Just a Google doc for now. Was going to try Evernote but we don’t have a campus license for it.

In my world history sections this semester I’ve gone back to an old favorite, Nzinga Mbemba’s letter to the King of Portugal. Just figuring out the power dynamics embedded in that little thing takes the better part of two weeks, spiraling back to ramp up the research skills to fill in context and intertext. Most of my students are raw beginners who think history is names, dates, and Hitler’s peculiar failure to notice that he wasn’t blonde. When something is wrong, they go looking for the Hitler, the one actor in whom all the power is concentrated; in the letter, they’re baffled how a King could seem so pathetic, supplicant and powerless to make things go his way. I could tell them, but then they wouldn’t know how to notice that neither our university’s nor our country’s presidents get much of what they want, either.

I think to some extent the rubric for participation is “active”, “constructive”, “thoughtful” in ascending order of difficulty and contribution to a strong assessment. Everybody has to be active–and I think this format will permit more people to be active in that sense. I think most people can make constructive or useful contributions. Thoughtful is sort of the “A” of participation. I will be showing them examples of all three across the range of participatory work we’re doing.