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I've produced a fairly comprehensive, color-coded reading calendar for your students. I've posted it in the Google Classroom, here in the physical space, and each student received a copy in the first week of school.

Students will receive a new calendar with readings at the start of each quarter.

A-day is "soft yellow"; B-day is "sky blue."

Students should arrive to class having completed the work PRIOR to the day's class on which it is listed.  So if "On Being Brought" - a rich, powerful poem by Phyllis Wheatley - appears on Tuesday, September 25, students in the relevant section should read it AT LEAST THE NIGHT BEFORE.

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This is a crucial tool for success in the class.  Your student will receive various handouts, texts, and graphic organizers.  Organization of these resources will be crucial.  Please furnish your student with a 3-ring binder and at least 5 dividers with tabs.  Additionally, your student should come to class prepared to read and write EVERY DAY.  We cover effective note-taking early in the quarter; your student will be expected to take notes on class discussions, lectures, and independent readings.  I will model this skill extensively throughout Quarter 1; by Quarter 2, we hope to see this skill internalized and applied independently with developing skill.

I've structured the class so that your student can succeed by coming to class with this binder and a willingness to put in the work. Please help me in motivating them to arrive prepared to work with an open mind and diligent work ethic.

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Some assignments post here.
- students submit much of their work in hardcopy, but occasional assignments are submitted here.
-  when paper copies are
required, assignments say
"SUBMIT IN HARDCOPY" in the
title
- both routine and major assignments, descriptions, handouts, and rubrics appear in the classroom as ANNOUNCEMENTS.
- HOMEWORK is usually reading and a short writing assignment, such as reading journals, quick writes, or completing unfinished classwork

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Virtually all assigned texts are available here.  This is a Google Drive folder which students may access for my general digital library, as well as course specific documents.
- The Fair Use Doctrine of US Copyright law prevents me from distributing these materials; therefore, options to print, copy, or download have been disabled.  Fair Use permits reproduction of portions of text that serve legitimate educational purposes, such as individual poems from an anthology, highly-focused selections from larger works, or open source material.
- Novel Study or Major Works: We will engage in novel and major works study throughout the year; students will have view-access only to digital texts, and I will make hardcopies of the immediately necessary portions of texts that serve educational purposes; this includes selections for annotation and prewriting.

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...are available for review in the syllabus. Please ask your student to share this document with you if you haven't accessed it already.

We're here to prepare your students to be critical thinkers, readers, and writers.  We're going to accomplish this with a variety of assignments throughout the year: writing, speaking, and group work.  Most of our instruction circles around close textual analysis across three "levels" of engagement. Level one is prewriting (first reading, annotation, and note-taking); level two is dialogue (your students discuss their reading in response to specific questions; level three is synthetic, formal writing and speaking (these are the essays and speeches your students prepare, revise, and deliver).  Most of our class time and assignments will address one of these levels at a time.

To be successful in the class, students must complete at submit ALL the work assigned.  This is absolutely critical! Many of our assignments work cumulatively and build towards our summative tasks: reading and note-taking assignments prepare for conversation in class; conversations in class are where students' reasoning and evidence become refined and expanded; expanded reasoning and supporting evidence lead to compelling, solid writing. This is the virtuous cycle we hope to establish in the English Department, and with your help - by ensuring your students complete the readings and writing tasks assigned for homework - we'll prepare your students to succeed in 11th grade.

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Already, our students have gone from feeling relatively apathetic about another elective - "Meh...I didn't pick this one" - to role-players in our yearlong project: publishing a school magazine.

Our class will rotate around a 4-week news cycle. Week 1: Finding the story and framing the angle; Week 2: Researching and drafting the story; Week 3: Revising and polishing the draft; Week 4: Editing and distributing the magazine.

Each week requires development of a critical stage of the writing process, and we'll encourage them to draw connections to between our work in Journalism and their other English classes.  Along the way, we'll discover and discuss things like: journalism's ethics, credibility of sources, credibility of writers, responsibilities to the audience, reader interest, the purpose, scope, and risks of a free and open press.

To excel in this course, the first step is for your student to complete and submit all the work.  This is our foundation, and it will allow me to offer meaningful and authentic guidance.  With this guidance, my hope is to encourage students to engage their own interests in new and exciting ways in order to share these interests through the medium of the written word.  More long-term, we hope that our magazine will be a focal point for students in the whole school.  We'll share student achievement, upcoming events, student-interest stories, and, of course, covering the hard news around the school and community.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, which I invite you to write below. Alternatively, you can email me at cbevard@cmitacademy.org, and I'll be happy to get back to you as soon as I can.

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1: 100% Testing Rate.  That sounds bad, but hear me out.  Early on, your students shared that several of them were reluctant to sit for the AP exam.  We have a rigorous schedule of readings, writings, and practice tests planned to prepare your students to achieve high marks on this exam - and the might even enjoy the process!  Please encourage them to register and take the test!
2. Developing Strong Writers.  Very soon, your students will begin writing with great frequency and focus.  I intend for your students to become comfortable with a variety of writing assignments, but ultimately they must be able to write under deadlines on a topic they cannot choose.  ALL OF OUR WRITING tasks have this in mind.  Completing and submitting assignments is critical, yet this is only part of the process.  Students will receive feedback, peer workshops, instructor conferences, and various opportunities for revision.
3. Cultivating Close Critical Thinking.  I'm a BIG fan of the dialectical method.  In a nutshell, this means your students will write (reading journals, quick writes), then they'll share their writings (either conference-style or summarize), and then we'll begin a constructive critique of their work.  This can be a challenging but rewarding process, especially once students connect concepts like "development of ideas" with "anticipating opposing, critical viewpoints."  Ultimately, our dialectical seminars intend to yield a variety of formal writings; the long-term goal, however, is for students to internalize the habit of dialectical method so they can produce this on command.

Please leave any thoughts or questions in your own comments below, and I'll address them as soon as I may! As ever, I'm also available the whole year long for conference and clarification at cbevard@cmitacademy.org.