The commuting experience of students taking an advanced writing class I occasionally teach — MEDP 299.47, fated to morph real soon to a full-fledge course number sans a decimal point — is finally a functioning assignment.
It’s been tweaked, pawed and poked and seems to be in good shape though I will be tweaking into the future. Clavijo’s Commute is one of the best of the best. She took the assignment’s basic guidelines “to keep descriptive notes of your commutes to and from school as well as, for some student treks around NYC “to a higher level. A few other students did well, also, this semester but a number flubbed the assignment. Probably didn’t take it seriously, I think, was the real reason (even though it was 20 percent of the final grade).
Natalia M. Clavijo’s commute is confirmation of how well it can be done as well as: How well Hunter/CUNY students can write if a writing course is treated seriously by its instructor and accepted seriously by its students. Last but not least: The signature importance of requiring students in news writing classes to write for publication.
[Of course, students have their facebook and myspace cyber accounts where they publish like crazy as well as add pictures and video and this development needs to be discussed in the near future.]