Writing Task Four

English 100

Task Four:  “Literacy Autobiography”

Overview of Purposes:  Learn something about yourself as a person as well as a reader, writer and student. Describe and reflect upon your own educational history.  Produce well-supported and thoughtful discussions. Incorporate other’s words, ideas and experiences into your own writing. Strengthen your critical thinking, reading, writing and editing skills.

Reading Assignment:  The essays you will read for this unit will help you to think  about and reflect upon your own stories and provide a foundation for your task paper. The authors recall significant stories in their life dealing with both their difficulties and achievements in regard to reading and writing and recall the history of their own education.

Getting Started:  In order to be   a successful college student, it is vital that you reflect upon not only the experiences that have shaped you in the past few months, but all of your past experiences, both good and bad, that have shaped you as a reader, writer, student and learner. Think about your past as well as the past of the authors we have read and reflect upon your educational history and how it has affected your educational present. You can also use and develop ideas and material from Task Three in this task paper as well. Be sure that you also make this exploration a useful one that will help you in the course of your college career. Think about the following:

·      What stories come to mind when you think about your education? What obstacles have you faced in learning, reading and writing? Have the obstacles been in the classroom and perpetuated by the teachers or in your home and personal life? Did you overcome or give into them? Think about the conflicts and obstacles Douglass faced. What achievements and milestones come to mind? How did they make you feel? Can you compare your achievement  and empowerment to Jordan’s? Can you find any similarities or differences between your stories and one or more of the authors’ stories?

·      What are your earliest memories of reading, being read to or writing? Recount them. Can you make any comparisons or contrasts to Welty’s memories? Have your definitions stayed the same or changed? Compare and contrast your definitions to one or more of the author’s definitions.

·      What about your present educational story? Is college what you expected? Have you learned or gained anything? Have your perceptions of learning been changed or challenged?

Writing Assignment:  For this last writing task, you will write a “Literacy Autobiography” in which you will reflect upon and assess the reading, writing and learning you have done throughout your lifetime. In this autobiography, you can focus on one specific event or time period or you can chronicle a large part of or even your entire educational history. In addition to narrating and describing these events, you will also explain their significance – you will explain how those certain events shaped your attitude towards reading, writing and learning in past as well as how they have shaped you into the reader, writer, student and learner you are today. Your essay can discuss negative and/or positive experiences and attitudes. You will use your past  experiences  as well as the texts read in this section as support and illustration for your ideas, opinions and conclusions.

Format/Organization:

Introduction:  Create a thoughtful and interesting introduction with a focused thesis statement. Perhaps you want to open your essay  in a more creative way with an anecdote. However, even if you choose this approach, be sure your introduction also provides your reader with a focus and thesis (e.g. if you will be comparing your experiences to one or more of the author’s, you will need to briefly discuss both and make the connection in your introduction and thesis).

Body paragraphs will:

·      Be unified, cohesive and developed (topic sentences and supporting details).

·      Support your opinion/thesis throughout your body paragraphs with relevant, persuasive and effective material and information (personal experiences, anecdotes and observations, information/passages/quotations from one or more of the texts, passages from your own writing).

·      Explain and discuss the significance of each anecdote, experience and quote.

·      Include profound and well-supported reflection.

Conclusion:  Create an interesting and strong conclusion  that gives a sense of closure and answers the question, “So what?”

Documentation:  Document your use of borrowed material according to MLA guidelines (e.g. parenthetical documentation within text and a works cited page at the end). If you use examples from your own writing, be sure that all of your quotations are correctly documented using quotation marks.

Editing and proofreading:  Editing and proofreading skills will be crucial to this writing task. Sentence structure and grammar will be correct, sentences will be more varied and complex; surface errors will be few.

Requirements:  This writing task will focus heavily on organization, structure and development of thought. This writing task must be word-processed, spell-checked, well-edited, at least three full pages in length (e.g. not including the works cited page) and must adhere to MLA guidelines. This writing task must also have sufficient and relevant support from your own experiences and observations as well as from the texts read in this section.

** If you do not meet all of the above requirements, you will not pass this writing task.

Checklist for Task Three

Checklist for Task Three:

• Proofread for the professor’s/peers comments.
• Explain all quotes.
• Make sure all quotes are cited.
• Spell your name right (Shout out to Jay)!
• Works cited > In correct MLA format.
• Clear thesis statement.
• Summary  > No opinions, no quotes!
• Analysis.
• Connection > Establish the connection you have with the essay all throughout the paper.
• Including three quotes throughout paper.
• Associate the essay to your experiences and/or views.
• First reference > Full name. Second reference > Last name.
• 3 full pages (Works Cited page is not included in this length)

Schedule of Task Four

English 100:  Introduction to College Writing

Task Four

Week Twelve

Nov. 15 - Discuss “Reading and Writing:  A Journey Through My Life” by Hilary Whitfield (300) and “Read With Purpose” by Cheryl Barnett-Bey (279). Discuss the connection to Task Four.

Homework for Nov. 17: 

Discuss Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities:  Children in America’s Schools” (141 – 156)

To your blog, discuss your experiences with reading and writing.

Ø  Before this course, what did you anticipate?

Ø  What were you unsure of and why?

Ø  Discuss your process as a reader and as a writer.

Nov. 17 - Discuss your experiences with reading and writing/Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities:  Children in America’s Schools” (141 – 156).

Homework for Nov. 19: 

Read “How I Learned to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass (137). To your blog, draft a response to one of the first two questions outlined in Questions for Reflection and Writing (142).

Nov. 19 - Discussion (connection to Task Four):  After reading “How I Learned to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass, how is his story and yours different?

Homework for Nov. 29: 

Read “Savage Inequalities:  Children in America’s Schools” by Jonathan Kozol (223-233).

To your blog, draft a response to one of the three options outlined in the handout given to you in the “Literacy Autobiography” (review in class).

Week Thirteen

Nov. 21 – Nov. 28

Fall break

Week Fourteen

Nov. 29 - Review of Task Four. What do you intend to discuss for Task Four? For this discussion, review what you have posted recently to your blog in order to contribute to class participation.

Homework for Dec. 1: 

Read “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” by Richard Rodriguez (232). Respond to your blog, a response to the first question outlined in Questions for Reflection and Writing (236).

Dec. 1 – After reading “The Lonely, Good Company of Books” by Richard Rodriguez, what is your relationship with books? What about writing? Before this class, what did you read (if you did read at all)? What about writing? How has this changed?      

Homework for Dec. 3:

Read “One Writer’s Beginnings” by Eudora Welty (182).

Dec. 3 – Writers Workshop                                             

Review Chapters 9, 10 and 13 in “A Troubleshooting Guide for Writers.”

Homework for Dec. 6:

Prepare the rough drafts for peer critique.

Bring to class the task papers that you have written until now. For Monday, we are going to conduct peer review for Task Four and revision strategies for Task One, Two and Three.

Week Fifteen

Dec. 6    - Writers Workshop

Review Chapters 24 and 29 in “A Troubleshooting Guide for Writers.”

Homework for Dec. 8: 

Read “The Love of Books” by Gloria Naylor (225).

Dec. 8 - Writers Workshop/Discuss the final exam.

Review Chapters 18, 19 and 25 in “A Troubleshooting Guide for Writers.”

Homework for Dec.10:

Prepare task four and the revisions for evaluation

To your blog, draft a self-evaluation about Task Three.

• What is the thesis for your paper?

• List the main points you make in your paper.

• What was the most helpful advice you received from your peer evaluation?

• What was the most helpful information you received in class for your paper?

• How many drafts of this paper do you think you wrote and how/when did you write them? For example, did you compose at the keyboard, did you write lots of notes to yourself, did you pre-write or outline, did you write in small chunks of time or sit down and produce an entire draft at one sitting?

• What would you do differently with this paper to make it more effectively, or what did you try to do that you just don’t think you got a good handle on?

• What are most pleased with about this paper?

Dec. 10  - Task Four due (with revisions for Task One, Two and Three). Continue the discussion of the final exam.

For additional points, due Monday, Dec. 13 to your blog, I would like for everyone to write a formal review of English 100. Assuming you have written this assignment, the assigned points can only improve your grade. What I would like to hear is about your interactions with this class. Some questions that may guide your response:

Ø  If your reading and writing practices have changed since this class, how have they been modified because of English 100?

Ø  How have you become a better reader and/or writer?

Ø  How has the blog encouraged you to write more thoroughly or has it not?

Ø  What did you like about having a blog in a reading and writing course?

Ø  How is the blog similar to a journal? How is it different from a traditional journal?

Ø  What kind of experience have you had for English 100? Please explain.

Ø  What would you like to see change with this class including the smaller writing assignments and/or the task papers?

Think of this last writing assignment as a time for you to reflect on your experiences as a reader and a writer. Do not ask me about the length of the assignment. Points will not be awarded to very small constructed responses. Instead, think of it as a formal, but small writing assignment, much like the journal assignments you wrote throughout the semester.

Week Sixteen

Dec. 13  - Finals begin

A Model Task Three Paper

Amy Chastain

Ms. Chastain

English 100

November 5, 2010

The Art of Education, Voice and Persons

            As a child, I have always loved learning and reading and writing. You would most often find me buried behind the pages of an R.L. Stine novel, a book about serial killers or the Holocaust. Or you would most often find me glued to the computer, typing my latest short story. This passion has not ceased even at the age of 25. My passion has led me to the art of teaching. Now I am sharing my passion for the written word with others. This passion and finding would not have been possible without two incidents and two persons who instilled in me the art of education and voice. “Sister Flowers” written by Maya Angelou tells a story about Mrs. Flowers and Angelou as a child. Angelou tells us about the one person who threw her a life line. This life line encouraged Marguerite to read and voice her thoughts. As Mrs. Flowers recited the first few lines of A Tale of Two Cities, it was then that Marguerite saw the music behind the words. The passion that I had for learning and reading and writing is presented in this story. Like Mrs. Flowers, I saw myself as Marguerite. I was a character in this story, but here, my life was presented, not as fiction, but as a reality.

“Sister Flowers” tells a story about an aristocratic African American womyn who threw Angelou, a young child at the setting of the story, a life line. Marguerite, as Angelou went by as a child, considered Mrs. Bertha Flowers a refined gentlewomyn. Angelou describes Mrs. Flowers as a rich African American womyn. She compares her to a refined, mature white womyn during the setting of the story. Mrs. Flowers invites Marguerite to her home to talk with her. When she arrives, Mrs. Flowers talks with her about her love of reading, but she has been informed that Marguerite does not speak up in class. Mrs. Flowers tells Marguerite that it is important to speak up because the human voice is then able to construct meaning. As an example, Mrs. Flowers opens A Tale of Two Cities and begins to recite, “It was the best of times and the worst of times…” This is music to Marguerite’s ears; she is then instructed to take a book of poetry with her and upon her next visit, she is to memorize and recite a poem for Mrs. Flowers. Marguerite, at the time of this setting, was simply pleased to be liked by Mrs. Flowers.

Mrs. Flowers, or as we may refer to her as Sister Flowers, played an important role in Marguerite’s young life. Before her visit to Mrs. Flowers, even the presence of her warmed Marguerite’s young eyes. Angelou writes, “When she chose to smile on me, I always wanted to thank her. The action was so graceful and inclusively benign” (93). She was an idol in some way to Marguerite. In the story, Marguerite tells us about her irritation of her mother. She defined her mother’s relationship to Mrs. Flowers as a “strange relationship” (93). Before her visit to Mrs. Flowers, Marguerite despised her mother’s ignorance because she felt that Mrs. Flowers was above them. Only years later did Marguerite find that “they were alike as sisters, separated only by formal education” (93). Because Marguerite’s mother and Mrs. Flowers are both African American womyn, this is the manner in which they are related. They are closely tied to the same community and the same gender; however, as Mrs. Flowers later explains to her that even though others are not able to go to school, they are just as intelligent as the ones who do. Mrs. Flowers instructs Marguerite to be tolerant to those who are illiterate like her mother.

The real story, I feel, lies in the essence of person. What I mean here is we see the definition of what a role model is. The relationship between Mrs. Flowers and Marguerite is intact. Angelou writes, “She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known, and has remained throughout my life the measure of what a human being can be” (93). I have had the privilege of two persons who have helped me on my path of careful finding. “The measure of what a human can be” was revealed to me throughout my time at Missouri Western beginning in 2003 (Angelou 93). I came to Missouri Western, a high school graduate who loved to learn, in the fall of 2003, ready and willing. Like Marguerite, I too loved to read and write; however, the essence of person had been missing in my life. While there were teachers who had sought me out and commended me on how well I wrote, there was never a person or perhaps a time that I carefully heeded their words or took to heart what they actually meant until Dawn, like Mrs. Flowers had done for Marguerite.

After graduating from Braymer High School at 18, I made the decision to attend Missouri Western in 2003. Because of my ACT scores, I was placed into English 100:  Introduction to College Writing, a development reading and writing course. Originally I had wanted to become a high school English teacher. I enjoyed reading and writing and as a teacher, I wanted to share my passion for the written language with others. However, because I was placed in a developmental reading and writing course, I thought that I was not smart enough to teach others. I thought that I had to be among the elite, the smartest.  One letter changed my thoughts. Dawn Terrick, the director of developmental writing and English 100 professor, wrote a letter recognizing my written skills and encouraging me to pursue a career in writing. Needless to say, Dawn and I work together now. I am now teaching English 100.

So, like Mrs. Flowers had down for Marguerite, Dawn had taken me aside to instill in me pride, motivation and encouragement. She taught me that a test should not determine your fate as it does not determine whether we can read and write. Mrs. Flowers came to me in the presence of Dawn, but six years later, she came disguised as another person who carefully took me aside and taught me the importance of voice. Upon her visit to Mrs. Flowers, Marguerite was a reader. Angelou writes, “Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That’s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning” (95). Mrs. Flowers was informed that the work that Marguerite did was good, but it was written work. The teachers found it difficult to encourage her to speak up in class. While I can only assume that Marguerite at this time was introverted like myself, once a upon a time, I found myself in this same predicament six years after Dawn’s letter encouraged me to pursue a career in writing.

Six years later, I was in Kay Siebler’s English 664 class, a course in Composition Theory. I was the only graduate student in the class among undergraduates, two of which were men. While I was vocal in the class, it was not to the level Kay wanted. I was called into her office at midterm and during our conference, Kay told me that because I was only a graduate student that I should be the most vocal in the classroom. Traditionally, men are more vocal in the classroom. As a womyn, I needed to establish my authority and as Kay suggested, the undergraduates could learn from my experiences because I was teaching at the time. In the past, I was introverted, but now I was in a new context, so I took her advice seriously. If I wanted to excel, I had to begin to read each essay critically, evaluating how I might apply it to my classroom. So as I began to read, I began to mark up the pages with my analysis and my comments of which I would bring up in English 664.    

I have been fortunate to have two Mrs. Flowers in my life in the last seven years. I only hope that like Mrs. Flowers, Dawn and Kay, one day, I can too can be that person for someone else. Angelou writes, “Then I met, or rather got to know, the lady who threw me my first life line.” (92). Dawn  threw me a life line, recognizing my written skills, and Kay, six years later, educated me about the importance of the human voice and what it can do. I have had two persons in my educational career who took the time to work with me. It would have been easy to look at me as just another student. However, Dawn recognized the skills in my writing. She later explained to me that because I was placed in English 100, this did not mean that I was stupid or could not read and write. A test does not determine your fate, just as it did not determine whether I could read and write. I could. Because I was placed in English 100, Dawn saw in me an excitement for writing that I will continue on in my career as I share it with others. Although it was a different time and setting because I was a graduate student, Kay like Dawn took the time to work with me. She took me aside because, as a fellow sister, she realized that I had things to tell that was worth sharing. The classroom can be a frightening and intimidating place; however, Kay taught me that everyone has something to say. We each can learn from what the other has said. The value of voice and being able to speak is so important that it is freeing in a way.

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. "Sister Flowers." Introduction to College Writing. Boston:  The McGraw-

Hill Companies, 2010:  92-96. Print.

Steps for the Written Process #3

Steps for written responses:

1)      Briefly summarize the essay.

2)      Find key quotes/passages.

3)      Think about your own ideas and experiences in regard to education and write them down.

4)      Take the above info and write one or two paragraphs blending your own ideas and experiences with the author’s. Be sure your written response contains the following:

a.       Title of essay in quotes and name of author.

b.      A key personal experience.

c.       A connection between the two. For example:  Have you had a similar or contrasting experience?

d.      One direct quote from the essay (Be sure to provide quotation marks and explain it to the reader).

Think of writing Task Three in stages. You may use the model above to write your essay as I am doing with my essay. I have begun to outline my personal experiences first.

The essays I have chosen to use for my Task Three paper include:  “Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou and “Becoming Educated” by Barbara Jordan.

The focus for my paper includes:  Who are persons who took me aside as Sister Flowers did for Maya Angelou and what does becoming educated mean to me as it meant for Barbara Jordan?

Summary of “Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou

“Sister Flowers” written by Maya Angelou tells a story about an aristocratic African American womyn who threw Angelou, a young child at the setting of the story, a life line. Marguerite, as Angelou went by as a child, considered Mrs. Bertha Flowers a refined gentlewomyn. Angelou describes Mrs. Flowers as a rich African American womyn. She compares her to a refined, mature white womyn during the setting of the story. Mrs. Flowers invites Marguerite to her home to talk with her. When she arrives, Mrs. Flowers talks with her about her love of reading, but she has been informed that Marguerite does not speak up in class. Mrs. Flowers tells Marguerite that it is important to speak up because the human voice is then able to construct meaning. As an example, Mrs. Flowers opens A Tale of Two Cities and begins to recite, “It was the best of times and the worst of times…” This is music to Marguerite’s ears; she is then instructed to take a book of poetry with her and upon her next visit, she is to memorize and recite a poem for Mrs. Flowers. Marguerite, at the time of this setting, was simply pleased to be liked by Mrs. Flowers.

Summary of “Becoming Educated” by Barbara Jordan

Barbara Jordan, a young African American womyn in the time of 1959, attended law school at Boston University. In a time of desegregation, lynchings, and movements which called for dramatic change, Jordan found herself amid a hostile learning environment at times. Unlike her fellow colleagues, she had more of a difficult time learning the concepts of the field, so she buried herself, night after night, in the law library under piles and piles of law books. Because it was 1959, Jordan certainly stood out as both a womyn and an African American in Boston University. Her law professors, on select days, would walk into class and announce that today was ladies day. They only called on the womyn; most days, they would call only on the male students. In order to prepare for classes, studying in the wee hours of the night by herself was not enough. In the spring, Jordan’s roommate’s boyfriend organized a black study group. With six or seven persons, Jordan began to orally discuss matters of the law including the facts, the cases and the findings. Jordan began to realize that she was becoming educated. By comprehending these new concepts of the law, that were otherwise unfamiliar to her, she began to delve into the process of thinking where she thought things through and reached her own conclusions. Jordan learned how to defend what she had to say in class and in her study group.

Creating a Works Cited Page

I have included the citations of the essays that I am using for Task Three.

Angelou, Maya. "Sister Flowers." Introduction to College Writing. Boston:
     The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2010:  92-96. Print.

Jordan, Barbara. "Becoming Educated." Introduction to College Writing. Boston:
     The McGraw-Hill Companies, 2010:  212-213. Print.

FYI:   Please post your citation(s) using the comment feature.