Week 4 Agenda

Week 4: Understanding the term “Education Narrative” and Annotating Texts

• Dates: Thursday, 9/9-Wednesday, 9/21
• Meeting Info:

ENG 1101 is a course that usually meets for 100 minutes twice a week. Our course is a hybrid format: we meet in person for 100 minutes once per week, Tuesdays from 12:00-1:40pm, in Namm 517, but instead of us meeting a second time for 100 minutes each week, you will do classwork asynchronously on your own. If you prefer to work together, you are welcome to join our student support meeting time, kind of a writing lab/writing studio/study space on Zoom on Thursdays, 12:00-1:00.

This week we’re going to continue thinking about what Douglass and Malcolm X wrote about learning to read and write in their narratives. We’re also going to start our work with Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” a text that will challenge us but that will help us think further about education. If you’re still missing work for earlier discussions and readings, please take the time to get caught up.

Objectives

• To work on Project #1: Education Narrative
• To consider and discuss aspects of education and educational experiences through the lens of our readings

To-Do This Week

Actions

• Join via Zoom our Thursday 12:00-1:00 student support hours/writing lab to get support and work together
• Before you watch any of the videos, try drawing a picture of a place described in the cave–eg the cave itself, or something described outside of the cave.

Reading

• Plato, The Republic, Book VII (“Allegory of the Cave”) (starts on page 6)
  • CONTENT WARNING: like the Douglass and Malcolm X texts, the Plato text and related videos refer to disturbing situations, in this case representing prisoners and their maltreatment and torture.
• Watch the short videos for Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”: start with “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” by Alex Gendler for a good overview of this section of the text and the philosophy behind it; then watch this reading of the text “The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato’s Allegory in Clay” by bullheadent; and another summary, “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” by Philosophy Vibe, that might help us understand it better.
• Alex Kapitan, “Dark and Light: Practicing Balance—and Countering Racism—in Metaphors“

Writing

• Freewrite for 10-15 minutes about an experience in your education (whether related to school or not) that you might want to write about in your education narrative.
• Join the “Allegory of the Cave” discussion and write a comment that includes your responses to each part of the discussion (there are a few).
• Choose one word that you needed to look up from one of our readings or course documents. Write a post with that word as the title of the post, and in the post, include the word, its part of speech, definition, a link to where you found the definition. Quote the passage where you found the word. Put the passage in your own words, using your new understanding of that word to help everyone understand that passage. Here are some instructions for writing a post.

In Class

• What does it mean to be educated, or to seek education?
  • well informed
  • makes you valuable eg to employers–or dictates your worth
  • “everybody needs to go to college” or not
  • next step on a journey
  • love of learning? or means to an end
• What are our education goals for this semester?
  • get the hang of college, find our place
  • study for exams
  • keep on track for minimum GPA for a major (eg nursing, dental hygiene, rad tech)
  • meet deadlines
  • learn more about yourself and your career
  • not have the semester take everything out of me
• What do we think about when we think about dark?
  • evil
  • night
  • cave
  • shadows
  • kept in the dark
• light?
  • bright
  • good
  • sun
  • lightbulb
  • knowledge
• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
  • Reading and annotating this Google Doc of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”
  • Reading aloud
  • sketching, focusing, reacting
• Project #1: Education Narrative
• In-class drafting