Comm 285A Greensheet F09 - Listen Speak Engage San Jos...

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COMM 285A: Teaching Associate Practicum I
Fall 2009 page 1 of 6
San José State University
Department of Communication Studies
COMM 285A, Teaching Associate Practicum I, Fall 2009
Instructor: Dr. Deanna L. Fassett
Office location: HGH 211
Telephone: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
(Re: Grad Program: [email protected] )
Office hours: Mondays, 2-4 PM, Drop-In (Comm 200R only); Wednesdays, 2-4 PM,
Drop-In (Graduate Program only); and Tuesdays, 10 AM-12 PM (by
appointment only). For people with scheduling conflicts, it may be
possible to arrange an appointment for another day/time.
Mandatory Furlough Days: Due to mandatory furlough of CSU employees, I am not permitted to
engage in university business (including, for example, teaching classes
or holding office hours, responding to email, or grading student work)
on the following days: 9/21, 9/22, 9/23, 9/24, 10/19, 10/30, 11/25,
12/11, and 12/18.
Class days/time: Tuesdays, biweekly, 1-3 PM (please see attached calendar)
Classroom: Marie Carr Conference Room, HGH 215
Prerequisites: Graduate Standing; Appointment as a Graduate Teaching Associate
Framing Thoughts
“It may be that there is no other way of educating people. Possibly, but I don’t believe it. In the meantime, it
would be a help at least to describe things properly, to call things by their right names. Ideally, what should be said to
every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being
indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it
is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular
culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who
have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-
perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find
ways of educating yourself—educating your own judgment. Those that stay must remember, always and all the time, that
they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.’”—Doris
Lessing, The Golden Notebook
“There is the fallacy that the great object of education is to produce the college professor, that is, the individual
who adopts an agnostic attitude toward every important social issue, who can balance the pros against the cons with the
skill of a juggler, who sees all sides of every question and never commits himself [or herself] to any, who delays action
until all the facts are in, who knows that all the facts will never come in, who consequently holds his [or her] judgment in
a state of indefinite suspension, and who before the approach of middle age sees his [or her] powers of action atrophy and
his [or her] social sympathies decay.” —George Counts, Dare the School Build a New Social Order?

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