Writing Project 2 Assignment Prompt

Purpose

Writing Project 2 connects to the work we started in Writing Project 1, asking you to further reflect on the knowledge that you bring to this course and connect the value of that work to the social factors that impacted your learning. As such, you may find that you've begun the work of this second project as you've pursued the first essay.

This second writing project asks you to continue developing your writing processes and critical reasoning skills. This project also asks you to write for a more public audience than the previous essay. To build on your skills as a writer, we will talk more about the role that structure plays in crafting a rhetorically sound argument. During this project, we will discuss some methods to arrange your ideas in response to audience needs.

We will also begin to work more deliberately in conversation with other voices and perspectives in our arguments, integrating other views in pursuit of our own work.

Readings

• Baldwin, James. "A Talk to Teachers." Zinn Education Project, www.zinnedproject.org/materials/baldwin-talk-to-teachers.

• Emdin, Christopher. “Teaching Isn’t about Managing Behavior: It’s About Reaching Students Where They Really Are.” The Atlantic, 24 July 2020, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2020/07/reality-pedagogy-teaching-form-protest/614554/.

• hooks, bell. “Introduction.” Teaching to Transgress. Routledge, 1994, pp. 1–12. (PDF on Blackboard)

• Smith, Clint. “Teaching Should Be Political: How to Talk About Race in the Classroom.” The Atlantic, December 2020, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/bringing-politics-into-the-classroom/616934/.

Premise

Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of society. — James Baldwin, "A Talk to Teachers"

In the first writing project, you were asked to reflect on something you know and the significance that your knowledge holds. The "content" of our knowledge is a critical influence in how we view the world. However, to consider the "what" without the "how" may give a too-limited view of the significance of our education.

As James Baldwin discusses in "A Talk to Teachers," the “how” of the education system is of critical importance because it shapes the potential conflict a student might feel with the systems of their learning and living. And the larger effect of those systems of education will influence social beliefs and understanding on a cultural level.

Schools, however, are just one part of the equation—although they are doubtless a weighty portion of that equation and are prone to much critique and circumspection. While systems of education shape the consciousnesses of the students, so too do the communities in which those students live and grow. In fact, those communities may often create barriers to various aspects of learning that the education system would otherwise tackle. At other times, those communities may fill gaps in learning that formal education overlooks or rejects.

As the readings we've already explored in the first project have demonstrated, the community influences on what we know can shape what is seen as valid or "serious" knowledge and can affect how we feel about that knowledge. We can also understand "community" around terms of language use, geographical placement, socioeconomic placement, family, culture, disciplinary specialization, method of inquiry, passionate affinities, and countless other ways.

Regardless of how we interpret the shape of a community, the influence it has on our knowledge matters, and as we dive into the question of why our knowledge matters (and perhaps what other knowledge might matter as well), it’s critical that we look at how that knowledge has been influenced by communities around us.

Writing Prompt

For Writing Project Two, I will suggest that you continue to explore the topic you chose for the first project, and point your focus more specifically to the influence of community on how you have gained that knowledge, how you regard it, or perhaps what you plan to do with it in the future.

Which is to say, we’re going to continue to reflect on our experiences and our knowledge while introducing the perspectives of others and integrating from our shared readings to help develop greater clarity about how we learn and the forces that impact it.

Using our readings during the second project and/or integrating the works we’ve already read during WP1, we’re going to consider how our arguments about community and the impact it has on our knowledge might be understood through the concepts and/or issues that the authors discuss. By adding that grounding of our ideas in others’ voices it can help add weight to the arguments we make without requiring that we go out and do research to find additional sources to make our arguments.

Speaking of other voices, this assignment will also ask you to engage with the possibility of other readers—rather than submitting your final draft as an attachment on Blackboard, you will be asked to create a free account on Medium.com and post your final draft with the possibility of it being seen by other readers across the globe. Medium’s platform also allows for you to integrate other multimedia content into your essay if you wanted, so you might consider how you could enhance your argument through other means.

Prompt Question

Make an argument that engages with a public audience through the platform Medium.com in which you address your answer to the question:

How has your learning been impacted by others?

As you consider a potential topic for WP2, I want to encourage you to continue the work you began in Writing Project 1, taking that effort to reflect on why your knowledge of your selected topic matters and now focus more intently on how others have influenced that knowledge. Maybe they taught you the subject itself; maybe they encouraged (or discouraged) you to learn about it; maybe you admired that community and wanted to be a part of it. Perhaps the community is a formal one—we can easily identify who makes up that community—or perhaps it is informal and difficult to define. That work of “who” and “how” will become central to our work in this next project.

Audience and Significance

The platform Medium draws a wide range of readers, and one way that we can help draw specific audiences to our work on the site is to identify topics that our post is about. You might consider how using topics might draw in different readers depending on those topics.

For example, if I said that my writing was about “writing” and “education” (Medium lets you select up to five topics per post), I might get some writing teachers clicking through to read my writing. However, if I were to select topics of “running,” “marathon training,” and “running shoes,” I would likely attract different readers. How I write will likely reflect the assumptions I make about those readers via those topics, so I would make choices in the approach to my text to anticipate what those readers might be familiar with and to consider how they might want to see the topic presented.

I want us to explore the potential of a public audience through Medium.com because it is important to consider how multiple readers might engage with our work, and if we keep everything locked safely in Blackboard, then our readership is pretty much limited to the other members of the class. If you wanted, you could share your writing with readers outside the class and they could comment and react to your work.

Outside Sources

For Writing Project Two, I want you to engage with at least one of the readings from class as you develop your own argument about freedom and education.

If you would like to cite other outside sources, you may choose to do so, but you should be able to successfully complete this assignment with careful selection of personal experience, critical analysis of those personal examples, and drawing upon the work by the authors we’ve read so far in the class.

Citations and Documentation

Always provide attribution for sources when you use them. Because we are publishing our writing on Medium.com, we might want to document our sources using other means than following the guidelines for MLA in-text citations and Works Cited. For example, you might use an attributive phrase (“According to researchers James Paul Gee and Elisabeth Hayes, …”) or hyperlink to the source itself. We can discuss strategies for attributing those sources as we tackle work of writing this project and developing the online version of it.

Submission

You must post a partial draft of at least 600 words to the Blackboard Discussion Board by your conference time between Tuesday, September 27 and Friday, September 30. I will be conferencing with you individually either in my office or via Zoom to discuss my feedback on your first writing project AND your draft of WP2 during those days.

After your conference meeting with me, I want you to post a full draft of your essay (at least 1000 words, including the shared reading you’re using in your argument) to the Blackboard Discussion Board by the beginning of class on Monday, October 3.

We will have the chance to do more peer review work, so be sure to show up to that class on Monday, October 3, with your laptop/tablet and your draft turned in by the deadline. You’ll get ancillary writing credit for your draft AND the peer response you post.

For your Final Draft, I will have you post your work on Medium.com and submit a link to your post via Blackboard. In addition, I will have you complete the WP2 Self-Assessment worksheet when you submit your final draft. Final Drafts of WP2 (and self-assessments) will be due by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, October 7.

Final Drafts of WP2 will be due Friday, October 7, at 11:59 p.m.

Feedback and Grading

After you have submitted your final draft of Writing Project 2, I will read your submission and give you written feedback. That feedback is given to help you improve your writing skills and to consider ways you might approach future work.

The grade you receive on your final draft of WP2 does not impact your final course grade; because the Grading Contract emphasizes the labor you put into your coursework, making an effort and trying your best to write a compelling argument for WP2 is what matters. The "grade" you receive on your final draft of this essay is intended to help you gauge the work you are doing in the course in relation to the WRIT 150 General Evaluation Rubric as you prepare for the Final Portfolio at the end of the course.

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