Due for Wednesday Blog Post Describe the relationship between the typical South student and grades (in terms of motivation, stress, identity, placement, value, etc.). Is this a healthy relationship? What improvements can be made?
Due for Friday Share your editorial or op-ed on which candidate you support with me by placing it in your Term 3 Google Drive folder. Due for Monday 1. Remember to turn in your HNZLMN on Turn it In 2. Blog post:"Look, I'd love kids to attend class "for the intrinsic value," and until then, I'd love them to do it for money. I just want them to do it." - Geoffrey Canada, on paying students in his Promise Academy schools for good attendance and strong performance. Respond to the quote above: what are a typical South student's motivations to earn high marks? What motivations should students have? What feels ethically, intellectually, or morally suspect about paying students for "showing up and doing well?" What feels ethically, intellectually, or morally suspect about internalizing grades as rewards themselves? In what ways do we already have a system that might undercut or overemphasize the supposed value of "a good grade?" 3. Prepare for our final seminar/debate Readings The Full Chapter on The Purpose of Grading Alfie Kohn's famous article "The Case Against Grades" Lit Review of Grading with Some Possible Fixes New York Time's What College Want in an Applicants NPR Transcript into How Amherst Looks at Its Applicants
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Due for Wednesday 1. Review for Act 4 reading quiz 2. Read Act 5 Scene 1
By End of Class Thursday Finish reading Romeo and Juliet; answer all the questions! Due for Friday Review your notes for your quiz on act 5 Due for Monday Come to class with your placement survey filled out! Also, work on your Romeo and Juliet project Due for Wednesday, March 7 Bring your outline to class Required Readings
Optional Readings
Read the following excerpt from "When Mindfulness Meets the Classroom". Should teachers try to play the role of therapist as a part of their jobs? What conditions need to be met for this sort of episode or experience to be held in a productive, positive manner? Could these conditions be reasonably met in your current context? What are some of the risks of asking teachers to embrace mindfulness? As the article asks, "Could any teacher teach mindfulness, or does it require a significant personal investment? Is opening teachers up to dealing with their students’ emotional and psychological needs, in addition to their academic ones, encouraging a blur between teacher and therapist?" Back in the Bronx, after a minute or two of the day’s mindfulness exercise, his own eyes also closed, Gonzalez [a mindfulness instructor] ran through a list of emotions: Happy. Sad. Excited. Mad. Bored. Loving. Worried. Jealous. Silly. The second item on this list seemed to especially resonate with an 18-year-old at the front of the classroom, a young woman with dark skin, shimmering pink lip gloss, and perfectly plucked eyebrows. Sitting up straight with her hands in her lap, her composed posture belied the challenges she faced shortly before transferring to Arturo A. Schomburg two years earlier. “I didn’t know anybody. I was very depressed. I didn’t want to be in school,” she told me in a hushed voice at the end of class. Shortly before transferring to this school, her favorite big brother had been hit by a car. She said she’d watched him fall into a coma, and sat by his side until his heart stopped; soon after that, she’d seen one of her friends get shot in the head and bleed to death in the street. During the quiet minutes set aside for mindfulness exercises in class, she would often cry. Now, she writes in perfect, neat script as she fills out a worksheet to accompany the day’s mindfulness exercise. But she told me she wasn’t always so eager to participate. “I used to write, ‘I hate this, I don’t want to do this.’ I ripped those papers up,” she said. But one day when she was in a particularly dark mood, something clicked. “Argos told me to close my eyes. Then he said, ‘Connect to your breath.’ He always used to say it, but I never really did it until then.” Gonzalez told me that his Mindful Schools training had specific segments dedicated to working with trauma. “I noticed that I could feel [my breath] in my chest,” she told me, “And at that moment, I felt so relieved. The only thing I could think in my mind was, ‘I’m ok.’ And, I don’t know—from that day on, it just didn’t hurt anymore.” She told me she hadn’t been in fights the way she once used to. Her four other brothers are in jail, and she is convinced it’s because they didn’t get the mindfulness training she now has. “Your emotions drive you mad,” she said, but escaping them is possible by “focusing on now.” Due for Sunday, the 18th Share your Speaker Series editorial with me by placing it in your term 3 Google Folder Due for Monday: Be prepared for the debate! Due for Wednesday 1. Read Act 4, Scenes 1 and 2. 2. Make a list of all the things that can go wrong with the Friar's Plan. 3. A Block has a vocab quiz on list 6!
Due for Thursday 1. Read Act 4, Scene 3 2. Reimagine Juliet's monologue in Act 4 Scene 3 as if she were a modern teen about to text someone she has a crush on or as if she were a modern teen who has sneaked out to her first party and was about to drink her first adult beverage. (300 words) Due for Friday 1. Read Act 4 Scene 5 2. Make 5 memes of #NewtonProblems or #NewtonSouthProblems 3. B Block has a vocab quiz! Due for Monday Just copy and paste a meme from last night's homework onto the Google Doc! Due for Monday: 1. Be prepared for your debate/seminar if you are in that group. 2. Blog Post: Is “it was different back then” a strong or reasonable excuse for men who have been accused of sexual harassment taking place decades ago? If something like inappropriate touching or inappropriate comments felt commonplace and “appropriate” 30 years ago, should we condemn those who committed those acts today? Can you think of any instance or example of something that you would consider excusable because "it was different back then?" Does it matter if the behavior takes place in the workplace or in general society? 3. Blog Post: IIs it fair to publish a document that names/accuses individuals of sexual harassment that is meant to be private? Should a document like this even be created, regardless of whether or not it is to be published? Should an individual face professional or personal consequences for simply being accused of sexual harassment? Should someone have a say in whether or not his name has a place on a list of “shitty men”?
Required Readings (will be done in class) 1. The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari - The Atlantic 2. Parsing the Generational Divide - NYT 3. The Shitty Media Men List Explained - Vox 4. Beware of Female Vigilantism - Boston Globe 5. Working with Leon Wiesltier, Editor Accused of Harassment - The Atlantic Other Readings
Your editorial on #MeToo will be due on Friday, 16th. Due for Wednesday 1. Read Act 3, Scenes 2-4. 2. Write a deductive reasoning paragraph on whether or not justice was served in the prince's decree in Act 3 Scene 1 (worth 15 points). 3. Write a deductive reasoning paragraph on whether or not Romeo or Juliet meets contemporary gender stereotypes (also worth 15 points).
Due for Friday Finish reading Act 3 Due for Monday Be prepared for a quotation quiz on Act 3! |
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