5-7 minutes...Discuss Zinsser with partner and class...what were the best pieces of advice for you? From Simplicity?  From Clutter?

5 minutes:  But sometimes you need to add meaningful and descriptive words:

Exploding the moment:

A portrait of Julia Child leans precariously on my bedside table competing for space with sticky notes, pennies, and a plastic alarm clock. Julia has been my role model ever since I spent an hour at the Smithsonian American History Museum watching cooking show after cooking show. As she dropped eggs, burnt soufflés, and prepared a whole pig, she never took herself too seriously and with her goofy smile and accompanying laugh.

Review the rubric...

10 minutes...Use the rubric and Zinsser and Explode the Moment discussion to critique and edit your own paper...

I will do a visual check at this point. (5 points for a completed draft)

15 minutes...Now, find another person with and exchange papers. Write directly on their paper and on the rubric, providing meaningful, encouraging, helpful feedback.

HW: Do your own review of your first draft, making comments/edits/additions directly on your first typed draft.  Also fill out the rubric and at the top of that rubric write "John Doe's" Self-Review of 1st Draft.  Next, using your peer and self-review papers, type your 2^nd draft to bring in two copies for Friday. At the top of your paper, before the body of your essay, provide a paragraph which describes the types of changes you made between the first and second draft and why you made them.


Note:  Please save all of your typed drafts and peer reviews.  They will eventually be handed in.

8/30  Tuesday DC Prd 1: DC West Prd 2: DC East For tomorrow: Finish 1st  typed draft of college essay and bring two copies (one for you’re your self-edit and one for someone else to provide feedback on) In reading packet from last week, read Zinsser chapters on Simplicity and Clutter for tomorrow

8/31  Wed  Late Start Day 1st typed draft due (5 points formative or zero based on visual check) Discussion of Zinsser and self-edit & peer review -Where can you explode a moment?  What concrete details might you add to bring it to life? What verbs might be changed? Where is there clutter? HW: Type 2nd draft for Friday/It should include a paragraph which describes the types of changes you made and why

9/1  Thursday Group Guidance All students will report the Library lower level main floor. Students will scan into the Library with their ID when they arrive. Thank you!

9/2  Friday 2nd draft and progress paragraph due Peer review of 2nd draft HW: Revise this 2nd draft, explain changes in a paragraph, and hand it in to me by Tuesday, 9/6.  (5 points) Exercise in Descriptive Writing: Dullest Day of The Summer

Discuss your summer reading books with your small group.

Then write about whether or not you would recommend it and why.

Another College Essay Example: Read Katherine Glass college essay (provided in its entirety at the bottom of today's post)

Finish your crappy first draft

HW tonight: Handwrite a more focused first draft. Bring it to class tomorrow.
Tomorrow we will be in the DC (go straight there) working on your 

Katherine Glass '18
Dana Hall School, MA
Arts and Sciences

A portrait of Julia Child leans precariously on my bedside table competing for space with sticky notes, pennies, and a plastic alarm clock. Julia has been my role model ever since I spent an hour at the Smithsonian American History Museum watching cooking show after cooking show. As she dropped eggs, burnt soufflés, and prepared a whole pig, she never took herself too seriously and with her goofy smile and accompanying laugh. And yet, she was as successful in her field as anyone could ever be. Her passion completely guided her career. She taught me that it does not matter what I choose to do, it only matters that I do it with my whole self; zealously and humorously.

Unlike Julia, I do not aspire to be a chef. Brownies out of a box may just be the highlight of my baking career. Something I have been passionate about for my whole life, however, is teaching. The first traces of my excitement came from a summer camp that I founded when I was seven years old. Motivated by too many imperfect summer camp experiences, I established my ideal summer camp, one in which campers could choose their activities, from banana split tutorials to wacky hat-making. So that year it began, with seven five-year-old campers in my backyard. For six consecutive years, I ran my summer camp, each year tweaking and improving from the years before.

Chebeague Island, Maine, established a preschool in the spring of 2012, run out of a trailer by a recent college graduate. I volunteered as an intern. For three months, I helped organize for the summer and the following year. I took out the trash, cleaned, and sorted toys, all while studying how to incorporate educational material into preschool activities. I wrote curriculum and researched preschool regulations to ensure that we were in compliance. We created a safe classroom, an academic plan for the upcoming year, and a balance between learning and playing in the classroom. By the end of the summer the intern became the co-director of the summer preschool program.

This past June, I returned to the trailer to find the space and program in complete disarray. Since the previous summer, the preschool had seen two new directors and the latest was spread thin, juggling maintenance, finances and curriculum planning. My progress had not endured. After sulking for a week, I decided I was better suited to envelop Julia’s mentality. What did she do when she flipped a burger onto the ground? She smiled, laughed at the camera, picked it up, reshaped it a little, and kept right on going. So that’s what I did. I brought in a group of friends to clean and organize the trailer. I initiated a “lobster-roll” fundraiser, and Island lobstermen donated lobsters while their wives came together to pick meat from the shells. It was wildly successful and thrived on the community’s spirit. Then I worked to reinstate some sort of educational value into the summer program. We danced to Spanish and Ghanaian music, crafted wacky hats, and read books about the lobstering industry, an aspect of their community that is so significant.

My past two summers have been exhausting and all too frequently frustrating but ultimately the Chebeague Island Preschool, along with many other teaching experiences, has exposed me to the ground level of education policy in the United States. After this past summer my goal is to become a future U.S. Secretary of Education.

So my portrait of Julia is by my bedside to remind me. Remind me that throughout the tedium of my extremely busy life there is something that I am passionate about. To remind me that personality and humor are essential to success. And remind me that the sort of passion I need to succeed is not the type that will let me give in to small setbacks along the way.

What did you talk about in group guidance?

What questions, stresses, etc., do you have about college or work next year?  Talk it over with a partner.


Make sure you have read "Shitty First Drafts"; and, slight change of plans, you do not need to read  "A Lesson in Advanced Misplacement" for Friday, since I want to devote Friday to working on your first draft of your college essay.

Find two lines that you thought contained good or surprising insights about writing.  What advice does she give and why?

Let's take a look at Liz Dengel's essay and then I want you to write your own shitty first draft.

Syllabus sheet 
Comp notebook

Homework: Bring something you read this summer: a book from the LT reading list is ideal, but if you did not read one of those, bring in something else you read this summer or have started reading recently (like this weekend!)

Today's agenda

• Hand in college writing prompt (5 points)

• In-class writing sample # 1 (10 points)

Tomorrow: Report directly to the Reber Center for Group Guidance. Bring your LT ID for scanning in for attendance purposes.

Homework for Friday, August 26:
Make sure you have read "Shitty First Drafts"; and, slight change of plans, you do not need to read  "A Lesson in Advanced Misplacement" for Friday, since I want to devote Friday to working on your first draft of your college essay.

Is there a Survey Monkey LT password?
Check L-team sign-up email.

1st period did not even start "It's A Woman World"

Have Charlie and Kelley MacDonald exchange textbooks; 

keep these textbooks in locker until further notice 

"Who I am" sharing

Finish reviewing syllabus

"We are defined by what we forget."

What do you think this means?

1st period: read the poem, and then get their responses.

What is another set of lines or a stanza that you found intriguing? Why? 

What word choices captured your attention?
What do notice about the structure of the poem? 

Share “Who I Am” w small group and class

Discuss Woman’s World or Home Burial

Found in Translation

 Oscar Guzman, Swarthmore College / Jones College Prep

You are no less than them," my tia Nancy would say. My aunt was also my grammar school tutor and the first in the Guzman family to attend college. Not only did she lecture me academically, but she also transformed me into a real Guzman, an individual with dreams. Thanks to my aunt's support, I was the top student in my class, receiving straight A report cards. When I started attending a magnet high school, I began to travel 45 minutes outside of my neighborhood. The transition of environments consisted of numerous changes.

For the past four years of my high school life, I have beaten myself to the ground, making sure that I obtain passing grades and proving myself capable of climbing the highest mountains.

I am more than a number. That's why a test score was not going to prevent me from obtaining my goals. What hurt the most was not the discouragement provided by my college counselor from applying to selective colleges. Instead, it was her proposal to stop speaking Spanish at home. To her, my language was a barrier to success.

To this day, I have never viewed the Spanish language as a fence. Instead, I have seen it as a linguistic beauty that has been passed down in the family for generations. It has been a language that defines who I am, and I was not going to let a counselor remove my identity. Even though I disagreed with her thoughts, they still affected me. Her thoughts forced me to question, "Will having learned Spanish as a first language affect my future goals? How about my children?"

For the past 18 years, I have encountered many obstacles. People have undermined my potential for not portraying the image of the "American" person, for not reacting to issues in the same manner or solely for not speaking the English language. The main point to this issue is that I have always been capable of doing these things; the difference is that since birth, my ideas and interests are different, causing me to look at the world from a different perspective.

On April 28, 2003, my aunt Nancy delivered her first baby boy, Adrian Villafranca. It has been over two years since his birth and his first language is Spanish. As I look at Adrian's face every time I visit him, I think about the struggles that he will encounter as he grows. He will face discouragement, racism and hate. Adrian will experience these injustices simply because of the color of his skin and the culture that he was born into. I know that I will do the same for Adrian

as his mother did for me, I will teach him how to appreciate the unique and beautiful culture that surrounds him every day. As a Mexican-American, he will have to carry a great cargo like I've done for the past 18 years, and I wish him a lucky passage.

While Adrian joyously dances around the pastel-colored walls surrounding his room, I quickly realize what an innocent little boy he is, a boy unaware of the mountains that await him. In my heart, I know that he will climb them.

Love it or leave it

 Liz Dengel, Princeton / Oak Park and River Forest H.S.

In October of my freshman year, I had to take a standardized career compatibility test. I remember a feeling of dread in my stomach as I sat at my desk in homeroom and bubbled in my name. I was giving information to the enemy.

 I had devoured as much theater as possible during the previous two years. I was working to build my own identity and to forge my own path in the world. That page of Scantron bubbles threatened all of my soul-searching. I did not want to know what the testing agency thought I should do with my life. I did not want my aspirations to be undermined by the conclusions of a computer program. For a brief moment, I considered filling my sheet with inaccuracies. When my teacher started the timer, though, I found myself answering honestly. Old habits die hard.

The envelope with the results arrived in my mailbox six weeks later. On the wheel of career options, I had tied in two categories on opposite poles. My relief was boundless. The inconclusive results were the best for which I could have hoped.

My favorite quotation is a Chinese proverb: "Love what you do, and you will never work a day in your life." I had taken the freshman standardized test too seriously. It was meant only to give me ideas about career possibilities that I might some day love, but I perceived the trap of an arranged marriage. I did not want to decide on a sensible career now and hope that I would learn to love it later.

I have carried this proverb with me through every career counseling session and every college information night I have since attended. When helpful high school counselors make prudent suggestions about my future, I thank them, smile politely, and remind myself that choosing a path is a matter of love.

As long as I love what I am doing, its difficulty is insignificant. Fifteen minutes of biology homework always felt like an eternity, but 15 hours of writing flies by in a breath. Ten seconds of swimming is 10 seconds too much, but 10 weeks of dance is a gift. If I have to wait tables in order to pay the rent before I go to rehearsal, then those 16 hours of work will leave me more fulfilled than a 9-to-5 life ever could. As the poet once said, "Money can't buy me love."

In the same way that my ribs feel a little lighter when I enter a theater, I find myself breathing more easily on the Princeton campus. I know the Princeton curriculum is rigorous, but I also believe I will find more to love passionately at Princeton than at any other university. Hours spent sleeping would feel like wasted time in a place where there is so much to see and to know. Four years of inspiration would feel like no work at all.

Look at college admissions letters. Discuss ethos, pathos, logos, and diction.

How do you want to present yourself in a college application letter? Who is your audience?

Review Syllabus

Time Permitting: Can You Hear Me Now ppt

HW: Bring your chosen college essay prompt for tomorrow, August 24, (to leave with me)
and 
in the reading packet you received yesterday,
read A lesson in Advanced Mis-Placement
and 

Shitty First Drafts for Friday, August 26.

Welcome to class and my blog (I generally use this instead of Canvas)

4AP periods 1 and 7
3AP Periods 2, 5, 6
Planning periods and lunch: 3, 4A and 8

Attendance...please let me know if I mispronounce your name or if you go by a nickname

Intro/my background

• Undergrad
• Grad
• Professional - Envirnomental and Teaching
• Daughter is an LT grad
• Summer

Hand out textbooks...please write the number of the textbook on the sheet that is going around the room

Begin syllabus review...please have signed by 8/26 

Save everything you write in this class for purpose of self-assessment activities throughout semester/year

How to Speak Rhetoric Composition notebook...please have by 8/26

Hand out “Who I Am” sheet

College admissions letter. How do they establish ethos? To what extent do they rely on pathos? What about logos?

Homework:  Due 8/23: Complete “Who I Am” graphic for tomorrow. Attach a copy of a picture of yourself if you have one. 

Due  Wed., 8/24: Pick an essay prompt from a prospective school you are considering or from the common app. (You can find these online) Handwrite the prompt on a sheet of paper. (5 points)