Current Project: Connecting Nonprofit and Charitable Labor Then and Now

The idea that nonprofits are a highly sought-after but problematic place to work has been at the corners of my consciousness for a while, but I had never fully appreciated the historical continuity of these issues before delving into my own research. Along the way, I've encountered a variety of materials in which charitable organizations presented negative portrayals of their own workers due to existing labor disputes or the mere potential that workers might demand better treatment. Though this is not the main point of my project, it does present enough interesting connections to the present that I wanted to draw them out a bit here.

To work for a certain sort of nonprofit is often a way for one to ally their personal or political commitments with their career-- to work towards a social dream while also working towards a paycheck. Yet as good as this sounds-- or as good as the goals of an organization based on helping, giving, and changing society can be-- the idea of these organizations as the best possible solutions to social problems has also been challenged. The group INCITE!, for example, in their collection The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, presents critiques of the goals of these organizations as mere sustainers and beneficiaries of social inequality, and usurpers of the momentum of grassroots movements.

Moreover, these organizations aren't always good to their workers, expecting long hours for low pay with a cheerful countenance fueled by one's passion for the work. This can lead to implicit or explicit inequities in selection for such positions; for example, a person who doesn't have the family support to take a very low-paying but status building job, or the recent case in which a federal program that funds workers in temporary community service positions engaged in discriminatory hiring practices, rescinding offers after demanding disclosure of medical information. Moreover, they can be actively antagonistic to organizing-- it took Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains months to cease fighting to prevent their workers from organizing.

As the introductory essay to the INCITE! collection hints, many of the problems with nonprofits' impact and their relationships with clients are rooted in the origins of the nonprofit industrial complex, which stem from the tax evasion and wealth accumulation of Gilded Age aristocrats as well as Progressive Era tendencies toward approaching reform as an individualized, controlled, and hierarchized project. (Indeed, what American problem doesn't have links to one or both of these? But I digress.) In my research on disabled children in the early to mid twentieth century US, I often examine sources from the perspective of Progressive-minded social workers and philanthropists, who saw their roles as being improvers of the race, and thus passed judgment on their clients with abandon in both public and private records. Linda Gordon's Heroes of their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence and Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare are great secondary resources for getting a sense of this rhetoric (these links offer some interesting reviews of both).

I was oddly unaware, however, that tensions existed between workers and management within charitable organizations before the late twentieth century, perhaps due to my uninformed assumptions that these were largely made up of volunteers. My trip to Minnesota's Social Welfare History Archive was the first on which I really noticed the anti-labor sentiment of some of the private charity organizations. 

Several of these were affiliates of Christian churches or denominations, and relied on religious sentiment to critique workers' interest in higher pay and better benefits. The Lutheran Orphan's Friend, for example, reported on recent staff turnover by narrating a brief cautionary tale: "Word once reached us that one of our workers ventured the opinion that if we all got together, they could all get more. She got out. How can such a person serve Christ at a place like this!" The very idea of organizing with coworkers was not only troublesome to management; it also indicated that such a person did not understand the mission of the organization or even Christian charity itself. 

Other organizations dropped the religious emphasis, but kept the anti-organizing sentiment. The superintendent of Sheltering Arms, a convalescent hospital in Minneapolis, noted that their concern was financial. In an item slipped at the very end of her Report for September of 1947, Superintendent Josephine Poehler noted, "Sheltering Arms is included in the Twin City Hospital Council's meetings regarding the nurses' demands, which will result in UNION tactics on the part of nurses and higher salaries. We will do everything possible to keep costs down!" This drama continues throughout several months of reports, though I have not had the chance to look more deeply into the outcome of the nurses' bargaining.

There is, of course, an irony to all of this. Why would people who set out to provide aid to others have no interest in providing compensation to their own employees? I see this in part as a weird side effect of the professionalizing of expertise, particularly medical expertise, in these sorts of institutions. The charitable model is in some ways built on the idea of free labor, on volunteerism for no reward other than the satisfaction of doing the right thing. However, if your organization was going to keep up with the times, you needed to include professional experts, and many of these trained experts wouldn't labor for free. Some doctors volunteered their visits, but nurses were needed consistently, not on a "pop in when you have time" sort of basis; they were also not earning wages high enough at any position to allow them to do things on a voluntary basis at other hospitals. Despite this reality, I suspect that those in charge of these organizations resented the idea that anyone would not only demand payment, but fair compensation for work that they felt should be volunteered in the spirit of charity. (This was likely a particularly acute issue at Sheltering Arms, which had spent sixty years as an orphanage before moving into the medical arena in 1943 in response to increasing concern about poliomyelitis.) These qualms are not dissimilar from modern arguments about one's lack of commitment to a cause or organization if not willing to work free overtime, be on call at all hours, or accept wages below the poverty line.

Although these cases are both from the 1940s, these tensions precede the midcentury era. Upon seeing the sources discussed above, I reflected anew on a source I'd already seen, some organizational documents from the Blanche Van Leuven Browne Hospital-School in Detroit in the 1910s. Blanche Van Leuven Browne, a polio survivor who opened a home for "crippled children" based on her own experiences of disability, demanded quite a bit of investment from the nursing staff she hired. Perhaps the first list item of her employee policy is the best example: "Absolute, unquestioning loyalty and obedience." Of course, Browne's position is a bit more complicated-- it's likely that her demand for respect was in direct response to the difficulty she faced having her expertise taken seriously, as her qualifications were based in having been a disabled child rather than a medical professional. I plan on exploring these tensions in greater detail as my project develops.

These sorts of connections are interesting, of course, but I think they're also a useful thing to highlight in comprehending our own career choices in the modern world. The problems that many of my students will face in choosing their career trajectories, particularly if they want to choose careers in charitable, nonprofit, or other professions associated with "service" or "helping", will have echoes of these tensions. Often historical context reveals to us just how long problems have been happening. This can crush our hopes that things will just get better on their own, but it can also spark us to critique and to action on our own behalf. 

Any suggested readings on the history of labor and philanthropy/charity, the rise of the

nonprofit, and the relationship between these things and governmental social welfare programs? Any themes or incidents seem familiar to you as a volunteer, a worker, or a client? Let me know in comments!

Thanks to the amazing folks who helped with sources and encouragement for this post in response to-- you guessed it-- an Internet Ask. Special H/T to Greg Butchello and Caitlin Dryke for their source suggestions.

Archival Citations: 

Lutheran Orphan's Friend, Oct. 1941. Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.

Superintendent's Report, Sheltering Arms, Sept. 1947 . Board Minutes 1943-47, Box 1. Sheltering Arms Records, 1882-1983, SW-95. Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.

Blanche Van Leuven Browne, "Policy of Van Leuven Browne Regarding Employees 1917 Dec." Box 1, Folder 8. Blanche Van Leuven Browne Papers, 2017039 Aa 2.  Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

Blog Note: This will be my last post of the year-- thanks for sticking by me through 2018. If you have favorite posts, items you'd like me to revisit, or themes of the year that you've noticed, I'd love to hear about them. Otherwise, I'll see you all in the new year!

Current Project: Reflections on a Semester of Weekly One Page Responses

Scattered papers; or, how your desk will look after a semester of one page reflections. 

Another end of semester comes with a round of reflections on what choices you made in the classroom. This was always true when I was a student--thoughts of the journey through a good class always left me sentimental on the last day-- and is even more so now that I am guiding others through the course.When I began developing my own version of Fiction and the Historical Imagination, called Fictionalizing US History, 1620-1920, I knew I wanted to shake up the assignment structure I had seen to this point in undergraduate history classes: a midterm, a final, some multipage papers. That worked well for courses that focused on periods, places, sets of facts, but I knew my course was going to be more about reflection than recollection. What kind of assignment would encourage them to sit with each week of material, turning it over in their minds, while still offering a bit of grace for weeks that did not appeal strongly to them? 

As usual, I looked to my own experiences as a student to sort this out. My advisor through my undergraduate and masters' program, Christine Ruane, had used two-page response papers for most weeks of the course. Every film we watched and article we read, I scoured, looking for material for those endless papers. It was supremely difficult to keep up, but most of us did it. As a result, we not only had great class discussions filled with details from the material and interpretations of its interaction with other parts of the course; I also continue to remember many of the things we read, watched, and discussed when many other details of my undergraduate career have fallen directly out of my brain. Furthermore, I've returned to those two-page papers years later, for comprehensive exam readings, course planning, and research help. 

I decided to do a variation-- one to two page responses per week. I quickly realized that although I had intended them as informal writing practice, I had to have higher standards than just "words about the reading" if I was going to use them as the main writing practice. I assigned no other formal papers-- just these, some group projects with varying levels of writing, and a flexible final project-- so I wanted to have some substantive grading criteria. 

What were my priorities? I decided I cared most about ideas and analysis, about incorporating the things we'd read, and about making connections between materials-- either between multiple things we'd read or watched that week, or between things discussed that week and in previous weeks. Structure and thesis statements would take a backseat to practicing the art of analysis-- what could a text mean, rather than articulating a sure argument every time. 

There were benefits and downsides to this assignment structure. First, the good-- students made connections which surprised and delighted me. They connected sources I'd never thought made a natural pair, or articulated interpretations of films that I hadn't considered. At times, they made great connections to the wider world beyond the classroom-- I got links between course materials and popular video games, other readings, and current events. [Naturally, as you might be able to tell by the mission of this blog, I was thrilled by this.] I also felt like it helped me figure out how everyone was doing with the material-- were the connections I was trying to imply clear, or were people struggling to understand what all of these things had to do with one another?

As might be predicted, the primary downside was the relentless pace of grading. Over the course of the semester I learned to do it more quickly, jotting down the three core elements desired for the reflection on the back of each paper as I read:

• Thoughtful analysis [did you grapple with the texts, pulling out your own thoughts about what they said?]
• Evidence [did you cite specifics from the reading/viewing for the week?]
• Connections [did you put sources in conversation with one another, either within the week or between weeks?]

I'd note the successes and absences of each in the paper, as well as taking a moment to summarize or highlight pieces I thought particularly interesting. At first, this took a lot of investment, but by the end of the semester we all grew used to the format, and grading went more quickly. Being able to isolate these three elements as the key to doing well on the assignment was helpful for all of us.

Overall, I think the short, frequent response is a great tool, though it should be applied judiciously and with a clear set of ideas about what you want to find in them. However, I have to admit-- I am gleefully anticipating a life without a stack of responses every weekend for a while!

What's your experience with short responses as a teacher or student? What kinds of courses or goals are they good for? 

Plug and Play: Evolving Class Discussions with Stacking Circles

In this post, I'm introducing a new Post Label: Plug and Play, for short posts on activities that can be used for a variety of different topics or readings.

Here's one that I crafted near the beginning of this semester, but kept chickening out on using because I was terrified it would be too complicated and wouldn't work. When I finally pulled it out to use for Week 8, I was surprised at how well it went. It's based on the concept of the Socratic Circle-- but I'll be honest, I hated the Socratic Circle when we did it in high school, and it didn't quite fit my needs for this course. So I altered it into something I've been calling "stacking circles."

Three stacked circles, or, if you prefer, donuts. Or a great reward for class participation? Photo: Sharon McCutcheon.

 

Steps

1. Assign several readings which relate to/build off of one another-- I used three for our 50-minute class on medical racism and The Underground Railroad. 
2. Have students sign up for one of six groups. Three groups will be discussants of a particular reading, and three groups will be commenting on the discussion of one of the first three groups.
3. Write guiding questions or ideas on the board to root the discussion in the topics you want addressed. I used "Argument/Main Point? Evidence? Themes?", but you could get more specific. Students can look to this if they get stumped for topics.
4. Note that you will time each group (I used 8 minutes each for my 50-minute session). Have the entire class sit in a circle (mine just barely fits). 
5. Have Group 1 sit in the middle of the larger circle and begin. Remind Group 4 to take notes on the ideas that are introduced and the ways that the discussion develops.
6. Repeat with Group 2, but encourage them to consider how their source adds to, contradicts, or develops the points of the first source. Remind Group 5 to take notes on the ideas that are introduced and the ways that the discussion develops.
7. Repeat with Group 3, asking them to use their source to build on the ideas of the previous two. Remind Group 6 to take notes on the ideas that are introduced and the ways that the discussion develops.
8. Invite Groups 4-6 to share their impressions of the conversations. Was there anything that surprised them? Did the groups miss anything important about the readings?

Variations: More or less groups for more or less readings/students. Speaking groups acting as listeners for other groups. 

What does this activity offer?

Most importantly, the construction of stacking circles emphasizes the way that texts can build on one another. As a result, this is particularly nice for any historiographical debate or examination of primary and secondary source comparisons. One text can answer all our questions, or it can completely overturn whatever we just thought we knew from the previous text. Exciting! 

This activity also encouraged students to reflect on how they best participate, and try on what it might be like to approach participation differently. There are almost always students who like to speak in class frequently, and those who hesitate. In my beginning remarks, I encouraged people to try a role that was new to them-- for those who always have something to say, try being an observer, and really listen to what others are saying; for those who speak up less frequently, try choosing a role in the first three groups. 

Logistically, this activity was a nice break from the problems that arise with large group discussions in a small classroom. The big discussions can be unwieldy-- either everyone clamors to speak or no one wants to because the sea of faces is too forbidding-- and the circle can fill the room, making it awkward to see everyone or to enter or leave the circle. You end up missing many things you'd like to talk about. Small groups offer more potential for students to hit topics that are important to them, but then I miss much of their conversations about it. Moving between these groups is a constant tripping hazard, and instead of being an encouraging listener in each group, I often feel like I'm surveilling everyone. This strategy combines the community of the big group with the in-depth discussions of smaller ones.

Finally, I wanted to highlight that active listening is a critical component of class participation, something that can get lost when sitting in rows or even in a circle. The quick shifts of speakers and their positioning as central was an indication that there might be new ideas expressed frequently, and that they deserved attention. 

One nice side effect I wasn't expecting: Progressive circles proved to be a relatively low stakes way to put people in new conversational groups. Frequently small group discussions had been defined by proximity in the classroom and thus were fairly uniform each time. Counting people off had been repetitive in a different way-- clearly I count the same way each time without intending to!

Strong feelings about circles? Proposed amendments to this activity? Have a better name idea? Let me know in comments!

Current Project: Timetables and Timelines for The Underground Railroad

A map of the Underground Railroad as portrayed in Colson Whitehead's novel.

Almost a year ago I read Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad and became fixated on what a great teaching tool it would be. It does that thing that people think historians hate-- incorporate a flurry of time periods and events into one story supposedly set in another time altogether. It's centered around a major counterfactual-- that the Underground Railroad, rather than being a metaphorical name for a many-legged, many routed entity, is actually a full-on locomotive system under the earth. And because of these things, it's a great tool to emphasize that "accuracy," while always a buzzword in any course about history and fiction, is much more complicated than just a painstaking adherence to the details associated with a period.

So that personal bit of reading, and that idea that the book showcased what a powerful choice it could be to mix together aspects of different histories, blossomed into the course I'm teaching now, HIST 365: Fiction and the Historical Imagination/Fictionalizing US History, 1620-1920. We have this week reached the section of the course devoted to this book, and so I wanted to share the strategies I'm using to teach the novel in a way that emphasizes Whitehead's use of time (through some discussion of topics, but no major spoilers ahead for the novel).

The Reading

First, the novel itself. I split the book into three sections, each a bit shorter than the last. Monday was the chapters from "Ajarry" to "Stevens" (or, 1-142); Wednesday was "North Carolina" through "Tennessee (143-232); and Friday was "Caesar" through the final chapter, "The North," (233-313).

I paired each of these sections with brief supplementary material. Being that there are so many topics and events, I knew I would not be able to address all the historical allusions through supplementary primary and secondary source reading. So I chose to instead emphasize a few themes and encourage students to address others through their projects.

For Monday, I emphasized themes of race in medical experimentation with the Introduction to Susan Reverby's Tuskegee's Truths (2000) and a chapter on grave robbing from Harriet Washington's Medical Apartheid (2006). (I also made available some of Reverby's critiques of Washington's text.) This was designed to suggest ways in which we could connect some of the events of The Underground Railroad to events which occurred during the time period in which the book is ostensibly set as well as to events in the mid twentieth century. I was surprised to find that although students had not read these exact texts before, many of them seemed familiar with their contents.

My choices for Wednesday seemed to be less familiar. I was pleased to find that many of my students were experiencing Jourdon Anderson's letter "To My Old Master" for the first time. If you have five minutes and have never read it, take a look-- it is an incredibly satisfying primary source. I also had students examine several pages of the Monroe Work Today site, which builds upon the lynching statistics assembled by sociologist Monroe Work in the early twentieth century to create an interactive map of (some) US lynchings from 1835-1964. These sources match some of the events and attitudes which appear in the novel, but they also provide some contours that the novel's story doesn't have the opportunity to express-- evidence of freedpeople's lives and self-expression; the national span of racial violence and the individual connections that our localism can lead us to make when we look at a map of it.

For Friday, when students are finishing the novel, they will read two pieces of commentary dealing with the novel itself: author Brit Bennett's "Ripping the Veil" and journalist Kathryn Schulz's "The Perilous Lure of the Underground Railroad."

The Project 

Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone with reading and discussing these documents. I also wanted to incorporate a project with this section of the course, one which would encourage us to consider the broad connections Whitehead is making within this text. Instead of continuing with the style of group project that I had used for the two previous tasks, in which each group created some artifact together, I designed a project in which the entire class would work together on one large timeline. Each entry on this timeline would connect one historical event, big or small, to something similar that had occurred in the book. Each person would be responsible for five entries, and they would have groups which would serve as peer editors to give feedback on their entries.

Here's the project sheet and rubric:

Within the Google Doc for the timeline itself, I also provided a sketchy template for the entries, complete with fake names:

Rough Example Template:

DATE-- Brief Descriptive Title

[[RELATED IMAGE/VIDEO/DOCUMENT]]

Section explaining details and historical significance of event, its inclusion in the timeline, and the reason it connects to the novel. This section should incorporate both description and analysis. References to a document or source can be linked here in text.

Sources:

The Underground Railroad, page XX.

Other sources used (at least one).

Author: Jane Doe, Group 4. Assistance: Charlie Horse (suggested the video used); Jim Roe (corrected errors in description).

The ambitious thing here has been trying to fit discussion and time to work on the timeline into class. So far I have managed to mostly make it happen, but it could be better. In future, I'd also like to work to explain this a bit more clearly, as it has taken a couple of class sessions to clarify what exact kinds of things I wish to be in the entries. As I envision it-- and as I've been explaining it to everyone-- I anticipate that some small tidbit in a news article or a secondary source will strike some familiar chord with a theme or event from the book, and poof! There's your entry. We'll see how it goes when these are all coming together at the end of next week.

What's History: In Praise of Extra Credit

Extra credit is the practice of the mission of this blog: connecting teaching history with everyday life. Today I was sending my Fiction and the Historical Imagination class some information about upcoming extra credit when this neat little observation struck me-- the reason that offering extra credit opportunities is so appealing to me, and why it in fact goes perfectly with the kind of history I try to teach. 

I've often been a bit mystified by the takes on extra credit I've seen floating around the Internet's education hubs. It seems that every teacher has a complicated relationship with extra credit, and they express it in a way which seems to go beyond a statement of method directly into a defense of their worthiness to mold inquiring minds.

There is a vocal contingent who find extra credit an exercise in grade inflation, gleefully proclaiming, "No Extra Credit for You." There are those who offer extra credit but seem compelled by this negative faction to argue its rigor, such as Deborah J. Cohan in her post for Inside Higher Ed. Cohan notes that her policy has changed; whereas years ago she did not offer extra credit assignments, she is now a regular user even though "it almost feels embarrassing to admit." Despite the fact that many instructors offer it in one form or another, it's also widely criticized; the general mood of the room is perhaps best summed up by a forum post in the Chronicle of Higher Education forums, which begins a query about what extra credit activities others recommend by saying, "I know that wise professors don't offer extra credit."

Detractors of extra credit suggest that it can encourage some to neglect the central requirements of the course in favor of the seemingly easier task of extra assignments. They point out that extra credit options can be inaccessible to those who have other obligations. And they are inordinately fond of bringing up hypothetical doctors and architects who passed their classes through extra credit and are thereby so lackluster at their job that you will wind up misdiagnosed/crushed by your house/generally, dead.

Each of these critiques have a basis in possibility, of course. Yet I think the benefits of extra credit not only outweigh the disadvantages, but also have positive effects for the class even beyond the people who actually receive the extra points. The way I approach extra credit highlights the values I find in history teaching as a whole-- making connections between what students are learning and the world around them, and using the information and skills of our classroom as tools to understand and approach other media, other people, other stories, other times.  

Permission to Engage

The most common extra credit options are related to attendance at events on or around campus. This makes particular sense, obviously, when the themes of the talk relate to the themes or content of the course-- hence, I will offer extra credit for attending and responding to the upcoming Lincoln's Body lecture (Spurlock, Thursday, 4 pm) as our unit on the Civil War approaches, but not a lecture on the history of dogs, much as I may wish to promote both events (if anyone knows of any upcoming canine-related programming, drop me a line).  I also like to incorporate some sort of written response for these events, both to encourage reflection on what actually happened at the talk and to avoid the awkward methods of establishing proof of attendance at such events.

The pessimistic reading of this sort of practice is that it is solely designed to boot attendance by strongarming grade-grubbing students into filling seats. The more people in attendance at events, the more "successful" events are. Some suggest that encouraging students to attend events should be unnecessary, as they should be doing those things of their own volition anyway. One commenter on Cohan's post claims that students' unwillingness to go to events of their own volition marks the "bankruptcy of education today." Those darn kids!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I want to offer an alternate reading, one that I've talked about before in thinking about how I structure assignments. In my post on assigning unstructured research time, I noted that doing so  "gives students permission to invest in the course in ways that many of them would like to do, but feel that they shouldn't." If one is duty-bound to work toward grades at the expense of all else, attending events related to course themes might feel like a needless luxury, an intellectual investment that will not pay off. This is not because students don't care about adding to their knowledge but because they are constantly forced to weigh the benefits and disadvantages of decisions that pull them away from other work. Adding some incentive to the event may help students justify their attendance in the face of many pressures pulling them in all directions.

Extending Class Themes 

Buzz Aldrin on the moon with an American flag, 1969. From BBC.com, "First Man flag row: How selective should Hollywood be with history?"

Most of the extra credit opportunities I assign extend what we have done in class and encourage applying familiar ideas in a new situation. Additionally, there's generally an aspect of connection to the world outside the classroom that informs these assignments. It's very similar to the purpose of this blog-- highlighting the connections between what we've talked about in class and what is going on outside of it.

For example, event-related opportunities allow students to explore ideas outside those you have time to cover in class-- ones that are connected, but not central to the core topics. The upcoming free screening of the historical fiction First Man promises to be an interesting extension of why the ideas about history and fiction we've been discussing have some everyday relevance, especially with the heated discussion surrounding its depiction of the American flag. It's an especially appealing choice for an extra-credit opportunity for Fiction and the Historical Imagination because it falls within themes of the course but outside of the time period-- making it truly "extra" in the sense that it encourages students to stretch what they already know into a new area and see what they can make of it. Students don't have to make this analytical leap, but if they want to think about a new application of these ideas, there's an opportunity, and an excuse, to do so. 

In the absence of fortuitously timed events, there are a variety of other ways to encourage connecting class ideas to matters of wider relevance. For example: After several days highlighting the role of maleficium in witchcraft trials in colonial New England, I realized that the Wikipedia entry for maleficium is woefully underdeveloped. I decided to develop an extra credit opportunity about this-- if anyone wanted to edit the page, improving its discussion of the topic and citing our course materials, they could receive points toward their weakest grade. 

What if no one does it?

As with anything else you decide to do in class, there's the danger of not getting buy-in. I don't find this a particularly compelling reason not to incorporate extra credit, though, because announcing extra credit opportunities like the ones I've described can further your goals for the course and benefit students even beyond the few who complete it.  

On the most basic level, announcing an event can inspire attendance even without completion of the assignment associated with it. I anticipate that many of my students will eventually see First Man and consider its relationship to our course whether or not they do so for this assignment. People who aren't sure they need the additional points might check out a suggested lecture just to see what they can make of it.  

Even when people don't attend the event suggested, knowing that it exists and has some connection to course themes encourages students to make connections between the class and broader issues. For example, noting that the author of a book you're reading is doing a local reading may suggest to students that the book has audiences outside of "people forced to read this for class." Non-event assignments, like Wikipedia editing, could have a similar broadening effect-- it encourages students to consider the limitations of Wikipedia and the ways in which they can use even a bit of knowledge to shape others' understanding, even if they ultimately decline to complete the edits.

Finally, like many other parts of my teaching, having extra credit assignments available is an indicator of particular standpoints on teaching and history. It suggests that I as a teacher value taking advantage of the learning opportunities that are around you, and that I have an approach to academic success which values flexibility and multiple chances to do well. It suggests that history is widely relevant and highly connective; that the skills and ideas you're working with can be usefully applied to other times, places, and topics; and that it might even be a decent way to spend a Thursday afternoon or a Monday night. These indicators communicate with all of my students, not just the ones that take me up on the extra points. 

Do you use extra credit, and how? Let me know! 

Related Links:

You know what other Wikipedia page could use some editing? The one for "extra credit." I'll offer extra credit on your blog-reading grade if you improve this. 
Incidentally, ColourPop promises you'll "look like 110% in this vivid orange-red" Extra Credit lipstick. (No, for some reason this is not a paid advertisement.)
Part of the weirdness of extra credit discussions is that everyone seems to have a different interpretation of what extra-credit is. Here, a post making a distinction between in-syllabus and ad-hoc extra credit (my approach is more "adding to the syllabus as I go).

Take My Advice: Reading Strategies

A bookshelf with three stacks of semi-organized books: left, for class; middle, for research; right, to return. I'm very proud.

I've talked before about how embracing the idea that there are many different ways to start writing, to begin a project, and to write well and consistently can be really useful when teaching. What works for you may not work for others. I recently had occasion to think about how this is true for reading as well.

Reading for classes is a different beast than reading for pleasure, and sometimes this truth can make it hard to get started on reading, or to sustain interest in it. Not only is it specific-- you must read this, not that-- but it's also a different process, one which calls for breaking down language and ideas to fully understand and use them. This is also a process that becomes more critical as one shifts from survey-level undergraduate courses to more discussion-heavy upper-level seminars, where the reading gets longer, more dense, and more deeply discussed during class, as well as plumbed for use in papers.

Like the writing strategies I mentioned in that earlier post, reading strategies can often be presented as a set of maxims, but also like writing advice, they don't have to be used in that way. They can simply offer another set of options for someone to choose from when they sit down to do coursework. Here's a few I like-- I'd love to hear yours in comments. 

Getting Started 

Sometimes the hardest part of reading is actually starting to do it. If a stack of text seems as though it will have no end, there can be little motivation for beginning. Here are a couple of helpful tricks to overcome this:

Throwing yourself in. 

I worked with someone once who worked many more hours than me at a job that I loved, but found very draining. I asked him how he could stand getting up every morning and going, and he told me he just had to not think about it-- to throw himself out of bed, into the shower, and out the door without contemplating what his day would hold, or else it would become overwhelming. This, I think, is especially applicable to reading. If you are afraid to start, just start. Take your book to the pool or to a comfy chair in the park. Don't worry about the notes, the perfect pencil, the right lighting level on your monitor. Just jump in and worry about all of the accoutrements later-- after you have an idea of what the text is about. 

Time based goals.  

If you have to read a certain number of pages, it can be tempting to just say "well, my goal is that number of pages." But for a long reading that might be too much for one session of reading, and it may be counterproductive to fully read all of those pages anyway. Try setting a goal of reading for an hour, or limiting the total amount of time you can spend on  reading for one course to three hours that week. Then when that time is up, evaluate how well that worked. Did you complete everything? Did you get the gist of what the text was about, and a few specifics to back it up? Are there ways you could improve your reading efficiency and get more out of these texts?

Study/reading groups. 

These can be really useful whether everyone is reading the same thing or not—if you invite people over or do a Google hangout get-together in which everyone reads for an hour or so, it can be motivating. Not only does it carry the promise of socializing before or after, if that appeals to you, it also has the benefit of social pressure-- "Everyone else is reading! Why aren't I reading? I should read and not look at my phone." (Citation: Me, on "Why I Do a Lot of Work at Coffee Shops.")
 

How-To's

Just as reading strategies are options you can use or not use to help your own learning process, I like to think of the act of reading as giving yourself options for the future in the form of information, arguments, and evidence for future papers, projects, etcetera-- similar to my thoughts on giving yourself gifts. When there are pages and pages to go before you can say "done," its easy to get bogged down.  But if you focus on looking for specific information about the text, it can ease this reading process. Starting to read a text is then less “I must slog through this text and complete it” and more “I will use this text as a tool to find these answers.”  
 
Focusing on concrete methods for reading can really help. 4 Steps to Reading a Textbook offers some advice for intro-level classes. The argument presented here that one should start with the questions at the back is a compelling one-- it gives you a goal to clearly pursue. Upper-level courses can benefit from concrete advice about reading selectively as well. In this piece on How to Read for History, I especially like the first section because it doesn’t just say “skim,” it suggests specific strategies for dragging a lot of info out of skimming a text’s title, chapters, and sections; and looking for particular sentence structures and placements which indicate key points. Another skimming strategy I sometimes use: the first and last sentence of every paragraph.

What other particulars might we look for? Academic Reading Strategies not only offers a few general reading tips that can be useful; it also suggests that having an idea of purpose (why you’re reading and why the author is writing) can be a good place to start, which I think is related to this idea of using the text as a tool. I also particularly like a handout that Tamara Chaplin used when I TA'd for her (my very first teaching experience!), which included the following outline: 

Level One

• Who wrote this document?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the story line?

Level Two

• Why was this document written?
• What type of document is this?
• What are the basic assumptions made in this document?

Level Three

• Do I believe this document?
• What can I learn about the society that produced this document?
• What does this document mean to me?

Switching It Up

Some people have one method and stick to it. The people who are in the business of giving mandates about studying tend to smile upon this method. "Find a method and stick to it," they say. "This is the key to success in college."

I personally tend to be a bit more variable, and really always have been. I work best when I switch between a variety of settings-- from office to home to coffee shop-- and change up the format of my reading depending upon the form of the text and the significance to whatever I'm doing. I might take detailed notes in a separate document for one article, and scribble notes and underlines in the margins of another. I might read one on my Kindle in the park and one at the library with a pen. Don't be afraid to change tactics if you find yourself distressed or bored by the one you're doing.

For especially difficult times, you might find that varying the method of intake may help break down the challenging wall between you and the text. You might find that listening to a work can be easier than sitting down to read it. It is a bit harder to get the details this way, but not so bad for getting the gist. Many PDFs have searchable text, which means they can be read by a screen reader or other text-to-speech tool like TTSReader. These are not always perfect (ever hear this thing read a footnote?), but they can be a way to get through a reading block.  Some course books can be found as audiobooks, or you can find some authors talking about their books on podcasts like Ben Franklin's World, which can help you get some of the main ideas. This is not a replacement for reading the text-- an audiobook won't help you when you have to cite page numbers in a paper; a podcast summary will be relatively unhelpful if your instructor really wants to talk about chapter 3 in detail-- but it can be a way to jump-start your reading, fill in gaps on stressful weeks, or allow you to engage in a discussion that you might not have attended otherwise. 

What reading strategies do you use or recommend? I'm always looking for more options.