Cathedral Christian Academy
2003-2004 School Year
Austin Lingerfelt
Last Updated October 28, 2003
Class Syllabus
Portraits of Human Experience:
Writing As a Reflective Art
As a college preparatory class, "Portraits of Human Experience: Writing as a Reflective Art" will prepare you for reading, writing, and research at the college level. This course's overall goal is to prepare students for freshman and sophomore composition, in addition to introductory literature classes. By focusing on the craft of writing, students will blend literary and written art, discovering an ancient craft that has allowed for human expression in unique, timely, and transcendent ways. Throughout the course, students will read a variety of genres, and within the fiction genre, students will read diverse types of literature, each reflecting their cultural contexts, in addition to various, biased concerns, offering us realistic, romantic, witty, epic, philosophical, and frightening/tragic portraits into human experience. Because this is a college preparatory course, students will be expected to actively read and write, while attending class regularly and turning in journals and essays on time. Students will also be expected to realize that what they read and write should not merely reflect their own presuppositions about life, but instead, the world's complexities and ambiguities. Some of the literature we will read does contain mature themes and language. However, these inclusions reflect the reality of the world. Literature that transcends its time and place is neither ideal nor deceptive in its presentation of life. Transcendent literature addresses the deeper, darker, broad, more frightening, and more intimate aspects of human nature—these are the qualities that draw us to literature in the first place. When we encounter non-Christian elements throughout the year, students will be expected to recognize textual reasons for maintaining faith despite lifeÕs more troubling experiences and objections. Doing so, students will not only encounter but also respond to the very elements that confront us as people of faith.
Since life is complex, good literature or literature that transcends the age in which it is written, responds accordingly, detailing and exploring life's complex moments and experiences. Throughout the course, students will constantly engage worlds that seem foreign to their own; however, by doing so, they will develop a better appreciation for the world around them, while cultivating an ability to comment on the creative difficulty of making easy, unambiguous decisions or living lives that are rarely simple or black and white. As a result, students will learn to write about such experiences, both in their own lives and in fiction, developing a craft for exploring life through writing.
Class Texts (Literary):
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand
The Best American Essays 2002 Edition*
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Odyssey by Homer
*Essays will also be selected from Best American Essays of the 20th Century. Any essays selected from other texts will be handed out in class.
Class Texts (On Writing):
On Writing by Eudora Welty
Webster's Pocket English Dictionary, Rev. ed.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed.
Class Movies:
Seabiscuit - PG-13; (Optional)
Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC ed.)
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
For rating information about "Seabiscuit" please visit: http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/seabiscuit.html
Office Hours
During the 2003-2004 school year, I will be teaching three classes—Multimedia, Intermediate Design, and College Preparatory Writing—from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, I will hold office hours from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. in room 202. If you know that you will need to meet with me in advance, please schedule an appointment ahead of time through e-mail.
Contact Information:
E-mail: alingerfelt@cathedralchristian.net
Ph: 817-925-9780
Instant Messenger: tcuguy
Grading
Your overall course grade for each nine week period will be determined by the following: (1) attendance/participation, (2) journal, (3) reading quizzes, and (4) essays.
Attendance/Participation: 10%
As a college preparatory course, Writing as a Reflective Art is geared for engaged learners. In order to do well in this class, you will need to attend on a regular basis. Unless you do so, you will not be able to keep up with class instruction and reading, and as a result, you will not be able to complete your assignments either effectively or in a timely manner. You also need to attend class on time. It is rude for you to walk into class late, interrupting your classmates' learning and my own instructing.
If you do not attend class on any given day without an excused absence, then you will automatically receive a zero for that class period. There will be no exceptions.
If you are tardy to class, your attendance/participation grade for that day will automatically be lowered ten points, that is, the highest grade you can then earn that day for participation is a B+.
In order to both learn and succeed in this class, then you will need to actively participate, learning at a reasonable pace, while engaging both the class material and your peers. This means that you will need to be attentive, work quietly, answer questions, and complete all of your assignments when they are due. To effectively participate, you will also need to complete the reading when it is due before each class period. Otherwise, you will not be able to participate in class discussions about the reading nor will you be able to continue improving your thinking and writing about literature. A lack of participation will result in a grade deduction for your daily attendance/participation grade. If you interrupt the class your grade will also be lowered, and if you are a nuisance, you will be asked to leave the class, in addition to receiving a zero for that day's attendance/participation grade, regardless of your attendance.
Journal: 25%
Although you will be writing three essays during each of the two 18-week periods, you will also be writing a hand-written journal on a weekly basis. This will enable you to not only work on your writing but to also "test out" your ideas for class discussions, your own writing, and your six essays on a regular basis. Your journal will be due every Thursday. After class each Thursday, I will read your journal over the weekend and will write at least a one-paragraph response to your journal's content and your writing style. You will receive my written comments along with your grade the following Tuesday morning. The purpose of this exercise is to offer you a consistent arena in which you can consistently work on improving your writing on a weekly basis.
Note: Your handwritten journal should be kept in a college-ruled notebook, and you should use the same notebook for the entirety of the year.
Reading Quizzes: 15%
During each nine-week period, there will be three reading quizzes at various points. Each quiz will cover all of the reading up until that point or the reading since the previous quiz during that nine-week period. On each quiz, there will be 3-5 short essay questions. Your answers will normally need to be about five sentences long. The purpose of these quizzes is to help me ensure that you are doing the reading for each class period. Under most circumstances these quizzes should only take fifteen minutes to complete.
If you have an excused absence for a quiz day, then you will need to arrange a time to make up your quiz within one week. After one week you will receive an Òincomplete,Ó which is a zero.
Essays: 50%
Each semester, you will write a total of three essays. The first two essays during each semester will be from 3-5 pages long and the third essay will be from 6-7 pages long. Before the final draft of each essay is due, you will be asked to complete and turn in at least one rough draft. However, for any essay, you may turn in as many rough drafts, as you like. The essay assignment due dates for the entirety of the school year are already listed on the curriculum; however, actual assignment details will usually be given about a month before each essay is due. Each of the six essays you write during the course will ask you to combine research, literary analysis, and creative input in essays that advances a proper, critical argument, reflecting the complexities of the texts we are reading, in addition to the difficulty of finding and utilizing various writing voices. These essays should also reflect your development as a writer, and I will grade accordingly, taking into account your improvements as a writer at each stage of the writing process. Please note that creative input is different from personal opinion. Papers that contain nothing more than personal opinion with no textual evidence will be giving a failing grade of ÒF,Ó no matter how good the writing may be.
For each and every assignment, your grade will be based upon your completion of the assignment and the quality of your work.
This is the grading scale I will use throughout the 2003-2004 school year:
Below-Average/Average Work = C-, C, C+
Decent/Good Work = B-, B, B+
Excellent/Superior Work = A-, A, A+
Since C grades are an indicator of "below-average/average" work, then you will need to do average or above average work in order to receive decent/good (B-, B, B+) or excellent/superior (A-, A, A+) grades. This grading scale is non-negotiable and will be strictly adhered to.
Since you can turn in as many rough drafts, as you want before the final version of each essay is due, you can determine your own grade in this course. In the end, your grade is up to you! However, you must turn in at least one rough draft for each essay, and those dates are listed on the syllabus, in addition to the dates that final drafts are due.
Since assignment due dates will be given far in advance, late work will not be acceptable. For each class period an assignment is late, your total possible grade on that assignment will be lowered by a letter grade. For instance, if you turn in an assignment one class period late, then the highest grade you can possibly get is a B-, B, or B+, not an A-, A, or A+. So if you turn in an assignment one class period late and earn a B, your grade will be lowered to a C. No exceptions. If any assignment is not turned in after it is late by three class periods, you will automatically receive a zero for that grade, and I will schedule a meeting between you, your parents, the school's principal, and myself.
Seabiscuit:
From Barnes and Noble: What, you may ask, is a biography of a famous race horse doing in the Discover program? Well, if you take a look at Seabiscuit -- a good look -- you'll understand. Much as Sebastian Junger did in The Perfect Storm , Laura Hillenbrand has woven together the many strands of lives that improbably create a phenomenon -- in this case, no raging storm, but legendary racing history. The little horse, Seabiscuit, with his crooked legs and sad tail, was at first thought lazy, but with the help of a trinity of men -- his trainer, his owner, and a jockey -- would make racing history and find a place in the hearts of thousands of fans in Depression-era America. Laura Hillenbrand has done what only great writers can do: She has taken a story that in other, less capable hands would be fodder strictly for the racing crowd, and written as dramatic and informative a biography of a horse and of 1938 America as you'll find. When you read this book, an America mired in the Depression and searching for something to believe in comes alive. The faith of those Americans in the little horse with heart will awaken your own, and when you read Seabiscuit 's racing scenes, even the most skeptical reader will find themselves jumping up and down, shouting at Seabiscuit to "Run!"
Pride and Prejudice:
From Barnes and Noble: Many consider this rich social commentary to be Jane Austen's finest novel. It is certainly among her more famous ones. Austen sets her entertaining study of manners and misconceptions against the backdrop of a class-conscious society in 18th-century England.
Spirited, intelligent Elizabeth Bennet is alternately enchanted and affronted by Mr. Darcy. She is quick to suspend her usual, more rational judgment when it comes to him. She also is quick to believe the worst gossip about this haughty, opinionated man, who soon manages to alienate Elizabeth and her family. But is the condescending air that Mr. Darcy wars an indication of his real character? Or has Elizabeth's pride gotten in the way of her chance for true romance?
The Brothers Karamazov:
From Barnes and Noble: Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, The Karamazov Brothers (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author's most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it 'the allegory for the world's maturity', but with children to the fore. This new translation does full justice to Dostoevsky's genius, particularly in the use of the spoken word, which ranges over every mode of human expression.
The Odyssey:
From Barnes and Noble: By its evocation of a real or imaged heroic age, its contrasts of character and its variety of adventure, above all by its sheer narrative power, the Odyssey has won and preserved its place among the greatest tales in the world. It tells of Odysseus' adventurous wanderings as he returns from the long war at Troy to his home in the Greek island of Ithaca, where his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus have been waiting for him for twenty years. He meets a one-eyed giant, Polyphemus the Cyclops; he visits the underworld; he faces the terrible monsters Scylla and Charybdis; he extricates himself from the charms of Circe and Calypso. After these and numerous other legendary encounters he finally reaches home, where, disguised as a beggar, he begins to plan revenge on the suitors who have for years been besieging Penelope and feasting on his own meat and wine with insolent impunity.
Curriculum
The following schedule is tentative for the 2003-2004 school year. You will be notified both in e-mail and during class whenever changes are made to the schedule.
September 1: Labor Day Holiday
September 2: First Day of Class - Introduction (Syllabus, Books, Class Materials etc.)
September 4: Welty, ix-xiv; 1-28
September 9: Strunk and White, xiii-xviii; 1-14; Welty, 29-38
September 11: Strunk and White, 15-33; Welty, 39-59; Journal Due
September 16: Strunk and White, 34-38; Welty, 60-88; Reading Quiz 1; Essay 1 Assigned
September 18: Strunk and White, 39-65; Welty, 89-93; Journal Due
September 23: Strunk and White, 66-85; Welty, 94-106
September 25: Hillenbrand, xvii-xix, 3-20; Journal Due
September 30: Hillenbrand, 23-35; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Reading Quiz 2; Essay 1 Rough Draft Due
October 2: Hillenbrand, 37-56; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Journal Due
October 7: Hillenbrand, 59-97
October 9: Hillenbrand, 99-113; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Journal Due
October 14: Hillenbrand, 117-148; Reading Quiz 3; Essay 1 Due
October 16: Hillenbrand, 151-184; Journal Due
October 21: Hillenbrand, 187-216; Essay 1 Revision Due
October 23: Hillenbrand, 219-255; Journal Due
October 28: Hillenbrand, 257-281; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Essay 2 Assigned
October 30: Hillenbrand, 283-310; Journal Due; See "Seabiscuit" the movie by this date (Optional); first nine-week self-reflection letter due
October 31: End of 1st Nine-Week Grading Period
--
November 4: Hillenbrand, 313-344
November 6: Hillenbrand, 347-368; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Journal Due; Essay 2 Rough Draft Due
November 11: Hillenbrand, 371-399
November 13: Austen, 1-29; Journal Due; Essay 2, Rough Draft #2/In-Class Workshop
November 18: Austen, 29-62; Reading Quiz 4
November 20: Austen, 62-85; Journal Due; Pride and Prejudice (1940) - Part One
November 25: Austen, 85-111; Pride and Prejudice (1940) - Part Two; Essay 2 Due
November 27: No Class
December 2: Austen, 112-167; Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC ed.) - Part One
December 4: Austen, 167-197; Journal Due; Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC ed.) - Part Two; Essay 3 Assigned
December 9: Austen, 197-227; Reading Quiz 5; Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC ed.) - Part Three
December 11: Austen, 227-254; Journal Due; Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC ed.) - Part Four
December 16: Austen, 254-282; Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC ed.) - Part Five; Essay 3 Rough Draft #1 Due (min. three pages)
December 18: Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Journal Due; Essay 3 Rough Draft #2 Due (min. five pages)
December 22-January 5: Christmas Holiday
January 6: Dostoevsky, xi-xviii; "List of Characters;" "From the Author;" 7-33; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Reading Quiz 6
January 8: Dostoevsky, 34-67; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Journal Due; Essay 3 Due (min. 5-7 pages); Essay 4 Assigned
January 13: Dostoevsky, 67-96; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays
January 15: Dostoevsky, 97-127; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays; Journal Due; second nine-week self-reflection letter due; End of 2nd Nine-Week Grading Period
--
January 19: Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday
January 20: Dostoevsky, 127-160; Selected Essay from The Best American Essays
January 22: Dostoevsky, 163-195; Journal Due; Essay 4 Rough Draft #1 Due
January 27: Dostoevsky, 196-228; Reading Quiz 7
January 29: Dostoevsky, 228-264; Journal Due
February 3: Dostoevsky, 265-312
February 5: Dostoevsky, 313-343; Journal Due
February 10: Dostoevsky, 343-373; Essay 4 Rough Draft #2 Due
February 12: Dostoevsky, 373-409; Journal Due
February 16: Presidents Day Holiday
February 17: Dostoevsky, 409-444; Essay 4 Due
February 19: Dostoevsky, 445-471; Journal Due
February 24: Dostoevsky, 472-499; Reading Quiz 8
February 26: Dostoevsky, 500-532; Journal Due
March 2: Dostoevsky, 532-562; Essay 5 Assigned
March 4: Dostoevsky, 563-597; Journal Due
March 9: Dostoevsky, 598-634; Reading Quiz 9
March 11: Dostoevsky, 634-662; Journal Due;
March 15-19: Dostoevsky, 662-692; Spring Break
March 23: Dostoevsky, 693-724; Essay 5 Rough Draft #1 Due
March 25: Dostoevsky, 725-753; Journal Due; third nine-week self-reflection letter due
March 26: End of 3rd Nine-Week Grading Period
--
March 30: Dostoevsky, 757-776; Reading Quiz 10; Essay 5 Rough Draft #2 Due
April 1: Homer, 399-403; 405-421; Journal Due
April 6: Homer, 422-445; Selected Essay; Essay 5 Due
April 8: Homer, 446-477; Journal Due
April 9: Noon Dismissal for Easter
April 13: Homer, 478-510
April 15: Homer, 511-538; Final Journal Due; Reading Quiz 10 (in journals)
April 20: Homer, 539-566; Reading Quiz 11
April 22: Homer, 567-604; Essay 6 Assigned
April 27: Homer, 605-631
April 29: Homer, 632-657; Reading Quiz 12
May 4: Homer, 658-690; Essay 6 Rough Draft #1 Due; Essay 6 Final Draft Due for Graduating Seniors; Final Narrative (fourth nine-week reflection letter) Due for Graduating Seniors
May 6: Homer, 691-714
May 11: Selected Essay
May 13: Selected Essay; Tentative Video - Part One
May 18: Selected Essay; Tentative Video – Part Two; Essay 6 Rough Draft #2 Due
May 20: Selected Essay; Tentative Video – Part Three
May 25: Selected Essay; Tentative Video – Part Four
May 27: Essay 6 Final Draft Due; Final Reflections; fourth nine-week reflection letter due