Your Blog Posts So Far

For eight weeks or so we have been developing, revising, and adding to our blogs.  Many of you have not only completed the required assignments, you have made your blog your own space by posting all sorts of wonderful extras.  You have posted artwork and music, videos and photos, poems and commentary.  And as a result you are enriching our intellectual environment by demonstrating the mission of our class: Learning is what we do in all of life, not just school.

Some, however, have maintained their blog as just a class assignment, a place to store their homework assignments.  Although that was not the intention of this ongoing project, I recognize that for some of you, that is the limit of what you are willing to do.

So how are your blogs going to be evaluated?  Well, first we look at the visual space and we ask if it is visually appealing and engaging?  Does the audience enjoy being in this space?  Second, we look at the quality of the posts and we ask if they are insightful and interesting to read?  Do the posts make the audience think at all?  Third, we look at the number of posts and we ask if all the assigned posts are there?  Are there extra posts that you put on there because you wanted to share ideas and other things you've come across with your intellectual community?  Have you enriched those who visit your blog?  And fourth, have you acquired an audience?  How large is your reach?  If you blog is interesting and engaging, your followers will multiply beyond those you asked to follow you.

As a check in, below you will find the required blog assignments as of 11/7/2013
1. What is courage?
2. What makes you enthusiastic about learning?
3. Write from the perspective of a non-human object.
4. Advertisement for a best friend
5. Reaction to Adora Svitak talk on TED.com
6. "A Difficult Conversation"
7. Define "flifferhuzza" using narrative
8. "New Thoughts"  Expand your thoughts on one or more of your daily exposure reactions
9. A representation of love
10. Parent Interview -- at least ten questions.
11. Reaction to Time article, "None is Enough" -- at least 500 words
12. "To Love or Not to Love?  That is the question." -- 500 words on whether or not you should fall in love.
13. Read six peer blog posts on the above and synthesize those perspectives into your own thoughts.

What's ahead?  More, more, more.  More of everything we've been doing but of better quality because how else would we show we are learning if the quality didn't improve? How could we claim to be making progress if second trimester posts look like first trimester posts?

No Kid Hungry - Letter-Writing Contest - WeAreTeachers

No Kid Hungry - Letter-Writing Contest - WeAreTeachers

Okay, you guys want authentic and meaningful writing assignments, here you go.  Make an argument for ending childhood hunger in a letter to a state or national leader because it is an important world issue.  Enter the contest in order to win a $500 scholarship.  Go to it.  After you are finished writing your letter, send it to my email account: william.sheehan@mansfieldschools.com.  Make sure your name is clearly on it.  Put "Hunger Contest" in the subject line.  Submission deadline is September 27th.  Follow the link and read the information thoroughly.

Note:  This is purely voluntary.

Please click on the following link to Survey Monkey and answer the nine questions honestly.  Thank you.

Post Writing Sample Survey

The Ingredients of Enthusiasm: An Inquiry

Enthusiasm creates momentum.  But what creates enthusiasm?  Every teacher wants to know the answer to this question because if we have this answer then our days are sheer joy.  No more apathy, no more disinterest, no more glazed looks from twenty-five pairs of eyes that twitch forever in the direction of the clock.  So I pose the question to you all (y'all):  In the past, what has made you enthusiastic about learning?  Do not limit yourself to school time -- you have been learning since you emerged into this world!  In fact, your brains are pre-wired for learning massive amounts of stuff.  So now reflect on when you felt enthusiastic about learning.  What qualities were present in the moment?

Post your replies to this question by clicking the reply link right below.  Feel free to read the replies of your classmates and add, argue, qualify what they have said before you.  Feel free to illustrate your point with personal experience, particularly if your point is abstract.  In other words, don't just answer the question, help me and everyone else understand what you are saying.

Building a Community in the Classroom

Too often education is an experience suffered in isolation.  Sure, we complain with friends, we grumble at the dinner table, we criticize on social media sites, but the majority of our learning occurs in isolation.  Why should this be?  In some ways, it is an easier education because it doesn't require us to re-shape the conversations we are having with our peers.  Who wants to really talk about Huck Finn at the lunch table -- unless you're exchanging homework questions, that is!  And who wants to type out some thought they were having while reading Thoreau for the rest of the class to read and laugh at?  Learning is best suffered in isolation so no one knows how smart you are, how stupid you are, how mediocre you are.  

No one need know that you were actually interested in that discussion during class about population control or that you liked the poem on that site we looked at in class today. No one needs to know The Road really did scare you a bit because you aren't ready for the world to end or that you would trade places with Huck Finn in a moment if you could.  Why should you share your opinion on homelessness when you can't really do anything about it?  Who cares what you think about what it means to be an American anyway?

See, it is easy if we see education as just a mindless movement from class to class, a disinterested desire to graduate from high school because you want to go to a good college -- just don't ask me to learn anything of use while I get there!  But what happens if we challenge this notion?  What happens if we decide that education can be more than a 12 year prison sentence?  What happens if you decide that you want a better education for yourself?  One that engages you, one that you look forward to doing, one that you actually don't mind working hard to achieve?

Well, I think to get that education, you need to be a part of the whole process.  You need to be engaged in shaping what education looks like.  Of course, if your goal is to just make everything easier to get through so it looks like you've learned something useful then that doesn't work, right?  I mean, it would be counterproductive to create an education for yourself that was just an easier waste of your time, wouldn't it? Rolling a pebble up a mountain for six hours only for it to roll down the other side is just as much of a waste of time as rolling a boulder for the same outcome, isn't it?  You still could have been doing something better.

And I suppose that is what education comes down to: what could you be doing that is better?  If we are honest, and we evaluate and decide on what we think is important to know and what we want to know, then can't we create an education that is actually worth your time and effort?

In which case, what does that education look like? Or more specifically, for an English class -- which it is my pleasure to teach -- what would that education include?

How can you possibly answer this? you might be asking yourself.  And truthfully, you can't answer it.  Alone.  but together, in a community, you can answer this question and all questions.  It is in the community that decides to reach a goal that success can be achieved.  But you have to decide to be a part of the community. There is no passivity in being a community member.  You decide to join and you get a say in not only reaching the goal but determining what that goal is.  And how can any opportunity to choose the course of your life be a waste of time?  What could possibly be a better use of your time then deciding how you use your time?