You need to be present and participating for all class meetings.

This isn’t about record-keeping or gold stars. Being at college means taking ownership of your education. In order to get something out of being a student, you need to actively engage in the material and the ideas.

Your attendance grade includes your physical presence in class meetings; involvement in class discussion; and turning in all assignments.

Every week there will be a brief one-page response assignment, either in class, on-line, or take-home, where you’ll write a bit about the topics we discussed that week in class.

The specific assignments for each week will be announced in class only on the last class meeting of the week (normally, that’s the Thursday). If the response that week is online or take-home, it will be due the following Monday.

For more on the responses, see the responses page.

In October, everyone will choose a topic related to being a student and do a brief in-class presentation or a brief video to be shown in class. The idea is to talk about something that’s important to you as a student and discuss some of the reasons it’s important and how it impacts on you, those around you, and others in the community.

We’ll go through the stages of this in class together, including choosing a topic, setting up what you want to say, and talking to a group. I’ll also be available to discuss your presentation with you individually.

We’ll talk about topics and each pick one for our presentations at the start of October. And the end of October, we’ll set aside a few class meetings to allow everyone to share their ideas with the class.

For more on the presentation, see the presentation page.

In the last part of the semester we’ll work together on a 3-page critical thinking essay, designed to help prepare you for future course work in other classes. For this paper, you’ll pick a document from history and talk about what you think it really tells us, giving examples of your reasoning from the text you chose and other sources related to that time and place.

We’ll go through together in class this step by step, including choosing a subject, understanding and interpreting evidence, types of sources, structuring an argument, and building your essay. In your English composition class you’ll also be talking about how you go about constructing an essay, so there will be some overlap and support there as well. I’ll also be available to discuss your essay with you individually.

A few weeks before it’s due you’ll turn in a draft, which I’ll respond to individually, and we’ll discuss the best ways to improve your paper before the final draft is due at the end of the semester.

For more on the essay, see the assignment page for this essay.