In this class, the primary focus is to deepen our understanding of the society around us while also developing our abilities to analyze text and effectively present our thoughts through writing. The structure of this class varies often, but some of the activities we frequently participate in include reading longer texts at home and having group discussions about them in class, watching documentaries, and writing essays (sometimes even in groups!). The units we have done so far include Education, Rhetorical Analysis, Satire, and Identity. Below you can find some examples of the work we have completed in this course.
Over the summer, we read the beloved classic, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. It was quite a gruesome read, but it was intriguing to notice how many of his commentaries about society and the developing world were still pertinent today. Additionally, when we first started school, our class was quickly able to bond over trying to analyze his atrocious grammar and peculiar desire for woodchucks. We were further able to bond and reflect on his work through our first major project of the year: our Walden skits. We were given the task of creating a 10-minute skit regarding a concept or scene from the novel. Our group decided to touch upon how Thoreau’s worries about the people in our society were reflected through iconic celebrities today. The general structure of our skit was an interview, talk show style with none other than Henry David Thoreau himself as the interviewer. You can immerse yourself in the incredibly quarrelsome interview below:
There is no doubt that a lot has been and is still being said about the American school system. There is a very distinct culture regarding public education here, although it is debatable whether it can be considered “better” or “worse” than other areas. For our Education unit, we studied the origins of public American schooling, and how it has developed into the system millions of kids across the country attend today. To wrap up our unit and complete our final reflection about the education system today, we were assigned to write an essay regarding one specific aspect of the public school administration of our choosing. I decided to write about how grading portals such as PowerSchool, Blackboard, and Google Classroom should be used by students and parents to maximize their efficiency. One event that stood out to me during my writing process was when I sent out a Google form to my class to gather more data about how students feel about the increased implementation of online grading portals. This not only ended up encouraging me to switch my original outlook and thesis regarding the prompt, but it also provided me with lots of evidence I could use to back up my points. My visual outline and essay can be found below: