What's Going on in 205

This semester has flown by so quickly. It's almost midterm, and I haven't had time to take a breath.  And we've even gone so far as to postpone this semester by a week.

Since my College Comp class is engaged (and totally shocking me, by the way) in revising their narrative essay, I'm posting a quick update of what's going on in 205.

College Comp II - We have already read The Dumbest Generation and are finishing Everything Bad is Good for You.

On Monday students presented their Dumbest Generation projects.  And they were quite good.  I thoroughly enjoyed them and am always pleased by how these students never shy away from thinking outside of the box.

Today students turned in an analytical essay related to Everything Bad where they analyze something from their lives that illustrates either Johnson's theory of "probing" or "telescoping."  Today we also finished watching the film, Crash.  Students will then write an essay analyzing how it is an example of Johnson's multi-narrative theory.  This theory argues that our current pop culture is far more complex (and, thus, intellectually stimulating) than ever before.

This is about where I used to institute the infamous cell phone hiatus where students turned over their cell phones to me for 48 hours and journaled what life was like without constantly being plugged in.  However, now that we are a 1:1 district and ever kid has a MacBook Air, they are still constantly plugged in, even without their phones.

So I am having students keep a digital journal instead.  For a weekend I'm going to have them track all of the texts, Tweets, Snapchats, Instagram, and Facebook posts they post.  Then I will have them use a site like easel.ly to produce an infograph that illustrates their digital lives.

Up next - probably their definition essay.  We're going to watch a Hisory Channel special on Sputnik.  We'll try and define how that changed the 21st century.  I hope to then have students select something to define as their own "Sputnik" moment.

In College Comp students have finished reading Sir Ken Robinson's The Element and are now turning in their second theme.

I'm not going to sugar coat it: several hated The Element.

I don't think it's because they're opposed to Robinson's ideas or theories. I firmly believe it's just because they have rarely read any real nonfiction.

"It says the same thing over and over and over," they cry.

Well, no.  It doesn't. He talks about finding your element (where what you love to do intersects what you are actually good at).  But he does that by devoting a different chapter to a specific aspect of it.  For example, in chapter one, he defines the element. In chapter two, he talks about how it is vital to think differently about talent and IQ  in order to discover talents that are usually disregarded by our traditional school system.  In chapter three, Robinson analyzes how important it is to try and re-imagine creativity. And so on.

I need to do a better job of preparing students for this.  I try and explain to them that nonfiction is the bulk of what they will be reading in college.  Better get used to it now.

Next up, we will begin our How-To essay before writing our Braided Essay.