What Promise Does Your Syllabus Make? (Flex #20016)

Part 1

For the first part of this assignment, please read A Syllabus Worth Reading, which is one chapter (13 pages) of several from Kevin Gannon's book, Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto. The entire book is available as an e-book from our library, and we strongly recommend reading the entire book. (It is amazing!) To access the e-book use the button below and login with your 10 digit ID and last name on the library's login screen. 

Open Mesa's e-book of Radical Hope Links to an external site.

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As you read that chapter, pay particular attention to the section named "The Promises We Make" which begins on page 98. Gannon explains how we are implicitly and explicitly making promises to students through our syllabus, and that we should ensure that those align with "our principles and commitment to our vision of what higher education ought to embody" (107). He invites us to take a critical look at our policies and syllabus language and to uncover the implicit "promises" that our syllabus is making to our students. 

Syllabi with language like “the instructor will . . .” and “the learner/student must . . .” promise students a sterile, impersonal course experience. Syllabi with no course calendar or explanation of assignments and criteria make a promise to students that assessment will be arbitrary, and likely frustrating. A syllabus that’s proscriptive—more thou shalt not than anything else—promises a course with a wide gulf between students and the instructor, where empathy or compassion will be in short supply. We may not intend for those promises to be made, but the syllabi that at least initially serve as our surrogates make them nonetheless. (p. 100)

Part 2

Now that you have read the Gannon's "A Syllabus Worth Reading" chapter take some time to reflect on your own syllabus. What promises does it implicitly make to students? Perhaps there are policies that could be revised with a more inclusive positive tone. Perhaps you could move away from the information dump checklists, and instead use language that invites students in to be a part of the semester ahead. Spend some time looking at your own course syllabus and think about the promises it makes. How do those promises align with why you decided to become a teacher? Once you've taken some time to reflect on these questions, submit this assignment with answers to the following: 

1. What resonated with you from the chapter reading?
2. How can you revise your own course syllabus to center student learning as its promise?