COURSE SYLLABUS

Office: Faculty Towers 201A
Instructor: Dr. Schmoll
Spring, 2010
Email: bschmoll@csub.edu
Office Phone: 654-6549
Office Hours: MWF 1:40-3
…OR MAKE AN APPOINTMENT!!!

ENGLISH 100, SECTION 3 30227
Mon Fri 10:55-12:15 DDH 105H
Wed 10:55-12:15 Classroom Bldg 101


Dear Class,
Welcome to this course. This quarter, we will enjoy numerous experiences together, traveling on countless mental journeys. To start things off, I have constructed a syllabus that will guide the class, hopefully answer many of your questions, and become the official constitution and law of this course.
Why is this syllabus so long, you may ask? As a student, you realize what you must do to succeed in college, right? Some students, rather than doing what is necessary and accepting the consequences of their decisions, would rather abuse the system by searching for loopholes in each professor’s syllabus. One of the best professors to ever teach at this institution never even gave students a syllabus; how would he fare in our overly legalistic climate today? I’ll let you ponder that, but for now, it’s important to say that this ridiculously long syllabus represents my desire to state all rules and regulations and to clarify what this course is all about.

Attendance:
Just to be clear, to succeed on tests and papers you really should be in class. That’s just common sense, right? To pass this class, you may not miss more than two classes. Why is that? Does it sound harsh? Every class meeting matters. If you miss two classes that’s bad; how can you expect to do well doing that? Certainly your participation grade will suffer if you do that, but we’ll talk about that later. For now, if you miss that third class meeting, you are missing 10% of the quarter. You cannot do that and pass. So, here’s what we do. Do your darndest to not miss any class unnecessarily. Let’s say your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, or wife calls and wants to take you to Tahiti this weekend, but you won’t be back until late Tuesday night. Here’s what you say: “Honey, I love you, but Dr. Schmoll seems to value my education more than you do, so we are breaking up.” Ok, that may be harsh, so don’t do that, but just make sure that you do not miss any class until the 8th week. What I’ve found is that it seems inevitable that those who miss two classes early for pathetic reasons like doctor’s appointments that should have been more carefully scheduled get to the 8th week and then have to miss for a legitimate reason (like a surprise meeting at work, a sick child to take care of, or a flat tire). If you get to that 8th week and then have to miss your third class, it’ll be bad. By that point, I’ll be kind, compassionate, a real shoulder to cry on, if you want, when telling you that you’ve now failed the course. Now, if you make it to the 8th or 9th week and you have not missed those two classes, then you have some wiggle room, so that if, heaven forbid, your cat Poopsie gets pneumonia and you have to sit up all night bottle-feeding her liquid antibiotics, you and I don’t have to have that ugly conversation where I tell you that Poopsie gets blamed for you failing the course. Let’s put this another way; do you like movies? No way, me too! When you go to the movies do you usually get up and walk around the theatre for 15% of the movie? Let’s say you do decide to do that, out of a love of popcorn and movie posters, perhaps. If you did that, would you expect to understand the whole story? Okay, maybe if you are watching Harold and Kumar, but for anything else, you’ll be lost. So, please, get to class.

Being Prompt:
Get to class on time. Why does that matter? First, it sends the wrong message to your principal grader(that’s me). As much as we in the humanities would like you to believe that these courses are objective (at what time of day did the Battle of the Marne begin?), that is not entirely the case. If you send your principal grader the message that you don’t mind missing the first few minutes and disturbing others in the class, don’t expect to be given the benefit of the doubt when the tests and papers roll around. Does that sound mean? It’s not meant to, but just remember, your actions send signals. Being late also means that someone who already has everything out and is ready and is involved in the discussion has to stop, move everything over, get out of the chair to let you by, pick up the pencil you drop, let you borrow paper, run to the bathroom because you spilled the coffee, and so on. It’s rude.
Since we read as the first activity each day, it may seem like showing up on time is not important...crucial mistake! Get here on time!
So, what are the consequences of persistent tardiness? What do you think they should be? Remember that 10% participation? You are eligible for that grade if you are on time. Get here on time. And no, I’m not the jackass who watches for you to be late that one time and stands at the door and points in your face. One time tardiness is not a problem precisely because it is not persistent. It’s an accident; show up late twice, and your participation grade will disappear.

The Unforgivable Curse:
Speaking of one time issues, there is something that is so severe, so awful, that if it happens one time, just one time, no warning, no “oh hey I noticed this and if you could stop it that’d be super,” you will automatically lose all 10 percent of the Participation grade. Any guesses? Cmon, you must have some idea. No, it’s not your telephone ringing. If that happens, it’ll just be slightly funny and we’ll move on. It’s a mistake and not intentional, and the increased heart rate and extra sweat on your brow from you diving headfirst into an overstuffed book bag to find a buried phone that is now playing that new Cristina Aguilera ringtone is punishment enough for you. So, what is it, this unforgivable crime? Texting. If you take out your phone to send or receive messages you will automatically lose 10% of your course grade. That means, if you receive a final grade of 85%, it will drop to 75%. If you receive a final grade of 75%, it will become a 65%. Why is that? The phone ringing is an accident. We laugh at it; we move on. Heck, my phone my even go off during class. Texting is on purpose and is rude. It, in fact, is beyond rude. It wreaks of the worst of our current society. It bespeaks the absolutely vile desire we all have to never separate from our technological tether for even a moment. It sends your fellow classmates and your teacher the signal that you have better things to do. Checking your phone during class is like listening to a friend’s story and right in the middle turning away and talking to someone else. Plus, the way our brains work, you need to fully immerse yourself, to tune your brain into an optimal, flowing machine (see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s incredible book Flow) that can grasp and can let itself go. Students now tend to see school as a stopover on their way to a career. Brothers and sisters, that’s deadly! I wish that I could pay for you all to quit your jobs and just focus on the mind. I can’t yet do that but if I could I would, because it’d be worth every penny. Devoting time to the mind and to thinking deeply about your world will change who you are and how you approach your future, your family, your job, and your everything. Is that overstated? I believe it to be true. So, until my stock choices really take off so that I can pay all of your bills, promise me one thing. When you are in class or preparing for class, you have to be fully here. Oh crap, now it’s going to sound like a hippy professor from the 1960s: “I mean, like, be here man, just be here.” Maybe the hippies had something. Devote yourself fully to your classes by unplugging from the outside world for awhile.

Late Policy:
I do not accept late papers...it's that clear. If, by some means, a tornado hits your car forcing you to turn in a paper late, the paper will lose 10% for each day that it is late. That starts at the start of class, so if the paper is ten minutes late, it will lose 10%. By the next day, it loses another 10%, and so on. Be responsible.

Rough Draft Policy:
If you do not have a complete rough draft on the day rough drafts are due in class, you will fail that assignment. That means you bring a complete rough draft, typed, double spaced, of the appropriate length.

Class Climate:
No, I don’t mean whether it’s going to rain in here or not. Sometimes I’ll lecture at you, but even then, your participation is vital. How can you participate when someone is lecturing? Any ideas? Turn to a neighbor and tell them the story of your first day at school in kindergarten. Now, if you are the one listening to the story, right in the middle look away, look at your watch, sneer at them, roll your eyes, yawn, wave to someone across the room, nudge a person next to you and tell them a joke, all while the other person is telling about his or her first day of kindergarten. If this happens in social setting we call it rude, and we call the people who listen in that way jackasses. They are not our friends precisely because we deeply value listening and do not put up with those who do not listen well. Right? So, there will be lecturing, and if you abhor what we are doing, then fake it. I used to do that sometimes too: “oh no, professor, I love hearing you talk about President Reagan’s supply side economics.” If we listen to psychologists, by faking interest you’ll be learning much more than if you show your disinterest. The next time you are sad force yourself to smile and you’ll see what I mean. So, sometimes there will be lecture. At other times there will be discussion of short readings that we do in class. During these times, it’s crucial that you do the silly little exercises: turn to a neighbor; find someone you don’t know and discuss this or that; explain to your friend what we just went over in lecture; pick something from the reading to disagree with; find two people on the other side of the room; throw cash at your professor…ok, maybe not that last one. This class is a bit unique in that it violates the normally accepted activity systems of college history classrooms. What we do in discussion will help solidify the concepts of each section of this course in your brain. If you are active in class, you will have to study less, and you’ll find yourself remembering much more.

Mining:
Have you ever wanted to be a miner? They do have those cool helmets with the lamp on top. Think about what miners do. They dig and dig, into the earth, looking for gold, coal, silver, or other valuable rocks. Sometimes all their digging amounts to nothing. They have to stop, change directions, and dig again. But sometimes they hit a productive vein. Our class will be a little like that. We’ll do some exercises that will amount to nothing and go nowhere. Who is the best judge of that? That’s right; you are! Sometimes we’ll do a written piece that will be fabulous and will produce beautiful golden prose. You will want to polish those pieces and turn them into even more brilliant and shining jewels.

Reading:
How many of you love reading? I did not read a book until I was 18, so if you have not yet started your journey on this ever widening path, it’s never too late. In any course, there’s no substitute for reading. Jim Moffett says that “all real writing happens from plentitude,” meaning that you can only really write well about someone once you know about it. Reading is one way to know—not the only, by any means! I want you to have experiences with great texts. I can show you voluminous research proving why you nee to read more, but then if I assign a stupid, long, expensive textbook you probably will end up not reading, or only reading to have the reading done, something we have all done, right? The economy now requires much high literacy rates (see The World is Flat), and even though reading levels have not gone down in the last 40 years, it is crucial that you start to push your own reading so that your own literacy level goes up. For these ten weeks, diving wholeheartedly into the course reading is vital. Remember to read in a particular way. As reading expert and UCSB professor Sheridan Blau has argued, “reading is as much a process of text production as writing is.” Reading involves revision? Does that sound silly? As you read, think about the different ways that you understand what you read. Most importantly, when you read, think about the words of E.D. Hirsch, who says that we look at what a text says (reading), what it means (interpretation), and why it matters (criticism). Hey, but if you are in a history course, aren’t you supposed to be reading for exactly the number of miles of trenches that were dug in World War One, how many railroad workers died from 1890 to 1917, or what the causes of the Great Depression were? Anyway, the answer is yes and no. There are two types of reading that you’ll do in college. As the literary goddess theorist Louise Rosenblatt explains, there is aesthetic reading, where you are reading to have an experience with the text, and there is efferent reading, where you are reading to take away information from the text. You do both types all the time. Think about a phone book. You have probably never heard someone say of a phone book, “don’t tell me about it, I want to read it for myself.” Reading a phone book is purely efferent. In this course you will practice both types of reading. I have chosen texts that you can enjoy (aesthetic) and that you can learn from(efferent). I want to see and appreciate the detail in our reading, but in this course I’ll give you that detail in class lectures. In the reading, it’s much more important that you read texts that will live with you forever and to inspire you to think more thoroughly about your world. As you read, you should be working hard to create meaning for yourself. As Rosenblatt asserts, “taking someone else’s interpretation as your own is like having someone else eat your dinner for you.” Please, don’t let the numbskulls as wikipedia or sparknotes eat your dinner for you.

Class Rules:
1. You should not lie to your teacher. How stupid that I should have to say that here, right? But I am sick and tired of hearing that a student is not in class because of that wonderful new word to which teachers can have no response: “famamergency.” (translation: “family emergency”) Just tell the truth and the world will be a better place;
2. You will speak every day in this course. No, I will not call on you or ask you to sing in front of class, but you will quite often hear me say, “turn to a neighbor and…”;
3. Be respectful of your classmates; disagree with them often, but be respectful.
4. You should use and abuse office hours. I’m in my office a ridiculous number of hours per week. One of the nest ways for you to retain information and build the kind of intellectually active life that makes college wonderful is by connecting with your teachers in office hours. Your learning will increase immeasurably.
5. You must bring a signed statement saying that you read the whole syllabus. You will also need a journal dedicated to this class. Bring that every day. I will occasionally check that journal, so you should not have any other notes in it.


REQUIRED READING:
1. Tattoos on the Heart, Gregory Boyle

2. A Novel or Non-Fiction Book of your Choice

3. A Grammar Text (do not buy a new one: Quick Access, Mosaics, etc.)


A DISCLAIMER ABOUT THE READING:
The book Tattoos on the Heart is a book written by a Catholic priest detailing his many years of working with gang members in East L.A. and helping them escape the violence and drugs of gang life. This book has incredible stories that will make you think, but you should also be aware that it is also written from Father Greg’s distinctly Christian perspective. In no way is this book meant to sway you to a certain religious belief. Instead, I want you to see the way this man gives his whole life to a cause, the way the gang members respond to him, the difficulties gang members have in leaving their gang, and the various institutional responses that Greg and others set up to offer some hope (like the Homeboy Bakery). If you have any problem in reading this book, by all means speak to me and I’ll set up an alternative for you.


GRADE BREAKDOWN:

In-Class Essay #1: 5%
In-Class Essay #2: 5%
Betty Awards: 5%
My Crazy Neighbor: 10%
Assignment #3: 10%
Father Greg Essay: 15%
Two Minute Book Report: 5%
Synthesis Essay: 20%
Blog Discussions: 5%
My Writing Lab: 10%
Participation: 10%


GRADED BUSINESS: this section will briefly describe the graded work you’ll do in this course. We will cover each area in much greater detail later.

My Writing Lab:
This is a computer-based program that will help you tackle your writing problems with exercises. While the best way to learn to write better is to write and read more, this program will give you specific assistance in your areas of greatest need.
You’ll get signed up for MWL this week. You must complete all of the assigned topics by the sixth week. You will have time during our computer lab days to work on this.

Blog Entries:
Each week you will submit entries and responses to our class blog. These entries, thoughts, complaints, ideas, movie or book suggestions, restaurant recommendations, or whatever you write, will extend the discussions of our class to the wider, internet world.
The blog name for this class is http://springlish2010.blogspot.com/

Sometimes, you may just want to read and ask questions of your classmates.

Betty Awards:
We’ll start the course with this assignment. It’s a contest that may result in you winning real money…

My Crazy Neighbor:
You will write a brilliant descriptive piece of spy non-fiction. Start examining the habits, strange hours, gardening techniques, newspaper retrieval methods, or anything else that strikes you about one particular neighbor.

In-Class Essay:
We will write two essays in class.
To be eligible to pass this course you must earn a C- or higher on the in-class essay.

Two Minute Book Report:
This is a secret. Just make sure your book is read.

Assignment 3:
This assignment will be explained in greater detail later.

Father Greg Essay:
We will write an essay on this inspirational book. As you read, take note of the various gang members, how Father Greg approaches them, and what it takes to escape the gang.

Final Assignment:
Your final assignment this quarter will be a synthesis. Normally, writing a synthesis means synthesizing from reading several sources. This time, you are going to write a special synthesis, a critical summation of your year at CSUB. You will have the opportunity to consider every class that you’ve taken this year, finding common themes between them in an effort to bring to some meaningful analytical conclusion your year. What has connected your learning in math and anthro and sociology and history and psychology and biology and criminal justice? Start thinking about this now!

TURNITIN.COM
For each assignment, the essay must be printed out and handed in at the beginning of the class in which it is due. By midnight, the essay must also be turned in to turnitin.com. We will go over sign-in procedures together. The Class ID is 3184994. The password is super secret and will be handed out in class.


COURSE SCHEDULE

3/29 Introduction/Explain and Begin Assignment #1/Explain Your Choice Book

3/31 CESAR CHAVEZ DAY/CAMPUS CLOSED

4/2 Signed Syllabus Statement Due/Dedicated Journal Due/Your Choice Book
Due (fiction or non-fiction, not a textbook but may be for a class). This book must be read by 4/21


4/5 Betty Awards Writing Due (Assignment #1)/Explain Assignment #2

4/7 In-Class Essay #1

4/9 Dan Kirby Exercise: _____ at your age.
_____ at half your age.
_____ at twice your age.
Observe the person from the outside.
For each time period, take a picture of yourself in words.
For each time period, start with a place: for example, “I am sitting
on the hood of my 1981, dog poo brown Dodge Omni, waiting for my bobbed blond haired 5 foot nothin’ tall girlfriend Beth Anne to finish working at the Wherehouse Music store on Columbus Street…”


4/12 Assignment #2 “My Crazy Neighbor” Rough Draft Due

4/14 FURLOUGH DAY—NO CLASS

4/16 Assignment #2 “My Crazy Neighbor” Final Draft Due


4/19 Explain assignment #3/ IDIOMS EXERCISE (linguistic collocations): Hit the Road, Air your dirty laundry in public, all hell broke loose, alive and kicking, backseat driver, keep in mind, par for the course, hit the road, got up on the wrong side of the bed, as sharp as a tack, piece of cake. kick the bucket…what do these mean? Draw them as literal statements.

4/21 Your Choice Book must be read by today/Two Minute Book Report

4/24 Work on Assignment #3


4/26 Work on Assignment #3

4/28 Work on Assignment #3

4/30 Assignment #3 Due/George Hillocks: Analyzing Evidence: Slip or Trip?


5/3 Assign Father Greg Essay/ Writing about Art:
Is this beautiful? http://wallpaper.travelblog.org/Wallpaper/pix/tb_fiji_sunset_wallpaper.jpg
Is this beautiful? http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Gustav_Klimt/kiss.jpeg
Is this beautiful? http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5448/198420afghan20girlhz1.jpg
Now, define beauty without using examples.
Is it possible? What does it mean to be beautiful?

5/5 Dear Abby Writing/Food Write Around

5/7 Random Autobiography


5/10 Father Greg Reading Due/Discuss

5/12 Recall your favorite place to play as a child. Write about something that
happened there. What was so great about the place?
Take three stories from around the room and answer the following questions: who do these stories have in common? taken together, what does it mean to play? Answer them in your group.

5/14 Father Greg Rough Draft Due


5/17 Father Greg Final Draft Due

5/19 Assign Synthesis Essay

5/21 FURLOUGH DAY—NO CLASS


5/24 Synthesis Work

5/26 In-Class Essay #2

5/28 Neighborhood Map


5/31 MEMORIAL DAY/CAMPUS CLOSED

6/2 Rough Draft of Synthesis Essay Due

6/4 Individual Conferences


6/7 LAST DAY OF CLASS/FINAL Draft of Synthesis Due Today