Featured

Daily Schedule–end of semester

12/2 In class Revision Assignment
Sign up for Class Presentations (due 12/9, 12/11, 12/16)
*Email me if you are not in class today and you want credit for the final presentation, and I will assign you a presentation day

12/4 DUE on Open Lab: Research and Audience Assignment
Read for class: Donald Murray, “Internal Revision” (in packet)

12/9 Read for class: Donald Murray, “The Maker’s Eye”
Presentation Day 1

12/11 Presentation Day 2

12/16 DUE on Open Lab: Final Portfolios due
Presentation Day 3

12/18 Last Class

Featured

Grades on first two major assignments are on Open Lab…

…please review your first two major assignments (Literacy Narrative and Annotated Bibliography) and look at the comments and grades on your posts. If you do not see a grade for a major assignment, and you think you uploaded the assignment, let me know NOW. If you do not see a grade, that means that I do not have record of your turning in the assignment, which means you will not get credit for the assignment.

Any questions, please let me know!

Featured

Post Research and Audience Assignment here (due Dec 4)–see instructions below!

For this Unit 3 major assignment, please post a one-paragraph intro before your two messages. In your intro, please give a brief description saying why your issue is important and also a justification for why you chose your two audiences to hear your messages. Finally, say why you chose the genre (medium for your message as well as the venue of publication) for each of your audiences.

Remember to include a bibliography at the end of your assignment (using proper MLA citation) with at least five sources.

Tag the Research/Audience category when you post!

Featured

Research and Audience Assignment–due Dec 4

Research and Audience Assignment (major assignment for Unit 3)

In this assignment, you will research an issue that you feel is important. Your job will be to identify two different audiences/communities that are impacted by your issue and then to write two different messages (one to each audience) that either persuades each audience of a particular outcome that should happen to resolve your issue OR that educates them about the dynamics of your issue. If you choose to educate your audience, think about your goal – why is education important in this context; what will new knowledge bring? Be sure to have a goal in mind when writing to each audience – what do you want to get them to do, think, or feel – and why?

You should have at least 5 references. This is a research assignment – do research to better understand your issue and what’s at stake.

Together, both messages should be 1000-1500 words.

Things to keep in mind:
• Your issue should be specific. If you are interested in researching and finding out more about immigration, for example, your issue could be a certain immigration policy that you would like to see changed and why; if your topic is vaping, you could talk about how celebrities should not endorse smoking because of its impact on teenagers.
• Your issue should be something with real consequences today – otherwise, what’s the point of you writing to your audiences?
• You should choose to write each message in a genre (email? Letter? Speech?…?) that makes sense for your audience. Be sure to write the imagined place of publication for your message to each audience.
• You should write in the tone and with the amount/type of evidence that is consistent with the genre you choose. But be sure you have at least five sources!

Featured

Revised Daily Schedule

**Check back before each class period for daily updates**

Mon, Nov 11: Discuss Annotated Bibliography Reflection; start drafting reflection

Wed, Nov 13: Read Kristen Roupenian, “Cat Person” (in packet)

Fri, Nov 15: Reflection on Annotated Bibliography due on Open Lab (see Open Lab for more instructions)

Mon, Nov 18: Read Ta-Nahesi Coates, “Letter to My Son” (in packet)
Due in class: research topic and question

Wed, Nov 20: Workshopping Research Questions and Audience

Mon, Nov 25: Peer Review, bring one of your audience assignments to class (see Open Lab for more instructions)

Featured

Reflection on annotated bib–due Nov 15

Tag “Reflection” category when posting

Reflection Assignment on Annotated Bibliography Prompt, due on Open Lab (500 words):

Your final portfolio will ask you to reflect on your evolution as a writer this semester. In this Open Lab post, you are doing two reflections (you can use this insight in your final portfolio reflection too):

1.Revisit the annotated bibliography you posted on Open Lab.
a. Now, imagine that you were teaching someone how to write in your genre. What are 4-5 things that all of the sources in your genre share? You could think about things like: the tone of the writers; ways that your sources open or close; whether they use emotional appeals or reason appeals more often; what audiences they are trying to persuade…
b. What did you learn about your topic? This could be anything, but you could also think about the norms or values that your writers and/or their audiences hold—how can you see those values working?
c. What do you still want to learn about your topic?

2.What did you learn about yourself as a writer through this assignment?
a. What do you think your strengths are as a writer? What are you good at? Please be specific and provide an example. (This could be any part of the writing process, including brainstorming and imagining.)
b. In what ways would you like to continue to grow as a writer?
c. How do you think you could enact those changes? What do you need in order to do so?

Featured

Unit 3 assignment due dates

Unit 3 Assignments Due Dates

November 15: Reflection on Annotated Bibliography due on Open Lab

November 25: Peer Review in class

December 4: Research and Audience assignment* due on Open Lab

In-class Presentations of research topic – date to be assigned by instructor

December 16: Final Portfolios** due

*Major Unit Assignment
**Comprising revised major assignments and reflection papers (instructions to follow)

Featured

Annotated Bibliographies–due Friday, Nov 1

Please post your annotated bibliographies here! Re-read the prompt to make sure you’ve met the assignment (remember you only need six sources, not eight!). Be sure to tag the “Annotated Bibliography” category when posting. And please put the name of your genre in the title of your post!

Featured

Due Friday, October 11–Rhetorical Analysis of One Text in your Chosen Genre

Here is your opportunity to practice the rhetorical analysis we started in class! After reading the Annotated Bibliography prompt, do some research and thinking before you decide which genre you want to become an expert on in Unit 2. Then, choose a text that falls within that genre and rhetorically analyze it in this post. (Check out the Annotated Bibliography prompt again to review the features within and surrounding your text that you should consider when doing your rhetorical analysis).

Be sure to identify your chosen genre in your post’s title. Oh–and choose “Rhetorical Analysis” when publishing your post!

For extra credit, respond to 3 of your classmates’s posts, offering ways you think they could enrich their rhetorical analysis and/or recommending other texts within their genre that they might consider for their annotated bibliographies.

Featured

Revised Daily Schedule

Mon, Oct 7: “Backpacks vs. Briefcases”

Wed, Oct 9: No class

**Fri, Oct 11: Open Lab assignment due

Mon, Oct 14: No class

Wed, Oct 16: Classes follow Monday Schedule.
LIBRARY VISIT: We will meet in front of the library at 10:00

Mon, Oct 21: Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”: In class, we will practice writing summaries and continuing our practice of rhetorical analysis

Wed, Oct 23: “I Have a Dream,” cont’d.

**Mon, Oct 28: Peer Review Annotated Bibliographies. In class, bring at least 5 full annotations of your genre texts to class (review the Annotated Bibliography prompt). Please print out two copies for class today.

Wed, Oct 30: Reading TBD; students to continue working on annotated bibliographies

**Fri, Nov 1: Annotated Bibliographies due on Open Lab

Featured

Revised Literacy Narratives

Due Sept 18: Please post your revised literacy narratives.  Think of a title that encapsulates your piece!

Click on the “Literacy Narrative” category option when posting.

Peruse your classmates’s stories about how they became the readers and writers and thinkers they are today. What can we learn about the role of reading and writing today as a result of these shared pieces?

Featured

Personal Experience Essays

DUE SEPT 11: Please post your personal anecdote/experience essays here! Be sure to consult the Unit 1 Assignment sheet (I passed this out in class and I also sent it as an attachment via email).

Describe a personal experience that in some way describes or enables you to say something about your relationship to reading and writing. BUT! Stick with the description of the event–we will be expanding the experience to your literacy narrative next week.

 

 

Jada mathurin 

Professor jewel 

ENG

 

Will Black men overcome the criminal justice system?

 

Dear , Black Men

 

Barack obama said “ so let’s look at the statistics the United States is home to 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners” there was a  prison population of 300,000 people in 1972 . Today we have a prison population of 2.3 million , the United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world can you believe that ? .  Black people suffer from many losses such as voting ,The war on drugs , Over policing in black communities and pleading guilty to crimes they didn’t commit .

Black men and black people in general are over represented in the news as criminals . That means they are shown as criminals more times than they are actually criminals , based on FBI statistics . The war on drugs had become part of our popular culture in television programs like cops. When people cut on their local news at night they see black men being paraded across the screen in handcuffs . They were creating a setting where people would be afraid and when you make people afraid ,It’s easy to justify throwing them in the garbage can . Society makes black people their own crime because that’s  how we introduce them in the world for example you often hear “ that’s a rapist , that’s a murderer, that’s a robber , that’s a sex offender , that’s a gang leader” and when you hear that so often it becomes easier to expect that their guilty and that they should go to prison . The reality Is that no one who Is white truly understands the challenge of being a black person in America so they have then educated public purposely , over the years to believe that black men in particular and people in general are criminals . To be clear white people aren’t the only ones that believe this black people also believe this and are scared  to be in their own community because of the way they explain us on the news and social media . They tell us to be careful when you’re walking home at night , make sure you stay alert , don’t play your music to loud , if you see anything weird call for help and this makes people worry and feel unsafe .

Looking at the way democrats were defeated in 1988 ,1984 and  1980 there comes to be a belief among the democrats that they have to adopt a position that is much more centrist . It became kinda impossible for a politician to look soft on crime . during that time if you appeared soft on crime they weren’t going to take you serious and you wouldn’t win the election  . When you are in an environment where everybody’s doing the same thing everybody’s competing to be tough on crime you quickly all end in the same space so it doesn’t become a political advantage unless you do something more and by the late and early 90s people like bill Clinton had begun to figure out they’ve been able to match the consistency of “ squishy , soft liberal won’t protect you , tough conservative will protect you” and they won the fight every time . Bill Clinton  was trying to figure out how to deal with a country that was still basically Reagan’s country but he was trying to govern as democrat . Then some horrendous crimes take place “ Polly Kalamazoo , abducted from her bedroom at home and ended up killed” which led to the California “ three strikes and you’re out” law Bill Clinton said “ when you commit a violent crime you will be put away put away for good , three strikes and you are out” A persons convicted of their third felony essentially that person is mandated to prison for the rest of their lives . Mandatory sentencing said that they were no longer going to let judges consider the circumstances around a crime they were just going to impose a mandatory sentence and that was a hard Thing for judges because they were trying to dispense justice on a daily basis and now cant do so. This is important because mandatory minimum sentencing laws force a judge to hand down a minimum prison sentence based on the changes a prosecutor brings against a defendant which result in a conviction usually a guilty plea . many states have such laws every significant federal drug offender could get a very long sentence . The truth in sentencing that kept people imprisoned for 85% of their sentence , the idea of truth in sentencing was that you were sentence to a certain amount of time and the public wanted to be confident that your gonna do just about every bit of that time . They found a way to move pass parole so when you get in the federal system and they give you 20 or 30 years that what you got parole was a mechanism for getting people out of prisons when it was clear that they were no longer a threat to the public safety . Then comes the Congress with a proposal for a 30 billion federal crime bill of 1994 that was heavily loaded towards law enforcer incarceration the omnibus crime bill was responsible for a massive expansion of the prison system and beyond that , it provided all kinds of money and perverse incentives or law enforcement to do a lot of the things that we nowadays consider to be abusive not only did he increase fungi to states to build prisons to locked as many people involved in drug crimes but also to put 100,000 police officers on the street . The effect that this had on black people was that they were easily targeted and put in jail for infamous crimes because they needed to fill up these jails. 

 

Based on the film “ 13th ” Throughout American history African Americans have repeatedly been controlled through systems of racial and social control that appeared to die down but they are reborn in new forms tailored to the needs of constraints of the time.  After slavery ended a new system was born and it was called convict leasing . Convict Leasing was a system of penal labor practiced in the southern United States . Convict leasing provided prisoner labor to private parties, such as plantation owners and corporations. The Lessee was responsible for feeding ,clothing and housing the prisoners which was a new form of slavery and once convict leasing faded away a new system was born which was the Jim Crow system that relegated African American to a  permanent second class status and here we are years after the collapse of the old Jim Crow and new system has been born again in America a system of mass incarceration that once again take away millions of poor people overwhelmly poor people of color of the very right supposedly won in the civil rights movement and instead of talking about it we just tired to move passed it after the civil rights was passed on and the civil rights laws they tried to play it off and because they didn’t deal with it back then that racial difference continued and it turned into this presumption of dangerousness and guilt that follows every black and Brown person wherever they are , “In 1850, Slavery was common throughout the southern United States , with concentrations in Georgia , South Carolina and Mississippi . A similar pattern is reflected in the number of American incarceration in 2000.” If there was a shortfall in the workforce , local law enforcement authorities simply made more arrest whether a crime was actually made or not . “ once the system of mass incarceration began to grow , it became quickly apparent that a lot of money could be made . 

Many people don’t realize that Jim Crow laws still exist today, studies show that the Empire States constitutional history , “Jim crow in New York” traces the current criminal imprison law to a century-long effort to keep African -American citizens out of the voting booth. And as the reports makes it very disturbingly clear: New York’s felon voting bar has been deep roots in jim crow . More than 108,000 New Yorkers are currently imprisoned under the law . And 80% of those who have lost the right to vote are people of color . Here is some history , for about 100 years , New York lawmakers found many ways to keep African Americans from voting . First, of course there was slavery. After emancipation, two laws continued to be especially effective: one that required blacks- and only blacks – to own a certain amount of real property in order to vote, and another that allowed countries to imprison those convicted of “infamous crimes”. African American suffrage was the subject of much debate at the 1821 and 1846 constitutional conventions , and the transcripts contain some astounding racist rhetoric . One theme that occurs again and again I cian alleged criminal propensity among African American as reason to restrict the black vote . In a refrain that echoes throughout the century-long suffrage debate , delegate Samuel young implore in 1821: “ look to your jails and penitentiaries. By whom are filled ? By the very race whom is now proposed to clot with the power of deciding upon your political right” . During slavery and the period when the property requirements were imposed on African American, New York’s criminal disenfranchisement law was merely permissive : that is , the state constitution left it to the discretion of individual counties weather to disenfranchise those with criminal convictions. The same year the fifteenth amendment force New York to eliminate its property requirement , the state amended the constitution from allowing countries to decide weather to disenfranchise those convicted of crimes , to requiring disenfranchisement throughout the state of anyone convicted of an “infamous crime.”