Author: Mr. Eure

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AP11: Feb. 21 Updates

  By AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018)

As we start the ending of the school year, expect a slight uptick in the number of instructional posts here. We need to hack the exam you take in May, set final goals for your Pareto Projects, and make our way through the usual reading, writing, and thinking1. Read everything posted here carefully, as always, as you would an assigned textbook or a posted lecture.

Next Year First

It’s time to make course recommendations and selections for next year. As this is English, we’ll be looking at your choices for the core ELA credit you are required to carry. Electives will be part of the discussion, but you’ll be able to make those choices on your own. I’m going to push you to take any English electives you can. Creative Expression, for instance, is one of the best courses you’ll find in this building, and any of the new 12R courses, if you go that route, are fantastic.

You have a chance to take exceptional courses from exceptional teachers, so if your schedule permits it, and you have even a passing interest in being a better writer, thinker, human being, etc., consider the electives available to you. When you feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill, it’s important to look for the good stuff.

As for the core courses, you have a choice:

  • English 12
  • AP English Literature & Composition
  • DCC English 101

Over the weekend, I’ll recommend you for one of those. But it’s up to you, as it always is, to learn about the choice by asking questions and sorting rubbish opinions from good opinions.

One almost invariably true thing: If a student only complains about a class, that person isn’t trying to help you with your decision. He just wants to vent, or he wants his frustration validated. Pay attention when you hear the language of blame. Think back to the supplemental readings at the end of this discussion we had, and avoid people who sound like that. Be empathetic toward them, but don’t invite them into your decision-making process. As always, you want folks who are thoughtful and insightful and specific, because that’s how you’ll find the shades of experience that separate all of your different choices.

Two things about the college-level choices:

  • That AP course ends, as you might guess, in an AP exam, and you’re expected to take that.
  • DCC requires you to have an 85 GPA or higher, and you have to pass an Accuplacer test, which will be scheduled soon.

When you’re ready, fill out this form:

Loads in a new window.

Just in case, this is the direct URL: https://goo.gl/forms/N773Q8aDmOWcymQ73. Get your choice in as soon as possible, and we’ll compare notes and make a decision together.

More Concrete Stuff

The classroom’s been slightly rearranged. You need to do more of that yourselves, because there’s always a reason to reconfigure a makerspace, but I had 30 minutes this morning.

Right now, one of our U-shaped tables is lined up with the TV mounted on our wall. That TV has a Chromebit attached to it, so you can log into it as you would any Chromebook. I’ve used it during our brief lapses back into traditional lectures. Use it more collaboratively as we delve into sample essays and practice exams. Let’s see if it helps you in small-group situations.

Otherwise, you all need to use the whiteboards and more often and more effectively. Choose to sit where you’ll get work done, whether that separates you from your friends or not. Put your phone away, if you know it’s disrupting you2. Move the furniture around, too. If nothing else, that’s a great metacognitive prompt: What role does the physical space play in your learning?

Take a look at the bookshelf by my desk, too, for a complete set of prep materials for both exams you’ll take this year. Your final calendar is there, as are a number of other useful handouts.

AP Timed Writing

As of this afternoon, you should each have three prompts, three sets of model responses, and three timed essays of your own. Put them together somewhere safe and accessible. These are your baseline for the written portion of our test prep.

If you haven’t done the metacognitive and reflective requirements for the first two timed essays, you’re behind. Let me help you attack the problem. For the next few months, you need this foundation. The rest of our prep for the AP Exam depends on it.

One more thing: if you want individual feedback, you may have it. Not yet, though. You need to spend a lot more time with the model essays, rubrics, and structural components of these assignments.

When and if you ask for individual feedback — traditional prescriptive and proscriptive commentary, done in colored ink — you are required to use it to teach others, and then you have to write about what teaching taught you. Keep that in mind. Remember what we’re really learning here.

More Readin’

Return your copy of 1984 as soon as possible. The book numbers are posted near the door to our space, where we can line the books up on a rolling cart to return them to the English Department’s book room (Which is a good place to visit, if you like the idea of a room filled with books. It’s always interesting to see what hidden treasures are lined up in class sets in there.)). If you can’t or don’t find your copy of 1984, you’ll owe the school a little money until you find it.

Our next novel will be The Catcher in the Rye. I’m looking into how this site could help us, and if you’re intrigued by that, let me know why in the comments. More on that soon.

The Course within the Course

Use the updated calendar to keep track of what you’re expected to do in here. Here is another link to it:

This is an organizational tool, sure, and you can see that you’ll be busy until June. But you should try to see beyond those units and lessons. That’s why I listed out goals by content and skill. As long as we hit those marks, there’s a conversation to have about how we hit them.

So there is always flexibility built into our learning. It’s the course within the course that got a mention way back in September:

A Glass Case Full of Lost Treasures and Fossils

If you missed it the first time, each of the subheadings in that instructional post link to a piece by an artist I’d like us to study again in April, during National Poetry Month3.

You have specific goals for the tests you’ll take this year, and you have specific goals for next year. For most of you, that calendar’s how you’ll meet your goals: completing whatever’s assigned, getting feedback keyed to your needs, etc., until you move on to the next boulder/mountain combo.

I hope, though, that you all see the opportunities to break off from the beaten path, as they say. Try to embrace the opportunities you have here.

  1. I’m most excited about teaching you all poetry in April. Of course, my excited face looks exactly like every other face I make, which is to say it looks like a frail lumberjack struggling against existential terror. ↩

  2. Especially if you’re told it’s disrupting you. Use the back corner to store your devices for 30 minutes. It’s got to be your choice, but I am strongly suggesting you make a specific decision there. ↩

  3. Also, here is what boggles my mind: That post, from September 7, 2017, lays out in exact detail everything you’d need to do to get a 100 average in here, which is the same as what you’d need to do to become highly skilled and insightful and so on. That post showcases exactly how this kind of instruction works, how collaboration works, how to be metacognitive, etc., in about as transparent a way as is possible. It’s a bit much to read, sure, but so is the contract you sign for a job. So is the guide to the SAT you force yourself through. So is the reading required for that first driving test. When you’re given exact instructions for getting what you want, you should study them. So the mind-boggling thing is how many students missed the blueprint, despite how often it was posted, photocopied, given in a traditional lecture, rewritten and reposted and re-lectured, etc., from the first day of school until now. There’s a reason we end up talking about self-control and blame as often as we do. ↩

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Silence and Space

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

From the Montserrat College of Art.

RE/AP Plans, Feb. 12-14

On Tuesday, and then again on Wednesday, you will spend the 42-minute class period writing. The subject of Tuesday’s prompt is your reading process, particularly with regard to 1984; Wednesday’s subject is your writing process, particularly with regard to the classification and division essay inspired by Stephanie Ericsson’s “The Ways We Lie.”

You will write by hand to start. That helps you practice the physical act of writing, which matters in a year when all of you take at least one timed, high-stakes English assessment. Writing by hand is also a way to engage the kinesthetic part of learning more directly. It’s as we discussed earlier in the year: Sometimes we need to focus on the physical and tangible. We spend enough time in front of screens in our lives.

When you arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday, plan to store all of your devices and electronics. As necessary, you can put them in that anti-distraction corner that was built for this purpose. The act of storing your phone and computer for two days will help you into a different mindset, and that’s what we want: the kind of interesting, authentic writing that needs silence and space to develop.

You will be strongly encouraged to take these responses with you over the long weekend for more reflection, metacognition, and revision. At that point, you should return to instructional posts that set the context for the work. For instance, this is how you were introduced to reading novels:

Well, Why Read?

Look over that instructional post again, and begin thinking about how you approached 1984. Do the same thing for the instructional posts that contextualized the writing process for your classification and division work.

Use the comment section here to ask questions, share ideas with me, etc., and keep an eye on your assiduousness this weekend. Six days off is just enough time for your brain to atrophy.

Two more admin notes:

  1. You will need to sign in your copy of 1984 during the week of February 211.
  2. It will be ten days until we are able to resume the required conferences that started on January 22. Let’s use those ten days to conference interstitially — over email — where possible2.

  1. If you’ve lost it, that’s actually an interesting approach to your writing: What’s the story behind the novel going missing? ↩

  2. Remember that these conferences have always been available to you as part of a better form of feedback. They are required now to make sure you’ve talked to me individually about your progress. You’re not limited to one conference, and you’re not required to do it in person. It’s about the feedback loop. ↩

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Negative Capability

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

The title and central link in this post are allusions to John Keats, specifically his idea of negative capability. The image is another take on Leliel, borrowed with thanks from this artist.

Content with Half-Knowledge

While writing that last post, I got distracted by etymology (as one does). I wanted to link you to the origin of quixotic, a word that means “exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical,” both to teach you the term and give you the allusion to Don Quixote, which also gave us an interesting idiom about windmills.

Anyway, I discovered two things to share with you. The first is the Chrome extension for the Online Etymological Dictionary:

Install that on your school Chromebook, if nowhere else, so that you can quickly look up the etymology of new and interesting words you encounter. The more you learn to recognize roots, the more easily you’ll intuit the meaning of unfamiliar words. (Note: The extension seems to be blocked right now. I’ll apply to get it unblocked. Bookmark the address for later.)

Remember what Paul Graham wrote: “[T]he more you learn, the more hooks you have for new facts to stick onto — which means you accumulate knowledge at what’s colloquially called an exponential rate.”

The second thing is this bit of writing by the author of the Online Etymological Dictionary:

 

I think the title should be “Cloud of Unknowing,” but ignore that — this fits our space perfectly. One of our goals is to “get the feel of things in fog or dusk,” which means trusting that the search is more important than any final answer. It’s again the idea that “the most important thing one learns is something about how one learns,” which is part of the Neil Postman quotation at the top of this website1

I want you to take a moment this weekend to think about your own relationship to uncertainty. To what extent are you comfortable with not knowing? Write about that, and will you have a better sense of what it really means to study the Humanities. After all, there are very few things as human as being a little bit lost and trying to find a way forward.

That’s lofty stuff, so here’s the bathetic bit: If you write about your relationship to uncertainty, you’ll also generate evidence of (1) doing more than just what is required, and (2) a precocious strength in metacognition, which are two of the criteria for the top tier of GAP scoring.

By the way, “bathetic” is another of those words that stuck in my head when I read Perdido Street Station, which first came up here. “Bathetic” is the term for a sudden drop in conversation, writing, etc., from the elevated to the commonplace. So we go from discussing the philosophical heights of the Humanities to motivating you through grades. The root of the word is bathos, which is fun to say, if nothing else.

  1. How we access and process knowledge is changing in the hypertextual era, which is the era of immediate access to the Internet. It’s a commonplace question, although that doesn’t make it any less important. Here is Pete Holmes talking about uncertainty in a stand-up act:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ4o1N4ksyQ?feature=oembed&w=920&h=518]

    You have Chromebooks, smartphones, and desktops that give you immediate answers to any questions you have, from how to complete homework to the meaning of life. That’s an important and mostly unexplored part of your learning. ↩

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Calendar Updates: RE/AP

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

The Return of the Aft Agley Gang

You might remember our syllabus and its quixotic desire to go paperless:

We need to be able to edit documents in real time and to collaborate in a more 21st-century way. You need access to the hyperlinks and connections that make up the bulk of contemporary writing and reading.

Which isn’t to say that you can’t have printed copies of this stuff. Think of it as responsive printing: If you need a copy of something, then you’ll get it. It’s up to you to determine that need, though, and usually to take care of it. We have our own printer, but it is connected only to the desktops in Room 210; if you want to print, you’ll have to be deliberate about it.

We will also print some essays as we workshop them, depending on need. Not everything can be done on a computer, but we are going to attempt to minimize our paper use.

As I write this, I’m staring at stacks of paper on every bookshelf and tabletop, so “minimize” didn’t happen. It’s hard to let go of the desire for printed copies of everything we do, and there is still a need, in many cases, to maintain that kinesthetic connection.

There was one reason above all others to go paperless: to be flexible. Photocopies, especially laminated ones, are a commitment to a particular state of things. Edits require us to reprint 100+ copies of a handout or text, and that’s not always possible.

Case in point: The calendar needs to be revamped.

If the Google Docs versions don’t load correctly, use the PDF. Obviously, only the Google version will be updated.

I’ll also replace the links on the main site and Google Classroom over the next few days. Make sure you’re using the updated version of the calendar. I’ll make copies next week. I’m also going to leave the earlier calendars laminated on our bulletin board as a testament to the folly of man.

Most of the changes are small. The only major change is to the GAP scoring process for the next month:

  • There will be no Q3A score.
  • Your Q3B score will reflect the entire time frame between January 22 and March 9.
  • Your Q3 average will come from that score and your Q3C score.

Infinite Campus already reflects this change. It works out in your favor, since it will give you more time to show growth, develop your skills, and conference with me, if you haven’t already done so. Use the new calendar to plan for that.

One reason for this change is our ongoing (and possibly quixotic) attempt to develop more self-control and self-awareness. In the last post, I explained the latest version of the Rubicon protocol. To reiterate:

  • You can accumulate a “point” more than once per period.
  • If you stay focused and productive, you won’t accumulate any.
  • If you don’t stay focused and productive, you’ll keep accumulating points.

The number you see in Infinite Campus won’t always be up-to-date, and you aren’t going to get a memo telling you what you did. This is basic stuff. Stay focused, follow directions, and do your job.

Rubicon scores factor into your grade abatement profiles, but there’s a caveat there. You aren’t going to fail because you see that Rubicon number tick up. It’s one data point among many. A low number there probably doesn’t exclude you from the fourth tier of profiles. A high number doesn’t necessarily drop you to the second tier. We’ll look at everything when fitting you into a profile.

The most important thing for you to keep in mind is that this is a learning tool. It’s designed to focus you. If it doesn’t do that, we can have a conversation about what’s happening. So far, you all seem to understand the purpose of it, and you’re buying into its efficacy:

Optical Delusions

That should link you straight to the comment section of the last post. Enter that discussion, if you have some insight into how best to motivate you and your peers from period to period.

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Regents Prep: Updates

  By English Regents Prep (2017-2018)

P1: Second Semester Updates

We are now settled into the second semester. Let’s talk about what that means.

For returning students, we will focus on Part 1 of the exam to get your multiple-choice scores where they need to be. The protocol will be the same for every assignment, whether it is assigned individually or to everyone:

  1. Take the practice test through Castle Learning.
  2. Get the correct answers and an explanation for each answer through Castle Learning.
  3. Write metacognitively about each question, answer, concept, etc., and submit that writing through Google Classroom.
  4. Conference with me about the results.

Look to Google Classroom for formal assignments and updates. We will return to timed writing in April or May, depending on the need.

For returning students who passed the Regents Exam in January, we will use this class either as an academic lab or as prep for another Regents Exam. I’ll talk to you individually about your needs. You can also opt out of this class now and move into a study hall, if you choose.

If we receive new students, they will be given a full practice exam to take through Castle Learning. As soon as they finish, I will meet with them to analyze the results and devise an individual course of study for the next few months.

For everyone, regardless of focus, this remains a pass/fail course that uses profiles to assess your performance:

We’ll rely primarily on in-class discussion to track progress toward one half or the other of that handout. I will also communicate progress through progress reports and the column in Infinite Campus labeled GAPQ3C (for third quarter) and GAPQ4C (for fourth quarter).

Remember that this classroom is a makerspace, which means it is about experimenting in order to solve an authentic problem. That applies to Regents Exam prep, too. We are looking for solutions to the problem of passing an exam.

That makerspace philosophy is also how we will use the space to hack other aspects of school for those of you who passed the exam and choose to remain on the roster. It will also help returning students universalize some of our test prep.

You can ask questions in the comments section here. I’ll respond so that everyone can read the answers.

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Optical Delusions

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018), Miscellanea

Necker Cubes and Rhomboids

This is a Necker cube:

It’s an example of shifting perspectives. You can push the front of the cube to the back, move the back to the front, and even flatten it into a six-sided, two-dimensional shape. You can feel your brain shifting its focus as you do this — a kind of gestalt click as the perspectives snap into place.

Shading the cube makes this clearer:

Since we’re focusing on our use of metaphors lately, let’s use the Necker cube to discuss perspective, optics, and in-class focus1.

In-class focus remains the most powerful predictor of your eventual success. Notice how much it’s interwoven throughout these posts:

The Fatal Flying Guillotine

The Aft Agley Gang

The Edge of the City

Note the dates of publication for these, too. Every month or so, you’ve gotten an interstitial lecture — the equivalent of a chapter in a textbook or an actual, in-class lecture, as you no doubt know — that clarifies and explicates the need to stay focused in class.

An Important Reminder of How You Receive Instruction

Every post is a lesson unto itself. This one, for instance, is mostly concerned with an update to the “Rubicon protocol” that tracks your in-class focus, but it also links back to important class updates while teaching you about perception and optics.

The depth of this course lies in interstitial teaching. That’s how we weaponize your class time: by arming you with a dozen different kinds of instruction before you walk in the door.

If you aren’t reading carefully, you miss out on that chance. You won’t understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, or how it helps you. It’s a self-inflicted wound, but that’s not the point; the point is to treat the wound before you bleed out.

Back to the less violent metaphor of Necker cubes:

A Shift in Rubicon Scores

In the most recent update to the course, I explained what the numbers in Infinite Campus mean. Now I’m shifting that online feedback in a small but significant way. It’s a shift in perspective only, like the shift of a Necker cube’s front and back.

What you’ll find now are assignments linked to each GAP panel. They will be named, for example, “Crossing the Rubicon: Q3A.” These assignments have had every parameter set to zero: zero points available, zero weighting, etc., and they aren’t factored into your averages at all.

Every “point” in this category indicates one of the unacceptable choices outlined in this guide. That occasionally ironic list, again:

  • doing homework for another class
  • playing games
  • sending text messages
  • watching videos
  • sleeping
  • rappelling down the side of the building and escaping into the woods
  • gossiping
  • complaining
  • gazing too long into the abyss
  • checking social media accounts

Last quarter, each Rubicon “point” reflected a single period during which you made a choice like these. The shift in perspective is this: You can now receive a “point” multiple times during each class period. Think of it as pro re nata, or PRN, which means “on demand.” These are PRN Rubicon tallies.

As an example, imagine that you are given the makerspace for the period, and you can choose between three separate course assignments: reading a book, writing an essay, or analyzing recent test prep. You work on the essay, but you get distracted by text messages for five minutes in the middle of the period. That ought to be tallied up as a Rubicon “point,” right?

But it can’t be treated exactly like the student who was sitting next to you, since she decided to do homework for another class for the entire period, including a trip to the iLC to pick up a printed copy. That has to yield more “points” than your (admittedly avoidable) lapse.

As another example, imagine that it takes you five minutes to settle down and begin a timed assignment that requires 40 minutes to complete. That’s a lapse in assiduousness, and it ought to be noted. It affects your learning. It’s not equivalent, however, to the student who stops every five minutes to gossip during the timed writing, effectively ruining the essay as a representation of her best efforts.

What this means is that the online grade book will reflect point values above a zero, indicating the frequency and severity of your lapses. We’ll try that for a GAP panel or two, see if it motivates you differently, and discuss other options.

As you accumulate “points” for this Rubicon tally, you can always sit with me during a free period and go over what you’re doing wrong. It should be obvious, though, and that brings us back to Necker:

It’s actually not about perspective. It’s not, at least, as subtle as pushing the front of a cube back and forth. There’s no optical illusion at all. When I note that you’ve crossed the Rubicon, it could be for any number of obviously inappropriate decision. You’re one of those cubes, or some variation thereof; but you’re obviously, irrefutably some kind of Necker-like shape.

The metaphor’s getting away from me, so to put it plainly: If you don’t want “points” for doing the wrong thing, don’t do the wrong thing. There are multiple perspectives on every choice you make, and I’ll always err on your side. I’ll always try to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you accumulate “points” (which I keep putting in quotation marks, hoping to find a better noun; this whole operant-conditioning thing makes my skin crawl), it means you were obviously and irrefutably doing the wrong thing.

That’s the feedback. Numbers in that column online indicate that you need to refocus. Make that in-class focus a strength, and you’ll see greater success overall. Remember to read this poster:

It’s the poster by our door. You can’t miss it.

Focus on in-class focus. And, as necessary, stop making excuses for your lack of self-control.

  1. I actually prefer the original version of the cube, which is the Necker rhomboid on the right of this image:

    I hadn’t heard of it until I looked through the notes section of the New World Encyclopedia entry on Necker cubes, which is the first link in this post. The lesson, as always, is to train yourself to click on links and follow ramiform paths to new information. That encyclopedia’s next entry, for instance, gives us an even better metaphor for what we do, although it isn’t one I’d advertise too much. ↩

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The Paradox of the Heap

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

By Simon A. Eugster (citation in link)

“Moving Slowly, and That’s Okay”

I want you to read the excerpt below in its entirety. It comes from a student’s GAP Q2C reflection, and it details what I imagine is a relatable experience:

Well, it’s that time of the quarter again, and there’s only one work I can use to describe my work pace this GAP period, and that is… slow, really, really, slow. I’m going to be 150% honest with you Mr. Eure, coming back from Christmas break and over the course of those next two weeks looking at our Google Classroom put so much anxiety in me that I could barely even look at it without getting a headache. There were also multiple times whereas the posts on Classroom were piling up I thought to myself, “he must be out of his mind”, only to come to find that none of them had due dates, and although that shouldn’t matter (but let’s be real, it does), it took a huge burden off of my back. Through much talking with my peers, I realized that most of them are not understanding that all of this stuff doesn’t have to be turned in by the end of Q2C, and that by submitting everything right away, they’re not grasping the point of all of these things, they’re for us to take our time, to put forth our best work, and to try, give up, and try again. I have not much at all to turn in by the end of Q2C, and ya know what, I’m not even going to stress about it, because the point of all of this is progress. I really started to bother myself when I kept scrolling down classroom, seeing little to no assignments with the green letters DONE next to it, because usually I have everything done by the end of the GAP period and have a bundle of fun metacognitive stuff to turn in as evidence. I felt as if I was not succeeding as a student, and that really drove me up a wall let me tell you, but little did I know that this GAP period I have grown and matured more than I ever have over the course of this entire year. I’ve had to sit down and tell myself that in the real world, progress does not happen overnight, and things take time. I kept asking myself “but what if you get a low GAP score because you don’t have a lot of evidence”, and I eventually came to the conclusion, unfortunately towards the end of Q2C, that I’ve been doing everything I have to, just slowly. I’ve been focused this quarter, just moving slowly, and that’s okay. Assignments don’t take me ten minutes like they used to, but that’s the best part of how much I’ve grown, I’m caring way more about the quality and advancement of my work over when it’s due.

She got it. And this is the right chain of logic to follow, for any other students who had the same he-must-be-out-of-his-mind reaction.

Look back at two of the end-of-quarter posts to Google Classroom:

Posted Jan 19.

Posted Jan 18.

These are key announcements and assignments, built to give you perspective and direction. Whether you felt overwhelmed or confident has something to do with how carefully you read these posts.

Anyway, as the student at the top of this post noted, “in the real world, progress does not happen overnight, and things take time.” Grade abatement is about process — about “caring way more about the quality and advancement of [the] work over when it’s due,” as she wrote.

You have many ongoing assignments and almost no deadlines, because your learning should be understand as a process. This is why your reflective and metacognitive work is so important.

Rinse, Repeat

This came up in many conferences last week: You need to know how to view your Google Classroom portfolio. To see it, just click the “VIEW ALL” link at the top-right of the course page:

You should see a list of assignments for the class. All of your work is here. This is your online portfolio, and it’s exactly what your teacher sees.

While you’re there, look at what you handed in for the “GAP Score: Q2C” assignment. Did you submit evidence? Did you account for your works-in-progress? Did you reflect on the skills and traits of the course? This is the self-monitoring that matters.

In fact, it’s so important that you practice metacognition and reflection that there are always formal assignments that require them both. For instance, even if the answer to all those questions about submitting evidence is a resounding nope, you had this chance to generate process-based reflection and metacognition:

Engines That Could

Did you complete the Google Form embedded in that post? It was more than a chance to talk to your district about its Strategic Coherence Plan. It was also a way to generate evidence of those higher profiles. That’s why the Google Form and GAP scoring itself were the only assignments with deadlines: That was my way of guiding you toward the right kind of metacognition and reflection. The form responses, for instance, will always be available in your Gmail inbox, and that is a fine benchmark for your growth over the next semester.

It’s well past time for lessons and lectures on self-control and honesty. It’s time for you to embrace the process.

We’ll keep meeting, as we did last week, to talk about you and your learning. Those meetings will continue past the day your GAP scores are finalized. In fact, I’ll need to take a day or two, while you do test prep and read 1984, to compile scores and post them.

The Sorites Paradox

Today’s analogy is the paradox of the heap:

You are always learning, and epiphanies are rare. A better metaphor is the heap: You will realize, one day, that you have become better and more skilled, and it will have happened slowly. You will be able to look back at an earlier version of yourself — at writings, journals, decisions, etc. — and see the obvious difference. But the more quotidian stuff will be less obvious, like someone adding grains of sand to a heap.

These GAP scores aren’t judgments, which is why our meetings aren’t about them. The scores mark the moments when we gather what you’ve done and look closely at it. We know the shape will change. It’s changing all the time. The process is what matters.

The questions for below, if you have the time to discuss them: At what version of yourself do you look, when you look back? Where does that non-heap version of you exist? The beginning of the year? Ninth grade? Earlier?

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Metaphorical Mixture

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

This is what I see in my own metaphorical mirror, of course, although I’m never quite sure which character I am.

The Metaphor Is the Message

“It’s human nature to conceive of abstract ideas through more immediate, concrete experiences,” goes the beginning of this Mental Floss article on the hidden etymologies of certain words. We use metaphors to make sense of the world around us, and the language of those metaphors shapes our thinking.

Certainly that’s a recurring idea in our study of truth, lies, and memory. It’s a theme in 1984, and you’ll actually grapple with the idea of “dying metaphors” when we study another bit of writing by the same author. For a moment, though, focus on “The Ways We Lie” and the emulation-through-analysis prompts you were given in this post:

Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Remember that posts like that are written to teach you, not just to present you with assignments and deadlines. That post, for instance, forces you to read slowly and carefully, if you want to know what to read and what to write. It provides context and plenty of opportunities for enrichment.

Google Classroom, meanwhile, contains a much more linear and rote version of our work. You’ll still need to be organized, but it’s harder to get lost — in the sense of developing curiosity and self-awareness.

Regardless, you’ve now had three weeks to read Stephanie Ericsson’s essay, “The Ways We Lie,” which is third in your reading packet, and make your way through the ETA and essay prompts, which are in your writing packet. The essay prompt is built around the following quotation, and you’ll notice it has its fair share of metaphorical language:

Martin Buber once said, “The lie is the spirit committing treason against itself.” Our acceptance of lies becomes a cultural cancer that eventually shrouds and reorders reality until moral garbage becomes as invisible to us as water is to a fish.

How much do we tolerate before we become sick and tired of being sick and tired? When will we stand up and declare our right to trust? When do we stop accepting that the real truth is in the fine print? Whose lips do we read this year when we vote for president? When will we stop being so reticent about making judgments? When do we stop turning over our personal power and responsibility to liars?

List out the metaphors in the first paragraph alone:

  • cultural cancer
  • shrouds
  • moral garbage
  • as water is to a fish

Your own essays are likely to use metaphors in a similar way. That will be one aspect of our in-class workshops over the next few weeks. Pay attention, as you embark on the writing process, to the metaphors you use. (I just used “embark,” for instance, because the metaphor of a journey or river fits our writing process.)

Back to the Looking Glass

That classification and division essay is one of many assignments you must complete over the next few weeks. You’ve been given a complete list through Google Classroom, but I will link to it and embed it again here:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F01%2FCYOA_-Q2C-Ongoing-Tasks-1.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

You have a predictive calendar covering every day for the rest of the year, too — load “What You Need Right Now” at the top of the home page — which is a reminder that you are also reading 1984, hacking high-stakes exams, and working on your Pareto Projects.

You are busy! That’s by design. And it gives us a chance to do what was always planned for the end of the semester.

What Was Always Planned for the End of the Semester

Each of you will meet with me, one at a time, to review your performance. We will go through your evidence from the most recent GAP panel, but that’s not all we will consider. If you are in a co-taught class, these performance reviews will include Ms. Olson, too.

First, you should recognize that this takes an ungodly amount of class time to do. We can afford to do it once, only once, and only because of the interstitial instructional and feedback model we use.

Second, the governing metaphor continues to be the mirror, specifically the looking-glass logic of Alice. Here is the metaphor in November:

A Looking-Glass Book

The final line of that instructional post is this: “You are what you do, and you must be honest about what that means.” We have returned to that need for collective clarity and personal honesty again and again, until the need bubbled over into a day of storytelling and lectures:

The Mirror

That image and link lead this site’s top-right menu now. Its lessons are more important than ever, especially the TL;DR of it: ​Stop shifting the blame in this course. Take responsibility for the choices you’ve made, or accept that your frustration and lack of learning is the choice you’ve made.

That’s the half-empty looking glass, to mix a couple of metaphors together. The half-full: Some of you remain a bit lost, and a conference will help. You need help fighting the dishonesty, cynicism, and selfishness that surround all of us — the “cultural cancer that eventually shrouds and reorders reality until moral garbage becomes as invisible to us as water is to a fish,” as Ericsson puts it.

So I want you to think of Alice and her looking glass. What we do lies on the other side, and you pass through by stepping into your own reflection.You must confront who you are and what you’ve done. There is no other way through.

Once on the other side of the mirror, the environment changes and a lot of the old rules stop applying. That’s what I promised on the first day of school, and it will stay a promise on the last: There are two courses taught in Room 210, and one of them can change your life.

Before you cross that membrane, however, you have to look critically at the reflection in front of you. You have to confront the truth. And that means recognizing the dishonesty and cynicism that throw that truth into relief.

That’s why Ericsson’s metaphor is so powerful. We become numb to lies because the world, unfortunately, is filled with dishonesty. Reason is under attack all around us. You are encouraged, sometimes by people who ought to have your best interests at heart, to blame others and foster distrust. These people, your age and sometimes older, reorder reality. They spread that cultural cancer.

But there are no “alternative facts.” There is absolutely a point after which an uninformed opinion becomes an error of fact. There is right and wrong, truth and fiction, and we can separate the one from the other if we are careful.

Through the mirror, there is an invitation to do good. There is an invitation to dialectical discussion. There is empathy. There is an opportunity to guide your own learning in defiance of a 100 years of broken educational policy.

I can help you pass through that mirror to a place where you have complete control over what you learn and how much it helps you. If you’re already there, I can help you make sense of what that means. But you have to work for it. It can’t be handed to you; that’s another metaphor entirely.

Remember that you’ve already been invited to stop blaming others, to learn self-control, and to break out of the Skinner-box machinery of traditional education. The only difference between that approach and what we’ll start tomorrow is that the language (and metaphor) of invitation will shift to the language of requirement. We will meet, one at a time, for as long as it takes.

90% of you will walk away from that conference in a much better place. (I actually think it will be 100% of you, in defiance of Sturgeon’s Law, because you’d have to be as stubborn as a Flat Earther to stay cynical or misinformed afterward.) That brief loss of choice will ultimately give you more choice than ever.

Meanwhile, you will work on the learning that has been provided for you, interstitially, using the makerspace as necessary.

Ask questions about this — any of it, from metaphors to etymology to Alice in Wonderland to the structure of a conference — below.

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Engines That Could

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

I don’t know if we should trust that clown.

Strategic Coherence

One of the first texts given to students each year is Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on educational paradigms. It introduces one of the animating beliefs of this makerspace, which is that traditional education does not prepare students for the world they will join after high school. That world demands a different kind of intelligence, and it’s a far cry from the “model of the mind” that Robinson criticizes.

Watch the whole thing periodically to remind yourself why we’re here.

For most students, what the “world” demands is less pressing than what it will take to get into college and/or start a career, which is why we need to look specifically at what colleges and careers value. That list always starts with empathy, but it also always includes the rest of the nontraditional skills and traits we centralize in this course.

Two of those skill and traits are self-awareness and self-efficacy, which we loop together like so:

Student learning depends on an understanding of why we do what we do. As that post on empathy and college readiness notes, we need an answer to the question, “When am I ever going to have to use this?”

That’s what we have here. These explicit connections to college-, career-, and world-relevance break the strange geometry of traditional education. We’re after a sense of purpose.

Part of that is our focus on metacognition and reflection. Tracking the arc of learning over time grants us self-efficacy, and that applies to all stakeholders: My teaching takes shape through the same rigorous metacognition and reflection required of students, and Brewster, as a district, has always reflected on its progress.

Which brings us to the BCSD Strategic Coherence Plan:

This Strategic Coherence Plan has been available to the public for a while, but January 11 saw the formal release through that post. This is, in part, because of an upcoming event: On January 24, 2018, the Tri-State Consortium1 will visit the district for three days to evaluate the SCP.

I want us to help Brewster’s Tri-State efforts by showcasing the extent to which our Humanities makerspace fits the Strategic Coherence Plan. Through the support of district- and building-level administration, we’ve been able to develop a unique and uniquely nontraditional learning environment, and it aligns perfectly with the SCP:

Load a PDF explaing how by clicking here.

Our particular innovations beyond the SCP are just that: innovations particular to our classroom. We have a unique assessment model, grade abatement, based on growth in universal skills and traits; an interstitial model of instruction that improves on the flipped classroom; and makerspace-inspired assignments that reframe the important work of the Humanities.

Students in this course can speak specifically to the district’s vision. It’s why feedback and advocacy are essential. The district values that perspective as much as I do, and a sense of how this SCP is enacted on the frontlines will help to shape what happens next.

That’s something to keep in mind as you complete this Google Form, which you can also access through Google Classroom or the version embedded below:

Fill that form out as completely as you can, paying attention to the framing assignment below and on Google Classroom.

First, recognize this as an opportunity for self-awareness and self-efficacy. It requires the most critical kind of reflection and metacognition, which is why it’s being folded into our work week.

There is also an extrinsic motivation: This form will generate evidence for the top tiers of grade abatement, including the use of “inquiry-based tools and structures” in an attempt to “demonstrably improve the learning environment.” See the fourth tier’s specific language:

This is also an opportunity to “do more than just what is required,” since no one is required to respond. For those of you take advantage of this opportunity, we will set aside time in class over the next few days to reflect and be metacognitive. That will let us finish by the end of the next GAP panel (which is this Friday, January 19) and leave time for organizing and submitting the responses to administration and the Tri-State Consortium.

Look over the questions first, and try to write your responses separately from the form itself. You can answer as many or as few as you like, submit responses at different times, and edit your answers. Like everything else in here, this is about looped feedback and shared understanding.

Ask any questions about this below.

  1. Learn more about this organization here. I’ve been involved as a team member for eight years now, and many of the innovations of this course started with Tri-State. I first heard of Alfie Kohn’s essay on de-grading through one of their study groups, for instance. ↩

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Know Your Enemy: High-Stakes Tests

  By All Junior Classes (2017-2018), AP English Language & Composition (2017-2018), English 11 Regents (2017-2018)

Read John Gardner’s Grendel, if you have a bit of time and an interest in philosophy and good literature.

Organization ⟹ Autodidacticism

At the bottom of the universal skills and traits of learning is this pair:

You cannot learn without organization, and the one true goal of education is the capacity to teach ourselves, which is the second word and “state of mind” there:

The most interesting thing about the quick definition provided by Google is the term “automath,” which uses the Greek root for “to learn” to give us a label for a new kind of learning. Polymath is another fun word that uses the same root.

But this post isn’t just about teaching yourself. It’s about students fighting a common enemy through convergent and divergent problem-solving. To defeat that enemy, we need both.

As a quick review:

Click for way more background than you need.

While Google and Wikipedia tells us that “most tasks in school and on standardized multiple-choice tests” do not require significant creativity, that’s actually not a helpful claim, because it devalues the importance of convergent thinking. You need precision and creativity equally to be successful.

Start, though, with what our common enemy is: standardized tests. Any standardized test, in fact, from Regents to APs to GREs. So we’re in agreement:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/04/19/34-problems-with-standardized-tests/?utm_term=.62103cdd0253

Valerie Strauss is thorough and insightful in all of her articles and essays on education, so it’s not much of a surprise that she hits 34 on this list without much difficulty. Standardized tests are just that damaging to educational systems.

Alas, we can’t get rid of them. We also can’t pretend that they reveal nothing about your learning. Even poorly designed tests teach us something about your assiduousness and self-efficacy. Well designed ones showcase critical thinking, close reading, and effective communication, among many other desirable skills and traits.

Standardized tests are still monstrous, though. They are the Grendel to your Beowulf, and you have to proceed with that in mind.

Your Assignments

You will work together to accomplish two tasks:

  1. Learn everything about the test: what it looks like, how much time it takes, the types of passages most often used, the skills tested, the font of the directions, etc.
  2. Reverse-engineer a personal plan of attack that will earn you as many points as possible when it comes time to perform.

The first one requires convergent thinking. Standardized tests pass through so many committees and focus groups that there will always be an overview, guide, and set of sample tests to study.

The second one requires divergent thinking. Your goal is to do as well as possible, which requires a keen understanding of your strengths, weaknesses, and resources.

You’ll make a decision about how much to invest in these tasks, and it’s always worth noting at the outset that you and you alone answer for that sort of decision. You can lead a horse to water, they say, but you can’t do much if the horse eats a bunch of rocks and drowns itself.

Most of you will start with a profile of the test you face. All that takes is a link to the right website, time, and the help of a teacher who has been around high-stakes tests long enough to know how to fight them. That’s me.

Below are the tests that juniors take in English Language Arts in New York State. All juniors take the Regents Exam in ELA (Common Core). Some take the College Board’s AP Exam in English Language & Composition.

Scroll down, load the website(s), and memorize the format and expectations of the test(s). Formal assignments about this will be given through Google Classroom, including ways to check your internalization of this information.

(In other words, we’ll use quizzes and tests to see what you’ve memorized and what you know. No grades, of course, but plenty of data and evidence.)

The Regents Exam in English Language Arts (Common Core)


Note: I want to believe that New York State is also interested in the etymology of “mathematics,” and that they are using it here to reference learning, not because no one checked the site’s code. Let me have that belief, please.

The AP English Language & Composition Exam

Note: The College Board uses more precise weapons to evaluate you than New York State does, but that has a lot to do with the size of the war chest. It’s also why New York State is aping AP exams as it adopts Common Core. The ELA Regents, for instance, took a lot of inspiration from the Language & Composition exam. That’s helpful for juniors taking both: You’re fighting similar monsters, at least. Grendel and Grendel’s mother, maybe?

Convergence: Test Profile

Those are the links you need for the convergent piece, regardless of course and level. The divergent work of hacking systems and figuring out how to do well will happen in class, over time, as part of our makerspace.

Organize your approach, your note-taking, and how you memorize this information. It is not enough to “present” it. You aren’t handing in a copy of something we could all look up on Google with 40 minutes and a bit of direction. You must know this.

Whenever we begin this work together in class, we’ll talk much more about what it entails. Use the space here to ask questions and get clarity outside of the face-to-face work.

Read on for some of the philosophy and background, if you’re interested in those things.

Philosophy and Background

The pairing of organization and autodidacticism started a long time ago, with a focus on how much work it takes to develop a system for both:

View at Medium.com

The unintentional insight of the first two paragraphs ended up moving the burden of learning from the teacher and his Skinner box of punishments and rewards to the student: If every assignment strengthens and demonstrates the skills and traits we care about, after all, then formative feedback is all that counts.

In terms of gamesmanship, the idea is that these tests have a logic that can be learned, weaponized, and beaten:

View at Medium.com

Read that for the “Too Many Cooks” reference, at the very least.