There is something ominous about a week that begins with laughter, you know things can only go downhill from thereon but no amount of portentous premonitions could mar the spirit of Monday's class.
Over the weekend I had my students post their mock proposal on the Forum and it was evident that while they had their ideas in place, we still needed to cover a lot of ground when it came to structuring a proposal. I was very fortunate to find two model proposals to take into class and along with that a handout on the 7 Points of Debate. We quickly perused the seven points and applied them in our analysis of the papers. The first paper was a proposal to build a playground for children on temple property and the second proposed the installation of urinals in student dorms. We analyzed the exposition of problems and the positing of solutions with reference to audience. In class we managed to have a rather animated discussion about the merits and problems of each paper. Both proposals were written in very different styles and the class was divided in their opinion about which made for a compelling proposal and this made for very good conversation. Also the paper on urinals seemed to spark some kind of juvenile mirth in my students, they were highly amused by the solutions proposed and felt compelled to point out various counter arguments. I had to step in and break up the discussion when one of the boys decided to drive home his point by enacting the problem.
When we broke for the day it looked like the students would have a decent idea of how to approach their first draft.
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