LY #92 The Saddest Week

For the past few years that I've been teaching interpersonal communication online, the second week of class is the saddest week.  Chapter 2 of Looking Out, Looking In focuses on the role played by communication in the construction of our Selves.  To understand why the week is sad, you should know about the weekly participation assignment.

This is what my students are supposed to do each week:

1. A primary post with a sentence long quote from the text (with page number) accompanied by a description of a communication event or behavior that illustrates the quotation along with a clear explanation of how the quote and the description are connected.  The chosen quote should always come from that particular week's assigned readings in the textbook.  The communication event should include an observation of a particular action or thing that occurred or existed at a particular time and place and could be seen, heard, touched, tasted or smelled.  Do not simply give a type of behavior like, "she was nice."  Be very specific and give a quote of a verbal message (Example: "She said, 'I really like the way you sing,'") or nonverbal message ("She picked up the groceries I'd dropped and helped me into the house.")
   
2. A thoughtful response to another student's primary post in which you mention something the other student has said.
3. At least one 5 turn conversation with a colleague.  This may result from your colleague's response to your primary post or your response to a colleague's primary post.
   
4. Be sure that you have at least 4 posts each week. 

For the second week, students need to offer a primary post in response to one of these prompts:

1. How has a specific communication behavior performed by one person (verbal or nonverbal) influenced the self-concept of another person? 
2. Can you identify and describe a communication choice that a person might make to manage the impressions others have of him or her in the workplace setting?

The reason that this is the saddest week is that all too often the primary post is about the terrible emotional and sometimes physical abuse my now adult students experienced at the hands of their parents. Sometimes that childhood abuse was followed by relationships with abuse relational partners.  In my current classes I have at least six women who shared that they'd escaped abusive husbands and two men who have talked about fathers who told them over and over that they were "nothing."  All this with quotations from the textbook and following all the other directions for the week.

I used to get information like this in the form of journals and back in the 90s I had lots of handwriting to read each week.  In those days students just shared the information with me, not with a "roomful" of other students.  And even then, I didn't see quite as much confession.  I'm not sure what accounts for the readiness now of students to share their histories so openly -- perhaps it's our confessional times.  It's challenging to give grades to such discourse but that's part of what I'm required to do.  

Grading:  One of the main reasons I'm really happy to retire.