Bill Castleberry
Criminal Justice
My name is William Castleberry and I am an instructor of Criminal Justice. I use "inkshedding" and other devices to encourage students to write in my classes. In the past I was engaged exclusively in high-risk writing assignments in my classes. I now ask my students to write to me informally on several occasions. On all of these assignments I have them use e-mail so that I can also fulfill program requirements for computer interaction, An example of how I combine the writing and computer requirements is the third exercise. By then I have exposed them to some very realistic, very gritty, downright nasty, brutish sides of police work. I have them assume the identity of the police officers depicted in the various scenarios of violence and mayhem. I tell them that today is their first anniversary as a police officer and they are to write a personal note to their best friend (the one they can tell anything) and tell their friend how they feel about themselves and their jobs. Since this is a note to a friend, grammar, spelling, and punctuation, are not graded. They are to "accidently" route me an e-mail copy of the note. The results are astonishing and revealing. I would be glad to share these course requirement exercise results and format to any interested faculty. I can be reached at bcastle@utm.edu. |
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