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Senior Projects Overview

  By Project Resources

Menu of Choices

Here are the projects assigned required for 2024:

Here are two other projects that are often adapted or folded into the second semester of senior:

Read on for other updated materials and a rundown of the projects.

Continue reading

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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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Update: June 8

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

This is an update to our last post, which more precisely covers what you should be working on at the end of the year. There are copies of that post available for anyone who might benefit from a printed version1. If you find yourself idle or distracted for more than a moment, use that to refocus.

On that note, your self-assessed GAP scores for Q4C are due on Monday. The required Google Form is now available, but you should not — absolutely should not — complete it until after class on Friday, June 9. Start compiling your understanding, insight, and evidence. Plan to attach something appropriate to the Google Classroom assignment. All recent instructional posts in RE11 and AP11 have invited you to be more critical of your efforts in here; this is an opportunity to make up lost ground through self-conscious testimony and analysis.

On the corner bookshelf, near the copies of that “Aged Paper” post, you have copies of pretty much everything else you need for the end of the year and exams2. Take some time on the last two days of school to peruse those piles. Most stacks are labeled. The unlabeled piles on the bottom shelf are less universally useful, so I’ll cover them now. One is a copy of the article on valedictorians and future-proof skills and traits that was recently shared with you; the other is a guide to transitional words and phrases, which I will paste below.

Click here to load the site.

As you prepare for the Regents Exam, this guide can help you to hone your essay arrangement. You can indicate for the reader how ideas are connected, how sections of your essay transition, etc, just by memorizing a few phrases from these lists. Most of you naturally use this language, but in timed writing, it pays to be deliberate. Tell your reader when you are contrasting concepts, when you are adding information, when you are concluding, and so on.

Pareto Project Update

In Room 210, near the windows, you’ll find a remarkable sculpture created by Grace H. in P7. You might have been lucky enough on Thursday to hear Sarah C. perform her spoken-word poetry. Those are the first two examples of what the last post encourages you to do with these projects. There will be workshops on blackout poetry on Monday, for instance, and several groups have reached out about posting their projects here, on this website. I hope that inspires many more of you.

Keep in mind that this was never about the closed-loop learning of a classroom, so it doesn’t hurt you to step away from your project without a final product or performance. Through the end of final exams, however, and through the summer online, I can help you share what you’ve created. That might be as simple as coordinating how to share a link to your podcast or Instagram account, and it might be as complicated as helping you film and edit a performance. It might be a physical product that you’d like to leave in Room 210 for a few weeks, and it might be something you’d like to leave in the Room for all of next year. I can imagine some of you wanting simply to talk with me about a printed portfolio of writing, while others might want to build a blog online to house future essays you’ll write.

The course doesn’t really end on Monday with the last bell of the day. It doesn’t really end on Wednesday when the Regents Exam is over. It ends when you want it to. For a few folks, it ended months ago, and the rest of this time has been a long slog through disinterest and disdain; for most of you, however, this has very much been about lifelong learning. Remember that.

  1. I really did try to go paperless, back in September, and still think it’s worth minimizing the amount that we print in a class like this. That said, there are copies of what you need, if you need them. ↩

  2. Everything you need for your summer work, remember, is on the other side of the entrance. Make sure you know what’s expected of you over the next two months. ↩

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The End of The Long Walk

  By All Classes (2016-2017), AP English Language & Composition (2016-2017), English 10 Regents (2016-2017), English 11 Regents (2016-2017)

Makerspace Calendar

Refer to this calendar for the overall structure of the last month:

We will spend most of our time before the end of school making things. The course expectations for focus and productivity haven’t changed, but you will have more autonomy. Note that any end-of-year test prep or individual GAP improvements will take precedence over unstructured makerspace activity. It’s not exactly a feast-or-famine framework, but it’s similar.

Pareto Projects

Review the expectations for the Pareto Project, including the last updates for juniors or sophomores, and then complete the following Google Form:

Note that the last question on the form requires you to write at least 1500 characters. This is a substantial amount of analysis, and it should be taken seriously. You are strongly encouraged to write your response separately, because Forms does not save in-progress work. The form will not accept anything less than 1500 characters. There is a visual approximation of what that looks like embedded in the form itself.

You can use Monday’s class period to work on this form and the response required at the end of it.

Exams

Refer to the following calendar for the schedule for final and Regents exams in all subjects:

RE10 Specifics

Sophomores will spend the next month prepping as necessary for their final exam, which has two components:

  1. A reading passage with multiple-choice questions, modeled after the passages on Part 1 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts
  2. A timed essay modeled after Part 2 of the Regents Examination in English Language Arts

For the multiple-choice practice, we will use old Regents Exams, Google Forms, and metacognition. For the timed essay, we will use old exam prompts, metacognition, and the Grammar as Rhetoric and Style work you’ve just completed.

We will begin our prep on Monday. A separate instructional post will be uploaded and photocopied then with digital archives of all the materials you’ll receive in class. We’ll review the protocol then, so if you’re reading this before class, all you need to prepare for is a shift to much more separate and individualized work — no groups, and computers and devices only if they aren’t a distraction.

AP11 + RE11 Specifics

All juniors must take the Regents Examination in English Language Arts. You have already been given access to every resource you need to prepare for it, and we will use whatever class time you require to practice and review. Refer to this post for all the required information:

Printed copies of every single element in that post will be available in our classroom for the rest of the year. If you are an AP student, start the period on Monday by emptying your test-prep folder of all AP materials. Then use Google Classroom to organize yourself by deadline. RE11 students can focus on the Pareto update and any other instructional posts.

The final exam for juniors is a more complicated subject. Read the following paragraphs carefully.

If you are in danger of failing English for the year, then you are required to take a separate final exam. This exam will be an essay-driven assessment designed to give you, if you are in danger of failing for the year, an opportunity to pass. You will be informed if this applies to you after Q4B GAP scores are determined on May 19.

If you are required to take a separate final exam in English, your final average will be determined by five scores, including that final exam score. The ELA Regents Exam does not count as part of your GPA, regardless of your overall average.

If you are not in danger of failing English for the year, you will not be asked to take a separate final exam.Your final average will be determined by your four quarterly grades only.

If you have questions about any of this, ask those questions below or in the comment section of the individual course posts, where I can clarify for everyone or forward things along to the folks who make these decisions.

Previous Course: 2021–2022

English 12

School Year: 2021–2022

Final Senior Projects: Showcase Website

Current Menu of Choices

Google Classroom is used to relay assignments, deadlines, and most specific requirements of each unit or panel. Below is a post updated with the current “menu” of project-based learning choices available in the Humanities makerspace.

URL: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4482
Updated Curriculum & Calendar: https://tinyurl.com/21-22-curriculum

Required Daily Goal & Mindfulness

Bookmark the link to your period’s required form. Follow the instructions carefully each day.

Syllabus and Baseline Resources

These are also be available through Google Classroom. Click on any important links and read those documents, as well.

General Feedback

General feedback documents that offer insight into the learning process and analysis of the skills and traits being taught or honed by a particular assignment. Organized and introduced in paragraphs.

URL: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?page_id=4514

Ongoing Discussions

Ongoing discussion posts for students and other stakeholders. Main page includes a link to every post, a description of each one, and directions for entering the discussions. Topics and direct links:

URL: http://sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=2197

Final Projects

Guides, FAQ, etc., for information for the Senior Talk and its preliminary project, a Humanities passion or “genius hour” project known as the Pareto Project. Provided as a preview of the end of the year.

BHS Google Site

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

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66 Minutes

  By 2020-2021, Distance Learning, Feedback, Grade Abatement, Space Explainers, Triage

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.

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:

What this exhaustive planning drives home for me is also what it should drive home for you:

  1. We spend the first four months of the year practicing and hopefully mastering the skills, traits, and processes of authentic learning.
  2. Only if you have built those foundations can you use the final five months to create extraordinary work.
  3. 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:

  1. This is the text that you’ll find reprinted below, almost verbatim. ↩

Archive [2019-2020]

This is what the homepage looked like at the end of the 2019-2020 school year.

Distance Learning & English 12 Final Projects

Office Hours: 10:00AM – 11:00AM
Email: meure@brewsterschools.org

Important communications will be sent as emails and posted as Google Classroom announcements. Posts on this site provide context, instruction, and general feedback. Please contact me directly with any questions.

As of April 27, seniors will be working on their final projects of the year. The updates to distance learning before April 27 are archived on this page.

English 12 Final Projects

Final Project: Documents & Posts | Note: This is the post that links to the rest.

English 12 Calendar: April 27 – June 15

Final Project: Overview

Final Project: Week One

Final Project: Week Two

Final Project: Week Three

Final Project: Week Four

Final Project: Week Five & Week Six

Final Project: Week Seven

Distance Learning Archives

Distance Learning: Week 1
• March 27 Update

Distance Learning: Week 2
• April 1 Update
• April 2 Update

Distance Learning: Week 3
• April 9 Update
• April 10 Update

Senior Projects Redux

The first post (Distance Learning: Week 1) covers how to contact me, what resources we will be using, and what students will do each day. One of the resources is a letter that explains project-based learning and its incorporation into distance learning:

English 12: Distance Learning Update (March 25, 2020)
• URL: tinyurl.com/makerspace-update-0325

If you have any trouble loading the Google Docs version of that letter, try the PDF version. Be sure to read the letter and its embedded resources carefully.

The material that follows is left as-is from before March 12. You’ll find answers to most questions about the makerspace below.

Makerspace Artifacts: 2019-2020

For All Stakeholders: A Quick Guide to Stakeholder Involvement
Google Site: Proof of Process: Testimonials, Tours, and Student Work

Units of Study

Updates and Overviews: 2019-2020 Specific Posts

① The Age of the Essay | Study of how and why we write. Includes close reading of a central text, guided analysis, and a universal writing process.
② What Is Literature For? | Study of how and why we read. Includes close reading of different texts (video, nonfiction), guided analysis, and discussion. Includes summer reading work.
③ The Practice of Empathy | Study of empathy as a skill. Includes close reading of nonfiction and the start of a novel, The Things They Carried.
④ Organization: Getting Things Done | Mini-unit for the start of Q2. Includes an in-class close reading of these excerpts from this article on distraction.
⑤ When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient | Study of truth, memory, and narrative. Lessons cover essential questions, reader-response writing, and poetry. Includes the English 12 assured experience, The Things They Carried.
⑥ Second-Semester Senior Projects | Student-directed projects designed to use the full potential of a makerspace and prepare students explicitly for the next stage of their lives. Covers the entire second semester. Includes the required final Senior Talk and the final exam.

Quick Links: Senior Projects
Essentials Pack: Assessment (2019-2020)
Essentials Pack: Writing

The Writing Process (Post)
The Writing Process (Doc)
The End of the Writing Process
The Writing Process: Reader’s Response
The Writing Process: College Essay
The Age of the Essay
Textual Analysis Guide
Simplified Analysis Worksheet
Insufficient vs. Sufficient Work
Turnitin.com Instructions
Artifact Feedback Worksheet

What Is a (Humanities) Makerspace?

Humanities Makerspace Building Blocks

The challenge is to set up systems that allow students to follow their interests. People tend to dichotomize approaches in education: The teacher is either telling students what to do, or standing back and letting them figure it out. I think that’s a false choice: The issue is not structure versus no structure, but rather creating a different structure. Students need to be exposed to new ideas and learn how to persist. They also need support.

~Tony Wagner, Creating Innovators

Makerspace FAQ

We may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in Experience and Education: “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes… may be and often is more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history… For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future.” In other words, the most important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do.

~Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

Click to see the full image, courtesy of Cognitive Media, RSA Animate, and Ken Robinson.

An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak, when you are present in the current moment, when you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing, when you are fully alive. An anesthetic is when you shut your senses off and deaden yourself to what’s happening…

We are getting our children through education by anesthetizing them. And I think we should be doing the exact opposite. We shouldn’t be putting them to sleep. We should be waking them up to what they have inside of themselves.

~Ken Robinson, “Changing Education Paradigms”

 

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April 9, 2020

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning

René Magritte, Elective Affinities (1933).

Two quick updates this afternoon.

Q3 GAP Scores and Grades

Q3 grades will be finalized on April 17, not the pre-COVID calendar date of April 24.

Your final Q3 grade will be the average of three scores: the two GAP scores posted on March 27 and a final profile score based on the distance learning from March 25 through April 15.

We’ll stop the Q3 assessment process on April 15 to give us two days to clarify your profiles through evidentiary discussion and analysis.

This last GAP score will reflect the same universal skills, traits, and profiles. The process is the same, minus any consideration of in-class focus.

You have been — and will be, through next Wednesday — responsible for checking in each day with a goal, filling out the weekly self-assessments, and advocating for any feedback you need. You should also have shared any relevant evidence related to your current project.

The language of the profiles can be applied to any circumstances, including distance learning. That language is student-centered and flexible. Think of it as a perpetually aggregate model: It rewards you for what you’ve done well, adding that evidence up until it fits a profile.

There will be a Q3C profile report, just like there usually is at the end of the panel, but it will not be part of Q3. Instead, it will be another way for you to take stock of your progress, sort through your work, and communicate your progress. We will use it in Q4.

In other words, that final GAP report will be given next week to start a discussion, not as the last required assignment of this strange last panel of the quarter.

Before Q3C scores are posted, you’ll have two days to discuss them with me. Right now, the plan is to post scores on April 17. Keep in mind that this situation is constantly changed, however.

Pareto Projects

Back in September, which feels like it was at least several years ago, we started your passion projects. These 20-Time or Pareto Projects were designed to lead into the Senior Talk, but only as one potential outcome; the real focus, as with any passion project, was to help you explore and learn and create.

This week, Apple posted the following:

If you have an Apple account and device, that list of apps is worth a serious look. The same apps are available through Google, for the most part. But you don’t need apps to set aside some of your free time now for a project of your own design.

This kind of thinking has always been part of our makerspace. The assessment and instructional innovations have allowed us to dedicate time to you as an individual, and the prime example has always been the Pareto Project.

So this Apple store story is an authentic validation of our space. The most important thing you learn is something about how you learn, because you can always learn something new. The more you learn, the more you’re likely to find your own passion.

Your final projects are going to need some tweaking, and you can predict what that means: We’ll need to prioritize the projects, organize your time based on the latest news from Governor Cuomo, and adjust your final products to work within distance learning limitations.

A passion project is about you, though. Fortunately, if you find something you want to study/create/etc, it’s likely to fit into a required project. It might even replace a requirement entirely, depending on the scope and sequence of what you want to do.

Remember, your work in the Humanities is about reading and writing as a way to develop universal skills and traits. It’s the study of you, though, more than anything else. It’s about what makes you human, what connects you to others, and how you can build a better version of yourself through the work we do.

These passion projects have always been a way to pursue those goals, so don’t ignore the opportunity to start one, even if it’s already April 9. You’ll find, again, that a Pareto Project makes it easier to generate whatever required projects are left. We’ll find a way to fit that passion into our final two months.

Ask questions about this below. Tomorrow, you’ll get an update with more feedback and instruction, and that should be followed on Monday by a post that simplifies and streamlines your second-semester projects.

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Distance Learning: Week 3

  By 2019-2020, Distance Learning

Image: René Magritte, Decalcomania (1966)

Self-Assessment: Week 2

Remember that these instructional posts set up the next week. The self-assessment for Week 2, which is the week that ended yesterday, is being folded in to help clarify the process.

You must complete the following form over the next few days:

This is a weekly form that updates you and your teachers on your progress and sense of self-efficacy. It is a way to strengthen the feedback chain. Here is the relevant instructional post from earlier in the year:

The Feedback Chain

If you did not read that earlier this year, last week, or at any other point when it was brought back into focus, you must take the time to read it now. Your self-advocacy is essential during distance learning.

The form asks you to write a paragraph (or more) about your progress. Then you are encouraged to share links, documents, and other evidence through Google Classroom or Gmail.

The form also requires you to review a series of statements about this course, indicating whether or not

  • you have examined all recent profile scores;
  • you know exactly what those scores mean;
  • you know you can get individual feedback about those scores at any time;
  • you know that you must read all instructional posts in full;
  • you know that you must read everything on Google Classroom in full;
  • you know that you must set a daily goal through Google Forms;
  • you are aware of all the available resources for your project-based learning;
  • you know to share evidence of your project-based learning;
  • you are aware of how to seek feedback, in class and online;
  • you know you can always ask further questions to individualize the work;
  • you know how to ask questions to individualize work.

More statements may be added. You will have this kind of check-in every week while we are doing distance learning.

If you answer “no” to any of these statements, you must self-correct. You must read the instructional posts, seek feedback directly, organize your work, and so on.

Week 3: Resources & Assignments

This section of the post will be repeated frequently. It lists and/or links to the resources and assignments you need to have organized for the rest of the year.

For the rest of this week, you should focus on self-advocacy and feedback. We will revisit the final shape of each project, especially the Senior Talk, next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Semester Projects

Evidence Folders | Essential. If you haven’t set these up yet, do it immediately. You’ll use them for most evidentiary work and feedback requests.
• Directions: https://tinyurl.com/gap-pbl-1
• Google Form: https://forms.gle/dT3FGwzoouPk3fibA

Google Classroom Links | These are listed out as they appear under “Second Semester Projects” on Google Classroom. Load the Classwork tab, and then be absolutely certain you’re clear on each and every element here.
• Final Obligations & Assessments [Posted Feb 12]
• Final Exam: Senior Talk Reflection [Posted Feb 12]
• Senior Talks [Posted Feb 12]
• Pareto Projects [Posted Feb 12]
• Commencement Address [Posted Feb 5]
• Research-Driven Essay [Posted Feb 4]
• Self-Prescribed Book Project [Posted Feb 4]
• Second Semester Projects: Overview [Posted Feb 4]

Formative Work

Google Classroom Links | These, too, are listed out as they appear on Classroom. Look under the Classwork tab for “Second Semester Formative Work.” These are assignments that help check for understanding or set up further feedback throughout your project-based work.
• GAP Scores: Q3 Before the Social Distancing [Posted Mar 27]
• English 12: Distance Learning Update [Posted Mar 25]
• Optional Work: March 18–24 [Posted Mar 18]
• Research-Driven Essay: Models [Posted Mar 12]
• Statements of Purpose [Posted Mar 5]
• Self-Prescribed Books: Your Choices [Posted Feb 25]
• Checkpoint: February 10, 2020 [Posted Feb 10]

Flipped Instruction and Feedback

This is an updated list of the essential instructions and feedback posted since March 25. If you have not yet read any element below, including the internal links to other documents, you must make it a priority to catch up.

Start, as necessary, with the April 1 lecture that delves into the nature of feedback and your responsibilities at home:

April 1, 2020

Then review the rest of the flipped materials below:

• March 25 Letter: tinyurl.com/makerspace-update-0325
• DL Week 1 Post: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4059
• March 27 Update: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4075
• DL Week 2 Post: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4079
• April 1 Update: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4082
• April 2 Update: sisypheanhigh.com/malachite/?p=4095