Monday: We’ll start the week with a 5 minute FreeWrite on Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. I’m sure that this will engender a fair amount of conversation, which I’ll be actively encouraging, as I believe that it will help us get to a point where we can address Carver’s perceptions of the way(s) that we love (or don’t?).

Homework: You need to complete your Carver/O’Connor seminar entry slip in your Carver journal. It should be a 1 page response to the following question:

In what way(s) are Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver similar? In what way(s) are they different? Please pay special attention to motifs such as Love, Family, Forgiveness, and Death. Make sure to reference the text often, and in MLA format.

Tuesday: I’ll be collecting the Carver journals prior to our seminar on our two authors. I endeavor simply to discuss what you have observed in the course of our mini-unit on these two literary giants.

Wednesday: On Wednesday we’ll be starting our Short Story Project. In groups of 2 or 3 (no more than 3) you’ll be working on these presentations. I’ll show you a couple of examples in class, and then you’ll get to work. The presentations will be on Monday and Tuesday of next week, and we’ll be drawing straws or cards or something to see when each group will go.

Thursday + Friday: We’ll have computers in the room so that you can get right to work on your projects.

Homework: Complete your presentations for Monday!

Naturally our schedule this week is a touch off at this point. Here’s what is going to happen for the rest of the week and into Monday.

Friday: We’ll start class with a 5 minute writing piece on the story Cathedral, during which I’ll stamp the journal entries you did over Thursday night. I have an in-class assignment on this story that we’ll do together, and we’ll end the day by handing out the story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Homework: Read and create journal entries for What We Talk About…

Monday: We’ll wrap up the our mini-unit on Carver by discussing What We Talk About… with a 5 minute free write and a reflection in class.

Homework: Seminar entry slip for Tuesday. I’ll post more about that soon.

Monday: We’ll start the week with a relatively simple in-class essay on O’Connor which we will discuss immediately afterwards. This will conclude our work with O’Connor for the time being. You will also turn in your O’Connor journals, which I will have back to you on Tuesday.

Tuesday: I have a short lecture on minimalism as an artistic movement (in music, painting, and writing), then we’ll jump right into Carver’s work with his short story A Small, Good Thing. Naturally, we’ll make a journal for our work with Carver, and you’ll be asked to complete 7-10 passage responses as well as a 1 page reflection on the piece.

Homework: See above.

Wednesday: I’ll stamp your work on A Small, Good Thing and then distribute Carver’s story Cathedral. This one tears me apart for several reasons which I’ll do my best to explain without losing it in class. Again, my expectation is that you’ll read the piece, complete 7-10 passage responses and a 1 page reflection on the story’s major themes.

Homework: See above.

Thursday: After I stamp your work on Cathedral I will distribute our last piece by Carver entitled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Complete 7-10 passage responses, a 1 page reflection, and voila, we’ll be ready to discuss Carver in class on Friday.

Homework: See above.

Friday: Again, I’ll stamp our work on What We Talk About... and then we’ll launch into a seminar on Carver, his major themes, and what we take away from his writing. This seminar is not strictly about the literature (though it is…), but is also very much about our own lives. There is a short entrance response that we’ll do in class (in our journals), and I’ll collect the journals to end the week.

Monday: I’ll start the week by simply distributing your essay prompts and walking you through some of the major components of the piece. In some ways, this is a more difficult essay than that which you’ll be asked to write next year, but in others it is much simpler. We’ll discuss that sources that you have to draw upon, the style of the writing you’ll be asked to do, and I’ll go over some basic information you’ll need to be successful (all of which I’ll post after class).

Tuesday: In class on Tuesday I’ll be providing you with a number of different sample paragraphs for analysis. Check you can take a look at a handful of pretty good pieces, along with some analysis of each one, here.

Wednesday: We’ll begin writing our essays on Wednesday, together, in class. Remember, because the synthesis piece is as much a measure of your thinking as it is of your writing that your organization is of paramount importance. You will create an outline which we will then, in small groups, critique. If your ideas are faulty from the start it is a virtual guarantee that the essay will not be successful. This process will, hopefully, help you to ensure that your ideas are clear and well reasoned.

Thursday + Friday: These will be writing days. I’ve reserved the laptops for class (though you may feel free to bring your own, of course).

Homework: Complete your first draft (typed) for peer editing on Monday.

That said, here’s your week:

Monday: I’ll start the week by reviewing, in brief, what we’ve done thus far with our unit on Rhetoric, Tone, and Things Fall Apart. It’s been a little more disjointed than I wanted, and I need to tie it together. From there, we’ll jump into a reading of How To Write About Africa and crafting a short, 1 page analysis of the piece’s tone and use of argument. It needs to be typed and is due at the start of class on Tuesday.

Homework: See above.

Tuesday: We’ll spend much of the period discussing Wainaina’s piece and applying it to what we’ve read/seen so far. Our work will happen in small groups, and you’ll only be allowed to participate if you’ve finished and brought in a typed response to the piece (see Monday).

Wednesday + Thursday: We’ll actually watch a movie. Holy cow, the universe must be ending. I want to show you the rest of The Gods Must Be Crazy, but there is a twist: you need to keep notes on the film, asking questions from the simple (why doesn’t the Coke bottle break?) to the more complex (what is Uys really saying about Africa?).

Friday: If we haven’t finished the film, we will. Then I’ll be introducing your essay. It is a synthesis piece in which I’ll be asking you to do many things you’ve never done before. There is a presentation. Be there for it. (If you can’t be, I will post it after class).

Homework: Your first draft is due Tuesday for peer editing. I’ll be giving you a work day on Monday, but you’ll need to have something started before hand.

Monday: I managed to secure the laptops for class for two more days, and we’ll be using them Monday to revise/wrap up our essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God. If you need to work on yours, make sure to bring it in via flash drive or email so that you can make use of the time. I’ll be there to help, too, if you’re stuck.

Tuedsay: The first few minutes of the day will be dedicated to turning in your essay on the Turnitins. Afterwards, we’ll be starting in on the work of Flannery O’Connor. She’s a easily my all-time favorite writer in any genre (yeah, big claim, I know), and I have a short presentation on her work to start us off. It is important that you know a bit about her before we start dealing with her writing, as she is such an enigmatic individual that a little understanding of who she is will go a long way. If you’re gone, check the blog for the presentation after class. Afterwards, I’ll start playing O’Connor reading the story A Good Man Is Hard To Find aloud so that you get a feel for her writing and her voice. You’ll need to keep a journal for each of the short stories we read in which you must respond to 10 passages and write one 1 page response. I’ll talk more about those in class and post instructions on Tuesday. Of course we’ll also be making mini-journals for our mini-unit.

Wednesday: You’ll have the whole period to read/make journal notes/respond to O’Connor’s story. I’ll be collecting the journals next Monday.

Thursday: I’ll hand out O’Connor’s story Parker’s Back and you’ll have much of the period to read/journal/respond to the piece. I have a short introduction to the story as well which I will post after class in which I’ll detail some of the major points that you should be looking for in the story.

Friday: Our final O’Connor story for the week will be Everything That Rises Must Converge. I have a few remarks to make about this story as well, highlighting things that you really should be noticing and making notes about him your journals.

Homework: Craft a 1 page response to O’Connor’s stories in which you explore one character or story that struck you. This is an entirely individual thing, and there is no wrong way to do it, unless you don’t. I’ll collect this, along with the rest of your mini-journal, on Monday when we start our mini-unit on the author Raymond Carver.

Monday: We’ll spend Monday discussing the readings from last week. It is my goal to slightly problematize some of the (I think) natural reactions to reading White Man’s Burden. I know that there is something of a natural aversion to Kipling’s point of view, and while I won’t defend him, I hope to make you think about his proposal in a different way.

Homework: Read chapter 16 and make 3 entries into your dialectical journals.

Tuesday: I have a few brief words to say about chapter 16, but it isn’t anything particularly earth-shattering. I hope to give you a little bit of time to read chapter 17, but if that doesn’t happen, it becomes your homework, along with this series of questions.

Homework: See above.

Wednesday: We’ll take a little bit of time to discuss chapters 14-17, specifically focusing on Achebe’s argument. This will, of course, necessitate a short presentation on argument. I won’t post it until Wednesday, but if you’re gone make sure to check out the presentation, as you’ll need some of the information in it to help you in your seminar preparation.

Homework: Complete a 1 page, double-spaced, typed analysis of Achebe’s argument in section 2 of the novel.

Thursday: We’ll spend the first 10 minutes of class (or so) preparing a secondary response to the text, then launching into a modified seminar on Achebe’s argument to end the week.

Homework: Read chapters 18 + 19 and complete 3 entries in your dialectical journals for each chapter. I’ll be stamping them on Monday.

Monday: We’ll kick the week off with a quick examination of Chapter 18 through a series of short questions. Just like every other novel that has ever been written (that’s a joke), Hurston makes use of weather in a powerfully symbolic way which I think we need to discuss.

Tuesday: During class we will be listening to part of chapter 19 together, completing a close reading, and then reading the rest of the chapter. You need to complete 3 additional entries in your dialectical journals as well.

Wednesday: Wednesday is much like Tuesday, as we’ll be listening to part of chapter 20, completing a close reading, then ending the day with a Free Write that I will post on Wednesday morning.

Homework: Prepare a 1 page, double-spaced, typed or neatly written in ink response to this prompt in preparation for Thursday’s seminar.

Thursday: Having finished the novel on Wednesday we’ll spend Thursday debriefing the novel through a short seminar. You need to have prepared the prompt above in order to participate. Lastly, I’ll introduce the prompts for the final essay.

Tuesday: We’ll continue our analysis of the first section of the text with a super, super fun activity that will take two days. I can’t really talk about it, otherwise it’ll ruin the fun. If you miss class, shoot me an email or talk to me in person (or just check the website on Tuesday) for information about our little activity.

Wednesday: And we’ll continue our activity on Wednesday with a written reflection (which I will post on Tuesday as well).

Homework: Read chapters 14+15 and complete 3 dialectical journal entries for each chapter.

Thursday: I have a short writing activity that will be comparing Ibo and Christian societies and exploring a particularly important quote from Uchendu in order to, in Atticus Finch’s words, see things differently.

Homework: Read Kipling’s poem White Man’s Burden and another piece with it.

Friday: We’ll write about the aforementioned stuff.