The Albatross’ Skeleton

Today was the last day of classes, and tomorrow starts your final exams. As always, if you have questions or concerns about what to do, you should email me or leave a comment on this post. I will get back to you as quickly as possible.

At any rate1, let’s run down our work, one last time.


Regents Examination in English Language Arts (Common Core)


Juniors and seniors taking this exam should arrive to the gym no later than 8:00 AM on Wednesday, June 14. If you are in a separate location, make sure you know where to go before arriving to school on Wednesday. The exam begins at 8:15 AM, and you must be there on time.

Note: The original calendar for final exams had 9:15 AM, not 8:15 AM. The Regents begins at 8:15 AM. Set your alarm. In fact, here is a checklist in all caps:

  • DATE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 14
  • TIME: 8:15 – 11:15
  • LOCATION: GYMNASIUM

If you are taking this test in a special location, or if you have extended time, you have already been given that information. Let me know if you are uncertain.

Review this post and your exam folder at some point Tuesday. Set aside a pen and pencil; you absolutely must have a pen, but I suggest bringing both. Your teachers will be in the gym to help you get seated and organized. The usual rules will apply: no cellphones, no bags, no papers or folders aside from the test itself.

Another note: Your teachers always bring candy to give you some energy2 and to celebrate the end of high-stakes English testing (for this year, at least). If you have a preference, leave a comment on this post, and I’ll see what I can do. Otherwise, I will put the decision in my four-year-old daughter’s hands, which means you will get something with Shimmer and Shine on it.


GAP Q4C Scores and Final Averages


Tonight is the deadline for most of you for the final GAP process. Submit your evidence and self-assessed scores, just as you always do. If you would like to share any Pareto Project work, contact me, and we’ll fold that into the scoring discussion. If there is anything else you believe is pertinent to this final cycle, make sure to attach it or share it directly.

Final exam note: If you are one of the students tackling the reader-response essay, that final essay is due by Friday. All GAP scoring and final grading will be held until that point. I’ll keep reminding you as the deadline gets closer, because there aren’t any extensions on this assignment. If you are required to do it, you have until Friday.

I will get the GAP score that fits your evidence and performance into Infinite Campus as soon as possible. When you receive that score, run the usual reflective protocol, and then reach out to discuss any concerns. If you want to conference with me, send an email to set that up. I’ll work around your schedule.

Computers are fickle creatures note: Because there were three seniors spread across your juniors classes, I was required to finalize grades on Friday. This does not mean that your current grades are final. How could they be? I am sure that there was a way to finalize just those seniors grades, but I could not find it, and all of my imprecations failed to make the computer work any differently. Again, your grades are not final, despite what the machine tells you.


Miscellanea


1. Outstanding Books

Where the adjective means both “very good” and “unresolved.” This is for anyone who still has a copy of 1984 or One Hundred Great Essays: Bring that book back in to me before the end of the school year. If I’m not around, you may drop it off on my desk in Room 210. I will take care of signing it back in and filing it away.

As always, if you fail to return a book you signed out from the school, you are responsible for the purchase price of the book. We’d always rather have the books back, though. Please return whatever you have.

2. SUMMER READING

You should already have a copy of the summer reading for BHS and any college-level courses you’re taking. If not, I’ll leave copies in the same place in Room 210 through the end of final exams. Copies of the assignments will be posted online, too, if they haven’t already been uploaded. Look to the high school’s main website for more information.

3. ROOM 210

The makerspace will be open periodically during the next two weeks. You are welcome to stop by before or after exams. In addition to copies of the summer reading, I’ll keep copies of all exam and GAP materials on the bookshelves. Let me know if you need anything.

Any further updates will be posted on Google Classroom. Good luck with your final exams!


  1. Well, not any rate. It is always at the most desultory and uncomfortable rate possible. That is the rate. Think about it: The school has collected your Chromebooks the day before final exams start. Hopefully, you have a phone or tablet or other device on which you are reading this, because it’s a little late to shift entirely to a paper classroom. Ten months of flipped and interstitial instruction and feedback, and you lose your computer right before exams. Is there a more perfect example of public education than that? 

  2. Fleeting, sugary energy, yes, but energy nonetheless. 

Update: June 8

This is an update to our last post, which more precisely covers what you should be working on at the end of the year. There are copies of that post available for anyone who might benefit from a printed version1. If you find yourself idle or distracted for more than a moment, use that to refocus.

On that note, your self-assessed GAP scores for Q4C are due on Monday. The required Google Form is now available, but you should not — absolutely should not — complete it until after class on Friday, June 9. Start compiling your understanding, insight, and evidence. Plan to attach something appropriate to the Google Classroom assignment. All recent instructional posts in RE11 and AP11 have invited you to be more critical of your efforts in here; this is an opportunity to make up lost ground through self-conscious testimony and analysis.

On the corner bookshelf, near the copies of that “Aged Paper” post, you have copies of pretty much everything else you need for the end of the year and exams2. Take some time on the last two days of school to peruse those piles. Most stacks are labeled. The unlabeled piles on the bottom shelf are less universally useful, so I’ll cover them now. One is a copy of the article on valedictorians and future-proof skills and traits that was recently shared with you; the other is a guide to transitional words and phrases, which I will paste below.

Click here to load the site.

As you prepare for the Regents Exam, this guide can help you to hone your essay arrangement. You can indicate for the reader how ideas are connected, how sections of your essay transition, etc, just by memorizing a few phrases from these lists. Most of you naturally use this language, but in timed writing, it pays to be deliberate. Tell your reader when you are contrasting concepts, when you are adding information, when you are concluding, and so on.


Pareto Project Update


In Room 210, near the windows, you’ll find a remarkable sculpture created by Grace H. in P7. You might have been lucky enough on Thursday to hear Sarah C. perform her spoken-word poetry. Those are the first two examples of what the last post encourages you to do with these projects. There will be workshops on blackout poetry on Monday, for instance, and several groups have reached out about posting their projects here, on this website. I hope that inspires many more of you.

Keep in mind that this was never about the closed-loop learning of a classroom, so it doesn’t hurt you to step away from your project without a final product or performance. Through the end of final exams, however, and through the summer online, I can help you share what you’ve created. That might be as simple as coordinating how to share a link to your podcast or Instagram account, and it might be as complicated as helping you film and edit a performance. It might be a physical product that you’d like to leave in Room 210 for a few weeks, and it might be something you’d like to leave in the Room for all of next year. I can imagine some of you wanting simply to talk with me about a printed portfolio of writing, while others might want to build a blog online to house future essays you’ll write.

The course doesn’t really end on Monday with the last bell of the day. It doesn’t really end on Wednesday when the Regents Exam is over. It ends when you want it to. For a few folks, it ended months ago, and the rest of this time has been a long slog through disinterest and disdain; for most of you, however, this has very much been about lifelong learning. Remember that.


  1. I really did try to go paperless, back in September, and still think it’s worth minimizing the amount that we print in a class like this. That said, there are copies of what you need, if you need them. 

  2. Everything you need for your summer work, remember, is on the other side of the entrance. Make sure you know what’s expected of you over the next two months. 

Aged Paper

The last day of classes is Monday, June 12. You have five days left.

Your productivity and focus for the next week will factor significantly in your Q4C profile score, which should be finalized on or before Friday, June 16. As you’ll read below, there is an optional assignment due on June 15 that may take longer to process, depending on how many of you complete it.

Look over each of these sections as soon as possible — at the start of class on Tuesday, June 6, at the absolute latest. Then recognize that this is the worst time to give in to apathy and atrophy.


ELA Regents Exam


Continue to do Regents Exam prep as necessary. All formal deadlines for the work have passed; at this point, you should prepare based on your individual needs. Refer back to this instructional post:

The Harrow: ELA Regents Prep

That has all the resources you need. You can also lean on me to get further practice, feedback, and advice.


RE/AP11 Final Exam


The reader-response prompt shared with you on May 25 is another option for you over these final five days. Obviously, if you were assigned this as a final exam requirement, you have no choice; you must finish your response by the deadline. It is a good prompt for everyone to consider, however, and certainly a fallback for anyone uncertain of how to spend their time.

If you are interested in dedicating some of your time to this work, talk to me in the comments here or in class. The prompt leans heavily on autodidacticism, but not to the exclusion of direct feedback. Here it is in full:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F06%2FReadersResponseEssayv3.1.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 


Pareto Project


The other default work for the final five days is your Pareto Project. Any and all work done on this project factors into your final GAP score, and you will have an optional assignment next week that allows you to get credit for anything you produce. This will be posted later.

The point of these projects, however, was always

  1. to give you time and space to do something meaningful; and
  2. to honor that time and space by emphasizing process over product.

The work can’t just be submitted to me as part of a GAP report. It also shouldn’t stop when the course does — unless you want it to stop, of course. If you want to present or publish something you’ve done, on the other hand, or if you want to share a part of your project with your classmates through a lesson or activity, this is the time to do it. To give you an example:

That’s an example of blackout poetry, the focus of one of your Pareto Projects. Use Google to look at other examples (this is one from the Google image results for “blackout poetry” that keeps the text intact, which is atypical). The student and I talked months ago about the possibility of an in-class lesson on creating this sort of poetry, which could be a lot of fun. You could bring in newspapers, magazines, books, etc, and see what can be gleaned from them — here is a Scholastic lesson, but I might go with this step-by-step guide instead. Then it’s all in how you isolate and emphasize the words on the page. I could set that up for Thursday or Friday using the student’s suggestions, give everyone a day to bring in materials, and then run the lesson beside her. That’s a great use of one of our last days of class.

Let me know as soon as possible what you’d like to do, if it requires my help. If in doubt, ask yourself a question: What would you do with this project if there wasn’t a single grade, GAP score, or classroom connected to it?


Summer Reading


You also have the option over the next five days to begin your summer reading work. Copies of the school-wide assignment are in Room 210. You’ll find them next to the hall passes and exam folders by our door. If you are taking AP Literature & Composition or DCC, you have an additional assignment. Those are labeled. All of this material will be digitized and shared by the school at some point, too.

I encourage you to use Amazon, Wikipedia, and Goodreads to learn more about these books. The teachers you will have next year aren’t going to care if you memorize the plot or pass a reading quiz; they’re going to ask you to have invested in the text. You’ll be writing about and discussing what you read. The best thing you can do, therefore, is pick a book you might actually want to spend time with.

You also know by now that if you put this off until the last second, you’re probably going to dislike whatever you read. That’s if you read it at all, which is unlikely. So you won’t have much of an experience, at least not compared to what might happen if you take your time now to look into each choice. Do this the right way, and you will almost certainly find something you want to read.

In the meantime, I’m curious about what you’ll do with the following excerpts about reading. They are distinct in tone and perspective. The first is from one of Franz Kafka’s letters:

Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? … We’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.

The second is from The Autobiography of Malcolm X:

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. I certainly wasn’t seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I’m not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man…

I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read, and that’s a lot of books these days. If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity — because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about. I don’t think anybody ever got more out of going to prison than I did. In fact, prison enabled me to study far more intensively than I would have if my life had gone differently and I had attended some college.

You could do a lot worse than reading Kafka and Malcolm X this summer, by the way, and that would be quite the interesting pair to bring to the beach. As a point of comparison, revisit this video about why we read literature:

Ask about the BHS or course-specific books in the comments below, and I’ll offer whatever feedback I can. If you want to talk to each other about the possibilities, use the classroom space — or maybe clear the cobwebs from your Google+ Community for these final five days.


Makerspace Shenanigans


That’s a lot to choose from for five days, so you really don’t need another choice… but this option takes us back to the first thing you ostensibly read, when the syllabus was given to you back on September 6. You should be using the space at this point to ask questions and solve problems. That was the point of most of the recent posts, especially the ones on the end of the year. Of course, most of you able to choose this option already have, which makes the following text — edited lightly from that first-day syllabus — just a bit of validation.

We are a makerspace. It’s a term rarely used in an English classroom, and you’ll understand why when you revisit this clip:

That scene from Apollo 13 presents the traditional makerspace experience: A group of like-minded and similarly trained folks are given tools and components, confronted with a problem, and then asked to collaborate to solve that problem.

These engineers pour out a box of components onto the table, and then they experiment in order to do something important and innovative. In most makerspaces, the components that are poured out (metaphorically speaking) are physical — even if they are as tiny as DNA:

From WIRED: “Cow Milk Without the Cow Is Coming to Change Food Forever”

Trying to hack DNA to create cow-less milk requires the same general kind of makerspace thinking that it takes to save a bunch of stranded astronauts. Both examples involve science, and that’s the usual focus of a makerspace: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. When Art is included, they call this STEAM education.

To adapt this for English, we ask two questions:

  1. What important and meaningful problems are we solving in an English classroom?
  2. What components do we pour out onto a table to help us solve those problems?

Well, the problems we face are the universal ones: What does it mean to be a human being? What does it mean to live in a society? What are our beliefs? How do we want to live our lives? We face the problem of metabolizing anxiety and processing grief, of love and hate, of carving meaning out of the rock in front of us.

Like any makerspace, we must experiment to try to solve those problems. We have to think outside the box. Sometimes we have to destroy the box and build a better one. In an ELA makerspace, however, the tools of experimentation aren’t robotics, circuits, or 3D printers, but a set of universal skills and traits, which we fold into a course in the Humanities.

If that makes sense to you, good. You know what to do, and you know how to fill these five days. As always, I’m here to help.

Poetry Practice: Update


Update: Google Form Resubmission


The poetry practice form had an error in it, so it wasn’t tabulating final scores properly. You and I can still see your correct and incorrect answers, but overall scores provide some important data. So an update:

  1. If your Poetry Practice assignment was originally due on May 24, but you did not meet that deadline, you should finish the work by June 1. This applies to RE11 students.
  2. If you already entered your answers for the Poetry Practice assignment, regardless of when you did, you must reload the form and resubmit your answers. This should tabulate your final score properly.

If you missed the original deadline in RE11, you can now complete the practice passages and required self-analysis to improve your GAP score1. Finish this work by June 1. The complete assignment is on Google Classroom. Here is the link to the form only:

Hard copies are available by the printer in our classroom. They are labeled.


The Poetry Part of It


One of our earlier posts asked you to consider the poetry in this practice packet not just as test prep, but as poetry worth reading and considering on its own. Depending on your progress so far, you’re going to use this post to discuss the study of poetry. If you still need to finish the practice packet, do that first, and then make sure you’ve submitted or resubmitted your data. Our discussion here should help you with the self-analysis and metacognition required after that.

Start with the end-of-year post for your course:

  1. Lights and Tunnels: AP11, Part 2
  2. Lights and Tunnels: RE11, Part 2

Remind yourself what the last paragraphs of that post tell you, which is that we’re meant to be doing makerspace work now, which is “work that is generated in the moment through questioning and observation and curiosity.” It won’t be work posted on Google Classroom, because it is meant to be folded into your focus on exploration and creativity, but I still want to point you in the right direction. Follow these steps:

  1. Scroll through your course’s post until you find the section labeled HOW TO STRIP POETRY OF ALL ITS BEAUTY.
  2. Consider the quoted metaphor about rose petals and spectrometers.
  3. Read the embedded Medium essay, “Splitting the Atom.”

What I want to know, especially from those of you who are putative 8s or 9s, is what you get out of reading poetry as part of Regents Exam prep. This isn’t like inviting you to read “God’s Grandeur” and think about how incredible the internal rhyme and sprung rhythm is, which you can appreciate without writing an essay or answering a multiple-choice question. It isn’t like inviting you to listen to “Hey Bobby,” which has so many rich allusions that identifying them is part of understanding the song’s purpose2. This is part of exam prep, which means our explicit goal is to get a lot of points. Are you able to compartmentalize and get something more out of the process? If so, what? How?

Talk to me about it below, and we’ll see how that conversation goes this week. Hopefully, a few of you got lost in the hyperlinks in that last paragraph and footnotes. I’d love to hear your thoughts on those poems and songs, too.


  1. And to improve your understanding of the exam and your strengths and weaknesses, etc. That stuff is important, too, even if we can’t always see past the looming threat of final averages. 

  2. Or inviting you to compare Sage Francis’ song to the Bob Dylan song that inspired it. That’s worth studying, too, and a comparison between the two as political protest songs would be a lot of fun. And if we’re going to study political poetry, I’d stick with songs long enough to invite you to listen to Brother Ali, even if that one’s a little too controversial to put it anywhere but in a footnote. That controversy is the point, though, isn’t it? Poetry ought to be alive and powerful, and studying it ought to be exhilarating. Brother Ali’s piece is made up of poetry and music and visuals that do something, and figuring out how he’s doing it makes it more powerful. It unlocks it. It’s hard to feel exhilarated by multiple-choice questions and five-paragraph essays, because there’s no life in that analysis. It’s dissection, but not even to figure out how to bring life to our own poetry. Instead, it seems sometimes like education drains poetry until it’s just a desiccated husk. But I digress. Sort of. 

Packing Nines…


…Like September


If you selected a 9 for the most recent GAP panel, you believe that this paragraph describes you:

The strongest readers, thinkers, and communicators, these students also evince the best kind of collegiality, the most authentic curiosity, and the most mature amenability. They are exemplary autodidacts, utilizing inquiry-based tools and structures to improve purposefully in skills and knowledge. They demonstrate a precocious strength in metacognition and are consistently, insightfully reflective.

That’s impressive! More than 40 of you, from sophomores to seniors, have said that you were one of the strongest readers, thinkers, and communicators throughout the three-week period that ended on May 19. Another two dozen of you selected an 8, which means you are right there next to the 9s in terms of exceptional work:

These students are highly skilled communicators, critical thinkers, and close readers; they lack only the exceptional maturity and depth of students earning a 9. An 8 reflects a systemic investment in the course and a desire to do more than just what is required. These students are also collegial, curious, and amenable in ways that galvanize their peers and demonstrably improve the learning environment.

That’s also impressive! Because of your systemic investment, I’m here to ask you all to hold a conversation with me in the comment section of this post. This particular inquiry-based tool — direct access to the teacher, independent of class time, through Sisyphean High — has been underutilized all year. It’s one of the “inquiry-based tools and structures” referenced in the profile of a 9, though, and a chance for you to do “more than just what is required,” which is part of the profile of an 8.

The topic of our discussion is this post on in-class focus, feedback, and unlocking the course. As a self-described 8 or 9, you have no doubt read that post already, especially with a response deadline of tomorrow. Look at the notes you’ve already taken on that post, and consider the assignment in front of you. Speak specifically to your own experience unlocking that individualized curriculum. What does your classroom and course look like? How are you balancing the requirement that you “demonstrably improve the learning environment” with the constant metacognition and reflection necessary to individualize the work? What questions did that post raise for you, and what do you think it changes about the last few weeks of the year?


A Box of Positives


Understand that this is a genuine invitation to discussion. This post is now a forum for your insights and ideas, because any student whose body of work truly fits an 8 or a 9 has earned that level of respect. As your teacher, I benefit from hearing more about how you earned that 8 or 9. This is also an opportunity for me to share my observations directly with you in a way that can instruct others.

Of course, this post and assignment are also, without malice or irony, intended to burst down any inflated self-assessments. If you try to wade into this conversation without having done what it takes to earn an 8 or 9, it’ll be obvious to anyone who has done the work. Your actual GAP scores, based on the evidence you generated, will be posted very soon, with the final scores of the year coming in less than three weeks; it will be much better to realize any errors before then, and definitely before you begin animatedly discussing the “evidence” that makes you one of the strongest readers, thinkers, and writers in the building.

To put it more bluntly, there will be two types of students who misidentified their profiles as an 8 or a 9:

  1. The group that reads this post (and the previous one), recognizes the self-assessment error, and changes it. This group will move toward an 8 or 9 just by demonstrating amenability, self-awareness, and integrity.
  2. The group that doesn’t even read this post, because their sense of what an “8” or “9” entails is deeply flawed.

Group #2 isn’t likely to join us here, nor are they likely to have read the post on in-class focus and feedback. Those lapses are further evidence of a lower-tier profile. I mention them to you, the true 8s and 9s, because that is another possible focus for our discussion here. What do you do about peers who haven’t invested enough time or energy into the course to know that they aren’t really an 8 or a 9? What do you think the system should do? Do you experience fremdschämen when you see these other students? Is it closer to frustration?

Try to stay positive as you start the discussion, whether or not we delve into the Dunning-Kruger effect, the fragility of some egos, and the frustration of watching students “cheat” this system. Criticism can be constructive; cynicism almost never is. I invite you to start with the good stuff: how you’re individualizing your learning, how you’re creating meaning, how you’re growing as a thinker/reader/writer, and so on.

Keep your comments succinct, too. This isn’t an invitation to write essays on your experience; it’s a chance to move the best kind of discussion to a forum online. You’re here to learn from others, which takes active listening, whether we’re commenting or circled up in class.

In-Class Focus and Feedback


Shrapnel


The focuses of this instructional post are in-class focus and feedback. The impetus is that many of you are straying from the path. You’re making poor decisions — wasting class time and ignoring instruction, for the most part.

There’s something there that should scare you. I’ll tell you what it’s not.

It’s not what happens when you ignore instruction. What you’re doing is insubordinate and disrespectful and breaking all kinds of rules, and our classroom can only tolerate that for so long. Then you face some kind of punishment. Parents are called, Guidance meetings are arranged, etc. But that should embarrass you, not scare you.

It’s not your grade. As the rest of this post will explain, for those of you able to read it, GAP scores suffer when there isn’t evidence of in-class focus and feedback. The margin for error is less these days, too. But that’s obvious. It shouldn’t scare you.

It’s not even what bad decisions truly do to you. You are, right now, becoming a permanent version of yourself, and that self, for some of you, is going to be uninteresting, unskilled, and undisciplined. Believing otherwise is the “grain through the body of a bird” error explained five or six years ago in the first guide to this stuff. But that is more depressing than it is scary.

What you ought to fear is missing out. Everyone who invests in this course and its philosophy, who works hard and pays careful attention, unlocks something special. In essence, there are two courses taught in Room 210. The first one exists to force you to do your work, pay attention, and develop basic skills and traits. It attempts to make you a half-decent citizen of the world. It’ll cover a few ELA staples, get you ready for any exams, and help you feel less stressed about grades.

The second course exists to transform you. Its students are smarter, more interesting, and more engaged. On their worst days, they have a space that understands and supports them. On their best days, they find freedom and inspiration.

Yes, you should be afraid of low grades, making disrespect a habit, upsetting the teacher enough that he decapitates you in the middle of class1. But you should be existentially terrified that you’ve wasted such an opportunity. And to be in a room with people who have unlocked that deeper level is a constant reminder that you could have done it, too. You could have the freedom to become a better person, to study what you want, to do what you want — and you’re wasting it so you can scroll through Instagram or play a video game2.


The Keys to Life vs. 15 Minutes of Fame


To figure out your GAP score, you only need the profiles, probably with the tiered annotations attached. You could use the expanded protocol, which is plenty effective, or the embedded content in that triptych post. But the original set of profiles and scores is enough.

Past the profiles, the GAP Google Forms you complete require you to assign a number only to in-class focus and feedback3. Those really are the two most important elements, even before you get to the profiles themselves. That’s why this most recent tool ought to help even the most disengaged of you sort out your profile:

[sz-drive-embed type=”document” id=”1PorDAGF_4NWhCDlU1Upq2lhC8S3ypVkyFl9EDfGSnnI” width=”auto” height=”auto” /]

If the embedded version glitches out or isn’t accessible where you are, use the copies in our classroom, or load a copy of the handout through Google Drive by clicking here:

Starting at the top of that handout, you see again these two most basic requirements of this course, which are also the two keys that unlock upper-tier success:

  1. You must make the most of the class period.
  2. You must invest in feedback.

Feedback was the focus of this recent essay/post, which clarifies a lot of long-standing ideas, and we’ve stressed the importance of our time together during the school day since the start of the school year — see this essay or this one for a reminder.

Part 1 of the new handout (“The Keys”) asks you to self-assess your in-class focus and the level of feedback you’ve generated. Again, it’s an iteration of what you see in the Google Form you complete every three weeks or so. Depending on your browser, the graphics may not translate into what was originally intended. The line of emojis should look like this:

In other browsers, the faces may look like this:

This will seem unimportant at first, but there’s a reason to use faces instead of numbers. It’s about relative self-assessment. In our case, there are two perspectives. The first is the imagined perspective of an objective observer. What would someone notice about your in-class focus and feedback over the course of several weeks? That observer doesn’t care about why you were playing video games or mindlessly reloading Snapchat; he just makes a note that you were.

The second perspective is relative, and it’s inspired a bit by the Wong-Baker pain scale:

Ah, #8, my old friend.

There is a lot of subjectivity in this sort of self-assessment. What you consider to be a 10 — the worst pain you’ve ever experienced — might be only a 4 or 6 for a much less fortunate person. It’s still a 10 for you, though, because you can only base it on your experience. That’s the second perspective in our classroom: To a small extent, your best version of focusing might be different from that of others, and we might adjust — to a small extent — the standards to which you are held. You might be capable only of a certain level of feedback. That’s okay, if it’s true.

Again, the first perspective on your body of work is ultimately more important: What would an objective observer write down, if he was asked to describe your habits and behavioral patterns? We aren’t always after the reasons you were compelled to play on your phone for 35 minutes while your practice Regents Exam gathered dust in front of you. We can’t always take into consideration why you were playing video games instead of workshopping an essay. And, in fact, advocacy is such an integral part of the course that if you did need to space out for 35 minutes, you could probably ask for that, reflect on it later, and end up learning quite a bit about yourself4.

Part 2 of the handout (“The Engine”) clarifies these two perspectives through some close reading. The selections you see come from grade abatement profiles of 2, 4, 6, and 8, which give us final scores of 60, 70, 85, and 95, respectively. By any heuristic, these are the profiles that serve as benchmarks for failure and success. These small excerpts should help you arrive at a more accurate and helpful GAP score.

GAP 2 | A 2 {may indicate} [a deliberate and systemic disengagement]…

This is a question of repeated, conscious choice. How many times does a student need to disengage, miss work, lose focus, etc, before it is “deliberate and systemic”? How many mistakes are permissible? No one expects perfection, even at the level of a 9, but we have to start the discussion with some sort of threshold. You have agency and self-control, and very few students goof off out of malice. You do it without thinking. At a certain point, however, a lack of adjustment or a lack of thinking is a choice.

GAP 4 | These students {do not meet} [the basic requirements of the course]…

The GAP 2 has modal language, which is language suggesting possibility. The student “may” meet those criteria, but there are other ways to slip to that tier. For a GAP 4 and its surrounding scores, the language is direct: If you do not meet the basic requirements of the course, you really shouldn’t be scored any higher than a 4 (70).

The question, then, is what the course defines as its basic requirements. Right now, as always, the course values in-class focus and student-driven feedback more than anything else. This new handout also lists the obvious stuff, like getting work in on time and being amenable to redirection, as basic requirements. As the handout says, it’s about doing the job on the days you would rather be watching Netflix, instead of, you know, actually watching Netflix in class5.

So the question is, again, how lenient we ought to be. Where is the line between human error and apathy or indulgence? It isn’t a hypothetical question. Look at these data from around 9:00 AM on 5/17:

Those are the self-reported scores from about a dozen students. See how high the scores are? Maybe you can spot the issue when you read the original directions from the Google Classroom assignment:

That clearly states that completing the form before May 19 will lower your profile score. So about a dozen students, some of them otherwise excellent, didn’t read the directions before jumping in. They also didn’t read the calendar, and they seem to have forgotten that we never do these forms ahead of the last day of the three-week period. Yet they self-reported scores in Tier 4. Should those students receive lower GAP scores? Do we shrug away their mistake, even though it’s mid-May? Where do we draw the line?

And that’s an innocuous example.

GAP 6 | Students earning a 6 {are consistent and reliable} [in performance]…

My theory is that you consider “performance” to be only a particular set of things you do in school. Tests are performances. Essays are performances. Exams are definitely performances. The formative steps aren’t performative in the same way, so you cut corners and cheat the system if/when you need to. You copy homework, use Schmoop before a class discussion, and zone out during lectures.

This course rests on the opposite principle: The process is what matters, and the products should never be the primary focus of our learning. That means that “consistent and reliable” work happens every day. You saw the importance of that philosophy in the article we read about preschool crafts, but it’s written about and discussed constantly:

View at Medium.com

GAP 8 | An 8 {reflects} [a systemic investment in the course]…

In many of our notes on a GAP 8, we’ve talked about “galvanize” as the key verb. It’s true that you ought to be collaborating more here, and you ought to be using the interstitial mechanisms more to help your peers; the most important verb might be “reflects,” however, because of what it does for us metaphorically.

The rest of the time, you’re looking at quantifiable stuff. You can count the number of minutes you’re off-task when determining that a GAP 4 is your fate. If you believe you’ve been “consistent and reliable,” you can add up the assignments you’ve handed in, collate the formative and process-based work you did, and stack up your feedback-driven metacognition. When you invest in the entire system, however, your evidence moves beyond the quantifiable and into something more reflective.

Which is not to get too existential6. Think about how else we use “reflect” in here: It’s the other part of the self-monitoring you do, alongside metacognitive writing and discussion. You reflect your investment through self-monitoring. Once you observe the true purpose of the work, you can set the course accordingly. You’re in control of the learning, because you are involved in all parts of the system — not just the daily class periods and formal writing assignments, but everything.

Which is why Part 3 of this new handout, “The Vehicle,” is a list of the universal skills and traits we value. They are streamlined and edited a bit, but they haven’t changed fundamentally from the beginning of the year. When you are invested enough, your focus is on honing these skills, and you will see them reflected in everything you do.

That’s why it matters less which books we read, which essays you write, and which discussions we have. We do what we have to do in those regards, from Regents Exam prep to school-wide summer reading. The goal is for you to memorize this list of skills and traits, and then for us to work together to determine what you need to do to hone your strengths and eliminate your weaknesses. This becomes the blueprint for your growth:


Reflections


At this point, your brain should be churning as it begins to process this. You may need to revisit and edit your most recent GAP score. You may need to ask questions in the comment section below7. Regardless, you absolutely must write something in response to all this feedback — not just because that is a formal assignment, but because it’s the whole point.

First, I want to add that I still believe that it is nearly impossible to fake in-class focus and feedback. You can fake a certain level of curiosity and empathy, but it’s nearly impossible to reframe a period spent off-task as anything but what it was. You can rush through a few pages of perfunctory reflection, but it’s nearly impossible to turn a real lack of feedback and investment into something else.

Since “nearly” impossible is not the same as “totally” impossible, I usually try to pitch faking it in here as a good idea, theoretically speaking. That was the theory as early on as the tenth section of this essay:

If you force yourself through the motions in here, those motions will inculcate the skills and traits we want. A misanthrope who forces himself to take collegial and galvanizing actions will incrementally learn empathy. A narcissist who forces herself to reflect and metacogitate every week will incrementally find new self-awareness and insight. An apathetic student who grinds through assignments just to get them done will incrementally gain a real appreciation for the value of the work.

That’s idealistic, but it seems to be true for most students: If you fake it, at least you’re doing some good.

I think there’s something else to add, though: If you decided that this “nearly impossible” claim was a challenge, you might figure out how to fake it. You might fool me. Or you might just slip through the cracks, earning credit when credit is definitely not due. Then the hard-working students become frustrated, seeing a kind of injustice. No one wants to feel cheated, to have a peer succeed dishonestly, or to see a good system subverted.

So here’s the thing: Did that person succeed? Did he really? When a student “cheats” in here, all he’s done is get worse at everything that the world actually values. That vehicle for learning — the list of universal skills and traits — might as well be a car rusting on cinder blocks in the front yard. The student, having gotten away with wasting class time and ignoring feedback, has made himself more distracted and more disrespectful. He knows less now and can do less with the little he knows than his peers. He’s grown dishonest and cynical and selfish.

That’s… not really a victory. How do you imagine you would celebrate that? “Boy, I tricked him! I’m a terrible student! My life is going to be much harder now!”

I mean, yes, I’m upset about that, but not in a mustache-twirling kind of way8. I would like the world to be filled with respectful, creative people who take advantage of extraordinary opportunities to learn about themselves and the world around them. I hope you will make that world a better place through your intelligence and compassion. I believe in your potential, and I hate to see it wasted.

That’s all.


  1. “Metaphorically!” he shouted quickly, glancing at administration and laughing nervously. “Metaphorically decapitates you in the middle of class.” 

  2. Both of which you could legitimately do, if it was part of a unit of study you’d designed. You could write about these things, study them, read excellent ETA essays on them. You’d get more out of it. Why not do that? 

  3. You are also asked about your confidence and certainty versus our collective Dunning-Kruger tendencies, but that’s for another lesson. 

  4. The best kind of metacognition is uncomfortable, so this would be perfect: Why do you need to waste class time? Is it really that you’re wasting it, or is something more significant going on? 

  5. Again, you could probably write and read about this, if you were invested enough in the course. Binge-watching culture is fascinating, and I’d want to help you unpack the reasons why that show had so transfixed you that it couldn’t wait another few hours. 

  6. Says the Camus-inspired website that just pitched Regents Exam prep with a Kafka reference

  7. Try that out. Scroll down and ask a question. It’s never too late to engage with the interstitial elements of the course, and it is the easiest and fastest way to get feedback. 

  8. Although I wonder… In that scenario, who is Dudley Do-Right? 

Lights and Tunnels: RE11, Part 2

Part 2 of a two-part series that probably isn’t going to be renewed for another season. Advertisers are pulling out.


Regents and Final Exam Work


As discussed in the last post, the final exam will be given only to students in danger of failing the course. If you are one of those students, you will know by the end of this week, and you will be given the final exam prompt on Monday, May 22.

If you have kept up with assignments over the last few weeks, you have a completed, annotated, and deconstructed practice Regents Exam in a folder in Room 210. If your folder is incomplete, that’s your focus until it is complete. Grade abatement will take the missing deadlines into account, but you should worry more about the exam on June 14. We will return to these folders in June, when we’ll need to review and arrange your mental architecture for the exam itself; and while it might not be the entrance exam at Oxford, the Regents needs to be taken seriously. The exhaustive context and directions remain where they have been.

The folders will be reviewed for any serious areas of weakness, and then I’ll talk to you individually and in small groups about what you might need to do before June. All of you will be practicing multiple-choice questions on poetry, however, which is why that gets its own section here:

How to Strip Poetry of All Its Beauty

Well, not all its beauty. We’re not quite at what David Foster Wallace called “the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty,” although that may be simply because the Regents isn’t precise enough a tool.

Regardless, the data from our first batch of multiple-choice questions suggest that you need help analyzing poetry. The data always suggest that. Perhaps that’s because you shouldn’t analyze poetry unless you plan to emulate it — to become a poet yourself, that is. I’ve tried to parse the logic that gets us anywhere else:

View at Medium.com

Whether or not multiple-choice questions on a timed, state-designed test are authentic or valid, however, or helpful in any meaningful way, you have to get them right. So we will practice.

You’ll get a packet of poetry and multiple-choice questions at some point this week, after you’ve had a day or two to look over recent assignments and metabolize that post-prom letdown1. You’ll have time to answer those questions and talk about the poetry, and then I’ll post a Google Form to give you the right answers and generate group data, just like we’ve done before.


Other Work


We’ll continue our Pareto Project work on Fridays in the iLC. I’ll use the data from this form, which has been formally posted to Google Classroom and embedded in an earlier post, to determine what happens next, and that will dictate some of our time together before the end of the year.

Otherwise, what we’ll do is true makerspace work: work that is generated in the moment through questioning and observation and curiosity. I’ll push you to write certain essays and read certain texts. It will be very much about exploration, creation, and the learning that goes with it. So the work won’t have a post here online, nor a Google Classroom assignment. It will be work that is folded into the grade abatement process and made authentic by the understandings we’ve developed over the year.

In other words, when we aren’t grappling with tests and their interior logic, we’ll be seeing what sort of happiness we can carve out of the rock in front of us.


  1. Even if you didn’t attend the junior prom, there’s a post-prom letdown. When the mob that surrounds you feels one way, it tends to put something in the water

The End of The Long Walk


Makerspace Calendar


Refer to this calendar for the overall structure of the last month:

We will spend most of our time before the end of school making things. The course expectations for focus and productivity haven’t changed, but you will have more autonomy. Note that any end-of-year test prep or individual GAP improvements will take precedence over unstructured makerspace activity. It’s not exactly a feast-or-famine framework, but it’s similar.


Pareto Projects


Review the expectations for the Pareto Project, including the last updates for juniors or sophomores, and then complete the following Google Form:

Note that the last question on the form requires you to write at least 1500 characters. This is a substantial amount of analysis, and it should be taken seriously. You are strongly encouraged to write your response separately, because Forms does not save in-progress work. The form will not accept anything less than 1500 characters. There is a visual approximation of what that looks like embedded in the form itself.

You can use Monday’s class period to work on this form and the response required at the end of it.


Exams


Refer to the following calendar for the schedule for final and Regents exams in all subjects:

RE10 Specifics

Sophomores will spend the next month prepping as necessary for their final exam, which has two components:

  1. A reading passage with multiple-choice questions, modeled after the passages on Part 1 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts
  2. A timed essay modeled after Part 2 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts

For the multiple-choice practice, we will use old Regents Exams, Google Forms, and metacognition. For the timed essay, we will use old exam prompts, metacognition, and the Grammar as Rhetoric and Style work you’ve just completed.

We will begin our prep on Monday. A separate instructional post will be uploaded and photocopied then with digital archives of all the materials you’ll receive in class. We’ll review the protocol then, so if you’re reading this before class, all you need to prepare for is a shift to much more separate and individualized work — no groups, and computers and devices only if they aren’t a distraction.

AP11 + RE11 Specifics

All juniors must take the Regents Examination in English Language Arts. You have already been given access to every resource you need to prepare for it, and we will use whatever class time you require to practice and review. Refer to this post for all the required information:

Printed copies of every single element in that post will be available in our classroom for the rest of the year. If you are an AP student, start the period on Monday by emptying your test-prep folder of all AP materials. Then use Google Classroom to organize yourself by deadline. RE11 students can focus on the Pareto update and any other instructional posts.

The final exam for juniors is a more complicated subject. Read the following paragraphs carefully.

If you are in danger of failing English for the year, then you are required to take a separate final exam. This exam will be an essay-driven assessment designed to give you, if you are in danger of failing for the year, an opportunity to pass. You will be informed if this applies to you after Q4B GAP scores are determined on May 19.

If you are required to take a separate final exam in English, your final average will be determined by five scores, including that final exam score. The ELA Regents Exam does not count as part of your GPA, regardless of your overall average.

If you are not in danger of failing English for the year, you will not be asked to take a separate final exam.Your final average will be determined by your four quarterly grades only.

If you have questions about any of this, ask those questions below or in the comment section of the individual course posts, where I can clarify for everyone or forward things along to the folks who make these decisions.

GAP Q4A: Pillars of Salt

I’ve kept your GAP Q4A scores and this feedback until this morning to sidestep the AP English Language Exam, which is taking place as this post goes live. After plague symptoms swept through my house last week, delaying grade abatement by four or five days, I determined that we were too close to AP exams to release scores. It would have created distraction and added frustration at a time when those 70 students could not afford either.

I predict some frustration because of the significant discrepancy between self-reported GAP scores and the actual body of work for the 4A frame. Many of you indicated a profile that is not supported by the evidence. It is often frustrating to be called out on that sort of mistake, but the most important principle here is accuracy.

As always, I did this clinically. The titular irony1 is that none of this is “salty,” as you might say. You have a static post with all the most recent materials for grade abatement — from way back in February — and you should be making your way through an instructional post on feedback that revisits what is expected of you day by day. There’s some intentional warmth and humor in that last post, and it’s otherwise a straightforward deconstruction of how to learn successfully. Even the disappointment is deliberate and clinical, in the same way that your car’s engine light doesn’t flash on to be rude. The light means only that something isn’t working.

Part of this post’s clinical deconstruction is a reminder that our class period is as important as anything else. This fact has not changed since the first day of school. Neither has the expectation that you archive evidence for virtually every formal assignment through Google Classroom, or else that you arrange a clear and explicit alternative. GAP work isn’t guesswork, and if you must constantly justify a lack of focus or a lack of evidence, that itself is evidence of a problem.

The other problem, as always, is the Dunning-Kruger reasoning that one is exempt from in-class requirements and/or exempt from creating written evidence of learning. You have really intricate guides and breakdowns for all this, but it’s just as often Occam’s razor: The “consistent and reliable” language in the profile of a GAP 6 requires consistent evidence and a reliable in-class focus.

So take a look at what you didn’t hand in on Google classroom. Take honest account of how focused you are in class. If you feel that the final GAP score is still incorrect, pull up the evidence and reflective thinking you submitted alongside the GAP 4A form. Was there any? If not, but you have evidence, the question is obvious: Where was it when it was required? That’s the idea of a body of evidence, a “rhinoceros” test, and a thorough self-reporting process. I work with what you give me.

That’s the other thing, though, and the more important one: Anytime it ends up being about me, not you and your learning, we need to refocus on what the course provides you. Try to take advantage of this opportunity. You’ll always have another turn in a Skinner box.


Carrots and Sticks


Now for some feedback that you should imagine is being read through an emotionless text-to-speech program:

First, if you believe that we need to meet about evidence and profiles, let me know. We’ll determine together if you’re right, and we’ll fold any conferences into the current collective refocus on radial and proxy feedback.

By that same logic, those of you doing good work need to work harder on helping your peers. You should broaden your circle of influence before the end of the year. As your ability to choose what to do opens up, you should revisit Google+ as a means of collaboration, and I would like to test Google Groups, too.

All of you should focus on each choice, each day. Make the best choice for learning. If you’re in doubt, enlist peers to help you make the best choice, or ask me for some guidance.

AP students who do not alter alter poor decision-making tendencies will see those GAP scores drop quickly. Post-exam work is more important to us, actually, and we fight the inevitable post-exam letdown through increased student choice. I’m not going to intervene to tell you that the way you’re spending a class period is unacceptable, though, or that you ought to hand in evidence of your work, except in the idle way I might comment on the weather we’re having.

If you’re an AP student who is not advocating and accounting for yourself, that’s fine — in that it’s a bad decision, and one that will inculcate self-defeating traits in you, and one that will absolutely and inexorably and ultimately hurt you; it’s not, however, a decision that will be wrestled away from you. Your choice to challenge yourself by taking an AP course also gives you the freedom to fail.

RE11 and RE10 students who don’t find a new gear and a new focus immediately will be isolated in class and required to attend study sessions during a free period, lunch, or after-school session, which means I’ll coordinate with your parents or guardians and Guidance to get you the help that you need. That probably means focused Regents Exam or final exam prep, respectively, but it could easily be a session on assiduousness, amenability, self-awareness, collegiality, or any of the other meaningful skills and traits we use to determine GAP scores.

You’re also looking at the likely end of student-choice seating in P4, P5, and P9. Some groups will be allowed to stay together, and probation is a possibility for a few others. Most of you would benefit immediately from the lack of distraction, however, and from an explicit directive to focus and get work done. That costs you choice in your learning, and it prevents in-class collaboration, but it buys us the time to get you the help that you need.

As always, you are encouraged to ask questions about this feedback and its application below. Use that space. You are not Lot’s wife, running from destruction and certain to die if you look back. You should look back. The more you reflect, the easier it is to move forward.


  1. The salt in the post title, which refers to saltiness as much as Lot’s poor wife. I actually like “salty” as slang; its origins are interesting, at least. The problem is that it treats criticism and emotion as an overreaction. It is sometimes appropriate to be disappointed or frustrated. 

Regents Prep: A Day’s Wait

In an effort to limit the amount of class time dedicated to explicit Regents Exam prep, we’re going to finish writing the practice exam this week. You should already have Part 1 and Part 2 in your folders. By Friday, finish Part 3, recording your response in the same essay booklet you used for Part 2. If you haven’t written Part 2 yet, do that, too. Printed copies of everything you need are available in our classroom, most likely on the bookshelves by the door.


Part 3: Text-Analysis Response


Part 3 of the exam is an abbreviated kind of analysis. The directions are clear enough, so you should be able to build the necessary writing out of the task and guidelines provided by the state. For reference, here are those expectations, which are the same on each exam:

Your Task: Closely read the text provided on pages 19 through 21 and write a well-developed, text-based response of two to three paragraphs. In your response, identify a central idea in the text and analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device) develops this central idea. Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis. Do not simply summarize the text. You may use the margins to take notes as you read and scrap paper to plan your response. Write your response in the spaces provided on pages 7 through 9 of your essay booklet.

Guidelines:

Be sure to:
• Identify a central idea in the text
• Analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device) develops this central idea. Examples include: characterization, conflict, denotation/connotation, metaphor, simile, irony, language use, point-of-view, setting, structure, symbolism, theme, tone, etc.
• Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysi
• Organize your ideas in a cohesive and coherent manner
• Maintain a formal style of writing
• Follow the conventions of standard written English

Write your response in the appropriate section of the essay booklet. You should eventually have a booklet with Part 2 and Part 3 in it; if you need to stitch this together by separating and stapling pages, be sure to do that. Finish Part 3 by Friday. You’ll see why in a moment.


Assignment: Transcription and Revision


Your next assignment, due Monday the 1st, is to type both responses from this practice Regents. You can edit the text as you go or keep it as-is. If you make edits and revisions, you will be able to account for those when you complete the required metacognition and reflection next week; if you copy your writing verbatim, you will be able to talk about possible revisions when you delve into the scoring guides next week.

Typing this handwritten work invites you to grapple with your choices in a different way from our usual metacognitive approach. That will benefit our test prep, and it also creates critical evidence for GAP scoring. My intention is to see if Hunter S. Thompson’s idea about copying writing down works on ourselves. If it doesn’t, we might try typing up the exemplar essays.

Regardless, you are being asked to complete two separate tasks by Monday:

  1. Type up your handwritten essay response for Part 2 of the practice exam.
  2. Type up your handwritten analysis response for Part 3 of the practice exam.

Attach those typed versions to the appropriate Google Classroom assignment. I suggest making a copy of them, first, so that you keep one for the metacognitive work we’ll be doing next week.

Ask any clarifying questions about this below.