Honors 201 does not have a written assignment, but is asked to consider the relationship between the events we have been studying, and what is occurring in the world today. You are not required to write a blog for class today; it is optional. Please enjoy time with your family, practice social distancing, and really ponder these SOCIAL studies. Thank you!
Honors 202 will write a thoughtful, personal essay that analyzes, interprets, and synthesizes the following thoughts:
- Students and teachers are currently facing a challenge unlike anything we have ever faced in our educational lives.
- Cyber school, distance learning, remote education - whatever you call it, it is new to us all.
- We all have new responsibilities and goals:
- Students, you find yourselves needing to take more ownership of your learning, teaching yourselves material outside of the comforts of the classroom.
- You do not have personal access to the teachers that you have become used to.
- You have an increased workload, reading and writing more than ever.
- Teachers have much less access to the tools we have become used to - answering questions from students in real time, or being able to give traditional tests and quizzes.
- Teachers have an increased workload, writing out lessons we used to be able to simply speak, or grading more essays than ever (678 grades in two weeks, in my case).
- Issues of integrity take on new importance. Students find yourselves tempted to copy/plagiarize/cheat in order to reduce your workload - behavior you might never consider while in a classroom might seem too easy to resist.
- Teachers might be tempted to take shortcuts, merely glancing at student work that we used to read closely, shortchanging our students in order to keep from falling behind.
- Does living in a time of crisis change who we are, or how well we behave, or alter our essential nature? Do we take advantage of a bad situation to become...bad?
- I think not!
- I believe we can all rise to the occasion, and actually strengthen our resolve to be good people who do excellent work.
- Most of you have been doing excellent work under difficult circumstances, and I applaud your efforts. Please keep up the great work!
- A handful of you may have slipped up, given into temptation, or just gotten sloppy.
- Together, we are going to raise the bar. I expect students to write well, to check your work for errors and correct those errors, and to turn in work worthy of conscientious John School students.
- You should expect me to grade your work fairly, holding you to a high standard, and making sure you are getting your money's worth.
This all begins now.
Starting with your response to this blog, I expect an honest effort to do your best work. I have been making comments on many of your blogs, and this practice will continue, so be on the lookout for feedback that will explain why you received the grade you did.
We don't know how long we are going to be in cyber school, but I know we are going to make the most of it!
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