The Aft Agley Gang Rides Again
If you search this site for the word “agley,” you get more than a few posts on the unpredictability of our schedule. Most of those posts make some allusion to Robert Burns’ poem, which gives us the phrase “gang aft agley” and a chance for a very weird pun.
This week was another microcosm of unpredictability. A snowstorm kept us out on Wednesday, which was naturally the first day of spring; we lost three hours on Thursday to a weather-related delay; many of you were, therefore, forced to spend all day on Thursday preparing for the spring musical; and some of you spent the period on Friday taking the the twice-rescheduled DCC Accuplacer exam.
Even the predictable elements of that lineup are chaotic. That’s why we use the term interstitial here: When the learning is accessible anytime and anywhere, we can ride out the chaos. All it takes is a focus on preparing in advance and watching each other’s backs. Hence the Aft Agley Gang.
Regulators, Mount Up
We will meet four times next week (barring another misplaced winter storm), have five days for a makeshift spring break, and then return for more than seven consecutive weeks of classes. It is a good time to self-assess.
We’ll start on Monday with a period of extemporaneous writing about writing and continue on Tuesday with a period of extemporaneous writing about reading. This worked well when we did it in mid-February, and it works especially well to tie together the writing and reading processes that were disrupted last this week.
The prompts for Monday and Tuesday are below. The first will be posted to Google Classroom at the start of the period on March 26. You will have the next 42 minutes to answer the prompt and submit your response. On Tuesday, March 27, you will answer the provided prompt by hand, with your phones and computers stored until the bell rings at the end of the period.
If you’re doing your job, you should be reading this well in advance of the work itself. That’s why we’re using the term extemporaneous, which has a number of possible meanings in context. You can prepare as much or as little as you like, because the focus will be on the skill of extemporaneous metacognition.
Monday’s Prompt: Character Essay
Here is how we planned out the writing process for your essay on character, starting with a bit of direct instruction on Monday, March 19:
You had the rest of the week, starting on Tuesday, to work with me and each other. The focus, whether you were applying to NHS or not, was on finding an unexpected or surprising approach.
You’ll be asked to submit copies of any and all digital evidence related to your character essay work. This includes final drafts, outlines, and collaborative notes. This evidence will be checked in separately from what you do during class on Monday.
For that in-class writing, you will spend about 40 minutes of a class period writing about the writing. How did you use the notes taken on the whiteboard? How did you use feedback from your peers and teacher? What did you discover in brainstorming, and how did that fit your various intrinsic and extrinsic goals? Most importantly, what did you learn about how you write from this week’s process?
This response must be submitted before you leave and folded into the GAP scoring process that culminates on Thursday, March 29.
Tuesday’s Prompt: The Catcher in the Rye
You started this novel on February 25 with an atypical look at online annotations. Since then, you could have signed out a hard copy of the novel. You’ve also been invited repeatedly to return to the story when you have time, sometimes as an in-class alternative to your formal assignments. It’s now been a month.
On Tuesday, you will spend about 40 minutes of our class period writing about your reading. You should start with what’s going on in the book. How far have you gotten? What’s happening? What do you know? Then you should write your reactions to the novel, including your perspective on the narrator. Finally, you should write about the most important aspect of this process: What have you learned about how you read over the last month?
This response will be written by hand — no computers, phones, etc. — and collected before you leave class on Tuesday. If you are absent, you will have the usual 24 hours to make up the work. It will then be folded into the GAP scoring process that culminates on Thursday, March 29.
Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.
For some of you, these two days of silent, introspective writing are opportunities to focus on what you’ve learned about your learning over the last month. This will put you in the right frame of mind to self-assess as the GAP panel ends, too.
For others, it is your last, best chance to drag your body of evidence out of the lowest tier of profiles and earn a passing score for the quarter. This is it. Look at the threshold for failure:
That untiered set of profiles hangs on our wall. The key language in that 2: “a deliberate and systemic disengagement from the learning process.” It’s repeated a sentence later: “There is no investment in the learning environment.”
If you invest for this entire week of focused self-assessment, writing as much as you can as honestly as you can each day, then you will genuinely fit a higher profile. It’s an incredibly forgiving system.
But if you continue to be weak in virtually all facets of the course? If you continue not to meet even the most basic requirements? You will fail, just as you would in any classroom.
As always, this is about self-control and choice. (And flying guillotines.)
GAP Scoring and Miscellanea
These instructional posts are used to set up our in-class work, so I want to explain a change to the GAP protocol for next week. On Thursday, March 29, you’ll be asked to complete the usual Google Form to self-assess your performance since March 12. In addition, you’ll be asked to submit a link to a Google Drive folder that contains organized evidence.
Here’s what that will look like in Google Classroom:
When clicked, that will open up a folder of evidence that is clearly labeled, like this:
This may require you to make copies of evidence, depending on your existing organizational strategy. It may require you to move a few things around. It should be easy enough, however, to organize your work under one hyperlink. We’ll talk more about the process on Wednesday.
A few more notes:
- AP students will need to complete both the multiple-choice assignment and the required analysis outside of class, since Monday will be dedicated to something else.
- Updates to the course calendars will be online as soon as possible, but probably not until spring break.
- Previous GAP scores will be posted tonight or tomorrow morning. Because of the extensive feedback and data released last week, there will be no further discussion or revisiting these scores.
If you have questions about anything in this post, ask below.