TL;DR: Let me know if these new groups create any serious interpersonal problems, and then expect to use them in class.
The Stuff of Growth
Back in September, we watched Ken Robinson’s speech on education. You can revisit our discussion through the first part of this corner of Sisyphean High, but we’re talking today about his idea that collaboration is the stuff of growth and that most great learning happens in groups.
The complication arises from how you form those groups, and through the end of 2016, you had almost total control over your collaborative setup. A few class periods were rowdy or unfocused enough to force assigned seats, but never for more than a day or two.
The shift we’re about to make is not an indication that you failed, individually or collectively, to work well in your self-selected groups. Some of you proved Ken Robinson right every day. Instead, this is a deliberate effort to change the classroom space, which has begun to stagnate in recent weeks. You sit in the same places and work with the same folks, and you’ll all benefit from a test your ability to collaborate outside of your circle of friends.
UPDATE, 1/11 | Your groups have been adjusted. You can access the new copies through Google Classroom. Look for the update from January 10, which has a PDF attached. These updated groups are smaller and should prevent the interpersonal problems that were brought to my attention.
If you have any more concerns, juniors should look to the metacognitive and reflective writing outlined in this more recent post. Sophomores can bring their concerns directly to me or Mr. Looby. The goal is to improve, using the resources of the room as effectively and efficiently as possible. Remember:
The most obvious changes below are to the calendar for your Pareto Projects, but you will need the definition of a “process update,” too, to help you plan for those checkpoints.
Calendar Update
In the last version, the checkpoints occurred roughly every three weeks, but not on the same day of the week. That has been changed so that a process update happens every other Friday. In English 10, we will almost certainly set aside the period on those dates to work together; English 11 and AP students should not anticipate having that class period, however, since we will be using that time for exam prep.
You can load the updated Google Doc version of the calendar by clicking here. If you’d like to download and print a version, you can use this PDF copy of version 2.1:
For all students, these biweekly updates should follow a similar format:
PARETO PROJECTS | Click that link to load the home of our eventual/hopeful Pareto Project publication. Your assignment for every required update is to write an essay that could hypothetically be published there. That essay should be a short, insightful response that blends the answers to three questions:
What have you accomplished so far for your Pareto Project?
What have you learned so far?
What’s next?
Answer these in a way that makes sense for your project. Include whatever images, links, digressions, etc, you want. You will not automatically be published, and many of you haven’t yet set up a Medium account. That’s okay. The metacognitive stuff is more important, so it matters most that you monitor your progress and find something insightful to say about it.
When in doubt, use the instructional posts that are available online. Delving into those posts will hone your close reading ability, and you will get better at communicating your questions and concerns only if you’re fully informed.
Today and tomorrow are transitional periods for us. First, you need to finish the work that was assigned two weeks ago. Then you will write short essays that chronicle your progress toward your Pareto project goals.
Transition #1: GAP Self-Assessment and “Unto the Breach”
Use Google Classroom and the following instructional posts to review and, as necessary, to complete the last two formal assignments:
If you submitted writing, this is an opportunity to revisit and revise. Either way, a day spent looking at where you were two weeks ago can help you to generate evidence of all sorts of important skills and traits.
There is a prompt at the start of that document. It will be cross-posted to Google Classroom at the end of the day tomorrow, at which point you will be able to upload a copy of your response for archival and evidentiary purposes. Until then, you must determine what to do by reading carefully, asking questions, and collaborating with your peers.
The rest of this embedded document is self-explanatory. Read it carefully, too.
Henry, pondering the breach. Click for one of the more famous speeches from Henry V.
Confounded Base
First, a note: You are not required to set up a social media account for this course. Read the Pareto Project guide and previous posts carefully, and you’ll see only the suggestion that using social media will give weight to your work. That’s why we cite Paul Graham’s “golden age of the essay” and stress the need for more than a teacher’s red pen and score. Your work needs to matter, and the Internet lets you reach an audience beyond our classroom.
The Internet is also, as those previous posts and guides explain, where you will live and work in your professional future. When you apply for college, those institutions will use Google to search for your name. They will scour social media sites. They will uncover any footprint you’ve left online.
Which is why your assignment today is to search Google for that footprint. Search your full name. What pops up? Visit any accounts you have that aren’t private, and look at them like a stranger would. What do you see?
Take today’s period to describe what is already out there about you, and then write about what you want to be out there. What sort of student do you hope colleges (and then prospective employers) find when they look for you? What footprint have you created?
This thought exercise is why part of the Pareto Project is publishing through Medium. On January 3, you’ll write the first essay documenting your process, and you will be strongly encouraged to craft that essay in a way that lends itself to Medium’s architecture and format. Again, you are not required to do this, nor to have a Medium account at all; nor is there some secret expectation built into this quarter’s grade abatement profiles. Instead, the hope is that you see the value in using Medium to create a portfolio of insightful reflection, narration, exposition, etc.
Many of you will also have multimedia elements to publish and share, from videos to comics to podcasts. You should consider which sites best fit those elements. Then you should consider which audiences best fit those elements.
Which brings us to Twitter. There are few better ways to publicize work, and almost no social media appears more future-proof. Once again, you are not required to use Twitter. Many folks get by just fine in life without a Twitter account. But you should not demonize it. You should not assume that it has no educational or vocational value. Used properly, it is among the best ways to establish a digital presence.
After you’ve written something significant about your current online footprint and what you want that footprint will be in the future, spend some time exploring Medium and Twitter. Find professionals you admire or hope to emulate, and observe their footprint. What do politicians write about on Medium? How do writers interact with others on Twitter? Do artists post pictures directly to Twitter, or do they link to another account online?
Take whatever you learn from this exploration, and commit it to writing. Be thoughtful. Make this a good piece of evidence of those essential skills and traits. And ask questions below, if you have them. Interacting with me, here, is as important as anything else.
Cover art to DJ Signify’s Sleep No More. The track featuring Sage Francis is at the bottom of this post.
Pareto Recap
Your Pareto Project should now be underway. If you haven’t already, post your 120-character idea to the central Google Form. Edit your entry, too, if it needs clarity or revision. Then check out the master list of ideas on the last page of the guide, which is embedded again below. If you get to the end of the week without incident, your project and blueprint are good to go. Otherwise, we’ll work out an interrupted schedule together to strengthen the project and clarify the blueprint.
Watch this space for an update over the winter break. I will give you instructions about what to expect on January 3, when you will complete a writing response related to your Pareto progress.
The new year is an opportunity to regroup and refocus. You’ve been given explicit instructions about ongoing work and upcoming work — here is the post for 11R; here it is for AP — and we just spent a significant amount of time setting up Round 1 of your Pareto Projects. As we enter 2017, you might also note that you are now in the calendar year when you will apply to college. If you haven’t been serious before, now is the time.
Our interstitial classroom will take care of your access to each other, to me, and to the materials of the course. We will centralize bishop composition after the break, using it to drive everything else we do, including exam-specific writing and reading work. Grade abatement will take care of how you are assessed.
On that last note:
Consider the assignments issued to you through Google Classroom. Take an inventory of missing work, incomplete work, lates, etc. Remember that approved lates or incompletes are fine; everything else is not.
Consider your use of class time. Take an inventory of how often you believe you have been on- or off-task. Then take a true inventory of your focus. How often am I likely to have noted that you are off-task?
Consider your metacognitive and reflective work. Take an inventory of how much writing you’ve done and how many conversations you’ve had with me about your learning, your growth, your writing, etc.
Consider your atelier or workshop efforts. That refers to the extent to which you’ve studied with me to become an expert and the extent to which you’ve taught others. Take an inventory of how demonstrably invested you’ve been in the academic and grade-abated success of your peers.
For some of you, that is going to be a sobering picture. You have lost focus, missed work, and neglected your responsibilities. That’s human nature, so you don’t need to self-flagellate… but you do need to get better at this. Load the expanded profiles alongside your notes on GAP logic:
More than a few of you need to approach 2017 as if you were clinging desperately to the edge of a Tier 3 profile, with the abyss of Tier 2 gazing up at you. Because you are. You are hanging on by your fingernails.
A Series of Tubes
The last post introduced the fourth step of the Pareto Project, and you’ve had nearly a week to flex your autodidactic muscles. You should have made some progress in answering these prompts from Step #4:
Set up a Twitter account and profile.
Set up a Medium account and profile.
We’ll now use Wednesday and Thursday to discuss Twitter, Medium, and your digital persona. That’s the first lesson: You need to curate a digital presence. When folks go looking for you in the future, they’ll use Google, and this is the start of your control over what they find. Colleges will want to see a student who maintained a Medium account, who wrote regularly and insightfully about different subjects, and they’ll want to see a student who engages online in a smart, responsible way. Finding nothing might be as bad as finding evidence of bad decisions.
That doesn’t mean that you manufacture a different version of yourself. You need to be authentic, but not unfiltered. For most of you, that means creating a professional Twitter account that you use to promote Medium essays you write, Instagram projects you create, podcasts you record, etc. You can carefully choose who you follow, what you post, and what your virtual space looks like.
Think of this like a digital résumé. The world you are entering won’t care about the grade you got on a test; it will care about your digital imprint and the impression that creates of you. Keep any personal social media private, and treat these new accounts as extensions of the work you do in our course. Build a better version of yourself.
Let’s talk, though, about what these social media accounts will do for us. Head back to that last post, look at what has been given to you as examples, and start a discussion with me and your peers. What are your concerns? What are your questions?
Meanwhile, a preview of the kind of poetry we’ll look at in January:
Apply SOAPSTONE to the essay you have read in 100 Great Essays.
Begin to brainstorm about your essay, using SOAPSTONE to outline.
You will also be given a copy of the following handout, which has a list of tones (often the hardest element to identify) on the back with abbreviated definitions:
After Monday, December 19, you should have a blueprint for your Pareto Project. If that’s not the case, you have the rest of this week to work with your teachers to finish this blueprint. You must have your work ready before the winter break. Use the complete guide to the project, focusing on Step #3:
We will return to Step #4 as a class in January. You will also have approximately one day a week dedicated to the Pareto Project — the necessary 20%.
If you have any questions about what to do over the next two weeks, refer to the guide or ask questions below.
Back to Essay Writing
We will spend the rest of this week reinvigorating your emulation-through-analysis essays. You’ll need your copy of 100 Great Essays, and you’ll need this new post:
Kandinsky’s Composition VIII. Click to see more of his work.
Step #4: Digital Presence
With today’s iteration, the complete guide to this Pareto Project has been rolled out to you, and you can now move at your own pace through the prefatory assignments and into the project itself. Start with version 1.6 of the guide:
Step #4 asks you to set up Twitter and Medium accounts to use throughout this process. It also encourages you to think critically about the other sites you can use to develop and eventually share your work. Most of this will be done in class under our atelier model — i.e., under teacher or teacher-proxy supervision — but you can begin at any point.
For Medium, exploring the site is the key. You will eventually hope to have a curated set of writing like this:
That is Gina Arnold, a graduate of Brewster and the student who first suggested that our makerspace might be able to use Medium. She predicted its rise as a digital platform, and she continues to use it for academic and job purposes. Your planned updates, which are identified on the Pareto Project calendar, will be posted to your Medium account, which should emulate the professional tone Gina uses.
Otherwise, explore the site. You’ll find everything from national newspapers to online comics, and your voice will eventually join these ranks. (You can do the same sort of exploration on Twitter, but stick to Medium for now. The Twitterverse is a labyrinth that would panic Asterion.)
Step #5: The Work
Step #5 has you start the work of this project. So that you’ve seen it twice, here is the complete guide again:
Notice that Step #5 gives you access to your peers’ concise ideas. Their projects are part of your environment for the rest of the year, and the more aware of each other you become, the better your own work will be. This is your “network of possible wanderings,” as Teresa Amabile once wrote in a discussion of creativity:
Expertise encompasses everything that a person knows and can do in the broad domain of his or her work. Take, for example, a scientist at a pharmaceutical company who is charged with developing a blood-clotting drug for hemophiliacs. Her expertise includes her basic talent for thinking scientifically as well as all the knowledge and technical abilities that she has in the fields of medicine, chemistry, biology, and biochemistry. It doesn’t matter how she acquired this expertise, whether through formal education, practical experience, or interaction with other professionals. Regardless, her expertise constitutes what the Nobel laureate, economist, and psychologist Herb Simon calls her “network of possible wanderings,” the intellectual space that she uses to explore and solve problems. The larger this space, the better.
Creative thinking, as noted above, refers to how people approach problems and solutions—their capacity to put existing ideas together in new combinations. The skill itself depends quite a bit on personality as well as on how a person thinks and works. The pharmaceutical scientist, for example, will be more creative if her personality is such that she feels comfortable disagreeing with others—that is, if she naturally tries out solutions that depart from the status quo. Her creativity will be enhanced further if she habitually turns problems upside down and combines knowledge from seemingly disparate fields. For example, she might look to botany to help find solutions to the hemophilia problem, using lessons from the vascular systems of plants to spark insights about bleeding in humans.
Expand your expertise and experience, and this 20% really will contribute to the majority of your learning.
I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that’s enough for me…
I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.
The bolded sentences give us our approach to novels like 1984. You’ve had Orwell’s book for a month now, and the only real question is this: Have you given the story 30-40 pages? If not, that’s your assignment: to read far enough into 1984 to determine if you are going to keep reading or not.
We need to tweak Holt’s language a bit to make it more meaningful, of course. Waiting for an author “to get his story going” isn’t precise enough to be useful, and there are other reasons to continue a book beyond “lik[ing] the characters.” What matters is that you should be getting something out of 1984, and if you aren’t, you have the right to stop reading.
To make that decision, you need to invest in the attempt. You can’t begin a book expecting to hate it, nor should you bring your previous reading experiences to that particular table. Start clean. Recognize that many folks, including your teacher, think highly of the book you’ve been given. Go back to that post from November 18 and read what one of your predecessors wrote about the power of 1984. Then give Orwell a chance to hook you.
If you invest in the attempt, you can make a respectable decision to stop. Either way, you need to account for your decision, which brings us to what you do after giving Orwell at least 30-40 pages:
Write reflectively and metacognitively about your decision to continue 1984 or your decision to stop 1984. Explain your reasons as a result of earnest attempt to invest in the book’s world and characters. Justify the time you dedicated to reading the rest of the novel, or justify the choice to put it aside and look for other texts.
That is taken from the Google Classroom assignment, which gives you until Monday, December 19, to make this decision and account for it in writing. As always, the thinking that surrounds your decision is more important than the decision itself.
Some of you have are deep into 1984, and a few have already finished the novel. You can still answer the prompt above by reflecting on when you made the decision to keep reading. I also invite you to share your experience with your peers by posting on Google+. Would you recommend the book? What general reasons for reading it (or not) can you give?
Bookkeeping
You will eventually be asked to do something similar for the other three novels provided to you in mid-November. Start looking for the time it will take to give each author a chance, and invest in each novel to the same degree, at least initially.
We have a few copies of The Invisible Man on our bookshelf, a full class set of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but no hard copies of The Time Machine. You should attempt to read these novels online when possible:
These are shorter novels chosen as much for their length as the quality of the stories. Use that to your advantage.
Note: If you decide not to continue 1984, or if you have already finished it, return your copy as soon as possible. Another teacher is interested in teaching it, and I’d like to get them to her before Monday. You will check in your novel through the same Google Form used to check it out.
As always, ask questions about this process below.
First, you should note that our original plans have shifted in light of your needs. That’s a good thing. I want to give you time to get your mind around this project. You will receive the complete guide according to this schedule:
Thursday, December 8: Introduction, Overview, and Step #1
Friday, December 9: Step #2
Tuesday, December 13: Step #3
Thursday, December 15: Step #4
Step #5 is a little gimmicky, since it will simply tell you to get to work. You’ll get it with Thursday’s update, and you’ll see what I mean. Let’s start today with the Pareto Project guide, updated with Step #3:
Step #2 is ongoing, remember, and you have updated directions for what to do by Wednesday. Step #3 is there for those of you ready to tackle it. For the sake of redundancy, a link to the blueprint is below. Remember to make your own copy.
There’s a metaphor here, I’m sure of it. (Click for the blueprint.)
Pay careful attention to the section of the guide for Step #3 that discusses how to share and refine these blueprint proposals. Make this as collaborative an effort as possible to cut down on delay.
As always, ask questions about this step here or in class. You’re closing in on winter break, and we’re likely to move on before then to talk about Santa Claus; before that, you need to be sure you know what to do for this project. More than perhaps any other skill or trait, this is a test of your organizational and autodidactic strength.
