Good Trouble (1000 words or more)

In a commencement speech Congressman John Lewis delivered in Atlanta in 2020, he declared, “You must find a way to get in the way. You must find a way to get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble. Use what you have … to help make our country and make our world a better place, where no one will be left out or left behind. … It is your time.” Similarly, in his CCNY commencement speech and final editorial, Congressman John Lewis urges us to find our own “good trouble.”

For Unit 2, you will put together a Reflective Annotated Bibliography on your own “good trouble.” Choose a current issue that you care about, one that you will write about further in Unit 3. You will locate, evaluate, and respond to 3 sources that already exist on this topic, and add your own voice to the conversation.

Once you decide on a topic to investigate, you will want to find 3 sources in different genres: newspaper and journal articles, interviews, documentaries, songs, poems, government reports, etc. Websites like www.easybib.com can help you format your entries. The Purdue University OWL (Online Writing Lab) provides a helpful guide to bibliographic form.

RAB Components:

  • Your Introduction (200-300 words)
    • Introduce your topic, why it interests you, and what you wish to find out more about
  • List your 3 sources in alphabetical order, with MLA citation and info below.  For EACH source, provide:
    • 1-paragraph summary + 2-3 Key Quotes (include citation page if possible)
    • Who is the author? What are his/her credentials? What genre of writing is this?  (newspaper article/book chapter/magazine essay/website/Opinion Piece, etc.)
    • List interesting rhetorical (writing) choices.  Use of statistics/graphs/maps/images/history references/interviews/other forms of evidence, etc.
  • Conclusion (200-300 words)
    • Reflect on what you have learned and why this new knowledge is important
    • Identify a potential audience for your ideas and consider which genre would be most appropriate to express them

Unit2 RAB Model

Evaluation Criteria Checklist

  • Reflection should be readable, informative, and thorough and give a clear sense of both the author’s ideas and your own
  • Sources should be varied in content and genre
  • Formatting should be clear, with attention to visual organization (labels)
  • Citations should follow MLA format
  • Clear sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation