What is Self-Grading

This is a chapter in which a currently incarcerated student/teaching assistant; a university staff member/former student/teaching assistant; and an instructor of women, gender, and sexuality studies collaboratively examine how the curricular approaches and pedagogical strategies utilized in the course “Writing as Activism,” taught inside a correctional facility, embody and enact the liberatory and transformative potential of prison-based teaching and learning. The authors review a selection of individual and collaborative assignments, activities, and writing exercises, as well as the faculty member's philosophy and practice of self-grading as a mechanism to relocate power and foster accountability. This chapter concludes with instructions for activities and accompanying materials used in this course, including the syllabus, for educators to refer to and adapt for their own use in (carceral) spaces of learning.