Academic Update: AP11

The following updates cover current and upcoming course work and are written to help you organize your time as you begin your Pareto Project on Thursday, December 8. Read this information carefully. Then ask any clarifying questions in the comment section below.

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Ongoing: Personal Journey Essay

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It’s been a while, so you may need to jog your memory:

Journey Writing

The majority of you will not return to this, especially with more essays and a Pareto Project upcoming. Some of you, however, have continued to meet with me and/or work on your own toward a final draft. This minority will now be tasked with publishing their work on Medium. Then they will use our nascent atelier format — essentially a souped-up form of proxy feedback — to teach their peers how to use Medium when we get to that step of the Pareto Project.

If you are in the group that will continue to work on these essays, you will need to make that part of your Q2 plans. Schedule time to conference with me, share works-in-progress, collaborate outside of class, etc. There is no formal deadline, but you will need to have learned how to use Medium before you return from the winter recess, if you plan on helping folks with their first Pareto Project posts.

Regardless, everyone in the course will need to account for their choice to continue working on the essay or not. That reflective writing will not have a formal assignment issued; instead, you will need to have read this post closely enough to know that you must sit down for 15-20 minutes to answer the question, “What happened with that journey essay?”

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Ongoing: Q2 Novels

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For future reference, here is the list of Q2 novels embedded in an earlier post:

• 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

Remember that each of those is available, for free, online. We have some copies of Stevenson’s novel and one or two copies of The Invisible Man, but only 1984 is stocked.

You should continue to read these novels. Keep the original post in mind:

Quarter 2, Day 5 [Juniors]

Just as important is John Holt’s essay and his criteria for reading a novel: Give each one 20-30 pages, and if you don’t want to finish, just make sure that your decision is deliberate and based on the text, not a lack of time or a general dislike of reading. Account for that choice metacognitively.

One note: Please push 1984 up in your schedule, as another teacher needs 50 copies of it to teach it to her class, and we should accommodate her. This might give us an opportunity to partner juniors with sophomores who are reading the same book, too, which could be interesting.

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Ongoing: Regular Metacognition

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This is simply a reminder that you need to reflect and be metacognitive regularly. Spend 15-20 minutes at least once a week analyzing your choices, your progress, and your subsequent goals. This is the best way to develop the skills and traits you need for the future and to generate evidence for your grade abatement profile.

If you struggle to think of how to frame this regular reflection/metacognition, respond to these three basic questions:

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

Answer #2 by referring specifically to the skills and traits of grade abatement (e.g., organization, amenability, assiduousness).

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Upcoming: In-Class Activities

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Meanwhile, there will be in-class activities that bring us together in a more traditional way. (Well, our version of traditional.) You will retain choice from period to period — you can spend the time in whatever way is most productive or effective — but certain days will be dedicated to an activity or focused lesson. The vast majority will be provided interstitially a few days in advance, so you’ll be able to plan accordingly. Some examples:

• A divergent-thinking activity about capturing the Invisible Man from The Invisible Man
• Poetry reading with Maya-Angelou-inspired hip-hop
• Poetry reading with Bob-Dylan-inspired hip-hop
• Dialectical discussion of topics from, e.g., The Pig that Wants to Be Eaten

For lack of a better way to phrase it, think of these as one-off lessons.

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Upcoming: Formal Units

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Once the Pareto Projects are in motion, we will return to more formal units. This needs to be mentioned, because it would be easy to forget that Pareto refers to only 20% of our work. You will need to plan your time around the reading, thinking, and writing that has characterized all of our learning this year, as we study specific ideas and answer specific essential questions.

The next unit, for instance, will build on the questions you’ve recently answered and the novels you are currently reading. We will learn about lying — how it works, how we learn to lie, the types of lies, and the nature of systemic/societal lies like the myth of Santa Claus. After that, we are likely to do a smaller unit on memory itself — how it works, how we construct collective memories, and how your individual memories function.

As always, you will need to watch this space and Google Classroom for instructional materials, assignments, and feedback.

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Upcoming: Test Prep

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Before the end of Q2, we start exam prep. Everything else on this list is makerspace learning — student-driven, creative, exploratory, iterative, even fun. Exam prep… not so much. Still, it will take up time, and you need a sense of how much effort and attention might be required of you when it comes to timed writing, timed reading, and multiple-choice analysis. Read this essay when you can:

View at Medium.com

That will give you an idea of how we’ll approach test prep: as an act of gamesmanship steeped in critical thinking, collaborative planning, and logic.