Author: Mr. Eure

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Final Project: Week Five & Week Six

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Week Five | 5/25–5/29

Week Six | 6/1–6/5

Final Project: Step #6 | The Final Project

In the original plan for your Senior Talk, you were asked to sign up for a specific date, time, and location for your presentation. That sign-up document still exists, but it won’t work for us now — not even if we are lucky enough to return to the high school before the end of the year.

Instead, you must use these two weeks, from May 25 through June 5, to finalize your project in a way that makes sense for you.

One note: Because everything you do will have a digital component — video, writing, photos, etc. — you should base your work for these two weeks around the possibility of reaching out to a wider audience. Remember the guiding ideas of project-based learning:

A public product makes your project authentic in a way nothing else can. You are not required to share your work, of course, but you are required to consider the possibility.

Anyone still doing a presentation can use these two weeks to film and submit it, and you’ll follow the guidelines laid out in Week Four for length and timing. Everyone else will need to think divergently and collaboratively.

Some possible questions to get you started:

  • Could you publish your project to a social media account? How does that help your purpose?
  • Could you showcase your project through an essay on a site like Medium?
  • Will you have a video that could be posted to YouTube? How could you share that link to broaden your audience?
  • What other artifacts could you create to showcase your project?

You should use the comment section of this post to brainstorm possibilities. Look again at that rundown of project-based learning: This is an opportunity for choice and authenticity about a project you’ve designed and built. What could you do during these two weeks?

You should also consider how you can involve a public audience, however large or small, in the critique and revision of your work. Critique and revision are part of these two weeks. You want a final product, but that final product can be a living thing that continues to grow.

Let’s say, as an example, that you are designing a digital town hall to tackle racism — a project that very much may happen — and will have an online meeting with a group of students as a final product. Could you share a video of that town hall afterward? Could you involve local newspapers? How about national journalists?

This is your chance to do something remarkable, and you don’t have to wait until May 25 to start. Add your thoughts below when you’re ready.

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Final Project: Week Four

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Week Four | 5/18–5/22

Final Project: Step #4 | Further Research & Discussion
Final Project: Step #5 | Designing the Project

As you figure out the crux of your project, you’ll need to do more research, reading, and discussion. At some point, that will lead into the actual Final Project design.

You should continue to use the skills outlined for your research paper and the resources of the iLC, but you can also create new information in this step — through interviews, reflections, surveys, and so on.

This is also when you would paint, record, and otherwise create the raw materials of an alternative project. If you are still doing a TED-inspired talk, you’ll write a script. A script is also required for a video essay.

In other words, this step is when the most essential design decisions are made: What are you building? How do you plan that? What resources do you need?

Then you build the project itself. You’ll need models, feedback from peers and teachers, help from people stuck with you in quarantine, and so on. This is the week put the project together.

This is probably the most time-intensive step, and you are especially encouraged to lean again on the “stuff of growth” — the collaborative energy and efforts of your peers. Use Zoom, Skype, etc, to talk things out. Share documents. Do whatever it takes to make this collaborative.

Note: Like every step of a process like this, you will be more successful if you fold this step into the previous week’s work and extend the design process into the next two weeks. You don’t necessarily stop designing the project on Friday!

The default form of this project is still a “talk” based on the format of TED Talks:

Your project, if it emulates a TED Talk, should be 8–10 minutes long. If you think you might benefit from more structure, you can also do an Ignite presentation:

These presentations use exactly 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds. If your presentation uses this format, it will be exactly five minutes long.

Ignite is a much more performative structure, since it eliminates any extemporaneous elements. Use their site to find examples and guides.

There are other models for presentations, of course, and you can use those. You can, as mentioned a few times already, create a video essay. There is a form and function to that kind of artifact, too, and you can look to the models from Week Two for examples.

This doesn’t have to be a presentation, of course! Your project can be an essay. It can be a paper with multimedia elements embedded. It could be a website. It could be an album of original music. It could be a personal journal, or just your meta-commentary on a personal journal.

Really, there are very few limitations to what the project is. The key is that you have to research it, design it, and filter that all back through a clear purpose. It can’t just be a link to your DeviantArt profile. It can’t just be a copy of a research paper you’ve already written this semester.

Think of it like this: If you do a talk, TED-inspired or Ignite-inspired, you must get approval of a written script as part of these steps — that is, you must submit a typed artifact that details your presentation in full. It may be verbatim, or written word-for-word, or organized by salient points and comments. It must be precise, however, and you must follow it when you present.

All projects need a similar “script” at this stage. For what that means, you’ll have to collaborate and think divergently.

Ask questions below!

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Final Project: Week Three

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Week Three | 5/11–5/15

Final Project: Step #2 | Initial Research
Final Project: Step #3 | Statements of Purpose

For these two steps, you must collect evidence of research and then write a statement of purpose. You will be given a form on May 11 and asked to fill it out by Friday, May 15. See the final calendar for context.

These steps are combined because they happen concurrently. You must use the same methodology outlined for the research-driven essay to explore the topic you chose during Week Two, and that research should generate a statement of purpose, which is explained in this post:

Statements of Purpose

On May 11, you will also be given this post as a formative assignment.

This post is from February, and you should have handouts and notes from that time. Read this post and any notes you have carefully. Your statement of purpose must reflect an understanding of these instructions.

Note again that the Senior Talk is now a Final Project. You can still create a traditional presentation, if you want, but you can also design a wholly different kind of project.

It may help to call the statement of purpose a thesis, which has Greek roots meaning “a setting down, a placing, an arranging; position, situation.” A thesis is the central staging or placement of a work.

A better term to use is crux, which literally means cross, but which is more generally understood as follows:

Crux
1. a puzzling or difficult problem : an unsolved question
2. an essential point requiring resolution or resolving an outcome
3. a main or central feature (as of an argument)

Your statement of purpose is really the crux of the project. That is what you are writing and rewriting during these steps. Your research helps you figure out the problem you’re addressing, the question you’re answering, the resolution you’ve reached, etc.

Your use of feedback is essential. We should collaborate to answer questions like these:

  1. Why does your topic matter?
  2. What is the bigger message intended for your audience?
  3. What can others gain from this project?
  4. What can you gain from this project?

Your statement of purpose will look like this when finished1:

Continue to use the models you’ve been given in other places to guide you, too. Each of the video essays posted for Week Two, for instance, has a thesis or crux to it. You should be able to identify (and then emulate) the crux of any meaningful project in the Humanities.

Ask questions below. You can also use the comment section to workshop statements of purpose or to analyze possible models for your own work.

  1. The filler text has an interesting history, and you can  read about the origins of lorem ipsum here. In this case, the filler text shows you about how long your statement of purpose should be. ↩

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Final Project: Week Two

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Week Two | 5/4–5/8

Final Project: Step #1 | Choosing a Topic

Review the idea of project-based learning through this PBL graphic:

Your goal is to check off each of the seven elements there as you work your way through the seven steps of the Final Project. Whether or not you have a topic in mind — and even if you made great strides with the Senior Talk — you should spend this week reading, thinking, and discussing what is possible.

There are many ways to find a challenging problem or question, for instance. How about the Japanese concept of ikigai?

This is another angle on the Pareto Project idea of finding your passion, but it’s bigger than that — perfect for the final months of your senior year, in fact. Ask yourself:

  1. What are you good at doing?
  2. What does the world need?
  3. What can you be paid for?

The third question is perhaps not as inspiring as the other two, but it’s no less essential. As for the world around us: We are weathering a generational crisis, so you are witnesses to what the world needs. You could (and perhaps should) consider making this Final Project somehow related to this moment in history.

You also have the original set of options for the Senior Talk, as outlined in that February post. Here they are again, with some edits:

Option A: Pareto Projects | One intention of your Pareto Project was to generate a topic for any sort of Final Project. This applies whether you maintained the same passion project for the entire year or rebooted it. The connection to a final project may be obvious, or it may take some divergent thinking. As always, you should ask for feedback when you need it.

Option B: Self-Prescribed Book | Your self-prescribed book project is another option for the Final Project. Could it be evolved into something more substantial? Could it be turned into a video essay or other artifact? Again, the best approach is to brainstorm in class about the connections between your book, any work you’ve done toward a book-driven project, and this Final Project.

Option C: Research-Driven Essay | The research-driven essay may also lead directly into a Final Project. The research portion can serve a kind of double duty, since two of the seven steps outlined here involve research. What else could you do to expand on your statement of purpose, if you got to that step? What could be done with the writing to turn it into something more substantial?

Option D: New Focus | If you like, of course, you can develop a new topic. You can talk with peers, talk to me, ask questions in the comment section below — whatever inspires you. Consider that ikigai concept. Revisit projects you created earlier this year, in previous years, for other classes, and so on.

Regardless of what you think you’ll do for this project, spend as much time as possible this week simply exploring. The best way to find a topic is to read, watch, and listen to as much as you can.

To help, here are some video essays chosen to help you think divergently about topics and what you do with them. Look at them for potential final products, sure, but focus also on the insight in each one.

First, a series of literature-based video essays from Storied and PBS Digital Studios. You can load the entire playlist of It’s Lit here, or sample the earliest video in the playlist:

Lindsay Ellis, one of the people featured there on PBS Digital Studios, has her own channel, and there is a playlist of 35 video essays there. The most recent video there is about Cats, and it deals intelligently with what a musical is, how an adaptation works, and why Cats was such a failure as a movie:

You might also enjoy Polygon’s Brian David Gilbert, who has a terrifically insightful series of video essays exploring video games. Each video turns its original concept into a discussion of societal, philosophical, existential topics. This video, for instance, teaches the monomyth and hero’s journey:

Every episode of Unraveled is excellent, especially if you are looking for atypical topics to pursue.

You might also want to try your hand at a video tutorial of sorts, like the WIRED series that explains concepts through five levels of complexity:

You could try to do something similar. WIRED also has an excellent process analysis of beatboxing that is posted outside of the 5 Levels playlist:

Process-analysis projects can be an excellent way to explore something you are passionate about, good at doing, and able to teach others.

Ask questions about these examples or any other aspect of this week’s work in the comments below.

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Final Project: Week One

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Week One | 4/27–5/1

You will use this week to transition into the Final Project. You must first decide what to do with any ongoing projects. You can use your existing work as part of the Final Project or submit all of it as evidence for your Q4 evaluation. There are other options.

Start with the overview:

Final Project: Overview

Continue by looking through the calendar for the next seven weeks:

English 12 Calendar: April 27 – June 15

Then make sure you’ve bookmarked the main post for the next seven weeks:

Final Project: Documents & Posts

Finally, choose one or more of the following as your focus for the next five days:

  1. Finish a second project (as established here) that you want to finish this week, and then finish it.
  2. Wrap up your work on a second project, and then prepare to move onto the Final Project.
  3. Identify the parts of your current project-based work that could be used for a Final Project.
  4. Begin the analytical and introspective work for Week Two.

Whatever your focus is, you’ll have an assignment on Google Classroom to help you transition into this final part of the year. Remember that you can individualize almost every aspect of this work, from the timeline to the final product, by advocating for yourself.

Use the comment section below to ask questions — especially ones that could benefit others!

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Final Project: Overview

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Click to see the full image, courtesy of Cognitive Media, RSA Animate, and Ken Robinson.

Senior Talk 🠊 Final Project

We started our year with Ken Robinson’s “Changing Education Paradigms” TED Talk, with plans to end the year with your own senior talks — a chance to experience what Robinson describes in the following excerpt:

An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak, when you are present in the current moment, when you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing, when you are fully alive. An anesthetic is when you shut your senses off and deaden yourself to what’s happening…

We are getting our children through education by anesthetizing them. And I think we should be doing the exact opposite. We shouldn’t be putting them to sleep. We should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves.

During this period of distance learning, the spirit of our second-semester projects remains the same: to wake up the part of you that you’ll need next year, no matter the path you’ve chosen. The more authentic and personally meaningful the work is, the better.

In the wake of COVID-19, of course, we must make some changes. First, the formal presentation outlined in February is no longer required. It is still possible, and if you wish, you can produce and record a Senior Talk that is virtually identical to what you would have done.

The second change is that you can choose from a wide range of possible final projects. You will be given a week just to think divergently about what this final project can be.

In the same TED Talk quoted above, Robinson defines divergent thinking like this:

This is why you’ll be instructed to use as much of your other second-semester projects as possible as part of this Final Project. You are not required to start over. In fact, you are strongly encouraged to use whatever you can from the work you’ve already done to help you.

The third and final change is that you’ll be given the project steps by week, with dates for May and June of 2020 detailed for each part of the final project. Your project should be finished and submitted between May 25 and June 5. See the new calendar posted here: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4157.

The icons for each step are used with permission from the Noun Project. Details here.

Assessment & Grades

Please be sure you have read the following:

  1. April 14 Course Update: Senior Projects Redux
  2. April 16 District Notice: Grading Letter to Staff and Community

The April 14 update explains where we were at the end of Q3, how to navigate leveled instruction like these posts, and where to find information about every original second-semester project. On April 16, the district posted an update about the adoption of a Pass/Incomplete option for Q4.

All assessment and feedback will continue exactly as it always has in here, with the silver lining of not having to convert grade abatement profiles into a 100-point score. The profiles, skills, and traits are universal and universally useful, so we’ll stick with them:

Even the usual GAP protocol can be used without any changes. There will be regular Google Forms sent to students to collect evidence of their work, which will provide all the fuel for feedback we need. The daily requirements will be the same, as well:

  • Check Google Classroom once a day.
  • Check in and set a goal each day.
  • Advocate for individual help and feedback as necessary.

Most importantly, the idea of individualizing these projects remains at the center of the process. It was that way in February, and it’s that way now. We’ll work together to do what is right by each of you.

Ask questions about the overall project below.

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Final Project: Documents & Posts

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Below is a list of resources for the final seven weeks of the year. Please bookmark this page. Updates will be rolled out here.

Google Documents

Final Calendar | tinyurl.com/2020-cal-v2

April 27 Letter | tinyurl.com/sh0427-letter

Final Project: Printable Week-by-Week Guide | tinyurl.com/sisyphus-tedx-dlc

Project Posts

English 12 Calendar: April 27 – June 15

Final Project: Overview

Week One | 4/27–5/1

Week Two | 5/4–5/8

Week Three | 5/11–5/15

Week Four | 5/18–5/22

Week Five & Week Six | 5/25–6/5

Week Seven | 6/8–6/12

Project Posts (Embedded)

English 12 Calendar: April 27 – June 15

Final Project: Overview

Final Project: Week One

Final Project: Week Two

Project-Based Learning: ETA Models

Final Project: Week Three

Final Project: Week Four

Final Project: Week Five & Week Six

Final Project: Week Seven

 

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English 12 Calendar: April 27 – June 15

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Final Projects, Second Semester Projects

Download a printable copy of the calendar here: tinyurl.com/2020-cal-v2.

Week One | 4/27–5/1

You will use this week to transition into the Final Project, which is explained in full in an instructional post and document that will be available on April 27.

After reading that post, wrap up any other ongoing projects. That does not necessarily mean abandoning them! You can use them as part of the Final Project, submit them as part of your project-based learning evidence for Q4, or continue them because they matter to you.

One of the goals for this week is to remind you that these last six week of your high school career are an opportunity to create something meaningful. It is the most important goal, in fact.

To do much of anything meaningful, you must have a solid understanding of what is required and the timeline for completing it. This calendar is an overview. The instructional post is also required.

Starting with Week Two, you’ll be focused on the final project.

Week Two | 5/4–5/8

Final Project: Step #1 | Choosing a Topic

Even if you already had a project underway, you will work on this. You’ll consider other options, get feedback, revise what you have, and so on.

Use this week to sort through the work you’ve done this semester with the end goals of the Final Project in mind. What do you have that will help you the most? What will contribute to the best process and product?

You will be given plenty of examples of atypical projects this week — everything from podcasts to video essays. You’ll be asked to read, watch, and analyze some of those examples in order to decide what you will create.

By the time you get to the start of Week Three, you should have a solid idea of where you’ll end up by June 5.

Week Three | 5/11–5/15

Final Project: Step #2 – Step #3 | Research & Purpose

You will be given a Google Form and Classroom assignment on May 11. You’ll need to submit your statement of purpose and evidence of your research. This will be due on May 15.

This week is also about potential design elements, potential final forms, and a potential audience for your project. You should be collaborating as often as possible with your peers and teachers to arrive at the crux of this project — its reason for being, in essence.

The statement of purpose will match the ones taught before March 12, and the research evidence will match the kind of evidence you usually submit to prove your reading and writing.

You’ll continue this work into Week Four.

Week Four | 5/18–5/22

Final Project: Step #4 – Step #5 | Research & Design

Your statement of purpose should lead immediately into the design stage. You’ll need lots of feedback and redirection to produce the script, blueprint, etc, required here.

You will be given a second Google Form and Classroom assignment on May 18. You’ll need to submit evidence of further research, as stipulated in the guide to this project, and then a final script, blueprint, etc. This will be due on May 22.

There will be a separate assignment posted to Turnitin.com on Monday, May 18. You’ll need to submit your written design(s) there to check your originality.

Week Five | 5/25–5/29

Final Project: Step #6 | The Final Project

You must complete your project this week or next. You’ll be responsible for an asynchronous submission, which means you will not be presenting live. Whatever you record, write, publish, etc, will be handed in when its ready.

You will also share the work in the way that makes the most sense. We’ll expand the list of options as we go, and it will help to think divergently about your audience. Should you publish what you write? Share out a video through social media? Post a link to a website or YouTube channel?

There are many, many more options. You might choose to do something live, using Zoom or another tool to host a discussion. You might use social media as the basis of the project itself — a gallery through Instagram, for instance. Perhaps you’ll share your work through Reddit and then document the results in an essay.

You will be given a third Google Form and Classroom assignment on May 25. You’ll be required to submit the final project through this form, solving any problems that arise with your teacher’s help.

Note that you have two weeks to submit a project. The deadline is June 5, so work on the projects can continue into Week Six.

Week Six | 6/1–6/5

Final Project: Step #6 | The Final Project (Cont.)

This will be the second week of sharing out what you’ve created, with a deadline of June 5 for most students. Any exceptions to that deadline will be determined this week. Remember that individualizing this process is down to you.

One of the goals of these two weeks is to shine a spotlight on your projects, so you should start thinking about the community around us, from Brewster to the wider world. Does your project lend itself to a larger stage? How can you connect your work with more people?

All of this will be done at your discretion, based on your wishes and needs. The academic requirement for English 12 will remain the formal assignment that was distributed on May 25. The deadline for submitting work will be June 5.

Once you’ve shared and celebrated your projects, you’ll move into the last step of the process.

Week Seven | 6/8–6/12

Final Project: Step #7 | Assessment & Reflection

Note that we’ll use this week to wrap up any remaining projects. The academic work is self-assessment and reflection, and it can be done as soon as you receive the assignment.

The formal assignment will be given in two parts: an online form and an essay prompt. The online form will ask you to self-assess the process and product created for your Final Project. The essay prompt will ask you to turn that analysis into a piece of writing.

You will be given the final Google Form and Classroom assignment on June 8. You’ll have until June 12 to finish both parts of this step.

The last day for most students is June 25, regardless of how long distance learning continues. For seniors, however, the last day is Monday, June 15.

The Last Day | 6/15

This will be our last day together, and we’ll use it to recognize the impact of some of the best projects created during the previous seven weeks.

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Senior Projects Redux

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning, Second Semester Projects

René Magritte, Time Transfixed (1938)

Full steam ahead.

Quick Read: What to Know

① You are not responsible for every scrap of understanding in every post.

There are levels to this kind of interstitial instruction, which is why it’s called interstitial.

In other words, there is no expectation that you exhaust every post and letter. The depth is there for students who would benefit from that depth.

To paraphrase the end of this essay by John Holt: Dive into these lectures and lessons, take the parts you understand, skip the parts you don’t, get what you can out of it, and then get to work.

As you do the work, you can ask questions, get clarification, and revisit these posts. It’s part of the process, and the process is the key.

An example is the writing from today. There is this “quick read,” then the rest of the post; then there is a letter to stakeholders that links to additional information; and on top of that, there are the updates through Google Classroom and ParentLink that likely brought you to this post.

The depth here helps. Do what you can, push yourself when appropriate, and advocate at all times.

② You are responsible for continued project-based learning.

The rest of the year will continue your project-based learning, which is enabled by flipped instruction, and which is ultimately assessed through profiles.

The goal of any project is to hone universal skills and traits. The purpose of instruction is to facilitate your creative efforts. Feedback is scaffolded and individualized, and you are empowered to use the space to help each other.

That goes for the digital space, too. Losing our classroom is a terrible blow; maintaining this digital connection will help us recover.

③ You are now required to complete only a “senior talk” and one additional project.

The Senior Talk will need to be adjusted, but there’s a silver lining: You now have the option of choosing from many different final products. We will workshop the list as we go, and some of the options are explored further in this post.

The same step-by-step guide and instructional posts can be used for this Senior Talk:

One other project is required. You can include any projects started in February and early March. We will also workshop how to adjust the process and product for your choice. For a recap of what projects are required, use the letter sent to stakeholders today and the original webpage:

Make this choice manageable for yourself. As long as you communicate your needs, this can all be individualized, which is why the most important step, as always, is to establish a feedback chain.

Read on for more on each of these updates.

① Leveled Instruction

Two things to keep in mind about all the writing I do for you:

  1. There are many points of entry and departure in each instructional post, so you can choose how much to read at one time. You never need to dig every scrap of understanding out of these.
  2. The more you read, of course, the more you’ll be able to do. There are levels.

The first point there was hammered home, I hope, through our unit on reading and the answer to why we read in particular1.

The second point is illustrated by Friday’s post:

April 10, 2020

You can take your time with this sort of instructional post. There are multiple points of entry, plus simplified or summarized instructions on Google Classroom.

If you take that extra time to read more deeply, you’ll be better equipped to individualize the work. You can take as much time as you need, however. There are levels to this.

② Not an Overhaul

The focus of your second-semester projects has always been on how you learn, what skills you need to hone, and how each project prepares you for the future. It’s been an exercise in individualizing project-based learning as much as possible. That is a universal framework.

The difference now is that we all need to cope with the present. This is the makerspace in action: We have very real, very pressing problems; they are problems of identity, anxiety, connection to others, misinformation and information; and we can address those problems through reading, writing, and discussion.

Before we get to the projects, another link to the trio of updates from last week:

Distance Learning: Week 3
• April 9 Update
• April 10 Update

Again, there are multiple points of entry. Read what you can, when you can.

Of special note is that Q3 grades will be finalized and posted on Friday, April 17. On Wednesday, you’ll be asked to self-assess, just like always, and then to work out any issues over the next two days.

Then Q4 grades will be pass/fail, which is a boon to us. Remember what grade abatement is and isn’t — which means we can now focus on authentic purposes and audiences.

This post prioritizes your projects around a few of these ideas:

  • Which projects might help you sort through the current situation?
  • What will connect us to each other through projects in the Humanities?
  • Which products have different audiences, now that we are all living and working online?
  • What still helps the most to prepare you for next year?

It’s not an overhaul. These are the same projects you started in February. You need the option to streamline and simplify them, however, and that’s what you have: the option to set a manageable schedule for yourself.

After you’ve read the next portion of this post, use the comment section to ask questions. That, too, is part of managing your own schedule. Continue to advocate for your learning.

③ Required Projects

Senior Talk

The Senior Talk is still a requirement, and you must still work with the instructional post that links it to the Pareto Project:

✰ Pareto Projects and Senior Talks

You must also use the step-by-step guide, which only needs slight alterations to function through distance learning:

Every step still works, including the final steps, regardless of the final form of the talk. We can even use the original sign-up document:

We need to think creatively about what that presentation could look like. There are no bad ideas right now, and I will share examples of video essays and other “talks” over the next few days.

In addition to this Senior Talk (which needs a new label, since “talk” is no longer exactly fitting), you must complete one additional project. They are listed below in a suggested order.

Commencement Address

This is an important opportunity to reflect on the learning community you are leaving in June. Whether you share the final product or not, this is the kind of writing you should be doing during a pandemic: personal, audience-driven, reflective.

The resources include examples of commencement addresses, but you can consider open letters and other digital formats. The key is the universal guide’s focus on audience. That guide is below, followed by the instructional post for this project.

✰ Commencement Address

I want you to think seriously about writing this in order to share it.

Pareto Projects

You might prioritize these projects precisely because we are learning from home. It’s why this post was put together for you:

April 9, 2020

Scroll down to the second section of that post, and note that there has been a cultural shift toward “passion projects” since COVID-19 hit us.

If you choose to work on a Pareto Project, it might turn into one of the other projects. It might become something we didn’t predict at all. It might continue into the summer. Regardless of the arc of that work, you have a unique learning opportunity.

In fact, this is a chance for you to build habits that will carry over into next year. Passion projects are the best way to do that, because they demand more structure from you. You build the scaffolding, and you fill it in.

Self-Prescribed Book Project

If you are able to use your time now to read, you may find no better time to become a better reader. That growth can then be turned into a project you design:

✰ Self-Prescribed Book Project

If nothing else, working further on a book you’ve chosen is a chance to discover or rediscover the part of you that loved reading when you were younger.

Below are the resources you’ve used or helped to create so far:

Research-Driven Writing

This is listed last here only because research-driven writing is part of the rest of pretty much every other item on this list. In fact, a research paper could explicitly be the product or outcome for the rest of the projects.

Don’t mistake this as a knock against research-driven writing. This is actually the most important set of skills on here: the ability to synthesize viewpoints, identify bias, craft an argument that deals with an issue, etc. It’s only that these skills are part of everything else, and time is of the essence.

To write an effective research-driven paper of any kind, you can follow this guide:

The rest of what you need is in the instructional post:

✰ Research-Driven Essay

  1. I haven’t used footnotes in a while, so let’s see if that code still works. Here is the end of an excerpt by John Holt that has been assigned off-and-on for a while now:

    This is exactly what reading should be and in school so seldom is — an exciting, joyous adventure. Find something, dive into it, take the good parts, skip the bad parts, get what you can out of it, go on to something else. How different is our mean-spirited, picky insistence that every child get every last little scrap of”understanding” that can be dug out of a book.

    I think that applies equally to a post on here. Dive in, take what you can, skip what you can’t, maybe circle back later on. Treat it as part of a much larger whole. ↩

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April 10, 2020

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning

René Magritte, The Listening Room (1952 )

Message Received: You Got This

Remember that instructional posts like this are called interstitial, which refers to their intended use: You should visit and revisit the post when you have a enough time to focus on paragraphs or sections, to click on links, to look up references, and so on. Use the spaces in between.

In other words, these are instructions meant for more than just our English work. As you read these, you’re meant to learn interesting things and practice universal skills and traits. Think of them less as a lecture you watch once and more like a textbook chapter you should return to as necessary.

This is always worth repeating, because it’s a deliberate attempt to help you develop a more future-proof kind of reading skill. It’s much more about the how than the what, although this is still an instructional post based on the current situation.

The header image and thumbnail for this post link back to Magritte, who keeps appearing in the instructions for distance learning. Maybe the use of Magritte paintings reflects the surreality of our current situation. Modern art should also be part of any study of the Humanities, especially if you are drawn to that study purely out of curiosity.

For today, there’s one more bit of interstitial knowledge: the ten-code system, which you might have heard in the line, “Ten-four, good buddy.” It derives from CB slang, and it means that a message has been received. Like that Magritte painting, it’s (sort of) about listening.

What does that have to do with this post? Well, America is one of the few countries in the world that uses the MM-DD-YYYY format for dates. The rest use DD-MM-YYYY. It’s an interesting fact, and it means that today, April 10, is also 10-4-2020.

The “ten-four” message received here is about your stress level and need for clarity, simplification, and support. After the most recent weekly update, one student left a private comment:

As I went through the instructional post today. I notice that even though you are giving us a good amount of time to work on them, it just feels like a lot of work. Maybe if you could share something like a checklist ,or something how to make one, or how to organize your work. I think this would be really helpful. Thank you.

That is a great example of working on the feedback chain that sustains individualized learning. It also gives us an excuse to look back on the strategies for organization embedded in a November unit. You should look at those when and if you can.

Here’s the thing, though: While those resources are continually useful, they were designed around regular in-class and face-to-face meetings. We don’t have that resource right now. That will require us to circle back to your projects over the next week or two to make them manageable.

Here is an additional resource, by the way, that was shared by one of your peers earlier this week:

It was also posted yesterday to Google Classroom as a formative assignment. You can make a checklist for checklists and then a checklist for your everyday work in here. Your list should remind you to set a goal, fill out the daily Google Form, and check for updates online. Then it’s about your current project goals.

But as that comment from another peer reminds us, the project-based work that was meant to be spread across four months of in-class interaction is now being done in quarantine. It was the right amount of work for a normal semester; while you might have more free time now, you don’t have the same resources. The workload needs to be adjusted.

Projects and Projected Adjustments

If you load the main page for these second semester projects, you’ll see the fundamentals of project-based learning and then a list of the three most important things to remember:

  1. Almost every aspect of every project can be individualized.
  2. You must read the instructional posts carefully in order to individualize the work and make it authentic.
  3. Your in-class focus and use of feedback will determine your grade abatement profile more than any other aspect of your learning.

That list is repeated on all of the individual project pages, which makes updating it to reflect our COVID-created reality a little difficult. Instead, we have to tackle each of those elements now, one by one, in reverse order.

③ Your in-class focus and use of feedback will determine your grade abatement profile more than any other aspect of your learning.

While we are all working from home in the midst of a pandemic, there is no in-class focus to evaluate. You must check in every day with a clear goal for your dedicated English time, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to share feedback, works-in-progress, and so on. You don’t, however, have that 36th chamber as the center of the learning experience. The result:

③ Your in-class focus and use of feedback will determine your grade abatement profile more than any other aspect of your learning.

Cross it off. Your use of feedback is still critical, but it’s not observable in the same way. The expectations are radically different now.

The next element of these projects:

② You must read the instructional posts carefully in order to individualize the work and make it authentic.

Still absolutely essential. If you don’t read everything carefully, you can’t keep up with the work. Flipped instruction has always been a building block for our makerspace; it is now more important than ever. You can’t rely on in-class Q&A, handouts with simplified checklists, whiteboards with key dates — that’s all impossible to replicate here.

What’s most important about these online resources is that they allow you to individualize the work, which is the single most important element of your projects:

① Almost every aspect of every project can be individualized.

And this is the goal now: to make the best of this situation by individualizing the projects. To do that, the project parameters might need adjustments. We might need to be streamline and simplify the work to give you more flexibility and freedom.

That will be the instructional post on Monday: a rundown of which projects to prioritize, which ones to combine, which ones to ignore, and how it all fits together, whether we spend the rest of the year apart or reconvene at the high school in May or June.

Right now, the “ten-four” takeaway is that I recognize your stress, especially as this situation stretches out longer than anyone anticipated. I know that working from home is not easier than having class every day, and that some of you will do better work if you know that the next two months offer even more flexibility than the original slate of second-semester projects did.

Look for the update on Monday. In the meantime, be sure you’ve done the weekly self-assessment and reflection assignment, and contact me or Ms. Egan with any questions or concerns you have. Read all the recent posts on this site, too. Do it in bursts, when you can, and try to use the comment section below to get clarification.