Professor Wanda's Posse

2012-01-28T11:06:00.001-08:00

Homework this weekend is to complete your "State of the Union" collaborative essays. Don't forget to respond to another essay as an individual and expand it by adding additional information in your comment.

Read the first section of They Say, I Say (xiii to 15). Do exercise 1 & 2 (14-15). Bring the assignments to class to share. The essay response can be 1 page (250 words).

Bring in Mighty. We will start reading it next week beginning Monday. We can decide how many pages per session. Don't forget to keep a reading and vocabulary log. You will turn this in with the essay.

2012-01-26T10:31:00.001-08:00

Cyber-Assignment

Post your collaborative essays on the State of the Union here.

2012-01-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

Today we got in groups to discuss the president's State of the Union Address. Here is a link to transcripts and footage and commentary.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/State_of_the_Union/state-of-the-union-2011-full-transcript/story?id=12759395#.TyCvMqWJdIE and

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/27/state-of-the-union-2010-full-text-transcript_n_439459.html

Bring in notes for tomorrow. In groups students will write a 3-4 paragraph essay discussing topics of interest to the group, analyzing the president's speech, weighing it for effectiveness and overall performance. Not to mention evaluating the writing, the crafting of the message which students will paraphrase in the critique.

Have at least 1-2 quotes in the essay response. Bring your books They Say, I Say and Diana Hacker Rules for Writers. We will look to see if there is a model we might employ. There will be homework from They Say, I Say over the weekend.

We'll start Mighty on Monday. I don't think it will take us more than a couple of weeks to read it. Monday the Pidd workshops begin. We'll start with an exam to see where people are. Again the time is 10:30 to 11:30 AM at my office D-219. If lots of students show up, we'll move to the LRC or Learning Resource Center.

If you haven't emailed me yet or responded to the syllabus, don't stress, you can have more time if you need it. Get it all in by Monday. Even if you hand work into me, so it isn't late, if it is a cyber-assignment, you still need to email the assignment to me as well.

2012-01-24T20:14:00.000-08:00

Homework is to watch the President's State of the Union Address. We will talk about it tomorrow. Listen for his key arguments, and evidence used to support claims.

If you missed the live broadcast visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/

2012-01-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

I rearranged the room this afternoon. I don't know if it's my imagination or if it is really a bit more spacious. I'll let you be the judges. In any case, I removed all the large desks and replaced them with smaller lighter ones from next door.

Today students read an article from Skyways magazine about thinking outside of the cage--hamster cage, that is. After reading the article, students then introduced themselves to a classmate and shared.

We spoke about the class materials and the email I sent many students but not all. Hopefully, students have rectified this and added email addresses to their Peralta contact information. I wasn't able to drop anyone, so Permission Numbers are how we'll handle those who want to add the class.

There was no homework other than reading the syllabus and the letter I sent out this weekend. There are two assignments connected to the syllabus: one is an email to me, the other a response to the syllabus.

Make sure you use a heading when posting anything to the blog. Sign-in as anonymous. The heading is: Your complete name, my name plus title "Professor," the class name spelled out, and on the last line (4) the date: day month and year.

Joe Blow
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 1A
23 January 2012

Tomorrow we will review the syllabus, talk a bit about the class, take an exam if we have time, talk about the President's final State of the Union Address that evening. We will see if we can apply a template from They Say, I Say to respond to it. We'll talk about this more on Wednesday.

Thursday we will watch the film or most of the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. There will be a cyber-writing assignment attached to the film. We start reading the book this weekend as well. It's a fast read. We will assign literature circles for discussion on Monday. Don't forget to keep a reading and vocabulary log for the assigned books this semester. Type your notes. You will turn them in with the essay.

2012-01-22T16:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome to COA Spring 2012

English 1A, Spring 2012
Professor Wanda Sabir

Course codes: 21757

Class Meetings: Jan. 25—May 17, 9-10, MTWTh
Location: Room A-202

Drop dates: February 4, Full-Term Credit Classes and Receive a Refund. Note: Short-term and open-entry classes must be dropped within three days of the first class meeting to receive a refund. Feb. 5 last day to add. Feb. 11 last day to file for Pass/No pass. Feb. 16 last day to drop w/out a W. Drop February 24, Full-Term Credit Classes Without “W” Appearing on Transcript; April 25 (w/W) and no refund.

Holidays: Feb. 6, 17-20; May 18, May 30; Spring Break: April 2-8 M-Su Spring Recess

Final Exam Week: May 19-25. We have no sitting final. Portfolios are due by May 25, 12 noon electronically. Last day of semester May 25. Class blog: http://professorwandasposse.blogspot.com/

Each One, Pull One (Thinking of Lorraine Hansberry)

. . . We must say it all, as clearly
as we can. For, even before we are dead,
they are busy
trying to bury us.

—Alice Walker

Syllabus for English 1A: College Composition and Reading

English 1A is the first transferable college writing course. Don’t get nervous, hopefully you took English 201 and passed with a B or better. Perhaps you’re fresh out of high school, did okay on the placement exam and voila wound up here. Maybe you’re returning to college after a significant hiatus and aren’t confident in your writing, yet once again passed that placement exam, which, if you recall, tested grammar not writing. Keep your receipt and notice the dates, so you can get a full refund if you cut your losses and drop by Feb. 4/16 (refund, no refund, no W), or Apr. 25 with a W/no refund :-) So my joke wasn’t funny? Hang in there and you’ll do fine in the class if you:

1. Know what an essay is
2. Have written one before
3. Are ready to commit yourself to the task of writing

Plan to have a challenging, yet intellectually stimulating 18 weeks, which I hope you begin by setting goals for yourself. Make a schedule and join or create a study group. Writing is a social activity, especially the type of writing you’ll be doing here. We always consider our audience, have purpose or reason to write, and use research to substantiate our claims, even those we are considered experts in.

I believe we’re supposed to write about 8000 words or so at this level course. Don’t let the numbers scare you. We’ll probably write more. This includes drafts. What this amounts to is time at home writing, time in the library researching, reading documents to increase your facility with the ideas or themes your are contemplating, before you once again sit at your desk writing, revising, and writing some more.

Writing is a lonely process. No one can write for you. The social aspect comes into play once you are finished and you have an opportunity to share.

This semester we will look at women and girls and the inequities which make their lives more difficult just because of the gender biases present in most of the developed and underdeveloped world.

No, you didn’t accidentally end up in a public policy or cultural anthropology class; however, I found the arguments presented in Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, compelling and thought provoking.

We will write an essay based on the themes from this book. We will start with a true heroine’s journey, Leymah Gbowee’s challenging and exciting story about peace in Liberia, a country once at war. Liberia is a country with a complex history. It is the country African Americans formerly enslaved were shipped to once slavery ended and free labor was outlawed. Gbowee’s story, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War is really inspiring. Before the war, she’d planned to attend the university to become a doctor and war, the immediacy of war changed all that temporarily as the protagonist became a mother and common law wife.

Mighty speaks to how dreams never really die as long as there is memory and hope and support, it also speaks to the great sacrifices a leader makes and the price these sacrifices have on oneself emotionally and physically, and on one’s family. The people who one loves and who one sacrifices for often don’t stand by one in the end as petty drama and jealousy eat at the fabric of the bond.

Excellently recounted, Mighty shows a woman whose life is a work in progress. At times I lose track of her age and then realize how young Gbowee is and what decisions she has to make concerning the lives of so many others. When the peace talk protests grow intense she is awake around the clock. I am amazed she has time for debriefing and self-reflection. Her sister’s support and her children’s understand is amazing. I love the aspects of the book that look at the culture she is a part of, which is clearly not western. The end of the book is too quickly summed up.

There is too much left to cover, I hope this is just part one of the story. I’d love to read the story from the perspective of Gbowee’s children, adopted and one’s she bore. I’d love to hear the story from the perspective of the wonderful friend she had in Tunde.

Mighty isn’t a love story, unless perhaps it is the story about a young woman coming to value herself and that loves growth. Mighty addresses the stress or pressures a leader faces and how unhealthy habits escalate and grow. True to form we learn that Gbowee is stubborn and learns her lessons the hard way whether that is as a girl or a more mature woman. She is not one to be pushed. Luckily we know the end of the story, that she survives. Mighty fills in the details as we count the casualties along the way. It is a sad and triumph story. No one wants the hero’s journey. Those who jealously pulled at Gbowee’s glory didn’t really want what she suffered, though in many cases her comrades suffered as much or more. I wish there was more regarding the strategy the organizers used and more information about what their handbook covered. It would have also been great to hear more of the women’s stories, perhaps in another book we will.

All writing is research writing so students will not write one long essay, rather four shorter essays based on themes from: Mighty, the midterm based on Half the Sky, the third an essay based on the book you chose written by a woman or about a woman, and the fourth is on a social entrepreneur. You meet many examples of SE in Half the Sky. I will introduce you to others in the program, The New Heroes and also in on-line programs from Frontline World, and in films shown in class like To Educate a Girl.

We will use They Say, I Say along with Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers to practice writing style and organization as well as review grammar where needed. I will give grammar quizzes and if students do not make 100 percent, he or she will know where to focus their review work.

Students also need a notebook for in-class writing with a folder for handouts. You also need a couple of ink pens, a pencil with an eraser, a hole puncher, a stapler and a travel drive for saving one’s work. If you have a laptop, feel free to bring it to class. Tape recorders are fine too to record lectures.

We’ll read the play Lysistrata in March and celebrate love in February. We will also contemplate the cost of war in March as well as celebrate International Women’s Day and Earth Day.

We will keep a reading log for the two assigned books: Mighty and Half the Sky. Discussion groups will meet each week. These reading logs or journals will be where students jot down key ideas and outlined responses for each discussion section, along with themes which arise, vocabulary and key arguments, along with primary writing strategies employed: description, process analysis, narration, argument, cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, problem solving.

Research Project
Each student will locate a social entrepreneur to profile in an essay. The woman has to be alive, preferably living in Northern California and has been working in her field for over 5 years and have documented resources you can draw from: books, essays, articles, films.

The paper will be about 4-5 pages. This will include a works cited page and bibliography. Students will make 5-10 minute presentations of these papers in May. The paper will be due about two-three weeks prior to the presentation. We’ll discuss this task further later on. Start thinking of whom you might want to profile now. Hint: define social entrepreneur first.

As already stated, the midterm will be based on a theme from Half the Sky. We might write the essay in class. We will talk about it.

New Heroes
Visit PBS.org The New Heroes, to read about social entrepreneurs. (I’ll show you a few episodes from the series.) Too often people feel helpless or hopeless when there is a lot you can do as an individual as soon as you realize the answer lies inside of you. Chose a female entrepreneur who lives in Northern California, someone you’d like to interview and perhaps meet. There is also a series on PBS called Frontline World with many SE profiled.

Academic Blog
In this course, students will submit essays and other written work on-line. The academic blog is an opportunity for students to utilize multiple intelligences as they engage one another in a variety modalities.
The site is: http://www.professorwandasposse.blogspot.com

Student Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course students will have an altered or heightened awareness of the world around them, especially discourse: speech and text. Students will see that everything is an argument, whether that is a cartoon, advertisement, or lyrics in a song. Students will be able to analyze and critique each incident or contact to evaluate its author’s purpose, audience, and evidence to determine whether or not such goal was met and if appropriate, act accordingly.

This course is intended to be both a group learning experience as well as an individually rewarding one. Mid-semester we will schedule conferences so students can confer with the instructor to evaluate his or her progress in the course. Classroom instruction will consist of lectures, small group work, and students working in pairs. This is an effective way for students to exchange ideas with classmates, compare reactions to readings and practice giving and receiving constructive feedback on class work.

Preparation for class, regular attendance and active participation is imperative for those students who wish to succeed in this course.

It is a student’s responsibility to contact the instructor if he or she plans to miss class. The student is responsible for all materials and information given during the class time, so please get telephone numbers for three (3) classmates in case you are late or absent. You will not be able to make up in-class assignments when you miss class.

Requirements for homework assignments:
Not late papers are accepted unless arranged in advance. Any papers below a C grade are an automatic revision or rewrite. Essays range between 2-5 pages, 500-1550 words. The cyber-assignments are generally shorter (250 words), as are freewrites.

Choose topics which give you enough to write about. We will use documentation to substantiate all of our claims. With this in mind, I expect all papers to utilize at least two (2) different outside print sources, in addition to the occasional interview, and broadcast news, that is, radio or television, Internet also.

You will learn to document sources; we will practice citing sources in text, using footnotes and end notes, and writing bibliographies and notes pages. Remember save all your work! This is a portfolio course.

All essay assignments you receive comments and have to be revised prior to resubmission; included with the revision is a student narrative to me regarding your understanding of what needed to be done; a student can prepare this as a part of the Writing Center visit (see below), especially if said student is unclear over what steps to take. The narrative might be in the form of a correction essay where the errors are cited, corrections given with rules and the essay is then revised after the correction essay is graded. These essays follow the Pidd template.

Library Sessions: TBA in February. We will meet in the library instead of the classroom.

Reading great authors and writers helps you develop your style. It’s similar to eating a balanced meal for optimum health. A writer is only as intellectually healthy as the material he or she reads. Models are often a great way to practice a style of writing. I will occasionally make copies of articles from magazines and textbooks I think illustrate a particular style of writing I’d like you to practice, or perhaps an argument which have peaked my interest. If you find an argument, either a visual one or a written one you’d like to share please do so for extra credit.

Jot down briefly what your goals are this semester. List them in order of importance.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Please include your goals along with your name, mailing address, phone number and e-mail address and send to me. The due date is January 26, 2011, by 12 noon.

Respond to the following questions as well in the same email:

What strengths do you bring to the class? What skills or knowledge would you like to leave with once the class ends? What can I do to help you achieve this? Is there anything I need to know, such as a hidden disability, childcare issues, etc., which might jeopardize this goal?

Email it to me at coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com by Do not forget to include the assignment in the subject line along with student name, course and time.

Cyber-Assignment Response to the Syllabus due by Thursday, Jan. 26, 12 noon. Include in your response acknowledgement that to pass the class one must have materials, such as textbooks preferably day 1 of classes, no later than the second week of classes day 1.

The syllabus response is a cyber-assignment due on the blog. Don’t email it to me. I will look for it there: http://professorwandasposse.blogspot.com Click comment and post your response to the syllabus there. Chose anonymous and type your name in the post.

Grading:
Mighty: 10 percent
They Say, I Say/Hacker Exercises: 10 percent
Student Book—presentation and essay: 15 percent
Midterm—Half the Sky: 15 percent
Social Entrepreneur Essay & presentation: 20 percent
Portfolio: 15 percent
Cyber-Assignments: 15 percent

The cyber-essays and comments on student work are practice essays and count as participation. I changed the calculation this semester to force students to participate in our on-line discussions. This portion of your grade is 15 percent. Presentations accompany the major essays, but we have other presentations as well connected to the cyber-assignments. 35 percent is attached to two paper presentations: research and independent study. The portfolio, which is a collection of your major work this semester, is another hefty chunk. Save all your graded assignments for inclusion.

Plan to visit the Writing Center (L-234 (510) 748-2132) weekly. Decide in advance what you’d like to cover. If you need help figuring that out, talk to me. Have a tutor evaluate your essays for form and content; the aim is lucid, precise, and clear prose.

The Writing Center
The Writing Lab is a great place to get one-on-on assistance on your essays, from brainstorming and planning the essays, to critique on the essay for clarity, organization, clearly stated thesis, evidence of support, logical conclusions, and grammatical problems for referrals to other ancillary materials to build strong writing muscles such as SkillsBank, The Bedford Handbook on-line, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers on-line, Townsend Press, and other such computer and cyber-based resources. The Lab is open M-Th 8-7, Fridays, 8-2. There is an Open Lab for checking e-mail, a Math Lab, an Accounting Lab and there will be an ESL Lab. All academic labs are located in the Learning Resource Center (LRC) second floor. Check the times which might have changed.

Students need a student ID to use the labs and to check out books. The IDs are free and you can take the photo in the F-Building, Student Services. There is also a Cyber Café in the F-Building on the second floor in the cafeteria area. Students need to enroll in a free class to use the academic labs. See the staff in the tutoring center or your counselor.

Revisions
Have a tutor or teacher sign off on your essays before you turn them in; if you have an “R,” which means revision necessary for a grade or “NC” which means “no credit.” Return both the graded original and the revision (with signature) to me. Revise does not mean “rewrite,” it means to “see again.” Also include a short narrative or correction essay stating what you did to improve the essay.

When getting assistance on an essay, the teacher or tutor is not an editor, so have questions prepared for them to make best use of the 15 minute session in the Lab. I will give students a handout designating five (5) areas s/he might want to have the tutor or teacher look at. For more specific assistance sign up for one-on-one tutoring, another free service. For those of you on other campuses, you can get assistance at the Merritt College Writing Center, as well as Laney’s. You can also come see me during my office hours. I am on campus every day except Friday.

All essay assignments you receive comments on have to be revised prior to resubmission; included with the revision is a student narrative to me regarding your understanding of what needed to be done; a student can prepare this as a part of the Lab visit, especially if said student is unclear over what steps to take. If I want a correction essay, I will let you know.

Students can also visit me in office hours for assistance. Again, prepare your questions in advance to best make use of the time. Do not leave class without understanding the comments on a paper. I don’t mind reading them to you.

Pedagogy or Waxing Philosophical
English language fluency in writing and reading, a certain comfort and ease with the language, confidence and skillful application of literary skills associated with academic writing, familiarity if not mastery of the rhetorical styles used in argumentation, exposition and narration will be addressed in this class and is a key student learning outcome (SLO).

We will be evaluating what we know and how we came to know what we know, a field called epistemology or the study of knowledge. Granted, the perspective is western culture which eliminates the values of the majority populations, so-called underdeveloped or undeveloped countries or cultures. Let us not fall into typical superiority traps. Try to maintain a mental elasticity and a willingness to let go of concepts which not only limit your growth as an intelligent being, but put you at a distinct disadvantage as a species.

This is a highly charged and potentially revolutionary process - critical thinking. The process of evaluating all that you swallowed without chewing up to now is possibly even dangerous. This is one of the problems with bigotry; it’s easier to go with tradition than toss it, and create a new, more just, alternative protocol.

Evaluation—Getting that “A”
We will be honest with one another. Grades are not necessarily the best response to work; grades do not take into consideration the effort or time spent, only whether or not a student can demonstrate mastery of a skill - in this case: essay writing. Grades are an approximation, arbitrary at best, no matter how many safeguards one tries to put in place to avoid such ambiguity. Suffice it to say, your portfolio will illustrate your competence. It will represent your progress, your success or failure this summer session in meeting your goals. I like to post essays on the academic blog as examples for other students. I will be asking students from time to time to submit copies for posting. The blog is cumulative, so you can read essays from Spring 2006 to now. I have not posted the Spring 2012 welcome letter on the syllabus, what I have posted is a narrative of the syllabus. I am still writing the welcome. The address for the class blog is: http://professorwandasposse.blogspot.com/

Office Hours: D-219
I’d like to wish everyone good luck. I’d like to wish everyone good luck. I am available on Monday and Wednesday morning 10:30-12 noon, MW afternoons 3-4 p.m. and by appointment MTWTh 3-5 PM (510) 748-2286. Let me know the day before, if possible, when you’d like to meet with me. Ask me for my cell phone number. I do not mind sharing it with you. My email address again is: coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com

Exchange phone numbers with classmates (2), so if you have a concern, it can be addressed more expediently especially over the weekend or on holidays. Again study groups are recommended, especially for those students finding the readings difficult; don’t forget, you can also discuss the readings as a group in the Lab with a teacher or tutor acting as facilitator. Keep a vocabulary log for the semester and an error chart (taken from comments on essay assignments). List the words you need to look up in the dictionary, also list where you first encountered them: page, book and definition, also use the word in a sentence. You will turn this in with your portfolio.

Students are expected to complete their work on time. If you need more time on an assignment, discuss this with me in advance, if possible, to keep full credit. You loose credit each day an assignment is late and certain assignments, such as in-class essays cannot be made up. All assignments prepared outside of class are to be typed, 12-pt. font, double-spaced lines, indentations on paragraphs, 1-inch margins around the written work (see Hacker: The Writing Process; Document Design.)

Cheating
Plagiarism is ethically abhorrent, and if any student tries to take credit for work authored by another person the result will be a failed grade on the assignment and possibly a failed grade in the course if this is attempted again. This is a graded course.

Homework
If you do not identify the assignment, I cannot grade it. If you do not return the original assignment you revised, I cannot compare what changed. If you accidentally toss out or loose the original assignment, you get a zero on the assignment to be revised. I will not look at revisions without the original attached - no exceptions.

All assignments completed away from class should be typed. Use blue or black ink when writing responses in class. You can annotate your books in pencil.

Textbooks Recap:

Gbowee, Leyman, and Carol Mithers. Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. New York: Beast Books, 2011.

Kristof, Nicholas D., and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.

Students need to choose a book by a woman author or about a woman who lives here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Biographies and autobiographies are great. If you want to read a novel, let me see it first. Students will have a paper and a presentation based on the book. Choose one now and when we finish Half the Sky you can start reading it. The presentation and paper will be due in April.

Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. Fourth-Sixth edition. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martins.

Recommended:
Pollitt, Gary. Craig Baker. Stewart Pidd Hates English: Grammar, Punctuation, and Writing Exercises. First or Second Edition. California: Attack the Text Publishing, 2008/9. ISBN: 13: 978-0-9755923-4-2

Students also need a dictionary. I recommend: The American Heritage Dictionary. Fourth Edition.

I will give students more detailed essay assignments for each of the four essays: Mighty, Half the Sky, Book Report Essay and Social Entrepreneur Essay.

Also stay abreast of the news. Buy a daily paper. Listen to alternative radio: KPFA 94.1 FM, KQED 88.5, KALW 91.7. Visit news websites: AllAfrica.com, Al Jazeera, CNN.com, AlterNet.org, DemocracyNow.org, FlashPoint.org, CBS 60Minutes on-line.

This syllabus is subject to change based on instructor assessment of class progress.

2012-01-22T13:48:00.000-08:00

Syllabus Letter

22 January 2012

Dear Students:

I am still on South Africa time waking at two and four in the morning. The time difference is about 10 hours between here and there. It was great when I needed a bit more time to complete something, I could go to bed and wake up in the same day—different time zone. I got up today at 4 a.m. went to sleep yesterday about six or seven in the evening. Today is my granddaughter’s birthday. She is nine. Her mother is a graduate of COA: psychology, with a BS in psychology and women’s studies from Cal State East Bay (2011).

This morning I completed a wonderful book, might I say, a mighty work (smile), entitled, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War, A Memoir, by Leyman Gbowee with Carol Mithers.

When I watched the film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, directed by Gini Reticker, produced by Abigail E. Disney, I marveled over the courage of the Liberian women to defeat the Charles Taylor war machine with prayer and nonviolent resistance. The women assembled along the road where the president’s caravan passed twice daily. Dressed in plain white garments, these women, from the city, from the countryside, rural women, educated and uneducated women, Christian and Muslim women, women who called on the ancient indigenous spirits and goddesses, sat or stood together in the oppressive heat and in the summer storms getting wet and growing dark and weak as they became the key voice for peace in a country that was violently spinning out of control. The film is on-line at: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/women-war-and-peace/full-episodes/pray-the-devil-back-to-hell/ There are also links to other films in the series: Women, War and Peace, as well as to interviews with Ms. Gbowee.

Unlike her memoir, the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell, is a heroines’ story, the story of a nation which is confronted by its most vulnerable population, its women. It is a story, Liberia’s quest for peace is a story, a story which ends as it begins. The film could be a miniseries; the culminating event is not the end, rather the beginning, which we’d never know unless we read 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner Gbowee’s tale of triumph and personal sacrifice. I am happy Abigail Disney told me about the memoir when we last spoke in a radio interview—what a wonderful journey is has been this weekend. I am just disappointed I wasn’t able to meet Ms. Gbowee when she was here on tour last year.

I bought the book at the college book store Thursday where I have it listed as required. I assigned it for my English 1A class, along with Half the Sky, the Pulitzer Prize winning book from the married team, Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Students either hate the book or love it. I never know what to expect from Spring semester to Spring semester over the past three years. One criticism is the formulaic nature of the book and the fact that men are not key characters and when they are, they are often the villains.

I assigned this book after seeing the authors and a woman profiled in Half the Sky on Oprah. You can imagine my great surprise when a student told me its authors were hosting a global event for International Women’s Day in theatres throughout the country. We attended of course. Locally our event was in Emeryville. Students bought tickets and I got some free ones from a sponsoring organization in San Francisco and we went. Students said they found the film and discussion inspiring.

We will start with Gbowee and then shift into the Kristof WuDunn land where all women are suffering— Yes, it would be depressing without evidence of triumph. Gbowee’s success is not singular, that is why her story is so remarkable. However, Half the Sky is unable to go into such depth, this is why we are reading her story first.

Students in English 1A will look for a woman entrepreneur in Northern California to profile in an essay. Students will also chose a book about the woman entrepreneur or a book by a woman to write an essay exploring the memoir, autobiography or novel’s themes and topics as relates to women’s empowerment or peace. These are the major essays for English 1A. We will write a series of short essays and post on the blog, these cyber-assignments will often start in class. All cyber-assignment are interactive and students have to respond to minimally 1-3 students posts for credit for the assignment. The first cyber assignment is a response to this letter, the second is a response to the syllabus. The second response includes a private response to me. My email addresses are: coasabirenglish201@gmail.com, coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com, coasabirenglish1B@gmail.com, coasabirenglish5@gmail.com

I love memoirs and autobiographies that cover political, social and historic movements, like this one does. The Warmth of Other Suns does a similar job, except Isabel Wilkerson didn’t live it, as Gbowee does. A short book, just under 250 pages, Gbowee’s work addressed in the award winning film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, doesn’t start until the book is nearly two thirds finished. I thought of all the murder mysteries I love where the crime is solved in the last ten pages; was this one of those reads?

Each Spring in honor of Women’s History Month in March, I have used women’s issues as the theme for the semester. So here we are again. In English 5 we are looking more are the criminalization of a population in California and in America, poor people of color, more specifically black people. California incarcerates more youth as adults than any other state and more women. I am concerned about this. I am a member of an organization called, California Coalition for Women Prisoners. We are an advocacy organization. I serve on its board.

Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, looks at the criminalization of a population and how this tale is not new when one looks at the historic Jim Crow polices of America’s south, instituted at the end of enslavement of an entire race for four centuries. Cornell West’s forward to the paperback edition is quite provocative as he raises questions and issues you might not be familiar with. As English 5 meets for 1 hour and 15 minutes. We will have to do a lot of preparation at home and come to class ready to talk and discuss what we have read, the theories we have explored in our text book or in other readings I will supply on other argument forms: Toulmin and Aristotelian. Writing Logically, Thinking Critically only uses the Rogerian argumentative form.

We will write four arguments using these forms. The last argument, which takes its theme from Alexander, will be an opportunity for a student to craft an argument using one of the three explored. There might be an opportunity for the “super students” to craft an argument taking on a topic they disagree with arguing its merits. Since this is an election year, it will be fun analyzing campaign speeches, looking for examples of logical fallacies or flawed logic in ads, op eds and other media.

All arguments are both written and oral. Students will present their written arguments for critique. Each of three arguments will take their topic from one of the texts. We will start with Yummy, then move to Mosely, and end with Alexander. Alexander is a hard read, so if you are a slow reader, start it early.

We are leaving Alexander for last, as I’d like to get through much of Writing Logically, along with its exercises, before we start the book. I love Walter Mosely’s work. He is one of my favorite writers since the Easy Rawlins’ series of detective novels, to his science fiction work, and lately his protagonist Socrates Fortlow novels, Fortlow who is just as thoughtful as Ezekiel "Easy" Porterhouse Rawlins, perhaps more.

One of my students in English 1A Fall 2010, shared the title with me and I checked it out from the Oakland Public Library. I read it in a day and a half and immediately decided to use it this Spring Semester. The argument is classic. How many of you ever thought the destination “hell” as negotiable (smile)? Well, Mosely’s character disagrees with his sentence and gets sent back to earth to work it out with his angel. There he meets the devil or Lucifer himself. It is a great story that makes the reader rethink her notion of right and wrong, good and evil.

When I was in Los Angeles last year in November to say good bye to a good friend who was dying, I went to the Holocaust Museum that Sunday, where the author of Yummy was receiving a book award. I hadn’t known the story of the child in Chicago. After reading Yummy, I decided to make it one of our texts this semester as it is an easy read and a story—those of us who live in urban communities can undoubtedly, unfortunately, relate to.

I also like films and in the classes longer than 50 minutes, we watch a few (smile). For English 1A, we will definitely watch, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, even if it takes two classes or I might assign it as homework (we’ll see).

Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street, first, Yummy, second, and last, Always Running. Students will also read a book, a memoir of their own choosing. I suggest the sequel to Always Running, It Calls You Back.

There will be a Social Entrepreneur Essay for English 201 and English 1A students.

In English 201, we will take our freewrites in response to House on Mango Street and make a book. We’ll have a book release party with refreshments (smile). There will be five major essays, three tied to assigned textbooks, one tied to a memoir you choose, the last on the social entrepreneur.

Four of the five essays involve presentations: House on Mango Street, Always Running, SE Essay, Book Report Essay. The response to Yummy can be a graphic essay for the artistically inclined (smile). In English 201 we might read the play, Elephant Man. I see this play and its character as a metaphor for what happened to the protagonist in Yummy and what happened to Luis Rodríguez in Always Running.

I chose Always Running after many years of not teaching it, because of the recent by the author, whom I had the opportunity to interview when he was in town last November on a book tour. I loved teaching his Always Running, a classic tale similar to Down These Mean Streets by the late poet and author, Piri Thomas, Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land, Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman, and more recently, The Pact by Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt with Lisa Frazier Page, and The Color of Water by James McBride. These coming of age tales about young men, are stories where growing up is not a given for the men who tell these stories, so how they survive proves instructive then and now.

In English 1A we will read the Greek play, Lysistrata. I also have a collection of poetry with the theme, war, which we will look at in English 1A in March as well.

I hope we can attend at least one play or author event as a community of writers. I will let students know what is opening and where. You can let me know of events you are attending as well. Films are also great, especially when the director is present or there is a discussion before or afterward.

Some students are not receiving this communiqués from me, which means, said student has no email address on file with admissions and records. Correct this omission immediately. Add an email address to your application. Make sure the phone numbers listed are the ones you are able to be reached at.

I have be using the book Stewart Pidd Hates English for too many years to recall when I started exactly, but suffice it to say over the years, “The Pidd Experience,” which many students hate as well as Pidd, has become a trademark text I have become well-known for on this campus and perhaps in the District (smile). It is a book that through a series of prescriptive exercises and essays covers many of the more salient errors writing students make which give their college teachers the most grief. The errors reviewed are both grammatical and mechanical, with an overview of summary and paraphrasing most third semester students have forgotten, not to mention a mind expanding section on plagiarism, which some scholars are not serious enough about, a slight which often comes back to haunt many a student as he or she crams at the end of the semester.

Deceptively simple, SPHE grows steadily more complex until the student who has been simply gliding along runs into major difficulty. This is around the third or fourth essays, Pronoun Case or BeVerbs. The fictional character, Stewart Pidd, supplies all the course work and students act as his teachers, grading his essays and offering comments on how he can improve by naming the errors and giving an example(s) of how he can correct the essays. These corrective essays are written as templates, which means there is little space for creativity, rather, the correct essay looks like everyone else’s, with perhaps originality in the title or often in the concluding paragraph. Many students cannot believe how simple the task is, until this simplicity is shattered by failing grades.

The essays are nonsense essays, which enable students to focus on the writing, rather than the content. This toSo fosters in students a false sense of competence failing grades quickly shatter. It isn’t the difficulty that gets students; it is the attention to detail that gets them over and over again.

Last semester, for the first time, I had students write an essay called, “The Stewart Pidd Experience.” I also had students write an essay where they evaluated their two grammar exams and an essay. This was a part of the class portfolio which is our final assignment. There is no sitting final in this class.

I have decided to not require Pidd for Spring Semester, except as a recommendation for all students who have never used the book before. The only class where this is not true is English 201 where I am making SPHE required. For everyone else, if your essays include errors covered in Pidd, students will have to write a correction essay outlining their errors, how to correct them and a revised essay.

The errors covered in SPHE are: confused words, sentence punctuation, pronoun agreement, pronoun case, be-verbs, possessives, verb tense, parallel structure, MLA, plagiarism, paraphrasing, summarizing, ellipsis use, signal phrases, works cited pages.

I plan to give students the quizzes and the exams, just so you can know if you need to get the book and run the exercises. Beginning Week 2, I will host a six week workshop on MW mornings (10:30-11:30) for students interested in “The Pidd Experience.” I could possibly host a meeting also on M or W afternoons, after 3 p.m., let’s say, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., if more than 5 students are interested. Students do not have to be in English 201 to attend. One has to commit to the entire six weeks though. The workshop is open to all Sabir students. Students in my English 1B class last semester who did not buy a grammar style book and made many errors up to the portfolio in MLA from works cited pages to ellipsis marks, received Bs instead of As in the course. For English 1A, it was crucial that students cited correctly. This is a key goal of Freshman composition. After English 1A, students are expected to know how to cite their sources and understand the importance of scholarly research when proving a point. Students are also expected to know the difference between free and literal paraphrasing, summarizing and plagiarism. It is that serious that students who are scholars know this information, so if you don’t, look at the book—SPHE, and think about this short refresher workshop.

I am teaching four classes: English 1B, 21792, 8-8:50 AM, MTWTh in C211; English 1A, 21757, 9-9:50 AM, MTWTh, A-202; English 5, 21763 & English 211, 21777, 11-12:15 AM, TTh, A-202; English 201A 21768 & English 201B 21774, MW, A 202, 1-2:50 PM. (The two classes ENG 201A & ENG 201B, as well as ENG 5 and ENG 211, run concurrently.)

As usual, I am looking to hold one class a week in a lab with computers so students can learn to navigate the blog and how I want essay portfolios sent to me.

If you do not have technology at home, use the computers here on campus in the LRC. There is the Open Lab and the Writing Center for your use. All you need is a Student ID, which is free. Make sure you get on early on. Students also need to sign up for a special LRC course, which is also free. Do this early in the semester as well.

For first year students, I suggest you fit College Success at COA into your schedules: Counseling 21739, MW 12-1:15, 3 Units, in C-113, with Cobb or Counseling 21738, MW 9:30-10:45, in CV-205 (portables) with Nakmo. Similar classes are offered at Laney and Merritt colleges (Peralta Colleges 2012 Schedule of Classes 96). There is a Grammar class at Laney: 20428 6-8:50 PM, Eng. 206A, English Grammar, 3 units (Peralta Colleges 2012 Spring Schedule of Classes 107). Here at the College of Alameda students can enroll in Grammar 6 in the ESL department.

In all except the English 5 or Critical Thinking class, I am using a new book, I hope students like or at least find useful, They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. Oh, no, students might cry, another book that uses templates?! What is wrong with Sabir, doesn’t she trust original thought (smile). You won’t believe this, but this book has been sitting on my desk for at least five years, maybe more and it wasn’t until a former student of mine, now professor, Maria Acuna, shared it with me last semester, did I decide to try it.

I have been reading it this weekend as well and I like the premise the authors use to explain why they wrote it. Granted, templates can get tiresome, but for those who are familiar with Stewart Pidd Hates English, these templates are nothing like the ones Pollitt and Baker use. Rest assured there (smile). Instead, this book helps students enter the discourse or conversation, often one which has been raging or simmering or bubbling over for a short or long while, a conversation you have never entered, however, one which affects your life in profound ways. Why haven’t you joined in? Often, the reason certain communities are not called to the table or invited to participate is intentional. The reason is, to do so doesn’t serve the interests of the body politic at the table.

Whether one is invited or not, whether one has a chair or not, whether one has the proper suit or proper language with which to engage those at the table using one’s life as a ping pong, the conversation is open in a democracy and it is yours to join even in an assignment for a class such as ours. I have students who have used their writing here to launch careers in politics. I have had students publish writing completed here in class in newspapers and respected journals. We are working in a laboratory where results can actually change lives beginning with our own. What you learn here is not “academic” if academic means useless. Each of you is a change agent; that is why you took time out of your life to show up.

Showing up is important. We all showed up for different reasons, some not as lofty as others, but you are here and because you are here, I expect great work from you. That is my goal and that is why and I am here and when you start hating me, remember, the promise I made to you here: meritocracy will never get a reward in this class. There is no grading on the curve. Everyone is held to a high standard and while I set the bar, well the State of California sets the bar and some of you will not reach it this time— keep trying and you will eventually.

The class might appear disorganized and I smile a lot and seem easy, this is an illusion. I am not easy. I demand a lot from each of you, but this is college—and you expect huge demands right? Don’t worry, I think you will get your money’s worth and then some. I do not assign writing assignments because I have nothing better to do. I can think or many tasks I love more than reading first drafts of students’ papers—you think they are final drafts, but they are not. I am a professional writer and I know what I am doing, so trust me when I tell you something is wrong. It is not personal, rather it is the writing not you I am critiquing. Some students enter the class with more skill sets than others. Some expect success in high school to tide them over here, and have rude awakenings. My suggestion is to come to class awake and sleep at home the night before.

I hope students surprise me and actually know a bit about the writing process and can read with comprehension and most importantly, are not lazy. You can enroll in this class not knowing everything, but if you do not exert yourself and fill in those spaces where perhaps time or preparation left you under-ready then, I expect you to get the extra help needed, whether that is attending my “Pidd Experience” workshop or a getting a tutor or both.

Be honest with yourself and do what you need to do to be successful here. Do not waste your time or your classmates. I will not let you waste mine or theirs or use my brain as your own. I do not suffer fools at all. Some students say I am rude, perhaps I am; however, when students are not prepared and want to waste the time of those who are, I cut them off. I am not interested in anything an unprepared student has to say. If you ever come to class unprepared, keep silent. Do not open your mouth except to tell us you are not prepared and are just observing that day.

I have to pay out of pocket for an assistant to help me with record keeping. I haven’t had a student aide in years to help students with their essays, so it’s on me and you. If you need help I can help you to a point—there is no magic. I am a great writer because I write and I kept writing when I got failing grades, had to take remedial writing classes at UC Berkeley, and got failing grades on first drafts at Holy Names.

Believe it or not, I didn’t know what a thesis sentence was until graduate school Teaching Writing course. I do not have hours to spend with one student a week, but you can get assistance, so ask when there are questions. I think faster than I write sometimes and I am an awful speller. No one is perfect. Learn what your strengths are. I have an almost photographic memory. Writing things down is a way for me to record them in my mind almost verbatim. I don’t hold hands and after last semester, a deadline is a deadline even if only one student makes it, so keep the due dates in your calendar, just in case I forget to remind you when something is due.

The blog is a place where reminders tend to go, but if you have limited access to the web, take good notes from the white board and get a few students phones numbers just in case. I suggest students hold study sessions to discuss readings and assignments. The library (first floor in the LRC or Learning Resource Center) has classrooms students can use for discussions.

Each class has varying requirements for the writing, which is about 6-8,000 words. I tend to assign more writing. In English 1A, students will have several short research essays, rather than one long essay. Each essay in English 1A will be about 3-4 pages, 250 words a page. In English 5 3-4 pages per essay. This is minimally. Essays can be a bit longer. In English 201 essays will be between 2-5 pages depending on the level. English 1B, 3-4 pages. This excludes the works cited page.

I am giving you all this in advance so you can drop the course and find a better fit.

Recap on textbooks. Find your class:

1. English 5: Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow; Walter Mosley's The Tempest Tales; Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, and Writing Logically, Thinking Critically 6th Edition. Recommended: Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers, American Heritage Dictionary.

2.English 1B:

Gardner, Janet E. Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide. Second Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. Print.

Grover, Linda Legarde. The Dance Boots. Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press, 2010. Print.

Kwok, Jean. Girl in Translation. New York: Riverhead Books, 2010. Print.

Satrapi, Marjane. The Complete Persepolis. Pantheon Books, 2007. Print. ISBN 0375714839

Bannerjee, Neelanjana and Summi Kaipa, Pireeni Sundaralingam. Ed. Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian Poetry. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2010. Print.

Recommended: Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers, 4-7th editions. American Heritage Dictionary.

3. English 1A: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee, Diana Hacker Rules for Writers, American Heritage Dictionary. They Say, I Say, Second Edition, by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birenstein.

Recommended for students who have not taken my classes before: Stewart Pidd Hates English.

4. English 201A: Stewart Pidd Hates English*, Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Always Running: Gang Days in LA by Luis Rodriguez. American Heritage Dictionary.

English 201B: for Pidd Alumni: Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers and They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birenstein. If a student has not had me for English 201A then Pidd is recommended.

Sincerely,

Wanda Sabir
English Professor, College of Alameda

2012-01-19T16:31:00.001-08:00

Greetings Students:

Welcome to English 1A!

Course materials for all Sabir courses Spring 2012. Find your class:

1. English 5: Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow; Walter Mosley's The Tempest Tales, Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, and Writing Logically, Thinking Critically 6th Edition. Recommended: Diana Hacker Rules for Writers, American Heritage Dictionary.

2. English 1B: The Dance Boots, Girl in Translation, The Complete Persepolis, Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian Poetry, Writing about Literature: A Portable Guide. Second Edition, Janet E. Gardner. Recommended: Diana Hacker Rules for Writers, American Heritage Dictionary.

3. English 1A: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee, Diana Hacker Rules for Writers, American Heritage Dictionary. They Say, I Say, SE by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birenstein.

Recommended for students who have not taken my classes before: Stewart Pidd Hates English.

4. English 201A: Stewart Pidd Hates English*, Yummy: the Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, Always Running: Gang Days in LA by Luis Rodriguez. American Heritage Dictionary.

English 201B: for Pidd Alumni: Diana Hacker Rules for Writers and They Say, I Say by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birenstein. If a student has not had me for English 201A then Pidd is recommended.

2011-12-07T11:12:00.000-08:00

Don't forget to include in the subject line in the email: your name and the assignment: COA Sabir English 1A Portfolio Fall 2011

Email by or on Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, 12 noon to: coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com Paste and attach the one word document.

2011-12-07T10:11:00.000-08:00

COA Sabir English 1A Portfolio Checklist 2011 Final

This checklist can serve as the table of contents. Put a check next to the items to show inclusion in the portfolio. Use as the second page to the portfolio, after the cover sheet. Where there are questions for the section, students can post the answers to the narrative there. Number the pages with a header.

Name ______________________________
Date ______________________________
Class including class code and semester ____________________
Address _______________________________________
Phone number __________________________________
Email address__________________________________

40008 Lec 11:00-11:50 MTWTh Sabir C 211 Alameda
Class Meetings: August 22-Dec. 7; No classes: 9/5; 11/24

Final Exam: Friday, Dec.16, 12 noon (Portfolios due via e-mail to coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com. There is no sitting exam.)

Dec. 7 12 noon to 2 p.m.
Drop-in Portfolio assembly workshop in A-205 _______________

Portfolio Due Date
Portfolios due by Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, 12 Noon electronically. Make sure you receive a receipt for your submission. No paper copies, no exceptions.

Grade Justification
What grade do you think you've earned this semester? What evidence supports this conclusion?

1. Portfolio Essay 1 Reflection on COA Fall 2011, Professor Sabir’s English Class_______

2. Portfolio Essay 2 Reflection on revision process__________________

3. Stewart Pidd Hates English Section:

The Stewart Pidd Experience Essay _________
Multiple Choice Exam Essay Analysis 2 essay _________

Social Entrepreneur Portfolio

Planning _____________

Library Research sheet _______________(if you did it)
List of sources (5) minimum in MLA format (post here)

Essay: Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis__________
First Draft (peer review)__________
Final Draft Grade ______________
Revisions (How many?)_____________
Pidd type essay ________________ or narrative ____________

SE Presentation date ___________
Self-reflection __________
Classmate responses __________

Cyber-Assignments:
Frontline World ___________
Muhammad Yunus ___________
Extreme Tour Oct. 7, 2011 (Extra Credit)____________

Nature vs. Nurture Portfolio

Book: Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary by Jasmine Guy
First Graded Draft __________
Revisions (How many?) _________
Correction Essays How Many?____________
Planning ___________
Peer Review _________
Related Cyber-Assignments _________

Hip Hop Portfolio: Dyson, Tupac, Hurt

Michael Erik Dyson: Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur
Cyber-Assignments (How many?) ___________
Byron Hurt’s “Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes” Essay__________
Planning _________
Revisions (How many?) ________
Correction Essays (How many?) ___________

Cyber-Assignments connected to Hurt_________

The Rose that Grew from Concrete Assignments

Cyber-Assignments (How many?) _________
Tupac-related cyber-assignments such as freewrites connected to songs (how many?)

Include the McCall assignment and the assignment on Censorship (handout) _______

Freewrites Type and Include here _________

Semester Cyber-assignments

Any cyber-assignments not connected to the two books or social entrepreneur essay, give another heading and post here. Some of these are connected to the other assignments. Put them there. Do not post twice.

Extra Credit Essay: Students can turn in a graded essay from another course if the other teacher doesn’t mind. It has to use research and MLA style documentation, so certain courses are not applicable.

Anything else? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________

Teacher research

Can I use your work in presentations and publications? Would you like to be anonymous? If I plan on using your essays or work in a book, I will let you know and share any proceeds.

Yes, I agree.
No, do not use my work.

Final Grade
Portfolio checklist _____________
Portfolio Essay 1_______________
Portfolio Essay 2_______________
Portfolio Grade_________

Course Grade_________

2011-12-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

Portfolio Checklist 2011 DRAFT

This checklist can serve as the table of contents. Put a check next to the items to show inclusion in the portfolio. Use as the second page to the portfolio, after the cover sheet. Where there are questions for the section, students can post the answers to the narrative there. Number the pages with a header.

Name ______________________________
Date ______________________________
Class including class code and semester ____________________
Address _______________________________________
Phone number __________________________________
Email address__________________________________

40008 Lec 11:00-11:50 MTWTh Sabir C 211 Alameda
Class Meetings: August 22-Dec. 7; No classes: 9/5; 11/24

Final Exam: Friday, Dec.16, 12 noon (Portfolios due via e-mail. There is no sitting exam.)

Dec. 7 12 noon to 2 p.m.
Drop-in Portfolio assembly workshop in A-205 _______________

Portfolio Due Date
Portfolios due by Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, 12 Noon electronically. Make sure you receive a receipt for your submission. No paper copies, no exceptions.

Grade Justification
What grade do you think you've earned this semester? What evidence supports this conclusion?

1. Portfolio Essay 1 Reflection on COA Fall 2011, Professor Sabir’s English Class_______

The narrative will look at the 18 weeks, the themes we looked at this semester: the role family and community have in shaping the lives of its inhabitants, also how much control we have over our lives and their outcome. Are people ever stuck in situations they cannot or will not change?

We also read stories of forgiveness and faith, love and guilt. Friendship and parenting were other themes explored in the texts along with the power of art to change one's life and the lives of others both negatively and positively.

What have you learned about yourself this semester? What have you learned about the discipline you are studying here: reading and writing that you plan to carry forth into your lifelong pursuit of learning.

Please also comment on the texts and whether or not they were helpful in this process. You can also talk about the instruction, culture of the class and the teacher. You can also offer suggestions.

2. Portfolio Essay 2 Reflection on revision process__________________

Look at the writing process and what you have been learning about yourself as a writer. Take two essays and talk about the planning, research and revision strategies you used. It helps to choose an early paper and compare to a later paper. Often you can more easily see the differences in your writing and a better example of mastery of certain concepts. Also discuss skills you need to improve and how you plan to address that.

Additional narrative considerations for the portfolio essay:

The second essay has students look at the writing process and discuss their own writing process: the topics chosen, the information used, revision strategies, writing as a process. This should include a definition of the difference between editing and revising and a value statement on the place for both in composition.

I am really interested in discourse about audience and how that shapes or determines how the writer approaches her topic.

I am also interested in discussion of the revision process, and whether or not seeing writing as a work in progress or a draft, liberates or stagnates the creative process. (Students are to use examples from their writing to illustrate these points.)

I'd also like students to think about and give at three specific ways how they have grown as writers and thinkers this semester. Each essay (1 & 2) should be minimally 1-2 pages (250-500 words).

3. Stewart Pidd Hates English Section:

The Stewart Pidd Experience _________
Multiple Choice Exam 1and 2 essay _________

Social Entrepreneur Portfolio

Planning _____________

Library Research sheet _______________(if you did it)
List of sources (5) minimum in MLA format (post here)

Essay: Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis__________
First Draft (peer review)__________
Final Draft Grade ______________
Revisions (How many?)_____________
Pidd type essay ________________ or narrative ____________

SE Presentation date ___________
Self-reflection __________
Classmate responses __________

Cyber-Assignments:
Frontline World ___________
Muhammad Yunus ___________
Extreme Tour Oct. 7, 2011 (Extra Credit)____________

Nature vs. Nurture Portfolio

Book: Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary by Jasmine Guy
First Graded Draft __________
Revisions (How many?) _________
Correction Essays How Many?____________
Planning ___________
Peer Review _________
Related Cyber-Assignments _________

Hip Hop Portfolio: Dyson, Tupac, Hurt

Michael Erik Dyson: Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur
Cyber-Assignments (How many?) ___________
Byron Hurt’s “Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes” Essay__________
Planning _________
Revisions (How many?) ________
Correction Essays (How many?) ___________

Cyber-Assignments connected to Hurt_________

The Rose that Grew from Concrete Assignments

Cyber-Assignments (How many?) _________
Tupac-related cyber-assignments such as freewrites connected to songs (how many?)

Include the McCall assignment and the assignment on Censorship (handout) _______

Semester Cyber-assignments

Any cyber-assignments not connected to the two books or social entrepreneur essay, give another heading and post here. Some of these are connected to the other assignments. Put them there. Do not post twice.

Extra Credit Essay: Students can turn in a graded essay from another course if the other teacher doesn’t mind. It has to use research and MLA style documentation, so certain courses are not applicable.

Anything else? _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________

Teacher research

Can I use your work in presentations and publications? Would you like to be anonymous? If I plan on using your essays or work in a book, I will let you know and share any proceeds.

Yes, I agree.
No, do not use my work.

Final Grade
Portfolio checklist _____________
Portfolio Essay 1_______________
Portfolio Essay 2_______________
Portfolio Grade_________

Course Grade_________

Cyber-Assignments Recap

Do not post assignments multiple times. If connected to an essay, post it there in that section under: Cyber-Assignments and Freewrites (type your freewrites)

Monday, August 22, 2011
Cyber-Assignment 1

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 assignment: Please respond to the syllabus in a minimally three paragraph essay (250 words). Comment on the goals and objectives, texts, methodology and anything else.

Sunday, August 28, 2011
Recap and Cyber-Assignment

Thursday in class we listened to the Tupac Shakur song: Keep Ya Head Up. Homework is to write a 250 word summary of the key ideas or themes in the song.

1. Talk about the characters or subjects Tupac uses to illustrate his point. What is the song about? Is it about single parenting or more than that?

2. Use citations or examples from the song to prove or support your points. Remember, all ideas are good, but they need to reference the text.

3. Use Standard English. If you use slang, it needs to be from the song and in quotation marks. Put a line or stanza notation in parentheses after the citation or quote, such as: 2:15 (stanza 2, line 15).

4. Respond to at least 1 classmate by name after you have posted your response. It is a separate comment.

Monday, August 29, 2011
Today is the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the worse natural disaster at that time to hit American shores. Presently there are many New Orleanian residents still in the disapora, displaced and then stuck in cities and towns throughout America. A lot of families here at College of Alameda are here as a result of this displacement.

Today is also the birthday of America and the world's most celebrated artists, Michael Jackson, who died about 2-3 years ago.

You have a choice: Find an article that looks at New Orleans or the Gulf Region, six years after Katrina (specifically hip hop's response if possible) or an article on Michael Jackson (something current). He would have been 53 today.

Thursday, September 01, 2011
Cyber-Assignments
Post your literal paraphrases here.

Thursday, September 01, 2011
Homework is to post a summary of your article on Katrina or Michael Jackson and post here.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Today in class we read the title poem from The Rose that Grew from Concrete. It was the topic of the freewrite this morning.

Weekend Cyber-Homework
Read the intro, preface and forward in Rose. Homework for Thursday, September 8, 2011, will be to summarize one of the three in a paragraph (5-10 sentences). Include one citation in the summary: a free paraphrase, a short quote or a block quote. Don't forget the works cited page.

In class tomorrow we will spend most of our time in groups discussing Holler, Chapter 1, using the Literature Circles handout as a guide. The freewrite will be Michael Jackson's song: "Heal the World."

Thursday, September 08, 2011
Heal the World Cyber-Freewrite

Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Today was the anniversary of Tupac Shukur's death. He was 25 then; today he would have been 41. The poem we read from Rose looked at solitude. We had an extended conversation about solitude and compared that with loneliness and isolation. We then read the poem, "In the Depths of Solitude, Dedicated to Me" (5). Students reflected on the poem and then were instructed to find supporting evidence for their claim or argument in Holler: Childhood Chains.

Post the freewrite here. Yes, I know it's late, so if you don't get to it until after class that's fine. We spoke about SPHE and most students turned their essays in electronically today. Students gave me the peer review sheets and proofreading sheets as well.

Pidd is review, almost self-paced but not really, since there is a schedule. Nseke and Edwin are available to help students who need it, so don't feel shy ask for help if you need it.

If students want the peer review sheets for the other essays, they will have to request them. Thursdays are a good day to do this, as they are in A-232.

Homework is to continue doing the exercises in Pidd and keep reading Dyson. Tomorrow we'll develop a character profile for Tupac and his mother. In your reading log list references Dyson makes to writers and artists and other people who remind the author of Tupac or people who shaped the young man's life. Test yourself. How many references do you know?

You can ask questions in your log for the class to ponder. We might know the answer, we might not (smile).

Thursday students will write a short essay in class based on a theme taken from Holler. Tomorrow bring in questions, if any from Pidd. We'll go over the answers to some of the exercises. This section is not easy, especially pronoun agreement.

We'll go over the essay on Thursday. I'll give you the quiz Thursday as well. You will have a short cyber-writing assignment this weekend, a three paragraph essay taking its topic from the third chapter in Holler.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
As a class on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011, we responded to the poem, "In the Depths of Solitude, Dedicated to Me" (5).

Post your response to one of the three poems we read from Rose: Sometimes I Cry (7), Under the Skies Above, After the Miscarriage (9), or Life through My Eyes (11).

Don't forget to respond to at least one classmate's post by name.

Thursday, September 15, 2011
Essay Questions Cyber-Assignment

Post the 3-5 questions developed for a chapter in Dyson.

Homework
In a separate post here, respond in a three (3) paragraph essay to another student's question (just 1), from another chapter than yours.

Give the name of the author of the question in your response. Use three citations in your essay, one citation per paragraph: 1 short citation, 1 free paraphrase, 1 block quote.

Include a works cited page.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Cyber-Assignment

Today is class we spent a few moments correcting the quiz on MLA: titles and essays. We read two poems, well Brianna and Sebastian read the poems: When Ur Heart Turns Cold and Untitled from Rose. Outstanding recitations (smile).

Sebastian's brought chills to my spin (cliche--I know. Smile). We then discussed the style of the two pieces and the themes. The freewrite was to develop a thesis that defined a key element in the work. Many students saw the two pieces as connected the character the same, yet at different points along his or her trajectory on his development or spirit journey.

I wrote a sentence where I compared madness to a state of inhumanity. Human beings are sane, and madness is perhaps the final step to the other side where all we were is lost, all that matters most is gone.

Post your thesis sentence that defines a key element in the poem --your choice, here. Comment on another student's poem.

We meet in the library tomorrow morning for an orientation: 11 AM with Professor Jane. If you can't figure it out, meet at the reference desk (smile).

We will discuss Dyson at length Thursday. That is all we will do. We are in the final stretch of the book. There will be an essay assigned (not due), next week (smile).

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Today we met in the library as planned for a library orientation. Post a reflection on the orientation: what new information did you discover, what was a reminder of information or research strategies you already knew?

Respond to one other student. Don't forget to post the thesis sentence response to the assignment yesterday. Only one student did so far.

Thursday, September 22, 2011
Today in class reflect on the final section of the book: "Bodies and Beliefs." How is this title a play on the words: body of beliefs?

Keep adding to the character profile as you complete the book.

What does this section open up for you regarding Tupac's life. Does Dyson make good on his goals and objectives for the biography now that you have come to the end of the book?

Look back at "I Always Wanted. . ." (13-16)?

In a 3-paragraph essay respond to your assigned chapter (6-7 or 8). If you didn't get an assignment, choose any of the concluding chapters (6, 7 or 8). Also respond to a classmate's post from a chapter different from your own. Use a citation to respond to your comment-on-a-classmate's-post which challenges or expands the claims the writer makes.

I dismissed class early as the students hadn't read the section we were to discuss today. Everyone received attendance credit for being present in the class.

Monday we will watch a video looking at misogyny in American culture and by extension hip hop culture called "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes". There will be a cyber-essay attached to the film. The film is 56 minutes, so there will not be any time for anything else, not even discussion, but we can talk about it on Tuesday (smile).

Thursday, September 22, 2011
Cyber Assignment
Write a 3-paragraph essay from one chapter in "Bodies and Beliefs"

Outline for the Assignment (read the post below this one for more details). The essay needs to include three (3) citations, one per paragraph: a free paraphrase, a block quote, and a shorter citation, all from Dyson. Writers can decide what type of citation to use and where you want to place it in the paragraph. Don't forget the signal phrase before the citation. "He says" is an example of a signal phrase.

You also need a works cited page. Each paragraph needs to be between 5-10 sentences long.

Introduction
1. Talk about the chapter, your impressions. List Dyson's major claims or arguments. He generally starts each paragraph with an argument, followed by examples and if it is a sophisticated claim, he might use the following paragraph to continue developing and proving his prior argument.

The way you find the evidence for an argument is to say: So and so is true . . . because. The answer to because is the evidence or proof.

But back to the Intro.

2. List themes, that is, topics that are repeated.

3. Cite evidence from Dyson that agrees with what you are saying here.

4. State the thesis.

Body

1. 1 paragraph-discussion of the points stated in the thesis. This is where you answer the because question. This is where you give examples and reasons why what you say is true is true.

2. Include a citation. This is a good place for a block quote (a long citation that is justified on the left (indent 10 spaces from the 1-inch margin) without quotation marks.) See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/

Conclusion

1. Bring up lesser, yet equally important themes. Remember the entire book is about Tupac. How does this final section, which addresses Tupac's morality, the body-politic as it were, wrap up Dyson's discussion?

How does this part of the book support or extend previous sections: "Childhood Chains, Adolescent Aspirations" and "Portraits of an Artist?" What does Dyson mean about the black body as canvas, as sacrificial offering, as blight, as stigma and Tupac's artistic response to this blessing and curse?

Do his ecclesiastic inclinations show here, especially in the "Epilogue"?

2. Citation

Monday, September 26, 2011
Assignment

1. Initial response

Think about Hurt's argument(s). In a short response (250 words), discuss the evidence Hurt presents in the film and whether or not you agree with his premise that commercial rap is misogynistic, violent, and promotes a negative stereotype of black manhood. Here is a link to Part 1 of 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8YpcN7oKIM&feature=related

At this link there is further information about the issues Hurt raises divided into categories: masculinity, misogyny, homophobia, or media literacy. http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/issues.htm.

Also visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/ for background information on the film and director. In your essay cite a song which supports Hurt's claim(s) or refutes it. You can include the URL in your essay as the reference.

2. After reading the Dyson interview with Hurt. Due Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011

Bring in an expanded freewrite or entirely different essay discussing Hurt's claims made in his film and to Dyson in the interview. In a 3 page essay (750 words min.), using citations from Dyson's interview, Holler and Hurt's film talk about Tupac's work in light of Hurt's critique. How would Tupac hold up?

Use lyrics from at least two songs to support your argument re: Tupac Shakur's contributions to the genre and the industry both positive and negative.

Bring the essay to class electronically on Thursday for a peer review. I will give you a Initial Planning Sheet tomorrow and we will talk about thesis statements, signal phrases and block quotes on Tuesday. I am going to be looking at introductions in this essay and conclusions, the two bookends of an essay.

The next essay will look at signal phrases and how well students integrate sources into their work.

Students will have up to five citations: 1 film (B. Hurt), two rap songs, one article (from Michael Eric Dyson's Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop, one book (Holler)

The citations need to be: 1 block quote, paraphrases, and shorter citations.

Students will turn in an Initial Planning Sheet with the essay and an outline. We'll practice on Tuesday-Wednesday.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
My Testimony Cyber-Freewrite

Post here. It's your choice to post anonymously if you like. Use initials.

Tuesday, October 04, 2011
Post your reflection on one of Tupac's poems read in class today. Chose a line that reflects the author's point or argument and expound.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Social Entrepreneur Research Essay Extra Credit
Register for http://extremetouralameda.eventbrite.com/

College of Alameda
Student Center (Building F)
555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Pkwy
Alameda, CA 94501

If you go to the event, and post something here, a 250 word reflection on the program and its usefulness, you can have extra credit. You might meet an entrepreneur to profile for our final essay.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Today in class we read, well Edwin read the Preface in Evolution. We then spoke about the writing and the content. Students then critiqued each other's essays. Turn in the essay with the peer reviews. Include the IPS and an outline. Students can email me the cyber-assignments. Pull them together for tomorrow and we can talk about how I want this to look.

We spoke about parallel structure (x), alliteration, assonance, and connotation vs. denotation when looking at words like "intimacy" and the multiple meanings of the word: "spit."

We also spoke about the relationship between Jasmine, the author and her subject, Afeni and how that compared or contrasted with that of Dyson's relationship to his subject, Tupac in Holler.

Recap

1. Essay 1 is due along with peer reviews and associate essays read.

2. Include IPS and outlines

3. Assemble all the cyber-assignments electronically in advance. All assignments connected to Dyson or Shakur or Hip Hop Culture.

4. Bring reading logs to class as well. I will take hard copies. Don't give me your originals.

Evolution of a Revolutionary Book Notes Format

Keep notes along the theme: Nature vs. Nurture or Destiny vs. Choice. Make a column with Tupac at the top. For all the instances where something connected to his mother impacts his life label it Nature vs. Nurture or Destiny vs. Choice.

Have another sheet with Afeni's name at the top with similar columns. Bring to class for discussions. Look in your atlas to find where Afeni was born and where the family lives now.

Make another list of key characters in her life and key and events where fate or choice were involved.

Homework is to read up to page 68. Students need to be thinking about what book they'd like to read for their book report essay. The author should be 30 or younger and live in the SF Bay Area. I will consider fiction, although I suggest finding a book written about or by your social entrepreneur.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Cyber-Field Trip Sign-up for next Thursday, October 13, 2011

Let me know if you are interested and bring your $5 to class Monday-Tuesday, October 10-11, 2011. I want to buy the tickets in advance. The venue will not hold tickets for us, but I doubt that they sell out. However, one never knows, Marc is famous here and well-loved.

We can meet at West Oakland BART at 6:30 PM and travel together. YBCA is on Third and Mission Street, 701 Mission Street in San Francisco.

YBCA is pleased to present the world premiere of Joseph’s newest project, Red, Black & GREEN: Marc Bamuthi Joseph/ The Living Word Project October 13 - 22 7:30 p.m. Admission $5 You can buy as many tickets as you like. Invite friends and family.

Thursday, October 13, 2011
Topical Invention Cyber-Assignment and 3-Part Essay

Today in class we are going to take the sentences developed in the exercise yesterday and write a 3-4 paragraph essay looking at: Introduction, Thesis (pro argument), Antithesis (con argument), and Synthesis (conclusion).

Homework:
Post the essay here for the group. As individuals, comment on the process, that is, looking at the argument form like this where one considers all sides of the issue.

Yesterday we looked at Topical Invention, a questioning strategy to develop: analogies, definition, consequence, testimony.

When using this strategy, students are to reference the topic in each sentence.

The questions are:

Definition: What is it/What was it?
Consequence: What caused it/Did it cause?
Analogy: What is it like or unlike?
Testimony: What does an authority say about it?

Students were to post their thesis sentences developed using the invention strategy: Topical Invention.

Reading and Research Homework:

We are on chapter six. Finish the book. Bring in a profile on Afeni Shakur. Look at her evolution over time from childhood, adolescence, as a young adult and as a mature woman who has suffered. Note her accomplishments, her tragedies, things she is proud of and what she still weeps over.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011, bring in an article from the library database on Afeni tied into a theme you are exploring like Nature vs. Nurture.

Thursday, October 13, 2011
Today a lot of students were absent, however, those who made it to class did a great job on the three-part essay exercise. The question: Is Afeni Shakur a revolutionary? was explored from the context of her role as a parent, as a mother and whether she did a good job.

What I came away with from listening to the essay was that parenting is also a revolutionary act, perhaps even more difficult than that of saving a world or a community.

Monday, October 17, 2011
Today we wrote a collaborative essay again. The topic was "inheritance." This time we had four paragraphs: Introduction, Thesis or Pro-argument, Antithesis or Con-argument, and Synthesis or Conclusion.

Students can post the paragraphs in the same location as last week's essay: topical invention.

Students were asked to use: analogies, definitions, consequences and testimony in each paragraph. I assigned different sentence types to each group. Considering the fact that many of the students were new to the concept, the overall essay to come from the exercise was great.

Students have not reflected on the process yet. Make sure you do so.

Homework is to finish the book and bring in a topic we could possibly explore in an essay taking its theme from Evolution of a Revolutionary.

Homework Reminder from Thursday, October 13. I gave students a copy of the assignment:

Reading and Research Homework:

We are on chapter six. Finish the book. Bring in a profile on Afeni Shakur. Look at her evolution over time from childhood, adolescence, as a young adult and as a mature woman who has suffered. Note her accomplishments, her tragedies, things she is proud of and what she still weeps over.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011, bring in a an article from the library database on Afeni tied into a theme you are exploring like Nature vs. Nurture.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011
I returned many of the "Hip Hop Hurt/Dyson" essays yesterday and the remainder today. Use Monday to revise the essay and return to me Tuesday, October 25, 2011. With that revision, include a narrative as to what you had to do to make the paper better. Look at it like you did Pidd's essays in SPHE this semester.

We will also begin the next essay next week. Bring in Initial Planning Sheet and outlines per the schedule. Your evidence is Guy, Dyson, and 1 article on the topic. You don't have to cite from all three, just two. The last document can be a part of the bibliography.

I expect these essays to get passing grades the first time around.

Homework
Homework for Thursday, tomorrow, bring in a completed profile on Afeni Shakur to share. You will include this profile with your essay.

Post your summaries of the scholarly article here. Don't fotget the works cited at the end.

Weekend Homework
Now that you have completed the book, write a letter to Afeni Shakur reflecting on her life and what you learned about her that you didn't know, which perhaps changes how you look at her as a revolutionary, a woman and a mother. Choose minimally three specific aspects of her life to reflect on.

This cyber-assignment is homework for the weekend, due, Thursday-Friday, October 20-21, 2011. Comment on one student's reflection with a citation expanding the comment.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Frontline World: Engaged Citizenry Cyber-Assignment

Visit http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/socialentrepreneurs.html

Respond to 3 stories by 11/10 (start 10/27). Post your Frontline World Responses (3) here.

Monday, October 31, 2011
Censorship Cyber Assignment(s)

Today, instead of reviewing the SPHE essays (all of them, beginning with Essay 1: Sentence Punctuation), we read one of two essays (handout) on the topic: Censorship. First we talked about what censorship is, defined it and then read an article by Michael Gartner.

Post you response to one of the two: Questions to Write About. The essay response should be 250 words. Include a works cited page. Read the Nathan McCall essay.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Post your abstract for the Social Entrepreneur here. Also post your self-reflection and comments for each student presentation.

2011-12-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

We will be working on the portfolio for the next two days. Bring in all work digitized. Tomorrow we will begin the first portfolio essay. You can complete essay 1and 2 for homework.

Later today look for the portfolio checklist here. I shared two portfolios with students. I only found one. Please return it tomorrow.

Some students are turning in assignments today. These assignments are late. You will not have time to revise them.

2011-11-29T13:27:00.001-08:00

Post your abstract for the Social Entrepreneur here. Also post your self-reflection and comments for each student presentation.

2011-11-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

Today we are reviewing outstanding essays and working on revisions. We are also completing the Pidd Semester Survey essay. Write this essay in first person.

This is the plan for tomorrow as well. Wednesday-Thursday, we will give presentations. Don't forget copies of the abstract for classmates. These are to be polished presentations.

Practice in advance and bring support materials like film clips, music, artifacts, etc.

Dress up. Oh, if you get too nervous and blow it, don't worry, you can't mess up and it won't adversely affect your grade, but it can help swing minuses to pluses.

2011-11-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

Today in class students who had drafty social entrepreneur essays shared. We spoke about the difficulty in crafting the essay as an argument using the outline strongly suggested for this assignment.

How is what a social entrepreneur does controversial, let alone cause for debate? Not everyone is a banker, like Muhammad Yunus. Money, capital, finance, is always a hot topic, especially for those who have none--the 99 percent (smile).

We chose Yunus, just because he is easy and everyone knows him and talked about the questions asked in the outline. For those questions where the writer cannot figure out an answer, leave it blank. You can't mess it up. The outline is a plan. Many of the answers to the questions have already been asked in other assignments in preparation for this essay, like the questions writers have been addressing for the SE exercises.

Sean wrote a great essay reflection on his two Grammar Exams. I shared it as a model (smile). Hope you didn't mind Sean, you were absent (smile). Yesterday, I wrote a sample introduction for the SPHE essay which looks at the entire book and its content. Everyone will not write this essay. You know who you are.

Meeting Location

Some students could not find me today. My office is: D-219. I am in the alcove near the elevator between D and C (second level). Tomorrow we will meet at C-211 and then go to D-114 (if you are late.) I don't have a key to the room yet, but the dean approved it for tomorrow. We will start with the SE essay and end with Pidd.

Social Entrepreneur Presentations

Practice your presentations in advance. Bring in abstracts for your audience. If you need copies, you can use the mail room. Get the copies in advance. An abstract is a short summary of your key ideas and argument. We will use the abstract to comment on the presentation.

Related Cyber-Assignment due immediately
A follow-up cyber-assignment will be a self-reflection on the presentation: what did you learn, what did you like most about the process, what would you change?

Students will also give a positive and constructive response to each student presentation: content, delivery, anything else you want to share. You will include these assignments as part of the SE portfolio when turning in the essay electronically to me. Start grabbing the cyber-assignments now.

Homework
Complete the SE essay. Revise essays, work on revisions. If you have essays without final grades, that is: C, B, A. Get the revisions in. All revisions at this point need a essay narrative in third person. Write it like you wrote the Pidd essays.

If you want to identify the errors and check them off with me first, before writing the essay, that is fine. If the correction essay is not correct, you will have to revise it.

2011-11-14T12:07:00.000-08:00

1. Today in class we completed and corrected Grammar Exam 2. Homework is to write a recommendation and correction essay for the writer instructing him or her on what he or she needs to do given this second exam.

Compare the two exams. Note any improvement (positive reinforcement). Attach this essay to the exam(s) tomorrow. Be specific re: errors and total correct per section and for the entire essay. State the grammar rule(s) and corrected sentence(s) or phrase(s) for each error.

2. We will meet in Thursdays in D-114 for the rest of the semester.

3. Continue working on the SE essay. Bring in your 5 sources in MLA so I can check it off. You will not be able to revise the SE essay. The final draft is due next week. Many students have not gotten their revised essays into me. There are a few students who have not turned in a first draft. Those students should talk to me. If you have spoken to me and did not honor your commitment, drop the class.

I am not reading any first drafts of essays which are past due after Thursday this week. Students will not be able to revise the essay(s).

4. We practiced the 3-part essay (handout). This is the kind of thesis sentence I want you to use for this final essay. I also want you to use this outline model for the SE essay as well. Everything needs to be typed, however, students can fill out the sheet if he or she desires.

2011-11-14T10:49:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, we read the Yunus essay together and talked about it in great detail. We focused on signal phrases per SPHE pages 331-332, 351-371.

Students are to work on the SE essay. It is due this week.

2011-11-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

Today we played hooky and watched the film I told students about maybe a few weeks ago, DEAF JAM, directed by Judy Lieff. Visit http://www.deafjam.org/presskit.html to read about the film, the director, her artistic team and the project connected to the film to bring poetry to the deaf community.

Funny, as I was reading the bios, one of the production team, Keiko Deguchi, editor, has made a film about Muhammad Yunus, called: To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunnus Banks on America (2010). I am going to see if she will send us a copy (smile).

Homework is to continue working on the SE essay. Today students were to bring in their 5 sources. Presently you should be completing the research process, that is, reading and watching and analyzing the data you have acquired to learn who the person is and answer the questions given in the assignment outline, the same questions you have addressed in the Frontline World pieces which you should be concluding this week.

2011-10-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

Assignment: Social Entrepreneurs: Engaged Citizenry

Introduction
Open with the problem statement. Be descriptive.

The thesis sentence names your social entrepreneur as a person who is addressing the problem identified in the introduction.

Body paragraphs
Background on the social entrepreneur and what brings them to the work. You can cite statistics here to illustrate the problem

Introduce the organization or business venture. Does the work grow out of the community? How do the SE and the community interact?

Are there any partnerships with other organizations and/or government?

Are there any peer reviews or industry reports?

What are the measurable results for the community? Share a story here.

What are the measurable results for the SE. You could quote the SE here.

Narrative
Your essay needs to answer all of these questions; you can structure it like a typical problem/solution essay or cause and effect.

The person has to be alive. Try to find someone local, who is living in the San Francisco Bay Area or in California. The person has to have been doing this work for 10-20 years (the length of time is negotiable; see me).

You need to locate 5 sources on your subject to form a bibliography; you don't have to cite them all. The sources can be published or broadcast interviews, books, articles, and films or you can interview them yourself. The person cannot be a relative. You can work in groups and share data. In fact, I encourage it.

You will have three citations: 1 in-text citation, one paraphrase, and one block quote in the essay. The rest of the writing has to be your own. The essay should be 4 pages (English 1A); 2-3 pages English 201. This does not include the works cited page or bibliography.

English 1A Social Entrepreneur Due Dates:

Planning Due by Wednesday, Nov. 10 (share)_____________
Essay: Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis due Monday, Nov. 14 __________
First Draft(s) Wednesday-Thursday, Nov. 16-17

Final Draft Monday, Nov. 21 (during class time: appointments with professor to check off essay______________

SE Presentations: Nov.21-22___________
The presentation is a quarter of the grade.

Supplementary Assignments

On-line Frontline World (on-line responses 3) Start by Monday, Oct. 31-Nov.10_______
Library Research sheet: Monday, Nov. 7 _______________
Website Evaluation completed (worksheet) by Nov. 8 _____________
List of sources (5) minimum in MLA format due Wednesday, Nov. 10 (share in class)___________

Book Report Essay Assignment
This semester we are looking at Tupac Shakur, Art for Social Change and Hip Hop

Each student was asked to choose a book. The author needed to be alive and living in the Northern California and if the book is a biography, the person profiled needs to be alive and also living here, the San Francisco Bay Area. I suggested students chose a subject or author who might also work as a topic for the Social Entrepreneur profile. For example, Alice Waters is a social entrepreneur and there is a book written about her life. She lives in Berkeley. She is not 30 or younger, but that is okay. That requirement is flexible.

For each essay, students need to find three articles: a published book review or analysis, and for the author, see if there is something on the author in Literary Criticism, (on-line in the Library Database and in COA library (public libraries as well). Third, find an article that addresses one of the themes in the book. Include all of these sources in your works cited page.

The essay will be 2-3 pages and in it you will summarize your book’s major themes and analyze them. If the book is a biography, feel free to tell us something about the author and how he or she comes to know the person he or she writes about. If the book is an autobiography or a memoir tell us how the author came to write it and if this is his or her first book.

This is an extra credit essay, but if students plan to write this essay, it is due no later than Friday, Nov. 25, 2011. I need to approve the book first.

2011-10-31T12:01:00.000-07:00

Censorship Cyber Assignment(s)

Today, instead of reviewing the SPHE essays (all of them, beginning with Essay 1: Sentence Punctuation), we read one of two essays (handout) on the topic: Censorship. First we talked about what censorship is, defined it and then read an article by Michael Gartner.

Post you response to one of the two: Questions to Write About. The essay response should be 250 words. Include a works cited page. Read the Nathan McCall essay.

Revisions for the hip hop essay (Hurt/Dyson), should have been returned by now. It has been seven (7) days. I received a few Nature/Nurture essays from students. Start the Social Entrepreneur assignments (Frontline World).

There are handouts to accompany the SE essay assignments. Make certain you get them all.

We decided to make the Book Report Essay optional. I will post the assignment for those who are interested.

2011-10-25T15:57:00.000-07:00

Frontline World: Engaged Citizenry Cyber-Assignment

Visit http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/socialentrepreneurs.html

Respond to 3 stories by 11/10 (start 10/27). Post your Frontline World Responses (3) here.

Answer the following questions in your response to the program.

Outline:

1.Who is the social entrepreneur profiled?
2.What problem did the person profiled identify?
3.What is the name of the organization they started?
4.Describe their relationship to the community that they serve?

• Why they decided to address this issue?

5.What is the local component?
6.How does the community own the process?

2011-10-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

Afeni Shakur: Nature vs. Nurture

Today in class we shared thesis sentences and then spent the remainder of the time, writing. I walked around and gave comments when asked. I am looking specifically at organization in this essay: introduction, topic sentences, the conclusion and how well writers support their thesis.

I will also look at coherence, how well do the ideas connect one to the other and flow. Make certain that you introduce your speakers when citing. Give their credentials: journalist, scholar, writer, author, director, playwright, mother, friend, sister.

The essay should be about 750 words, one citation per page: block quote, free paraphrase, and a shorter citation. The essay should be more than 2/3s original writing.

If you have not gotten the revision to the hip hop essay back to me, it is due now.

Include the scholarly article in the bibliography. For Thursday, October 27, 2011, bring in a completed essay for a peer review, print it out or have it on your computer. The essay is due Friday via Internet: coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com
You can have until Monday, October 31, 2011, 12 noon.

Included should be the Intial Planning Sheet, outline, peer review (Microsoft Comment) or typed response per Questions for Discussing . . . all related Cyber-Assignments and comments.

Paste the document and attach it. Include the assignment in the subject line. I am not opposed to paper copies, but also email it.

Social Entrepreneur Essay

I will be posting the Social Entrepreneur Assignment here as well. There are handouts I will be giving you too.

Book Report Essay

We have run out of time, so this essay will be due with the portfolio, unless students have been reading their book over the past month. We can talk about this.

2011-10-19T10:29:00.000-07:00

I returned many of the "Hip Hop Hurt/Dyson" essays yesterday and the remainder today. Use Monday to revise the essay and return to me Tuesday, October 25, 2011. With that revision, include a narrative as to what you had to do to make the paper better. Look at it like you did Pidd's essays in SPHE this semester.

We will also begin the next essay next week. Bring in Initial Planning Sheet and outlines per the schedule. Your evidence is Guy, Dyson, and 1 article on the topic. You don't have to cite from all three, just two. The last document can be a part of the bibliography.

I expect these essays to get passing grades the first time around.

Homework
Homework for Thursday, tomorrow, bring in a completed profile on Afeni Shakur to share. You will include this profile with your essay.

Post your summaries of the scholarly article here. Don't fotget the works cited at the end.

Weekend Homework
Now that you have completed the book, write a letter to Afeni Shakur reflecting on her life and what you learned about her that you didn't know, which perhaps changes how you look at her as a revolutionary, a woman and a mother. Choose minimally three specific aspects of her life to reflect on.

This cyber-assignment is homework for the weekend, due, Thursday-Friday, October 20-21, 2011. Comment on one student's reflection with a citation expanding the comment.

2011-10-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

Today we wrote a collaborative essay again. The topic was "inheritance." This time we had four paragraphs: Introduction, Thesis or Pro-argument, Antithesis or Con-argument, and Synthesis or Conclusion.

Students can post the paragraphs in the same location as last week's essay: topical invention.

Students were asked to use: analogies, definitions, consequences and testimony in each paragraph. I assigned different sentence types to each group. Considering the fact that many of the students were new to the concept, the overall essay to come from the exercise was great.

Students have not reflected on the process yet. Make sure you do so.

Homework is to finish the book and bring in a topic we could possibly explore in an essay taking its theme from Evolution of a Revolutionary.

Homework Reminder from Thursday, October 13. I gave students a copy of the assignment:

Reading and Research Homework:

We are on chapter six. Finish the book. Bring in a profile on Afeni Shakur. Look at her evolution over time from childhood, adolescence, as a young adult and as a mature woman who has suffered. Note her accomplishments, her tragedies, things she is proud of and what she still weeps over.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011, bring in a an article from the library database on Afeni tied into a theme you are exploring like Nature vs. Nurture.

2011-10-13T12:23:00.000-07:00

Today a lot of students were absent, however, those who made it to class did a great job on the three-part essay exercise. The question: Is Afeni Shakur a revolutionary? was explored from the context of her role as a parent, as a mother and whether she did a good job.

What I came away with from listening to the essay was that parenting is also a revolutionary act, perhaps even more difficult than that of saving a world or a community.

2011-10-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

Topical Invention Cyber-Assignment and 3-Part Essay

Today in class we are going to take the sentences developed in the exercise yesterday and write a 3-4 paragraph essay looking at: Introduction, Thesis (pro argument), Antithesis (con argument), and Synthesis (conclusion).

Homework:
Post the essay here for the group. As individuals, comment on the process, that is, looking at the argument form like this where one considers all sides of the issue.

Yesterday we looked at Topical Invention, a questioning strategy to develop: analogies, definition, consequence, testimony.

When using this strategy, students are to reference the topic in each sentence.

The questions are:

Definition: What is it/What was it?
Consequence: What caused it/Did it cause?
Analogy: What is it like or unlike?
Testimony: What does an authority say about it?

Students were to post their thesis sentences developed using the invention strategy: Topical Invention.

Reading and Research Homework:

We are on chapter six. Finish the book. Bring in a profile on Afeni Shakur. Look at her evolution over time from childhood, adolescence, as a young adult and as a mature woman who has suffered. Note her accomplishments, her tragedies, things she is proud of and what she still weeps over.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011, bring in a an article from the library database on Afeni tied into a theme you are exploring like Nature vs. Nurture.

2011-10-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Today in class we talked about primary vs. secondary sources and how important it is to know your source and its author. If anyone is interested in more information about this, ask me for the handout.

Homework is to read chapter 5 in Guy and bring in 3 questions for dicussion. Tomorrow there will be a cyber assignment connected to the reading. Post your questions there.

In the COA library there is a section on Nature vs. Nurture (Destiny vs. Choice). Ask a reference librarian to show you where it is. For this essay writers need 2-3 sources outside the book reference.

The essay will be due at the end of the month. Monday, October 24, Initial Planning Sheet is due. The essay is due Wednesday, October 25. Bring a copy to class. Thursday, October 26 the final draft is due, via email: coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com

2011-10-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Field Trip Sign-up for next Thursday, October 13, 2011

Let me know if you are interested and bring your $5 to class Monday-Tuesday, October 10-11, 2011. I want to buy the tickets in advance. The venue will not hold tickets for us, but I doubt that they sell out. However, one never knows, Marc is famous here and well-loved.

We can meet at West Oakland BART at 6:30 PM and travel together. YBCA is on Third and Mission Street, 701 Mission Street in San Francisco.

YBCA is pleased to present the world premiere of Joseph’s newest project, Red, Black & GREEN: Marc Bamuthi Joseph/ The Living Word Project October 13 - 22 7:30 p.m. Admission $5 You can buy as many tickets as you like. Invite friends and family.

Overview

It is a hard and obvious truth that people of color are under-represented in the environmental movement. It is also a hard and obvious truth that violent crime and poor education pose more of an imminent danger to most poor neighborhoods than environmental crisis. I personally am of the belief that the movement for social change and environmental accountability are one and the same, that focusing on steps to sustain the planet ultimately forces us to envision a pathway to sustaining humanity. — Marc Bamuthi Joseph

YBCA has had a long and fertile association with Bay Area artist and director Marc Bamuthi Joseph whose artistic work reflects an evolving aesthetic that integrates spoken word with contemporary movement to produce performance works that are populist, experimental and that challenge formal models from both a cultural and environmental.

2011-10-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

Today in class we read, well Edwin read the Preface in Evolution. We then spoke about the writing and the content. Students then critiqued each other's essays. Turn in the essay with the peer reviews. Include the IPS and an outline. Students can email me the cyber-assignments. Pull them together for tomorrow and we can talk about how I want this to look.

We spoke about parallel structure (x), alliteration, assonance, and connotation vs. denotation when looking at words like "intimacy" and the multiple meanings of the word: "spit."

We also spoke about the relationship between Jasmine, the author and her subject, Afeni and how that compared or contrasted with that of Dyson's relationship to his subject, Tupac in Holler.

Recap

1. Essay 1 is due along with peer reviews and associate essays read.

2. Include IPS and outlines

3. Assemble all the cyber-assignments electronically in advance. All assignments connected to Dyson or Shakur or Hip Hop Culture.

4. Bring reading logs to class as well. I will take hard copies. Don't give me your originals.

Evolution of a Revolutionary Book Notes Format

Keep notes along the theme: Nature vs. Nurture or Destiny vs. Choice. Make a column with Tupac at the top. For all the instances where something connected to his mother impacts his life label it Nature vs. Nurture or Destiny vs. Choice.

Have another sheet with Afeni's name at the top with similar columns. Bring to class for discussions. Look in your atlas to find where Afeni was born and where the family lives now.

Make another list of key characters in her life and key and events where fate or choice were involved.

Homework is to read up to page 68. Students need to be thinking about what book they'd like to read for their book report essay. The author should be 30 or younger and live in the SF Bay Area. I will consider fiction, although I suggest finding a book written about or by your social entrepreneur.

More to follow.

Pidd Assignments Writing Homework

1. The POV is due as well. If you need until Monday to get it into me, no problem. Print a copy for me in advance, the printer in A-225 does not work. There will be no make up exam for the Grammar Exam 1.

3. We'll write Essay Exam 1 in the morning. Email yourself the templates (7). It should only take 15 minutes to complete it. You will have to email me. This is where we will meet on Thursdays.

2011-10-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

Social Entrepreneur Research Essay Extra Credit
Register for http://extremetouralameda.eventbrite.com/

College of Alameda
Student Center (Building F)
555 Ralph Appezzato Memorial Pkwy
Alameda, CA 94501

If you go to the event, and post something here, a 250 word reflection on the program and its usefulness, you can have extra credit. You might meet an entrepreneur to profile for our final essay.

Friday, October 7, 2011 from 9:30 AM to 2:00 PM (PT)

It has never been easier or more important for students to start a business and think entrepreneurially! In a world of rapidly evolving technology and globalization, being able to leverage the entrepreneurial mindset regardless of career path is critical to success. The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour (www.extremetour.org) puts on events that can be customized to your campus’s wants and needs in order to introduce all students to this new life framework and inspire them to plan, prioritize, and pursue their own vision.

2011-10-04T17:43:00.000-07:00

Pidd New Dates
Do not wait for the class. Complete the book.

All the exercises for the POV essay are to be completed no later than Thursday, October 6. The essay is due Monday-Tuesday, October 10-11, typed and printed.

The Be-Verb exercises are to be completed by Tuesday-Wednesday, October 11-12. The essay is due printed Thursday, October 13.

The Possessives exercises are to be completed by Monday, October 17. Essay Exam 2 will be given to students Tuesday/Wednesday, October 18-20.

The Parallel Structure exercises are to be completed by October 20. Essay Exam 3 will be given Monday-Tuesday, October 24-25.

Subject-Verb AGR exercises are to be completed by October 27. We will write the essay in class Thursday, October 27. If students miss an exam, it might not be able to be made up.

Major Multi-tasking
Keep a clear head. The plan was to be completed with Pidd this week. You will notice that we are a month behind. None of the work is disappearing. We will be working on three tasks at the same time, so stay organized:

1. Reading Jasmine Guy's book. The essay planning will be due October 20. The essay due October 24-25, 2011. The final draft is due October 26-27.

2. Working on the Social Entrepreneur essay.

3. We will spend November on the SE essay and the Book Report Essay. Choose a biography to read preferably connected to the Social Entrepreneur profiled. The person needs to be alive and preferably living here in the SF Bay Area.

If you cannot correct Pidd's essays, you should be worried.

2011-10-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Post your reflection on one of Tupac's poems read in class today. Chose a line that reflects the author's point or argument and expound.

2011-10-04T11:38:00.001-07:00

Homework last night was to finish the Dyson-Hurt-Shakur essay re: Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes.

Students peer reviewed each other's essays. Homework is to revise the essay, if needed and bring in another copy tomorrow for another peer review and a grade.

Pidd is always homework. We will review the POV essay tomorrow. It is due Thursday electronically. Start the B-Verb Essay. We'll do the quiz Thursday.

Yesterday, Monday, we took and graded Grammar Exam 1. There was a possible 50 correct, the highest were in the low 40s. I dangled a carrot. If anyone gets 50 correct on Essay Exam 2, let me know and there will be some incentive given for the good work (smile).

2011-09-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

My Testimony Cyber-Freewrite

Post here. It's your choice to post anonymously if you like. Use initials.

2011-09-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Homework

1. Type the templates for the Pronoun Case Essay and email them to yourself. Keep working on the templates in the next section on point of view.

2. Fill out the Initial Planning Sheet, bring in an outline and an introductory paragraph to share.

We'll look at developing thesis sentences and evaluating how a strong introduction reads. The essay will be due next week.

2011-09-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Assignment

1. Initial response

Think about Hurt's argument(s). In a short response (250 words), discuss the evidence Hurt presents in the film and whether or not you agree with his premise that commercial rap is misogynistic, violent, and promotes a negative stereotype of black manhood. Here is a link to Part 1 of 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8YpcN7oKIM&feature=related

At this link there is further information about the issues Hurt raises divided into categories: masculinity, misogyny, homophobia, or media literacy. http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/issues.htm.

Also visit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/ for background information on the film and director. In your essay cite a song which supports Hurt's claim(s) or refutes it. You can include the URL in your essay as the reference.

2. After reading the Dyson interview with Hurt. Due Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011

Bring in an expanded freewrite or entirely different essay discussing Hurt's claims made in his film and to Dyson in the interview. In a 3 page essay (750 words min.), using citations from Dyson's interview, Holler and Hurt's film talk about Tupac's work in light of Hurt's critique. How would Tupac hold up?

Use lyrics from at least two songs to support your argument re: Tupac Shakur's contributions to the genre and the industry both positive and negative.

Bring the essay to class electronically on Thursday for a peer review. I will give you a Initial Planning Sheet tomorrow and we will talk about thesis statements, signal phrases and block quotes on Tuesday. I am going to be looking at introductions in this essay and conclusions, the two bookends of an essay.

The next essay will look at signal phrases and how well students integrate sources into their work.

Students will have up to five citations: 1 film (B. Hurt), two rap songs, one article (from Michael Eric Dyson's Know What I Mean? Reflections on Hip Hop, one book (Holler)

The citations need to be: 1 block quote, paraphrases, and shorter citations.

Students will turn in an Initial Planning Sheet with the essay and an outline. We'll practice on Tuesday-Wednesday.

Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Directed by Byron Hurt
From http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/hiphop/

Filmmaker Byron Hurt, a life-long hip-hop fan, was watching rap music videos on BET when he realized that each video was nearly identical. Guys in fancy cars threw money at the camera while scantily clad women danced in the background. As he discovered how stereotypical rap videos had become, Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist, decided to make a film about the gender politics of hip-hop, the music and the culture that he grew up with. “The more I grew and the more I learned about sexism and violence and homophobia, the more those lyrics became unacceptable to me,” he says. “And I began to become more conflicted about the music that I loved.” The result is HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a riveting documentary that tackles issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture.

Sparking dialogue on hip-hop and its declarations on gender, HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes provides thoughtful insight from intelligent, divergent voices including rap artists, industry executives, rap fans and social critics from inside and outside the hip-hop generation. The film includes interviews with famous rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D and Jadakiss and hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons; along with commentary from Michael Eric Dyson, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Kevin Powell and Sarah Jones and interviews with young women at Spelman College, a historically black school and one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions.

The film also explores such pressing issues as women and violence in rap music, representations of manhood in hip-hop culture, what today’s rap lyrics reveal to their listeners and homoeroticism in hip-hop. A “loving critique” from a self-proclaimed “hip-hop head,” HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes discloses the complex intersection of culture, commerce and gender through on-the-street interviews with aspiring rappers and fans at hip-hop events throughout the country.

Hip-hop has been accused of glorifying violence, misogyny and homophobia, and at the same time has been lauded for its ability to simply “tell it like it is.” Such controversial debates over forms of expression can rarely be boiled down to a simple case of wrong versus right. Instead, they are complex and multi-layered and must take into account the larger cultural context.

HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes goes beyond polarizing arguments to explore hip-hop’s most contested issues. How do limited perceptions of masculinity play into a culture of violence? What roles do misogyny and homophobia have in hip-hop culture—as well as in wider mainstream cultures? And are the media and music industries really to blame?

2011-09-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

Cyber Assignment
Write a 3-paragraph essay from one chapter in "Bodies and Beliefs"

Outline for the Assignment (read the post below this one for more details). The essay needs to include three (3) citations, one per paragraph: a free paraphrase, a block quote, and a shorter citation, all from Dyson. Writers can decide what type of citation to use and where you want to place it in the paragraph. Don't forget the signal phrase before the citation. "He says" is an example of a signal phrase.

You also need a works cited page. Each paragraph needs to be between 5-10 sentences long.

Introduction
1. Talk about the chapter, your impressions. List Dyson's major claims or arguments. He generally starts each paragraph with an argument, followed by examples and if it is a sophisticated claim, he might use the following paragraph to continue developing and proving his prior argument.

The way you find the evidence for an argument is to say: So and so is true . . . because. The answer to because is the evidence or proof.

But back to the Intro.

2. List themes, that is, topics that are repeated.

3. Cite evidence from Dyson that agrees with what you are saying here.

4. State the thesis.

Body

1. 1 paragraph-discussion of the points stated in the thesis. This is where you answer the because question. This is where you give examples and reasons why what you say is true is true.

2. Include a citation. This is a good place for a block quote (a long citation that is justified on the left (indent 10 spaces from the 1-inch margin) without quotation marks.) See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/

Conclusion

1. Bring up lesser, yet equally important themes. Remember the entire book is about Tupac. How does this final section, which addresses Tupac's morality, the body-politic as it were, wrap up Dyson's discussion?

How does this part of the book support or extend previous sections: "Childhood Chains, Adolescent Aspirations" and "Portraits of an Artist?" What does Dyson mean about the black body as canvas, as sacrificial offering, as blight, as stigma and Tupac's artistic response to this blessing and curse?

Do his ecclesiastic inclinations show here, especially in the "Epilogue"?

2. Citation

2011-09-22T10:43:00.000-07:00

Today in class reflect on the final section of the book: "Bodies and Beliefs." How is this title a play on the words: body of beliefs?

Keep adding to the character profile as you complete the book.

What does this section open up for you regarding Tupac's life. Does Dyson make good on his goals and objectives for the biography now that you have come to the end of the book?

Look back at "I Always Wanted. . ." (13-16)?

In a 3-paragraph essay respond to your assigned chapter (6-7 or 8). If you didn't get an assignment, choose any of the concluding chapters (6, 7 or 8). Also respond to a classmate's post from a chapter different from your own. Use a citation to respond to your comment-on-a-classmate's-post which challenges or expands the claims the writer makes.

I dismissed class early as the students hadn't read the section we were to discuss today. Everyone received attendance credit for being present in the class.

Monday we will watch a video looking at misogyny in American culture and by extension hip hop culture called "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes". There will be a cyber-essay attached to the film. The film is 56 minutes, so there will not be any time for anything else, not even discussion, but we can talk about it on Tuesday (smile).

Other homework:
Continue in Pidd. Pronoun Case and so forth (smile). Pronoun Case is an Essay Exam, Essay Exam 1. We will write it in class, just bring the templates.

2011-09-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

Today we met in the library as planned for a library orientation. Post a reflection on the orientation: what new information did you discover, what was a reminder of information or research strategies you already knew?

Respond to one other student. Don't forget to post the thesis sentence response to the assignment yesterday. Only one student did so far.

2011-09-20T17:35:00.001-07:00

Cyber-Assignment

Today is class we spent a few moments correcting the quiz on MLA: titles and essays. We read two poems, well Brianna and Sebastian read the poems: When Ur Heart Turns Cold and Untitled from Rose. Outstanding recitations (smile).

Sebastian's brought chills to my spin (cliche--I know. Smile). We then discussed the style of the two pieces and the themes. The freewrite was to develop a thesis that defined a key element in the work. Many students saw the two pieces as connected the character the same, yet at different points along his or her trajectory on his development or spirit journey.

I wrote a sentence where I compared madness to a state of inhumanity. Human beings are sane, and madness is perhaps the final step to the other side where all we were is lost, all that matters most is gone.

Post your thesis sentence that defines a key element in the poem --your choice, here. Comment on another student's poem.

We meet in the library tomorrow morning for an orientation: 11 AM with Professor Jane. If you can't figure it out, meet at the reference desk (smile).

We will discuss Dyson at length Thursday. That is all we will do. We are in the final stretch of the book. There will be an essay assigned (not due), next week (smile).

2011-09-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

Today on class we reviewed phrases and pronoun agreement in SPHE. After answering questions and completing a few exercises together I gave students the chapter quiz and the quiz for the next essay, Pronoun Case. The idea for taking the quiz in advance was to see if students needed to do the exercises or just skip to the essay. Pronoun Case is an in-class essay which will be given along with a 50 question Grammar Exam 1. We'll do this next week (smile).

If students got 100 percent on "Pronoun Case" then they can skip the exercises and just do the essay. No one got 100 percent, so everyone needs to do the refresher so you can get all 50 questions correct next week on the first of two grammar exams.

Tomorrow students will spend time discussing Dyson, the final section. Wednesday there will be a group writing assignment. Tomorrow students will continue with their character profiles for Tupac. We will start the class with a freewrite using a song or a poem or both (smile).

I like the questions and responses from the last assignment.

2011-09-15T12:33:00.000-07:00

Essay Questions Cyber-Assignment

Post the 3-5 questions developed for a chapter in Dyson.

Homework
In a separate post here, respond in a three (3) paragraph essay to another student's question (just 1), from another chapter than yours.

Give the name of the author of the question in your response. Use three citations in your essay, one citation per paragraph: 1 short citation, 1 free paraphrase, 1 block quote.

Include a works cited page.

Other Homework
Other homework is to continue in Pidd. We are on Essay 2, Pronoun Agreement. Bring in essays Monday-Tuesday. Remember, if you don't ask for a peer review and proof reading form, I will not automatically give it to you.

Narratives and Subject Lines
The Pidd essays are due Tuesday electronically. I should be finished reading everyone's essays today. If you haven't already turned the essay in talk to me. make sure the subject line reads Essay 1: Sentence Punctuation. If you have to revise the essay for any reason, change the heading to Essay 1: Sentence Punctuation Revision 1. Make sure you attach the revised essay with a short narrative as to what changed between drafts. What mistakes did you make and how they were corrected.

This narrative should proceed the actual essay. It can be its own page with heading and title.

2011-09-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

As a class on Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011, we responded to the poem, "In the Depths of Solitude, Dedicated to Me" (5).

Post your response to one of the three poems we read from Rose: Sometimes I Cry (7), Under the Skies Above, After the Miscarriage (9), or Life through My Eyes (11).

Don't forget to respond to at least one classmate's post by name.

2011-09-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

Today was the anniversary of Tupac Shukur's death. He was 25 then; today he would have been 41. The poem we read from Rose looked at solitude. We had an extended conversation about solitude and compared that with loneliness and isolation. We then read the poem, "In the Depths of Solitude, Dedicated to Me" (5). Students reflected on the poem and then were instructed to find supporting evidence for their claim or argument in Holler: Childhood Chains.

Post the freewrite here. Yes, I know it's late, so if you don't get to it until after class that's fine. We spoke about SPHE and most students turned their essays in electronically today. Students gave me the peer review sheets and proofreading sheets as well.

Pidd is review, almost self-paced but not really, since there is a schedule. Nseke and Edwin are available to help students who need it, so don't feel shy ask for help if you need it.

If students want the peer review sheets for the other essays, they will have to request them. Thursdays are a good day to do this, as they are in A-232.

Homework is to continue doing the exercises in Pidd and keep reading Dyson. Tomorrow we'll develop a character profile for Tupac and his mother. In your reading log list references Dyson makes to writers and artists and other people who remind the author of Tupac or people who shaped the young man's life. Test yourself. How many references do you know?

You can ask questions in your log for the class to ponder. We might know the answer, we might not (smile).

Thursday students will write a short essay in class based on a theme taken from Holler. Tomorrow bring in questions, if any from Pidd. We'll go over the answers to some of the exercises. This section is not easy, especially pronoun agreement.

We'll go over the essay on Thursday. I'll give you the quiz Thursday as well. You will have a short cyber-writing assignment this weekend, a three paragraph essay taking its topic from the third chapter in Holler.

2011-09-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

Today in class we broke into discussion groups to talk about Dyson. We will continue tomorrow. Students who hadn't completed the reading will be able to form a discussion group.

If you haven't already done so, send me Essay 1, Sentence Punctuation. Give me the Peer Review and Proofreading Sheets tomorrow, if you haven't already done so.

Continue reading in Dyson. Also, continue in SPHE. We are in Pronoun Agreement. Do the exercises. We'll talk about the next section tomorrow.

2011-09-08T11:30:00.001-07:00

Heal the World Cyber-Freewrite

2011-09-07T17:34:00.001-07:00

Extra Credit September 11, 10 years later

Read a news article, go to an event, or talk to a someone affected by the bombings that day ten years ago. Write a 250 word (min.) reflection on the event. Post it here and email it to me. Don't forget your works cited and use a citation in the piece (1).

2011-09-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

Today in class we read the title poem from The Rose that Grew from Concrete. It was the topic of the freewrite this morning.

We then took two "Sentence Punctuation" quizzes, reviewed the Essay 1 in SPHE. If a student didn't do well on the quiz, he or she should review the chapter and if necessary get additional assistance in the academic labs in the Learning Resources Center (LRC). I am also a resource, a finite one however (smile).

Homework is to bring the body paragraphs in electronically. If a student wants to complete the essay. Please do so. If you find it difficult, we will go over the introduction and conclusion in class tomorrow.

The essay is due electronically Monday morning, before class. Email the essay to me, paste and attach it. We will start Essay 2, Monday. Start the exercises this week.

It needs to be perfect. Make sure you get a proofreading sheet and a peer review sheet. Get someone in the Writing Center or a tutor or a classmate to review it for you.

The details are important. The MLA should be perfect. I am not kidding.

Weekend Cyber-Homework
Read the intro, preface and forward in Rose. Homework for Thursday, September 8, 2011, will be to summarize one of the three in a paragraph (5-10 sentences). Include one citation in the summary: a free paraphrase, a short quote or a block quote. Don't forget the works cited page.

In class tomorrow we will spend most of our time in groups discussing Holler, Chapter 1, using the Literature Circles handout as a guide. The freewrite will be Michael Jackson's song: "Heal the World."

Next week Monday-Tuesday, we will spend most of the class on Holler, Part 1, since we didn't get to talk much about it this week.

2011-09-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

Reread and annotate the first chapter based on our conversation this morning. Don't forget to jot down a brief summary of the chapter in a separate notebook.

We will talk about the chapter in small groups tomorrow. Bring Rose to class. Homework for Thursday is to read the preface and introduction to Rose.

Keep doing the exercises in Pidd. Tomorrow we will have a short quiz on Sentence Punctuation (smile). Thursday we will write the essay, tomorrow we will talk about it.

2011-09-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Homework is to post a summary of your article on Katrina or Michael Jackson and post here.

Other homework is to continue reading Dyson, Section 1. See reading assignment sheet. Continue doing exercises in Pidd. Hopefully it is a review. If you are having difficulty, let me know and get help in the LRC or Learning Resource Center. You can also visit me on MW between 9-11 or after 12.

Tuesday-Thursday between 12-1. This Tuesday,Sept.6, 1-3 PM, I want to go see the unveiling of the Remember Them Grand Unveiling at the Henry J.Kaiser Memorial Park 19th Street & Telegraph in Oakland.

The Unveiling ceremony will introduce the first installation phase of "Remember Them: Champions for Humanity," the largest bronze monument in the West, which will weigh more than 40,000 pounds, cover more than 1,000 square feet and measure 25 feet tall and 52 feet wide. Remember Them, a 501(c)3 nonprofit project, is a world-class monument featuring 25 humanitarians.

Visit http://www.remember-them.org/index.htm

2011-09-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Assignments

Post your literal paraphrases here.

2011-08-31T13:29:00.000-07:00

Film and Theatre in the SF Bay Area

Beginning Sept. 1 and for consecutive Thursdays in Sept. at 8 PM there will be a hip hop film festival presented by Fist Up! Productions. Visit http://www.lapena.org/. There is a $5 donation, but it is optional.

On Sept. 29, also at La Peña Cultural Center, in Berkeley near Ashby BART, Dennis Kim performs excerpts from "Tree City Legends," I saw this really wonderful work in the Hybrid program at Intersection for the Arts about two years ago.

The San Francisco FRINGE Festival starts next week too. Visit http://www.sffringe.org/

2011-08-31T12:10:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Assignments and Due Dates, Catching Up

Today we reviewed Pidd exercises and quizzes connected to the sections on "Confused Words" and "Sentence Punctuation."

Students are to complete the exercises in "Sentence Punctuation" or at least try to (smile). Next week we will complete the first essay.

We also spent a few minutes paraphrasing a sentence from the "Introduction" in Tupac, the second page on. Students who worked in pairs and completed a literal paraphrase of a topic sentence, post the paraphrase and the original sentence with page number here. Put both names on the post. Students who didn't finish can post as individuals. Again chose a topic sentence and write a literal paraphrase--keep the sentence structure.

August 29 Assignment
We also spoke briefly about the articles students read about the Gulf 6 years post-Katrina. Tomorrow for our freewrite, students will post a summary of the article. We will practice citing from a newspaper as well.

Other Homework
Continue doing exercises in Pidd up to page 30. Continue doing exercises in Pidd related to "Plagiarism and Paraphrasing." I gave students copies of the reading schedule for Dyson and Guy with tentative essay due dates. I also passed out an assignment schedule for Pidd.

Next week's homework is to complete templates for Essay 1 and read chapter 1 in Dyson: "Dear Mama." Keep reading and doing exercises in Pidd on "Plagiarism and Paraphrasing."

Tupac Readings for Fall 2011 All classes

We will read a book a month. In August-September as we work our way through SPHE we will read Michael Eric Dyson’s Holler If You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur.

Weekly there will be at least 2-3 weekly cyber assignment connected to each section. At the end of the book we will write a short essay reflecting on a central theme from the book or a character analysis of Tupac Shakur based on Dyson’s scholarship. We will listen to select songs as well as write a skit based on one of the chapters and perform it in class (smile).

Week 2: Aug. 29-Sept. 1: Introduction-Preface
Summaries, paraphrasing and outlines. In class and cyber-assignments

Week 3-4: Sept. 5 – 8: Childhood Chains: “Dear Mama” (21) & “Son of a Panther” (47); “No Malcolm X in My History Text” (69)
Selections from The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Week 5: Sept. 12-15: Portraits of an Artist
Give Me a Paper and a Pen (105); For All the Real Niggas Out There (141)

Selections from The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Week 6: Sept. 19-22: Bodies and Beliefs
“Do We Hate Our Women” (175); “But Do the Lord Care” (201); “I Got Your Name Tatted on My Arm” (231)

“Epilogue: How Long Will They Mourn Me?”
Posthumous Presence of a Ghost Saint (247)

Selections from The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Week 7: Essay plans and essay
Plans Monday/Tuesday, Sept. 26-27

Essay due Sept. 27-28 for peer review 1

Essays due Sept. 29 for peer review 2

Final drafts due: Sept. 30 via mail coasabirenglish201@gmail.com for English 201 and coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com for English 1A.

There will be a separate essay assignment sheet.

Readings for Fall 2011 All Classes con't. (English 201 & English 1A)

Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary by Jasmine Guy is an easier read than Dyson and we will finish it quickly. I like to look at the themes: nature vs. nurture for this book as well as forgiveness of self and others. These will be the topics students can consider for the essay based on this book.

We will start the book in October, October 10, but students can start sooner. We will read, beginning with the preface, 50 or so pages a week. We will finish the book the week of Oct. 31-Nov. 3.

Essay plans are due: Nov. 1. First drafts are due Nov. 2/3. Final drafts are due: Nov. 7.

Students will already be looking at potential subjects for the final essay on a Social Entrepreneur and the research associated with this essay will start in November. The essay is due at the end of the month, Nov. 21/22, the presentation Nov. 29-Dec. 1.

We will be multitasking. Students will be watching videos late October on Social Entrepreneurs into November to get a feel for what a business person who creates wealth for social good, looks like.

There will be separate assignment sheets for all the essays. This is an overview for the semester. Students who have free time should read ahead. We will be finished with Pidd by the time the first essay is due—that is the plan (smile). Stay on top of the work and ask for help and get help if you are not grasping a concept. If you don’t ask questions, I don’t know what you don’t know until the essays come in.

There are quizzes associated with the Pidd work. We will take the short quizzes and longer Grammar Exams in class.

We will also squeeze a Library Orientation into the September mix (smile). Plan to be busy. This is a plan, so it is open to revisions and suggestions if it isn’t working for students. The only constants are the end marks or dates for the beginning and ending of the semester, as well as holidays like Labor Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving. We do not have a sitting final. The final is an e-assignment – the portfolio which we will work on the final week of classes.

Stewart Pidd Hates English Assignment Schedule for Fall 2011
English 1A/English 201 Professor Wanda Sabir

WEEK 2-3 August 22-Sept. 8

Part 1, Confused Words (p. 1)

Paraphrase exercise (pages 339-354)
Read MLA Format (pages 312).

Part 2, Punctuating Sentences (p. 18) (WRITE ESSAY)

MLA exercises (pages 319-320)
Do “Titles” and “Quotations” exercises (pages 322-329).
Paraphrase ex (pages 346-350)

WEEK 4 Sept. 12-15

“In-text parenthetical” exercises (pages 330-332)
More in paraphrases (pages 355-380)

Part 3, Pronoun Agreement (p. 69) (WRITE ESSAY)

MLA exes (pages 319-320)
“Ellipsis marks” (pages 333-334)

Part 4, Pronoun Case (p. 108) (In Class Essay)

WEEK 5 Sept. 19-22

Part 5, (144-175) Point of View (WRITE ESSAY)

Part 9, Subject-Verb Agreement (p. 277)

WEEK 6 Sept. 26-29

Part 7, Possessive (p. 221) (Take-home exam: optional)

Part 6, Be Verb (p. 178) (WRITE ESSAY)

WEEK 7 Oct.-3-6

Part 8, Parallel Structure (p. 243) (In class Essay)

2011-08-29T08:37:00.000-07:00

Today is the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the worse natural disaster at that time to hit American shores. Presently there are many New Orleanian residents still in the disapora, displaced and then stuck in cities and towns throughout America. A lot of families here at College of Alameda are here as a result of this displacement.

Today is also the birthday of America and the world's most celebrated artists, Michael Jackson, who died about 2-3 years ago.

You have a choice: Find an article that looks at New Orleans or the Gulf Region, six years after Katrina (specifically hip hop's response if possible) or an article on Michael Jackson (something current). He would have been 53 today.

Read the article, bring the article to class, and be prepared to share it tomorrow.

2011-08-28T12:39:00.001-07:00

Recap and Cyber-Assignment

Thursday in class we listened to the Tupac Shakur song: Keep Ya Head Up. Homework is to write a 250 word summary of the key ideas or themes in the song.

1. Talk about the characters or subjects Tupac uses to illustrate his point. What is the song about? Is it about single parenting or more than that?

2. Use citations or examples from the song to prove or support your points. Remember, all ideas are good, but they need to reference the text.

3. Use Standard English. If you use slang, it needs to be from the song and in quotation marks. Put a line or stanza notation in parentheses after the citation or quote, such as: 2:15 (stanza 2, line 15).

4. Respond to at least 1 classmate by name after you have posted your response. It is a separate comment.

Buy your books or rent them or check them out from the public library. all the books are in the college bookstore. You need Pidd now and the other books: Dyson and Shakur by Monday at the latest. If you have Shakur now bring it to class, along with Pidd.

I gave students a copy of the introduction and preface from Dyson. Read the two chapters and annotate it. If you have questions, put them in your notes for the chapter. Also keep a vocabulary log-chapter by chapter for all the books.

In Pidd
We start with the section Plagiarism and Paraphrasing (339-379). We already completed the MLA review (315-317), Quiz (319-320) and (321-331). We'll go over the works cited section Monday.

While we work through Pidd, hopefully an essay a week, we will be reading Dyson. Week 2-4 we will start Chapters 1-3 (1-51), Pidd: Confused Words, Sentence Punctuation, and Pronoun Agreement and Sentence Punctuation. I will give you an assignment sheet with dates for the readings and Pidd, to make keeping up clearer.

2011-08-22T06:54:00.002-07:00

Cyber-Assignment 1

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 assignment: Please respond to the syllabus in a minimally three paragraph essay (250 words). Comment on the goals and objectives, texts, methodology and anything else.

If you have any suggestions, I am happy to hear those also. Post on class blog: http://professorwandasposse.blogspot.com/

There are two other another assignments within the syllabus also due Tuesday, August 23, 2011.

To post:

Click on "comment." Post response in box, then click anonymous, make sure you have included a heading: student name, course and time, date, my name.

Student Name (first and last)
Professor Wanda Sabir
English 201 A (or B) 8-8:50 AM or 1:30-3:20 PM
24 August 2011

Title

Content

2011-08-22T06:54:00.001-07:00

COA ENG 1A Fall 2011
Professor Wanda Sabir

40008 Lec 11:00-11:50 MTWTh Sabir C 211 Alameda
Class Meetings: August 22-Dec. 7; No classes: 9/5; 11/24
Final Exam: 10-12, Wednesday, Dec.14 (Portfolios due via e-mail)
Drop dates: Sept. 2 (w/refund), Sept. 17 (w/out a W), Nov. 23 (w/W).

Syllabus for English 1A: College Composition and Reading
http://professorwandasposse.blogspot.com/

English 1A is the first transferable college writing course. Don’t get nervous, hopefully you took English 201 and passed with a B or better. Perhaps you’re fresh out of high school, did okay on the placement exam and voila wound up here. Maybe you’re returning to college after a significant hiatus and aren’t confident in your writing, yet once again passed that placement exam, which, if you recall, tested grammar not writing.

Hang in there and you’ll do fine in the class if you:

1. Know what an essay is
2. Have written one before
3. Are ready to commit yourself to the task of writing

Plan to have a challenging, yet intellectually stimulating 18 weeks, which I hope you begin by setting goals for yourself. Make a schedule and join or create a study group. Writing is a social activity, especially the type of writing you’ll be doing here. We always consider our audience, have purpose or reason to write, and use research to substantiate our claims, even those we are considered experts in.

I believe we’re supposed to write about 8000 words or so at this level course. This includes drafts. What this amounts to is time at home writing, time in the library researching, reading documents to increase your facility with the ideas or themes your are contemplating, before you once again sit at your desk writing, revising, and writing some more.

Writing is a lonely process. No one can write for you. The social aspect comes into play once you are finished and you have an opportunity to share.

I thought it might be interesting to look at the life of one of rap’s more well-known artists, Tupac Amaru Shakur (25), who died before we had a chance to know the fullness of his genius. We’ll be reading a memoir about his mother Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary by Jasmine Guy; a scholar’s research: Holler if You Hear Me by Michael Eric Dyson, Ph.D.; and a collection of poetry by the subject: The Rose That Grew from Concrete by Tupac Shakur. We will look at his music as well in a collection pulled from some of his more popular songs. Students can suggest others.

The questions and analysis will come out of the discussions and listening parties as we look for themes in the work and try to reconstruct the artist’s life through his songs which were quite autobiographical. Tupac loved his mother, but he was angry with her too. We will describe this relationship and how mother and son were able to mend it. Forgiveness is preached, however, it takes a certain kind of personality to actually let bygones be bygones. Tupac personified “thug life.” He had old ladies tattooing his TL on their arms. What is a thug and why did Tupac celebrate it? Questions of heredity certainly come up when one looks at Tupac’s trajectory. Was the man he became his choice or were there other issues at play such as heredity? What about his environment? We will look at the concept: nature vs. nurture.

Reading Logs for Analysis
Keep a reading log for all books. Discussion groups will meet each week. Students will also keep a reading log/journal/notes with key ideas outlined for each discussion section, along with vocabulary and key arguments listed, with primary writing strategies employed: description, process analysis, narration, argument, cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, problem solving.

We will write an essay based on the themes from each book. You will also write a research essay. In the past, I have recommended Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers as the grammar style book of choice. I still like the text, but Stewart Pidd Hates English also has the same information, so for this semester, you will not need to purchase Hacker, Pidd will suffice. You will also need a notebook for in-class writing with a folder for handouts. You also need a couple of ink pens, a pencil with an eraser, a hole puncher, and a stapler.

Stewart Pidd will provide a context for essay writing which will hopefully allow students the opportunity to become conversant about the writing process and use grammar in context, as well as, employ MLA documentation. Keep a reading log for the Dyson book noting key ideas, themes, vocabulary, questions and an analysis of primary writing strategies employed: description, process analysis, narration, argument, cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, problem solving.

For English 1A SPHE is a review of grammar and essay writing skills students should be familiar with already. I hope we can wiz through the book in six weeks, 1-essay per week. If you are struggling, come by my office for extra assistance. We have a study hour each Thursday 12-1 p.m. in D-216. Students can also get help in the Writing Center and Tutoring Center in the Learning Resources Center (LRC), located on the second level of the L-bldg. where the library is located. To use these services students have to enroll in the free class LRNE 501 (Supervised Tutoring). It takes 24 hours for the class to become effective, so enroll now.

For students have already completed SPHE in another course, you only have to take the quizzes and write essay exams. If said students make errors on their class essays: Dyson, Guy, etc., they have to complete correction essays in addition to revising the essay due.

Research Project
Your research project will entail finding a person here in Northern California who is a social entrepreneur. The person has to be alive. I would like you, if possible to look at an artist, who is using their creative work for social change. The paper will be about 4-5 pages. This will include a works cited page and bibliography.

New Heroes
Visit http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/ to read about social entrepreneurs. PBS.org has another program call: Frontline World which also explores social entrepreneurship. Visit: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/socialentrepreneurs.html. We will explore this assignment more, later in the course.

Why socially responsible economics?
Too often people feel helpless or hopeless when there is a lot you can do as an individual as soon as you realize the answer lies inside of you. If possible choose an entrepreneur who lives in Northern California, someone you’d like to interview and perhaps meet. Students can work on the project together, share resources. Each person has to write his or her own paper, but you can make a group presentation if you like. (If you have taken a class from me in the past, chose another subject.)

We will keep a reading log. We’ll develop Literature Circles and see how that works this semester. Discussion groups will meet each week. Students will also keep a reading log/journal/notes with key ideas outlined for each discussion section, along with themes which arise, vocabulary and key arguments, along with primary writing strategies employed: description, process analysis, narration, argument, cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, problem solving. There are roles for the participants: Discussion Director, Vocabulary Enricher, Summarizer, Literary Luminary, and others. The roles are fluid and each week students can switch roles, so that by the end of the text, everyone will have had an opportunity to try several if not all performance hats.

At the completion of each text Holler If You Hear Me and Evolution of a Revolutionary we will write a short essay about the work using the books as a primary source plus minimally 2-3 other sources utilizing other mediums. The Rose That Grew from Concrete will give us material for freewrites and discussions.

Jot down briefly what your goals are this semester. List them in order of importance.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Email the following data to me: coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com
Your name, mailing address, phone number and e-mail answer, along with answers to the following questions. This is also due Tuesday, August 24, 2011:

What strengths do you bring to the class? What skills or knowledge would you like to leave with once the class ends? What can I do to help you achieve this? Is there anything I need to know, such as a hidden disability, childcare issues, etc., which might jeopardize this goal?

Grading
Essays: 25 percent (including Stewart Pidd essay assignments)
Daily-Weekly journals and/or freewrites posted on blog: 15 percent
This includes SPHE assignments in book
Midterm: 15 percent (SPHE)
Final: 15 percent (Social Entrepreneur Essay Portfolio, plus presentation)
Research Essay/Presentation: 15 percent
Portfolio: 15 percent

The Writing Center
The cyber-essays posted on the class blog are practice analytical essays. Initially, plan to visit the Writing Center (L-234-231, (510) 748-2132) weekly. Have a teacher evaluate your essays for form and content; the aim is lucid, precise, and clear prose.

This is a portfolio course, so save all of your work. You can average the grades to see how to weigh the various components. Participation is included in the daily exercises and homework portion of the grade, so if your attendance is exemplary, yet you say nothing the entire 18 weeks, you lose percentage points.

Each book will have collected writings or essays. This in itself is its own “portfolio.” The essays which take their themes from the books are practice essays, and are about a fourth of your grade, your midterm and final are another fourth and your portfolio is the final fourth. (Save all of your work.) You can average the grades to see how to weigh the various components.

The Writing Center is a great place to get one-on-on assistance on your essays, from brainstorming and planning the essays, to critique in areas like clarity, organization, clearly stated thesis, evidence or support, logical conclusions, and grammatical problems. In the Writing Center there are ancillary materials for student use. These writing programs build strong writing muscles. The Bedford Handbook on-line, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers on-line, Townsend Press, and other such computer and cyber-based resources are a few of the many databases available. There is also an Open Lab for checking e-mail, a Math Lab. All academic labs are located in the Learning Resource Center (LRC) or library. The Cyber Café is located in the F-bldg.

Again, students need a student ID to use the labs and to check out books. The IDs are free. Ask in Student Services (A-bldg.) where photos are taken.

Have a tutor of teacher sign off on your essays before you turn them in; if you have a “R,” which means revision necessary for a grade or “NC” which means “no credit,” you have to go to the lab and revise the essay with a tutor or teacher before you return both the graded original and the revision (with signature) to me. Revise does not mean “rewrite,” it means to “see again.”

When getting assistance on an essay, the teacher or tutor is not an editor, so have questions prepared for them to make best use of the 15-20 minute session in the Lab. I will give you a handout which looks at 5 areas of the essay you can use as a guide when shaping your questions for your peer review sessions. Please use these guidelines when planning your discussions with me also.

For more specific assistance, sign up for one-on-one tutoring, another free service. For those of you on other campuses, you can get assistance at the Merritt College’s Writing Center, as well as Laney College’s Writing Labs.

Correction Essays & Essay Narratives
All essay assignments you receive comments on have to be revised prior to resubmission; included with the revision is a student narrative to me regarding your understanding of what needed to be done, that is, a detailed list of the error(s) and its correction; a student can prepare this as a part of the Lab visit, especially if said student is unclear over what steps to take. Cite from a scholarly source the rule and recommendations for its correction.

Students can also visit me in office hours for assistance; again, prepare your questions in advance to best make use of the time. Do not leave class without understanding the comments on a paper. I don’t mind reviewing them with you.

Student Learning Outcomes
English language fluency in writing and reading; a certain comfort and ease with the language; confidence and skillful application of literary skills associated with academic writing. Familiarity if not mastery of the rhetorical styles used in argumentation, exposition and narration will be addressed in this class and is a key student learning outcome (SLO).

We will be evaluating what we know and how we came to know what we know, a field called epistemology or the study of knowledge. Granted, the perspective is western culture which eliminates the values of the majority populations, so-called underdeveloped or undeveloped countries or cultures. Let us not fall into typical superiority traps. Try to maintain a mental elasticity and a willingness to let go of concepts which not only limit your growth as an intelligent being, but put you at a distinct disadvantage as a species.

This is a highly charged and potentially revolutionary process - critical thinking. The process of evaluating all that you swallowed without chewing up to now is possibly even dangerous. This is one of the problems with bigotry; it’s easier to go with tradition than toss it, and create a new, more just, alternative protocol.

More on grades, and portfolio
We will be honest with one another. Grades are not necessarily the best response to work; grades do not take into consideration the effort or time spent, only whether or not students can demonstrate mastery of a skill – in this case: essay writing. Grades are an approximation, arbitrary at best, no matter how many safeguards one tries to put in place to avoid such ambiguity. Suffice it to say, your portfolio will illustrate your competence. It will represent your progress, your success or failure this session in meeting your goal.

In past semesters, students have skipped the portfolio and/or the final. Neither is optional.

Office Hours

I’d like to wish everyone much success. I am available for consultation on Wednesdays, 9:30-11:00 AM and on MW by appointment. I am also available after 3:30 PM Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment. My office is located in the D-216 suite. My campus number is (510) 748-2131, however, I don’t have an office number yet. I will share that with students later this month or next. My email again is: coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com. Let me know the day before, if possible, when you’d like to meet with me. I am more of a phone person. Texts are fine. Ask me for my cell phone number. I do not mind sharing it with you.

I am a phone person, especially on weekends, so take time to exchange email and phone numbers with classmates (2), so if you have a concern, it can be addressed more expeditiously. Again study groups are recommended, especially for those students finding the readings difficult; don’t forget, you can also discuss the readings as a group in the Lab with a teacher or tutor acting as facilitator.

More on Logs
Keep a vocabulary log for the semester and an error chart (taken from comments on essay assignments). List the words you need to look up in the dictionary, also list where you first encountered them: page, book and definition, also use the word in a sentence. You will turn this in with your portfolio.

Students are expected to complete their work on time. If you need more time on an assignment, discuss this with me in advance, to keep full credit. You lose credit each day an assignment is late and certain assignments, such as in-class essays cannot be made up. All assignments prepared outside of class are to be typed, 12-pt. font, double-spaced lines, indentations on paragraphs, 1-inch margins around the written work. See SPHE.

Cheating

Plagiarism is ethically abhorrent, and if any student tries to take credit for work authored by another person the result will be a failed grade on the assignment and possibly a failed grade in the course if this is attempted again. This is a graded course. There might be an option to take this course C/NC. See Admissions and Records.

Textbooks Recap:

Pollitt, Gary. Craig Baker. Stewart Pidd Hates English: Grammar, Punctuation, and Writing Exercises. California: Attack the Text Publishing, 2008. ISBN: 13: 978-0-9755923-4-2

Shakur, Tupac Amaru. The Rose that Grew from Concrete. Pocket Books. 1999. ISBN: 0-671-02844-2

Jasmine Guy. Afeni Shakur: Evolution of a Revolutionary. Atria Books. 2004. ISBN: 0-7434-7054-0

Dyson, Michael Eric. Holler If You Hear Me. Basic Civitas Books. 2001. ISBN: 0-465-01756-8 (or latest edition)

Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. Fourth or Fifth edition. Bedford/St. Martins.
(Required for those students who have completed Pidd.)

Students also need a dictionary. I recommend: The American Heritage Dictionary. Fourth Edition.

The Prepared Student also needs...
Along with a dictionary, the prepared student needs pens with blue or black ink, along with a pencil for annotating texts, paper, a stapler or paper clips, a jump drive to save work from college computers, a notebook, three hole punch, a folder for work-in-progress, and a divided binder to keep materials together.

Also stay abreast of the news. Buy a daily paper. Listen to alternative radio: KPFA 94.1 FM (Hard Knock), KQED 88.5, KALW 91.7. Visit news websites: AllAfrica.com, Al Jazeera, CNN.com, AlterNet.org, DemocracyNow.org, FlashPoints.org, CBS 60Minutes.

The syllabus and course schedule is subject to change, at the instructor's discretion, so stay loose and flexible.

2011-05-18T15:38:00.000-07:00

Today students completed their Social Entrepreneur essays. Don't forget to post your self reflections and responses to classmates portfolios. Many students did not have abstracts, which makes it hard to respond.

I want to thank English 1A, 9-9:50 AM, for agreeing to be an audience for the English 1A students who hadn't completed their presentations today.

When I last checked, there were only two abstracts posted, no self-reflections.

Reminder: the essays were due by today. If anyone is missing an essay he or she is not passing the class. Check your email for grades. Everything will be graded by or before Monday, May 23. I have graded Pidd essays for some students. Ask me for them Monday.

If you don't want to come in Monday, just call me between 9-12, and I will look at your portfolio. Don't forget to paste it.

We will meet in A-232 on Monday to review the portfolio assembly. Today I handed out copies of the portfolio checklist.

2011-05-17T10:24:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Assignment on Social Entrepreneur Presentations

Today's presentations went exceedingly well. Congratulations to everyone, especially English 1A, 9-9:50 AM. When technology failed one group regrouped well without it!

Post the abstracts here and comments, self reflections and comments on each presentation.

Tomorrow we wrap up. Read the chapters on revision handed out.

2011-05-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

Today in class we will try to get through most if not all of the presentations. Please rehearse in advance.

I have a couple of chapters from a textbook I used to use on revision for students to read to give them a bit of background on the topic.

The book is: Writing with a Thesis: A Rhetoric and Reader. Tenth Edition, by authors, Sarah E. Skwire and David Skwire. The publisher is Thomson Wadsworth 2008 in Boston, MA.

I am not making anymore deals with students. If the work isn't in or if it is in and not up to par, you are out of luck. Next week's workshop is for students who have completed all of their work and are ready to assemble their portfolios.

2011-05-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

More on narrative essays
The portfolio narratives (These are essays)

1. The narrative will look at the 18 weeks, the themes we looked at this semester,
women and empowerment.

What have you learned about yourself this semester? What have you learned about the discipline you are studying here: reading and writing that you plan to carry forth into your lifelong pursuit of learning.

Please also comment on the texts and whether or not they were helpful in this process. You can also talk about the instruction, culture of the class and the teacher. You can also offer suggestions.

2. The second part of the narrative looks at the writing process and what you have been learning about yourself as a writer. Take two essays and talk about the planning, research and revision strategies you used. It helps to choose an early paper and compare to a later paper. Often you can more easily see the differences in your writing and a better example of mastery of certain concepts. Also discuss skills you need to improve and how you plan to address that.

Additional narrative considerations for the portfolio essay:

The second essay has students look at the writing process and discuss their own writing process: the topics chosen, the information used, revision strategies, writing as a process. This should include a definition of the difference between editing and revising and a value statement on the place for both in composition.

I am really interested in discourse about audience and how that shapes or determines how the writer approaches her topic.

I am also interested in discussion of the revision process, and whether or not seeing writing as a work in progress or a draft, liberates or stagnates the creative process. (Students are to use examples from their writing to illustrate these points.)

I'd also like students to think about and give at three specific ways how they have grown as writers and thinkers this semester. Each essay should be minimally 1-2 pages (250-500 words).

We will work on portfolio assembly, Monday, May 27, 9-12 noon, in A-232. If there is a final being given there, call me to find our location.

2011-05-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

Portfolio Checklist

Name _______________________________
Address ____________________________
Phone number________________________
Course______ term ________and code 20218, 20219 (circle one)

This page can serve as you table of contents. If an assignment doesn’t look familiar just put N/A on the line. If you are missing work you know you turned in, make sure you let me know.

If there is work you have done which is not listed, please add it at the end. Thanks!

May 23 9 AM to 12 PM A-232
Portfolio assembly workshop _______________

Portfolio Due Date

Portfolios due by Friday, May 27, 12 Noon electronically. Make sure you receive a receipt for your submission. No paper copies, no exceptions.

Grade Justification

What grade do you think you've earned this semester? What evidence supports this conclusion?

Portfolio Narratives

1. Self-reflection on 18 weeks of study (250 words minimum).

2. Self-reflection on revision strategies (250 words minimum).
For assignment description, see earlier posts. Each narrative essay is to be minimally 250 words. For the second essay, use two essays as examples. Cite them in a works cited page. Also, site two other sources, one can be the video: Revision Strategies the other can be a Grammar Style Book like Diana Hacker's Rules for Writers. The Bedford Handbook is on the desktop of the labs in the LRCregarding the revision process as part of the writing process.

Stewart Pidd Hates English Section
Just list the grade or score

Grammar Exam 1, March 2010 _____/50
Grammar Exam 2 May 2010 _______/50

Midterm Synthetica (Pronoun Case) _______
Revision ____________

Essay Exam 2 Possessives_______
Essay Exam 3 Parallel Structure________

Sentence Structure ________, Pronoun Agr._______, POV _______, Be-verbs______, SV Agr._______

Paraphrase pkg. _____________
Cyber assignments, in-class assignments___________

Half the Sky

Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis _________
First Draft _________
Final Draft Grade __________
Revisions (how many? Grades?) __________

Pidd-type essay grade__________or narrative _______________

Please include in this section peer comments and self-reflections (how many?)_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Half the Sky freewrites (how many?)_______ and reading logs (how many_______(if typed include them) and grade on reading logs ________

Include peer responses and self-reflection ___________
Cyber assignment attached to this assignment (250 words) __________

War Stories
Poetry of War __________

Book Report

Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis___________
Final draft grade__________
Revisions__________________
Pidd-type essay grade ____________or Narrative________________

Book Report presentation___________
Peer reviews (how many?)_________________

Book Report Presentations
Grade is an “A” for all presentations or “-0-“ for opting out. The presentation is a quarter of the grade for this assignment

Abstract___________
Self-reflection__________
Feedback_____________

Social Entrepreneur

Planning Sheet _____________
On-line Frontline World (on-line responses 3) Post them here

Library Research sheet: _______________(if you did it)
List of sources (5) minimum in MLA format (post here)

Essay: Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis__________
First Draft __________
Final Draft Grade ______________
Revisions _____________
Pidd type essay ________________ or narrative ____________

SE Presentation date ___________
The presentation is a quarter of the grade.

Cyber-Essays:
New Hero essay responses (some collaborative)(Mimi Silbert, Albina Ruiz, Muhammad Yunus) ____________

Other Assignments:
Woman I Admire essay ___________

Cyber-Assignments
How many?__________ (They are listed below)

Teacher research

Can I use your work in presentations and publications? Would you like to be anonymous? If I plan on using your essays or work in a book, I will let you know and share any proceeds.

Yes, I agree.
No, do not use my work.

Final Grade

Portfolio checklist _____________
Portfolio Essay 1_______________
Portfolio Essay 2_______________
Portfolio Grade_________

Course Grade_________

Cyber-Assignments Recap

Some of these assignments are grouped as a part of the other essay portfolios. Do not list them twice.

JANUARY 24, 2011, Response to letter

JANUARY 23, 2011, Response to syllabus

JANUARY 26, 2011 REFLECT ON PRESIDENT OBAMA'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

Extra Credit:
FEBRUARY 02, 2011

FEBRUARY 03, 2011, SUMMARIES OF THE INTRODUCTION TO HALF THE SKY

FEBRUARY 15, 2011 CYBER-NARRATIVES ON LOVE

FEBRUARY 24, 2011, CHARACTER PROFILES CYBER-ASSIGNMENT

FEBRUARY 28, 2011, POST 5 SIGNAL PHRASES AND 3 BLOCK QUOTES FROM HALF THE SKY. INDICATE THE PAGE NUMBERS AND LIST THE MEMBERS OF THE GROUP WHO PARTICIPATED.

MARCH 01, 2011, CYBER-ASSIGNMENT GROUP ESSAY, WHAT DOES AN EMPOWERED WOMAN LOOK LIKE?

MARCH 09, 2011, WATCH FILMS BY WOMEN IN THE MUSLIM WORLD

Extra Credit:
MARCH 10, 2011, MARILYN BUCK AND WILD POPPIES (Genny Lim) HTTP://WWW.FREEDOMARCHIVES.ORG/WILDPOPPIES/INDEX.HTML

MARCH 17, 2011 POST YOU RESPONSES TO A POEM FROM THE WAR POEMS PACKAGE HERE.

MARCH 21, 2011, CYBER-ASSIGNMENT: THE NEW AMERICAN SOLDIER

MARCH 21, 2011PUBLISHED BOOK REVIEW CYBER-ASSIGNMENT

MARCH 21, 2011 FRONTLINE WORLD: ENGAGED CITIZENRY CYBER-ASSIGNMENTS (SE portfolio)

MARCH 22, CYBER-ASSIGNMENT: What is a SE re: Mimi Silbert

MARCH 24, 2011, POST A SUMMARY OF THE BOOK REVIEW.

MARCH 31, 2011 CESAR CHAVEZ REFLECTION

APRIL 06, 2011 Student responses to presentations

APRIL 12, 2011 REVISION STRATEGIES.

Extra Credit:
APRIL 14, 2011 DEMOCRACY NOW

APRIL 14, 2011 MOTHER EARTH'S BIRTHDAY PARTY.

APRIL 25, 2011 LIVING ON THE FENCE LINE. VISIT HTTP://ALONGTHEFENCELINE.COM/

MAY 05, 2011 MUHAMMAD YUNUS ESSAY: CREDIT IS A HUMAN RIGHT. (Include this with the SE portfolio in cyber assignments)

MAY 10, 2011 ALICE WALKER'S WE ARE THE ONE'S WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR, "CHILDHOOD" (31-37).

Wednesday, May 11, Alice Walker, The Pause from We Are the Ones.

2011-05-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

Porfolio Essays for Spring 2011

Note: Some students are still not submitting their assignments correctly: pasted in the body of the email and attached. If a student doesn't send the portfolio to me correctly and when I send it back for corrections, she or he doesn't see it, the grade will be a zero.

Portfolio Narratives

For students who are interested in starting the portfolio essays now, here are the questions which serve as the introduction to the portfolio.

The portfolio narratives (These are essays)

1. The fist narrative will look at the 18 weeks, the themes we looked at this semester: women's empowerment and friendship. Talk about what you've learned and discovered this semester about writing, college and life, which have transformed or changed you.

What have you learned about yourself this semester? What have you learned about the discipline you are studying in this class: composition and reading that you plan to carry forth into your lifelong pursuit of learning?

Please also comment on the texts and whether or not they were helpful in this process. You can also talk about the instruction, culture of the class and the teacher.

2. Essay 2 discusses the revision process. Use the video, Revision Strategies (posted here) as a start. Also include a scholarly reference re: the revision process like Diana Hacker (The Bedford Handbook or Rules for Writers -- the Bedford Handbook is on the desktop in the Open Lab and Writing Center).

Besides the two essays you use as evidence to discuss your revision process, I also want you to reflect on that first essay on a woman you admire and your classmate's comments, the book report essay and the social entrepreneur essay.

We have already started the narrative on revision (check past cyber-assignments). Each narrative essay needs to be 250 words minimally.

The checklist will list all the assignments, but you know what they are. On the check-list include the assignment grade. All the essays included in the portfolio are graded essays except for the final essay on TKW.

If anyone would like help assembling the portfolio bring the assignments electronically I will let you know when I am available finals week.

3. Cyber-Assignments that are not connected to one of the essays will have their own section. Start collecting them now as it takes a while to go through all of the posts. There is a section on the portfolio for these assignments.

4. Freewrites: Type your in-class freewrites. This is another section for your portfolio. Some freewrites are also cyber-assignments.

5. Extra credit. If you have written any essays this semester for extra credit they would go in this section.

6. Evaluation: There is a course evaluation for the class which is optional. I also ask if I can use any of your work for academic research.

This is a preliminary checklist.

2011-05-10T16:03:00.001-07:00

Today, our freewrite looked at the chapter in Alice Walker's We Are the One's We've Been Waiting For, "Childhood" (31-37). Homework is to complete the meditation. Students were asked to reflect on the chapter. I read it aloud in the first class. In the second class, only one student completed the Pidd exams in time to work on it.

Three students in the early class did peer reviews. In the second class only one student had an essay, so she emailed me.

What else? We will complete the Pidd work tomorrow, so be in class on time for the Grammar Quiz and Essay Exam 3. There is no make up Thursday. The Social Entrepreneur essays are due tomorrow; this is an extension from last week. All the outstanding revisions are also due this week.

We will have a final peer review tomorrow as well.

On the SE essay, the only revisions will be for those students who do not write a passing essay and if you are a lucky winner of this dubious prize, then you will have to identify all the errors and write a correction essay as well.

We will practice writing portfolio essays Thursday. I will pull up portfolios for students to see. We will have a portfolio assembly session next week for those students who are finished with everything and during finals week. We have to figure out when.

It is my normal times: MW 10-12 A-232 and W 3-5 PM A-205. Your writing should have gotten better. Give me your best work, not rough drafts. Everyone only gets one, line by line edited copy. I don't think it helps writers when I do this too often. You should be able to do this yourself.

2011-05-09T16:24:00.000-07:00

We completed the final essay exam today. Some students also completed the Grammar Exam 2. I am expecting 50 out of 50.

Students are to bring in the Social Entrepreneur essays tomorrow. We will meet in A-232.

Bring in the Alice Walker handout for the next few days. We will complete it. There is one more Pidd essay due, SV AGR. It is not a test and students can email it to me by Thursday, May 12, 2011.

If you make too many errors on any of the remaining essays: book report or SE, even HTS, you will have to write a correction essay. If any of the errors we have penalized Stewart Pidd on this semester show up in your essays, you will be dinged where it hurts--the GPA.

Pay attention to details. Do not send me drafts. I will not be giving students line by line comments for anymore essays. Learn from your errors and do better. For the SE essay, you get the grade you get after one revision with a correction essay.

The two portfolio essays cannot be revised. I made copies of the play Ruined and I really wanted to read it (smile).

2011-05-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Post the Muhammad Yunus essays here with the thesis: Credit is a human right.

2011-05-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

Today we reviewed the following:

1. Revisions for HTS and the Book Report essay. Students met with me to review comments. In the future, ask me sooner, I am reading a lot of essays and if you wait a long time to get back to me, I might not remember all the details. Also students were not opening my attachments which are easier to read than Microsoft comments as footnotes.

Believe it or not, there are still students who have not gotten their essays into me, I am talking about first drafts. Do not wait on me to call you. If the essays are not in and you plan to complete the class you must complete them before the SE essay is turned in. I have extended the due date for those who need it to next Wednesday, May 11, 2011.

In my second class, students have completed their SE essay. Presentations are now scheduled for the final week of class: Monday-Tuesday, May 16-17, 2011. We can probably get through them in one meeting. Let me know if you need technology next week.

If you have completed your essays already, you can send them to me by Tuesday, May 10, 2011. This will give students time to get help in the Tutoring Center. Get your tutor to give you a receipt --electronic is best, but we'll take paper (smile). The final draft is due for the rest of the students (those who needed more time, Wednesday-Thursday, May 12-13).

The essays are due into me by Thursday, May 13, 2011, 12 noon.

2. SPHE-Complete the PS essay templates and SV AGR essay templates as well. We will complete these two essays next week, along with Grammar Exam 2. Review all the chapters for this exam: Possessives, Parallel STR., SV AGR.

3. SE essay, share with classmates: outline, planning, drafts

4. If you plan to make a presentation as a group, let me know and give me the abstract with all the student names listed. Also plan to give classmates a copy as well.

5. For those students who have completed the SE essays, we will work on the portfolio essays in class.

2011-04-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Post a reflection or comment or summary of key arguments found in the film in 100to 250 words.

http://alongthefenceline.com/

2011-04-25T08:25:00.000-07:00

Today we watched the film: Living on the Fence Line. Visit http://alongthefenceline.com/

You will find profiles for the women here. Bring in your notes. We will practice writing an essay together tomorrow. We will also look at returned essays over the next two days and how to improve them. This will be one-on-one. I will print out copies of your essays with my comments. Do not revise your essays without talking to me first, also, don't feel discouraged. Writing is a process.

This week we will look at revisions in Writing Workshops. We will also look at argumentative writing.

Keep moving through Pid. The lessons learned there will be helpful, especially Subject Verb Agreement.

2011-04-14T09:37:00.001-07:00

Cyber-Freewrite

Post your freewrites from Wednesday, regarding Mother Earth's Birthday Party. Were you invited? Are you planning on attending? How old is she this solar return?

2011-04-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

Today I was listening to Democracy Now as I wandered inadvertently onto the High Street Bridge and had to drive all the way through Alameda via Otis to Central to Webster streets this morning mindful of the traffic signals and speed limits.

The guests were responding to President Obama's compromise or what he calls: The People's Budget, re: the Republican suggested cuts to medical coverage to balance the budget.

In the meantime, Detroit, Michigan's population is decreasing, because people cannot not find work and are leaving one of this country's industrial centers.

At the round table discussion: Assessing Obama’s Budget Plan & State of U.S. Economy were Author Thomas Frank, Rev. Jim Wallis, and Activist/Philosopher Grace Lee Boggs.

Bogg's also addresses this issue in: "The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism For the Twenty-First Century."

What I want you to consider is what she stated when she said the "real revolution is a cultural one." She said we needed to examine our relationships with one another. That the very jobs we state we want and need have contributed to our excessive consumption. See http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/14/grace_lee_boggs_on_detroit_and

What is her argument? What evidence does she use to support it? Where do you agree and where do you disagree?

I liked the idea of a cultural revolution and began the query with, "what is culture?"

2011-04-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Assignment

Today we watched Revision Strategies. Post a response here. Will this information affect how you response to the task or seeing your essay anew?

In the first class we also talked about argumentation, deductive and inductive reasoning. We watched the introductory section of a film entitled: Pink Saris.

In the second class we reviewed the Possession Quiz and had a longer discussion about what it means to revise and how one can tell when he or she is finished. A student also brought up the problem of having too much feedback, especially when it is contradictory.

Announcements

Quite a few students were absent, I hope those students who are sick recover soon. I appreciate those students who text me and let me know why they are absent. Tomorrow there is a reading in the COA Library at 12 noon. I will read a poem and perhaps a short essay.

The Oakland International Film Festival continues this week at the Art Deco Theatre in Alameda on the old navy base about 10 minutes from the college. Visit www.oiff.org for the schedule. The film festival closes at the Grand Lake theatre in Oakland, Thursday, April 14, 2011.

2011-04-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

Make up presentations: Thursday, April 14, 2011. Students who missed the presentation will have an opportunity to make it up. We will start with the presentations. If a presenter is late, that is, we have started, they miss out. We cannot start before 8 AM, so let's meet in the classroom, D-206 (?) and then we will migrate over to A-232.

Don't forget, especially if you are presenting. Also, we need the abstracts. Pass them out at the top of the hour.

2011-04-11T15:54:00.000-07:00

Today students had the opportunity to catch up. Tomorrow we will complete the Possessives essay, Essay Exam 2. Bring your books to class. We will write the essays out long hand. We will review the quiz given last week first.

I am trying to make it through all the essays by the morning. Wednesday and perhaps Thursday, we will revise essays in class.

When you return from Spring Break we will be critiquing the Social Entrepreneur essay, reviewing argument and essay structure, reading a play and working on the portfolio. The SE presentations are the final. We don't have a final exam. The portfolio is the final assignment.

Cyber-Assignment
Tomorrow we will watch a video called: Revision Strategies. Post your reflections on the video here.

What did you learn about revision and what was reenforced that you already knew?

2011-04-06T10:24:00.001-07:00

Cyber-Assignment

The second class had abstracts, which was wonderful. All the abstracts gave its audience the plan for the presentation and one gave a synopsis of the book. Even if there was no synopsis, within each presentation, the plot became clear. Some students analyzed the plot and themes, others still confused the two and gave a synopsis of the book mixed with analysis.

Presentations were excellent, from skits and power point presentations to creative collages, students showed a visual comprehension of key elements of their texts. I was impressed with the level of detail involved in certain presentations such as Erin, Eman and Cherefah's which included an image of their mapping or invention process. I loved Dereje, Morgan, Andrew and Ashante's attention to the assignment with regard to topical invention: definition, analogy, consequence, and testimony.

The same was true with David's group as well. His use of geese to symbolize the boys, now men, in The Pact, was a wonderful analogy which he continued to refer to as the group acted like a tag team, each member elaborating on an aspect of the book or a theme they highlighted in their research. Thailea's comments on friendship, a further elaboration on David's comments, was powerful and her writing quite remarkable.

I hope students heard her use of parallel structure when she wrote: "the friendship between the boys formed a triangle of hope, trust and motivation."

The collages created by Stacey, Summer, Ellie, and Alex were lovely and provided a creative range reflecting the varied intellectual perspectives of the group members. Some students filled the page, while others left room for the viewer to add his or her own perspectives, arguments or thoughts. I thought Alex's placement of notes on the back of his collage clever and the entire presentation well rehearsed, polished and professional.

I hope the students will bring the posters back and put them on the bulletin board in the classroom (A-232).

Assignment
Post your responses to student presentations here. Talk about what worked well. If you had any questions, here is the place to ask them. Did the students follow their plan? Can you formulate the thesis? What were some of the arguments presented? What evidence did the students use to support their arguments?

If presenters did not give classmates an abstract, post that as well with student names in the group.

If a student was a presenter, write a self-reflection on the process, what you learned and what surprised you most about the planning and the presentation. This forum is not the place to beat oneself up. Only share the positive aspects of the experience and what you learned about yourself and about the group process, and what you plan to do differently, if anything, next time.

Homework
Bring in your completed essays tomorrow for a peer review. Email everything to yourself.

We will end with presentations (1-2). Make sure they are well-rehearsed.

2011-04-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

In the morning we will start with our presentations. If we can get through all in one class then great. If not, we will continue on Thursday or Monday. Most students are presenting in groups. We will have a peer review on Thursday. Bring in your book report essays and all the supplementary materials such as: notes, planning sheets and outlines.

Students will turn in their essays with peer reviews.

We will write the Possessives essay on Monday. We will write it out, so bring your books to class. There was cheating on Essay Exam 1, so we will do the essay in class. Hopefully we can get to the Parallel Structure quiz next week as well. We will complete the Parallel Structure essay when you return and the Subject Verb AGR essay the first week back.

We shared names of social entrepreneurs today. Many students are still undecided. Choose someone. Go to the KQED website and peruse the women profiled over the years as local heroes.

The play, Ruined closes at Berkeley Rep this Sunday, April 10, 2011. The International Women's Film Festival kicks off April 6-10, in San Francisco at the Roxie Theatre on 16th Street near Mission, http://www.womensfilminstitute.com/sfiwff-2011-films-and-schedule/.

The Oakland International Film Festival also kicks off this week, April 7-15, 2011, http://www.oiff.org/films.html with screenings in Oakland at the Grand Lake Theatre, Laney College Theatre and panels at the Claremont Hotel. Other screenings are at the Art Deco Auditorium in Alameda.

Today we read from Alice Walker's We Are the Ones (handout). The freewrite was in response to a meditation. Next week I am participating in a poetry reading in the library, April 12, 2011. April is National Poetry Month and within the month is National Library Week.

Sunday in San Francisco, April 10, 2011, at the SF Main Library is the Northern California Book Awards at the SF Main Library on Larkin. It is a great opportunity to meet marvelous writers from Northern California.

2011-03-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

Social Entrepreneurs Brainstorm:

Lateefah Simon, Center for Young Women's Development
Visit http://www.newday.com/films/GirlTrouble.html

Favianna Rodriguez, artist and activist
Kamala Harris, CA Attorney General
Alameda has a woman mayor, check her out (smile)

WISE -- Women's Initiative for Self-Employment
http://www.womensinitiative.org/index.htm
You could find women who have come through this program or profile its founders

Women's Initiative for Self Employment is a Bay Area non-profit which provides high-potential, lower-income women the training, resources and on-going support to start and grow their business. The business management training, technical assistance, and financial services we provide — in English and Spanish — improve the quality of life for the women we serve, their families and our communities.

Youth Radio, was founded by women. It is run by women directors or used to be.
Youth Radio trains young people in broadcast and media skills. Through hands-on practice, working relationships with industry professionals, and production of award-winning programming, Youth Radio students learn the basics of broadcasting. In the process, they are exposed to a broad spectrum of media-related careers. Youth Radio also offers training and classes at Camp Sweeney, a juvenile detention facility in San Leandro, California. To hear Camp Sweeney radio shows about Proposition 21 and incarcerated youth, visit www.youthradio.org/about/sweeney.shtml.

Poor Magazine & Poor News Network was founded by a mother/daughter team

The Youth in the Media program is an extension of POOR Magazine's Youth Mentoring program and The Po' Poets Project. Each internship includes extensive creative arts and media training as well as media activism and advocacy focused on addressing and creating media on issues affecting low- and no-income youth. PoorNewsNetwork.org is an online news service of POOR Magazine, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to providing media access, advocacy and education to very low- and no-income adults and youth locally and globally resisting race and class oppression.

The last two came from http://www.kqed.org/w/juvenilejustice/mediasociety/organizations.html

2011-03-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Homework is to complete your Book Report essay. We meet in A-232 Monday, maybe Tuesday. We will decide next week.

We will also complete the Be-Verb essay. Continue with Pidd--Possessives. This is a review, however, if anyone is struggling with a concept or exercises, speak up in class and we can review sections in the book.

I returned old assignments today. If I returned a Grammar Exam or Essay Exam 1 a month ago, bring it in on Monday, so I can record the grade.

If I left something out, read the more thorough explanation of where we are going below. Book Report presentations are next week as well. I gave the wrong date for Thursday, April 7, 2011. Correct it please, also note that we might have a second peer review on Thursday, depending on how Monday and Tuesday go.

Students can present in teams. I need an abstract for the team before the presentation. If you want me to print a copy, bring it in on Monday-Tuesday.

2011-03-31T08:29:00.001-07:00

Cesar Chavez Reflection

2011-03-30T16:26:00.000-07:00

Today and yesterday we looked at revision strategies (handout). We looked at global revisions as a way to approach a draft that needs to be revamped for a better grade. When looking at the term "revision," we noticed that at its most basic means "to see again."

We also looked at ways to develop thesis sentences using "topic invention." We talked about "invention" and that that means: developing ideas to write about--what one does when he or she freewrites, clusters, lists, maps, and diagrams.

Topical invention involves asking questions about a topic to develop sentences. these questions develop sentences that are analogies, consequences, definitions and testimony.

Students practiced this in class and for homework, were to develop four sentences, one for each type of question. Homework was also to keep reading and to bring in an essay plan--even if students are not finished with the book. Obviously one can't create an outline--well it wouldn't be complete, but the IPS is certainly possible if students are more than half-way through the book, which you should be. This is week 3.

The essay is due next week.

Email me the Be-Verb essay by Friday. We will take the quiz tomorrow and even if students object, I happen to like freewrites, poetry and other writing that might seem unrelated to the topic or assignment; however it is.

The next essay is an in-class essay which should be easy. Possessives and then Parallel Structure. We will also write the Subject-Verb AGR essay in class, so you are as of the Be-Verb Essay finished with Pidd, except for the exercises and if you are one of the anointed ones then you can just take the exams and hope for the best (smile).

Remember, if you make any of errors covered in Pidd, your grade of the essay drops accordingly after three errors depending on what they are.

Narratives for Revisions
The Half the Sky revisions are due via email a week after graded or sooner. Make sure you include the history and tell me what changed between the two drafts, that is, write a narrative cover page.

2011-03-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Assignment, March 24, 2011

Post a summary of the book review. After you complete the book, return and analyze where or not you agree with the writer's conclusions. The review needs to be scholarly and minimally one and a half-two pages long.

If you review doesn't meet the criterion, find another one. The summary needs to be comparable to the article. Do it justice. I am thinking minimally 150-200 words for a one and a half, to two pages, review.

2011-03-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

Homework

Bring in a published review of your book. Read it and prepare to summarize it in class for the freewrite.

Bring in a headphone to watch a Frontline World program.

Bring in your POV essay. We are skipping the peer review this essay. I am grading them. Some students are turning in rough drafts, drafts they have not completed the self-check on. This is a waste of my time to read and your classmates. Other students did not follow directions on the title for the essay.

If you need help with formatting and spacing, visit the Open Lab in LRC.

Read the books. They are not hard to read, one just has to open them and do the work. This class is a reading and writing class.

2011-03-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

March 23, 2011

Dear Students:

I gave students time to meet for the Lit Circle in both classes and perhaps half the class did not have their books. Only two students had their book reviews, and students meeting in one group were all doing separate activities. One student was looking up the book on-line.

One student stated in his freewrite that Lit Circles were a waste of time, because students do not come prepared to discuss the book. We don't have time to waste, so if the majority of students are not prepared then students can read their books on their own and bring in the assignments as stated in the assignment sheet. I can certainly fill the time otherwise with more writing activities. Students might not know when we'll have time for the Book Report Lit Circles, so stay prepared just in case. I am fitting this in. Normally, we do not have Lit Circles for this essay, because everyone is reading a different book. Students also complained about the time allotted to read the book. How long ago did students complete Half the Sky, 1-2 weeks?

I will give you one, perhaps two opportunities a week to meet and produce collaborative writing. I told students today, they could divide the reading logs between them, but if only a few students are prepared then, students who have done the work, should opt out of said collaborations.

The Lit Circle premise is: discussion helps one clarify his or her thoughts. Perhaps not, especially if we are thinking different things.

Other comments were some students are behind. There are quite a few of you. No, you cannot make up Cyber-Assignments attached to an essay or an in-class assignment which is past. If you are unclear what you can make up, ask. I withhold judgement pertaining to student writing until students have developed a body of work, as you have with Half the Sky, then I can offer suggestions on improvement.

My teaching style is unorthodox and if one needs clarity all you have to do is ask. Some students have been asking. Others are silent.

I am sitting here in A-232 for the next two hours and two students have come by, no one asked for assistance with writing. If you are lost, my assumption is you enjoy the absence of light, because I have batteries.

This is not heaven can wait, because it can't. I dropped my UC Berkeley Extension Class in French (I can't teach 4 classes and study 2-3 hours a day). I got too far behind and even though I threw away $450, I could not go back. I tried and had an anxiety attack in the car and turned around. That was two weeks ago.

I understand time management, how there are often not enough hours, no matter how one works it. I also understand life, as in family, getting in the way. I had a relative arrested unjustly, then during the course of the arrest hospitalized for chest pains and then when released from the hospital under police guard, taken to prison. My sister-in-law's son was killed December 20, 2010; he was 19. At the funeral last year there was a scuffle and my niece's former boyfriend was threatened. He was killed two weeks ago.

I have been wearing an orthodontic device in my mouth almost daily so I can function despite the stress, none of it my own. On International Women's History Day, March 8, 2011, I had a muscle spasm and couldn't move. This was the day my sister-in-law was to appear in court. It was also my French class . . . . I couldn't go. The next week I went and couldn't get out the car. I felt lost and even though my daughter told me to go anyway last night when I finally decided I am not going back. I still feel a bit of despair.

It isn't fun sitting in class not understanding what the class is doing because one is not prepared.

I understand how one can miss class, miss class and then, well drop out: 9 hours of class gone. I understand how one can become overwhelmed, but you work through it, if you can. If you can't, you drop the class and re-enroll when life is a bit less complex. I say less complex, because there is always something going on--that is the nature of this journey our spirit is on.

If you are familiar with a jazz musician riffing along the edges of a band member's staccato comment dropped into the kind of silences felt in grave sites, then you have a glimpse of my process and how I work.

No, I am not inviting you to visit a cemetery (although I love cemeteries, a child of Oya from New Orleans) . . . just to hang out in the solitude . . . peace, writers experience when the work is going well.

Students in my classes have to trust the process and go with the flow, even when the music sounds like noise, even when one is confused with the messages the soloist is sending.

Trust the process and trust what you know. I am very good at what I do. Google my name. If you are not getting what you need, tell me what that is. Some of you already have the tools to pass the course and are in this class because the institution requires it. This is beyond your control.

There are certain ventures we enter willingly where we surrender aspects of our freedom and wonder if captivity ever worth it. Ask someone in love as he or she navigates the margins of compromise and regret and second thoughts.

If you are interested in where we are going, it is already documented: Just search the blog, Spring 2010. At this point in the writing process, English 1A, the assumption is students know how to write an essay and know how to read at a high school, if not college, level. I have been wrong in this assumption, so I introduced Pidd.

Some students expressed outrage that a peer was reading their Pidd essays and grading them for me. The students who have completed the Pidd essays (English 201)are doing all the tests (as a review). There is nothing to be done about this. I requested a TA this semester and last semester, Division 2 does not have any money and I need help with this aspect of the class (which is a review or refresher). Pidd for all its simplicity is not easy to grade, so I hired your classmate. I generally hire former students for this job; they have all graduated or transferred to universities.

For privacy students can put their student IDs on the essays instead of their names. Indicate the course.

Many students cheated on Essay Exam 1. I find this ironic. If SPHE is so easy, why cheat? Students should be able to talk about their writing and produce writing intentionally. A great essay should not happen accidentally.

I don't hold students hands or call students who stop showing up. I might send a student an email, but we are adults and the institution is just one aspect of a multifaceted life we are juggling. It is not easy for anyone, so I try to have compassion even when things do not work out between us.

That said, I hope we can continue this ride to the end of the course and that this juncture in the journey is full and complete and rewarding.

Peace and Blessing,

Wanda Sabir

PS One student is mad because I lost an essay. Print another copy of it and I will grade it again. Bring your graded essays to class Thursday so I can record them while you are completing the freewrite.

PSS One never has everything one needs, so one makes the best with what one has. I am speaking of money and time and energy and skill.

2011-03-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

I am still working on the HTS essays. The three I have read on-line are majority plot summaries, not much analysis. If students get a No Pass or NP, said student has to revise the essay. You have a week.

Today in the first class, students told me we are moving too fast. I gave students the plan at the beginning of class and we are behind. Pidd is a review. Everything in Pidd was covered in English 201 A/B. Students who have taken English 201 with me or my colleagues here at the College of Alameda have learned these skills. For some, these concepts might be ones covered in high school.

If students are having trouble, he or she should come to my office hours. I was here until 6 PM last Thursday, 5 PM Monday. I am available. Only a few students take advantage of my offer of help.

I suggest students, especially freshman take College Success. It is a three unit class for students new to higher education to learn about the culture of academia. English 1A is a foundation course. It is actually a class that will determine how well one does in his or her career. Success in English 1A equals an easier journey through other disciplines, because one needs to know how to read and write, think critically and apply one's analysis to situations familiar and unfamiliar.

I am not an easy teacher, and my classes are not ones one can slide through. April 24/25, 2011 (check), is the final date to drop with a W. After that, I have to give students a grade. If you have a load which is too heavy, then drop the class until you have time, especially if life is going to get even busier as we head into half time and then the final quarter, where hopefully one will have a touch down.

Teachers have their styles and a good teacher/student relationship is like all relationships--some work and others don't. There are no secret assignments. Everything was laid out at the beginning of the class. I am flexible. The reason we are running Pidd is so that students write passing essays the first time. Students will not be able to revise all essays for a higher grade, because we are behind. The only revisions will be for failing grades.

Pidd is not hard, one just has to keep up. Well, I don't think it is hard. If students have suggestions on how to survive English 1A, Spring 2011, please post suggestions (smile).

2011-03-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

Homework is to complete the Pidd essay for Wednesday. Bring it in.

We then watched one of the programs from The New Heroes. See http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/meet/

Mimi Silbert, Delancy Street, is the program we watched. Examine what we know about her and the organization in relationship to what we define as social entrepreneurs per Robert Redford, program series host. At the series website there is a brief description of the program and a bio on Mimi Silbert. If students are interested in Delancy Street Foundation, visit the foundation website.

Cyber-Assignment
Write a three paragraph response to the episode in response to the question: what is a social entrepreneur and how does Mimi Silbert, Delancy Street Foundation, exemplify this?

Start doing your research re: the person you want to profile in an essay on a social entrepreneur. I will give students a copy of the assignment Wednesday, March 23, 2011.

Students were asked to bring their books: The Pact, The Kite Runner, Sula, to class today, bring your books in tomorrow.

2011-03-21T23:41:00.001-07:00

Frontline World: Engaged Citizenry Cyber-Assignments
Visit http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/socialentrepreneurs.html

Respond to 3 stories from Thursday, March 24 to April 18. Bring in headphones for the computer. Post your Frontline World Responses (3) here (on the blog).

Answer the following questions in your response to the program.

Outline:

1.Who is the social entrepreneur profiled?
2.What problem did the person profiled identify?
3.What is the name of the organization they started?
4.Describe their relationship to the community that they serve?
5 Why did the person decide to address this issue?
6.What is the local component?
7.How does the community own the process?

2011-03-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

The plan in the morning for both classes is to watch a New Heroes video and talk about Social Entrepreneurship. We might just watch the film and talk about SE Wednesday. I want students to have enough time to discuss the books.

2011-03-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

I have posted the two remaining essay assignments. The book report essay is below, along with the homework assignment for March 21, 2011. I'll give students a paper copy of the assignments.

We are still completing SPHE essays and one more Grammar Exam. We are behind in Pidd.

2011-03-21T23:23:00.000-07:00

Assignment: Social Entrepreneurs: Engaged Citizenry

Introduction
Open with the problem statement. Be descriptive.

The thesis sentence names your social entrepreneur as a person who is addressing the problem identified in the introduction.

Define "social," "entrepreneur," and "philanthropy." This should be a part of your introduction. Use the library handout to flush out the difference between the two philanthropist and social entrepreneur and to assist you in your research process tomorrow.

Body paragraphs

Background on the social entrepreneur and what brings him or her to the work. You can cite statistics here to illustrate the problem

Introduce the organization or business venture. Does the work grow out of the community? How does the SE and the community interact?

Are there any partnerships with other organizations and/or government?

Are there any peer reviews or industry reports?

What are the measurable results for the community? Share a story here.

What are the measurable results for the SE. You could quote the SE here.

Narrative

Your essay needs to answer all of these questions; you can structure it like a typical problem/solution essay or cause and effect.

The person has to be a woman. Try to find someone local, who is living in the San Francisco Bay Area or in California. The person has to have been doing this work for 5-10 years (the length of time is negotiable; see me).

You need to locate 5 sources on your subject to form a bibliography; you only have to cite three (3). The sources can be published or broadcast interviews, books, articles, and films. You can also interview the subject yourself. The person cannot be a relative. You can work in groups and share data. In fact, I encourage it.

You will have three citations: 1 in-text citation, one paraphrase, and one block quote in the essay. The rest of the writing has to be your own. The essay should be 4 pages (English 1A); 3 pages English 201. This does not include the works cited page or bibliography.

English 1A Social Entrepreneur Due Dates:

List of sources (5) minimum in MLA format due Monday, April 25 (share in class)
Essay: Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis due Tuesday, April 26 __________
First Draft Thursday, April 28 (peer reviews)__________
Second Peer Review, Monday, May 2 __________
Final Draft due via email, May 4, (during class time: appointments with professor to check off essay______________

Presentations: May 9-11

Supplementary Assignments

On-line Frontline World (on-line responses 3) Start Thursday, March 24-finish by April 18 _______

Library Research sheet: Tuesday, March 22-Monday, March 28_______________
Website Evaluation completed (worksheet) April 14 (in-class) _____________

2011-03-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Published Book Review Cyber-Assignment

Bring in a published book review for your book Wednesday, March 23, to share with your group. The cyber-assignment will be to post a summary here, after class. If anyone wants to post the assignment early, this is fine as well. If the review or interview with an author is on NPR, they transcribe their broadcast interviews.

2011-03-21T21:36:00.000-07:00

Book Report Assignment

The theme is friendship. How does each story define and defend the notion of friendship: its responsibilities and its benefits.

Usually I let students chose their own books, this time I gave students a choice between three titles: The Pact, The Kite Runner, and Sula.

For each essay, students need to find three articles: a published book review or analysis, and for the author, see if there is something on the author in Literary Criticism, (on-line in the Library Database and in COA library (public libraries as well). Third, find an article that addresses one of the themes in the book. Include all of these sources in your works cited page.

The essay will be 3-4 pages and in it you will summarize your book’s major themes and analyze them. If the book is a biography, feel free to tell us something about the author and how he or she comes to know the person he or she writes about. If the book is an autobiography or a memoir tell us how the author came to write it and if this is his or her first book.

Abstract

The presentation is weighted heavily here, so prepare well, and please include an abstract which includes the title of the book, the key points you plan to make and any arguments you’d like us to consider. Bring in copies for each student. If you would like the college to make copies, give me a copy of the abstract Monday, April 4, 2011. We will meet in A-232 on Monday, April 4. Make sure your essay and all support documents (planning) are digitized.

Book Report

Planning Sheet, Outline, Thesis March 31___________
First Draft Monday, April 4___________
Final Draft due Thursday, April 6 via email____________
Presentations: Tuesday-Thursday, April 5-7___________

The presentation is a quarter of the grade for this assignment

2011-03-21T20:01:00.000-07:00

Extra Credit Assignments

Post any extra credit assignments here for March. I'll try to remember to post a link for assignments in April and May as well. Students can post extra credit assignments from January and February here as well.

2011-03-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Assignment: The New American Soldier

Today we watched the film NAS. Students are to respond to the film in a three paragraph essay. What price is American citizenship worth for the three immigrants profiled in the film? What it mean to defend freedoms one doesn't have at home? (Taken from the film).

The film was a part of the United Nations Association Film Festival 2010 www.unaff.org
Visit http://www.newday.com/films/newamericansoldier.html and http://www.newamericansoldier.com/New_American_Soldier/HOME.html

SPHE
We reviewed POV. The essay is due Wednesday. We are taking the POV Quiz tomorrow. As soon as you complete POV start working on Be-Verbs. It is not as easy as POV.

Bring your books to class tomorrow for discussion: The Pact, The Kite Runner, and Sula.

If anyone is having trouble keeping up in SPHE come see me or go to the Writing Center and/or see a tutor. Often tutors are not helpful with SPHE. They don't always understand how the prescriptive exercises work. Your best bet is to see me, or get together with classmates who are doing well (smile).

We will talk about the final essay tomorrow as well: Social Entrepreneur Essay. Bring your headphones on Thursday.

2011-03-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Today in class we reviewed the Half the Sky essay. Some students turned in their hand written notes, others gave me the entire package printed out, still others told me to ignore emails sent to me Wednesday evening. If you sent me an assignment and want me to ignore it, tell me in the subject line (and call me).

We also met in groups to talk about the next assignment: The Book Report essay, first task, reading the book (smile). In the second class there is no group for Sula, there is for the first class (8-8:50 AM); in both classes students are reading, The Kite Runner and The Pact.

If students did not divide the reading up, then email each other or call before Monday, we will break into Lit Circles on Tuesday. The books need to be read in two weeks at the most.

SPHE
We are completing exercises in the section on POV in SPHE. How many POVs are there? Which POV is best for academic or scholarly writing? Bring SPHE to class on Monday with exercises completed. We will have a quiz on Monday for POV and complete the essay for Tuesday for the peer review.

We'll start the Be-Verb exercises on Tuesday as well, identify the errors on Wednesday and the essay will be due on Thursday in class. Email it to yourself and bring a copy to class for the peer review. We'll do the be-verb quiz on Thursday.

Play Reading in Class
Ruined, the play by Lynn Nottage is at Berkeley Rep. I think we will read it aloud and I'd like to take a group of students to see it. It is up through April 10, 2011.

We were to read Lysistrata, but since no theatre, I know of, is performing Lysistrata, let's read the play we might have an opportunity to see. The play runs Tuesday-Sunday. What days work for students. Post your availability here. Check the website first: http://www.berkeleyrep.org/season/1011/4526.asp If you'd like to hear an interview I conducted this week with cast members from Ruined, listen at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2011/03/15/wandas-picks-radio-special-broadcast(Tuesday, March 15, 2011)

Other Announcement: Free Medical Check-ups

April 1-4 in Sacramento
April 9-12 at the Oakland Coliseum

Free medical, dental and vision services. Details on-line at RAM website: http://www.ramusa.org/expeditions/schedule.htm

Remote Active Medical, an organization that provides free services to the unemployed, under served, uninsured, under insured, and those who cannot afford to pay for these services.

Arrive at 3:30 AM to get a number.

Patients will be seen from 5 AM to late afternoon, early evening. The organization can also use volunteers.

2011-03-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Cyber-Freewrite

Post you responses to a poem from the War Poems package here.

2011-03-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Today we completed the second peer review using the questions on the peer review worksheet. Tomorrow bring in electronically your essay and support documents.

Include:

The final draft
Initial Planning Sheet
Outline
Peer Review
Cyber-Assignment
Reading Log

E-mail to me at coasabirenglish1A@gmail.com

Paste and attach and copy yourself. Number the document after you have assembled it. If your reading log is in a notebook, you do not have to type it--make copies or I can make copies.

Don't forget to bring in the book you plan to read: Kite Runner, Sula or The Pack.

2011-03-15T13:05:00.001-07:00

Today in class we reviewed student essays. Bring a copy of your essay to class tomorrow. We will meet in the classroom. Bring the questions for discussing essays as well, along with your supporting documents such as the Initial Planning Sheet and the Outline.

Oh, bring Pidd and the Poems about the War package I gave students a while back.

2011-03-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Today when I arrived at 8 AM students were boarding the buses headed for Sacramento. I hope the Lobby Day and Protest went well. We look forward to report backs and further actions.

Back home on the ranch our heads were buried in Half the Sky, some students contemplating thesis sentences, while others read the book-- I spoke briefly about complete vs. open thesis statements and passed out a handout. If you were absent ask for it.

We developed a complete thesis on the board. I told students who liked it they could have it for their papers. A few students completed their essays and used Microsoft Comment to give feedback--at least that was the plan.

Example of a complete thesis

Although women and girls are treated poorly all around the world, there are many who rise out of socially sanctioned oppression, because people like the authors care.

Open thesis
There are many women, according to authors Cheryl WuDunn and Nicolas Kristof in Half the Sky, who rise out of socially sanctioned oppression.

Although women and girls are treated poorly all around the world, there are many of them who rise from obstacles such as: sexual abuse, poverty and illiteracy.

Some students hadn't seen the requirement to chose two (2) articles from the library database to find a scholarly articles to support the thesis. I changed the two articles to one (smile). Students who didn't see this were told to find an article while in class. For each essay students need to use at least 2-3 outside sources. For this assignment and the next one, The Book Report Essay, the book, in this case, Half the Sky counts as one.

Bring the book you plan to read for the book report essay to class on Thursday. You have three to choose from: The Pact, Sula and Kite Runner. The theme is friendship.

While you are reading the book, we will be talking about the Social Entrepreneur essay. We will also read a play, Lysistrata, and complete a collection of poetry, with the theme of war. We also from time to time read from We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For by Alice Walker.

Oh and we can't forget Pidd. I will return your essays tomorrow with grades. Keep working on the next essay; it is Point of View.

Homework is to bring in a completed essay with the Initial Planning Sheet completed and an outline.

2011-03-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

For more information about Marilyn Buck and Wild Poppies, the collection of her work where her poem, "Rescue the Word," read by poet Ginny Lem is shared: http://www.freedomarchives.org/wildpoppies/index.html

For extra credit, listen to a poem and respond here.

2011-03-09T15:48:00.000-08:00

Watch Films By Women in the Muslim World

http://womensvoicesnow.org/watch These films reinforce themes in Half the Sky. If you want to use any of these films as evidence to support your claims, feel free to do so. We'll have to talk about how to cite multimedia sources.

Thursday, March 10, we will individually watch a film to inform our freewrite. Bring headphones to class.

Today we met in Lit Circles and discussed Half the Sky and topics students were considering as an essay topic. We also reviewed writing outlines. I gave students a handout a few weeks ago with bubbles for mapping and a form for developing an outline.

The essay is due Tuesday, March 15. If students are not going to Sacramento, bring drafts of this essay to class. Monday we will meet in A-232 and also on Tuesday for the peer review using Microsoft Comment.