ENG 202: Teaching TA Guide

At or right after your first tutorial session (ahead of which you must read the first Cavendish reading assignment!), you should:

• Recruit students onto the Discursive Track during the first meeting! (Keep in mind that the maximum at any one time is four students per tutorial section — but three is ideal — and that they’ll have a chance to switch on or off of the Discursive Track at midterm.)

• Copy your students’ info from their CQ worksheets, compiling (a) a master cut-and-pasteable email list for both your tutorial sections and (b) a straightforward spreadsheet (or something similar) on which you can keep track of each student’s personal information, email address, accommodations, and ongoing grades (DDAH item 1.4), including their participation, their comprehension question (CQ) worksheets, their attendance, and their assignment grades (Philological Essays or Discursive Presentations) — keep in mind that you will have to submit this sheet to our admin TA twice during term, so it should be clear and easily readable. Our admin TA will be in touch presently about the preferred form for the spreadsheet to take.

• Establish the location and times of your weekly Office Hours, ideally with your students’ feedback on what times are good for them, then let both me and your students know what they are. You’re responsible for holding 90 minutes of Office Hours during each week that classes meet, whether in person or remotely (DDAH item 2.2).

• Determine how you want to receive essay assignments (by email? by Quercus? in hard copy?) and let me and your students know; note that I prefer not to use automated anti-plagiarism apps in my courses.

• Start reading your first round of Discursive Track articles (DDAH item 3.4).

Every week, you should:

• Attend all ENG 202 sessions, including lectures (DDAH item 1.1), bringing and circulating your students’ CQ worksheets at the beginning, then collecting them at the end, and checking/marking them before the next session (DDAH item 3.1)

• Complete all ENG 202 reading and watching assignments (DDAH item 1.3), including videos (DDAH item 1.6), that are assigned to the undergrads

• Run your two tutorial sessions per week (DDAH item 2.1), asking a very basic comprehension question in the final 2-3 minutes of each session. Prepare nearly nothing except doing the reading yourself. When you get there, allow student questions to take precedence: let them drive, and improvise the direction of the conversation based on what they bring to the table, encouraging references to specific passages or to throughlines from lecture and prior readings. Always offer ample time for clarification of confusing readings. Giving your students a forum to talk about the reading, and to bounce their ideas off of each other and off of you, is your primary task.

• Remember, too, that you’ll be grading them on their participation/engagement in these discussions, so keep light notes and periodically (or, at least once at midterm) jot down provisional numerical participation scores for each student. (Students whose participation is nil should receive a 45; students whose participation is truly truly excellent should receive between an 87 and 90; very few students — one or two per tutorial session at most — should receive such a “truly truly excellent” grade; the average of your participation grades should fall somewhere in the high 70s or, if the conversation was especially lively, low 80s). Remember that students who feel unable to contribute aloud can opt to hand your pre-prepared comments at the beginning of class.

• Hold your weekly Office Hours.

• Answer your students’ emails within the week they were sent, at most. Aim for about 2hrs max per week (but try for less, DDAH item 2.3). Forward any course management/mechanics/accommodations issues to me, and any technical issues to the admin TA; no email should be very long -- long-form concerns should be redirected to your OHs or to me.

How to grade Discursive Track assignments:

• Every three weeks, the Discursive Trackers in your tutorial sections (if any) will take over all or part of the session with their own mini-lectures, running subsequent discussions. Before those presentation dates, you’ve got to make sure there are no more than four Discursive presenters, organize the presentations to make sure each student is working on a different scholarly article (DDAH item 1.5), and read or skim through the scholarly articles they have chosen, spending about one hour per article (DDAH item 3.4).

• During the Discursive Trackers’ presentations, take as thorough notes as you’ll need in order to ask productive questions during their Q&A and to fill out their grading form later on.

• Once the presentations are done, fill out one Discursive Track grading form per presenter—which should take you no longer than ten minutes per form—and send each student their form within a week of the presentation. Don’t forget to record your numerical grades in your spreadsheet as instructed by our admin TA.

• The week before the second round of presentations, check in with students about who wants to switch onto, or off of, the Discursive Track.

How to grade Philological Track assignments:

• Receive student essays by whatever means you and your admin TA prefer.

• Consult, and enact, the extension/lateness policy I’ve laid out at this webpage. The webpage specifies that papers receiving extensions need receive no comments, only a numerical grade — but I invite you to bend that rule as you see fit (doing so will not exceed the hours already allotted for this task). Papers submitted late without extensions, however, should never receive any feedback further than a numerical grade.

• Spend no more than 20 minutes on each essay (DDAH items 3.2 and 3.3): the most pressing thing for you to do is to read the essay fully through and assign it a numerical grade; the time that remains should be used for whatever comments you consider most helpful to the student writer. In grading, please keep in mind that I have communicated to students that the main criteria for evaluation are specificity, clarity, rigor, innovation, precision, tone, focus, stakes, complexity, depth, and economy. See here for brief explanations of each of these criteria, with links to deeper investigations of each. I recommend making comments directly onto the essay, but keeping your numerical grades in a separate document or spreadsheet, so you can review the grades more easily later .

• If you see reason to suspect academic dishonesty, you can devote a couple of minutes to doing basic reconnaissance to determine whether it has occurred—beyond that, grade the essay as normal—but if you suspect the offense is serious, then forward the essay directly and immediately to me with a few brief words of explanation.

• Once you’re done grading all your essays, give your range of grades a final look—were you grading the earlier essays with the same rigor as the later ones? Make adjustments as needed. If the average grade across all your essays is lower than 74, then increase all grades by whatever percentage is necessary to bring the average up to 74.

• Return your students’ essays back to them, again by whatever means you prefer, with comments and grades attached, within ten days of submission.

After midterm grading is complete:

• The admin TA should provide you with a fillable spreadsheet that clearly shows, for each of your students, a provisional participation grade, a tally of missed class session so far (not counting absences from the first three class sessions); a tally of missed comprehension questions (counting all class sessions), and grades for assignments in the first half of term (for Philological students, the one essay grade; for Discursive students, two presentation grades; for Embodied students, just a zero that I’ll emend later). Fill out the spreadsheet and send it back to the admin TA. Do not delete any fields in the spreadsheet provided: just fill out the data relevant to your students.

At the end of term:

• Update the spreadsheet with data for each of your students, including a final participation grade, a tally of missed class session so far (not counting absences from the first three class sessions); a tally of missed comprehension questions (counting all class sessions); grades for assignments in the first half of term (for Philological students, the one essay grade; for Discursive students, two presentation grades; for Embodied students, just a zero that I’ll emend later), and grades for assignments in the second half of term (same). Send the completed spreadsheet to the admin TA.

Running Tutorials: Suggested Lull Questions and Comprehension Questions

Do not lecture in your tutorial sessions! There certainly will be material related to our course text that I do not cover in my lectures (it’s a survey covering a millennium in 12 weeks!) but tutorial is NOT an opportunity to add supplementary coverage — it is an opportunity for our students to respond to and deepen their understanding of what was covered, by asking questions, expressing ideas, and requesting clarification or context. The students’ own contributions and ideas should shape the tutorial; it’s your job to bring those contributions and ideas out of them, in ways that will provoke and deepen all participants’ engagement. The students’ ideas, not yours, should be the main driver of tutorial.  Your job is to act as facilitator: encouraging and prompting student ideas to be heard, clarifying misunderstandings about material, drawing connections among what students have already contributed (“It seems to me that Caiden’s reading of this passage chafes somewhat against Corynn’s — are these ideas incompatible, or is can we articulate this as a complexity inherent to the text?”), or encouraging deeper or more complex dives into the conversation already underway, always encouraging references to specific passages and identifying throughlines (where you see them) from lecture and prior readings (so, for instance, you might press with “where specifically in the text did you notice this, or feel this?”, or even “I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to a particular passage/line/text that might ground/resonates with/challenge what Caiden just said”). 

The first and most important things to do in each tutorial are to a) check in with progress, reading, and comprehension—is everyone keeping up with the readings and does anyone need clarification; b) invite questions and comments from students and let them drive the conversation as far as it goes (and working into discussion any contributions submitted to you through Alternative Avenues); c) invite the class to comment on, complicate, challenge, or critique, in their own terms, what has been said so far about readings, perhaps making connections across prior lectures and discussions.

That said, sometimes there are lulls in discussion. Remind students first and foremost that they’ve all been instructed (in the intro video) to come to every class prepared with two possible contributions to discussion — if you say “does anyone have anything else to add?” and no one does, then they have not done their work; you should warn them that my class policy is that whenever it becomes clear that no students have prepared contributions properly, you are supposed to reduce the average participation grade of the whole class. But if lulls persist, or if students just need a little extra nudge, you can refer to my optional “lull questions” below as light prompts to get the ball rolling.

WEEK I

Assignment 202-1: Read Cavendish, Blazing World, pages 57-102 (pages 84-91 are optional).

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1.     Is there anything in the lecture’s interpretation of/relation to our class readings that anyone wants to comment on, complicate, or challenge?

• 2.     Hone in on the subject of enjoyment, or lack thereof.  Ask students to share any passages where they enjoyed the imagery, or alternately, where they were bored.  Start the process of picking apart and analyzing what evoked that reaction.

• 3.   Try reading together through the fullness of Cavendish’s prologue (or any other passage of comparable length) and inviting reactions.  If you use the prologue, ask whether, in the reading students have done so far, Cavendish makes good on the promises the prologue makes.

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

Which of the following creatures does not appear in the Blazing World passage we read for today?  Bear-men, Cat-men, Bird-men, Fish-men, or Worm-men?

WEEK II

Assignment 202-2: Read Cavendish, Blazing World, pages 102-141.

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1.     How does Cavendish’s use of language differ from Donne’s and Milton’s?  Are there similarities?

• 2.     Practice close reading on a passage you liked in the Cavendish reading: please consult my course website at https://premodernity.net/1specificity (but skip the video) to get a sense for how I’d like close reading to be taught, but please also feel free to take it in your own direction. Have the OED open during that close reading; refer to it with gusto!

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

What person does the Empress first summon into her own world, and connect intimately with, in spirit form?  (Any answer that refers to “Margaret Cavendish” or “Duchess of Newcastle” is acceptable).

WEEK III

Assignment 202-3A: Watch Video Lecture ENG 202-3

Assignment 202-3B: Finish Cavendish, Blazing World, 143-164 and read Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 5.

Today, your time should primarily (and ideally exclusively!) be given over to Discursive Track presentations and the discussion that arises from them.  But if there is any time remaining, you can use one of these suggested lull questions if you wish:

• 1.   How did witnessing a live staged reading of the Shakespeare affect the way you read the remainder of the play on your own?

• 2.   How much of the very serious matter in either reading—the Shakespeare and the Cavendish—yields a satisfactory camp or parodic reading?  How much is tongue-in-cheek, and how can you tell, and can it be both, and does it matter?

• 3.  What about endings?  What did we make of the way that Shakespeare’s final scene, and Cavendish’s epilogue, summed up and tied together what came before (or failed to do so)?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

Name one pair of characters who get married in Act Five of Twelfth Night.

WEEK IV

Assignment 202-4A: Read Robin Hood and the Potter (inscribed c. 1500) [Optional: Audio Accompaniment ENG 202-A (Robin Hood and the Potter)]; read A Gest of Robin Hood (composed c. 1450, printed c. 1510) [Optional: Audio Accompaniment ENG 202-B (A Gest of Robin Hood)].

Assignment 202-4B: Read Parker’s “A True Tale of Robin Hood”; Read “Robin Hood and Maid Marian”; Read selections from Munday’s Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon

Important: during this tutorial session, please briefly review with students how the CQ sheets work. Remind them that missed CQs require make-ups (you may opt to just read through the course policies printed directly on the CQ sheet!).

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1.     How do early stories of Robin Hood differ from later ones? 

• 2.     Can we see the process of gentrification here—and what does gentrification do to our appreciation of the story?  Which Robin do we like better? 

• 3.     Which Robin most closely resembles present-day versions of the story—and what does that make us think about how present-day versions of the story relate to the “narrative of diminishing liberties”, of a literature founded in restriction and centralization, that we’ve discussed?

• 4.     What is going on with the “Skelton” character in Munday’s play?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

In Munday’s Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, why does Prince John want to bring about Robin’s downfall?  What is his main problem with Robin?

WEEK V

Important note: at this time during term, the way this week-by-week breakdown aligns with the students’ schedule of assignments may get disrupted. Please double check what you’re preparing against their assignments, linked through the main course page.

Assignment 202-5: Read Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley (1530s) [Optional: Audio Accompaniment ENG 202-C (Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, etc)]

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1.     What was exciting, gripping, or enjoyable in the story of Cloudesley?  (If anything!)  What needs explanation or clarification?

• 2.     How does Cloudesley’s handling of violence, law-and-order, and gender differ from, or resemble, the various Robin tales we’ve seen so far?

• 3.     How does Cloudesley fit, or fail to fit, within traditional divisions between medieval and early modern English literature?  What about with present-day aesthetic values?

• 4.     How does the style and structure of Cloudesley compare with that of Wyatt and Skelton, contemporary with its circulation?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

In Munday’s Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, why does Prince John want to bring about Robin’s downfall?  What is his main problem with Robin?

WEEK VI

Important note: at this time during term, the way this week-by-week breakdown aligns with the students’ schedule of assignments may get disrupted. Please double check what you’re preparing against their assignments, linked through the main course page.

Assignment 202-6A: Watch Video Lecture ENG 202-6

Assignment 202-6B: Read the “Prose Life of Robin Hood” (c. 1600), “The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield” (c. 1650); “Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar” (c. 1650); “Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage” (1660s).

Today, your time should primarily (and ideally exclusively!) be given over to Discursive Track presentations and the discussion that arises from them.  But if there is any time remaining, you can use one of these suggested lull questions if you wish:

• 1.     What did we make of Clorinda and how does she compare to Marian, or to other women from the outlaw tales?

• 2.     In certain ways, these ballads—all from the seventeenth century—feel more medieval than most of the seventeenth-century texts we’ve read.  Why do we think that is so (or do we think that is so?)—and does it have anything to do with whether the ballads are meant for live performance?

• 3.     Let’s review all the outlaw tales we’ve covered in class: their dates, and their similarities and differences.  And if we’re brave enough, let’s discuss which are the best and worst of the bunch: not in a personal, eye-of the-beholder way, but aiming to discuss which are most necessary to the canon (and to the syllabus!) and which, perhaps, are not.1.   How did witnessing a live staged reading of the Shakespeare affect the way you read the remainder of the play on your own?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

What two decades do “The Jolly Pinder of Wakefield,” “Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar,” and “Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage” come from?  (Yes, those who think to check the backs of their sheets can do so).

WEEK VII

Important note: at this time during term, the way this week-by-week breakdown aligns with the students’ schedule of assignments may get disrupted. Please double check what you’re preparing against their assignments, linked through the main course page.

Assignment 202-7A: Read Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue, The Miller’s Prologue, The Pardoner’s Prologue, and The Pardoner’s Tale lines 904-968 (Optional: lines 463-903); optional audio accompaniments available for all.

Assignment 202-7B: Read Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Miller’s Tale [Optional: Audio Accompaniment ENG 202-E (The Miller’s Tale)].

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1. How much agency does Alysoun have at any given point in this Tale?    

• 2. Is this Tale funny?  Not like "oh, I could see how back then they might have..."  Is it funny, to you?  Does that matter?   

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

During the Miller’s Tale, something happens to Nicholas with a hot coulter, like an iron poker.  What happens to him?

WEEK VIII

Assignment 202-8: Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale [Optional: Audio Accompaniment ENG 202-F (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale)].

Important: during this tutorial session, please remind students that missed CQs have to be made up, according to the instructions at the course website, before the last day of class — and that there are limits to how many CQs may be made up per week, so start planning now if you have more than a couple CQs to make up.

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1.     Prof. Sergi has asked us, in our readings of medieval literature, to do away with preconceived assumptions about how religion signifies in everyday life.  How might our class texts up to this point, taken on their own terms (especially Margery, Julian, and the Wife of Bath), support or challenge such assumptions?

• 2.     The Host defines a game-winning Tale as one that provides both enjoyment and something worthwhile to learn.  Do the Prologue and/or Tale ever achieve those goals—and how do their depiction of violence against women relate to, or perhaps block entirely, our ability to enjoy or learn from them?

• 3.     Where do our sympathies lie in the Wife’s Prologue and Tale?  Which characters are we rooting for, if any?  And which ones, if any, do we hate and have no sympathy for?  How does the text—in its implication of the sympathies held by Alisoun, by Geoffrey-as-narrator, and by Chaucer-as-author—seem to align or misalign with those sympathies?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

You can answer either of these two questions: (a) how did Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, lose her hearing in one ear? (b) What crime does the main character in the Wife’s Tale, the unnamed knight, commit at the start of the Tale?

WEEK IX

Assignment 202-9A: Watch Video Lecture ENG 202-9

Assignment 202-9B: Read Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Nun’s Priest’s Prologue, Tale, and Epilogue [Optional: Audio Accompaniment ENG 202-G (Nun’s Priest’s Prologue, etc)].

Today, your time should primarily (and ideally exclusively!) be given over to Discursive Track presentations and the discussion that arises from them.  But if there is any time remaining, you can use one of these suggested lull questions if you wish:

• 1.     Zoom in on and close read lines 3375-3401: how does this passage construct its imagery, its tone?  What do we make of the reference to “Jakke Straw”?

• 2.     The Fox and the Wolf play (or narrative poem) that we saw performed in our last session precedes the Nun’s Priest’s Tale by about a century.  How do the two beast fables speak to each other?

• 3.     What moral does this beast fable have to teach—and is that moral valuable to us now?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

How does Chaunticleer get the fox to open his mouth?

WEEK X

Assignment 202-10A: Read Prologue and Guildelüec et Guilliadun (by Marie de France, translated by Waters); Read The Liflade ant te Passiun of Seinte Margarete (from The Katherine Group MS Bodley 34, translated by Huber and Robertson—students may opt to read only paragraphs 1 through 54); Read Beowulf, lines 1-498, twice: once in the Heaney translation, once in the Headley translation. 

Assignment 202-10B: Read Beowulf lines 499-883 in both translations.

Some suggested “lull questions”, if they prove necessary:

• 1.     Discuss violence in poetry: how has the poetic depiction of violence changed, or not changed, since Marie, Margaret, and Beowulf? 

• 2.     How do these two translations relate to each other—and what is the experience of reading them both?  How are students interacting with these coterminous texts?

• 3.     Which characters are or are not human, or one of us?  How so—and can we refer to translations and to original text to suss out answers?  (Please have the DOE and MED open for in-class lookups, should any students want to do one).

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

Identify any one of these characters by how they relate to the story of Beowulf: who is Hrothgar? Who is Unferth? Who is Wealtheow? Again, you only have to choose one of those: write the character name and a very brief explanation of who they are.

WEEK XI

Assignment 202-11: Read Beowulf lines 916-1049 (in both translations); Read Beowulf lines 1698-2998 (in whatever translation you wish)

Depending on scheduling for our term, this may be your final tutorial session. If so, your time should primarily be given over to Discursive Track presentations and the discussion that arises from them. If not, some suggested lull questions:

• 1.     How does the experience of Beowulf differ between having it performed for you in a group, and reading it alone?  Why does that difference matter, if it does?

• 2.     Has anyone been trying to look at the Old English or DOE at all?  What have you found?  [Maybe try it on enta [aer]-geweorc, at lines 1679, 2717, 2774?]

• 3.     Where do our sympathies lie in Beowulf?  Which characters are we rooting for, if any?  And how do our sympathies land differently depending on the translation we use?

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

Identify any one of these characters and how they relate to Beowulf: Hygelac, Wiglaf, Ecgtheow.

WEEK XII

Assignment 202-12: Watch Video Lecture ENG 202-12

Depending on scheduling for our term, this tutorial session may not happen; if it does happen, then your time should primarily be given over to Discursive Track presentations and the discussion that arises from them. If there is any time remaining, then you can invite Philological Track students to talk through their essays in progress, or you can make it a true TA’s choice session and offer a closer look at any text we have read so far, or, if you like, you can introduce any short text from before 1670 you’d like to add to our curriculum! 

Suggested Comprehension Question (CQ):

Beowulf begins with reference to the funeral of Scyld Shefing—the location of his body, laid in a boat and set off to sea according to early Scandinavian custom, will never be known.  How does this differ from the way Beowulf himself is laid to rest?  Give a concise answer that includes at least a little specific information about Beowulf’s funeral rites.

In-Class Comprehension Worksheet: Instructions for Marking

In the final 2 or 3 minutes of each full-class meeting, I’ll ask the students what should be two very easy basic comprehension questions, which they’ll write into the blanks for that day.  If they can’t answer those questions, they weren’t engaged sufficiently in that day’s material at a basic level.  On tutorial days, I expect you to do the same, but with one question: in the final 2-3 minutes of your tutorial session, ask a low-lob easy question that anyone who was in the room and paying attention could answer, then have the students write the answer in that day’s blank.  Above, I provide you with a suggested comprehension question for each tutorial, in case you have trouble coming up with one—but I encourage you to create your own if you can, especially if you can improvise one based on what the students were most energetically discussing in class that day!

At the end of every class session, once they write in their answer for whatever you or I have asked that day, the students will turn in their worksheets to the admin TA.  The admin TA will then delivery the sheets to you (within a couple of hours after class). You’ll briefly look through them and mark them up as needed, and then at the beginning of the next class, your students will come up to you and get their worksheet (which they’ll be easily able to find in your stack, because they’re multicolored).  Then, after class, they return their worksheet again to you; you’ll briefly look through them and mark them up as needed, and then at the beginning of the next class, your students will come up to you and get their worksheets. 

So the worksheets stay with you, the TA, except during the class session.  The students will know it’s their responsibility to come get their sheets from you at the beginning of each class and return it at the end.  If a worksheet should leave the classroom with someone other than you, contact me and I’ll assess the situation.

Here’s how to mark them up (again, you do this quickly after every class session, yours and mine; please keep the markup consistent so that your admin TA and I can also refer to these worksheets as needed):