CUNY Academic Commons

I love your approach of giving students metacognitive questions to consider as they read–both a way for them to reflect on what’s challenging and rewarding about close reading and a way to thread personal connections and value to their coursework.

I teach first-year writing, and I don’t put grades on drafts, just written feedback. My department’s composition program is now putting more emphasis on reflection as we’ve moved to a portfolio model, and that’s been empowering for students too (and for me as their instructor) in terms of seeing how gradual, incremental progress and development…[Read more]

I agree that the time element is so important, Faiza-and the tools, space, even community support to do this too.

This is a thought-provoking quote; it makes me wonder whether we tend to ruminate on failure more than success. (And by ruminate, I mean dwell on, overthink, feel like, well, a failure about!) Ruminating on success is important too, but I think it’s easy, to generalize, to overlook what’s going well and working well.