This will be published the afternoon of March 5, with the intention of reading through it together on March 6.
Through the weekend, your focus should be on the following instructional post:
Statements of Purpose
All projects must support a full statement of purpose. There must be an appropriate crux:
- a puzzling or difficult problem: an unsolved question
- an essential point requiring resolution or resolving an outcome
- a main or central feature (as of an argument)
Your statement of purpose should further answer questions like these:
- Why does this work matter to you?
- Why might it matter to others?
- What is the potential message for your audience?
- What is the potential lesson to be learned?
These criteria are listed in the instructional post on statements of purpose, which has been photocopied for you to annotate in class.
For each project, you must submit a statement of purpose. It can be written before you begin, as you build the project, after you finish, or all of these; and it can help you revise and refine your project as often as you like.
Note: You can finish one project before beginning another, or you can move between projects according to inspiration and in-class needs. You might explore an idea for a while, write a statement of purpose, and then discover you’d like to change entirely — just keep an eye on the calendar.
Each of your statements of purpose must be entered into the appropriate form:
✰ Self-Prescribed Book Project | https://forms.gle/ufPyFt4bPWXsVjtD7
✰ Research-Driven Essay | https://forms.gle/mm2JueFFCRgUmbHQ9
✰ Commencement Address | https://forms.gle/g9RLS4UMRxBHpf5R6
✰ Pareto Project | https://forms.gle/xAxbBp2rwnJVLB1x5
✰ Senior Talk | https://forms.gle/NSpDWj5ijHxWtzYK6
The forms will require you to write 250 characters or more. That is half as long as the following example, which is taken from the instructional post:
[Blame] has an inverse relationship with accountability. Accountability, by definition, is a vulnerable process. It means me calling you and saying, “Hey, my feelings were really hurt about this,” and talking. It’s not blame. Blame is simply a way that we discharge anger. People who blame a lot seldom have the tenacity and grit to hold people accountable, because we spend all of our energy raging for 15 seconds and figuring out whose fault something is. And blaming is very corrosive in relationships. And it’s one of the reasons we miss our opportunities for empathy.
So your own statement must only be about half the length of a normal paragraph. It should furthermore not be much longer than Brown’s statement on blame.
The paragraph must be precise and effective, of course, and we will wordsmith and workshop until it is. These statements support your projects. That’s another reason to use Brown’s excerpt: It’s a reminder to take responsibility for your work this semester. Do not blame others for how your project-based learning unfolds. You must own your choices, including the choice to raise the level of your work.
Project Expectations
Speaking of leveling, review these posts on the line between sufficient and insufficient work:
All of your projects must meet grade-level expectations. The research-driven essay, for example, must reflect the standards detailed in this writing guide: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-researches. There are other structures and other model texts you might use, but any individualized approach must reflect the same breadth and depth required by that five-page, eight-step guide.
That means that any research-driven essay must have multiple kinds of evidence from a wide variety of sources. It must use appropriate rhetorical strategies, including appeals to logic, emotion, and ethos. It must be arranged purposefully. And it must, as necessary, cite its sources with accurate MLA formatting and the use of hyperlinks and embedded multimedia.
If you submit a research-driven project that doesn’t meet those expectations, you’ll have to revise it. Depending on your amenability and timing, you may find yourself asked to give up free periods for further feedback. Remember how your choices are tracked and how interventions are triggered.
The Senior Talk also has a guide: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-tedx. The seven steps in that guide are required, and your work for each step must meet grade-appropriate expectations. The public presentation or talk is just one element. The research, script, and final reflection are equally important. Think outside the box, but remember that you’re building something; box or not, it has to showcase your own intelligent design.
The default project for your self-prescribed book (or other text) is a reader-response essay, and that, too, has a guide: https://tinyurl.com/maker-readres. Any individually selected project must reflect the same skill and insight required of a reader’s response. Simple exposition — a basic book report, for instance — is insufficient for your grade level.
Remember that a reader’s response is a mixture of different writing styles and purposes, tied together by personal insight into the text. One can be written on any kind of text. That’s why there is such a rich diversity in what you’ve chosen to study this year.
Finally, there is the commencement address, which was not assigned with a guide. Instead, you have multiple examples and the skill to find more. A simple search will turn up hundreds of templates and guides, because the commencement address is a universal experience: https://lmgtfy.com/?q=commencement+address+template.
The difficulty of that address is deciding its purpose. The audience is given. Your purpose, however, is up to you. That’s why the statement of that purpose is so important: What do you mean to convey to that audience? What lesson or message are you imparting to these graduates?
Use the comment section below to ask for clarification on any of these requirements.
