Shockingly Simple Realizations
I used to dread grading. In-class discussion thrilled me, but the grading was terrible. Or at least until I realized something shockingly simple: students submit tedium because I assigned it. It was not their fault but mine. 

Seizing this responsibility/freedom, I started experimenting. Soon I was teaching courses in which we read and wrote only letters (“epistolary philosophy”), philosophy of food courses with choreographed philosophical meals and annotated menus as exams ( “gastrosophia”), and ancient courses dramatized as five-act Shakespearean plays. The more creative the assignment, the more enjoyable to grade—and the more meaningful for students.  

It was not long, however, before I noticed something amiss. Things were too teacher-centered. I was designing assignments without real student input. While creative, if assignments did not engage the individual students—their personal interests, underlying concerns, cultural backgrounds, etc.—they’d bring yet more tedium. 

Then a second shockingly simple realization: Students should design their own exams. 

Although I usually sensed what did or didn’t work in class, I suspected students could articulate something essential about their own experiences in class which I could not offer. So, I asked them to design their own exams, with me simply encouraging or discouraging the process with minimal limitations and maximal anticipation.

Several classes have since designed exams, and there’s much to say about that. But for this blog, I focus on one: the Collective Final Project.

Collective Final Project
It is one thing for students to design exams they take separately, but it is another to collectively design something they take collectively. Many powerful pedagogical strategies are packed into this. Collective Final Projects inspire them to reflect on who they became as a community, to retrieve the lessons they learned or developed through their discussions, to articulate their shared growth, to debate and decide as a group, and more.

For three years, I’ve asked all classes to co-design their exams. It is always an interesting process, yet one stands out. 

In Fall 2022, I was teaching two sections of “How Should We Live?” (HSWL). One section was fine, but the other was magic. This group of students cultivated a real sense of community. Three days a week, we co-explore philosophical themes in the Haitian Revolution, John Brown, and the Black Panthers. We loved it.

The final task was the Collective Final Project. In those last weeks, they debated. Lots of ideas were introduced, and several were entertained, but all were rejected. Nothing seemed to reflect the magic of the philosophical bonds we had formed. Until that is, one student floated an idea, mostly as a joke. But it was fabulous. 

The idea was simple: Those students in the Fall 2022 HSWL course would visit my two Spring 2023 HSWL courses—but “in disguise.” They would not be enrolled in that new course but pretend to be students. By modeling for the new students the philosophical skills they had honed during their semester, they might fast-forward the development of the new HSWL students. 

It felt risky, and slightly devious, but all for good learning aims. The students were pumped, as I was. So, we started to scheme. 

Fake Students
First, they debated texts. As I never teach the same class twice, the text they chose must resonate with the new material. They thus considered curricula, what does or does not appear in a philosophy course, and parts of education students mostly ignore. They read widely, debated suggestions, and eventually agreed on a text appropriate in size, theme, and difficulty for fresh philosophers. They also co-wrote a reflection on and justification for their chosen text.

Corresponding to the text, they needed a lesson plan. Again collectively, they designed a discussion that also resonated with the new themes. Recalling what they learned from their course, they articulated what skills, habits, moves, questions, etc. each of them could model for new students. They compared what they had experienced in their first philosophy days to what the new students might experience, which exhibited how far they had come. 

Finally, they sorted details—scheduling, timing, techniques for “pretending.” Given that they’d have different schedules, not everyone could make it to both courses. So, they split up. Half went to one course, half to the other. Since the very first class would mostly cover the syllabus, they decided to attend the second meeting class for each section. 

Eventually, the final class of Fall 2022 arrived. We said our goodbyes, knowing the next time we’d be together, we’d pretend to be strangers. 

What allowed the “fake” students to pass as “real” was the frequency of dropping/adding in the first few weeks. As this was year two of COVID-19, illnesses were very common, so new faces appeared or disappeared for weeks. 

Even as faces grew familiar, students remained curious about who was “really” a student and who wasn’t. Students who added later or missed classes due to illness were suspected of being plants. Things were hazier still because I only taught outside, so every class brought new visitors. One day, someone started asking about specific students—who were “really” in class. I played dumb, eager to keep up the mystery for pedagogical purposes. A few even wondered if I were really the teacher. 

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