Test and Roots

We have a test (4.20.10) and Roots in the City (4.22.10).  Here's the map to the Roots event on Thursday:


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We will meet there on Thursday at around 7:15am. Bring your pigeon peas, service-learning forms, and one-page reflection.

Osama +

We finished watching Osama this morning.  This film is powerful and disturbing.  It should give you a sense of the scope of Greg Mortenson's work in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

Please note that you have an extra credit essay you can write that incorporates what you learned from the film with what you have read in Three Cups of Tea and what you have written in your essay about the future and the first essay you wrote about motivation.

Requirements

• No less than four pages
• Double spaced
• One inch margins
• MLA style

Due:  April 22

at least five pages...

A big thank you to Jorge for sharing his essay with us.  It's always very useful to be able to hear and see how other writers approach their themes.  Do note that you should revise your photographic essay.  My comments were intended to get you to stretch a bit as you do this.  Have the revision of this essay by March 30.

While working on your revision, you also need to be taking care of your third essay.  Line up your interviews and have transcriptions and notes to use as primary sources.  The first draft of this essay is due March 25.  I will provide a completion grade for the work you bring to class.  In order to earn an A, you will need to have at least five pages of typed text with you.  Please plan accordingly.  

This coming Tuesday, March 23 is a catch up day.  Take the time you would normally spend coming to class, working on your draft and also on your revision.  

Don't forget to keep reading Three Cups of Tea.  By next week you should have read through Chapter 17.  Expect some kind of quiz when we see each other on Thursday.

Brainstorm

Class Activities
Today we will spend a good portion of the class mapping out three possible scenarios for the future.  I will provide some newsprint and markers; the aim is to provide a visual map of three possible futures.  The map should help you visualize your third essay.

As I think further about this last essay, I want to add a couple of other requirements.  You should do some primary research.  These sources should include the following:

• An interview with a family member, significant other, or close friend and their thoughts on your three potential paths.
• Notes from a meeting with one of our academic advisors regarding your particular transfer process and what you need to do to graduate.

Thinking of Next Steps

We move to our third essay.  This one focuses on well-being as we look toward the future.  The topic arose from a conversation with Carlos Hernandez concerning his plans after MDC.  Here's the theme:

Develop a five-page essay with at least five sources detailing your future plans.  Most of you are planning on continuing  your studies.  Explore your options; look for at least a couple of schools that may serve your needs.  Identify potential scholarships.  Make this paper as useful as possible.

Draft # 1--Due March 23 (Needs to be at least five pages.)
Final Draft--Due April 6

In other course related news,  note that I will be going back and checking missing labs next Thursday.  This is your one chance to make up missing work.

We have a Roots in the City service-learning event this Saturday from 9-12 noon.

Half Way Point

Class Activities

• Peer Editing Checklist and sharing of essays.
• Short grammar quiz.
• Discussion of Three Cups of Tea (focusing on Chapter 12).

Homework

Complete the following in MyWritingLab:

• Parallelism (Getting Started with the Essay)
• Essay Introductions, Conclusions, and Titles (Getting Started with the Essay)

Catch up with any missing lab assignments.

Read through Chapter 14 of Three Cups of Tea for Tuesday.

Important Links for the Photo Contest

Here are the two links we went over in class.  Remember that you will need to print the form and also mat your photographs.

• Rules
• Form
• Pearls Art Supplies

Working with Images: Essay #2

Class
Today we will work on turning the brainstorm into an essay.  We will look at the photographs for the essay and consider the contest rules.  I will answer any questions regarding the Motivation Research revisions.

Homework
In MyWritingLab:

• Summary Writing 
• Pronoun Case
• Commas
• Semicolons, Colons, Dashes, and Parenthesis

Read through Chapter 12 of Three Cups of Tea

Plain and Simple

Class Activities

1. Share and collect revised essays
2. Practice in-class writing exercise
3. A word about grades and assignments

Homework

• Complete the following in MyWritinglab:

1. Critical Thinking: Responding to Text and Visuals
2. Illustrating
3. Quotation Marks

• Work on photographic essay.  Bring a one page freewrite or brainstorm to class.
• Read through Chapter 11 of Three Cups of Tea.

Ten Times Out, Ten Times In

This week we move toward writing about what we see.  Someone has said that seeing is believing, but this statement can easily be turned on its head:  Believing is seeing. So what do we believe that allows us to see the world around us a certain way?   Essay #2 asks for a photograph of something that is non-human that somehow is related to you as the observer.  The image will be accompanied by a text, an essay that will help us better understand that connection.  But if you don't believe the connection, you may actually miss it altogether--you may not see it.
With that in mind, I want to share a short visual exercise that may help us explore the notion of relations and relationships.  It has to do with looking at the universe in powers of 10.

the powers of 10 from Bomi Lee on Vimeo.

In your blogs, go ahead and take the Powers of Ten video and embed it.  Provide a list of questions regarding the video; muse about your approach to your photographic essay.  Keep it all to around 300 words.  Have fun!

Everglades Trip (February 27)

For those of you participating in Saturday's trip to the Everglades, please fill out the travel release forms.  Have these to me by Thursday.  We will be meeting at the Coe Visitor Center at the main entrance of  Everglades National Park at 9am.

How to Get There (Click on View Larger Map for Directions)

View Larger Map

We will spend about 20 minutes in the visitor center and then entering the park by car.  We hope that we can leave as many cars behind.  Entrance to the park is $10 per car; please have change so that everyone in the car can split the cost.  

What to Bring

• Notebook and pen
• Camera
• Comfortable clothes (two pairs of shoes that can get wet; no flip flops)
• Water
• Lunch and snacks
• Sunscreen and bug repellent
• Curiosity

Inviting Space to Learn, Live, and Love

I came across the following line from a poem and I thought it had something to do with our book and also what you have been experimenting with the writing process. The line comes from the Masnavi a very long poem by the Persian poet Rumi.  I'd like for us to think about his words and use them as a way to deepen our own experience with Three Cups of Tea and also the things we have been learning about the writing process. Tasks for the Morning

• Exploring the following line from Rumi:   "Grace comes when something is taken away."
• Sharing homework clusters in groups.
• Coming back to the idea of stepping back or taking away.
• Exploring South Florida

South Florida

View more presentations from carlosgonzalezsf.

Homework

• Freewrite one page of text using the images we looked at in class.
• If you have not done so already, complete the Research Process in MyWritingLab.  I will be using the highest grade on the the quizzes for an official grade.  If the work is not completed by Thursday, the grade will be a 0.  

Revision Work+

Today we spent most of our class going over the difference between revision, editing, and proofreading.  This is an important conversation to have as most of you are in the midst of doing some heavy revision work on your first essay.  For those worried over end of semester grades, please put these concerns aside and focus on the work before you.  There's plenty of time to improve grades.

Homework
Read through Chapter 9 of Three Cups of Tea.  Expect another quiz!
Work on the revision.
Keep an eye out for a good image to use for Essay #2.

Important Dates to Remember
Draft of Revised Essay #1--February 18
Roots in the City (Service-Learning)--February 20
Everglades Trip (Optional)--February 27
Essay #2--March 9

Other
We now have a sign-up sheet for those participating in the Pastries for Dreams (Nicaragua Project).  Please use it to let us know ahead of time what you will be bringing.

Finally, our campus has a very active Lit Club.  Please know that everyone is invited to join and participate.  The club meets every other Wednesday from 2-3pm.

Relatives

Relationships

We move into our next writing assignment by focusing on relationships. Instead of looking at this theme from a conventional perspective, I invite you to explore this topic from a more cosmic and non-personal point of view.

We are all here through a series of cause and effect relationships. All of us can trace our origins to our parents, to their grandparents, and back to the very flaring forth of the Universe 13.7 billion years ago. Our connections are many and unavoidable. Becoming aware of them is not that difficult. Our next assignment is meant to increase our sense of interbeing by encouraging us to see and name.

For this next essay, I want us to focus on our relationships to land/sky/water/air, to this particular place/home we call South Florida. Instead of starting from the written word, however, I would like for you to take a photograph of something in our local bioregion (needs to be non-human) to which you find a particular affinity. This assignment is inspired by the Earth Ethics Institute 2010 Photography Challenge, and I encourage everyone to submit their image as part of the contest.

The essay will work as a companion to the image and should be no less than 750 words long. Instead of describing the photograph, the text should help the reader better understand or feel the relationship the image symbolizes.

Resources

A Universe Story
Journal of Light

Visit to the Everglades
We will be taking a car ride to Everglades National Park on Saturday, February 27th. Please let me know if you plan on attending. The trip will be an all day affair. We will meet at the park entrance at 9:00 and spend the day traveling through time and space in this magical place.

Turning Toward the Outside

We begin in earnest to look at how to incorporate the information you have gathered from our library databases into your own writing. In today's class we will work on better understanding the writing and research process.

The following slides will use an article from The New York Times to better help us see the process at work a bit more.




Group Activity

Each group will read and digest "Quoting and Paraphrasing" in order to present it to the rest of the class. Each group will have five minutes to present at the start of next class.

Research Legs

Today we broke up into our small groups and shared what we learned from performing the roles we assumed last class. Don't underestimate these activities as they are helpful in allowing you to gain your research legs.

For Next Class

1-Watch the research clips in the Research portion of MyWritingLab.
2-Select one article from the library databases to be used for your collaborative essay. Each person should have one article, with annotations, and notes pointing to how the information connects to the overall theme of the essay.
3-Read the next three chapters of Three Cups of Tea.

Today's Class

We are weavers of context a friend of mine told me once, and your research is all about weaving, finding connections in order to deepen your understanding. In today's class we saw how a primary source such as a speech or an interview can be used in a research essay if we think carefully and ask fruitful questions.

Work to Do
The groups need to post the outline, thesis, and work plan by no later than tomorrow morning, January 20. I want to see these in order to provide more specific feedback.

For Next Class
Make sure to follow through with your assigned roles regarding Three Cups of Tea. If you were not in class, make sure to contact one of your group members.

For Tuesday

Make sure to have completed the following:

1-Working outline for the essay
2-Thesis
3-Work load assignment
4-Begin research
5-First three chapters of Three Cups of Tea

Service-Learning Opportunity

We will have our first garden day this Saturday in celebration of Dr. King's work and vision. The event will run from 9 to 12 noon. If you are planning on attending, come dressed to work outside; bring a water bottle and a hat. Here's the address:

ROOTS IN THE CITY: EcoUrban Gardening
3rd Ave. & NW 9th St. (Plots are in front of Mt. Zion Baptist Church)


View Larger Map

Accelerate Your Learning

Please know that you can come in to Rm. 1217-17 (small room in the Computer Courtyard) from 9 to 12 noon on Wednesdays to get help with your writing. Bring a question, a paragraph, or an essay and you will get help!

Moving Along

This week we should get into a good work rhythm. The groups should be set up; everyone should have posted to the team blog over the weekend. Here's what I have planned:

1-Stroll through the team blogs and provide feedback. I want to pay close attention to the need of keeping an audience in mind as we write and also edit.

2-I'd like to go over the library resources. I know that there are a number of you who already know how to access these. Maybe you can help me show the rest of the class what's available.

3-We need to continue working on the first essay. By the end of the week, the group should have a working outline and assigned tasks for each of the members. This should be posted in the team blog.

4-Our first service-learning opportunities will take place this week. The writing/reading circles will start on Thursday; Saturday we will have our first garden day which will be part of our effort to honor the work and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Motivation

Starting on our first essay on the second day of class suggests the pace of the semester. Intense! I look forward to the weekend posts in each of your team blogs. Remember to take a photograph of something that illustrates the brainstorming you did in class today. Include a couple of sentences of text to accompany the image.

Next week I want to start the service-learning work for the reading/writing circles. I will need facilitators for 8:25 and 9:50am.

Welcome

Welcome to a new semester. I hope that your holidays were full of blessings and love. I enjoyed my time with family and friends, and I'm ready for the start of a great new year and decade. Let's make the next 16 weeks be the best ever. I look forward to sharing a rich and meaningful learning space with you.

As usual, I'm trying something different and new. For those of you who had me last semester, you may see some familiar brush strokes in the way I'm approaching the class, but you are in for a surprise as we move ahead.

Our semester will focus on three major themes: passion, connections,and well being. These three thematic pillars will help create a learning container for the whole of the semester. If you're wondering how the themes came about, they came to me in one of my training runs for the upcoming ING marathon. The three can be seen as holons, welcoming insights that can stand alone and that build to a greater understanding of who we are are as human beings.

There will be a number of writing assignments. Most but not all will have a research component. Each will stand on its own but will also build on its successor to create body of work at the end of the semester that addresses the course competencies and objectives, the College's learning outcomes, and hopefully, your own personal pride in creating something of value.

Writing Assignments
Expect to write three three-page documented collaborative essays. Each essay will need at least two sources--a primary and secondary source. The secondary source will need to come from the library data base. The essays will need to be worked on in a team of five. Final copies of the essays will be published in the group blog.

Toward the end of the term each learner will need to compose one at home reflective individual essay of at least three pages long. This text will synthesize or bring together the knowledge gained from the three essays in an insightful and practical paper with at least three sources--two of which need to be primary and one secondary.

There will also be three in-class essay assignments that will focus on themes generated from the readings, class discussions, and service-learning activities.

Teams will maintain a public blog where they publish work for an on-line audience. The blog will include collaborative and individual texts; short and long pieces, original photographs and videos, and poems around the three themes of passion, connections, and well being; the team will receive a grade for the quality of the blog.

Action Learning
There is a 15 hour service-learning requirement which can be met in five ways:

1. Nicaragua Awareness Project
2. College Prep Reading/Writing Circles
3. Nautilus Dreamers
4. Roots in the City Garden Project

I will go over the service-learning options in class.

Collaborative Essay Dates:
Essay 1: What gets us going?
Due: Tuesday, February 2
Essay 2: Who are our relations?
Due: Tuesday, March 2
Essay 3: What makes us whole?
Due: Tuesday, March 30

Final Reflective Paper (Individual)
Due: Tuesday, April 13

Finished Blog
Due: Tuesday, April 20