Jordan’s Assignment

Please ask your family members to assemble together for a conversation before Wednesday.  Eliminate electronic distractions and just talk as a family for 5 minutes – you could choose to make it “problem-solving” or you could just talk about how everyone is doing.

This relates to the lesson on Wednesday about face to face communication and making happy families.  Even if they refuse that still works for the lesson – so just try, and if it doesn’t work, note the dynamics of how you get overruled.

For everyone who has NOT presented yet;

a.  remember to email other people co-leading same day to co-plan a great lesson with a strong text, meaningful practice doing an important skill, and some way of assessing what students learned, use the model lesson – cc the teacher also.

b.  send an email to teacher 24 hours before the lesson with the latest best draft of the plan including the text confirming that the lesson will happen as scheduled.

c.  after you co-lead the lesson write up an evaluation and email it to the teacher, addressing the points requested.

 

A policy that can affect families.

XC – Reading & Research – HCZ

For this extra project please do the following;

1.  Finish reading and taking notes on the account of child-rearing in the text from class – Class differences in parenting and Baby College – the password is the usual abbreviation of our school lowercase no punctuation.

2.  Write out an initial response – does teaching working class parents the family style of middle class parents seem like a good idea to you?  What seem like the most important pros & cons?

3.  Do initial research – look up Harlem Children’s Zone online, find articles that both celebrate and critique it.  Print, read, annotate, and collect those articles.

4.  Do primary research – interview at least 2+ people who have participated in HCZ programs (Baby College, Promise Academy, HCZ Asthma Initiative, etc).  Visit an HCZ program and take a few pictures (get written permission of any individuals you plan to post the pictures of) and sit in on an program.  Getting permission to sit in on or visit a program might be hard – use your skills and if you fail at first, come to SGI on Friday to discuss strategies.

5.  Make an outline of an argument that includes a claim related to whether or not an orientation/aspect/program of HCZ should or shouldn’t be supported or how it should be changed.  Include reasons and evidence from your research.

6.  Flesh out the outline into a succinct and well-crafted 400-700 wordanalysis of why or why not a particular program or orientation or aspect of HCZ should or shouldn’t be supported or how it should be refined.  Please include 2 pictures that you took (captioned with the fact that you have written permission from people in the shot).

Worth up to 40 “Writing & Publishing” points – due by Friday, May 25 at 11pm.  Please publish all separate parts (initial response, outline, argument w/photos) and email your mentor/protege/triangle partners asking for comments.  You may post less than the whole assignment and will be eligible for up to 10 points for each part published.

HW 37 – Response and illustration to “How To Land Your Kid In Therapy”

Please finish reading and taking notes (allusions and argument) from “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy” by Lori Gottlieb.

Then look up some of the allusions (such as to Harlow’s monkeys or Joan Crawford) and select one – copy an image related to that allusion onto your blog, write a caption that engagingly explains the allusion for the image on your blog, links to the article, and cites the source of the image & your information for the caption.

Below your image/caption/citation please write a 140 character response to Gottlieb’s primary claim.  You can agree, disagree, nuance, make fun of, question or do any other kind of intelligent academic response.

Then email your triangle partners, mentor, and protege asking them to comment on your post.

Please complete all of the above by Thursday 11pm.

HW 35 & HW 36 – Starting new unit on strengthening families

HW 35: 

Go to the Google Doc of the unit plan.

Hopefully you signed up and recorded your co-leading slot and comrades.  Unfortunately someone kept posting weird stuff about some of us so I had to delete the site.

In class we’ve talked about what makes a good lesson.  Please examine this model lesson for inspiration.

Note, if you sign up for a Thursday lesson, that means you’re responsible to teach that lesson as the “extra period” if your section isn’t here Thursday.

Then collect the emails of the other 3 students who signed up (using Facebook, mutual friends, or whatever) and send a group email to all of them, plus Andy, that includes the quick outline of the day’s lesson from the unit plan and some thoughts about what to actually teach – what sort of activity to do – what texts and ideas and questions to emphasize.  This email will go back and forth until you’ve got a good plan. It might be necessary also to meet in person.  The sign-up and first email are due Tuesday, April 17 at 11pm.

Later you will co-lead that lesson and write up an evaluation of how the class went.  The evaluation should be emailed to other students who presented that day and Andy and include;

• date and time of your co-leading, summary of what you did and what students did
• whether you met your goal for the lesson, evidence whether you met your criteria for success
• what you would do differently if you were going to teach the lesson again
• the best insight you had about the topic through preparing to teach and teaching it

HW 36:

Undertake a 24-48 hour anthropological investigation of a family -  the family must be unnamed and I suggest that you choose a family of a friend who doesn’t go to SOF.   Look at expressed and implicit feelings, communication styles, division of labor, family rituals, etc.  Write up a 2-3 paragraph summary and analysis of what you noticed, along with an optional photo of the physical layout of the family’s home that does reveal something important about the family but doesn’t reveal that family’s identity.  Does this family seem strong and happy?  What would it take to make this family strong and happy?  Of course acknowledge your ignorance and short observation in the post, but also do the best you can to create insights. Should be posted Thursday, April 19 at 11pm.

If you were at another family’s abode during Spring Break, you may also use your recollections from that experience.

Survey Link

HW 34 – Responses to Jobs Challenge Project

Part 1:  Email your protege, mentor, and triangle partners with a link to your challenge project and a request that they offer comments on your post that may include congratulations on what you did well, where your post & video provoked thought, and suggestions or questions they have for you.

Part 2:  Reply with polite thanks and intelligent attention to their comments via email.  It’s possible that one of their comments will change your life, if you pay attention, or at least that you’ll get better at communicating.

Part 3: Post a comment of your feedback on the challenge project on each of your triangle partners’ blogs and copy and paste it to your blog.

Post Parts 1, 2, and 3 as HW 34 on your blog by 11pm, Wednesday, April 18.  Format it how you choose but make it clear which part is which.  I’ve found the format – Other person’s comment, my reply, my comment to the other person – to read the best.