The first piece of writing included in this section is my syllabus for the section of WRA 101 that I taught. The reason why I included it is twofold. It was the first document I created for the first course I ever taught, so I’m a little emotional about it. Additionally, it’s also the first time I try to articulate what my pedagogy is. Since the very start, I place a lot of emphasis on joy, kindness, and messiness. I wanted my students to know that our classroom was a place where they could play with ideas and practice things that might be too risky to try in other spaces; that they could focus on learning rather than on performing well.
Apart from the introduction, some of the ways in which I tried to model these ideals were through my emphasis on reflection. Each piece of writing the students were to produce for the course was to be accompanied by a reflection of their writing process while creating said piece of work. Additionally, their final project was a reflection letter, in which they had the opportunity to look back on their semester, celebrate their accomplishments, and consider what they might have done differently in retrospect. I placed this emphasis on reflection hoping to open-up enough space to have honest dialogues about writing and the role it played for them in the class and outside of it.
That said, there’s also a lot I don’t like about my syllabus. For example, I wish I would designed and implemented a grading contract instead of the grading scale I actually used or that I didn’t have such a steryl tone throughout the whole document. It’s not bad for my first one, but I know I can do better in the future.