Our enrollment cap for our first year writing course is 28. Sometimes the powers that be add another for 29, but you get the idea. It's a big class, way bigger than any of our professional organizations sees as a "best practice."
The numbers are a problem in big, obvious ways. But they're also a problem in little ways. My problem today is with focus.
I collected some journals and quizzes from the class today. The journals are frequent short writing assignments (most don't write a full page) to which I respond mostly with short, positive comments in the margins and a quick 1-10 grade. (At least the short, positive comments are my goal.) All sorts of writing research suggests that short writing assignments that someone responds to are a good practice in all sorts of classes, and especially in writing classes. I'm convinced by the research, so I use them in my classes.
I can do 12 of these in short order, well-focused and not too frustrated. And if I saw that I had only a few more to grade, I'd power through the last four or five easily enough. But when I look and see that I have more to grade than I've graded, I find it difficult to keep my focus. And that means that I stop grading and write a whiny blog post or something instead of powering through.
Okay, now I have to get back to that last part of the stack. And then the quizzes.
Bonus: Almost all the students are now actually citing their source in the journal! YAY! (Yes, I care. Citing sources should be habit for assignments in college.)
Our class cap is 22. While that's more manageable than 28, it still seems to be too much. Wouldn't it be amazing to have writing classes with a cap of 15? Geez. Dare to dream. I might be able to teach those kiddos how to punctuate if I didn't have so many of them. (Not that punctuating properly is the ultimate goal of my class, but there might, at least, be time to talk about it ...)
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