Taking One for the Team

This is the view my students see less of every day on campus in order to
work on their fiction. I admire their dedication every time I see it. 

This is another entry regarding the student-driven hybrid fiction course I’m piloting at the moment that is testing both my notions of teaching and my students’ understanding of how the classroom is supposed to look. From time to time, I’ll reflect here on what I’m learning along the way.

Part of my new fiction class that I’m finding fascinating is that I have required groups to copy me in on any functional emails they send each other over the course of the week. This is a necessity in the hybrid portion of class because I need ways in which to keep up with the decisions various groups make within their own work and with the other groups in class.

Sure, it’s blown up my inbox a few times. But my observing their correspondence has also elevated the discourse most groups are having with each other about the stories they are writing collaboratively while also helping students distinguish the various different roles they play over the course of the class – Writer, Editor, Communication Specialist, and Group Lead – from each other.

An added benefit has been seeing students make choices I am almost certain they would not in a traditional class.

Exhibit A: One Student Voluntarily Cancelled a Trip to Mexico.

You read that properly. One of my students, upon taking over the role of Group Lead for the first time, emailed the rest of her group to check in on their progress heading into the weekend. This is the part of the weekly schedule when the majority of the week’s writing is being drafted and also the time when face-to-face contact among group members is at its lowest level.  

In her email, she told the group, and me by proxy, that she was staying in town rather than going on the trip with her friends so she would be around should her group need to contact her and clarify anything.

I was certain this was not her only reason, and she confirmed as much when I asked her about it the next day. But she said that it was the responsibility of being the leader, and not the other work she was planning to do over the weekend, that kept her from going. She also told me that she saw telling her group she wasn’t going as a way to motivate them to take their work seriously.

I can’t ask for much more than that. Caring enough about the class to put it ahead of a fun trip and setting an example of the work ethic she wants from her group by exemplifying it in her own actions?

I’m one proud professor.