Tag Archives: BHS

Essay #1, blogging about our first BHS visit, and more

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Essay #1:

Essay #1 is due on Monday, but I haven’t heard much about Part 2–how is it going? Please bring a paper copy of both parts of Essay #1 to class on Monday. Once i see that everyone has these materials, I will ask you to do some reflective writing about your writing process and will then provide directions for submitting your work electronically.

If you still have questions about Essay #1, please ask them! I know there must be questions, and better to be brave and ask them now than wonder and guess and have no guidance.

Blogging for homework:

At the Brooklyn Historical Society on Wednesday, I asked you to blog for homework. I’ve added some more suggestions to the instructions, so this might be more helpful:

After class, write a blog post in which you elaborate on the materials you examined in class. You might begin with your one-sentence presentation. If your item can be posted on the blog, please share the photograph; if it can’t, you might describe it for your readers. This blog post is the place to say all the smart things you observed and interpreted but didn’t have a chance to present to the class. You can reflect further on the questions of how the “big guy” in “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” gets to know Brooklyn, and how you have, or you might think about what was missing from our exploration at BHS, what you would have liked to examine. This blog post could also be the chance for you to include other materials that you know about or seek out. Remember to include a citation for any materials you use, including the items from BHS and “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.” Choose the category Homework, and tag your post with whatever tags you think represent your work.

For those of you who missed class, please use the BHS visit 1 handout I distributed at BHS and any of the following materials to complete the assignment:

Map of the New York City subway system. 1955. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection.

Who Lives Where. Guenter Vollath. 1985. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection. (not the first map in the post)

Brooklyn and how to get to the World’s Fair. 1939. Brooklyn Historical Society Map Collection. (first map)

Dry Dock 1, 1928, v1973.5.875; Photography Collection; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Coney Island Beach, ca. 1968, v1988.12.41; Otto Dreschmeyer Brooklyn Slides Collection, V1988.012; Brooklyn Historical Society.

And more:

We will begin blogging in a rotating cycle again, so if you have any other requests or suggestions, please let me know what they are. Our next round of blogging will be geared toward preparing for the midterm exam, which will be on 3/20 in class.

“Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” and the Brooklyn Historical Society

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On Wednesday, we will be traveling to the Brooklyn Historical Society to look at some of the archived materials in their collections. Please meet promptly at 11:30 or prior inside the Adams Street entrance to City Tech (near the entrance to the bookstore). We will leave from there and travel the short distance to the Brooklyn Historical Society at 128 Pierrepont Street at Clinton Street.

Before our visit to the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), every student in our class needs to complete a survey. You can find the survey here. Follow the instructions on the site. If you have any questions or problems, please get in touch with me. You’ll do another survey at the end of the semester. It’s all to gauge how much you’ve learned at BHS.

To prepare, think about the following two questions:

Q: How does the “big guy” in “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” attempt to know Brooklyn?

Q: How have you gotten to know Brooklyn?

When we’re at BHS, I’ll ask you to think about getting to know Brooklyn:

Q: How can we get to know Brooklyn and Wolfe’s story through the archival materials at BHS?

You will work in groups to examine the materials at one of six stations.

Be prepared to photograph each piece and its citation–your phone’s camera is fine.

In your groups, you will discuss what you’re looking at, trying to identify elements from the story in your materials and to piece together an understanding of the area you’re looking at.

Your group will then share what you have discussed by presenting for 3-5 minutes total on some aspects of the following topics:

  • What did you look at?
  • What do you know about Brooklyn from each piece you didn’t know before?
  • How does it represent aspects of “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn,” if it does? How is it different?
  • What more do you want to know?

Each person needs to speak!

Before we meet again…

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There’s much to do before we meet again. Just as a reminder, I’ll list them here:

First, there are two things I should have mentioned in class but didn’t:

  1. Before our visit to the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS), every student in our class needs to complete a survey. You can find the survey here. Follow the instructions on the site. If you have any questions or problems, please get in touch with me. You’ll do another survey at the end of the semester. It’s all to gauge how much you’ve learned at BHS.
  2. Dropbox:
  • Essay #1 is due electronically on 3/11. I’ll collect the finished essay–Part 1 and Part 2–via Dropbox.com. You should each have received an invitation to join Dropbox–check your City Tech email. If you didn’t, or if you have a Dropbox account associated with a different email address and would prefer to use that, please let me know. Once you create an account, you’ll find an invitation to join our shared folder waiting for you in your Dropbox account.
  • It’s important that you understand that there are two ways to use Dropbox: you can use it exclusively on line, or you can download it to your computer. You do not need to download it. I do not require that you download it.  I promise that you can use it without downloading it. Please read those last four sentences several times out loud, with witnesses.
  • We will share a folder on Dropbox. That means that everyone in the class can see what everyone puts in the folder. I will not return work to you via Dropbox, so it will contain only your ungraded work. If you have any concerns, please let me know. Since we are the audience for our writing, it’s good that you can read your classmates’ work.
  • If you want to put your draft of your retelling in our Dropbox folder, please do. I’ll give timely feedback so that you can revise it before you get too far with Part 2 of your essay.
Also:
  • You need to work on your draft of your retelling for Essay #1. To do that, you want to make sure you really understand what kind of narrator the story has, what kind of narrator you’re switching to, and what that means for both versions of the story.
  • You should consider sharing any draft you have ready, or any questions you have, by posting to the blog, so that we can all give advice, answer questions, brainstorm, etc. Remember please that it can be difficult to share creative work, or work that’s an early draft, so let’s all be respectful of that.
  • If you haven’t finished “The Metamorphosis,” please do!