Month: March 2021

This last week before Spring Break, we’re batting clean-up: writing and peer reviewing a timed essay based on our group discussions and your individual analysis of JFK’s April 1962 steel price press conference. If you’re a junior, you’ll write and turn in your essay in class on Monday, then conduct a detailed peer review of work during class on Tuesday (sophomores will write during class on Thursday and conduct a detailed peer review on Friday). If you have accommodations, you’ll write during our hour-long lunch on Monday (juniors) or Thursday (sophomores).  Beyond this, we’ll be kicking off another group reading book, The Accommodation, written by local journalist Jim Schutze.

This Week’s Assignments

As stated above, you’ll write your timed essay during the first class of this week, and turn in both your outline and your essay to this week’s timed writing Google form. You’ll also post your timed essay below as a comment on this blog. As a reminder, you’ll need to keep your camera on during all timed essays.

Then, during the second class of this week, you’ll review the AP Language rhetorical analysis rubric and, then click through and review and attempt to score these released student sample essays for this prompt. When you’re done, you’ll review our standing class peer review sheet and, then, go into the comment thread, below, select an essay that hasn’t received a comment yet, hit reply and identify yourself, and, then, provide one of your peers with detailed feedback on their work by completing — well and thoroughly — all the questions on the peer review sheet. You will be graded on your peer feedback here on the blog, so do your best-possible job.

Beyond this, you’ll start reading our new class reading book, The Accommodation: The Politics of Race in an American City by longtime Dallas journalist Jim Schutze. Long out of print, this book — originally published in February 1987 and immediately purchased and dumped or burned by its opponents, goes a long way toward answering questions you likely have about why Dallas is so different north and south of the Trinity River. It’s such a compelling read that a new publisher is re-releasing it this fall, a development that has drawn national attention, as you can see from this CBS News report. (Note: The PDF I’m supplying you here is a bootleg that circulated once the book went out of print, and so many copies had been destroyed. Taken from an old printer’s galley, it has a few typos, but that in no way diminishes the importance of the story or the quality of Schutze’s writing.)

By Sunday evening, 3.21 (juniors)/3.24 (sophomores), you’ll need to complete the first 58 pages — Chapters 1-10 — of the book, and come ready to discuss what you’ve read in a whole-class seminar. It’s a fascinating read. We’ll have lots to talk about 0ver the next month or so — and we’ll talk a lot in preparation for a Zoom live visit with the writer.

See you in class!