General
Expectations for Class Preparation
Bernice L. Hausman
English Department
Virginia Tech
Contact
Info:
206 Shanks Hall, 231-5076
homepage
Email:
bhausman@vt.edu
What this page is for:
This page will give you some basic information about how to prepare for each class period in a discussion-oriented course offered by Professor Hausman. See other web pages about How to Hand in a Paper, Tips for Writing Successful Papers, Formatting, How to Read, and General Expectations for Writing Assignments. Class preparation for lecture classes will be detailed by Professor Hausman in the course of the first week of classes.
Why come to class prepared:
Not being prepared for class makes you unable to participate in class discussion (unless you want to say things without having done the reading, not usually a good idea), and thus unable to contribute to the production of classroom experience and knowledge on any given day. Thus, not being prepared makes you the proverbial "lump on the log" in terms of your presence on that day. It's boring, for you and for your classmates.
Rules for engagement:
In this sense, preparing for class is what makes you interesting to other students and to the professor. You are probably an interesting person for lots of reasons, but what makes you interesting as a class member is what you have to say about the assigned materials. The first rule of being prepared for class, then, is to read the assignment.
The second rule is to think about the readings. (See How to Read for further insight.) Preparing for class means not simply reading the material, but reading with understanding, which generally means reading with an eye toward having an interpretation, or at least an opinion, about the readings. What do you want to say about them? What do they make you think about? What questions do you have about the readings that you can't answer yourself? Taking notes on the readings should be a routine activity for you; coming to class prepared to ask and answer questions about the reading is a baseline expectation of all Prof. Hausman's courses.
The third rule is courtesy. We all come to our courses and our interpretations individually, with different backgrounds and different levels of preparation. Courteous classroom conduct is a requirement for civic engagement and respectful discussion. Courtesy does not, however, mean that we can't be tough on one another and challenge each other to develop ideas that are difficult, counter-intuitive, or just not what ordinarily comes to mind. Being intellectually tough is often the highest form of respect.
As we develop our conversations, we will become more and more comfortable with our differences of opinion. Sometimes, our texts will not give us the opportunity to decide a disagreement one way or another; we will have to agree to disagree. At other times, though, our readings will themselves be bounded in such a way as to circumscribe our interpretations. In the terms of Roland Barthes, some texts are more writerly than others, in that they engage the reader in an act of coproduction of meaning. These texts are more open to interpretive exuberance than other texts, which more narrowly suggest specific meanings.
Regardless of how we label our texts, our main purpose in coming together in a class is to discuss the readings. The professor's job is to develop the interpretive capacities of the students and to teach about some important ways of approaching the texts and ideas of the course (aside from evaluating the students' performance in the class and their learning). To accomplish these goals, students must come prepared to participate in discussion, ask questions when confused, and, in general, engage in the communal production of knowledge that defines the course. This means, of course, that students must try hard to stay awake.