Succinct Self-Analysis

The first panel of your Q4 GAP triptych ends on Friday, April 28. You will receive the usual data- and evidence-gathering assignment that morning. On Friday, you will also need to submit the “Succinct Self-Analysis” assignment that was post to Google Classroom during P1 on April 24. The assigned template looks like this:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F04%2FQ4ASelf-Analysis.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=400px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

A copy will be sent to you through Google Classroom, and you will see that it’s been organized already. Keep the layout as it is. At some point after class on Monday, in the box labeled for that day, you must answer the following questions:

  1. What did you accomplish in class today?
  2. What did you learn in class today?
  3. What’s next?

Look to spend 10-15 minutes on this. You can write more, of course, and the boxes in your document will expand as you type. Blend your responses into paragraphs, not bulleted lists. You are focused on being succinct. Read the definition here, and notice that it’s not about length; it’s about avoiding unnecessary words. Short and perfunctory (read that definition here) is useless for our purposes.

At some point after class on Tuesday, in the box labeled for that day, answer those three questions again, blending your responses into succinct paragraphs. Repeat this process on Wednesday, and then again on Thursday.


Evidence: Revision History


If you click on the File menu in Google Docs, you’ll see an option to check revision history. When you select that option, every change you’ve made to the document is called up for review. Read more about this process here.

On Friday, selecting this option should pull up evidence that you’ve worked on this assignment once a day for four days. It is straightforward enough to check this, because each timestamp shows, down to the minute, what you’ve changed:

This is from a guide to bishop composition I’m putting together for you.

If you aren’t diligent about writing each day, it will be obvious. Budget 10-15 minutes, or plan to use 10-15 minutes of class time to do this — not the best plan, but certainly one that would work in a pinch. See what this sort of ongoing and embedded metacognition does to encourage you to use your class time more effectively and deliberately.

This daily, succinct self-analysis is a requirement for all Tier 4 GAP scores. Done well, it might also be enough to pull those of you who’ve perhaps made poor decisions so far this quarter up into a higher tier. This assignment will create evidence of almost every skill or trait we value.

If you have any questions about this work, ask them in the comments below.

Lights and Tunnels: RE11, Part 1

Here is a blank copy of the calendar for Q4, which is already in progress:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F04%2FRE11-Calendar-Q4.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

The end of the year starts on April 19, when we return from spring break. We won’t see another day off until the end of May, and you’ll have final exams a week later.

This calendar is meant to be printed and filled in according to your needs. Note the dates of each panel of your Q4 GAP triptych, as well as the Fridays you’ll be in the iLC. All other assignments, instructions, and feedback will be posted here and on Google Classroom, as always, and we will spend April 19-20 setting things up1. I’ll share a copy of the calendar through Google Classroom, too.


The Non-Denominational Evil Spirit in the Details


For the next two weeks, you are going to work on the practice Regents Exam you began before break. You should already have Part 2 finished, but you’ll now get a few days to correct any lapses there. Next up is Part 1, which asks you to read passages and answer multiple-choice questions, and Part 3, which requires a couple of paragraphs of rhetorical or literary analysis2.

You have until Monday, April 24, to finish Part 1. Copies of the practice exam are available in our classroom, and you’ll remember that our goal is to understand the test, not just take it. You will use the rest of the week to answer all of the multiple-choice questions, and then you’ll record your answers. In fact, I’ll prepare a Google Form that will require you to record how you answered each question. You’ll have the correct answers provided in class, which we’ll use to start hacking and reverse-engineering the logic of the test. The Google Form assignment will let us plan out group work and individual feedback going into next week.

One other note: On Friday, you’ll have time in the iLC to revisit your Pareto Projects. Remember that those projects are built for 20% of your time, with the other 80% dedicated to test prep — until May, at least, when we’ll reorganize ourselves around something else. You need to use your time in class effectively, which means working on this Regents Exam for a few days.


  1. This includes finalizing Q3 GAP scores and reorganizing our physical space. We’ve had almost two weeks to atrophy, so we’re going to need two days to start moving again. 

  2. Brief, perfunctory analysis, at that. The real difficulty of the exam lies in the essay, which you’ve now ostensibly deconstructed, and the multiple-choice section. 

The First Rule of Tautology Club

If you think of this week as a balancing act, you’ll miss the point of it, which was actually given to you last week. We’re building systems, one choice at a time, until you are capable of effective writing and close reading and critical thinking, regardless of the situation. That starts with how you organize yourself, and this week requires even more organization than usual.


Timed Writing


You have a timed essay to work on.

The design of our recent lessons and readings allows all juniors to talk to each other about this essay, even though you might be answering different prompts. The common skill is synthesis, and you’ve all read the same prep on that concept. Individual course instructions are below.

AP11 Students: Take Monday to finish your timed response to Free Response Question 1 from the 2016 AP Exam. You have all the prep and directions you need. You must be ready on Tuesday to move into rapidfire reverse-engineering work. That will be one of our two focuses for the rest of the week.

RE11 Students: Begin writing your response to Part 2 of the January 2017 ELA Regents Exam. You need the essay booklets that are on the bookshelf by our new whiteboard. Pick one up for yourself, and use that to start writing. You can continue this essay in class or at home over the rest of the week. See below for how you’ll spend the rest of your time.


Character Essay


The following document will also be shared with you on Google Classroom. Use it to figure out what to do, and then get to work. You can ask questions about any of this below.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F03%2F2017CharacterEssayREAP11-1.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=800px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

GAP 3B Feedback: Developing Systems

The header image in this post is from the RSA ANIMATE of a Ken Robinson speech on educational reform. In this particular section, he’s discussing how counterintuitive and reductive it is to separate students by “their date of manufacture,” as he says. Of course, he’s not advocating for kindergartners to work on the same assignment as high school seniors. It’s more about recognizing that learning is a little more complex than a factory-line model suggests.

I want us to think about this idea, which is one of the reasons I’ve chosen to fill this post with three sets of separate, class-specific feedback, instead of separating them as this site normally does. You are formally responsible only for what’s written to your class, but you now have access to all of it, which is a pretty clear suggestion to read all of it. It’ll show you how style and detail shift between audiences, for one thing, but it’s also an exercise in finding useful feedback wherever you can. As an example (and something else for you to consider reading):

Cooking More at Home Is About Developing Systems, Not Memorizing Recipes

The recipe community makes it seem like one-and-done type meals are the pinnacle of home cooking. And if you crack open a cookbook or browse a few food blogs, that’s mostly what you’ll see. But for people who don’t already have experience in the kitchen, this is wildly inefficient.

When I read that yesterday, my first thought was how perfectly it lines up with lifelong learning and teaching. We need systems that help us learn, not step-by-step instructions. Memorizing “recipes” might help us pass those high-stakes tests, but even then, it’s going to depend more on systematic skills and traits, not what you’ve memorized.

The point is that you can find meaning in almost any feedback, if you trust the source. Trust this one.


To All Students


GAP 3B scores will be entered within an hour or two of this post. The recent spate of bad weather upended our schedule, so you’re receiving these much later than anticipated. I also needed a lot more time to determine how to talk to you about your recent work, as you’ll soon see.

You have around two weeks until the end of the quarter, at least in terms of GAP scoring, and you can use that time to conference with me about your GAP 3B scores. But you need to take heed:

  1. Don’t stop moving forward because you want to conference.
  2. Do not come to a conference without doing your homework for it.

Your homework for a conference is to read the feedback below, dive deeply into your body of evidence, and put your thoughts in writing. Don’t tell me that you don’t understand, and don’t say that you disagree. For 99% of the potential concerns you’ll have, the following feedback is enough. Applying it to your current routine might require a conference, though.

Two other general points:

  1. You are going to notice that many of the specific assignments discussed below were due on March 10, which was a snow day. This does not matter at all. The work was assigned weeks earlier, and you were given Monday, March 13, as a day to finish that work without penalty.
  2. All of you are being told that this — this post, any photocopy of this post, and any performative lecture based on this post — is direct feedback, and that failure to use this feedback to improve will lower your next GAP score. This is true. It isn’t a guillotine, though, waiting to slice through your neck. It’s more like the bladed pendulum in Poe’s short story, which descends slowly, inch by inch, to cut you in half. The difference is that you don’t have to lay there and let it cut you in half. You can stand up and climb out of the pit.

To AP11 Students


As always, your focus in class and the quality of the feedback loop you created were most important. Remember to look at yourself with clear but unyielding eyes, as I do: If you were off-task, you were off-task. Make better choices during the period.

Next, you should consider three particular assignments carefully. I will not provide hyperlinks as I normally do; you are in the third quarter of a college-level class, and we have spent a substantial amount of our time honing your organizational skills. This feedback should be unnecessary in the first place.

#1: On March 10, you were instructed to attach all evidence of your ongoing writing process to an assignment first posted on February 13. After a month, each and every one of you should’ve had something to submit. Missing or insubstantial work here fits a lower profile.

#2: In that same March 10 assignment, you were instructed to tell the story of your month-long writing process, using an instructional post to guide you. You were further instructed to treat that response as you would any essay, developing and shaping it with the same skills we’ve emphasized all year. You were given an article to incorporate into that reflective and metacognitive response, and, again, you had a full month of work to consider. Missing or insubstantial work here fits a lower profile.

#3: Finally, you had a formal GAP assignment, which was given in advance of Friday, March 10. You were told not to complete the form until Friday. You were also given much more than just a form to complete. There was a close reading assignment, too, that compelled you to apply an article’s insight to your own learning process. If you did not submit evidence of this close reading and analysis alongside your form, you could not earn a GAP score of 9.

As you dive back into your own work on these three assignments, I strongly suggest that you track down that last article. There was a reason it was given to you a bit ahead of the scoring process: Many of you are overvaluing and overstating how invested and self-directed you are, and while I have empathy for that, you must hold yourself accountable for what you do, not who you think you are. You are treating that fourth tier of scores as a given. You need to grapple with the requirements.

We are going to slow down, at least in one respect, while we set up our test prep and lay the groundwork for the fourth quarter. That makes your margin for error significantly smaller. You must be better students over the next two weeks.


To RE11 Students


As always, your scores come down to how you spend your time in class and how much you invest in our instructional posts. If you want to know why your score is lower than you thought it was, start there. You are closer than ever to senior year, which is a pretty good indication that you’re old enough to have self-control. You have no excuse for being distracted and disrespectful. You never did — only three-year-olds do, and even that’s debatable — but it’s time to face your behavior with clear and unsympathetic eyes.

Before you think to debate this perception of your assiduousness and focus, your score also depended more than anything else on two specific assignments. Both were due on March 10, and both were the culmination of your work over the previous month. Missing, incomplete, or insufficient work on either assignment outweighed anything else you might have in terms of GAP evidence.

#1: On March 10, you were told to scroll down the assignment feed until you found the assignment posted on February 13, nearly a month earlier. You were then instructed to attach any and all evidence of your writing process. Regardless of your progress on the essay itself, you should have found something to attach. Failure to do so is a failure to follow directions, to be organized (a skill we have also been studying for more than a month), and to be productive.

#2: In that same March 10 post, and in the instructional post attached to it, you were invited to tell the story of your month-long writing process. You were given an article to fold into that writing, too, which gave you an approach to this reflective writing. You were then told explicitly to shape and develop this writing as you would any essay.

Look at what you submitted for this reflection, if you submitted anything, and ask yourself if it looks substantial enough to reflect a month of writing. Then remember that you were also given Monday, March 13, to do this. You were told that your in-class work on the 13th would count for this GAP score, too, and I think it’s important we recognize that many of you did not listen to that warning.

We are almost at the end of the third-quarter, and we will spend the next two weeks working in class on either Regents Exam prep or a personal essay prompt. You will keep to the Pareto and GAP schedule outlined in our calendar. Start planning how to demonstrate growth, in class and at home, with each and every assignment. If you don’t change your habits, you will fall into the lowest tiers of our system, where you will find scores of 60 and below.

If you’d like to schedule a conference about your latest GAP score, make sure you’ve read the instructions at the top of this post. Your teachers aren’t going to entertain baseless complaints, but we’d actually like to give you clarity and direction.


To RE10 Students


If you’d like to understand your latest GAP score, load Google Classroom and scroll through the list of assignments posted over the last month or so. Every missing, late, or incomplete assignment cost you. You shouldn’t need us to point out what is missing or late, since it is recorded automatically.

If you got permission for a late assignment, that was, of course, okay. If you were given an alternative assignment, that, too, was okay. For 90% of the missing work in this course, however, there was no extension or alternative assignment. You just didn’t do the work.

If you’re not sure how you’re missing work, let’s meet to go over your recent organizational efforts. Your teachers will help you sort through your current system and develop a better one. We can talk about procrastination and distraction, too.

If you are confused about why the work you’re submitting isn’t sufficient or complete enough to boost your overall GAP score, you should schedule a conference. Your teachers will show you anonymous work from your peers that is acceptable. For the most part, though, you can trust your common sense: If you have a lot of time to finish an assignment, you’re expected to use that time, and if you do genuinely finish early, you can always reflect, be metacognitive, and help others. It really is about effort, in the end.

Effort is also responsible for how you spend each and every class period. Your in-class focus remains the single most important part of your GAP score, whether we look at how you performed over three weeks or in a single day. Every time you are off task, whether you are playing a game or texting a friend or studying for a test or just staring mindlessly into the void, you cost yourself a higher profile.

This GAP scoring process is ultimately about things you can control:

  1. You can stay focused during every moment of every class period.
  2. When you’re not sure what to do next, you can ask for help.
  3. You can submit every assignment.
  4. When you’re not sure if what you’re going to submit is substantial enough, you can ask for help.

To All Students


If you are not working hard every day, completing every assignment, and asking for help whenever either of those responsibilities seems difficult, you run the risk of failure. Failure, for you, might mean a GAP 6, or it might mean a 60 on the report card; whatever you think it is, that’s the risk you face.

For those of you who’ve come to appreciate what this environment offers you, this is about navigating the exhaustion and distraction of the end of the year. It’s about becoming the best version of yourself. It’s about finding meaning in that NHS application. It’s about beating the SAT and Regents and AP at their own game. It’s about adjusting how you learn while you are pouring your energy into Mary Poppins. (Break a leg, by the way.)

For some of you, though, it’s about correcting the mistaken belief that the bare minimum in here will allow you to pass the course and stumble, blissfully ignorant, into next year. You have forgotten what “the bare minimum” really is in our classroom. This course builds on itself, so that your success grows exponentially — as does your failure. The evidence for a particular profile resets every three weeks, in that what you gather and categorize for a profile resets; growth or resistance are based on everything that came before, however, so you must always deal with the past. That should be obvious. How else could we talk about improvement in writing, reading, thinking, or any of our other skills or traits?

Perhaps it’s even simpler than that: Do the work. Avoid your friends, if they prevent you from doing the work. Listen when you are reminded to do the work. Ask for my help if you don’t see the value in the work, because I’ll either show you the value or create something else for you that is valuable.

Remember that this is a makerspace, and that gives you a chance to rebuild yourself. It’s a process that will take you a lifetime, but every day you can tinker a little bit more with the blueprint.

As always, ask questions in the comments here.

GAP Scoring: March 10, 2017

Your course calendar tells us that we’re a couple of days away from the second GAP score of Q3. As you read this post, especially the GAP protocol, keep in mind that your organizational skill is the concrete on which everything else is built. Make time for all of this, in class and at home, and never lose sight of the purpose of what we do and what you’ve been assigned.

And think about pushing some of your peers to stay focused during the period. Even a day or two of renewed focus is enough to shift the GAP score up a bit, and the alternative…


Clear and Unyielding


As you read the following essay, replace every reference to teaching with a reference to you, your learning, and what it takes to evaluate yourself through grade abatement:

A copy of this will be provided in class, too, to facilitate your reading of it. Take the time to see past the superficial audience — teachers — and into the universal insight on display here. To help, start with the pull quotes from the article. Here they are, with the language altered so that they reference student learning and GAP scoring, not teaching:

You talk enough dirt about yourself and [teachers and peers] will start to believe it.

I’m as guilty as anyone of distorting my [learning]. When talking to [peers and teachers], I often play up the progressive elements.

As an aside, any time you edit the original text of a quotation, use brackets. In this case, it shifts the nouns and pronouns so that you can apply them directly to yourself.

The first of those pull quotes is always a concern: You must avoid downplaying your success, especially when collaboration and collegiality are vital to our work overall. You need to develop confidence, which isn’t quite as difficult as you might think. The second pull quote is part of one of the most important paragraphs, because it deals with a more common problem: ducking the ugly truths about our own progress. Here it is with the language altered again:

I’m as guilty as anyone of distorting my [learning]. When talking to [peers and teachers], I often play up the progressive elements: Student-led discussions. Creative projects. Guided discovery activities. I mumble through the minor, inconvenient fact that my [learning] is, at its core, deeply traditional. I let my walk and my talk drift apart. Not only does this thwart other [peers and teachers] in their attempts to honestly evaluate my approach, but it blocks my own self-evaluation. I can’t grow properly unless I see my own work with eyes that are sympathetic, but clear and unyielding.

The bolded sentence is critical. This is where you all are, two-thirds of the way through the third quarter of the year: in need of “eyes that are sympathetic, but clear and unyielding.” If, at its core, your learning remains deeply traditional, you must account for that.

Start here: What does traditional learning look like in your life? To what extent do you “play up the progressive elements” of your learning, especially during GAP scoring? To what extent is the core of your progress “deeply traditional,” and how can you remove that obstruction?

Answer these questions in conversation and in writing. Focus on insight. Then use that insight to inform the GAP scoring assignment outlined below.


GAP Scoring: March 10, 2017


First, though, let’s test your self-control, close reading, and self-awareness. Do not complete this form until Friday during your class period:

Again, do not complete that until Friday, March 10. Don’t complete it in its embedded form, and don’t complete it through Google Classroom. You still have two days to generate evidence for your GAP score. You have another post assigned to your class that deals with your recent writing work, a reboot of your Pareto Projects, and plenty of good and bad decisions made during those all-important 39 minutes. Give yourself 48 hours or so to read these instructions, work through recent posts, and think critically about your progress.

You should also use your newly strengthened organization to revisit the updated guide/overview of grade abatement, which will recalibrate you before you tackle one of these GAP forms:

Grade Abatement Triptychs

Even some of the students who have earned a GAP 9 in the past have lapsed over the last three weeks, which was always a possibility when we moved to shorter time frame. Each bad decision is magnified. By the same logic, all of your good work is magnified, too. Look carefully at the profiles and even more carefully at the protocol, which has been updated slightly in order to clarify how to apply it to your body of work. As always, you must focus only on the evidence you’ve generated.

Ask questions about these instructions in class and in the comment section below, and remember: You are balancing many assignments right in order to test your organization and advocacy. If you feel overwhelmed, advocate for yourself. If you are confused, keep attacking the work, alone and with peers, until it makes sense. If you feel frustrated, find someone who knows how to listen, vent, and then fix the problem.

“Observe, question, explore, reflect.”


Preschool Crafts, High School Writing


Read the following essay:


It will be photocopied for you, too. In fact, you’ll be asked to read it offline first, in order to remove the distraction of the Internet. Then you will do the work of understanding the essay:

  1. Take notes, click on links, ask questions, etc.
  2. Talk to your peers about their notes, questions, etc.
  3. Share the essay or its ideas with other folks, and talk to them a bit about what they believe.
  4. Do the writing assigned below.

To Think More Clearly: March 10 Deadline


Melissa Dahl’s essay emphasizes process over product, which fits your current essay work. The deadline of March 10 was given nearly a month ago, on February 13, alongside a detailed prompt:

To Think More Clearly

What does this week’s reading, “Why Typical Preschool Crafts Are a Total Waste of Time,” have to do with that Orwell essay? Everything. Your assignment is to figure out what happens when you replace “preschool crafts” in Dahl’s article with “high school essay writing.”

To clarify this through a list:

  1. A “finished” Orwell essay is not due on March 10.
  2. You can and probably should keep writing after March 10.
  3. The process of writing is our chief concern and the focus of your self-analysis and metacognition.

Let’s see what you can learn from that process.


Your Assignment


On Friday or over the weekend, write a response that tells the story of your writing process, start to finish, including

  1. your use of time in class and at home;
  2. your collaboration with your peers;
  3. your collaboration with your teacher, including any interstitial or flipped instruction;
  4. your use of other resources; and
  5. especially your overall sense of how that writing process unfolded.

To figure out what you’ve learned through your writing, we must have a sense of how you, like some sort of ersatz Frankenstein, brought the response to life. That doesn’t mean your story will, like Frankenstein’s, involve lightning strikes and violence; it means that you should take stock of all the time and energy that went into creating your writing from all its disparate parts.

In other words, you are writing an essay about your essay, or at least about the process of writing your essay. That’s where you will learn the most. Remember the quotation at the top of this website:

We may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in Experience and Education: “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes… may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history… For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” In other words, the most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do.

~Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

The most important thing you will learn here is something about how you write and how you approach the writing process. In fact, you should weave into this reflective/metacognitive response your thoughts on these three questions:

  1. What have I accomplished?
  2. What have I learned?
  3. What’s next?

Write specifically and purposefully there, too, and focus on efficacy. What new information have you garnered about how you learn? How can you improve future demonstrations of your skills and traits? What lessons can you take away from the writing and post-writing process?

Pareto Projects: Soft Reboot


Pareto Project Updates


It’s never a bad idea or a waste of time to look over the instruction manual for something, even if you’ve already started using it. You might find some clarity you didn’t have or notice a function he didn’t see the first time. Here is the instruction manual1 for your Pareto Projects:

Click here to read the updated Google Doc.

When I built that guide, the goal was to split your projects into two rounds, which you can see in the original calendar. We also set “deliverable” deadlines, focusing on what you could create and present, in writing or in person, by certain dates.

A couple of months later, I’d like to shift the calendar for these projects. Here is the updated version, which you’ve seen in class and online already:

Course Calendar

Remember that our shift to a GAP score every three weeks shifted our specific lessons and assignments a little bit, and we’ll extend that soft reboot to your Pareto Projects. We will now take one Friday every three weeks to check in on your progress. On those days, you will be in the iLC, where you will be able to spread out and use those resources as you see fit.

Remember, too, that you have spent a considerable amount of time in this course working on organization. When we meet in the iLC on those designated Fridays, you are responsible for setting the agenda and being productive. You must bring your own device, for instance, since we will no longer have a class set of Chromebooks. You must plan in advance for anything else you’ll need.

To help get you in that frame of mind, we have reserved the iLC for every Friday in March. We need to explore that space and see what it offers us in terms of collaborative and innovative learning. That means that you should plan to bring everything you need directly to the iLC, not Room 210, on the following dates:

  • March 3 | Pareto Project Checkpoint
  • March 10 | GAP 3B Due
  • March 17
  • March 24 | Pareto Project Checkpoint
  • March 31 | GAP 3C Due

You will be able to choose to focus on anything course-related while we are in the iLC, but there are assignments and checkpoints associated with certain Fridays. It’s like everything else in here: There is tremendous freedom and a precise structure. You need both.


Pareto Project Deadlines


Your new deadline for these projects is June. Note that there is no date attached to that deadline. At the start of the month of June, we will use one of the designated Pareto Fridays to talk about presentations, publishing, final essays, final reports, and so on — the potential artifacts that will tie together the work you’ve been doing.

Because those artifacts will differ from student to student, we can’t set a specific deadline for everyone right now. We can only say that you will spend June finishing up these projects. In the meantime, you should revisit the original blueprint you completed for your project, noting that it has been updated to reflect our new calendar:

Pareto Project: Blueprint

What you “deliver” on each designated Pareto Friday will differ from project to project, but you should approach those deadlines with an eye toward producing something. The idea of “finishing” the projects will be refined as we move forward, too. For some of you, June will be about reviewing your goals and your success in meeting those goals. for others, this project will be a labor of love, and it will continue into the summer and into next year. in the latter case, “finishing” will mean something quite different.

For the first Friday after our shift — March 3 — you need to assess the state of your project. Answer the following questions:

  1. To what extent did you keep up with the biweekly update essays required by this January 3 post?
  2. To what extent did you “curate a digital presence,” as outlined in this December 20 post?
  3. To what extent have your project goals changed over the last two months?
  4. What have you accomplished?
  5. What have you learned?
  6. Finally, what’s your next step, and how are you using the iLC on Friday, March 3, to accomplish that next step?

Write your answers in a Google Doc and set it aside, using your new system of organization to keep track of it. Finish it over the weekend. You will be asked to submit those answers next week, and you will have only a portion of a single class to do that. You will go to Room 210, the assignment will be posted to Google Classroom after the bell rings, and then you will need to find your answers to those questions and submit them inside of five minutes or so. Among other things, this is a test of your ongoing organizational efforts and your ability to invest in these instructional posts enough to figure out what to do.

Ask questions about this work or the Pareto Project overall in the comments below.


  1. For lack of a better metaphor. Orwell would disapprove. 

Juniors: Online + Offline Reflections


Interstitial Learning and Individual Devices


Good news: You can sign out your district-issued Chromebooks this week. That opportunity opens up a number of other opportunities, especially in a class that embraces an Internet-driven, interstitial access to learning. We’ve always been fortunate enough to have a class set of Chromebooks, but now every student has access to a computer, which means we’ve leveled the playing field entirely. You all have access to a device. The choice of using a computer or other device is now yours.

This matters because we’re all creatures of habit, and one of our habits is to occupy the same space in the same way at the same time. When you arrive to Room 210, most of you pick up a Chromebook from the classroom set, say hello to me, and then settle into your usual seat. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an in-class essay, having a class discussion, or reading a post on this website — you keep the Chromebook open next to you. It doesn’t matter if you have a smartphone (~100% of you do) or a tablet, either — you associate classroom work with a classroom-specific computer plucked from a cart.

Our classroom set will be gone by the end of this week. Those Chromebooks are being repurposed for individual use. Our method of instruction won’t change, though, which means that you must bring your own computer or device to do work. That subtle shift in responsibility will make a noticeable difference in how you allocate your time and other resources. You’ll have to think ahead.

Your first assignment from this post is to organize your personal device, which includes (but isn’t limited to) the following:

  • District-issued Chromebook
  • Personal laptop
  • Smartphone
  • Tablet

Make this device into a tool for learning. This is deeper than setting up Google Drive and Gmail, although you need your Google tech to be organized; the device itself should be organized, from what tabs open when you launch a browser to which sites you bookmark to how you arrange and access apps. You are leaning on all four kinds of organization outlined in this post:

Getting Things Done

The device you choose is a physical object, much like a folder or backpack. It will only work as well as your mental approach to it. And you will need to plan ahead in terms of schedule in order to maximize what you do in class, which remains the all-important 36th chamber of instruction.

Assignment: Organize your device for learning, and then take screenshots of that organization. You’ll want screenshots of your Internet browser, bookmarks, Google Drive folders, and Gmail setup, but there are certainly more possibilities, like a screenshot of your smartphone’s app arrangement. Embed these screenshots in a Google Doc, explaining your organizational approach for each one. Attach that document to the appropriate Google Classroom assignment.


Something More Kinesthetic


On Tuesday, February 28, you received a printed copy of this post:

Orwell Essay Writing: Approach

The four quotations embedded in that post offer insight into how we approach essay writing. You’ve had time now to engage with the assignment online and offline, with the freedom to annotate and take notes as you see fit. That lets us talk about some of what separates your offline learning from your online learning. You need a mix of both, and you need to make choices that consider the efficacy of both.

Assignment: Write briefly but insightfully about what you did with the printed copy of the post and what you learned from the printed copy. Did you annotate it? What insight did that bring to the reading? Were the ideas clearer in some discernible way when you read the printed copy? Do you feel the difference in terms of learning and engagement when you consider these quotations offline? Answer some of these questions, plus any other questions that arise, and attach a copy of that writing to the appropriate Google Classroom assignment.

Orwell Essay Writing: Approach

To Think More Clearly

Let’s spend the week experimenting with how you write the essay that follows that post. Look to Google Classroom for the formal assignment, and then start with this quotation from Piet Hein:

Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer.

That echoes Paul Graham, whose “Age of the Essay” tells us what writing should do (emphasis mine):

To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called “essais.” He was doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb meaning “to try” and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out.

Figure out what? You don’t know yet. And so you can’t begin with a thesis, because you don’t have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn’t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don’t take a position and defend it. You notice a door that’s ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what’s inside.

If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne’s great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That’s why I write them.

And we’ll throw in Joan Didion’s “Why I Write,” too, which adds another perspective:

It took me some years to discover what I was.

Which was a writer.

By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Right now, you have a subject for the essay you are writing. You have potential prompts and possible directions to take. You may have jumped into putting words on the page, and you may have only just finished reading that preparatory post1; regardless, you are at the relative start of the writing process.

Now you need a clear and precise approach to the subject at hand. You need an interesting question to ask or a unique perspective to explore. Paul Graham compares this, in “The Age of the Essay,” to a river finding its way to the sea; Virginia Woolf, in Moments of Being, compares it to a “shock” that drives her to “put the severed parts together”:

I hazard the explanation that a shock is at once in my case followed by the desire to explain it. I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together. Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me.

Come up with your approach. What question will drive your process? What is your perspective as you begin? What’s interesting or inventive or curious about your thinking as you start writing? What are you trying to learn?

Ask me questions and share ideas below.


  1. If you fall into the camp that hasn’t done the prep work, keep that to yourself until you’ve caught up, and recognize the danger of making poor choices over and over again: Eventually, you are what you do. 

To Think More Clearly

With Orwell’s 1984 and “Politics and the English Language” as a backdrop, we’re going to talk about grammatical declension1, and that more than justifies a look at LOLcats. They have a rich history (really) and lead us into complex studies of macros and grammar (yes, really). For me, though, if we’re going to look at declining English and memes, nothing really beats the simple stupidity of wurds. (Full LOLcats image available here.)


Orwell’s Inspiration


[A]n effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration…

That quotation is drawn from George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” which we will continue to use to frame a unit of study on contemporary English writing and its connection to our thoughts and actions, especially our dishonest thoughts and actions. Refresh your memory of the first instructional post here:

Politics and the English Language

Now we move into some focused writing work that is meant to be balanced through your recent organizational efforts. The way you approach this writing assignment also gets into the circadian dynamics we’ve discussed before, because you must be more vigilant and focused than ever to avoid falling behind. We’re using that Orwell quotation above, though, to focus on two things:

  1. [A]n effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.
  2. [T]he process is reversible.

In other words: You will spiral into confusion and frustration the more confused and frustrated you get, but there is always a way to stop the cycle and reclaim your learning for yourself. There is a lot going on below, and all of it is interesting, if you’re open to it. Use your time wisely, ask the right questions, and do good work.


First, a Caveat


The idea of political discourse is important to Orwell’s argument, and the connections he makes between clear thinking, “the slovenliness of our language,” and politics should grow more important to us, especially now. I think we should embrace the opportunity. Perhaps we can use some of the original meaning behind the word “politics” to help us focus:

Politicks is the science of good sense, applied to public affairs, and, as those are forever changing, what is wisdom to-day would be folly and perhaps, ruin to-morrow. Politicks is not a science so properly as a business. It cannot have fixed principles, from which a wise man would never swerve, unless the inconstancy of men’s view of interest and the capriciousness of the tempers could be fixed.

That comes from Fisher Ames, whose idea of a “science of good sense” ought to appeal to our better natures, especially in the vexed and volatile world of politics. That said, I want to repeat that this is not a unit about politics, at least not expressly or exclusively. It is a unit on the way language shapes our thoughts — a unit about names, business jargon, school jargon, lying, Twitter, slang, profanity, memes, and much more.


Your Assignment


Write an essay inspired by “Politics and the English Language.” This essay must demonstrate an understanding of Orwell, and it must use his ideas and specific language to an appropriate extent.

The audience, subject, purpose, etc, of this essay are all yours to decide. That kind of freedom can lead to bad choices, however, so I’ll give you a list of possibilities. Consider each before striking out on your own. Whatever your choice, you probably ought to start by skimming Paul Graham’s treatise again. You want an essay that is interesting and insightful — the kind of “river” writing that engages its author and reader equally.

Note that many of these are drawn from the essay by Maddie Crum that is included in the first option. That’s a subtle clue that you should devote some time to Crum, even if you eventually choose to write a completely unrelated essay of your own.

Note also that the deadline for this assignment is posted on Google Classroom, where it will be edited at least once or twice in the near future. The goal is organization, remember? You need to stop self-medicating through deadlines and invest in the process part of writing, reading, and thinking.


§ Option 1Degree of difficulty: 8.0

Emulate Maddie Crum.

Maddie Crum is the author of this Huffington Post essay about workplace jargon. It’s much more interesting than you think, and it’s perfect for emulation. Start, of course, with the ETA work: Read Crum, break down her writing, and note how it connects to Orwell. Then consider your own observations of a specific place and its identifying or characteristic language. You might look at the language of textbooks, the profanity of the school hallway, the violent metaphors in sports reporting, or the language of the college application process; you might also analyze the way your family communicates, the way a specific group talks on Twitter or Facebook, or the peculiar grammar of texting and other forms of micro-communication. Whatever your chosen subject, the purpose of a direct emulation of Crum is to (1) identify the problem; (2) explain its causes and effects; and (3) offer a well reasoned approach to solving it.


§ Option 2 | Degree of difficulty: 9.92

Write an essay about the current political landscape.

The instructional post that introduced Orwell should help you here, and current events offer almost endless ways to apply “Politics” to current politics. Your goal is to add something meaningful to the discussion. How you approach that goal is up to you, so it will take a lot of individual discussion to get started.


§ Option 3 | Degree of difficulty: 6.5

Write an essay about placeholders such as “like.”

Crum brings up the debate over placeholders, and you can do a lot with the connection between verbal tics and written clarity. It might help you to read Christopher Hitchens’ essay on the subject, especially his idea that “you have to talk well in order to write well, and you can’t write while using “like” as punctuation.”


§ Option 4 | Degree of difficulty: 7.0

Write an essay about the language we use to discuss stress and anxiety.

This builds off of Crum’s inclusion of Times essay on being busy, which she uses to argue that “[w]hen we replace a specific task with a vague expression, we grant the task more magnitude than it deserves.” The way we discuss stress and anxiety shape how we feel about stress and anxiety, which in turn shapes our responses. You should also look to the recent instructional post on empathy and blame for inspiration here.


§ Option 5 | Degree of difficulty: 8.5

Write an essay on Internet memes.

This one has the most potential to derail even a focused student, so you would need to look past the superficiality of the subject and delve into the way language shapes meaning in memetic circles. Look to the italicized opening of this post for ideas, and bookmark Know Your Meme.


§ Option 6 | Degree of difficulty: 6.5

Write an essay on fonts.

Comic Sans is the obvious whipping boy in this discussion, but it’s a lot richer than that. You would look at whether Orwell’s logic applies to superficial elements of writing like kerning and font type, especially in a hypertextual (or web-based) sense. For instance, does this essay on level design fit Orwell’s ideas, since it deliberately uses no capital letters? Does font choice actually impact clarity of thought?


To give you a little further help, here is an essay written last year by one of the top seniors in the graduating class of 20173:

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  1. We’ll be collecting words that we love (and hate) during a future lesson, and I discovered “declension” during a previous year’s study of Orwell. It derives from the same root as the more obvious “decline” and refers to “a condition of decline or moral deterioration.” It somehow seems apt in 2017. 

  2. Writing well about politics is always difficult, but the current landscape has made it into a minefield. 

  3. A fact that has less to do with her writing ability than you think. Being good at school and writing well are skills that overlap, of course, but much less than any of us would like.