If you’re reading this as a student, it’s likely because you are being asked to complete an activity like a SWOT analysis or a blueprint for a passion project. There is sometimes a question about when, in our makerspace, we will get to the so-called “real work” of English. This is a response to that question, and it is written to help even those who already know the answer.
The TL:DR is that the makerspace is dedicated to building habits and developing substructural skills and traits. English is about reading, thinking, and writing; you’ve been immersed in the Humanities since you entered the room. We must occasionally focus on a skill or trait in order to better read a novel or write an essay. We must dedicate the time to putting those skills and habits of mind into practice.
These skills, traits, and knowledge are necessary in this course. These are also the skills, traits, etc., that you need for every class you take in Brewster.
Remember that this is an interstitially taught course, where interstitial is a new term for an old idea: flip instruction and offer student-selected access to the learning environment.
You are always being given guides to this sort of thing. Here is one you may not have seen yet:
There are additional posts on getting yourself organized, the reading process, what it means to be “paperless” in an English class, and an updated guide to profile-based assessment.
With every unit, we put this substructural work into practice. The makerspace becomes a place for exploring literature, writing authentic essays, preparing for exams, and much more. This is the so-called “traditional” work of an ELA curriculum — which includes metacognition, reflection, collaboration, by the way, because all classes following the SCP include those things.
The Humanities are a marathon, not a series of sprints. If you’ve been reading and listening since the course syllabus was posted, you know this. You also know that putting in the effort will have built the habits you need. It’s why we would dedicate an entire unit, when necessary, to procrastination and akrasia: Because future success is directly correlated to self-control.
Every student who buys into this approach is doing well and reporting success. Based on their GAP feedback and the testimonials of hundreds before them, we know that this interstitial, grade-abated approach works, and invested students are going to see their investment pay off as they read and write and think in increasingly complex and creative ways.
In fact, students who have invested in the process and developing these universally useful habits are going to see what a Humanities makerspace engenders — not just Pareto Projects and the kind of writing that you share with others, but the capacity to solve almost any personal or academic problem you encounter. Soon, this will be part of district-wide Success Projects.
Our collective concern needs to be for the students who have failed to invest. These students haven’t done many assignments, or they’ve done them insufficiently. They haven’t accepted help. They haven’t used feedback to improve. Given too much individual choice during class, they’ve failed to focus.
These students have developed habits, too, but only habits that will hurt them in the end. Because they have not practiced self-control, they do not possess it. Because they have rejected constructive criticism, they lack amenability. Because they have not read these posts of interstitial instruction, they will not have the close reading skill to handle what’s to come.
Time is the issue. You are building habits. If you’ve built good habits, they’ll carry you to the end. If you’ve built bad ones, they might bury you. You always have less time to change than you did yesterday.
Help each other to realize that ignorance and spite are deadly. You do not want to develop those habits of mind. Selfishness leads to mean-spiritedness. Blame leads to avoidance. Here’s how Peter Johnston puts it in Opening Minds:
Our main advantage as human beings lies in our ability to think together. Our main threat has become our failure to think and act together on larger scales and to act on the understanding that the sheer existence of our species depends on how we think together — how we experience and treat each other. We can think of this as an autoimmune disorder. In recent years in the United States the number of people experiencing physiological autoimmune disorders has grown quite rapidly, and there is reason to believe that this growth is associated with increasing stress. Prolonged stress can confuse the immune system’s ability to distinguish between foreign invaders and parts of the body, so the immune system ends up attacking the body. Stress in learning communities produces a similar response…
[U]nder stress, we often take up fixed theories about people and ideas. We stereotype and begin to view difference as a threat. We shut down any ideas unlike our own and turn against the source of those ideas. Without difference, creativity drops, and the community’s ability to deal with novel threats becomes restricted. As the emotional and relational fabric of the community is undermined, the ability of the community to learn, adapt, nurture, and grow further deteriorates.
That book was assigned by Brewster’s administration to all teachers, precisely because the potential for radical change exists here. What matters now is the role you choose to play. Will you undermine or strengthen the relational fabric of the learning environment?