In both the college and high school classes, I had students who just couldn’t seem to figure out where to start. These students generally did an early assignment or two, seemed to have a basic understanding of how the achievement system was going to work, and then took a break. (Interestingly, every student who got […]
One of the exciting parts of developing the course was that I could let students determine which assignments they would undertake. I spent hours developing small assessments that students could complete to demonstrate an understanding of the different elements of craft that go into the making of a poem, hoping that early in the course […]
In the syllabus this spring, I included achievements for perfect attendance and near-perfect attendance. These achievements had high point values– I had high hopes that students would attend class regularly. It’s not that I believe my presence is magical and that students will learn so, so much from me. No, quite the opposite; I wanted […]
This spring, I had the chance to use the achievement-based course syllabus in two environments: an intro-level course at the college level, and an intro-level course at the high school level. (Though, admittedly, since the high school is a residential school for gifted kids, it was in many ways a college course.) Here’s the syllabus, […]
I’m pretty excited about the books my students chose for the first round of reading assignments in the class. It’s a nice mix of voices, and a few asked for books that surprised me. I had read most of them, but had the opportunity to read Jane Hirshfield’s Come, Thief for the first time this morning. […]
Some more thoughts on a flexible, achievement-oriented assessment system for an Intro to Poetry class. For more context on this post, you may first wish to read: Rationale First Group of Assessments: The Basic Stuff The Bookshop Some Other Achievements A few of these items showed up on First Group of Assessments: The Basic Stuff. Forms […]
Some more thoughts on a flexible, achievement-oriented assessment system for an Intro to Poetry class. For more context on this post, you may first wish to read: Rationale First Group of Assessments: The Basic Stuff The Bookshop Travis made the note this week that the sheer number of items that could be done will likely […]
Some more thoughts on a flexible, achievement-oriented assessment system for an Intro to Poetry class. For more context on this post, you may first wish to read: Rationale First Group of Assessments: The Basic Stuff This post focuses on Bookshop, which is the term I’ve picked for short craft annotations on a book selected by […]
To make sense of this post detailing achievements for a student-centered or game-based Introduction to Poetry Writing course, you may want to first read the post which makes a case for a new system of assessment. Before I jump into achievements, I’m going to refer a couple times to this term, which will be included in […]
This spring, I’ll have the opportunity to teach two introductory poetry writing classes, one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. I’ve taught this course five times now, and every time I’ve loved it. But one thing I have always struggled with […]
I had the chance to teach in a creative entrepreneurship class at UNC-Greensboro on Monday. Visiting students who are putting together business plans for their arts and creative business ideas always thrills me, even though I know that most of the businesses remain just that: ideas. Last year, one of the best ideas was for a small […]
A student asked me to look at an imitation of Walt Whitman for another class this morning, and I began composing thoughts about imitations in my response to her. Here they are: To my mind, an imitation can take a few forms. The first is that you can adopt a voice similar to the poet, […]
Another post about the Grind Daily Writing Series. Here are others: The secret origin of the Grind Why We Grind, Part One We Grind to push ourselves past what we knew we could do. Most people enter a month of the Grind ready and willing to do the work, and they generally have some ideas […]
We Grind to write every day. When I was an undergraduate, my favorite professor’s syllabus included a plethora of quotes about writing regularly or even daily. The one that stuck with me is the one that stuck with many of you, too; I see it in a lot of different places. “Write a little every […]
It’s April now, which some people know as the cruelest month, and others know as National Poetry Month, and handful of others know as NaPoWriMo. Back in maybe 2003– the very infancy of the Interwebs!– poet Maureen Thorson adapted National Novel Writing Month to be an exercise worthy of us poets. Instead of taking a […]
When I brought this blog back with a couple of selected posts made public, I was surprised to get a comment from a friend asking for another post with some advice from an editor, specifically around cover letters. What follows is my thoughts on cover letters. Keep in mind that I’m just one editor, and […]
A friend wrote me and asked the following: “Hope you don’t mind a submitter-type question. There are a couple of journals that I’ve been rejected by more than once. I’d like to keep submitting there because these are journals I admire and where I think my work (in general) kind of fits, but I wonder […]
My students had their midterm exams today, so I am anxious to see what sunk in and what still needs work. We’ve just finished A. Van Jordan’s M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, though we’ll come back to it toward the end of class, when students begin thinking about how collections of poems work. Response to the book was terrific… […]
So, my students are nearing the end of their first book, and have made their requests for a second book. Some went directly for the books that they commented on in the first two weeks, some went back to the list they used for the first requests, and some went in new and surprising directions. […]
I began Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax last night, and though I haven’t yet attempted to apply what I have learned to my readings of poems, I’ve actually found that her translation of some of Robert Jourdain’s thoughts on music (in Music, The Brain, and Ecstasy) had a deep, profound effect on the […]
