WEEK OF MARCH 30TH to APRIL 6TH

Hello, Ospreys! Welcome back to junior year, remote edition!  

I hope you have enjoyed your extra week of rest and feel ready to use your brain for some interesting learning. Although we may be socially distanced, we are still a community, and we are still united by our common purpose. I look forward to connecting to you all in the coming days and being together again in the spirit of learning.

And the spirit of eating! It's a great time to learn to cook! It's definitely a great time to think about where your food comes from.

I have distilled our food project into hopefully manageable weekly chunks.  As many of you will be doing LINK,  the content learning for our project will be completed by early May, with just an essay left to finish up.  I realize that different people are in different situations at home, so I wanted to make it flexible and manageable for you.  If there are things I can do to make this whole adaptation go more smoothly for you, let me know.  Even within the options, there might be further flexibility to differentiate for yourself.  I just invite everyone to engage and do some beautiful thinking about interesting and relevant topics WITHOUT GETTING OVERLY STRESSED.  I also want us all to grow in our writing skills, thus I am excited to give you an opportunity to write and get feedback on a personal essay before our time together is through.  

The main thing you should do today is READ OVER THE NEW PROJECT SYLLABUS and make some decisions about how you want to approach your work in Humanities.  You will see that there are options for a few things, so I want to collect data ASAP on which learning track you think you will take.  You guys have commenting power on the document, so feel free to ask questions in the margins.

Once you have read through the syllabus, please give me some quick data.

First, if you have not done so already, please take the survey on how you might procure a book for this project.  Those option again are:

• Order a fresh copy on Amazon for $7.99
• Download (and print?) the pdf version
• Let Jessica know that you need a hard copy and she will send one to your house

TAKE BOOK SURVEY

Second, once you have read the project syllabus, please fill out this survey to let me know what you are thinking in terms of the WRITTEN RESPONSE track or the GROUP DISCUSSION track. I need this data as soon as possible in order to figure out important details.

TAKE FOOD PROJECT LEARNING TRACK SURVEY

Please do the surveys as soon as possible, pretty please by the end of the day today!  Other than that, you have until next Monday to complete the work for Week One.  By then, I will have emailed you with more information regarding discussion group schedule and other pertinent details.  I will be emailing you periodically, and I will be updating my DP weekly, so make sure you are checking in on those things.  I will be checking my email daily, but I appreciate your patience and understanding as I try to navigate the challenges of being home with both of my children.  I will get back to you as soon as I can. I am going to try to hold office hours from 10-11am, Tuesday-Friday on Google Chat/Hangouts, so tune in if you have burning questions or you just miss me and want to talk about food or whatever stage of the existential crisis that quarantine has you in.  

A NOTE ON THE PHILOSOPHY PROJECT:

I realize that many of you have had your ideas compromised by the new situation, and please don't stress about this too much right now.  If that is the case, I will be allowing you to complete your project in a simplified way.  I will communicate about that soon, or reach out if you have concerns.

A NOTE ON HONORS:

Your 2nd essay of the semester is now due May 9th!  For most of you, this is the LITERARY ANALYSIS. For a few of you, it is the PERSONAL NARRATIVE.
See Honors Syllabus for links to support materials.

Instead of our final book club meeting, I would like you each to read a novel of your choosing and enjoy it. Please send me a selfie of you curled up reading it and a quick review by email letting me know what you read, what you thought about it, what you learned from it, and whether or not you recommend it to me.

I MISS YOU GUYS A TON!  BE WELL OUT THERE AND USE YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS!

COURSEWORK FOR THE UPCOMING WEEK:

WEEK 1: What is a “food ethic”?

Readings: ESSAY: Wendell Berry, “The Pleasures of Eating” (questions to THINK about as you read) SHORT SHORT STORY Anton Chekov, “Indigestion” BRIEF POEMS: “Vespers” by Louise Glück and “This is Just To Say”, by William Carlos Williams BOOK: Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma Young Readers Edition, Preface and Introduction (pp.1-6) Videos: Jessica’s video explaining the project and the idea of a “food ethic” LINK COMING SOON! Try to discern the “ethic” present in each of these videos: Applebee’s Commercial One Million Gardens  The Questions: What do we mean by “food ethic”? (Think about the ethics contained in the readings.) What are some different ethics that we see present in America’s relationship to food?  How does Wendell Berry’s food ethic run against the grain of the dominant culture’s relationship to food?  What is his thesis? What does he want us to do/feel/change? How is a “food ethic” reflective of one’s relationship to Earth and her resources? What is the “omnivore’s dilemma”?  What does it have to do with the ethics of food, agriculture, and eating?