If you were to look at all the categories assigned to this post, you’d see it covers everything from grade abatement to feedback to triage. Looking through those categories isn’t the point today, though; the links are there to emphasize that the post you are reading is important. Very, very important. Use-an-empty-adverb-and-italicize-it important.
The central concept here is that you must maximize your work for the 66 minutes of class time allotted this year. You’ll have breaks built in, including breaks you can schedule yourself; the rest of the time must be fully focused on our work.
You’ll have a flexible set of guidelines for this, which you can load below:
That schedule is printed and posted in the classroom, too. This post provides context. You will start with a list of instructional posts that have something in common.
You do not need to read these, because they are assigned when needed; several of them, in fact, have been sent in concert with the post you are reading now.
- The Return of the Fatal Flying Guillotine
- Leveling Up: TL;DR
- Leveling Up
- Focus and Feedback
- A Glass Case Full of Lost Treasures and Fossils
- The Feedback Chain
- Feedback: In Shambles
- Terms and Conditions
Again and again, these posts circle back, like so many falcons in the widening gyre, to in-class focus and feedback. Those are the keys.
The feedback in question is more than the feedback you receive on work. It’s the instructional feedback chain that you need to learn and to grow. You cannot be successful without sustained in-class focus and a habit of reading — closely reading — every instructional post, guide, letter, and comment.
This year, 2020-2021, you are physically present for our course only once a week. The odd Wednesday you attend will be dedicated to the Pareto Project. This is a strange schedule for a strange year.
Here are multiple versions of the full scope and sequence of the year:
- https://tinyurl.com/2020-scope-overview | Overview1
- https://tinyurl.com/2020-gap-cal-02 | GAP/Quarterly Scoring
- https://tinyurl.com/2020-scope-month | Monthly Focuses
- https://tinyurl.com/2020-scope-week | Weekly Texts and Tasks
What this exhaustive planning drives home for me is also what it should drive home for you:
- We spend the first four months of the year practicing and hopefully mastering the skills, traits, and processes of authentic learning.
- Only if you have built those foundations can you use the final five months to create extraordinary work.
- You cannot build anything in this space without serious in-class focus, especially on interstitial feedback and instruction.
In other words, if you do not make the most of your in-class focus, and if you do not invest fully in the instructional framework of this course, you cannot be successful.
Each week, you meet for just 66 minutes in person for a period of intense focus. This will include conferences, in-person workshops, presentations, lectures, and class discussions. You must make active, thoughtful choices.
There will be just 33 minutes additionally of at-home focus. This will include synchronous activities like discussions, lectures, and peer presentations. Distance learners can extend this beyond the required 33 minutes. You must make the best of the situation.
Again, you have access to a schedule for this:
Wednesdays will always be set aside for “genius hour” passion projects. Students who are on the schedule will workshop their projects, in person or remotely; the other students have the option of asynchronous feedback through Drive, Docs, or a meeting during office hours.
Overall, there is a limited amount of time for the critical in-person work on writing, reading, and the other Humanities skills and traits. You must, therefore, direct yourself outside of class time to prepare for in-person feedback and workshops.
If you do nothing else, you must treat the 66 minutes of in-person time as sacrosanct: You must do good, authentic Humanities work while you are in the classroom.
This is possible. 66 minutes is just 0.65% of your entire week. If you happen to be in person on Wednesday, too, that percentage doubles to just 1.3% of your life over seven days.
You can dedicate a single percentage of your time each week to this space. And a strange thing will happen, when you do: You will find it easier to dedicate more time outside of this space to this work. You will find the work more meaningful. It will be easier.
This is the trick of it: The more you invest in the class, the more you benefit; the more you benefit, the more you will want to invest in the class, and the easier it will be to do so. Authenticity and understanding stack.
Once more, here is the post that breaks down your 66-minute periods for 2020-2021:
This is the text that you’ll find reprinted below, almost verbatim. ↩