About a month from the end of the semester is the last day to withdraw from or drop our course without applying for a “late withdraw.” I generally contact students before this date and will withdraw students who have not been active or responded to my email. Learn more at the CCSF Add/Drop Procedure page.

A community is like a garden: it needs some attention and nurturing to flourish. I want each of us to help create a supportive, productive class environment, which means we will all take an active role in watering and tending our class community.

The last couple of years have been a challenging time for “schooling,” with a sudden turn to online classes, isolation, and all the other ambiguities, confusions, and grief wrought by a global pandemic. Research about successful learning indicates that more of us can do well if we are actively part of a connected learning community. This is why I'm naming community tending as an explicit thing we do, something we need to pay attention to. I think we’ll all do better if we keep an eye on tending our classroom community.

Please understand that this is not a self-paced course. We have assignments due several times each week, and activities that are dependent on each other. 

Think of our deadlines as “best by” dates (like on a food package: you can eat it after that, it’s just not as good). Assignments that are more than one week late will earn half a point; a few late assignments is not a deal-breaker. But when late assignments pile up, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and fall too far behind to successfully catch up. 

Most importantly, we all get more value out of doing the work when it’s most relevant to what we’re doing together, and each week’s material will build upon previous weeks. Everyone learns more if we move forward at a similar pace, so please make every effort to complete your work on time so that you can learn, participate fully, and contribute to our community.

Of course, life does sometimes get in the way. So, about that: we still want you here. Let’s get you back on track—the sooner the better.

→ If a few assignments pass you by, there are boosts (AKA extra credit). If you have an off week, you can make up work.

Obviously, the idea here is to encourage you to get stuff done, on time. But there's also space for slip-ups and glitches, dealing with unexpected headwinds, and new learning. You can “boost,” complete late work, and/or resubmit incomplete work.