Half Empty or Half Full?
Here ends the first half of the school year. I hate to say I told you so, but our class has dwindled to 27 students, down from the original 36 that we started with. History has repeated itself: Every year between December and March we lose a quarter of the class. This year, however, was even crueler in that we lost not only students, but also my teaching partner, Kathy Eller. I've always done the honors gig more or less on my own, but it was nice touching base with Ms. Eller periodically just to see how her honors students were doing. I'm going to miss her in so many ways that I can't count them all.
I just posted the third term requirements on the honors web site, and I am planning a meeting next Thursday, at which I will hand out the new books for the term and explain some of the changes in the requirements for the last half of the year. The most significant change will be that I am going to outlaw blogs that are nothing more than "Here's what I did last weekend." I want them all to have a central theme or thesis, a main idea around which the writing revolves, rather than just a random list of activities to fill space. I am going to look more carefully for some critical reflection rather than just journalizing and random list making. Here are some samples of blogs from our class that have a thesis: Tsunami by Lindsay Crosby, Slave Forces by Aaron Burgin, and King George II by Trey Williams. Also, if you are looking for a style to imitate, try Erynn Spencer's. Practically every blog she writes is focused on a theme, which is usually the title. This is not to say that you can't talk about yourself and your experiences, but put them within the context of some main idea. What's funny to me is that many of you are writing blogs that you know are boring because you announce it, first thing: "Don't read this! It's really boring! All I do is ramble on for 500 words about whatever pops into my head!" And after a couple weeks of this, I gotta tell you, I get bored of it, too. The moral of third term blogs will be this: Have a point!
We're halfway finished, but we're just getting started....
*<%^) MRT
I just posted the third term requirements on the honors web site, and I am planning a meeting next Thursday, at which I will hand out the new books for the term and explain some of the changes in the requirements for the last half of the year. The most significant change will be that I am going to outlaw blogs that are nothing more than "Here's what I did last weekend." I want them all to have a central theme or thesis, a main idea around which the writing revolves, rather than just a random list of activities to fill space. I am going to look more carefully for some critical reflection rather than just journalizing and random list making. Here are some samples of blogs from our class that have a thesis: Tsunami by Lindsay Crosby, Slave Forces by Aaron Burgin, and King George II by Trey Williams. Also, if you are looking for a style to imitate, try Erynn Spencer's. Practically every blog she writes is focused on a theme, which is usually the title. This is not to say that you can't talk about yourself and your experiences, but put them within the context of some main idea. What's funny to me is that many of you are writing blogs that you know are boring because you announce it, first thing: "Don't read this! It's really boring! All I do is ramble on for 500 words about whatever pops into my head!" And after a couple weeks of this, I gotta tell you, I get bored of it, too. The moral of third term blogs will be this: Have a point!
We're halfway finished, but we're just getting started....
*<%^) MRT
posted by MRT at 6:36 PM
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