Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nate Stearns
Room 607
nathan.stearns@shorelineschools.org
website: http://nstearns.edublogs.org
Course Overview
This is a course about writing. And, as Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Hemingway is a bit optimistic--writing
actually involves hard work, frustrating distractions, societal contempt, and the constant
feeling that everything you create isn’t worth very much. And then you bleed. But, you do get
a laptop!
On the other hand, writing is one of the best known ways to send forth your thoughts into the
universe, into the future. Writing is a kind of immortality. Your well-rendered ideas and
metaphors could outlive you a thousand-fold and—though it might not be comforting—give
you your best shot at bugging other people for all of eternity.
In the College Board’s description of the AP English Language and Composition class, they
describe the purpose of the course:
Similarly, in this class we will engage a number of varied texts in order to understand and
analyze them, but we will also use those texts as models of our own writing. We will work to
become powerful readers—able not only to understand what a writer is communicating, but
also how the writer manipulates the English language to achieve those effects. Furthermore,
we will take this knowledge and apply it to our own writing. As writers, we will grow. As
people?—well—maybe. We will have opportunities to write for a number of purposes—to
teach, to persuade, to tell a story—and in a number of styles—memoir, editorial, journalistic,
satirical. In the end, we will explore all that words have the power to do.
Textbook
Grading System:
Essays: 40% Essays we write in class involve a multi-step process that goes from pre-
writing, research, drafting, editing, and publishing. Some essays will have grades at different
parts of the process to assess how well you navigate the demands of writing. Some essays
will be edited by peers or outside editors (web editors or guest editors). Most major writing
will be graded one-on-one with the teacher and to some extent expectations and grading
standards will be negotiated individually according to the needs and abilities of each student.
Quizzes and tests: 20% Periodically, we’ll be learning terminology and concepts necessary
for writing and will therefore need assessments to make sure you understand them before we
begin integrating them into your writing.
Blog and Daily Work: 40% One of the major methods of providing you with the space and
opportunity to display your analysis of readings is the blog. Regularly, you and your fellow
students will engage with readings and explore the issues, techniques, and purpose behind the
writing. The blogs give us the added ability to share these insights with students within the
class and outside of the school community. Using global collaboration resources such as
Global Schoolroom and ePals, we will expand the conversation. We will also be able to use
commentary, hyperlinks, accompanying visuals (charts, photos, illustrations), and RSS
readers to broaden the intellectual experience and anticipate the methods the modern
marketplace of ideas employs and will employ in the future.
Happy Mondays: Mondays are reserved for reading and discussion of articles from The New
Yorker. Each Monday a different student will be charged with selecting and leading a
discussion on an article from the magazine.
Technology Expectations
Every student will be expected to have their laptops (charged) in class every class period. Also, you will be
asked to maintain an academic blog where much of your in-class work will be entered as well as your longer
assignments. During class, you’re expected to work only on class work; any time you spend on other sites—
Dolphin Olympics, Meebo, whathaveyou—I reserve the right to confiscate your computer for the duration of
class. Similarly, I restrict all uses of cell phones and MP3 players to out of class time. Please keep these
devices in your pockets or backpacks. If I see you using one in class, I also reserve the right to confiscate it
and make several long distance calls to Fiji.
I am not OK with students disrespecting or belittling other students. The first time this happens, expect to be
asked out of class and sent to the front office. I take it very seriously. Besides that, I hope for a classroom of
mutual respect where I treat you with the dignity and honor you deserve and you do likewise. Education has
such a potential to be a force fro good in the world and I expect all of us to treat it that way.
Fall Schedule
Note: Any of the major writing we do in class can be used as elements in your Clas Portfolio.
Unit 1: Beginnings
Unit Goals
• To re-familiarize ourselves with practice public speaking and group discussion skills
• To familiarize yourself with the skills being assessed by the AP Language and
Composition test
• To establish a set of terms and concepts needed to analyze your writing and others’.
• To analyze the rhetorical strategies and stylistic devices of personal essays
• To understand the elements of the writing process
• To learn the basics of sentence variety and the writing of anecdotes
We’ll start with a roundtable discussion/dissection of the test along with anchor paper and
create a class document that will attempt to quantify the skills, knowledge base, and
conceptual understandings necessary to be successful on the AP test.
Also, we’ll review and evaluate our knowledge of the parts of speech and of sentence
mechanics (clauses, phrases, antecedents, sentence types) in order to establish a common set
of analytical labels for our writing. We’ll then apply those tools to short writing selections
(from the memoirs we read for summer reading) in order to practice methods of evaluation,
connection, synthesis, and application.
Finally, we’ll present short passages from our summer memoir readings to showcase our
newly learned analytical tools. This will also give us an opportunity to figure out how our
class discussions (both small group and large) can contribute to our learning.
Personal Essay: Using NPR’s This I believe and the Newsweek’s My Turn essays as a guide,
we’ll write personal essays that combine the use of narrative with expository writing in order
to explain and personalize your view of the world.
Models: “Defending our Skies against the Elderly” by Diane Dimond Newsweek
“Just Walk on By: Black Men and the Public Space” by Brent Staples 50 Essays
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris 50 Essays
“Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell 50 Essays
“Learning to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass 50 Essays
“An ideal of service to our fellow man” by Albert Einstein This I Believe
“Be Cool” by Christian McBride This I Believe
“How to Become a Writer Or, Have You Earned This Cliche? By Lorrie Moore
Unit 2: Welcome to (or Fear) the Singularity: Expository Writing in Science and Nature
Unit Goals:
In this unit, we’ll be exploring issues of nature, technology, and science as discussed by
contemporary and historical writers. Along the way, we’ll also learn the process of research in
which we search for relevant and credible information, select the information we need,
speculate on the implications, outline our arguments, and shape our writing for specific
audiences and purposes. We’ll learn how to use the MLA citation format to indicate where
our sources come from and we’ll discuss issues of plagiarism and bias in the modern era.
We’ll also work backwards on sample synthetic essays from previous AP exams and create
our own reading sets with sample questions that revolve around scientific issues.
Synthetic Science Essay: Write a research-based essay that uses a recent scientific advance
(culled from Kurzweill’s AInews service) along with other research to put forth an original
argument about the technological advance’s implications on society and culture.
Models:
Annie Dillard “Death of a Moth” 50 Essays
Henry Waldo Thoreau “Where I lived, and What I lived for” 50 Essays
Oliver Sacks “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”
“Women’s Brains” by Stephen Jay Gould 50 Essays
“Digital Maoism” by Jared Lanier The Edge
“Know it All: Can Wikipedia conquer Knowledge” by Stacy Schiff The New Yorker
“Reinventing Humanity: The Future of Human-Machine Intelligence” by Ray Kurzweil The
Futurist
selection from Bill McKibben’s from Enough
“The Bird and the Machine” by Loren Eisley
In this unit, we’ll engage in the messy process of convincing and persuading people to agree
with you, to pursue a particular policy, or to trust/mistrust someone. Part of this will be
learning classical rhetorical concepts and reading historical persuasive attempts and part of
this will be applying those ideas in our own writing. We will also take a look at persuasion
works today in both online and offline media. How does the explosion of blogs and
anonymous commenting mirror classical ideas and how do they change the nature of opinion-
making? Also, we’ll see how visuals have in the past and now in the present communicate
and persuade.
Persuasive Speech: Give a 3 minute speech on a persuasive topic that uses classical
rhetorical methods, research, powerful visuals and an understanding of your audience to
convince of a
Models:
In this unit we’ll see how various authors capture experiences and then comment on its
meaning. We’ll analyze the writing techniques the authors employ and the strategies they
exploit to capture experience but also to shape perceptions of the audience. Also, we will
explore groups such as the New Journalists and other who combined modes of rhetoric for
powerful and unexpected effect.
Expository/Journalism: Go somewhere you’ve never been that has the potential for
something strange to happen and write about what you see and notice there. Your focus will
be on capturing the experience and portraying it for the reader.
Model:
2nd Semester
Our culture is moving more and more to a visual culture where images entertain, persuade,
inform, and inspire us more often than the use of words alone. In this unit, we’ll learn how
visuals follow some rules and principles similar to words but also how visuals differ in
quality and effect from words.
Compare/Contrast Visual Essay/video: Create a short 2-3 minute video which uses images,
words, and sound to put forth a particular proposition and convince us to consider it.
Unit Goals:
• Learn the techniques and strategies of satire and parody.
• Learn how to use and analyze the effect of humor on argument
• Analyze word choice in terms of audience and purpose
Sober and serious is not the only way to get a point across. The use of satire, parody and
humor are not only breaks from the crushing pressure of modern life, but valid methods of
argument as well. We’ll analyze these techniques and practice them in a modern satirical
essay.
Satire and Parody: Write your own satirical essay that uses irony, exaggeration, the mixing
of genres, and ridiculousness to comment on an aspect of society or culture.
Models:
An Immodest Proposal, Jonathan Swift
“Mass Transit Hysteria” P.J. O’Rourke
“Lost in the Kitchen” by Dave Barry
“Immigration Bill is a Fraud” by Mark Steyn
“The Unknown Citizen” by W.H. Auden
Unit 7: Define Your Terms: Historical and Philosophical Definition in the hypertext era
Unit Goals:
We will continue our work on the synthetic essay, focusing on how writers attempt to define
crucial concepts (love, fear, patriotism, happiness) by placing them in historical context,
engaging in philosophical discussion, marshalling popular and personal examples, and
categorizing ideas. In writing, we will focus on organization strategies to shape your writing:
cause/effect, process, and classification.
Philosophical Definition: Define a common word and explore its meaning in current culture
in a hypertext argument which mixes words, images, links, sounds, and embedded video.
Include a mix of philosophical history with recent history and pop culture.
Models:
“The Insufficiency of Honesty” by Stephen L. Carter 50 Essays
“On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs 50 Essays
“Clashing Civilizations” by Edward Said 50 Essays
“On Compassion” Barbara Lazear Ascher 50 Essays
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“The Four Idols” by Francis Bacon
selection from “I and Thou” by Martin Buber
“Apollonianism and Dionysianism” by Friedrich Nietzsche
“Education” by Ralph Waldo Emerson
selection from “Labor” by Thomas Carlyle
Unit Goals:
• Learn how to break down a process into discrete steps
• Learn how to use voice and attitude to infuse energy into expository writing
• Learn how to think critically to categorize and order thinking
In this unit we learn how to explain not only how things work but to narrate the process.
We’ll study how master writers find ways to explain clearly and with style without sacrificing
authority, credibility, or accuracy.
How to do it: Write an essay that explains how to do something in a clear but dynamic way.
Model:
Final Project
Finally, I will have a final exam which will ask you to apply everything you learned in
conducting a 20-minute lesson on the reading of your choice. I will evaluate you on your
ability to combine visuals, guide discussion, and suggest interpretive methods.