Week 3 Agenda

Week 3: Genre Awareness; Understanding Education Narratives; working on Project 1

• Dates: Monday, 9/15 and Wednesday, 9/17
• Meeting Info: This course meets in person for 100 minutes twice per week, Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:00-11:40am, in Namm 523.

Objectives

• To read, discuss, analyze, and use RLW techniques as we read education narratives
• To use our readings as mentor texts
• To consider the genre of Education Narrative as we begin drafting Project 1: Education Narrative

To Do Before Week 3

Just in case you haven’t already, please:

• Add your introduction to the Introductions discussion
• Publish your Noticing City Tech post for our Noticing Series
• Catch up on any readings or discussions you’ve missed–you can review the Week 1 Agenda and the Week 2 Agenda to see what we covered.

To-Do This Week

Monday, 9/15:

Texts

• Personal narrative/essay: “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X
• Personal Narrative: “Maybe I Could Save Myself By Writing” by José Olivarez
• Oral Narratives (with transcripts): “Imposter Syndrome: Stories about not feeling good enough” Part 1 by Sarah Demers and Part 2 by Kevin Smiley
• Writing Resource Video “Understanding Genre Awareness.”
• Video: “Understanding Genre Awareness”

Writing

• Spend some time freewriting and brainstorming for the second noticing series post, Noticing Absence.

In Class: Education Narratives

• Focused freewrite: Where do you read? Where do you do your work for school? Where do you learn? What would be ideal?
• Personal narrative/essay: “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X
  • How can we RLW for this excerpt?
  • identify, and in your group discuss what you found: genre, author and their background/motivation, purpose, audience, tone, style, structure, word choice, use of examples, context (theme)
  • Groups reporting
  • Double-entry journal: find a passage that stands out to you, copy it, and write about it. What stands out? what does it mean to you? what points do we connect to? what questions do we have?
  • Reading/Writing Resource Essay: “Double-Entry Reading Journals” (Butte College).
• Reading and annotating “Maybe I Could Save Myself By Writing” by José Olivarez; “Imposter Syndrome: Stories about not feeling good enough” Part 1 by Sarah Demers and Part 2 by Kevin Smiley (Google Doc version of “Imposter Syndrome” transcript)
  • Read these as writers: what do we notice as we read ?
  • what do we want to do ourselves?
  • what do we connect to or relate to? what seems unfamiliar?
• What is an education narrative?
• How are these texts education narrative?
• Let’s understand genre and genre awareness:

Wednesday, 9/18: Education Narratives

Texts:

• Opinion Essay: “Architecture Needs a Culture Shift” by Michael Caton
• Oral Narrative: “Rochelle Williams: Potential“
• optional essay: “I Am Being Pushed Out of One of the Last Public Squares, the Library” by Emily St. James

Writing:

• Before Week 4: In response to our Project 1 assignment to help draft Project 1, share your thoughts in the Pre-writing Education Narratives discussion
• Before Week 4: Continue putting our readings in dialogue with your ideas for your education narrative in our Connecting to our readings discussion
• Finalize your Noticing Absence post for W 9/17

In Class:

• Read the ENG 1101 Project 1 Assignment
• Focused freewrite: Noticing: Now that you’ve been at City Tech for 3 weeks, what are you noticing? What patterns are emerging? What have you noticed that surprised you?
• Focused Freewrite: What path are we on? What are you majoring in and where do you want that to take you?
• What’s something in our lives we would want to write about as representing a moment that got us interested in the path we’re on for school, career, life?
• “Imposter Syndrome: Stories about not feeling good enough” Part 1 by Sarah Demers and Part 2 by Kevin Smiley (Google Doc version of “Imposter Syndrome” transcript)
• Kevin Smiley tells his person discovery of confidence as he finds success in the army after failing out of college, and his decision to leave it behind to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering.
• Inspiring to see him succeed in spite of his failures
• In your group:
  • what is “Maybe I Could Save Myself By Writing” by José Olivarez about? what was your experience reading it?
  • how is it an education narrative?
  • what are the components of an education narrative? follow a progression of educational development; maybe a struggle; points of connection to the audience; present, past, future; lacked something that caused them to struggle and leads them to their accomplishments
• For Project 1, you’re writing an education narrative of your own that tells a story about a meaningful learning experience, whether in school or in your life. Your experience might be about a class, a text you read, a space where you like to learn, a mentor who had an impact on you, an accomplishment, a failure, etc. What questions do you have? Start writing in our Pre-writing Education Narratives discussion
• Reacting and responding to the readings
  • How do these texts fit with the education narrative genre?
  • what else stands out in the texts?
  • what other of our mentor texts do we connect to?
• Metaphors: What metaphors for education have we encountered? Any new ones this week?
• Work on Project 1: brainstorm, take notes, freewrite, draft, draft, draft, etc

Photo credit: “Let’s Go!” by Karl Schultz via Flickr under the license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.