That was Encouraging
September 16th, 2009So my students either missed a beat, or they’re feeling more confident about the material than they’re letting on.
For the last week and a half we’ve been dealing with two main ideas—Aristotle’s Rhetorical triangles, and looking at the Early Colonial period of American literature. We’ve used one to practice the other, with my kids struggling—and how they have hated, and how much they have detested—with William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation and only slightly less so Johnathan Edward’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
But… today I handed them an assignment. A test, in fact, in the purest sense of the word—here’s a piece of early colonial writing. How do you know it’s from the early colonial period? What characteristics of the text help you make that identification? What is the purpose of this text? How does the author accomplish this rhetorically? What techniques are used?
I said this was a true test, and that’s because, to do it, the student has to be able to competently demonstrate a number of abilities. They need to be able to organize an essay that expresses their thoughts—I said nothing less than two pages, suggested that three would be good—and they need to take their knowledge of the early colonial period and their knowledge of rhetoric and apply it to an actual text.
In short, they need to do the same work that any competent reader does when approaching an unknown text. They need to be detectives, and they need to be able to apply what they should have learned—which is much, much better than a multiple choice selection that has some dates and some terms already written down on it.
Strangely, they didn’t argue with me much… which means either they missed their chance to advocate for themselves (in which case they deserve their fate… learn to speak truth to power, kids!) or they’re feeling like they can do what I asked them to do fairly easily.
I hope the latter. If not… well, sooner or later I’m going to be handing them selections from every time period of American literature and asking them to identify from where it comes, when that was, and how they know. If they can’t do this right now, they have plenty of incentive to learn.
Six kids showed up for the first night of SAT prep. Four of them were from MC2.
I’m trusting that will grow as word gets out, but it is a little frustrating when so very much is offered for free and yet it’s so rarely taken advantage of.
Those who did will get a Reeses out of it, though… not to mention significantly higher test scores, if past history is any guide.
I love mail from my kids:
Hello hello!
I wanted to show you this project I’m working on for typography. We have to create a composition/pattern using one letter from a specific typeface: Baskerville, Futura, standard/akzidenz grotosic, Styme bold, Garamond, Bodoni or Claredon bold. Unfortunately I don’t have all of the fonts…but I’ve made do. This class is so badass. I’m in my element. We talked about the origin of Jenson yesterday—I had no idea it originated in Venice!
Anyway, just wanted to show you my comps. Hope you enjoy!
Stuff like this makes me wish that I could be a science teacher.
How could you not capture a kid’s attention? I have to gouge out somebody’s eyes to get them interested…
But I’m willing to do that.
It took forty minutes of discussion, but I helped a kid pick a senior project today that he was excited about. That just rocks.
