Category: All Junior Classes (2016-2017)

Interstitial instruction, feedback, and discussion for students in all junior-level classes (AP English Language & Composition and English 11 Regents), for the 2016-2017 school year.

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Politics and the English Language

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

From a recent Daily Beast article on Orwell. Click to read.

Clarity Is the Remedy

In searching the Internet for recent articles on George Orwell, I found an NPR story that was published more than a decade ago:

Most people these days think of George Orwell as a writer for high-school students, since his reputation rests mostly on two late novels — Animal Farm and 1984 — that are seldom read outside the classroom. But through most of his career, Orwell was known for his journalism and his rigorous, unsparing essays, which documented a time that seems in some ways so much like our own.

I used to teach Animal Farm, and you know, of course, that I’ve encouraged you to read 1984, among other novels1. But I agree with Paul Graham and Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace and many other smart people: The surest way to ruin a student’s experience with an author is to make the student take tests and write essays about the experience. Instead, you need to recognize that there might be a reason for Orwell’s surge in popularity over the last few weeks.

Read the rest of this NPR essay from 2006, and then tackle Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” which is embedded below and will be photocopied as soon as possible. We’re going to go slowly, but we are going to talk about politics. Everything is about politics, after all, especially lying. As Orwell said,”Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

Orwell on Writing: ‘Clarity Is the Remedy’

Most people these days think of George Orwell as the author of high school reading staples Animal Farm and 1984. But author Lawrence Wright says that Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language,” is the piece of writing to which he most often returns.

Politics and the English Language

Reading an essay like this in a climate like ours requires some interaction. I’ll focus your efforts later in the week; for now, take notes in a way that feels natural to you.

Sidebar: If you are in AP11, plan your week around two assignments: Orwell’s essay and the timed essay you wrote a while back. All juniors should expect general feedback on grade abatement early this week. GAP scores will be posted by Wednesday afternoon.

If you want to read Orwell online, use this link:

Politics and the English Language

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse.

Remember to enable the reader function on Safari if you’re using an iOS device, which will make the text easier to skim:

It’s a little more complicated to do this on Android, but here’s one set of directions for the Chrome browser. If there’s an easier way, leave it in the comments below. The goal is to make it possible to read this sort of essay (and this sort of post) interstitially.

If you want to print your own copy, use the document embedded below. I’ll make copies for you, however, as soon as I’m back in the building tomorrow morning.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F01%2FPoliticsandtheEnglishLanguage1946.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

  1. I was a little too ambitious in floating so many novels at once, but that’s the point of a makerspace: Be ambitious, make mistakes, and learn something from our failures. Don’t be surprised if we randomly spend a period discussing how to catch an invisible man, though. ↩

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Unspoken Rules

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

Our primary learning goal this week involves your new groups:

New Groups

That post explains why assigned groups have become important for a nontraditional space like ours. This week is the experimental step — the test of what those groups can do, with time set aside to debrief and adjust on Thursday and Friday.

The secondary learning goal this week is to analyze an author’s writing in a unique way. You’ll have an article from The New York Times that was published on Thursday, January 5. Specific instructions for analysis will be given on Tuesday, after you’ve had a day to interact with the text as you normally would.

We also have a tertiary goal1: to extend and apply the text’s ideas to our current work, including the online components of your Pareto Projects.

Monday

Start by reading the article:

Rules for Social Media, Created by Kids (Published 2017)

Another group of seventh graders (of mixed gender and in a different community) told me the rules regarding how many pictures to post from an event. There was a sense of what was acceptable and what was not.

Work with this text however you normally would2. You can take notes, annotate the printed copy, click on hyperlinks, have discussions — anything goes. We’ll use whatever you choose to do as the basis for reflection and metacognition later in the week.

Tuesday

Remaining in your current seats — that is, wherever you normally sit during a class period — spend Tuesday analyzing the text. Commit as much of that analysis to writing as possible. You need written work for Wednesday. Use these prompts:

How does the ol’ rhetorical triangle break down in this text? More specifically, what can you tell about the audience of this text, especially compared to you? I think we can make a meaningful distinction between the intended audience and you, the actual readers of the article.

Beyond the rhetorical triangle is the style of this piece, specifically its tone. What is that tone? Make a distinction between tone that is backed up by language and logic in the text and a reader-projected tone. The latter is a tone that isn’t actually present. We often hear what we expect to hear, not what is actually written.

Finally, what can you, the reader, do with this? I would call this practical redirection. Are there other unspoken rules for social media? And since the answer is obviously yes, which ones matter to our studies?

Wednesday

Get into your new groups as you enter the classroom. Find space to work with these two or three other students, and then figure out how best to share your writing and thinking from Tuesday. Then work together to revisit the text and refine your responses.

If done correctly, this day will see you editing whatever you typed on Tuesday. You’ll have a record through Google, which monitors every change like a benevolent Big Brother, of how you incorporated your new group’s feedback.

Thursday

On Thursday, sit again with your new group. I imagine that many of you will need the extra period to finish Wednesday’s assignment, so that will be first; then you’re going to start reflecting on the previous three days. Consider how your new group meshed, how well you worked together, and how different the experience was compared to your usual chambered work.

Your assignments over the next few days are (1) to submit the text-based work you’ve done, and (2) to write metacognitively and reflectively about the group work, focusing on collegiality especially among the many other GAP skills and traits.

You’ll receive Google Classroom assignments for both of those. Expect the text-based work to be due on Friday; the metacognition will probably have a due date of Monday night.

Friday

Friday’s lesson will be determined midway through the week. As always, pay attention to the interstitial hubs of the course for information.

  1. Mostly so I can use the word “tertiary,” which is one of my current favorite words. ↩

  2. With emphasis on the imperative verb there: Work with this text. If your normal approach is to ignore an assignment, try something outside the box. ↩

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Tuesday, 1/3 – Wednesday, 1/4

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

Today and tomorrow are transitional periods for us. First, you need to finish the work that was assigned two weeks ago. Then you will write short essays that chronicle your progress toward your Pareto project goals.

Transition #1: GAP Self-Assessment and “Unto the Breach”

Use Google Classroom and the following instructional posts to review and, as necessary, to complete the last two formal assignments:

Pareto Principalities

Unto the Breach

If you submitted writing, this is an opportunity to revisit and revise. Either way, a day spent looking at where you were two weeks ago can help you to generate evidence of all sorts of important skills and traits.

Transition #2: Pareto Project Update*

Load the following document:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F01%2F2017StartParetoAnalysis.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

There is a prompt at the start of that document. It will be cross-posted to Google Classroom at the end of the day tomorrow, at which point you will be able to upload a copy of your response for archival and evidentiary purposes. Until then, you must determine what to do by reading carefully, asking questions, and collaborating with your peers.

The rest of this embedded document is self-explanatory. Read it carefully, too.

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Unto the Breach

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

Henry, pondering the breach. Click for one of the more famous speeches from Henry V.

Confounded Base

First, a note: You are not required to set up a social media account for this course. Read the Pareto Project guide and previous posts carefully, and you’ll see only the suggestion that using social media will give weight to your work. That’s why we cite Paul Graham’s “golden age of the essay” and stress the need for more than a teacher’s red pen and score. Your work needs to matter, and the Internet lets you reach an audience beyond our classroom.

The Internet is also, as those previous posts and guides explain, where you will live and work in your professional future. When you apply for college, those institutions will use Google to search for your name. They will scour social media sites. They will uncover any footprint you’ve left online.

Which is why your assignment today is to search Google for that footprint. Search your full name. What pops up? Visit any accounts you have that aren’t private, and look at them like a stranger would. What do you see?

Take today’s period to describe what is already out there about you, and then write about what you want to be out there. What sort of student do you hope colleges (and then prospective employers) find when they look for you? What footprint have you created?

This thought exercise is why part of the Pareto Project is publishing through Medium. On January 3, you’ll write the first essay documenting your process, and you will be strongly encouraged to craft that essay in a way that lends itself to Medium’s architecture and format. Again, you are not required to do this, nor to have a Medium account at all; nor is there some secret expectation built into this quarter’s grade abatement profiles. Instead, the hope is that you see the value in using Medium to create a portfolio of insightful reflection, narration, exposition, etc.

Many of you will also have multimedia elements to publish and share, from videos to comics to podcasts. You should consider which sites best fit those elements. Then you should consider which audiences best fit those elements.

Which brings us to Twitter. There are few better ways to publicize work, and almost no social media appears more future-proof. Once again, you are not required to use Twitter. Many folks get by just fine in life without a Twitter account. But you should not demonize it. You should not assume that it has no educational or vocational value. Used properly, it is among the best ways to establish a digital presence.

After you’ve written something significant about your current online footprint and what you want that footprint will be in the future, spend some time exploring Medium and Twitter. Find professionals you admire or hope to emulate, and observe their footprint. What do politicians write about on Medium? How do writers interact with others on Twitter? Do artists post pictures directly to Twitter, or do they link to another account online?

Take whatever you learn from this exploration, and commit it to writing. Be thoughtful. Make this a good piece of evidence of those essential skills and traits. And ask questions below, if you have them. Interacting with me, here, is as important as anything else.

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Pareto Principalities

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

Cover art to DJ Signify’s Sleep No More. The track featuring Sage Francis is at the bottom of this post.

Pareto Recap

Your Pareto Project should now be underway. If you haven’t already, post your 120-character idea to the central Google Form. Edit your entry, too, if it needs clarity or revision. Then check out the master list of ideas on the last page of the guide, which is embedded again below. If you get to the end of the week without incident, your project and blueprint are good to go. Otherwise, we’ll work out an interrupted schedule together to strengthen the project and clarify the blueprint.

Watch this space for an update over the winter break. I will give you instructions about what to expect on January 3, when you will complete a writing response related to your Pareto progress.

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F12%2FParetoProjectGuidev1.6.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

Really, Though: Mind the GAP

The new year is an opportunity to regroup and refocus. You’ve been given explicit instructions about ongoing work and upcoming work — here is the post for 11R; here it is for AP — and we just spent a significant amount of time setting up Round 1 of your Pareto Projects. As we enter 2017, you might also note that you are now in the calendar year when you will apply to college. If you haven’t been serious before, now is the time.

Our interstitial classroom will take care of your access to each other, to me, and to the materials of the course. We will centralize bishop composition after the break, using it to drive everything else we do, including exam-specific writing and reading work. Grade abatement will take care of how you are assessed.

On that last note:

  1. Consider the assignments issued to you through Google Classroom. Take an inventory of missing work, incomplete work, lates, etc. Remember that approved lates or incompletes are fine; everything else is not.
  2. Consider your use of class time. Take an inventory of how often you believe you have been on- or off-task. Then take a true inventory of your focus. How often am I likely to have noted that you are off-task?
  3. Consider your metacognitive and reflective work. Take an inventory of how much writing you’ve done and how many conversations you’ve had with me about your learning, your growth, your writing, etc.
  4. Consider your atelier or workshop efforts. That refers to the extent to which you’ve studied with me to become an expert and the extent to which you’ve taught others. Take an inventory of how demonstrably invested you’ve been in the academic and grade-abated success of your peers.

For some of you, that is going to be a sobering picture. You have lost focus, missed work, and neglected your responsibilities. That’s human nature, so you don’t need to self-flagellate… but you do need to get better at this. Load the expanded profiles alongside your notes on GAP logic:

[pdfjs-viewer url=”http%3A%2F%2Fsisypheanhigh.com%2Fmalachite%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F12%2FGradeAbatementProfilesFourTiersv2.2.pdf” viewer_width=100% viewer_height=600px fullscreen=true download=true print=true]

 

More than a few of you need to approach 2017 as if you were clinging desperately to the edge of a Tier 3 profile, with the abyss of Tier 2 gazing up at you. Because you are. You are hanging on by your fingernails.

A Series of Tubes

The last post introduced the fourth step of the Pareto Project, and you’ve had nearly a week to flex your autodidactic muscles. You should have made some progress in answering these prompts from Step #4:

  1. Set up a Twitter account and profile.
  2. Set up a Medium account and profile.

We’ll now use Wednesday and Thursday to discuss Twitter, Medium, and your digital persona. That’s the first lesson: You need to curate a digital presence. When folks go looking for you in the future, they’ll use Google, and this is the start of your control over what they find. Colleges will want to see a student who maintained a Medium account, who wrote regularly and insightfully about different subjects, and they’ll want to see a student who engages online in a smart, responsible way. Finding nothing might be as bad as finding evidence of bad decisions.

That doesn’t mean that you manufacture a different version of yourself. You need to be authentic, but not unfiltered. For most of you, that means creating a professional Twitter account that you use to promote Medium essays you write, Instagram projects you create, podcasts you record, etc. You can carefully choose who you follow, what you post, and what your virtual space looks like.

Think of this like a digital résumé. The world you are entering won’t care about the grade you got on a test; it will care about your digital imprint and the impression that creates of you. Keep any personal social media private, and treat these new accounts as extensions of the work you do in our course. Build a better version of yourself.

Let’s talk, though, about what these social media accounts will do for us. Head back to that last post, look at what has been given to you as examples, and start a discussion with me and your peers. What are your concerns? What are your questions?

Meanwhile, a preview of the kind of poetry we’ll look at in January:

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Reading the Room

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

A Decision About 1984

In “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading,” John Holt offered a litmus test for reading:

I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that’s enough for me…

I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.

The bolded sentences give us our approach to novels like 1984. You’ve had Orwell’s book for a month now, and the only real question is this: Have you given the story 30-40 pages? If not, that’s your assignment: to read far enough into 1984 to determine if you are going to keep reading or not.

We need to tweak Holt’s language a bit to make it more meaningful, of course. Waiting for an author “to get his story going” isn’t precise enough to be useful, and there are other reasons to continue a book beyond “lik[ing] the characters.” What matters is that you should be getting something out of 1984, and if you aren’t, you have the right to stop reading.

To make that decision, you need to invest in the attempt. You can’t begin a book expecting to hate it, nor should you bring your previous reading experiences to that particular table. Start clean. Recognize that many folks, including your teacher, think highly of the book you’ve been given. Go back to that post from November 18 and read what one of your predecessors wrote about the power of 1984. Then give Orwell a chance to hook you.

If you invest in the attempt, you can make a respectable decision to stop. Either way, you need to account for your decision, which brings us to what you do after giving Orwell at least 30-40 pages:

Write reflectively and metacognitively about your decision to continue 1984 or your decision to stop 1984. Explain your reasons as a result of earnest attempt to invest in the book’s world and characters. Justify the time you dedicated to reading the rest of the novel, or justify the choice to put it aside and look for other texts.

That is taken from the Google Classroom assignment, which gives you until Monday, December 19, to make this decision and account for it in writing. As always, the thinking that surrounds your decision is more important than the decision itself.

Some of you have are deep into 1984, and a few have already finished the novel. You can still answer the prompt above by reflecting on when you made the decision to keep reading. I also invite you to share your experience with your peers by posting on Google+. Would you recommend the book? What general reasons for reading it (or not) can you give?

Bookkeeping

You will eventually be asked to do something similar for the other three novels provided to you in mid-November. Start looking for the time it will take to give each author a chance, and invest in each novel to the same degree, at least initially.

We have a few copies of The Invisible Man on our bookshelf, a full class set of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but no hard copies of The Time Machine. You should attempt to read these novels online when possible:

These are shorter novels chosen as much for their length as the quality of the stories. Use that to your advantage.

Note: If you decide not to continue 1984, or if you have already finished it, return your copy as soon as possible. Another teacher is interested in teaching it, and I’d like to get them to her before Monday. You will check in your novel through the same Google Form used to check it out.

As always, ask questions about this process below.

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Provisional Answers: Analysis

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

Gibson is always good.

Pattern Analysis

Load the following:

That should show you the complete set of responses to the essential questions given to you in our last post. If it doesn’t work, let me know in the comments or in person, and I’ll see what I can do to flip a PDF of the responses.

Your assignment: Read your peers’ responses, identify patterns, and offer insight into the collective thinking for each question.

If we break that sentence down, you have three things to do:

  1. Read your peers’ responses.
  2. Identify patterns in those responses.
  3. Write down something insightful about those responses.

This kind of pattern analysis needs a lot of data to work well, and you’ll have it: more than 100 students will have given provisional answers to seven essential questions. The obvious problem? You have to read 700 responses.

Speed Reading

Actually, you don’t need to read 700 responses. First, there won’t be 700 responses; we’ll be using what we have at different points over the next few days. Second, you only need to read enough responses to identify a meaningful pattern. You are meant to skim your peers’ writing. This is also a time to practice your reading speed — how quickly you can push through a wall of text while still understanding what it says.

You should apply your regular metacognition to this speed-reading to see how your brain handles it. Note which questions generated responses that you find interesting, too. You should even start to see patterns in the writing itself — in the use of specifics, the development of ideas, the repetition of phrases, and so on.

If you have questions about how to approach the assignment, ask them below. Otherwise, bring your observations and insights to Google+ and group discussions in class.

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Questions and Answers

  By All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)
From the 1933 film version of The Invisible Man.

From the 1933 film version of The Invisible Man, which is quite different from the novel.

Essential Questions

In education, the sort of question you’ll find below is often called essential. The Greeks called these discussions dialectics. In brief, they are the reason we read and think and write: to answer questions that matter. Or, at least, to start to answer them. I don’t think any of us ever find the truth Socrates sought.

But you have something like a foundation now. You know what is expected in a learning environment like this one1. So you can take a few days to work on a set of questions that relate to the reading for this quarter:

  1. To what extent can any of us trust our senses?
  2. To what extent can any of us trust our memories?
  3. How do ignorance, knowledge, and happiness interact for us2?
  4. To what extent and in what ways does power corrupt?
  5. In what ways are any of us ever alone?
  6. To what extent are people self-destructive?
  7. At what point and for what reasons should a group stop an individual from doing whatever he or she wants?

Define terms, seek examples, and, above all, talk to each other. Ask clarifying questions below in the comments. Use Google+ to anchor your in-class conversations and to continue conversations that require more thoughtfulness and precision. Share your observations and insights as often and widely as you can.

We will also add to these questions as we continue, shifting the language and focus as necessary. As you read and write, new questions will occur to you. This is Piet Hein’s idea: “Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer.”

One more thing: While I will guide you through activities and lessons built around those four novels, they are not required. Strongly encouraged, yes, but not required. Nor will we drive our learning through prescribed readings. There are hundreds of other texts that tackle the same subjects, that lend themselves to the same discussions, and while these have many advantages, we must remember the lessons of Paul Graham and John Holt.

The point is that we’ll take all quarter for this, and that means you should read because the readings are interesting and edifying, not because some teacher told you to do it. Keep your eyes out for other texts, too; taking that sort of initiative can only help you in here. I’m thinking of introducing “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” for instance, because of its powerful connection to these ideas, and there are several short stories and poems that we could read together3.

Throughout all of this, work in writing as often as possible. Sketch out ideas, take notes, write metacognitive responses — whatever it takes to generate understanding and GAP evidence, since those are one and the same in this course. Look to Google Classroom for formal assignments, as always, and advocate for yourself when you feel lost.

Here are the readings again, as reminder and encouragement:

  1. Which is an atelier model, by the way — a specific kind of makerspace that centralizes creativity and expertise through the ripple effect of teaching others. We’ll talk more about it later this week. ↩

  2. I don’t like the phrasing of this, but I want to avoid the cliché: Would you want to be ignorant and happy, or have knowledge and be miserable? It’s not a binary consideration like that. The idea is to consider what you know, how you know it, and whether you’d prefer not to know it. We’ll talk more in class. ↩

  3. I love “Funes, the Memorious,” if you want a beautifully strange story about memory. ↩

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Quarter 2, Day 5 [Juniors]

  By All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)
On future maps, though...

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:

countymappurple1024

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:

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.

  1. 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. ↩

  2. See John Holt and Paul Graham for a reminder of what that means. ↩

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Journey Writing

  By All Junior Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)
From the video game, Journey, by thatgamecompany.

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.

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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.