Many essays about this course and its approach to learning stress the need to work together. It’s embedded in posts about how we spend each period, implied in extended metaphors about how we learn, and repeatedly referenced in guides to grade abatement.
In the essay below, collegiality and empathy are the backdrop for a discussion of low-information sepsis and herd immunity — extended metaphors about the responsibilities you have to each other. How do we combat ignorance together? What should you do with a peer who “join[s] in on a conversation in a language he has no interest in learning”? Does anyone have the right to refuse to learn?
This writing frames your shared responsibility in a different light. Read the essay carefully, and consider how its message applies to you. Then ask questions and start discussions in the comments.
I like the herd immunity about vaccines and I think it helped me understand more of what it is about. The “herd immunity” when applied to education means that students and teachers are working together to help everyone get the best education they can get from this class. What might that type of collaboration look like? Would it be the feedback that we can get from you and our peers? What else could it include?
Good question! I think we ought to make a list of every way you can coordinate or collaborate with someone or something else. That’s the idea: to give you as many options as possible for learning. As long as it is focused around universal skills and traits, it counts.