Class Info

  • Date: 9/16-9/22
  • Meeting Info: All of our meetings will be asynchronous, meaning you will do your work throughout the week on your own time. Our weeks will begin on Wednesdays. Work will be due on Wednesdays and at other points during the week as noted in the weekly agenda, usually with Monday morning as a deadline to join a discussion so we all have time to respond to each other. Optional synchronous meetings will be available, as well as office hours, which are opportunities to meet synchronously with me individually or in a small group. If time permits, I will visit your ARCH 1101 meeting to use a portion for ENG 1101.
  • This week, I will join you in ARCH 1101–see you there on Wednesday.

To-Do Before Class

For the start of Week 4, be sure to have completed the work assigned in the previous ENG 1101 Weekly Agenda, most importantly:

Topic

ENG 1101 Project #1: Education Narrative

Objectives

  • To consider and discuss aspects of education and educational experiences through the lens of writing
  • To begin drafting educational narratives
  • To develop course discussions to be more interactive

To-Do This Week

The readings and videos I’ve shared with you can help us explore the genre of and education narrative to be able to analyze the genre and begin to draft our own. Again, I’m not imposing incremental deadlines throughout the week except to say that it’s helpful to share your work by Monday so you can come back and comment on your classmates’ contributions before Wednesday.

Actions

Reading

Writing

Try freewriting again. 10 minutes. Write about what’s on your mind, or focus on the topic of your education–past, present, future, whatever works for you.

Go back to our Allegory of the Cave discussion and add:

  • comment in response to at least 2 classmates, either their work from Week 3 or this new work from Week 4. Try to write 100-150 for each of these 3 comments. This is a great way for us to really generate discussion instead of having solo conversations near each other. You can find something that stands out in what a classmate wrote, something that you want to add to or challenge, that you want to put in conversation with a passage from Plato’s text, or even just try to paraphrase what you want to be sure you understood. Try to choose comments that interest you. But also consider spreading out your efforts, so it’s not just the same 2 comments that get all the extra attention. You can also respond to someone’s response, if it is a substantive response that gives you enough to engage with–it would be really great to get a real back-and-forth going in our comments.

Follow instructions in the Project #1 instructions to ask questions (add them as comment there) that can help you begin pre-writing and drafting your education narrative.

  • After watching Phil Smyth and CAES’s video, “Understanding Genre Awareness,” and keeping in mind the other readings from this semester, what do you think belongs in an education narrative? Add a short comment (a sentence or two) to this brainstorm about genre, about what you think are features of an education narrative. If someone else has already written what you wanted to add, instead of replying to me, respond to your classmate’s comment and amplify what they wrote–meaning add to what has already been written with more detail, more clarity, more context, an example from our readings, etc.
  • To help you begin drafting Project, #1, as potential questions come in, I will add them to the Project #1 instructions post. Choose 3-5 questions you want to answer in a post (learn more about Writing a Post), choosing the cateogry ENG 1101 Project #1 Posts. Include your chosen questions and your answers, approximately 200-300 words for each. Remember that you are looking for the idea that you want to include in your education narrative. Channel what Anne Lamott writes about in “Shitty First Drafts” when she describes the purpose of writing more than is required.
  • Be sure to write your post by Monday morning, 9/21. Comment on two classmates’ posts by Wednesday morning, 9/23 to let them know which part of their post you think is an important moment or experience to focus on in their education narrative. Which best meets what we understand about an education narrative (see just below), which would help them tell their story, and who you think the audience should be for that story–who would benefit from hearing this story?
  • Once you know what story about your education you want to tell, begin drafting your essay by writing that story and why it matters to you. If you are comfortable using Google Docs, it will be easier to share drafts, comment and suggest, and even submit the work

Remember you can always ask questions, either in response to this agenda, in the ENG 1101 Q&A area (as a post with the category ENG 1101 Q&A, or as a comment on the Q&A post/pages that I already added there), or by emailing me at jrrosen @ citytech.cuny.edu (remember to delete those spaces if you want to send me an email).