BAスタイル英語：「始まり、中間、終わり」クリエイティブライティング（短編）

Courses in my “BA-Style English” collection are modeled after upper-division college English courses that I took while earning my Bachelor of Arts. These courses are not designed to just be preparatory, but rather are designed, taught, graded, and, in many ways, scheduled to be just like some of my favorites when I was in college.  As such, the demands are high, and students must be responsible, self-motivated, and legitimately care about learning, developing, and advancing their knowledge and skills. These are not courses of hand-holding, sunshine, and gumdrops. There will be no small daily tasks or quizzes, no reading outlines, no progress reports, and absolutely no excuses. These courses are intended to push students beyond their own expectations through higher-level thinking, deeper analysis, strong critique, and hard criticism.  There are currently four courses in this collection, one literature course, “The Minds of Mad Men,” and three writing courses, short prose, poetry, and essays. A fourth writing course, creative nonfiction will be listed by fall and scheduled to begin in January.

BA-Style courses are designed for those who already have a solid foundation in reading and writing.  As such, they are intended for high school juniors and seniors.  In some cases, exceptions may be made, especially for students who have a proven success rate in my courses. New students below the age range may be asked to meet with me, present a writing sample, or both, prior to approval of enrollment.

All writing courses in this collection, with the exception of creative nonfiction, will follow the same basic structure in regard to both daily lesson plans and grading.  In addition, they will use the traditional 10-point grading for final grades; however, for some tasks, a pass-fail-zero option may also be used. Students must be self-motivated, comfortable speaking and reading in class, and comfortable both giving and receiving critiques. Students will also be required to keep their cameras on during class.


About BA-Style English: “Beginning, Middle, and End” Creative Writing (Short Prose)

This course is dedicated to writing fictional short prose.  Students will write four original short stories, 3-5 pages in length, during the semester. Each of these stories will be given a simple and lose objective, such as "write a story that takes place in the distant future," or "write a story told from second person point of view." Stories will be submitted 72 hours prior to class and posted to the classroom page. Students will then be assigned to read specific stories that will then be discussed either as a class or in small group discussions. Submitted stories will be graded more on a pass/no pass scale and not all stories will be read by the teacher; however, students should receive feedback on each story as either part of whole-class discussion or within their peer groups.  At the end of the semester, students will then choose one story to edit and revise as their final submission. (*Two-week sessions will also be available in a condensed and slightly modified format).


BA-Style Writing general class design

Lesson 1: Course introduction and writing workshop (first writing assignment given)

Students will be provided with a simple objective for each writing task. While they must adhere to that goal, beyond that, they are free to write about whatever they choose.  For example, in a prose class, students might be asked to write a story in second person, or write a story that takes place in the distant future.  Poets might be asked to write a poem from the point of view of an animal or a love poem. Essayists, will be asked to focus on a specific type of essay, perhaps literary analysis or a satirical essay.  Exactly how they choose to address this objective will be entirely up to them.  Specific prompts will be made available, but only as a back-up option.  Students may also choose to use a piece of writing hey are working on for another class, provided that they meet the core objective.

Students are to post all writing assignment to the designated portion of the classroom page a minimum of 72 hours prior to class so that other students have time to read them.

Lessons 2-13: Whole class critique and peer writing groups

The first 5 minutes may be used to provide basic instruction when needed; however, most of this will be done in writing. We will then begin our whole class critique (about forty minutes), then class will then be divided into small groups for peer review. 

Two students will be selected each week to be focal students for whole class critique. This will rotate throughout the course so that each student is one of the focal students at least twice during the course. All students are to read these two works prior to class.  We, the teacher and the class, will then spend approximately fifteen to twenty minutes analyzing and critiquing each of these works (40 minutes total). This is open and honest commentary and criticism.  At times it will even be nit-picky.  We are not looking for compliments, nor are we focusing on grammar and editing, but rather on content and writing.  Our goal is to be better.

During the final 20 minutes, students will be sent into breakout rooms to discuss an additional student’s writing.  These groups will be pre-assigned, as will the work to be addressed, so that once again, students will rotate and have an equal distribution of feed back.

Final submission
After the final class of the course, students will be given one week to select and revise a work they completed throughout the course and submit it for their final draft assignment. 


Grading
40% Regular writing submissions
40% Engagement and critiques
20% Final writing submission (final draft)


Multiple, concurrent, and consecutive enrollments

BA-Style writing courses are designed so that students may take multiple courses and multiple sections, be it concurrent or consecutive, provided that they are willing to do the work. While the general format is always the same, there are more possible core objectives than there are classes. Plus, since the objectives tend to be simple and not overly restrictive, there are an infinite amount of possibilities for the finished product.  In this way, each section will be a little different. For example, one section of prose may be asked to write a story in first person while another section may be asked to write in second person.