Summer Madness

[barclay_barrios]

I’m hoping things are budgetarily cheery in your world; here at my institution they’re looking a bit bleak.In particular, we’re facing a lot of pressure for our summer classes. We’ve already raised the caps on our FYC course by four, and I’m not sure the administration is done yet.These courses are nearly impossible to begin with: how do you squeeze sixteen weeks of writing into six? We generally cut out two papers, but even then the course moves at breakneck speed with writing due just about every class. With our caps up, we’re thinking about how to streamline the class even more.It's sad when pedagogy suffers because of budget.But it has me thinking, how do other institutions handle the general challenge of delivering writing courses in the summer? Do your summer classes last as long as the classes in a normal semester? If not, how to do you compress all that learning into so little time? What do you keep, what do you sacrifice, and what do you change?