In this portfolio, due by noon on Saturday, December 20th, we are asking you to collect and reflect on the written work you have done for this course. This portfolio project invites you to chronicle what has happened in your evolution both as a writer and a speaker in class, and to contribute to and assist us with the evaluation of your work. So--

* Gather together everything you’ve written for this class: copies of what you’ve posted on the course website, all your paper drafts, as well as all the responses (you’ve saved) from both your classmates and your instructor. Arrange the material in a folder, chronologically, back to front.

* You are invited to revise one of the papers. Be willing, in this process, to engage in major re-thinkings of what you have done already (although you may also find it satisfying to edit merely for stylistics and technicalities—and so are more than welcome to submit a clean and corrected copy as finale for a sequence of drafts.)

* You are also warmly invited to post another one of your papers on our course website, as your public finale to the course.

* Review all you’ve gathered together in the portfolio; ruminate for a while on what you’re seeing as you do so. Then write a short (2 pp.) essay tracing where you were when we began this process, where you are now, and what’s been happening in between. Be specific and descriptive, but also evaluative: how much effort have you put into each of these drafts and their revisions, and what can you say about the quality of the final products?

* Review as well your participation in our group work: how frequently have you come to class, how present-and-contributing have you been in our discussions, both large and small, what role have you assumed in our group dynamics? (Are you an organizer, devil’s advocate, includer, clarifier, withdrawer? This idea is from a book called Freire for the Classroom: A Sourcebook for Liberatory Teaching, which calls attention to the roles people play in groups.)

In our responses to your portfolio, we’ll be giving you a grade not just for the quality of your written work, but also for class participation and process. Your self-evaluation will assist us with our own.

We very much look forward to seeing what you come up with, as well as what you have to say about it.

In gratitude for the pleasure we have found in the hard work we have all been doing together,

Anne and Paul