Class Meetings: Tuesdays 2:00pm-5:20pm Zoom Meeting Link
Weeks 1, 2 and 3: 8/31, 9/7 (No Class)
Unit 1: Education
- LAF 2021 Welcome video; Diana Diaz, “Overnight Pandemic” (2020) in City Tech Writer; Caroline Hellman, “In Defense of the Classroom” (2020)
- First-Year Companion
- Mike Bunn, “How to Read Like a Writer” pages 1-6 (2011)
- Toni Morrison, “The Reader as Artist” (2006)
- Reading strategies: annotating, understanding main ideas, considering how reading and writing work together (IRW principles), summarizing
- Hellman, How to Write a Summary PPT
- Create free New York Times account
- Reading strategies: annotating, distinguishing main ideas from examples and details, summarizing and responding
Week 4: 9/14
- Summary Writing
- José Olivarez, “Maybe I Could Save Myself by Writing” and “Mexican American Disambiguation” (2018)
- Class: Watch 2019 LAF student video on Olivarez; responses
- Reading strategies: summarizing and responding, identifying rhetorical choices, imagining intended audience
- Unit 1 discussion and brainstorming
- Hellman, Writing Process PPT
- Low-stakes paragraph about educational experience, inside or outside of a school setting. Use this paragraph to generate an outline for your Unit 1 Education & Identity narrative
Week 5: 9/21
- Unit 1 Outline due
- Barack Obama, A Promised Land (excerpt)
- Barack Obama Vanity Fair Interview on new book
- Examples and details: What are President Obama’s main ideas, and what are the corresponding examples he uses to illustrate them? What does President Obama articulate is the goal of his writing? Do you think he achieves this goal in the excerpt? Why/why not?
- Quote integration and quote sandwich; assignment formatting; titles
- Schedule writing conference
Week 6: 9/28
- Unit 1 Rough Draft due in Google Drive
- Revising and proofreading. How can a piece of writing be improved? What does it mean to revise? Revision components: argument, structure, development, grammar, word choice, sentence structure. What does it mean to proofread?
- Peer review
- Revise Unit 1 essay with feedback from Professor, peer review partner
Week 7: 10/5
- Unit 1 due in Google Drive
Unit 2: Reflective Annotated Bibliography (Good Trouble)
- John Lewis, CCNY 2019 Commencement Speech
- John Lewis, “Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation”
- Hellman, Understanding Unit 2 PPT
- Read Lewis’s editorial and watch his CCNY speech. What is important about his life story? What does he mean by good trouble? Do you think you have ever pursued, or wanted to pursue, good trouble in your own life?
- Write a 1-paragraph Unit 2 topic proposal: what it is, why you’re interested in it, what you think or know about it already, and some potential questions you have. At the end, include a preliminary list of sources in different genres that you plan to consult
- Respond to two of your colleagues’ proposals (how to narrow down topic, possible source suggestion, something you find cool or interesting about the proposal).
Week 8: 10/12
- Library Session
- Unit 2 & RAB Continued
- RAB Student Sample 1 and Sample 2
- Rhetorical analysis and determining representative quotations
- Flesh out your bibliography to generate a rough draft of Unit 2
Week 9: 10/19
- Unit 2 Rough Draft Due in Google Drive
- Share draft with peer reviewer
- Use feedback to revise draft and prepare final version with cover page reflection
Week 10: 10/26
- Unit 2 Due in Google Drive
Unit 3: Genre Determination (Good Trouble: From the Classroom to the Community)
- Annie Correal, “Love and Black Lives, in Pictures Found on a Brooklyn Street” (2017)
- Podcast: FOUND: “To My Darling Etta Mae”
- City Tech Zoom Event with Annie Correal (2020)
- Consider ideas, photos, and genre for Correal’s text and podcast. How do the article and podcast differ?
- But, “Purpose and Audience” PPT
- Write a 1-paragraph proposal for Unit 3. Include which genre and writing style best suit your project, and your intended audience (class response exercise)
Week 11: 11/2
- Kyle Spencer, “The Memory-Keeper of SoHo” (2015)
- Or Szyflingier and Jonathan Baez, “The SoHo Memory Project” (2020)
Week 12: 11/9
- Transforming Unit 2 into Unit 3
- Outline your Unit 3 project
- Genre continued
Week 13: 11/16
- Unit 3 Workshop: Outline due
- Use your outline and annotated bibliography to generate a rough draft of Unit 3
- Schedule writing conference
Week 14: 11/23
- Continue working on Unit 3 rough draft
- Class presentations
Week 15: 11/30
- Unit 3 Rough Draft due in Google Drive
- Unit 3 Class Presentations continued
- Revision workshop
Week 16: 12/7
- Unit 3 Due in Google Drive
Week 17: 12/14
- Final Reflection Posts Due 12/16
