Reminders and Reanimation

From the movie adaptation of a seminal text on the importance of education.


Reminder: Final Triptych


Final Triptych

Actually, it’s less a reminder than a reanimator. We’re all a bit dead on our feet by June. There’s more than the course’s final triptych to consider, too.

1. Summer Reading

Read the post covering your 2018 summer assignments. Start the work now, even if you only consider your choices. Your work ethic is going to atrophy by August; you need to exercise it regularly.

Of course, you should only focus on summer reading if you’ve truly finished up everything required of you for this year.

2. Junior-to-Senior Jumpstart

This, too, should only be your concern when and if you handle the rest of your responsibilities, especially in this class. Time will keep on keeping on, though, and in two weeks, you can start to consider some of the bigger stressors of the fall of your senior year:

  1. Asking for letters of recommendation
  2. Drafting the college essay
  3. Completing the Common App
  4. Completing your Junior Autobiography
  5. Organizing an online portfolio of writing, art, etc.

If you can dedicate some time to these over the summer, the fall will be much less stressful.

3. Pareto Projects

The goal was always to grapple with the soritical paradox of most projects and final exams. That’s a way of saying that these projects should involve work you take with you into the summer, into next year, etc., because the work is meaningful. Any arbitrary end date ought to exist to prompt feedback and validation, not to truncate your progress so we can assign it a score.

Share anything you want to share through the Google Classroom assignment created this morning. I’ll populate a Google Site created for this purpose, and we’ll see how much feedback and validation we can gather from the rest of the district and community. Unless you’re a senior (and probably even then), this kind of community feedback will matter as much in July and September as it will next week.

4. Final Essay

The retrospective consideration of your writing life is due on Monday, June 11. Late work affects your profile — of course it does — but it is more important to write meaningfully than to compromise your insight through a last-second rush job.

It’s possible that some of you did not organize your time well over the last three weeks. If so, you should take a few extra days to write this retrospective. Get through the Regents Exam first. Make sure you’ve done what you needed to do for your Pareto Project. Then carve out the necessary time, starting after the Regents Exam on June 12, complete your final essay.

The prompt is in the “Final Triptych” post and on Google Classroom. You should submit your response on Classroom, unless you are using Medium or another site to publish; in that case, you can link directly to your essay.

Note: Some of you negotiated an alternative subject for this final essay. That deal still holds. Submit your response to Google Classroom.

5. THE Regents Exam

By now, you should be deep into this prep. You ought to have finished it, really, since doing a complete practice exam right before taking the real exam is a surefire way to court burnout.

As necessary, the exam posted to Castle Learning is the best use of your remaining time. It has the metacognitive work built in. Load your account and work through the multiple-choice and writing. Refer back to your notes on these posts:

Test Prep: Endgame

Gamesmanship: Regents Exam (CC ELA)

To a significant extent, the Regents Exam reflects your preparation more than your talent for writing, reading, and thinking. Weak work ethic leads to low scores; strong work ethic leads to high scores. If you work hard, even at this late hour, you will do well. The data will tell us your story.

In fact, you might consider everything happening now as another chance to tell a story about yourself. It can be a story of continued investment and insight, of apathy and entitlement, of perseverance and turning points — all narratives stitched together from the choices you’ve already made and the choices you will eventually make. Create something meaningful.

2018 BHS Summer Reading


Brewster High School: Summer Reading (All Students)


Read the assignment below carefully. You can ask questions about this assignment in the comment section of this post.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F06%2FBHS-Summer-Reading-18-2.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 


AP English Literature & Composition: Summer Reading


For students enrolled in this course for 2018-2019. Contact information for any questions you have included in the assignment.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F06%2FAP-LIT-Summer-Reading-18.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 


DCC English 101: Summer Reading


For students enrolled in this course for 2081-2019. Contact information for any questions you have included in the assignment.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F06%2FDCC-101-Summer-Reading-18.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 


AP English Language & Composition: Summer Reading


Note that the assigned chapters from The Language of Composition require a BCSD login.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F06%2FAP-LANG-Summer-Reading-18.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

How to Self-Direct


Trial and Error


This is an example of how to self-direct, which does not mean to go it alone. It means, instead, that you are active in your learning. You might need help with each step below, and most steps are more effective with expert guidance and feedback.

Situation:

As part of the end of the year, you’ve been assigned a practice Regents Exam in English. The exam is posted to Castle Learning, so you start there with the multiple-choice questions on reading passages. For this example, we’re sticking with that Part 1.

Steps:
  1. Assess Your Performance | First, you finish the assignment and note your score. You set aside any questions you missed or had difficulty answering, regardless of score. Castle Learning does this automatically; otherwise, you would seek an expert.
  2. Diagnose Greatest Need(s) | Castle Learning provides the correct answer and its explanation for each question. With an expert’s help, you can identify patterns and diagnose needs. In this example (which is drawn from a real-life example), there are two patterns: authorial tone and figurative language.
  3. Peruse Available Resources | You’ll always have resources available in the classroom or online, and usually both. In this case, we can search Google for help identifying tone. I’ve embedded a screenshot of the results below. Then we look carefully through these results for what will help us meet your needs.
  4. Practice and (Self-)Assess | The second link in this example gives you an online exercise. Luckily, it also gives you the correct answers and an explanation, just like Castle Learning. This is an excellent autodidactic resource. In other instances, you can rely on an expert to give you the assignments and any necessary feedback.
  5. R.E.M. | Let’s see if this works as an acronym: reflect on your process; explicate the correct answers, model writing, central skills, etc.; and metacogitate on your learning. This is the key, because the goal is improvement, not just an increase in quantitative success. In other words, this is where you make the learning permanent, regardless of score.

Here is a screenshot of what you would see in this example for Step #3:

The first link is a PDF, and it would be an effective exercise for anyone looking to improve their ability to identify tone. It would require an expert’s help to score, though, which is why that second link is the real find: an interactive, automatically scored exercise. It’s short enough to do quickly, but the explanations are thorough enough to fuel effective metacognition.

What’s even more helpful is that this website has more exercises related to this Regents prep. The first one is on identifying tone:

But you would also find, with a simple bit of searching, an exercise on figurative language:

Five questions each, with explanations for each question. The exercises are scored online automatically. It’s the best kind of resource, and it happens to fit our example perfectly — and remember, this example comes from a real student. With a resource like this, you can much more easily get through the three parts of that final step.

Step #5: R.E.M. (Reflect, Explicate, Metacogitate)
  1. Reflect on the process. The better you get at searching online, the better your resources will be. You also need to codify a system for evaluating resources quickly. It took me about five minutes to find that website for the student who needed help with figurative language and tone. You can find expert resources just as fast, if you practice.
  2. Explicate the results. Explicate means to give a detailed explanation, but its root is more helpful here: It means to unfold or unravel. You need to unfold any feedback you get, whether it’s automatically generated by a site or provided in person by an expert. Imagine that you are laying that understanding out in front of you.
  3. Metacogitate about the learning. You can also think of it as being metacognitive, but then you lose the awkward verb and the “R.E.M.” acronym. Anyway, this is the key: understanding your learning choices, cognitive strengths and weaknesses, etc., in the context of improvement.

As I said, it’s possible to find exceptional resources in only a few minutes. That’s the potential of Google (or any other search engine). You’ll also have plenty of resources provided in class, from textbook lessons on grammar to printed self-assessment forms. It’s about resource management, really — repeated trial and error with the help of peers and other experts.

Ask questions about this post below.

Gamesmanship: Regents Exam (CC ELA)


TL;DR


The rest of this post delves into the scoring mechanics of the Regents Exam, but I want to try something else:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F05%2Fela-exam-matrix-01.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

I put together a scoring matrix that lines up total points for Parts 2-3 and total points for Part 1 and indicates the final exam score. No weighted raw scores here, and no breakdown of the math — just a look at how many multiple-choice answers need to be correct for a combined writing score to get you over a particular threshold.

The green section indicates distinction, or 85+; the yellow is for passing scores below 85; and the red covers a group of scores that are within striking range of 65.

For reference, here is a similar matrix for the writing sections:

This shows the weighted raw scores for the writing portions of the test. The numbers in the matrix form the left column of the final exam score PDF.


Gaming the Regents Exam


As we enter the last three weeks of the year, our test prep shifts into a kind of endgame. Here, that means crunching the numbers to see what points you can afford to lose on each part of the Regents Exam. You each have a target goal. Whatever that goal is, the multiple-choice section — the three reading passages and 24 questions on Part 1 — will most directly determine whether you succeed or not.

First, though: It takes close reading, critical thinking, and effective writing to do well on any high-stakes English exam. It is rarely, if ever, a test of content. The preparation for these tests starts, therefore, years before you sit to take them. Every essay, text, and discussion contributes to your prep. Skills are built over time, and a comprehensive test of those skills requires that time to tell us anything meaningful. There’s a reason this is the only Regents Exam that is not technically attached to a course (i.e., it has been taken in the past by sophomores, is sometimes taken by seniors, and could theoretically be taken by very advanced freshmen).

What we’re doing here is separating the gamesmanship of all high-stakes tests from the skill-building required. Like all tests, the Regents Exam is about gaining as many points as possible. You’ve prepped for the skills part of the test since you were in middle school. It helps now to consider the numbers game.

Click for an essay on high-stakes test and grade-abated gamesmanship.


Case Study: January 2018


Almost all of this is available online:

What we need from that site is the equation for generating what is called a weighted raw score, which will then be converted by the state into a score out of 100 points. Let’s call the weighted raw score X.

There are three parts to the Regents Exam. Each one generates a raw score, based either on the number of questions answered correctly (Part 1) or the scores given according to a rubric (Part 2 and Part 3). We can give each of those scores a variable, too:

  • Part 1: Total MC Score = A
  • Part 2: Essay Score = B
  • Part 3: Short Response Score = C

The formula for determining a student’s weighted raw score: A + 4B + 2C = X. Here is the chart for converting that weighted raw score to a scale score out of 100 points:

We can call the 100-point score Y. What we can do now is determine what you’d need, given a particular score on Part 1, to hit the more meaningful thresholds:

  • When X ≥ 31, Y ≥ 65
  • When X ≥ 38, Y ≥ 80
  • When X ≥ 45, Y ≥ 90

This lets us run some interesting scenarios. Perfect scores on the writing would yield a score of 66 without Part 1, for instance, which means a student could get zero points there and still pass. That speaks to the importance of the writing sections. It’s the multiple-choice, however, that allows the most gamesmanship. Consider:

  • You can practice the multiple-choice on your own, because the answers are available online; no one needs to score your work for you.
  • When multiple-choice is assigned through Castle Learning, you get explanations automatically, which means you can focus on metacognition and repetition.
  • It is often difficult to improve an essay from a 4 to a 5; the bell curve puts most responses in the 3-4 range.
  • It is similarly difficult to improve the Part 3 response from a 3 to a 4; the bell curve puts most responses in the 2-3 range.

It is much easier to practice more multiple-choice, work metacognitively through that practice, and pick up a few more points on Part 1. And with that in mind, we can work off of middle scores on the writing section to determine what you’d need on Part 1 to earn a target score.


By the Numbers


Part 2: 3 | Part 3: 2

Together, those writing responses would earn the student 16 points. We need another 15 points to pass, which means the student could miss nine (9) multiple-choice questions and still get there. The rest of the numbers, where A is still the total multiple-choice score for Part 1 and Y is the overall converted score:

  • When A ≥ 15, Y ≥ 65
  • When A ≥ 22, Y ≥ 80

The student would need to miss only two questions on Part 1 to eke out an 80, but 15+ correct is more than possible. The questions are unevenly distributed, so that only four or five will ever be attached to the poem, whereas most exams have ten each per longer prose passage.

More importantly, writing responses that earn a 3 and 2, respectively, would be considered failing. See the rubrics here and here. This is, for most students, the starting point for writing, and many students can expect to do slightly better. For proof, consider the sample essay from Part 2 embedded below. According to the state’s scoring guides, this essay “us[es] some language that is inappropriate or imprecise,” “exhibit[s] frequent errors” that “make comprehension difficult.”

In other words, this sample essay is riddled with errors, and it still gives the student a chance to pass with only 15+ correct responses on Part 1.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F05%2FELA-Part-2-Level-3C.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

Part 2: 3.5 | Part 3: 2.5

What happens if the student’s two writing responses go up by just 0.5 points each? That barely brings the writing halfway up the rubric, but it earns the student 19 points for Part 1. Now we need only 12 more points to pass, which means the student could get 50% of the multiple-choice section incorrect and still get there. The rest of the numbers, where A is again the total multiple-choice score for Part 1 and Y is the overall converted score:

  • When A ≥ 12, Y ≥ 65
  • When A ≥ 19, Y ≥ 80
  • When A ≥ 22, Y ≥ 85

Again, this is with much weaker responses for Part 2 and Part 3. Getting 15 right on Part 1 would now yield a 72, well above passing. 19 correct is a relatively high bar, but it’s more than possible, and it starts yielding overall scores in the 80s.

Part 2: 4 | Part 3: 3

These writing scores are in the upper-half of the rubrics. They reflect adequate work — nothing stylish or particularly well developed, just adequate. Now, the student earns 22 points for Part 1, which means we need only nine more points to pass. The student could miss 15 multiple-choice questions and still get there. The rest of the numbers, where A is still the total multiple-choice score for Part 1 and Y is the overall converted score:

  • When A ≥ 12, Y ≥ 70
  • When A ≥ 16, Y ≥ 80
  • When A ≥ 19, Y ≥ 85
  • When A ≥ 23, Y ≥ 90

Yes, it would take a nearly perfect score to inch above a 90 overall, but a 90 is not everyone’s goal. An 80 requires this student to get only half of the questions right on Part 1. That’s well within reach. And more effective writing boosts the overall score quickly, as you’d expect.

Part 2: 5 | Part 3: 3

For instance, one more point on Part 2 earns the student 26 points for both writing sections. It takes only five more points to pass, with the following numbers now possible:

  • When A ≥ 12, Y ≥ 80
  • When A ≥ 19, Y ≥ 90
  • When A ≥ 23, Y ≥ 95

It takes skill and focus to earn a high score, which is only natural. The encouraging thing ought to be that there are many paths to success, and each of you can use these last few weeks to practice until you are confident of your path.

Ask questions in the comment section.

Final Triptych

Triptych, 1976 by Francis Bacon

Something to keep in mind: We are always, even on the last day of the year, still making the makerspace, not just using it. We can always learn more about how to use the Humanities to build a better version of ourselves. There will always be meaningful problems to solve and new ways to learn.

On the course calendar, this was the shape of the next and final part of the school year:

That remains a helpful framework — red for collective test prep, green for autonomous makerspace work, and yellow for your Pareto Projects. But you could also set your own schedule. This is not just the last panel of this quarter’s triptych of studies, but a triptych itself, split unevenly between three focuses.


Pareto Projects


From September, when we started these Pareto Projects:

Pareto Project Guide (2017-2018)

This year, you’ve used 20% of your time to work on a project of your choosing. You have set (and often reset) the goals, schedule, parameters, etc., with time in class every week or so to work.

It’s time to showcase what you’ve accomplished. We’ll partner with the high school’s Media Specialist, Mr. Breen, to share some of your work online and in the iLC. We’ll fill the walls and shelves of our classroom. If we can, we’ll spread into other areas of the building. It’s up to you.

In fact, figuring out how to showcase your project is part of the project — a problem to solve, as we would any other problem, through collaboration and experimentation. This moment is about you and what you have created.

There won’t be a Google Classroom assignment for these projects. They are part of your final profile score, though.


Writing Life Retrospective


Meanwhile, you are encouraged to create a writing life retrospective, which is exactly what it says on the tin: a look back at your writing life. The scope and sequence of this retrospective are up to you. The form is up to you. It could be a portfolio of essays and other writings from this year, but I’d encourage you to think bigger.

Whatever your exploration looks like, you need to pull together an essay that bills itself as a retrospective answer to a question about your writing life. That will be the assignment on Google Classroom, available from May 21 on.

The essay should follow Paul Graham’s idea of “err[ing] on the side of the river,” or mining for insight and interesting perspectives. You’ll want to think creatively. Scour old folders in Google Drive, boxes of work your parents have kept, the corners of old Internet haunts — wherever you might gather unique details and meaning.

And think of your writing life as much more than just essays written in school. Your writing includes anything written, from essays to poetry to online posts to the occasional bit of bathroom graffiti. Use it all.

We’ll shape this work as we explore it, same as we will for the Pareto Project showcases. Keep Piet Hein’s idea in mind: “Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer.”


Regents Exam Triage


On the other end of the educational spectrum is the Regents Exam, for those of you who must take it on June 12. There is no art to test prep, at least not as Hein or any other creative person would define it. Think of it as triage — self-directed, teacher-assisted triage.

Castle Learning has also been set up for each of you. You’ll need your login information, which I’ll provide in class. Here is the main site:

I’ll help you through the registration process, if you need help. Once you’re registered, you’ll find these five assignments:

  • 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage A
  • 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage B
  • 8/16 Practice: Part 1 – Passage C
  • 8/16 Practice: Part 2
  • 8/16 Practice: Part 3

This practice all comes from the ELA Common Core Regents Exam given in August of 2016. Follow the directions carefully. For each assignment, there is a CR — constructed response — that asks you to be metacognitive about your choices and performance.

These metacognitive constructed responses are essential. They turn cursory work into meaningful work, and they force you to take the test seriously, even if you are burned out on tests.

For each reading passage, the metacognitive prompt in Castle Learning is this:

Use teacher feedback, your peers, and the correct answers that are provided by Castle Learning to engineer an understanding of how these questions and answer choices work. Write metacognitively about the passage, the questions, and your problem-solving efforts.

And for both writing responses, the metacognitive prompt in Castle Learning is this:

Identify and analyze several writing choices you made in this response. You can focus on your use of detail, your arrangement, your central meaning, or your rhetorical manipulation of grammar and style.

All five assignments will be open until June 11 at 11:59 PM. Your overall diligence and effort in preparing will be part of your final profile score, so try not to wait too long to do this.

If you are in P1 English Regents Prep

You have these five assignments already. Your role is that of a proxy teacher: Use your experience and our work in P1 to help your peers. That’s the kind of collaborative work that boosts your profile score, and it’s the best way to continue to improve your own skills.

If you are in AP English Language & Composition

You also have access to the most recent Regents Exam, which was prepared for you here:

Test Prep: Endgame

This one is not on Castle Learning. Copies are in our classroom. You can choose between the two versions of the exam. Both will force you to learn the format of the test, so it’s more a matter of personal preference.

You should also keep in mind that the Common Core ELA Regents Exam is a lot like the AP exam you take. If you’ve prepared well for the latter, the former will feel far easier. Avoid overconfidence, and you’ll be fine.

 

Test Prep: Endgame

This post covers our final preparations for two high-stakes tests: the Regents Examination in English Language Arts, given by New York State in June, and the AP® English Language and Composition Exam, given by the College Board in May. If you’re reading this, you’re probably taking one or both.

Read on for instructions. Skip what doesn’t apply to you specifically.


Regents Examination in English Language Arts


This is a straightforward test of skills. We’ve practiced each part of it in isolation already, and we’ve been working on the skills themselves all year. Search the site for references to exam prep; you’ll find a few dozen lessons and posts.

Refer to our end-of-year calendars for when you’ll take the June exam. The practice exam we’ll be using was given on January 22, 2018, which is the most recent test available to us.

These cover sheets delineate the three parts and the resources you’ve been given:

The test itself is in the classroom. You’ll be taking it, sans cell phone and Chromebook, until you’ve finished it, at which point you’ll be asked to complete the following Google Forms.

Jan. ’18 ELA Exam: Part 1

Jan. ’18 ELA Exam: Part 1https://goo.gl/forms/lgTs1G1dX0GADfW02

This covers three reading passages and 24 multiple-choice questions. You’ll need to enter your original answers all at once. We’ll track patterns and provide support based on your in-class work and these data.

Jan. ’18 ELA Exam: Part 2

Jan. ’18 ELA Exam: Part 2 | https://goo.gl/forms/Qd96mHQacYBieUy73

This is the source-based argument. You’ll need to type your handwritten response, and then you have some metacognitive analysis to complete.

Jan. ’18 ELA Exam: Part 3

Jan. ’18 ELA Exam: Part 3 | https://goo.gl/forms/V61DNFuFN4wdQdei2

This is the text-based analysis. You’ll need to type your handwritten response — remember, it’s not a full essay — and then complete a bit of metacognition.


AP® English Language and Composition Exam


Do you notice the ® by “AP” in this post? That refers to the registered trademark of the College Board. I don’t take the time to add it, usually, but I probably should. The folks at the College Board take their intellectual property rights seriously:

That’s why the 2016 exam, which we practiced intermittently throughout Q3, was never posted to the interstitial classroom. The same goes for the 2017 exam, which you’ll be taking this week and next. It’s a purely offline bit of practice.

Google Classroom blurs the line a little bit — it’s pedagogically the same thing as distributing work in class — but it’s part of the testing frenzy of this part of the year to stare at printed pages and bubble in small circles and write until your hands cramp.

Everything you need is in the classroom. We’ll discuss the possibilities outlined in the end-of-year calendar as May gets going, because we’ll want to balance rigorous test prep with your own units of study.

2017 AP Exam: Section I

You probably want to take 60 uninterrupted minutes to do this. When you’re ready, enter your answers here:

2017 AP Exam: Section I https://goo.gl/forms/yylJ8XjCuzvXGzit2

2017 AP Exam: Section II

You probably want to take the suggested time here, too — two hours and fifteen minutes, all at once. When you’re ready, type up your responses:

2017 AP Exam: Section II | https://goo.gl/forms/EyDZ3W0Y2xQQNnp83

The form for Section II asks you to identify and analyze several writing choices you made in one or more of these essays. We’ll focus our metacognitive work for Section I through face-to-face conferences.

I’ll monitor your work online and offer help as necessary and on request. Use all of your resources. Most of them are in the photocopied packets lining our bookshelves. It might be useful to see that the cover sheets for those packets delineate their contents:


Above All


Above all, remember that these AP and Regents tests are important, because they do reveal something about your skill and potential. They are tests of skills and traits that matter, for the most part. But they are ultimately emphasized so much only because of the failure of the system to design anything better.

In other words, no one believes these tests get at the inimitable, wonderful parts of you that truly matter. They don’t. You must take the tests seriously because of what high scores do for you — and because it is good to beat the system at its own game:

Know Your Enemy: High-Stakes Tests

That’s from January. Your confidence should be high, if you’ve done your work; this is about confirming the things that the last eight months have taught us about you. That, and playing the game.

Ask questions below.

A Not Inconsiderable Amount of Feedback

In honor of the snowfall on April 6. Click for more snowman antics from Calvin and Hobbes.


Justifying 6200+ Words


When I’m asked about the need to make instruction and feedback interstitial — to spend Saturday morning with a pot of coffee and keyboard, like I have here — I think of days like April 4, a Wednesday, which was one of three days added to the calendar after we used up all of our allotted snow days. It was also a day with pretty low attendance:

Those are the numbers for each class on April 4. 37 different students missed class that day. That’s more than ¼ of the total roster. Thursday and Friday were the same, and this doesn’t include students who were late, sometimes significantly, or who left early.

When I write to students, it circumvents all of those problems. It gives everyone a chance to access deep, meaningful feedback at any time, from anywhere, with total transparency. When hard data are included — like the spreadsheets embedded later — there is a chance to self-assess and adjust even more. No aspect of it is wholly dependent on the unpredictable personal and environmental parts of a high school.


Background, or What You Should Have Read Two Weeks Ago


The following instructional and feedback post led to a lot of good student feedback. Here is the post, which absolutely needs to be read in full before you proceed:

Verbing Weirds Language

I’m going to walk you through quite a bit of what students had to say, because I want you to see what your peers are thinking alongside my responses. It’s all much more valuable when it’s transparent and accessible to the entire group.


Under the Hood


We’ll start with some constructive criticism:

For this GAP period you decided to put everyone’s GAP scores up on classroom. It was made as anonymous as it could be because it was done by student id and it wasn’t in alphabetical order. I still found this incredibly rude though because now everyone can see everyone’s scores. I think a grade should be something that is private between a student and a teacher and if the student feels comfortable enough to share their grade then they can. Now, student know that someone got a 3 or a 4 on their GAP profile and will now start to speculate on who that was, causing rumors to start. And imagine how badly the person who got a 3 or 4 must feel after seeing that people in their class got a 9 or 8. They might see that they did as much as someone who got a higher score but the quality of their work wasn’t as good as that other persons.

This is why I didn’t post those under-the-hood scores until now, right before the last quarter of the year. Some of you needed the reminder: Every choice you make is significant. But I don’t want you to be embarrassed. Of course not. I want to help you confront the idea that what you see in your own work and growth might not be accurate — because our sworn nemesis, the Dunning-Kruger effect, is always lurking.

If you walk away from our classroom with nothing else, I hope it’s a sense that you and you alone control whether you avoid that:


Self-Awareness and Self-Efficacy


I flipped numbers to give some of you a chance to grapple with your actual performance. The post on the process — read it again here — is clear about how feedback is embedded in everything we do, which makes these numbers redundant for anyone paying attention. It also emphasizes the need for herd immunity — read that essay again, too — since you should be empathetic enough to your peers to want to help them.

Here is a student who didn’t complete a lot of work for the first two-thirds of the third quarter:

I like this approach you did to explain how you arrived to the grad you gave, and I am one of the people who didn’t do that well, which should say something. It showed us what really goes isn’t the grading, and showed the difference between the people who actually put in the effort to get an 100, and those who didn’t (like me). This actually really help show me what I can do to improve in this course.

I am quoting her for a specific reason: She’s actually being too hard on herself. It’s not always about a lack of effort, and it’s not always about the delusions of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Sometimes, it’s about recognizing that real life — never to be confused with the Sisyphean landscape of school life — can interfere with our ability to get work done. When that happens, as it did with this student, admitting to it isn’t capitulation or weakness; it’s the most sane and rational response.

In other words, you all deserve to be human beings, and often human beings are overwhelmed and overcome by things outside our control. So we work on hacking the impact real life has on your school work, usually by targeting metacognition and the more therapeutic aspects of reading and writing.


Correlation and Causation


As always, you need to know how to read data to reach the right conclusions. One student had this to say:

When looking at the AP11 P2 GAP Q3A+Q3B some people have 7+ assignments missing throughout the quarter yet still come out with an 8 and kids that have handed in all the assignments come out with 5+. After seeing this chart im confused as to how the grading policy works because I feel like it can’t be based off how many assignments that you hand in. I was not surprised with my GAP score and was happy with it but I can see why some people were not, looking at the chart it makes no sense.

Again, the original post covers all this in significant detail. You can’t just look at the chart; you have to look at the explanation, too. If you take data at their most superficial level, you will make mistakes in reasoning and understanding. Correlation isn’t causation.

In fact, take a break from this post to visit this site about spurious correlations:

You have to keep an open mind about what you think you know.


What You Put into It


The most important thing that last student highlights, however, is that GAP scoring “can’t be based off how many assignments that you hand in.” That’s correct. It’s not enough to hand in work. You have to meet the criteria for a profile, and those criteria are far more about growth, collaboration, self-awareness, amenability, etc., than they are about checking assignments off a list.

If there’s a lesson in flipping these numbers, that’s probably it: The system is a bit complicated, but it’s fair and transparent and consistent in its expectation that you do more than just the bare minimum. You get out of your education what you put into it, for the most part, which is exactly why someone handing in poor work might fit a lower profile than someone doing exceptional, individualized work.

But the individualized work is the exception. Many students will complete just the formal assignments, because that’s where the most accessible learning opportunities are embedded. You should do what you’re asked to do. That’s not different from any other aspect of school.


Decoding the Data


More student thoughts on that flipped set of data, feedback, and direction:

I think this chart could be a helpful tool throughout our GAP periods and that we should have access to a diagram like this, not just at the end of the GAP displaying our scores, but throughout the whole gapping period so that we are given a chance to fix and make up assignments before the GAP is over and it is too late.

This is from a student who put herself down as an 8 and probably fits a 9 — and I only say “probably” because I am still going through evidence as I type this.

Here’s another insight1:

The aspect of the post that I found the most intriguing was the way in which the information was presented to us, almost in a type of code. Therefore, if we cared enough to know what those numbers meant, it became our responsibility to decode the charts on our own, which wasn’t much work at all, as we simply just had to use our brains and digest the writing which followed.

That’s exactly it. You had to decode the feedback. The struggle — which, as this student notes, isn’t really a struggle, not if you are paying attention — teaches you how to decode, helps you grapple with close reading, encourages you to think critically, etc., and serves, therefore, as a microcosm of interstitial instruction and feedback overall.


Rock Bottom


If necessary, force yourself to write responsively to what you’re studying, and do it often. Skill and understanding will come with repetition. Meanwhile, you’ll generate enough evidence to earn a higher profile.

Here’s the same idea from another perspective:

Today I took a good look at the spreadsheet that was made for us individuals to really look at what I was doing. The whole idea with the spreadsheet really helped open my eyes to a lot. It made me realize my time management is terrible. For the majority of the assignments, I had a bolded number. It made me realize that I need to be more responsible and consecutive with my work. I need to turn many thing in way before the deadline. Also, I noticed that I only had one Rubicon point, which gave me a bit of a sigh of relief. It shows to me, that my teacher has noticed, I try my best to stay on track and be focused with whatever is going on in the class. Another thing that the spreadsheet has opened my eyes up to is my actual work quality. Seeing all the one’s or two’s really hit me hard. Going back to another post on Sisyphean High from a while ago that I really related to, I hit rock bottom. Seeing numbers for every assignment shows, my work isn’t where it should be. Now, after analyzing everything, I feel more inclined to try harder. That means, getting assignments on time and really diving into every instructional post that is given to me.


Akrasia, Back Again


This next excerpt is specifically about an AP class, but the idea that everyone should, at least, complete all assignments is a universal one:

Personally, I liked the way the GAP scores were displayed this quarter. It was nice to have some feedback as to see what I was missing, and how many assignments I have submitted in each catergory. For my one catergory that was a 0, I was able to understand what I was missing and how it was effecting my GAP score, when before I didn’t realize I was missing it. I noticed some of my peers commenting on how they didn’t like the way it was arranged and how there was so much emphasis on a number. I agree that its disapointing that in high school our education is measured by a number, however that is just how it is. It is impossible in my opinon to have a class without any sort of grade ever. Although there are exceptions, most teenagers would take advantage of that and not have any motivation to do anything. It would be treated like a study hall and not be effective. In addition, it was interesting to see the other grades in our class. Without knowing who they are, we can see the environment around us. I was very surprised at the number of lower grades in the class. I would assume everyone who takes AP Lang, is going to do the work given at least. In addition, looking around the class it seems as most people are on task everyday. This just goes to show how decieving people can be, and why grades are necessary somewhat.

That idea of “how deceiving people can be” is interesting. I don’t think there is real malice in the deception, but it is a conscious choice — or, at least, a choice made despite knowing the consequences. It’s a bit different from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is about the perceived quality of the work.

This is akrasia again. Revisit this older post and its threat of flying guillotines for a reminder:

The Fatal Flying Guillotine


Slashing Canvases


Flying guillotines haven’t been our only metaphor, and I tried to come up with a less violent one in this post. It ended up with knives and slashing, of course. Students had their fair share of reactions:

I like the idea of thinking how for each GAP period we are a blank canvas and we get a chance to start over and change our ways. However, I don’t like the idea of how one wrong thing and the canvas is ruined. I think as students we are human and we aren’t some perfect robots that don’t make mistakes or get distracted. I think the analogy should be more of we are a blank piece of paper and when we mess up it gets a mark. But, that mark can easily be erased as it was drawn on there. I don’t like the fact that if we do one wrong thing we are ruined and there’s nothing we can do to fix it. It’s unfair and unrealistic. This is the only class where what we do during class time effects our grade. In every other class its if the work is completed then you get a good grade. In here I do above and beyond what is needed for a good grade but if I slip up in class once, my whole canvasis ruined. I dont think thats right at all. We’re real people not just a canvas and we make mistakes but that shouldn’t mean we are ruined entirely.

Like all metaphors, this one helps clarify an aspect of what we do, but it has its limits. Think of it more in terms of the act of destruction: If you make a mistake while drawing or writing, you might be able to erase it; if you make a small mistake while painting, you might be able to paint over it; but if you take a knife to the canvas, you’re going to need to start over.

Even then, that’s the key: starting over. No one is “ruined” by mistakes in here, and every three or four weeks, you can set aside even the most serious mistakes. You can start over.


We Are What We Repeatedly Do


It’s not true, by the way, that “[t]his is the only class where what we do during class time [a]ffects our grade.” What you do in class contributes to most of your grades to some extent. In Physical Education, it’s dressing or participating, but that’s the obvious one; less obvious is that you often receive classwork or participation grades. You’re assessed formatively all the time. It’s part of the DNA of this district now.

I think what this student is identifying is that most classes give you a heads-up before a grade — a bit of forewarning, like knowing that you have a seminar or an in-class lab or station work.

But that’s just it: In here, you have just as much forewarning. You know exactly what you have to do, each and every day. You have had around ten different calendars, tailored to your needs and updated whenever necessary — and they cover every day of the entire year:

That’s just the most recent update, which covers April, May, and June. It’s posted to the main website, shared over Google Classroom, and tacked to the bulletin board by the door to our room.

I’ve even added your skill- and content-based goals for each assessment panel. You have the flexibility of meeting those goals according to your own strengths, but you have the guiding focus of knowing exactly what’s happening.

Most importantly, the expectations for staying on-task and the penalties for failing to do work have been clear since September. You are surrounded by the posters every day.


Nothing Is Ever Ruined


Still, you’re not “ruined” by small mistakes, and certainly not by one mistake, as that student fears. If one mistake could devastate you, just a little more than 100% of you would be devastated. It’s human nature.

Read the feedback and guides to this carefully, and note that it is always about patterns of behavior or massive, impossible-to-ignore choices. In other words, you are always given plenty of chances and a sizeable benefit of the doubt.

If you are chatting with a peer for a few moments before starting an assignment, that’s okay. If you take out your makeup during a practice essay and spend five minutes adjusting your eyeliner, that’s obviously not okay. If group discussion gets off-topic here and there, that’s to be expected. If you barely register that the discussion has a topic, that’s not good. If you hand in a few assignments late, but we’re in constant communication about it, that’s probably fine. If your work is always late or missing, that’s somewhere south of fine.

There are levels to this. I’m encouraging you to experiment, so you can mess up as many canvases as you like, especially if you are trying to do something interesting. If you take a knife to that canvas, however, you’ve made a different sort of choice. And if you slash one canvas, get a second one, slash that one, and then are told, “Stop slashing these canvases, please,” then you need to stop.


It Can Feel Inhuman


There’s a cost to this approach, since we remain in a public school:

I know that that’s not the intention of the Crossing the Rubicon score and the WIP GAP score, but when someone uses a number to tell you whether or not you’re doing something bad, it can feel inhuman in the way that it just makes our goal to just lower the number. It makes it so instead of genuinely wanting to be focused during class, we are doing it just so our GAP score doesn’t drop.

It’s hard to find a balance. That’s why information dumps are not the usual practice in here. All of these experiments in Rubicons and Skinner boxes and other, even weirder metaphors? They’re to help you get at the “genuinely wanting to be focused” part of learning. When they work, we stick with it (e.g., with the profiles themselves), and when they don’t, we try something else (e.g., with the “tallies” of crossed Rubicons — I think we’re done with that).

Sisyphus is our mascot because of Camus’ essay, or at least a pop-culture understanding of it: We have to imagine ourselves happy in a situation that often makes us feel inhuman.

Another, less existential perspective:

I realize now that my everyday habits affect my performance in school and in order to succeed, I must push these habits aside and focus on what’s really important.


From a 5 to a 9


This is universal and universally useful stuff. You should practice it constantly. The more you practice, the easier it gets, the better you do, etc., until you can report something like this:

With there being a sub on the first day this week, I found this as a test for myself. This was a test to see if I could focus even if there was slight chaos around me. And I am proud of what I did. I stayed on task the whole class and completed the in class assignment on time. This triptych, I will be 100% sure that I do not hand a single assignment in even one minute late.

This is the kind of goal-setting that you want. And what’s heartening is that she did it. She didn’t miss any assignments, and what she’s writing now is thoughtful and invested. Here is the same student in another response:

While I was writing, I realized how much I actually appreciated that [The Catcher in the Rye] was a text we were able to read on our own time. In past years we have been forced to read novels during class. It became such an obligation that I absolutely hated it. If someone would have asked me last year, to write about my thoughts on the book we were reading, I most likely would have laughed in their face. Most of the time I never knew what was going on, and if I did I was never interested enough to have an opinion in it. However, since we have been able to read both 1984 and Catcher In the Rye on Our own time, I was able to analyze the books deeper than I ever had before. I was able to….. Enjoy the book.

I take this sort of thing at face value, because (1) this student seems like a genuinely good human being, and (2) even those of you fake this kind of appreciation are still engaging with what we do. Read the tenth part of this essay: Faking it can work in here, if you fake the right things.

Anyway, this student went from a profile in the 5s to a 9 in less than a month. That’s how important in-class focus is: It translates into success everywhere. And even if it feels a bit hokey — especially when it feels a bit hokey — there is power in realizing what we’re trying to do here.


Find Yourself through Your Writing


Here’s another student noticing the power of it:

Everyday when I walk into math class I get handed a worksheet. It has different numbers, but the same idea. I have to solve for X, using only the knowledge that has been shoved into my brain. Every person in the class must come to the same conclusion, and if you don’t, it’s considered to be wrong. It’s similar to be given a sketch and then told to color it. You can choose any color you would like, but ultimately it comes out to be the same picture. It contains no individuality, especially when the beginning picture has been provided to you. Math is like a sketch. A copy of somebody else’s work. Essentially, plagiarism.

Everyday when I walk into the makerspace, I get handed my own imaginary canvas. In this case it’s my worn out chromebook. For other students, it’s the Macbook pro they were gifted from their last birthday. Either way in 2018 a blank canvas, usually contains some kind of technological advancements. This class was designed for students to take a new step in their english learning career, but also an opportunity to find themselves through their writing.

I think I’ve said before that not everything can be experienced through ironic detachment and memes. We have to allow ourselves to be excited about learning, to want to learn, to enjoy the freedom to figure things out. Then you can send each other memes.


In the Kingdom of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man Is King


Here is another student whose work over the last month fits a 9:

This post starts with a very powerful quote “Do not gather your pitchforks and torches without reading everything available to you in this post.” I understand what this means, because a lot of people like to form their own opinion or become aggressive or defensive about something that they don’t even have any knowledge of. This is the very definition of ignorance. However, in this class, referring to the posts that detail what is required of each student, a lot of kids don’t read it. So, it is hard to tell them not to say anything without completely understanding, when in reality they are probably not even going to touch this post so they would never even see that quote. This can make it very frustrating for others that hear people complain when in reality they do not even know why they got the grade that they got.

I read the gap quarter three A and B notes, however I have to say that they were not very useful because these are things that have been reiterated in class. It was more of reminding people than saying anything new.

That is pretty insightful. I know that the people who most need the feedback in a post like that — or a post like this one, right here — aren’t going to read it. But as this student points out, most posts “are things that have been reiterated in class.” That’s why the term is interstitial. You get the same access and feedback and so on in class as online.

Another purpose of all this writing is to galvanize the best of you to help others — to have you galvanize, in turn, the people who don’t read posts or seek feedback. Read it again: GAPs in Herd Immunity. The more you help each other, the stronger we all get.


Metacognition Is the Key


The other way you get stronger is through metacognition:

I mostly get my higher grades through metacognition, which is a key aspect of the class and my Pareto Project, which I work on every quarter because it is something I like to do. So as we near the next grading section I would like to see my work on that spreadsheet again, so I can make sure I am doing all the work required and doing it right.

The bolded phrase in “Verbing Weirds Language,” gave my a smile and also stated the truth. In this day in age, people like to act before thinking, fix something before knowing exactly what they are fixing. Some people just don’t have the awareness to realize what they are doing wrong and how their grade reflects that. I saw a couple grades that were low in the spreadsheet, but when looking at the work, it justified the low grade. One student didn’t do any work. Zero. Another completed two assignments, asked for a 7, and got a 5-. Some students think that they are invincible to low grades, others think that by doing nothing and trying to fake their way through the class, their grade won’t suffer. They are wrong. This class is student oriented. If you don’t put in the work, your grade will reflect that. If you do, you grade will prosper.

Metacognition is, always has been, and always will be the key. Done properly, it unlocks everything else you want, from a high grade to a truer understanding of how you learn. That’s done properly , though. This student does it properly. And it’s true that “people like to act before thinking, fix something before knowing exactly what they are fixing.” You need patience to improve.


Your Style, On Your Terms


This student refers specifically to the AP curriculum, but the insight applies to every class in Room 210:

As we’ve progressed throughout the year, I’ve noticed that I have become more aware of my actions and thinking about why I did something, or what pushed me to do or not do something. I think that GAP scoring is a great way to self assess because it lets you evaluate from your perspective how well you did. Mr. Mullane’s military history class also has GAP scoring because for most assignments there are no right or wrong answers which I feel applies here too. When someone writes in this class, they write in their words, their style and on their terms. This class allows for that, which I haven’t experienced in other English classes, but I have the freedom to respond to a prompt in anyway that I want. I like that I’m not graded on just my writing because I don’t write formally and I don’t prefer to. I want the reader to hear me when they read whatever I’ve written or else it won’t feel like I wrote it. I don’t know if that flies for the AP but my goal in this class isn’t to pass the AP or even stress about it. I want to use this class to my own advantage and do the assignments in the way that they will benefit me. For example, writing about reading helps me break down what I’ve done, how I’ve understood it, and how I should move forward. As I go on with the book I would like to write about it more and how I connect with Holden- I plan to have a few of those for myself for Quarter 4.

Consider this line: “I want to use this class to my own advantage and do the assignments in the way that they will benefit me.” That’s a good approach, as long as you recognize that it always helps to have help figuring out what will benefit you. Your idea of what works is likely to be improved by some feedback — critical and constructive feedback, especially.


The Two Aspects of the Class


Here’s more feedback about how difficult it is to square the circle:

The central message of this post was clearly that we must learn how to find success in this course. That does not mean we should work merely towards a high grade (even though achieving a high grade should reflect an investment in the course). We should instead be focused on growing and improving our character. I noticed in the comments that some of my classmates were having difficulty separating the grade from the process of learning. I completely understand the confusion here, but I’m not really sure how it can be amended. It’s difficult to separate these two aspects of the class, especially when grades are so impactful in our lives.

That’s why it’s abatement, not de-grading or a “Kohnian shift” (which was its original form). Grades can’t be eliminated. They can barely be mitigated. All we can do is gut the smoke-filled, belching machinery inside of them, replace it all with something better, and change what the number means. The number is ineluctable.


Lengthy Feedback: Read Carefully


Which brings us to a set of responses written to a student asking questions about the difficulty of separating these two aspects of the class. While his questions have been answered before, I thought there might be a benefit to using them to help everyone at this point in the year.

My responses are in red:

Read that carefully, as its title suggests. If you’ve gotten this far, tell that friend who blew off this post to read this document carefully, even if you can’t make them see the value in the rest.


Next Steps: Proxy Feedback


When this kind of feedback is flipped — posted anonymously so that you can all benefit from it — the student is pretty much required to become a proxy teacher, using his or her newfound insight to help others. You’ll see that idea emphasized in that “Lengthy Feedback” above, but it needs to be emphasized, because two things are about to happen: You’re going to see the GAP Q3C data I have, and you’re going to hear about a list of students who should be acting as proxy teachers.

These students are what I’d call journeymen. They’re learning how to make themselves better students and people, how to think and read and write well, how to hack their own learning, etc., and they’re well on their way to a kind of master craftsmanship. They’re able to teach others.

If you’re one of these students, you’re going to get a notification about it. You need to reach out to help others, and if you haven’t realized that already, it will be made explicit. Everyone needs to start working together more regularly. Remember: The best learning happens in groups, and collaboration is the stuff of growth.


A Bunch of Numbers and Notations


Now you’re ready to see the numbers. You should know how to read these spreadsheets, or you know that you need to go back to the GAP Q3A/B post to learn.

Make sure you recognize that the score out of 100 in the “GAP Q3C (Report) — 3/29” column is the one you selected for yourself. It’s what came in as part of your report and self-assessment. You won’t find a true WIP GAP or final GAP score. You’ll have to parse this as-is.

AP students: The first multiple-choice assignment is here, too, as a reference point. It does not factor into your profile, but it obviously matters as part of your exam prep. It might help to see it all together.

Here are the flipped spreadsheets for Q3C:

Ask questions below. Your in-class time is reserved for other assignments for a little while. You need to practice using this kind of forum, and you need a reason to examine your choices outside of the school day.

If you want a starting point for how to process everything in this post, make sure you follow the instructions you were given in the last one:

“Just say, how will you walk?”


  1. I’m editing this after the fact, and I’m going to invite all of you to have a conversation with me about why that is. Here’s the original introduction to this quotation: “To see what one of the strongest 9s has to say, you’ll want to read the entire response that is copied below, in the next subsection of this post.” That’s been deleted, as has the following section. 

Character and Catcher in Context


The Aft Agley Gang Rides Again


If you search this site for the word “agley,” you get more than a few posts on the unpredictability of our schedule. Most of those posts make some allusion to Robert Burns’ poem, which gives us the phrase “gang aft agley” and a chance for a very weird pun.

This week was another microcosm of unpredictability. A snowstorm kept us out on Wednesday, which was naturally the first day of spring; we lost three hours on Thursday to a weather-related delay; many of you were, therefore, forced to spend all day on Thursday preparing for the spring musical; and some of you spent the period on Friday taking the the twice-rescheduled DCC Accuplacer exam.

Even the predictable elements of that lineup are chaotic. That’s why we use the term interstitial here: When the learning is accessible anytime and anywhere, we can ride out the chaos. All it takes is a focus on preparing in advance and watching each other’s backs. Hence the Aft Agley Gang.


Regulators, Mount Up


We will meet four times next week (barring another misplaced winter storm), have five days for a makeshift spring break, and then return for more than seven consecutive weeks of classes. It is a good time to self-assess.

We’ll start on Monday with a period of extemporaneous writing about writing and continue on Tuesday with a period of extemporaneous writing about reading. This worked well when we did it in mid-February, and it works especially well to tie together the writing and reading processes that were disrupted last this week.

The prompts for Monday and Tuesday are below. The first will be posted to Google Classroom at the start of the period on March 26. You will have the next 42 minutes to answer the prompt and submit your response. On Tuesday, March 27, you will answer the provided prompt by hand, with your phones and computers stored until the bell rings at the end of the period.

If you’re doing your job, you should be reading this well in advance of the work itself. That’s why we’re using the term extemporaneous, which has a number of possible meanings in context. You can prepare as much or as little as you like, because the focus will be on the skill of extemporaneous metacognition.


Monday’s Prompt: Character Essay


Here is how we planned out the writing process for your essay on character, starting with a bit of direct instruction on Monday, March 19:

You had the rest of the week, starting on Tuesday, to work with me and each other. The focus, whether you were applying to NHS or not, was on finding an unexpected or surprising approach.

You’ll be asked to submit copies of any and all digital evidence related to your character essay work. This includes final drafts, outlines, and collaborative notes. This evidence will be checked in separately from what you do during class on Monday.

For that in-class writing, you will spend about 40 minutes of a class period writing about the writing. How did you use the notes taken on the whiteboard? How did you use feedback from your peers and teacher? What did you discover in brainstorming, and how did that fit your various intrinsic and extrinsic goals? Most importantly, what did you learn about how you write from this week’s process?

This response must be submitted before you leave and folded into the GAP scoring process that culminates on Thursday, March 29.


Tuesday’s Prompt: The Catcher in the Rye


You started this novel on February 25 with an atypical look at online annotations. Since then, you could have signed out a hard copy of the novel. You’ve also been invited repeatedly to return to the story when you have time, sometimes as an in-class alternative to your formal assignments. It’s now been a month.

On Tuesday, you will spend about 40 minutes of our class period writing about your reading. You should start with what’s going on in the book. How far have you gotten? What’s happening? What do you know? Then you should write your reactions to the novel, including your perspective on the narrator. Finally, you should write about the most important aspect of this process: What have you learned about how you read over the last month?

This response will be written by hand — no computers, phones, etc. — and collected before you leave class on Tuesday. If you are absent, you will have the usual 24 hours to make up the work. It will then be folded into the GAP scoring process that culminates on Thursday, March 29.


Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.


For some of you, these two days of silent, introspective writing are opportunities to focus on what you’ve learned about your learning over the last month. This will put you in the right frame of mind to self-assess as the GAP panel ends, too.

For others, it is your last, best chance to drag your body of evidence out of the lowest tier of profiles and earn a passing score for the quarter. This is it. Look at the threshold for failure:

That untiered set of profiles hangs on our wall. The key language in that 2: “a deliberate and systemic disengagement from the learning process.” It’s repeated a sentence later: “There is no investment in the learning environment.”

If you invest for this entire week of focused self-assessment, writing as much as you can as honestly as you can each day, then you will genuinely fit a higher profile. It’s an incredibly forgiving system.

But if you continue to be weak in virtually all facets of the course? If you continue not to meet even the most basic requirements? You will fail, just as you would in any classroom.

As always, this is about self-control and choice. (And flying guillotines.)


GAP Scoring and Miscellanea


These instructional posts are used to set up our in-class work, so I want to explain a change to the GAP protocol for next week. On Thursday, March 29, you’ll be asked to complete the usual Google Form to self-assess your performance since March 12. In addition, you’ll be asked to submit a link to a Google Drive folder that contains organized evidence.

Here’s what that will look like in Google Classroom:

When clicked, that will open up a folder of evidence that is clearly labeled, like this:

This may require you to make copies of evidence, depending on your existing organizational strategy. It may require you to move a few things around. It should be easy enough, however, to organize your work under one hyperlink. We’ll talk more about the process on Wednesday.

A few more notes:

  • AP students will need to complete both the multiple-choice assignment and the required analysis outside of class, since Monday will be dedicated to something else.
  • Updates to the course calendars will be online as soon as possible, but probably not until spring break.
  • Previous GAP scores will be posted tonight or tomorrow morning. Because of the extensive feedback and data released last week, there will be no further discussion or revisiting these scores.

If you have questions about anything in this post, ask below.

Verbing Weirds Language

Click for the source. Read the feedback below for why it’s here.


TL;DR


This is less a summary, per the usual application of TL;DR, and more a warning: Do not gather your pitchforks and torches without reading everything available to you in this post.

If you read everything, you will not need those pitchforks and torches. That’s the self-fulfilling prophecy: If you invest in this feedback, you will see no reason to mob together and storm the castle; if you don’t do the assignment, that will be just another example of where those Frankenstein numbers came from.


Unlearning Helplessness


This space is reserved for interstitial discussion and Q&A feedback on the following documents:

These have been posted to Google Classroom. The notes are the same for all students; the spreadsheets differ by roster, as you might expect. All students should also look carefully at their Google Classroom portfolios, since those assignments are represented in these spreadsheets. As a reminder, you see all assignments by clicking “VIEW ALL” at the top of the Classroom stream:

You’ll see that the lesson in most of the feedback you’re being given today is about taking responsibility for your own progress. You have an extraordinary number of resources to help you; if you won’t use them, that is a poor choice that may further roil a sea of poor choices.


This Assignment


All students should read the guide/overview first:

This will explain the notations in each spreadsheet, contextualize the feedback embedded in those data, and provide direction for metabolizing all of it. If you do not read this carefully, we will have nothing to discuss.

When you’re ready, you should fold what you’ve learned into reflective and metacognitive writing. Set aside time this week, over the weekend, or next week. You have enough time before the end of the next GAP panel to adjust, but this is much more about success beyond that — success not just in this course, but in any situation where you are expected to demonstrate growth, understanding, mastery, and so on.

In a day or two, I will post the indicated GAP scores to Infinite Campus. They will not surprise you, if you’ve set aside time to read this feedback, consider the data, and analyze your performance. If those Infinite Campus scores do surprise you, we’ll talk about the need for greater awareness and vigilance when it comes to interstitial instruction. Again, this is about taking responsibility for your choices.

Above all, please help each other. Ask questions here about what I’ve given you. Use class time to collaborate. Use interstitial access to me and each other to investigate. Do the work.

Canvassing the Area

Robert Rauschenberg, White Painting [three panel], 1951

The paragraph below comes from this blog post, where you can read more about the French philosopher who wrote it:

It is a mistake to think that the painter works on a white surface. The figurative belief follows from this mistake. If the painter were before a white surface, he could reproduce on it an external object functioning as a model, but such is not the case. The painter has many things in his head, or around him, in his studio. Now everything he has in his head or around him is already in the canvas, more or less virtually, more or less actually, before he begins his work. They are all present in the canvas as so many images, actual or virtual, so that the painter does not have to cover a blank surface but rather would have to empty it out, clear it, clean it.

Read that carefully. It should test your ability to read closely and critically, and we should discuss what you find difficult about its language in class. The point of a metaphor, however, at least in this kind of instructional post, is to elucidate an idea. It should move us closer to an understanding of a process, usually so we can refine that process.

So the gist of that paragraph is this: You create from what is already in your head. You add value into the world based on who you are as you go about the business of creating. The canvas isn’t blank; it contains all its possibilities already. It’s a version of Michelangelo’s angel in the stone.

A Humanities makerspace leans on this philosophy. You can’t just study the work of others; you have to create, too. And the most important creation is your self — the person you create through your choices. How do we create the best version of ourselves? How do we create meaning on the blank canvas of the self?

Those questions are clichés, but so are roses on Valentine’s Day. There’s a lot of power in clichés, and irony has to yield to sincerity at some point. You can’t always talk in memes.


‘Waiting’


So. You’re a blank canvas. Every three or four weeks, this course gives you a chance to reset your assessment of what you put on that canvas. We’ve been experimenting with that triptych model for about a year now, and it seems to work.

For those of you who want to create and explore and learn things, this is sort of unimportant. You take stock of yourself every so often, get a reward for doing well, and recognize that it’s all right to use a few extrinsic motivations to prime the intrinsic ones.

You share a space with another group, however, and they are reading this now with a different purpose. Whenever we reset, it’s also a chance to slough off the burden of mistakes. It’s a chance to start over.

Three or four weeks of hard work in a makerspace will yield the evidence for one of those top profiles:

Click to load the entire set of profiles, poster-sized.

It takes three or four weeks to do that. Filling a canvas with purpose is time-consuming, contemplative work. It’s an aggregate process, not a subtractive one. You don’t start with a perfect piece of artwork and lose beauty from it.

On the other hand, it takes only a moment to damage a canvas.

Lucio Fontana, Spatial Concept ‘Waiting,’ 1960

That’s the real lesson: Destruction is always faster and easier than creation. Some of you walk into a new opportunity for growth and immediately slash the canvas, instead of searching for what’s inside of you that can be brought forth. Your reasons are incredibly important, but there’s also this: You destroy the canvas. It can’t be undone.

As a result, some of you are going to find a new number in a new column in the online grade book. That number will be clearly labeled as a work-in-progress assessment score. It is inactive. It will never affect your “average,” because it exists only to provide feedback to you when you need it.

The number corresponds, as always, to a grade abatement profile. It reflects, at this point, your choices over a single period of learning: Monday, March 121. The number tells you, in other words, if you took a knife to the blank canvas as soon as you could.

And the number doesn’t care if you meant to damage the canvas or not; it’s a number based on evidence, and that’s all. It can’t be undone. Fortunately, you always have a way to start over in here. You acknowledge that this particular canvas has been slashed/burned/covered in spilled coffee, and you get a clean one.

The rest of the feedback this number gives you is built into the language of the profiles. Read them. The classroom is filled with every other tool you need. You have a few weeks to use the new canvas in front of you to create something meaningful. There is time to earn a very good profile score, which will mean that you’ve created meaningful work.

First, take some time to look at the calendar for your course again:

The learning and content goals for every unit are listed for you. This is the blueprint, if you want to switch from painting to architecture. Use those goals to set up your choices, and look to the lessons for each day or week for what’s expected of you.

If you’re told, for example, to spend a Monday doing test pre, you have to do that. If you’re told to read the first chapter of The Catcher in the Rye, you have to do that. Not doing what you’re asked to do, especially without any sort of discussion in advance, is what leads to low performance and low skills and low interest and so on.


Next Steps, or TL;DR


If you have a number online to look at, look at that number. Read this post2 with that number in mind, examine your recent choices and current mindset, and then talk to me about how you’re going to make better choices to get into a more productive mindset.

Look to your peers, too, since they ought to help you to make better choices. If your peers don’t help you make better choices, your first choice ought to be to distance yourself from them for the 42 minutes you spend in our space each day.

Almost all of this boils down to staying on task and getting work done. Those choices have been tied into profiles that reward hard work and amenability much more than performance on tests and quizzes.

Which means, in our class, that low grades indicate a student who is not following directions, not responding to feedback, and not completing assignments. Those are probably the three easiest elements of learning to control, and the rules of the room are simple, forgiving, and logical.

Let’s talk in the comments.


  1. Having to cobble this post and its feedback together ate up our snow day on Tuesday, so your GAP scores for the work done through March 9 will be a little late. The solution to this really is that everyone focuses and works hard, by the way. The design of the course means that universal hard work would make the scoring process perfunctory, while the feedback process became much more enriching. 

  2. There is no TL;DR for meaningful information. Read the whole post.