Students, class, I am so excited to welcome you to your 2020-2021 senior year! One of the best things that has happened to me recently was signing into my new gradebook and seeing names of students who I taught as Freshman Pre-APers. This year, you guys, it’s your year. Soon (maybe in November!?) you’ll be voting and shaping the future of our world. I can’t wait. But first, it’s me and you (and you and all your other senior teachers) here in our online classroom. You can go to my About Me page to learn some more about me. In this, my first blogpost and also our syllabus, I will be covering the following topics:
MindsetIn our first virtual teacher orientation meeting of the school year, Principal McDonough taught me a new thing about basketball referees. When chaos happens on the court, referees are trained to focus on their primaries. I did a little Google research, and I can attest to the fact that this is true. According to referee.com, focusing on your primaries means going back to the basics to focus on fundamentals. This year, in this class, we will all focus on our primaries together. And while we’re focusing on our primaries, we will be flexible with each other. I will be flexible with you, and you will be flexible with me. We will all be ready to revise our strategies at the drop of pin: our strategies, but not our goals. And, finally, none of us will be afraid to try new things because none of us will be afraid to make mistakes. As Sir Ken Robinson says in his TED talk on Creativity in the Classroom, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.” Right now, in our minds, let’s just decide we are all prepared to be wrong. Writing is a creative endeavor, and I certainly know from experience how fear of mistakes can paralyze a writer. GoalsSo we’re focusing on our primaries, and bringing flexibility to everything except these, our core goals. Great. What even are our primaries? I’m so glad you asked, because the primaries for this class are some of my favorite primaries of any class I’ve ever taught. We will be teaching and learning the AP curriculum for Literature and Composition. Basically, it all comes down to this: We will be reading literature. We will be writing about literature. We will be writing literature. Our curriculum comes from the College Board, and you can find it here at the AP Central website. That first document, the “core” document of the course, is 178 pages and absolutely unnecessary for any of you to read. But it’s there for you if you want to for whatever reason. What you do need to know is that I’ve read it, and I’ve crafted our course to be aligned with the objectives of AP, the same entity who writes and distributes the AP test. So everything checks out. Remembering our flexibility mindset, here is a draft of what I generally expect us to cover this year: 9/8-10/9: Short Fiction and Literary Argument 10/12-10/30: Poetry and Literary Argument 11/2-11/20: Novel and Literary Argument This rhythm of short fiction, poetry, and longer works will be repeated at least one more time throughout the year, possibly two more times. Analytical skills pertaining to different aspects of character, setting, structure, and figurative language will be woven through each of the units, but the literary argument/analytical writing component we work on together every step of the way. Which is good, because 55% of your AP Lit exam is written analysis. ToolsY’all, this list is longer than I’m comfortable with. In general, I’m more of a paired-down, less stuff, empty walls, clean desk kind of a teacher. I like making more room for essentials and clearing enough space to create. I love my copy of Marie Kondo’s tidying book. I’m big into this Thoreau quote from Walden: “Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand...Simplify, simplify!” But it turns out that the reality of online schooling means that quite large bits of our lives will be frittered away with the details of websites, passwords, and the like. And I realize it has to be even worse for students, multiplied by all your classes. Flexibility will also serve us well here. Flexibility and communication. What are our tools?
NormsOur new world calls for new norms. Let’s start with what you can expect from me:
And now, what I expect of you:
In an effort to create boundaries where none exist, that is, between home and school/work, here are a few norms for all of us:
First Day Action Listead this blogpost (almost done!)
All of the class codes for everything are in the HUB. If you are feeling anxiety about your summer reading, please don’t. Take some deep breaths, go for a walk, and know that next Wednesday’s blog post will deal with all of that. See you in Teams! |
AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
Categories |