Author: Mr. Eure

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More Examples of Sufficient Work

  By Skill-Building, Triage

Here again is a guide, with pictures, to help you identify the differences between sufficient work and insufficient work. The post and all its resources assist self-assessment and self-advocacy, especially during the writing process.

Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work

There is another post geared toward Honors- and college-level work that might be useful, but the one embedded above is probably enough. In case it isn’t, this post offers more examples of sufficient work.

Here is a folder of student responses to assignments given in English 12:

There are three responses each to two separate assignments. They are labeled clearly.

Proof of Process: Instructional Posts [Assignment #1]

This first assignment asked students to respond to a series of instructional posts given over several weeks. This is what was posted to Google Classroom:

The three model responses in the provided folder have been reformatted and given some context within the documents themselves.

Response: “In Defense of Distraction” [Assignment #2]

The second assignment asked students to annotate two excerpts from a longer nonfiction article and then to respond in writing. This is what was posted to Google Classroom:

The instructional post contains all of the relevant links:

In Defense of Distraction

Two of the three model responses in the provided folder have been reformatted and given context within the documents themselves. The third is an image, which is reposted below:

Note that this response is unfinished, and the student worries herself if it “completely went off topic.” The teacher’s feedback on the side is included to emphasize how important it is to write enough — to do work sufficient for feedback. That threshold is easy enough to identify.

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The Things They Carried

  By Units, When the Truth Isn't Sufficient

Part of a unit of study called When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient. Preceded by The Age of the Essay, What Is Literature For?, The Practice of Empathy, and Organization: Getting Things Done. These preceding units covered the art and purpose of writing essays and reading literature; the central skill taught through literature, which is empathy; and the substructural organization needed to tackle complex texts and tasks.

Animating quotation by Tim O’Brien, author of the assured novel, The Things They Carried:

That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.

The Things They Carried

The central text and assured experience for this unit is Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Every study has a copy of this, plus plenty of time to read it, before the unit’s official start. Here are some more resources related to the book and its author.

First, the Goodreads page: Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried. The reviews and responses offer plenty of insight into why this novel is taught so often in English classes.

Second, an excellent piece on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to mark the 20th anniversary of the novel: ‘The Things They Carried,’ 20 Years On. The program is about 30 minutes.

Finally, a more recent piece on O’Brien: Tim O’Brien, a Veteran of War and Fatherhood, Opens Up to His Sons. This is a review of the audiobook of O’Brien’s Dad’s Maybe Book, which is read by the author.

The central work for The Things They Carried is the central work for the entire unit. It is outlined here:

Required Writing: When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient

The reader’s response is the central means of responding to the novel, and that is explored more below.

The best reader-response essays will use a complete reading of the novel, start to finish, as their basis. It’s possible, however, to use selections from the text without having finished the rest. This is absolutely not the best way to explore O’Brien’s writing — but it does allow the inevitable students who don’t read to practice the essay.

Suggested Selection #1: “Ambush” and surrounding chapters

“Ambush” is on page 125 in our edition. We use it as an anchor because we have a recording of it being read by O’Brien himself. Here is a direct link: User Clip: Tim O’Brien Reads Ambush.

The suggested readings around “Ambush” add up 13 pages total. Here they are, with the page numbers from our edition indicated first:

Suggested Selection #2: “The Ghost Soldiers”

“The Ghost Soldiers” is a self-contained story that works well for reader-response writing. It’s 27 pages long and starts on page 180 in our edition.

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Feedback: In Shambles

  By Grade Abatement, Triage

Etymology Corner

Shambles is one of those words that sounds like its definition. We’re using the “disorder” definition, of course, not the one about the slaughterhouse — although it’s interesting to have another etymological reference to slaughterhouses, after abatement (via abate via abattoir).

Shambles might look a bit like it relates to shame, but the roots are different. The origins reference support, before changing over time to mean “ungainly” or disordered.

Shambolic, which is the adjective form, might be modeled on symbolic, and that helps, too. It’s a symbolic word, meant to conjure up the relative unsteadiness of various things, from mental states to writing.

Even the verb form, shambles, which the dictionary tells us means a “slow, shuffling, awkward gait,” works symbolically: There’s a reason zombies are described as “shambling” as often as they are.

TL;DR

You, the student enrolled in class, are subject to cause and effect. If your performance is good, good things happen; if you struggle, you will receive help until your performance improves.

This kind of cause-and-effect feedback chain is evidence-based or evidentiary. If the evidence supports an action, that’s it. That’s what we do. This is the logical construct of grade abatement, which is the logical construct of assessment in the real world: collective human judgment informed by evidence, as Tony Wagner has phrased it.

In other words, you are what you do, not who you are (or who you think you are).

Getting Help

If you complete assignments to the best of your ability, you will get positive feedback and earn higher grades. You will also be better prepared for next year, especially if you plan on attending college.

In a perfect world, that would be all the motivation you’d need. You’d forge, in that perfect world, a feedback chain of positive reinforcement and constructive criticism.

In this imperfect world, unfortunately, your motivations might differ. You might rely, for instance, on the shambolic logic of second-semester seniors, which isn’t actually confined to seniors, nor to the second semester. It’s a shambles built with bad habits.

A certain amount of contemporary research and debate calls this a generational issue, or at least a systemic one, and points to the same deficits:

  • Inability to sustain focus
  • Inability to read deeply for understanding
  • Inability to think critically or reason well
  • Inability to self-direct
  • Inability to self-assess
  • Lack of self-awareness
  • Lack of basic academic knowledge
  • Lack of basic academic skills

Students in our high school have these deficits, too — but don’t mistake this instructional post for a jeremiad (a word with its own fascinating etymology). This is an evidence-based assessment of groups of students. It is evidence-based.

And it starts, as always, with your choices. It’s what you do, not what you could do. If you don’t consistently demonstrate that you can sustain focus, then your focus is a hypothetical thing. If your work doesn’t demonstrate grade-level skills and understanding, we can’t just assume that you are capable. You’ve shown otherwise.

So it’s all about evidence. What do you do each day? What do you demonstrate through required assignments? What traits are reflected in your work? How do you advocate for yourself, for instance, in order to do your best work? Is that work sufficient?

All this evidence is organized through grade abatement profiles and a set of universal skills and traits. You could also look to Brewster’s SCP or Tony Wagner’s 21st-century skill set or probably a dozen other sources. It’s all the same. This is the stuff that persists after high school.

What you want to produce daily is evidence that you can do the following:

  • Get to class on time
  • Set a goal quickly and get to work
  • Collaborate effectively on specific goals
  • Utilize class time effectively
  • Utilize physical resources effectively
  • Utilize digital resources effectively
  • Use feedback amenably and consistently
  • Advocate for yourself early and often
  • Submit assignments on time
  • Revise assignments appropriately

Every action you take should create evidence for this list or evidence of grade-level skills (e.g., in writing). Otherwise, you need help. And if the evidence tells us you need help, then you need help.

Fortunately, this classroom, like the entire high school system, is set up to give you that help.

Possible Help, Classroom Scale

If you repeatedly demonstrate that you can’t focus in class, that you can’t do the required reading, etc, then there are a variety of interventions that could help you.

You’d first lose some autonomy and choice. You could be given an assigned seat, usually away from distractions and peers. Then you’d be given restricted access to technology — most likely a soft ban on phone use, plus heavily monitored Chromebook usage.

You might also be required to check-in at the end of each class period, not just at the beginning, in order to confirm the work you’ve done. This could be part of an individual work contract — one that would limit your choice in class in order to give you a better chance at success.

At this point, help also certainly includes phone calls home that detail the evidence of your inability to sustain focus, lack of basic skills, etc. Parents or guardians can monitor your use of time at home until you are able to demonstrate growth and mastery in class.

Possible Help, School Scale

If the evidence tells us you need more than what is possible in the classroom, we have options. It might start with a required meeting in Guidance to figure out what’s preventing you from being successful. That might lead to a meeting after school with all of your teachers to discuss how best to help you.

By involving other support systems, we have an opportunity to validate and address any social/emotional issues that are affecting your work. Depending on your needs, we could then modify assignments, set up a network of adults in the building to keep track of your progress, or get you help outside of school.

Another possibility, if you struggle with the basic skills and traits required of a senior in English, is to remove any free periods and replace them with regular study halls. The extra time in an academic environment would help you practice your focus and self-direction, and you’d have more time to finish required assignments.

Another good use of those free periods is mandated tutoring through one of the peer-driven systems in place. NHS has one; for 2019-2020, at least, we have another through the Learning Center in the iLC. Tutoring would give you regular access to a peer who could help you finish assignments, self-assess weaknesses, and so on.

All Carrot, No Stick

That last section gives you a list of interventions for students struggling with the requirements of senior English:

  • Assigned seat
  • Restricted access to technology
  • Additional daily check-in
  • Individual work contract
  • Meetings in Guidance
  • Meetings after school
  • Social/emotional support
  • Free period → mandated conferences in Room 210
  • Free period → mandated Study Hall
  • Free period → mandated tutoring in Learning Center

This is all ameliorative. It might feel like an imposition, but corrective help can feel that way — at first, before the positive impact becomes obvious. Physical therapy hurts. Emotional therapy is difficult. Sports practice can be monotonous and painful; so can play or band practice. Self-discipline takes time.

If you believe you don’t need help, but the evidence says otherwise, then you have to create different evidence. You have to prove that you don’t need help. There’s no stigma, either way. It’s evidence-based. You need help if there is evidence of the following:

  • Inability to sustain focus
  • Inability to read deeply for understanding
  • Inability to think critically or reason well
  • Inability to self-direct
  • Inability to self-assess
  • Lack of self-awareness
  • Lack of basic academic knowledge
  • Lack of basic academic skills

If you believe that this appearance is due to factors you can control, without interventions and extra help, then you must produce evidence that you can do the following:

  • Get to class on time
  • Set a goal quickly and get to work
  • Collaborate effectively on specific goals
  • Utilize class time effectively
  • Utilize physical resources effectively
  • Utilize digital resources effectively
  • Use feedback amenably and consistently
  • Advocate for yourself early and often
  • Submit assignments on time
  • Revise assignments appropriately

Ask questions about this below. You can also suggest other ways for us to help you master the necessary skills and traits of the course.

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Required Writing: When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient

  By Units, When the Truth Isn't Sufficient

Part of a unit of study called When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient. Preceded by The Age of the Essay, What Is Literature For?, The Practice of Empathy, and Organization: Getting Things Done. These preceding units covered the art and purpose of writing essays and reading literature; the central skill taught through literature, which is empathy; and the substructural organization needed to tackle complex texts and tasks.

Animating quotation by Tim O’Brien, author of the assured novel, The Things They Carried:

That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.

Essential Questions

These questions relate thematically to The Things They Carried, but they are essential apart from that novel. Note that some of these questions come from Facing History and Ourselves materials, including the FHAO resources for Elie Wiesel’s Night.

Your task is to explore the following essential questions:

  1. What is the relationship between our stories and our identities?
  2. To what extent are we all witnesses of history and messengers to humanity?
  3. To what extent will the decisions we make now affect us and others in the future?
  4. How does an individual keep his or her humanity when surrounded by inhumanity?
  5. To what extent can we make the “right” moral decision when faced with adversity?

You will answer those five questions in two parts.

First, you will complete this Google Form, which is also posted to Google Classroom. Having everyone’s responses online will allow us to work anonymously and collaborative on the meaning of these questions.

Second, you will use what we gain from those group discussions and any individual feedback to expand on the original, individual answers. This will likely take the form of an optional “river” essay.

Direct link to the Google Form: https://forms.gle/4CCdP9QEMhfaFHry5

Reader-Response Essay

In the makerspace, there is a universal and modular writing process that works for open-ended essays as well as required ones. Here is a direct link: tinyurl.com/sisyphus-writes. This proprietary style can be attached to any rubric, prompt, etc, as explored in the first unit of the year.

For this unit, you will respond to The Things They Carried through a reader-response essay. Reader-response theory covers many genres and formats — see this post for the complete rundown — but we will focus on the basic format used in other English classes:

Your prompt will be simple enough: Write a reader-response essay about The Things They Carried. To do this, you’ll be given excerpts and specific chapters to read in class, and you’ll watch O’Brien read “Ambush.” Even students who read nothing else will have fodder for a reader’s response. The process, as always, will be central.

Note: The suggested focuses of your reader-response essay will be posted separately.

This time, you must also submit your writing to Turnitin. Here is a brief overview of the service, if you’re unfamiliar with it: Turnitin.com Instructions.

When Turnitin is made part of the process, it is a required part of the process. It’s preparation for the many colleges that use similar services, but it’s also a friendly reminder of the need for integrity and honesty in here. Codes and keys for each class period will be posted to Google Classroom.

2019-2020: Turnitin.com Registration Info

Reprinted here for 2019-2020. Find your period, copy the class ID and enrollment key, and register at Turnitin.com.

Class Name: P2 English 12
Class ID: 23156813
Enrollment Key: tardigrade

Class Name: P3 English 12
Class ID: 23156818
Enrollment Key: tardigrade

Class Name: P6 English 12
Class ID: 23156822
Enrollment Key: tardigrade

Class Name: P7 English 12
Class ID: 23156826
Enrollment Key: tardigrade

Class Name: P8 English 12
Class ID: 23156834
Enrollment Key: tardigrade

Emulation Through Analysis

This will be a shorter response that invites you to emulate O’Brien’s style through a “The Things I Carry” piece. In the makerspace, this would be a collaborative exercise in creative and critical thinking: What do students carry — tangible and intangible — into school everyday? What does that mean, and how can we convey that meaning in emulative writing?

While creative exercises are enjoyable, this is the response that may be sacrificed to the altar of required and assured experiences. There is only so much time, after all, which leaves prompts like this as optional work.

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December 3, 2019

  By 2019-2020

Resource Pack

Use what you learned about organization to sort this set of resources, which were posted to Google Classroom and distributed in class during the weather-related weirdness of the first two days this week:

That was the best use of our shortened schedule on Tuesday, so it’s being reposted here. As a reminder, here is what you were told on December 3, via what wsa cross-posted to Google Classroom:

River Essays: Feedback and Revision

This is a two-part exercise. First, we need a writing response. In this case:

River Writing: On Empathy

The writer has to find someone to read the work and give feedback. The writer also needs to prompt the reader with a preface of some sort — the Artifact Feedback Worksheet posted above takes care of this.

Second, the reader fills out the worksheet to give specific and actionable feedback. This has to be done by hand, at least for now, to make collection, redistribution, monitoring, etc, a little easier.

Since you’ll hand in a hard copy of this feedback worksheet, you’ll mark the upcoming Google Classroom assignment as done. That online version exists to give you the deadline and copies of the worksheet.

Q: What if you haven’t written anything?

If you haven’t written a response to this assignment, which was assigned a month ago, you can only give feedback. You’ll have to track down people who did the work to ask if you can read and comment on their writing. The students who share their work so that others can practice giving good feedback are creating evidence for a higher profile, so the reward is both the ability to improve the writing and a higher profile score.

Q: What about revisions?

The original December calendar required them by Friday, December 6. Due to snow cancellations and delays, that will become an optional revision due during Q2B (2/10–1/8). We’ll adjust the GAP worksheet and related resources together in class.

Essential Questions

We’ll finish our study of The Things They Carried this month, starting with a set of essential questions on themes explored by the novel. Note that some of these questions come from Facing History and Ourselves materials, including the FHAO resources for Elie Wiesel’s Night.

  1. What is the relationship between our stories and our identities?
  2. To what extent are we all witnesses of history and messengers to humanity?
  3. To what extent will the decisions we make now affect us and others in the future?
  4. How does an individual keep his or her humanity when surrounded by inhumanity?
  5. To what extent can we make the “right” moral decision when faced with adversity?

You will answer those five questions in two parts. First, you will complete this Google Form, which is also posted below. These responses will allow us to look, as a class, at all responses in an anonymous, collaborative fashion. Second, you will use what we gain from group discussions to expand on the original, individual answers.

The form: Essential Questions. Look to Google Classroom for the deadline, and mark that assignment as done when you’ve finished the form itself.

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In Defense of Distraction

  By Organization: Getting Things Done, Units

Click below to load “In Defense of Distraction,” a 2009 New York Magazine article by Sam Anderson:

http://nymag.com/news/features/56793/

Anderson has written more than six thousand words here, and the full article is more relevant now than it was in 2009. Consider his final thoughts:

Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t—a sense of the way ten projects all dovetail into something totally new. They might be able to engage in seeming contradictions: mindful web-surfing, mindful Twittering. Maybe, in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction.

The idea of “associative genius” is fascinating, especially with the kind of access you now have to computers and smartphones. Note, too, the mention of being “mindful.” What we do is always connected to mindfulness, whether you use that term or not.

For our purposes, you should read the entire article, but you are required only to read the following excerpts:

Those excerpts are reposted below for those who prefer a non-Google format, or a format that permits tools like Snap&Read. (See the post on organization for a description and directions for Snap&Read.)

Read these excerpts, take notes, discuss the ideas, and think critically about how this applies to you, now, in this school. You will be asked to write a response to these excerpts (or to the entire article, if you choose to read it). In the comment section of this post, you should ask questions and offer your observations and insights.

Extended Response Focus

The response you will write to Anderson’s article does not need to consider more than the excerpts posted above. To do more than just what is required, however, which is one path to the top tier of profiles, you might look at his final paragraph, which is about you:

Which brings me, finally, to the next generation of attenders, the so-called “net-gen” or “digital natives,” kids who’ve grown up with the Internet and other time-slicing technologies. There’s been lots of hand-wringing about all the skills they might lack, mainly the ability to concentrate on a complex task from beginning to end, but surely they can already do things their elders can’t—like conduct 34 conversations simultaneously across six different media, or pay attention to switching between attentional targets in a way that’s been considered impossible. More than any other organ, the brain is designed to change based on experience, a feature called neuroplasticity. London taxi drivers, for instance, have enlarged hippocampi (the brain region for memory and spatial processing)—a neural reward for paying attention to the tangle of the city’s streets. As we become more skilled at the 21st-century task Meyer calls “flitting,” the wiring of the brain will inevitably change to deal more efficiently with more information. The neuroscientist Gary Small speculates that the human brain might be changing faster today than it has since the prehistoric discovery of tools. Research suggests we’re already picking up new skills: better peripheral vision, the ability to sift information rapidly. We recently elected the first-ever BlackBerry president, able to flit between sixteen national crises while focusing at a world-class level. Kids growing up now might have an associative genius we don’t—a sense of the way ten projects all dovetail into something totally new. They might be able to engage in seeming contradictions: mindful web-surfing, mindful Twittering. Maybe, in flights of irresponsible responsibility, they’ll even manage to attain the paradoxical, Zenlike state of focused distraction.

Anderson reported the research and wove in his insight back in 2009. You are those “kids who’ve grown up with the Internet and other time-slicing technologies” he describes here.

That means an important an authentic prompt is this: To what extent is this final paragraph accurate?

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GAP Reports: Required Writing

  By Grade Abatement, Triage

There are two halves to the required self-assessment for grade abatement.

  • First, there is a form, which is outlined here and mirrors the GAP process itself.
  • Second, there is a short written response, which is explained in this post and repeated on Google Classroom.

For the writing, the best feedback can be read in this document:

An example of how the prompt is posted, from the end of Q1 in 2019:

Before we discuss the data, here is a random selection of adequate or effective responses from that Q1C example:

Emulate those in the future. Use the feedback below to help you.

Requirements

First, even though it’s obvious: You have to do the writing. It is always required. You should never turn in a GAP report without attaching a response, and the amount you write should fit the definition of sufficient in this post:

Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work

Your insights and observations are necessary for any sort of feedback. It’s how you keep the chain going.

Compliance Data

If you fail to write a thoughtful response about your progress, two things will happen:

  1. You will break that feedback chain, which slows your overall progress.
  2. You will provide last-second evidence of a lower profile.

Compliance is always an issue, of course. It’s human nature not to do the right thing, even when the choice is obvious. That doesn’t excuse lapses in judgment, but it may help you to be honest about what you need to adjust.

It may also help to see hard data about noncompliance and its effect on the learning environment. Here are some statistics from November 14, 2019, which was the date of the last GAP report of Q1:

Section 1: 29 students | 17% submitted a written response.
Section 2: 27 students | 33% submitted a written response.
Section 3: 25 students | 24% submitted a written response.
Section 4: 16 students | 19% submitted a written response.
Section 5: 19 students | 33% submitted a written response.

This does not include late work or work generated through individual conferences the next week. The key takeaway: Only 25% of all students met the deadline for a written response.

Next, we have to evaluate whether the individual responses in that 25% were adequate or effective. This kind of self-analysis must use the language of the selected profile and the language of the skills and traits. That’s not difficult to do, because all of that language fits on the front and back of a single page:

  1. Grade Abatement Profiles
  2. Universal Skills and Traits

If a student just copies over the selected profile and writes, “This is me,” it at least demonstrates an awareness that there is required language. It’s a lapse in close reading and critical thinking to make up what you think constitutes a particular grade.

Overall, 41% of the completed assignments were adequate or effective. That means only 10% of the total student roster handed in adequate work by the deadline. This is much lower than normal, and it doesn’t include late work. That’s why I’m using the example: All that late and insufficient work slowed down the feedback process and prevented us from using the makerspace’s flexibility to make adjustments. It gummed up the works.

If you take the time to write when asked, you improve your score, help your progress, and prevent damage to the class.

Ask any questions about these reports below.

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Static GAP Score Feedback

  By Grade Abatement, Space Explainers

A grade abatement profile or GAP score can be further unpacked through this Static GAP Score Feedback post, which is adapted from the Step-By-Step Guide to Grade Abatement and the GAP Process post.

The basic components are the grade abatement profiles and set of universal skills and traits. All other guides and clarifications, like this post that clarifies grade abatement, further elaborate on those basics. The entire process is evidentiary.

Continue reading

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November 18, 2019

  By 2019-2020

Notes and updates for Monday, November 18, 2019, which is the start of the second quarter. Read carefully, take notes, and ask questions.

Skill Building: Organization

We are going to take a few days to work on organization as an essential skill. The reading and writing components are here:

Organization: Getting Things Done

It’s worth noting the SWOT analysis assignment that is given context within that post. You may also benefit from reading this post, which is also another example of how feedback works best:

Exemplary Feedback

Don’t drag your feet about this organizational work until a formal assignment is posted to Google Classroom. Show that you can take steps forward before then. Let the posts guide you.

Soft Reboot: Q2

You need to make better use of the physical space, starting with the following directions.

The whiteboard table needs to have a more limited number of students using it at any given time, and those students need to be working on an assignment that requires a whiteboard.

The office chairs need to stay by the touchscreen TV for small-group instruction, which can be expanded to include the conference table lined up with the TV.

The rest of the furniture needs to be spread out — no more bunching up in groups of five or six just to be near each other. If it’s not a conscious decision to improve collaboration, rethink it.

If you don’t need your phone for reading or writing, it should be stored somewhere else. If you do need it for an assignment, you also need permission. Any other use is distracting you.

You can still choose to work with any peers you’d like to work with. If you’re not productive in those groups, that will be reflected in feedback and assessment.

Start of Class

The information from this handout/post is required:

This is posted to Google Classroom, right above the required daily calibration. It’s on the front page of this website as direct links:

It’s on the walls by the cell phone cubbies, too, and you will be using those more frequently.

You need to learn self-reliance and self-control. It starts with goal-setting. Do the daily calibration form every day until it’s a habit.

You also need to get to work immediately after any announcements or directions are given. You need time to transition into the right headspace, but you must be moving in that direction.

Feedback Chain

You should have a printed copy of this post on feedback:

The Feedback Chain

It is required reading. The post is obviously a better place to read this information, because you can enlarge images, click on links, etc; it’s been printed so that you can shut down your screens and read without distractions, if you need to.

Snap&Read Universal and Co:Writer Universal

This is part of the organizational mini-unit, but it needs to be isolated here. It will help with the amount of instructional reading you must do.

Review the plug-ins Snap&Read Universal and Co:Writer Universal. You can use them to eliminate distractions, define words, look up references, and so on. If you don’t already have these from last year, we can take a period to install and review them as a class.

The Things They Carried

Continue reading the book. Don’t stop reading it. Don’t ask what page number you have to reach — the answer is that you should keep reading until you finish.

There will be a post on what you’ll do with this novel, but not until we’ve completed a soft reboot of the course through an organizational mini-unit.

The next few weeks of Q2 will be spent studying The Things They carried or incorporating it into other lessons. Keep reading.

River Writing: On Empathy

Continue writing the essay. Here again is the prompt:

River Writing: On Empathy

Don’t wait for another deadline to be posted to Google Classroom. One will be there, but not until we finish these organizational lessons.

Just keep writing. Set up conferences, ask questions, and collaborate with each other. Show that you can be self-directed.

Pareto Projects: Q2

We had a chance to talk last week about sharing progress through structured discussions, small presentations, and other showcases. Starting in December, we’ll use the occasional Friday to do this.

Note two things:

  1. This low-stakes work will be good practice for the end-of-year senior talks.
  2. You will only have to share out your progress according to your comfort level.

Interstitial Instructional Posts

Lastly, another reminder to read actively and interstitially — that is, when you have a few minutes to dedicate to it — every post like this one.

If you aren’t clicking on links and actively taking in information from these posts, start clicking on links and actively taking in information. Every post will teach you more than what’s indicated in its title or subheading. Most posts will review important skills, traits, and knowledge, if you read actively and deeply.

Mostly, though, you can’t be lost if you read and click and think a little bit. These posts are the textbooks, packets, and lectures of the course. They also provide flexibility for every assignment. But you have to read them.

If you have questions, including questions about these updates, ask them in the comment section, where other students can benefit from the answers.

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Organization: Skills to Frame the Rest

  By 22–23 Resources, Organization: Getting Things Done, Skill-Building, Units

From the profile of an INTJ, or “Architect.” Click for the website by NERIS Analytics Limited, which includes a free test and explanation of these personality classifications.

Getting Things Done, Part 1

You are reading this post because you need to organize the academic stuff you have on you. That word, stuff, comes from a root meaning “to equip,” and that’s the idea: You equip yourself every day in order to deal with school and the work it requires. You gear up.

Start with a frank assessment of how you do that. This is an inventory of your equipment, so to speak. You are going to empty your bag, metaphorically and literally, and then use the resources of our makerspace to improve or replace what you find.

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