May and June Birthdays
Here’s a quick shout out to all of the freshmen, junior, senior Englishers who had late May and June birthdays and missed their time on the board.
E9er Sam in first period had a birthday on May 22, and APELCer Sam in second on May 23. E9er Christina in fourth had a birthday on May 26. Second period APELCer Addie celebrated on June 11, first period E9er Ashley in first on June 12, fifth period APELCer Logus on June 16, and E9ers Jose in third on June 19, Edith in fourth on Jun 21, and Rags in third on June 28.
I hope you’re all having a great summer break.
APELC Reflections
As I wrote in my notes to the freshmen, it’s been some time posting these reflections, more time than I initially said, but here they are anyway. Some of you may read them, so I’m happy to share my thoughts.
I congratulate all of you who decided to stick with me the entire year. I challenged you back in August, explaining that that I didn’t really care what was in your hearts, that I was more interested in what was in your heads; that you’d become critical thinkers, readers, and writers; that I didn’t want you to write to please me or parrot back what I told you in class; that I didn’t have all of the answers, and that I wanted you to draw your own conclusions about what you read and explore your own assumptions about language and reality. And by the end of the year, every one of you was doing all of these things, successfully, easily, despite your early misgivings that first quarter.
This class this year, as many of you expressed in your reflection letters, was the most difficult you’d had to date, and I was pleased to read such. Too often in the past, I know, too little was asked of you, and I was glad to watch you struggle (and struggle with you) to really earn your marks. Each of you should be proud of your accomplishments and progress from August to May.
If you take anything with you from our experience together, I hope that you’ll remember that it’s your obligation to:
Attend the world around you and the events of the day. You’ll be inheriting the world and her problems very soon, and you’ll be expected to make decisions about how best to solve them, and, to that end,
Understand that all ideas are not equal and all ideas have consequences. If all ideas were equal and true then conservatism could never logically be distinguished from liberalism, slavery from liberty, totalitarianism from republicanism, success from failure, good from bad, wrong from right, et cetera. By their nature all ideas are different from their opposites, and some better than others.
Evaluate people (and their ideas, their behaviors, their morals, their beliefs, et cetera) often but with compassion, critically but with fairness. As we’ve discussed, although we’re taught to “never judge others” we do all the time (that proscription itself is a judgment about how we should behave). Indeed, if we’re to survive for any length of time in this world, we must judge others and their ideas and their motives.
That last one is probably the hardest for many of you to grasp, but I suggested that we’re often hesitant to judge others because when we do we necessarily open our own selves and our own ideas up for similar scrutiny. That’s disturbing to us because we might then begin realize that we might not understand why we believe what we believe, what we know and how we know it, that our worldview isn’t as internally cohesive or externally coherent as we’d like. It forces us to examine our own assumptions about the world and defend our understanding of it. We’re told to leave our personal moralities and philosophies out of our judgments and our public participation they engender, too, but you’ve discovered that this is clearly impossible: our personal moralities and philosophies necessarily inform our judgments and thus direct public action.
Atticus Finch, the hero of one our foundational freshman texts, is a discriminating man. He makes judgments, notably about the Ewells, and we’re meant to admire and emulate his character and integrity and his cool ability to discern what’s right and to follow through with action. Atticus is guided by his personal conviction, he has a highly structured worldview, and he’s able to defend it.
Whenever you approach a subject, I encourage you to use the three classical and incontrovertible laws of thought, those first principles upon which Western philosophy is based, which Ed Miller, in his introductory philosophy text, Questions that Matter (1984), casts metaphysically and epistemologically:
- The Law of Excluded Middle: A thing either is or it is not; or, a statement is either true or false;
- The Law of Identity: A thing is what it is; or, a true statement is true;
- The Law of Non-contradiction: Nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect; or, a statement cannot both be true and false at the same time and in the same respect.
As you observe and attend (yellow) the world, use these laws to analyze and understand (blue) it, and then evaluate (green) it.
As you well know, forbidding inclement or severe weather, my door’s always open and classroom space is always available. The site and its resources are always available too; I’ll be making some changes before the school year, but it’ll be updated and live by the time school starts.
I look forward to seeing you next year. If I don’t see you, I’ll at least be listening for your name at graduation. I hope the best for you all.
English 9 Reflections
Freshmen (now Sophomores, I guess), it’s been much more than a week after the end of classes since I’m writing these reflections about our time together, but after a year of posting multiple times every day, I got a little sick of the site (as I know many of you did over the course of the school year). But the weeks since the end of the school year have given me the time to ruminate, and even if none of you ever read this, I’ll post some of my observations about the 36 weeks we spent together in T-12.
Most of you didn’t believe me at the beginning of the year when I told you that I had different expectations of you than other teachers have had in the past and that you’d be held to account for your work and comportment like never before. Some of you caught on quickly when you realized that I meant what I said, while others took a little longer to figure things out. Still some of you never did take me at my word even when faced with the evidence of your grades. Regardless, as I said in class, I’m proud of the progress all of you made from August to May, even if your only progress was realizing finally that your success rests in your own hands, in so far, at least, as there are things over which you have power in this life, your behavior and attitude among them.
Those of you that achieved the success you wanted, whether you hit the ground running that first day or whether you lingered a bit after the starting pistol sounded, should be proud of your work as well. The quality of all student work went up significantly over the year culminating in some impressive, creative finals, particularly the papers in which students compared and contrasted characters from the various literature we read. I hope that all of the hard work you put in this year pays off next and after.
Remember, you don’t need to attend and graduate college to succeed in life, but you do need to find your talent or discover your ability and exercise it, hard. You’ll get no where by sitting around talking about your dreams—you have to work for them. If you’re not prepared to do the work, to start at the bottom and put in the time, to experience, accept, and learn from failures, you’re never going to get what you want. Are there shortcuts to success? Sure, but never to real, lasting, satisfying success.
I encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunities offered here at high school; it’s the best place to start building your foundation for success. I hope to hear all of your names announced at graduation in 2011. I’ll be listening.
Best to you.
PS – Come by T-12 to visit any time, even come by with questions or for counsel. As you know, the door’s always open. And feel free to use the site resources as you need if they’ll help you in your English classes next year and after. Just know that I’ll be changing the look of the site over the summer, but it’ll be live and working by the time school starts.