By Dr. William J. Macauley, Jr., Professor Emeritus, University of Nevada, Reno

You can see more background info on my ENG 401B class in Issue 13:1 (Jan 29, 2024) of The JUMP+, where other of my students from the class have shared their work, along with my contributions to that discussion. Here, I am going to focus on what I call the “Addendum” project and Maddie’s work there.

In ENG 401B: Advanced Nonfiction, we focus our attention on housing and homelessness, a significant challenge for the communities around UNR, as well as for too many UNR students. The course is built around students proposing collaborative projects that use nonfiction writing to respond to these issues. The course includes contract course grading; the available contracts are set up to earn a grade of B or C, one contract each. If students want a better grade than a B, they are invited to write what we call a grading contract addendum. In this addendum, students lay out in detail what they would like to do for the better grade, in addition to the B grading contract. 

Here is the syllabus text describing grading and the addendum option:

Grading

We will be working from a course grading contract in this course. The contracts that I use are labor based in an effort to respect the time and energy you put into the course, much of which often goes unaccounted for in grading. It is also designed to give you as much freedom as possible to choose your work. The idea is a pretty simple one. There will be six primary assignments on which you will be graded this semester, along with several smaller tasks. 

 If you want to earn a C in this course:

• Miss no more than three class meetings
• Participate thoughtfully in class activities
• Make on-time and good-faith efforts to complete four of the six class assignments

If you want to earn a B in this course:

• Miss no more than three class meetings
• Participate thoughtfully in class activities
• Make on-time and good-faith efforts to complete all six class assignments

If you would like to earn a grade higher than a B in this course, you must:

• Miss no more than three class meetings
• Participate thoughtfully in class activities
• Make on-time and good-faith efforts to complete all six class assignments
• Write and have approved a course grading contract addendum that answers these questions:
  • What grade do you want for the class?
  • What is the topic/focus of your addendum work?
  • Why have you selected this?
  • What will the final product be (size, shape, format, platform, sources, etc.)?
  • What work will be turned in and when (No later than the final exam period)?
• Complete your proposed and approved addendum work

Bill reserves the right to add to your grade as he sees fit, in response to your good work over the semester. If you do not meet the requirements for a grade level, or you do not complete your addendum work, evaluation will revert to the next lowest grade level contract option and work from there. Attendance matters here!

As you can see, the addendum is a significant commitment. It also varies from one student to another because they are proposing something out of their own interests, constraints, skills, and experience. I really like how this works because the contract provides a safety net while the addendum allows students to take on some new challenges, take some risks, and pursue their own interests. Honestly, the addendum projects are consistently interesting and particularly good. The advice I give students most often when they submit their addendum proposals is to scale it back in order to keep it doable and humane within the constraints of a single course.

Maddie’s project was particularly interesting to me because she made some unique choices. First, she scripted and then conducted interviews with informed participants. Second, she chose the angle of mental health support via a unique lens. Rather than perpetuating the oversimplification and dismissiveness of blaming homelessness on mental health issues (as is way too frequently the case here), she chose instead to look into what was actually needed in terms of mental health supports from the perspective of those directly involved. Problem solving and using nonfiction writing to do so.

I really appreciate Maddie’s voice and style in her discussions—supportive and kind while inquisitive and respectful. Her podcast is very polished, very well done technically as well as humanistically. I think she learned some important things and allowed those of us who heard her podcast to do the same. I love that students learn. I enjoy it even more when I get to learn, too.