Home » 2016-2017 » Category "English 11 Regents (2016-2017)" (Page 5)

Quarter 2, Day 5 [Juniors]

By Mr. Eure All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

On future maps, though…

1984 and Other Dystopias

Warning: I am going to talk about the election.

Well, not the election exactly — I’m still digging pitchforks out of my back from the end of Q1; I don’t need torches added to the mix — but an idea related to the election. We’re going to look at maps.

In the runup to November 8, an article in the Times used a map to discuss the country (and attempt to predict the election):

What This 2012 Map Tells Us About America, and the Election (Published 2016)

The 2016 Race It’s not just a map. History, race, religion, culture, ethnicity, geography: The 2012 presidential election county-level results map has many stories to tell. Nate Cohn, The Upshot’s elections analyst, and Toni Monkovic, an Upshot editor, discussed some differences we can expect for 2016, and posted a lightly edited transcript of their written exchange.

In the aftermath of the 8th, there haven’t been quite as many nuanced discussions (Twitter, as always, is a nightmare), but we do have this site to show us a 2016 version of Purple America:

Why does this matter to us? Because we began the year with empathy, and empathy is what we need now¹. Societal shifts and societal divides affect all of us. It matters, too, that Brewster identifies itself as exurban, an uncommon word that refers to a commuter town located past the suburbs:

Putnam County’s Brewster Central School District is committed to educational excellence and the success of every student. This exurban community of 18,000 values its natural beauty, while priding itself on advancing a progressive educational agenda.

That’s from our school’s website. It means that Brewster, to some extent, defines itself by its proximity to New York City.

In this course, I would like you to read a few books that might help us to think about these probably false dichotomies: urban and rural areas, cities and countrysides, science and nature. These books aren’t solely about those aspects of society, nor are they all focused on conflict of that kind; they are related, though, and worth reading, regardless. The list:

1984 by George Orwell
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Each of those is available, for free, online. 1984, however, shouldn’t be, because it’s still under copyright. (The rest are public domain, which is how we ended up with excellent and allusive stories like this.) We have copies of 1984 the classroom, so I’ll ask you to use those, if you read that one.

The if in that last sentence is crucial: You are not required to read any of these novels. You are not being assigned any of them. What we will do is to encourage reading, to celebrate it as it happens, and to make it possible for you to explore and expand and share your experiences. But we won’t mandate literature. Nothing ruins reading — and writing — more quickly than forcing it through the traditional English machine².

Instead, we want to chase down a reading experience like this one:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2F1984Essay.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=500px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

Read that essay. The author has offered to talk to any junior who is interested in reading 1984, both to follow up this essay and to try to convince you that, yes, it’s worth reading. Let me know if you would like to speak to her.

So… What Is Today’s Assignment?

Read that senior’s college essay about 1984. Then poke around the list of novels you’ve been given. You don’t need to read any of them yet, but you should start thinking about them. You might go back and read John Holt’s essay or Paul Graham’s essays, too. (They’re in a footnote, if you need the links.)

On Monday, we’ll set up our next few weeks, which will be driven by your interests and energy. I have lessons to teach you, tangents to take you on, and probably too much hope that we’ll enjoy some of it; it will all come back to you, however, now that you’ve got the substructure in place.

Over the weekend, reacquaint yourself with your most recent essay, too, and think about how close to an ending you are. We’ll make that writing process part of our plan on Monday, too.

To be clear: You don’t have anything to submit today. Take notes, reflect, be metacognitive, etc, according to your own needs.

I originally thought to lead this post with an article written in October by David Wong, because it offers powerful insight into the belief that rural areas are at odds with urban areas. It’s far too profane, though, so let’s bury it in a footnote. ↩
See John Holt and Paul Graham for a reminder of what that means. ↩

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Quarter 2, Day 4

By Mr. Eure All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Instead of Pavlov’s dogs, here’s a video about Schrodinger’s cat.

Unlearning Lessons

Today is Thursday, November 17. For the last three days, you have taken stock of yourselves through various lessons and assessments. As a result, you have a wealth of evidence to consider. You also have to unlearn two dangerous lessons.

First, consider what you were asked to take home after finishing Tuesday’s diagnostic test:

You weren’t given a deadline for this reading. It’s your responsibility to find the time to read all three documents, because they provide you some context for this class, whether you are a senior challenging yourself in AP or a sophomore still wondering whether this high school thing is worth it.

So these documents will tell you why it matters if you know, for example, what “assiduousness” means. The terms we use give shape to the work we do, and this work is the work of the world — the work valued by the 21st century, including the people who will eventually hand you that college acceptance letter or job offer. When we read literature, it won’t be to ruin it the way it was ruined for Paul Graham; it will be to learn empathy and to develop a better understanding of the world, because those traits lead to a better life. When we write, it won’t be to earn a grade; it will be to clarify our thoughts, because that makes us better human beings.

The second dangerous lesson to unlearn is about “failure” on a test like the one you took on Tuesday. Of course it matters if you couldn’t remember ideas covered repeatedly throughout the first quarter. It matters more, however, that you now improve — and that’s why there is no grade or grade book in this course. That test was a diagnostic. It might spark a revolution in your work ethic or another branch of our main skill tree. It might further validate your hard work from Q1. It might shine a spotlight on the need to strengthen your memory. That’s the point: To individualize what happens next.

You need to let go of the Pavlovian part of yourselves, because that part of you wants a treat when it does well. It expects a shock when it screws up.

Pavlovian Part 1

Most of you have been institutionalized. You have confused clarity with simplicity. When you are given complicated directions, you give up almost immediately and become frustrated. Over the past few days, student have

called the work “stupid” after a cursory read;
argued that an assignment wasn’t given, despite evidence to the contrary;
claimed that Snapchat isn’t distracting during class, despite evidence to the contrary;
given up and fallen asleep.

Every choice you make matters, and you can choose to embrace what we’re doing in here, which is to prepare you for the rest of your life. That’s why you were given those excerpts and essays this week: to show you that we are about more than turgid literary analysis and test-driven busywork. This stuff matters.

But you lack grit, many of you. You lack that particular kind of assiduousness that allows you to cope with difficulty. Until you develop that trait, you will never improve. No one can force you to be patient. No one can make you resilient. If our goal was for you to vomit out an essay that I would then mark up with that red-pen pathology so unique to English teachers, sure, we could force all of you to the goal line. But you’d learn nothing, least of all the grit necessary for success.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t change your future in here, however, and that plasticity may be the most important lesson this week. Since change starts with an inventory of sorts, that’s your assignment: to do an inventory of the evidence you’ve generated this week.

It’s not enough to have completed the work, of course. It’s one thing to be succinct, to think that less is more, but reflective and metacognitive writing benefits from length. More is more, in most cases.

Which means that you need to consider the quality of your work over the last three days, too. What did you learn from Monday’s writing? What did Tuesday’s diagnostic teach you? How do you plan to utilize Wednesday’s insight in the future? Consider, too, the substructural skills and traits of grade abatement. Think about your organization of resources, your reliance on peers and peer feedback, your amenability to explicit and implicit feedback, and so on.

Pavlovian Part 2

Students who earned an 8 or 9 in Q1 are in a slightly different position: You need to teach others how to learn, how to generate evidence, etc. And you cannot be arrogant or condescending, even for a second; being either is evidence of a 4, if you want to look at it through the lens of GAP scores.

Read this older addendum to the grade abatement process:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2F03-GradeAbatementAmended.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=400px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

What you do is all that matters. That idea was clarified in Section X (“Faking It”) of this essay, too. Be collegial and supportive. Share your understanding. Take pride in your accomplishments, of course, but separate that pride from egotism. From that hyperlinked essay:

There is no game to play and no gamesmanship to lean on. This course does not care how naturally gifted you are. It does not care if you play sports and play them well. It does not care what your parents think of you. It does not care what you look like, how charming you are, or how much latitude you have been given throughout your life to do what you want. It cares only about what you do.

Today’s Assignment Again

Since we got sidetracked from today’s assignment for a bit, I’ll clarify what you must do:

Your assignment for Thursday is to spend 30-40 minutes writing about your progress toward a top-tier GAP score in Q2. In just three days, you have created a small body of evidence. What does it look like? More importantly, what do you need to do now?

In the future, you won’t have many formal assignments that require you to be metacognitive and reflective to this degree. Instead, you will need to find time every week or so to think and write like this on your own. We might take a class period here and there to revisit and refine that metacognitive and reflective process, or to talk about the protégé effect and its impact on your learning, but that would be no different from taking a period to talk about organization or timed writing or critical thinking. We’ll deal with skills and traits as necessary.

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Quarter 2, Day 3

By Mr. Eure All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Image borrowed from this blog post.

The Stuff of Growth

On Monday, regardless of class and grade level, you were given a checkpoint assignment. Below are three anonymous, exemplary submissions, presented with minimal commentary. Carefully read the exemplar for your class’ assignment. Then type up an actionable analysis. That bolded phrase breaks down like so:

actionable | Your analysis must indicate actions you can take in the future. Focus on what you did or didn’t do in comparison to the relevant exemplars, and then use that to discuss what you will do next time.
analysis | You need insight into precisely what makes this work exemplary. Talk about specific elements: use of detail, arrangement of ideas, meaningful insight, overall approach, etc.

This is peer ETA work, or an attempt to learn by analyzing and emulating a peer. It bolsters and in some cases supplants individual and group feedback. With that in mind, today’s submission — what you submit to Google Classroom later — should meet certain criteria:

It must be significantly developed, which means you can’t write a few sentences and call it a day.
It must be significantly detailed, which means you need to cite specifics from the exemplar.
It must have some sort of shape, which means you can’t just throw your thoughts on the page haphazardly.

If you have questions, ask them (quickly!) in the comment section at the bottom of this post.

Quick FAQ

Q: Why include all three exemplars in one post?

A: Same answer as last time: The skills and traits of this course are universal. The goal of peer ETA work isn’t to copy the exemplar; the assignment is over, and “corrections” aren’t a thing in here. You can only benefit from today’s writing if you look beneath the specifics and focus on actionable analysis — in this case, what the best kind of metacognitive and reflective writing looks like, regardless of the assignment. A junior can learn a lot by reading the most effective work by a tenth grader, an AP student could benefit from the work done over in Regents, etc.

10R Exemplar

Tenth graders wrote short stories, which is a bit more fun than a traditional essay¹. The most important step, however, was their understanding of authorial choice. This exemplar identifies specific language and elements that create everything from character motivation to suspense. It’s quite good.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2FQ2D1-RE10-EX.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=400px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

11R Exemplar

Just like all of these, this brief bit of metacognition was attached to a copy of the central writing response itself, and that response was developed enough to need a bit of analysis moving forward. If you don’t invest in the first part of the writing process, this reflective and metacognitive loop won’t work, and that top GAP tier will stay out of reach.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2FQ2D1-RE11-EX.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=400px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

AP Exemplar

This last one is thoughtful and specific, and it weaves in our reading and writing background authentically. It also references K-pop, which still surprises me by being a thing. Why, I remember when it was just S.E.S. and Drunken Tiger, and everything had to be imported on CDs from YesAsia. Now it’s as ubiquitous as any genre of music. (It’s strange, by the way, to date oneself through Korean pop music.)

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2FQ2D1-AP11-EX.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=400px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

Not that we write traditional essays, but the comparison still stands. ↩

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Quarter 2, Day 2

By Mr. Eure All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

A graph you’ve seen before.

Doki Doki Panic

It’s 1:50 PM, and school is almost over¹. Your homework tonight involves the test you took earlier:

List the sixteen skills and traits used for GAP assessments. Put them in the prescribed eight pairs, too.
Define interstitial in terms of this course.
Define galvanizing in terms of this course.
Explain the criteria for a third-tier grade abatement profile.
Explain the criteria for a fourth-tier grade abatement profile.
Explain the criteria for a GAP score of 9.
Briefly describe Joan Didion’s perspective on writing. (Juniors only)
Briefly describe Paul Graham’s perspective on writing. (Juniors only)

A test of this sort has been mentioned in the past, but it was written about on this site only in the footnote of this AP post. We can call them DDTs, either for direct diagnostic tests or doki doki tests, depending on how weird we’re feeling. The origins of the stranger version of the acronym are here:

View at Medium.com

Some of your predecessors eventually came up with doki doki as the onomatopoeia. You, too, should take an active role in shaping this sort of assessment. That starts with today’s assignment, which is to write insightfully about your performance, especially what it means for you moving forward.

Before you write, think about some of what today’s DDT performance reveals:

your previous close reading of instructional posts and central texts;
your internalization and recall, especially of the language of grade abatement;
your critical thinking and understanding of how the course works;
your integrity and character.

Then write specifically and introspectively. This is a moment captured in writing; it is reflective and metacognitive in equal measure, covering both the wider narrative of your learning and the narrower focus provided by a single day’s lesson. What do you know about this class? How much have you studied its particular requirements? How carefully do you read the central texts?

On my end, this allows for a kind of triage. Patterns emerge. What have you internalized? Which ideas are unclear? How many students are in a position to teach others? How many need an intervention? The answers help me adjust for the rest of the calendar year.

Quick FAQ

Q: What do we do about the Pavlovian “cheating” that occurred immediately as students sat down to take this test?

A: I don’t know, but it was alarming to see students cheat out a copy of, e.g., the GAP checklist in order to copy answers. That betrays such a fundamental misunderstanding of the course that even my empathy is staggered. I saw a hundred versions of this:

Maybe I need a stick like Miss Wormwood has there.

The point of these diagnostics is to diagnose. Cheating on them would be like cheating on a test for strep throat: I guess you didn’t get bad news now, but if you’ve got strep throat, you probably want to know. Treatment seems important. And in here, pretending to know things sets you up to be embarrassed and humiliated later, when you’re called on to demonstrate that expertise or internalized understanding. We care so much about growth that it makes no sense, except as a reflection of a system that batters students into these pathologically frightened creatures, to cheat.

Q: What do we do about students who wrote for nearly 39 minutes in response to a test that should take about ten minutes?

A: I don’t know this answer, either. In a way, that level of panicked overkill is more troubling than the student who drew a picture of a flower instead of doing any work. None of these prompts requires much in the way of writing. They test a student’s understanding and internalization of straightforward concepts and ideas. Here’s a key:

The sixteen skills and traits used for GAP assessments, in their respective pairs, as seen in a half-dozen handouts and posts:
- Collegiality ⇆ Empathy
- Integrity + Character
- Close Reading ⟹ Internalization
- Critical Thinking ⟹ Metacognition
- Effective Communication ⟹ Writing
- Amenability ⇆ Self-Awareness
- Assiduousness ⇆ Self-Efficacy
- Organization ⟹ Autodidacticism
Interstitial, in terms of this course, means to learn and to create in those brief, spare moments we have during our hectic and often overscheduled lives.
Galvanizing, in terms of this course, means to teach others what you’ve learned from some expert source. The protégé effect is a significant factor in how we galvanize others.
Third-tier grade abatement profiles “reflect varying degrees of incomplete work, disengagement, and misunderstanding.” That’s lifted directly from this guide. The class period matters significantly more than anything else, and we can almost quantify student work at this level.
Fourth-tier grade abatement profiles require a little more explanation, but still less than a half-page. Look at the top of page five in that same guide:

That’s only about 250 words.

The most important criteria for a GAP score of 9 are “a precocious strength in metacognition” and evidence of being “consistently, insightfully reflective,” both in person and in writing. The other, obvious criteria are to teach others, make the learning environment better, and develop discernible strength in every skill or trait.
The juniors read Joan Didion’s “Why I Write” as a preface to this journey essay. Her perspective on writing is nuanced, but I especially like this section of the essay:

[I was] 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.

Paul Graham’s perspective on writing is so important to us that it got its own post and series of assignments. He’s nuanced, too, but we could get away with a list of at least some of what he suggests:
- Observe carefully, looking for what is most interesting and surprising about a subject.
- Let the essay take its own course toward what is most interesting, like a river seeking the sea.
- Clean up your thoughts as you write, keeping an audience provisionally in mind.
- Ignore all the rote, repetitive, literature-dependent habits you learn in English classes.

Q: Why is this cross-posted to all courses?

A: Because the skills and traits of this course are universal. How we develop and apply them differs from grade to grade and level to level, but it also differs from student to student — hence the focus on individualizing the curriculum. The terms we use help give clarity and direction to the work we do. The only way a makerspace (really, an atelier; more on that later) works is if the participants know the basics, and that goes for everyone.

Q: Why is the post available only at 1:50 PM, not during every class?

A: Because you need the occasional period without Chromebooks in front of you, and because you need to see the importance of work done at home. Remember this essay on the chambers of your day? We used that to emphasize the importance of our 39 minutes together, and those 39 minutes do determine your profiles to a significant extent. Your learning should continue at home, however, and today’s writing assignment forces you to do that.

The post is up a little early to give P9, when the siren call of home is strongest, some added support. This is our equivalent of lashing Odysseus to the mast. ↩

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Quarter 2, Day 1

By Mr. Eure All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Screenshot of Google Classroom assignment

WIP into Shape

Except for the number of students on the right, the image above is exactly what was posted to your individual class stream this morning at 6:09 AM, and the text that follows is a transcript of what was said to you at the start of the class period later that day.

Today, you must submit your progress on our current assignment to Google Classroom. This is a record of the work you’ve done before this moment — a snapshot of a work-in-progress. You are not submitting it for feedback; that will happen in class, in small groups and individually, throughout the rest of the week. Your submission simply locks in place a piece of evidence. Among your choices:

Create a copy of your work in Google Docs (File ▸ Make a copy) and attach it to the Google Classroom assignment.
Take a picture of your handwritten work, upload it to Google Drive (New ▸ File upload), and then attach it to the Google Classroom assignment.
Write a metacognitive reflection on your work and attach it to the Google Classroom assignment.

A metacognitive reflection also generates evidence necessary for a fourth tier profile at the end of the quarter. Find the time to write one, regardless of your progress on the central assignment.

Examples:

10th grade students have had enough time to finish this assignment. They should attach a copy of each step: the outline, the short story, and the metacognitive analysis. Additional reflection and metacognition should be written during the class period and for homework.
11th grade students have had enough time to start the essay dictated by this prompt. They should attach any outlines or brainstorming work, plus a copy of the essay in its current state. Additional reflection and metacognition should be written during the class period and for homework.

Ask questions in any of the usual places, and take the time to teach others what to do.

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Enigmas and Their Opposites

By Mr. Eure All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

From “The Enigma of Amigara Fault”

Q1 GAP Reports

For all students, the protocol of assigning a GAP score is the same:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F11%2FGAPProtocolv3.1.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=1360px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

The process, however, should be individualized. Grade abatement stresses individual learning, and it would undermine our philosophy to treat the end of each quarter as a high-stakes event. It would turn us back toward the warping pressure of the old model of learning, and none of us — teacher absolutely included — benefits from the wearying push through 140 essays, reports, or conferences.

Instead, you are required only to read the embedded document above (here is the up-to-date Google version), and then to complete this Google Form:

Loading…

A copy of it has been assigned to you through Google Classroom, which is where you can also submit further evidence, if that helps. Note, however, that how you submit evidence — if you submit evidence — is up to you. The next steps of this process are, to a significant extent, yours to take.

Ask questions in the usual places, and take this opportunity to teach each other what you learn. Fight the predictable, learned helplessness that comes with a difficult task. Focus on the universal feedback in this essay:

View at Medium.com

The end of a quarter should be a validation and a celebration, and then it should pass quickly. If you have struggled, it should be a moment of reflection that spurs greater effort and focus — and then it should pass quickly.

One more note: Included with this assignment is an evidentiary matrix of sorts. Here is an embedded image of it:

I realized far too late that giving students this kind of document immediately overrides everything else. You rush to fill it in, to “complete” it, and neglect the context. But at the bottom of the printed and Google versions of this thing, it tells you how it should be used:

This is not a mathematical chart, which you might guess from the emojis creeping across the top. (I blame/thank former students for that contribution.) It can’t be used to generate a GAP score. Instead, it is designed to help you to think about the quantity, quality, and category of what you’ve done in class. You might mark more than one circle in each row, for instance, depending on the kind of evidence you’ve generated.

The guide is important. The many branching links in that guide are important. What we’ve done for the past quarter is important. This emoji-laden handout is about as ancillary as it gets.

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Journey Writing

By Mr. Eure All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

From the video game, Journey, by thatgamecompany.

Essay Prompt

The following document contains your essay prompt in full, plus some context and direction for what you will write.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F10%2FJourney-Essay.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=800px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

Other links to the assignment are listed below. Additional materials, deadlines, and requirements will be posted here and announced in class.

Use the comment section on Sisyphean High and/or the Q&A section on Google+ to ask questions about the prompt and process.

Update #1

The following document introduces you to the universal language we’ll use for writing: bishop composition. This is the most recent iteration of the collected materials found on the main Sisyphean High site. It explains the elements found in all writing, which is often enough to give you more control over what you do; there is also a series of questions to ask in writing a response, however, that could be answered one after the other.

For now, read and take notes. Google Classroom will be updated with more instructions later this week.

BC DAMAGES Rubric and Guide

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The Age of the Essay

By Mr. Eure All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Dante at the river Lethe in Purgatorio.

Our Approach to Writing

Our writing philosophy in this course is best expressed by Neil Postman:

Writing makes it possible and convenient to subject thought to a continuous and concentrated scrutiny. Writing freezes speech and in so doing gives birth to the grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian, the scientist — all those who must hold language before them so that they can see what it means, where it errs, and where it is leading.

That quotation, along with an overview of what we’ll call emulation-through-analysis work, is in this PDF overview. As that document notes, we also pay attention to Paul Graham and his theory that essay-writing in school focuses on literary analysis through “a series of historical accidents,” with the end result that most school essays are “now three steps removed from real work.” (If you are an AP junior, by the way, you’ve already seen this stuff.)

Except when test prep is necessary, you will read what you write and write what you read. You must understand how an author writes in order to emulate her, of course, but we are focused on using what we read, not doing what David Foster Wallace described as “the literary equivalent of tearing the petals off and grinding them up and running the goo through a spectrometer to explain why a rose smells so pretty.”

This essay, while focused in part on one particular quarter/class, explains more of what analysis means to us:

View at Medium.com

Find the River

Our focus early this week is on “The Age of the Essay,” which was written in 2004 by Paul Graham. You have a hard copy of this text — here it is in Google Drive — but it was originally published online:

Graham, “The Age of the Essay”

Whichever version you read, do what seems most effective to you as you go. You don’t need to annotate the text, unless that’s what you would naturally do. You simply need to understand it. That is most often helped by interacting with the text, of course, and annotating is one way to do that.

At first, you should read this essay individually and silently. The reason: Sometimes you need to sit with your own thoughts, free of distraction, in order to find meaning. The collaborative chaos you create on most days is vital, and I think we will always be more inclined to spend our time that way than any other; it’s important, however, that you occasionally let silence into your life, especially while you read. It deepens the experience and allows you to get a bit more out of the text.

Look to Google Classroom for further instructions and any required assignments for this reading. After tackling Graham on your own, you should focus on the protégé effect, which we will define most often as proxy feedback. Read alone, and then talk to me and to each other.

One more thing: English 11R students began reading Graham last week; AP students will begin today, Monday, with a day to catch up. (That’s the burden of a college-level course.) You can and probably should work together, because the cross-pollination of ideas is a powerful part of collaboration.

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Habits and Habitats

By Mr. Eure All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Pictured: A typical classroom setup.

The Stuff of Growth

Ken Robinson on Education

This video appears elsewhere on this site, which tells you how important it must be to our work:

Every time I come back to this speech, another idea resonates with me. I’d like to know what resonates with you, especially as you continue in our classroom. My explicit goal is to make Robinson’s ideas actionable — to do more than just agree with him. I believe that grade abatement is the key. It helps, though, to consider another luminary:

Dan Pink on Motivation

This is another RSA Animate video:

Again, I find that different ideas in this speech resonate with me each time I watch it. I’m drawn to the idea of autonomy right now, because we’ll be attempting a Genius Hour from Q2 on. I’d like to know what resonates with you, too.

Talk to me in the comments below, and extend your own conversations to your specific course’s Google Classroom.

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10/11 Post-Writing: RE11

By Mr. Eure English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

*Image from Garfield Minus Garfield. If you read this assignment carefully, you can avoid the wall.

SWOT Post-Writing

Starting today, and using the SWOT analysis given to you last week, you will answer the following prompt:

Spend a significant amount of time reflecting on your process. Then tell the story of that writing process, start to finish, viz.

your use of class time;

your collaboration with your peers;

any questions you asked your teacher;

your use of other resources, like the Internet; and

especially your overall sense of how that writing process unfolded.

Before we can analyze how effectively you wrote, we must have a sense of how you, like some sort of ersatz Frankenstein, brought the response to life.

This is the first step of the post-writing protocol we use whenever you produce a piece of writing. It applies to a SWOT analysis as much as it will apply to your first full essays, and is just one of the writing tools you will learn to use as part of this makerspace:

Opens in Google Drive

The rest will be introduced and practiced over the next few weeks. For now, you are being asked only to write a process reflection. You still need the entire post-writing directions:

Post-Writing: Guide

When you load the modified template given to you in Google Classroom, you will see space only for Step #1.

Step #1: Process Reflection

Start by collecting your work. As necessary, print a copy of your responses. Then turn off your devices and look at the product(s) in front of you. For the moment, you are assessing exactly what you have — no more and no less.

In this first step, you are also analyzing the extent to which you meet the criteria for a fourth-tier GAP score. This is not, however, a completion check. Some of you will have negotiated a slightly different assignment by speaking to your teacher; that meets the threshold for a “student-generated feedback loop,” which is a significant part of these higher profiles.

Many of you, unfortunately, will not have completed your assignment, and you will not have spoken enough with your teachers to excuse that lapse. You will have wasted time in class and failed to complete the work at home. These are the facts. They are part of the evidence that we must process in order to improve your work ethic.

For now, any of you who do not have a finished assignment or a clearly articulated alternative track are locked into the third tier of GAP scores. You can unlock passage into the fourth tier through renewed assiduousness and a kind of academic makeover — a significant change in attitude and approach that will create a more assiduous and invested version of you.

If, however, your habits do not change, that is a failure to take this feedback — what you are reading right now — and apply it. At that point, you are likely locked into the second tier of profiles. You can see the logic for this by reading the first tier again and noting its focus on amenability and improvement:

GAP Tiers

After you’ve taken stock of your work ethic and time management (among other things), you can use those observations to produce an answer to the prompt. You are, as the directions suggest, telling the story of your learning: a short and hopefully edifying narrative about how you have approached this class, especially over the last week or two. (You’ll want to define “edifying” before you begin.)

This writing response shouldn’t just address the past, however; the purpose of the SWOT analysis you were assigned is to prepare for the future, and you will need to write about that, as well. Before our next class, you need to have produced a piece of writing that connects what you’ve done to what you will do.

There are no other formal requirements. You can write this response by hand or type it. If you choose the latter, you will need to print a copy before arriving to our next class, and you’ll need to attach it somehow to the Google Classroom portion. We will run a kind of triage on these responses before we begin our next unit.

Preview of Next Unit

That next unit will be to read, analyze, and then utilize “The Age of the Essay,” by Paul Graham, which you can preview here. We will use it to differentiate between digital and analog annotations, to discuss your writing habits, and to set up your first full essay assignment.

You can begin thinking about that first essay, too, if you like (and are capable of multitasking more than most). We are going to use the “find a river” philosophy to write about your own journey, with “journey” used to invoke the summer reading, Enrique’s Journey. This will be a personal narrative conceived and iterated through the tools of our course.