Steven,

        I've been monitoring, from a leave's distance, all that has been going on.
 I was certain, before you just noted as much, that having grad students
teach 226 wasn't going to mean that tenured faculty would avoid basic
writing assignments.  I, for one, have no interest whatsoever in teaching
111.  Nor do I believe that it serves our program to have most of our 226
classes taught by graduate students.  Not only would that obviously add to
our monitoring/mentoring, and I think everyone who supports grad students
teaching 226 needs also to  sign up for that, but I'm not sure what it will
do for the teaching in 226 for it to be taught by first-timers all the time.
For it certainly seems to me that only 2nd year grad students should be
offered the oppty to teach 226, and only after they have a year of teaching
behind them.

        We had previously discussed allowing only the top-rated teaching 2nd year
grad students to teach 226, sort of as a reward for performing well in
their first year.  While that might prove a bit difficult to administrate,
I think it has many merits.  Another notion I think worth exploring and
supporting is having two grad students--one poet, one fiction
writer--co-teach two sections of 226. I remember my own hesitancy in
teaching poetry writing for the first time.  I'm not sure we want to impose
first time creative writing teachers teaching out of their discipline as a
built-in feature of 226 unless we are indirectly committed to cutting down
on the number of majors....

        Happy holidays to all.


        Eric