ENG 1101 Week 6 Agenda

Class Info

• Date: 9/30-10/6
• Meeting Info: This course is asynchronous. But unlike each week’s agenda where I explain what that means, here’s where I’m going to break from that. As we move to finish Project #1, it will be helpful to be synchronous if possible. That means office hours, writing lab, and 1-on-1 conferences. I explain this all in the announcement post I made at the end of Week 5.
• This week, I will hold optional 1-on-1 conferences to help you finish Project #1 Also, I postponed the due date for Project #1 to Monday, 10/5.
• This week, I will also hold an optional writing lab session, Thursday, 10/1, 10:20am-11:20am. I shared the Zoom link via email.

To-Do Before Class

For the start of Week 6, keep working on Project #1 (due this week), including the peer review that you were assigned in the Week 5 Agenda:

• Sign up for an optional 1-on-1 conference with me to discuss Project #1.
• Catch up on any texts that you missed (written or visual) or discussions you missed related to Project #1.
• Continue drafting Project #1. Review the Project #1 assignment instructions to be sure you’re on track.
• freewrite on your own in your notebook, either just following where your mind takes you or a guided freewrite about something you encountered in this course or in life this week.

Topic

Finishing ENG 1101 Project #1: Education Narrative; transitioning to Project #2

Objectives

• To draft and revise writing that shapes aspects of education and educational experiences into an education narrative
• To provide interactive peer review to support classmates’ further development of Project #1
• To submit Project #1 and Project #1 Reflection (instructions below)

To-Do This Week

This week, as we work toward submitting Project #1 on Monday, 10/5, we will also continue with our work to begin our next project.

Actions

• Review the instructions for ENG 1101 Project #1: Education Narrative
• Participate, if you are available, in the optional writing lab on Thursday, 10/1, 10:20am-11:20am via the recurring Zoom link shared via email
• work on your draft of Project #1 and support your peer review partner
• reach out to me with any questions. If it’s not a private matter, consider using the ENG 1101 Q&A area.
• optionally, sign up for and attend a 1-on-1 conference with me to discuss Project #1.

Reading

• If you haven’t already read the assigned readings for this course for Project #1, please do–they’re good models or guides for this project.
• Read as many Project #1 posts as you can–these will give you a good idea of the range of topics and approaches.
• Read your peer review partner’s post, or if they haven’t made one yet, anything they can share with you from the drafting process–a list, a brainstorm, a sketch, etc.
• Re-read your draft–even if you think you know it!
• Read the feedback from your peer review partner, comments I share, and comments from anyone else.
• New! Read Lex Berko’s “What If You Could Choose Between the Fastest Route and the Most Beautiful?” and Patrick Sisson’s “How better photos can help you document, and shape, your neighborhood”

Writing

Keep freewriting! 10 minutes. 10 minutes again. Write about what’s on your mind, or focus on the topic of your education narrative, or shift to think about urban environment, or your ARCH 1101 field trip to Greenwood Cemetery. Or something in the news, in your life, in your alternate reality. Write.

Join our discussion about our two new readings. In “What If You Could Choose Between the Fastest Route and the Most Beautiful?” Lex Berko reports on technologies that would help you alter your route by taking short detours to maximize your walking experience. She identifies a few different kinds of goals for the detour, such as having a more beautiful walk. What kind of environment or experience would motivate you to take a short detour from the most direct path from your location to your destination? What environments or experiences do you seek out when you’re walking, and what do you avoid? What if instead of thinking about this from your ordinary walking point of view, you think about it as though you are what Chuck Wolfe says in the interview by Patrick Sisson, “How better photos can help you document, and shape, your neighborhood,” an urban diarist. What does he mean, and what would you look for on your detoured walk? Respond to one or two classmates in the discussion.

In a new post, write approximately 300 words about reflection. What can we mean by reflection? When might you seek out a space for reflection? What would that look like? Include a photograph or two of what you think about when you think of reflection, either one that you have taken in the past, one that you take now, or an openly licensed photograph (and give credit to the source if appropriate). Choose the category ENG 1101 Project #2 work (more on Project #2 coming soon). Also, add a tag or two or three to your post. It’s just below the option to select a category. You don’t need to include a # before the word. What tags belong on your post? Think about what you want the tag to do: is it a funny way to describe what you’ve written or photographed? a functional indication of what you’ve included? a way to connect with what other students have chosen, so that the tags serve as an index of what’s on our site–meaning that if you click one tag, you can see multiple posts that all relate to that topic in some way?

The other writing you’ll be doing this week is for Project #1, due on Monday, 10/5. Please refer back to the Week 5 agenda for more information, particularly your peer review partner if you didn’t do that already.

You can now take the early draft that you initially wrote, answering 3-5 questions, plus any more that you answered as you continued to work, plus your peer reviewer’s feedback, plus feedback from me, plus ideas you got from our 1-on-1 meeting, and build your narrative. Here are some ways to think about structuring your narrative:

• narratives have a beginning, middle or middles, and an end, or at least a provisional end that would be replaced as more happens. Use that structure to help you tell your story.
• we identified in the education narratives that we read that it helps to tell a specific story, some experience that in some way defined who you are, what matters to you, etc. What specific story do you want to include? Where does it go in that beginning-middles-end organization?
• in addition to telling that specific story, your narrative should also make it clear why that matters. In Michael Caton’s essay, he talked about the experience of someone sharing architecture materials with him when he was a student, and then went on to explain the so what, that the experience of being an architecture student was harder with a lack of diversity, easier when someone else like him was there, and that the field of architecture needs diversity. What’s your so what? It doesn’t need to be as big as his–it can be more on a personal scale, but the story should be connected with something that matters to you, like why you want to pursue architecture, or what you’re most passionate about, or why school doesn’t work but education does, etc etc etc. Last week I made these suggestions:
  • a success story
  • a cautionary tale
  • a tracing of a multipart journey
  • a call to action
  • something less than a call to action, but that identifies a larger issue.

• Don’t feel like you need to stick with the answers you wrote in that first attempt! Those just got you started. Look back through the questions, look at what your classmates wrote about, think about what matters to you, and move in that direction.
• You’re aiming for 1000 words. Have a plan for that. Consider how many paragraphs do you have, and how many words each.
• I strongly encourage you to add media to your project–a photograph, gif, video, sketch, something that amplifies your message, adds interest, and helps you take ownership of it.
• This project should start to feel like it’s yours, not mine. I’ve started you on this project, but ultimately, it’s your work. What you write about, the media you include, your purpose, your details, your style, it all represents you.

• By Monday, 10/5, in a new post, post your final draft. Give it a title, and choose the category ENG 1101 Project #1 posts. If you’re not comfortable sharing your work publicly, please reach out to me and we can come up with a solution!
• We’re working in a Portfolio system this semester, which means that each of you will gather your writing together, reflect on it, and revise it as needed for the end of the semester. For each project, you will bundle your work and reflection in anticipation of the final portfolio and reflection. To submit Project #1 for my review, add a new post on Monday, 10/5, that you make private (see #7 in these instructions), that includes:
  • links to each of your earlier drafts
  • any freewriting, brainstorming, sketching, etc, that you want to share. This can include photos of your hand-written or hand-drawn work.
  • A reflection that considers the following:
    • what did you learn about yourself as a student? as a learner? as a writer? as a reviser, as a collaborator (eg, peer reviewer, suggesting questions for Project #1, responding to classmates in the discussions)?
    • what do you want to do with your narrative (part or all of it)? (eg, use it on your ePortfolio, as a personal statement for an application, as something you circulate on social media to get attention for issues you raise in your narrative, something you share with your family or community as a way to connect, share history, etc)
    • what do you want help with as you revise it for your final portfolio for the end of the semester?
    • what can I do to help you achieve your goals and mine for Project #1?
    • is there anything else I should know about?

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).

See you in our writing lab hour, conferences, office hours, and on this site for our discussion and posts. I’m really excited to continue reading your work!