Hello Friends,

Once again, we have an irregular schedule.  Baruch will be closed on Wednesday, September 15th, so we will not be having our in-person class.  Here are your assignments for this week.  Please reach out to me with any questions.

• Read Chang-Rae Lee’s “Mute in an English-Only World”.   You can find the link to the essay on the blog under the “Texts” tab.  In a separate post, I have shared some questions about the text.  Please choose a question to respond to, and share your response (in the form of a comment on my post) by Monday, September 13th.
• Read Sherman Alexie, “Superman and Me”, also available as a link on our blog.  Respond to my post about this reading by Wednesday, September 15th.
• Reflecting on the work we’ve read thus far (Rodriguez, Jones, Tan, Lee, and Alexie), begin to explore your own language and literacy story.  This will take the form of a 2-3 page typewritten “pre-write”.  See my guidelines below.  Your pre-write should be placed in our shared Google Doc Folder by Sunday, September 19th.
• Office Hours:  I will be holding Zoom office hours on Monday, September 13th from 12:30 – 1:30.  Please stop in to say hello, check in, and ask any questions you might have about your assignments for this class.  Attendance at office hours is not mandatory, but is encouraged!  Here is the link for our office hours: https://baruch.zoom.us/j/83345839831

Literacy Pre-Write Assignment

Length: 2-3 pages

Due: Sunday, Sept. 19th

Use this assignment as an opportunity to start gathering your thoughts and ideas for your upcoming Literacy Narrative.  This is not expected to be a tightly organized, focussed piece of work.  Instead, it is a chance to write freely, without fixed expectations, in an effort to excavate (dig up) some of your own literacy-related memories, family language stories, and thoughts and feelings about language, school, reading, and writing.  Here are some questions you might want to use as springboards for this writing.  I would suggest choosing one as your starting point and then seeing where it takes you.  Of course, if none of these ideas speaks to you, you are free to move in your own direction, provided you stick to our theme of literacy, which we understand broadly as our relationship to language and learning.

–Choose the reading that spoke to you most deeply.  Start crafting your own version of (or response to) that essay.  For example, maybe you were moved by Edward Jones’ story, so you choose to meditate on your own “first day” experience.

–What is your family’s “language story”?  How might you tell it?

–Describe a pivotal school experience.  How did it shape your sense of yourself as a student, a learner, a reader, a writer, a wielder of language, etc.  This could be a positive experience or it could be a painful or difficult experience.

–Tell a story about a parent or other person close to you that addresses our themes of language and literacy.  What does their story mean to you?

–What is a text (this could be written, or it could be something visual like a movie or television show) that is important to you and your personal history?  Describe its role in your development.

–How has your life required you to move between different languages? This could be literal bilingualism, or it could be simply shifting between various forms of English, as we move between family, friends, work, school, and our on-line communities.  What is at stake in these different linguistic spaces?  What does this shifting between languages mean to you?

–Who have the “gatekeepers” been in your literacy story?  Is there a person who looms large for you – either because he/she brought you closer to fulfilling your own identity as a wielder of language, or because he/she blocked your path and impeded your progress?