As we start the ending of the school year, expect a slight uptick in the number of instructional posts here. We need to hack the exam you take in May, set final goals for your Pareto Projects, and make our way through the usual reading, writing, and thinking1. Read everything posted here carefully, as always, as you would an assigned textbook or a posted lecture.
Next Year First
It’s time to make course recommendations and selections for next year. As this is English, we’ll be looking at your choices for the core ELA credit you are required to carry. Electives will be part of the discussion, but you’ll be able to make those choices on your own. I’m going to push you to take any English electives you can. Creative Expression, for instance, is one of the best courses you’ll find in this building, and any of the new 12R courses, if you go that route, are fantastic.
You have a chance to take exceptional courses from exceptional teachers, so if your schedule permits it, and you have even a passing interest in being a better writer, thinker, human being, etc., consider the electives available to you. When you feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a hill, it’s important to look for the good stuff.
As for the core courses, you have a choice:
- English 12
- AP English Literature & Composition
- DCC English 101
Over the weekend, I’ll recommend you for one of those. But it’s up to you, as it always is, to learn about the choice by asking questions and sorting rubbish opinions from good opinions.
One almost invariably true thing: If a student only complains about a class, that person isn’t trying to help you with your decision. He just wants to vent, or he wants his frustration validated. Pay attention when you hear the language of blame. Think back to the supplemental readings at the end of this discussion we had, and avoid people who sound like that. Be empathetic toward them, but don’t invite them into your decision-making process. As always, you want folks who are thoughtful and insightful and specific, because that’s how you’ll find the shades of experience that separate all of your different choices.
Two things about the college-level choices:
- That AP course ends, as you might guess, in an AP exam, and you’re expected to take that.
- DCC requires you to have an 85 GPA or higher, and you have to pass an Accuplacer test, which will be scheduled soon.
When you’re ready, fill out this form:
Loads in a new window.
Just in case, this is the direct URL: https://goo.gl/forms/N773Q8aDmOWcymQ73. Get your choice in as soon as possible, and we’ll compare notes and make a decision together.
More Concrete Stuff
The classroom’s been slightly rearranged. You need to do more of that yourselves, because there’s always a reason to reconfigure a makerspace, but I had 30 minutes this morning.
Right now, one of our U-shaped tables is lined up with the TV mounted on our wall. That TV has a Chromebit attached to it, so you can log into it as you would any Chromebook. I’ve used it during our brief lapses back into traditional lectures. Use it more collaboratively as we delve into sample essays and practice exams. Let’s see if it helps you in small-group situations.
Otherwise, you all need to use the whiteboards and more often and more effectively. Choose to sit where you’ll get work done, whether that separates you from your friends or not. Put your phone away, if you know it’s disrupting you2. Move the furniture around, too. If nothing else, that’s a great metacognitive prompt: What role does the physical space play in your learning?
Take a look at the bookshelf by my desk, too, for a complete set of prep materials for both exams you’ll take this year. Your final calendar is there, as are a number of other useful handouts.
AP Timed Writing
As of this afternoon, you should each have three prompts, three sets of model responses, and three timed essays of your own. Put them together somewhere safe and accessible. These are your baseline for the written portion of our test prep.
If you haven’t done the metacognitive and reflective requirements for the first two timed essays, you’re behind. Let me help you attack the problem. For the next few months, you need this foundation. The rest of our prep for the AP Exam depends on it.
One more thing: if you want individual feedback, you may have it. Not yet, though. You need to spend a lot more time with the model essays, rubrics, and structural components of these assignments.
When and if you ask for individual feedback — traditional prescriptive and proscriptive commentary, done in colored ink — you are required to use it to teach others, and then you have to write about what teaching taught you. Keep that in mind. Remember what we’re really learning here.
More Readin’
Return your copy of 1984 as soon as possible. The book numbers are posted near the door to our space, where we can line the books up on a rolling cart to return them to the English Department’s book room (Which is a good place to visit, if you like the idea of a room filled with books. It’s always interesting to see what hidden treasures are lined up in class sets in there.)). If you can’t or don’t find your copy of 1984, you’ll owe the school a little money until you find it.
Our next novel will be The Catcher in the Rye. I’m looking into how this site could help us, and if you’re intrigued by that, let me know why in the comments. More on that soon.
The Course within the Course
Use the updated calendar to keep track of what you’re expected to do in here. Here is another link to it:
This is an organizational tool, sure, and you can see that you’ll be busy until June. But you should try to see beyond those units and lessons. That’s why I listed out goals by content and skill. As long as we hit those marks, there’s a conversation to have about how we hit them.
So there is always flexibility built into our learning. It’s the course within the course that got a mention way back in September:
If you missed it the first time, each of the subheadings in that instructional post link to a piece by an artist I’d like us to study again in April, during National Poetry Month3.
You have specific goals for the tests you’ll take this year, and you have specific goals for next year. For most of you, that calendar’s how you’ll meet your goals: completing whatever’s assigned, getting feedback keyed to your needs, etc., until you move on to the next boulder/mountain combo.
I hope, though, that you all see the opportunities to break off from the beaten path, as they say. Try to embrace the opportunities you have here.
I’m most excited about teaching you all poetry in April. Of course, my excited face looks exactly like every other face I make, which is to say it looks like a frail lumberjack struggling against existential terror. ↩
Especially if you’re told it’s disrupting you. Use the back corner to store your devices for 30 minutes. It’s got to be your choice, but I am strongly suggesting you make a specific decision there. ↩
Also, here is what boggles my mind: That post, from September 7, 2017, lays out in exact detail everything you’d need to do to get a 100 average in here, which is the same as what you’d need to do to become highly skilled and insightful and so on. That post showcases exactly how this kind of instruction works, how collaboration works, how to be metacognitive, etc., in about as transparent a way as is possible. It’s a bit much to read, sure, but so is the contract you sign for a job. So is the guide to the SAT you force yourself through. So is the reading required for that first driving test. When you’re given exact instructions for getting what you want, you should study them. So the mind-boggling thing is how many students missed the blueprint, despite how often it was posted, photocopied, given in a traditional lecture, rewritten and reposted and re-lectured, etc., from the first day of school until now. There’s a reason we end up talking about self-control and blame as often as we do. ↩