I’ve written before about how I teach an Advanced College Writing course, but I don’t think I’ve commented much on it since I first wrote about putting the syllabus together. The course, as I explained earlier, is essentially divided into three parts—one part introduction to literature, one part conference presentations, one part workshop.

So it works like this:

We spend about five weeks getting a few pieces of literature under their belts and cap it off with a novel. While we’re reading all of this, they turn in two-page position papers—tight, focused arguments about the texts we’re reading—and what I call “article treatments,” where they find an article about something we’ve read and provide an analysis of it.
When we’re done with that, they all sign up for presentations and we spend a few weeks (depending upon how many people are in the class) running the class like an actual conference. Every day, a panel of three students sits at the front of the classroom. They read their conference-length papers (about 7 pages) to their classmates and, at the end, we have a question and answer session. This is where we are now. When I first came up with this scheme, I was worried about the risk. What if their papers suck? What if they’re mean to one another in their comments? What if the questions are terrible?

I’ve taught this class several times now, each time with this structure, each time taking this enormous risk that the class will turn on some poor unsuspecting presenter, and each time, at the end of class, I want to run down the hallways singing their praises.

When the papers are good, the discussion is astonishing. The give and take between the presenters and the audience is easily as good, if not better, than professional conferences I’ve attended (and often, the papers are better, too). The ideas zoom around the room. The presenter frantically takes notes as good ideas come up; people whose papers are coming up soon do the same. Everyone picks at and needles the argument, and the result is that arguments and interpretations change in meaningful ways.

When the papers are less than good? The discussion is thoughtful, helpful, respectful—all the things that I hope it will be. The presenters take notes and furrow their brows as they consider new approaches to the text and new lines of argument.

I leave class every day wanting to sing their praises, which I do now, down these virtual hallways.

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