All Courses
Published 2018–2023
Google Site: Sisyphean High
Built in 2018 to feature student work and testimonials. Some of the most helpful pages are listed here with quotations pulled from those pages.
URL: https://sites.google.com/brewsterschools.org/sisyphean-high
About
For the most part, instruction is no different from instruction in any Humanities-based classroom: Texts are read, lessons are taught, guidance is provided, etc., as students develop the skills and traits they need for the future.
URL: https://sites.google.com/brewsterschools.org/sisyphean-high/about
Tour
The digital [and physical] spaces of the course are constantly evolving. Each one offers some insight into what it means to run a makerspace in the Humanities — to change the paradigms around instruction, student work, and feedback.
URL: https://sites.google.com/brewsterschools.org/sisyphean-high/about/tour
Testimonials
These are testimonials written by students. The first batch are categorized by how they relate to grade abatement, which is the paradigm shift in assessment, [and by] the Strategic Coherence Plan used by Brewster Central Schools… [while this page] showcases feedback from the Top Ten seniors who graduated in 2018-2019.
GAP Testimonials
These are collected from the most recent iteration of the self-assessment process. The set includes responses from April, May, and June of 2018.
SCP Testimonials
The following five sets of testimonials allow students to speak to [a Strategic Coherence Plan that emphasizes a set of universal skills and traits]. These testimonials also get at the strength of Brewster, what has always been to nurture innovation and creativity.
URL: https://sites.google.com/brewsterschools.org/sisyphean-high/testimonials
English 12 Testimonials (2021): https://sites.google.com/brewsterschools.org/sisyphean-high/testimonials/English-12
Products
The first products of a Humanities makerspace are the students themselves. They design blueprints around universal skills and traits, which are understood in the context of their needs and goals. This is best showcased through student testimonials, especially those steeped in the language of universal skills and traits.
The second products are the relationships formed between the different stakeholders in the system. The goal of a learning environment like ours is to bring real-world collaboration into a public high school — that is, collaboration driven by shared beliefs and goals, not grades. This is why empathy is the first skill taught and honed, and why it is tagged with an image from Ken Robinson’s seminal speech on educational paradigms.
Pareto Projects
These projects cover student interests as diverse as using metacognition to develop a new baseball pitch and developing a following as a Fortnite streamer.
Student Writing
Paul Graham, in 2004’s “The Age of the Essay,” notes that “[a]nyone can publish an essay on the Web, and it gets judged, as any writing should, by what it says, not who wrote it.” Almost fifteen years later, that “golden age of the essay,” as he puts it, is even more evident.
URL: https://sites.google.com/brewsterschools.org/sisyphean-high/products