Honesty and Curiosity | Excitement and Discovery
Hi Class, the “Inner/Outer Dialogue” assignment we discussed in class is written out and is in your WEEK 5 Assignment Folder. Here is a direct link. We will read what you’ve got in class and discuss formatting for future submission.
UNIT 2 starts this week. Stay safe this week-end.
(closeups from the work of Martin Wilner)
All your assignments and all of our class periods in this last month have comprised UNIT 1. You will recognize a bunch of similar themes: Learning — in general (different methods); the way you, specifically Learn; Language — how it works, what sorts of amazing things it does; and now: Literacy — the ability to be fluent and skilled in most anything, which requires repetition, correction, mentoring, study.
After the rain, yesterday, this rainbow came out.
If you have been keeping up with our short assignments and have been participating in class, you are more than ready to take on the Capstone Assignment for UNIT 1. Please take the time to read this assignment (if you have not already!!), and bring any questions you have to class.
I strongly suggest you begin to read what other smart people say about HOW they learned to read and write. One is from the Autobiography of Malcom X. Would you like a direct link? Here it is. Please check it out.
I also recommend Amy Tan’s essay on literacy and language. It is excellent.
If you read both of these, you will have a good basis and inspiration for your own story!
P.S. These and other essays are available on our READINGS page.
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I will put all of these items in your new (WEEK 4) Weekly Assignment Folder, which is now live.
One added announcement: please remember that there is no school on Sept 25. See you Thursday.
First off I want to thank those who spoke up today for their honesty and support of each other. Sometimes classrooms are laboratories. Ideas get taken apart and explored. That’s a good thing.
A note on Transitions:
Yes, I agree with what was said. Many of you are facing some pretty serious or otherwise intense transition moments right now. Old paradigms of how things were are being placed on top of new realities. They don’t merge. Plus, Our Fair City often seems to fight us as we strive just to get out of bed and, well, eat and walk around.
So, I just want to say something about procrastination on that score. In my humble opinion? It is an epidemic. You are not alone. It isn’t just some “freshman” thing — though it is prevalent among freshmen. Teachers have it, I have it. It is almost in the drinking water. It is basically the byproduct of our current culture.
No one can seem to be able to get out of their own way and just…succeed.
My two suggestions are to: A) realize that this new normal is in fact crazy (and that, ultimately, it will fall to your generation to fix things — LOL), and B) we should try to view time differently. (Yes, B is big.) The ancient Greeks saw time in two ways: One was as a long, continuous, never-ending (hello routine!) extended thing; The other was as a flash — a NOW, a moment.
And, in my interpretation, a moment of brilliance.
So: what if freshmen viewed schoolwork/homework/etc time as a whole lot of waiting around for a moment of genius?
So be it. The genius moment will come. Please just have faith.
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Now, I need to write you another post about your week’s homework. Sorry about that. I do have a photo of a rainbow I saw yesterday and am going to put it in.
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