Essay #1
Your Calling to Teach: Narrative and Analysis
Due Dates:
| Rough draft (Be ready to share three copies) | October 4 |
| Final Draft | October 9 (via SmartSite) |
Reread these instructions carefully and often before you begin to write. Remember that your essay must tell a story, offer a clear cause-and-effect relationship between an event and your resolution to teach, and support assertions with specific (that is, shown and empirical) evidence.
Each of us has a different set of motivations or influences or even freak events that led us to become (or to choose to become) educators. We might have been motivated by the advice of family members, an influential teacher, an innate talent, a rational assessment of the job market, or by other forces much less ordinary or predictable.
Drawing on the reflection essays in our class reader as resources/models, write an essay in which you 1) tell the story of how you were called to teach, and then 2) reflect upon and analyze the forces that led you to pursue your current or long-term career goals as a teacher. Clarify for your audience the relationship between the influences on you and the choices you have made. For this short essay, please focus on a single narrative or one moment of realization; don’t let your essay become an elaborate list or a rambling remembrance. Consider what makes any story interesting and meaningful, and then include these elements (conflicts, obstacles, realizations, discoveries, resolutions, etc.) in your essay.
Organize your narrative and ideas according to some consistent principle, and make sure to convey some overall point to your reader. As you explain the relevance of your narrative, stick to a main point or thesis, supporting and developing that point with specifics–anecdotes, vivid recollections, and descriptive details–that will enliven your paper. Allow no irrelevancies to appear in your final draft. Revise for unity, conciseness, and clarity, using “Revision: Cultivating a Critical Eye” as your guide.
Length: 750 Words (Three double-spaced typed pages).
Bring three copies of your essay to be workshopped.
In your draft, underline your thesis; make your topic sentences clear (and if you don’t understand these concepts thoroughly, review them now on a university online writing lab website).
Keep Hairston’s “Elements of Good Writing” in mind as you edit your draft.
Revise your final draft dozens of times before submitting it.
Include with your final draft a completed questionnaire, a rough draft, and a progress log.
Note also this general discussion of evidence (also relevant for your final essay).
Note This Warning About Using Specific Evidence to Support Your Assertions : Narrative and Analysis essays which lack assertions supported with specific evidence (that is, descriptions and narratives starring named actors who are shown to be engaged in actions) rarely earn a grade higher than a “C.” (Please read that last sentence over a dozen or more times until you are sure you understand it.) Furthermore, reflection essays that begin with long, rambling or “preachy” introductions rarely earn a grade higher than a “B-.” Make your narrative clear, unified and engaging.
For more on “showing” your narrative (rather than blandly “telling” what happened), see “Show, Don’t (Just) Tell” by Dennis Jerz.
If you are wondering what we mean by appropriately specific supporting evidence, consider this paragraph, written by a UWP104D student during the spring of 2010:
During my remaining years of high school, I eagerly enrolled into oceanography, excited for what awaited me. The return to the biological sciences felt familiar and safe, for biology lived at the heart of my passion. I soon discovered that my teacher had as much love and enthusiasm for the subject and her students in the classroom, as she did outside of it. Making my way to my desk, I saw 20-gallon aquariums placed throughout the room, filled to the brim with water. Microscopes lined the workbenches along the walls, each equipped with a Petri dish. On that day we would learn about phytoplankton. Providing students with an overhead transparency and toothpicks, she challenged us to compete as a class and construct the best possible phytoplankton model. Scissors drawn, we cut and crafted our specimens, testing them in the tanks, attempting to suspend them at the perfect depth. As the contestants dwindled and the winner was declared, we moved to the microscopes, peering into the mysterious fluid contained in each dish. Live plankton of various shapes and sizes awaited us, some floating, while others twisted and turned. To this day I remember her creative lessons, the ways that she engaged each student, and even the smell of the hand soap placed at every sink.
