Kicking Off the New Year! January 10, 2017

Focus: Where does our power come from?

1. Warming up with three good things (or more)

2. Enjoying a lightening round of "Yes, No, Maybe"

• Do your choices empower or disempower you?

3. Witnessing Benjamin Franklin's attempt to find power in perfection: Rationalism and Franklin's 13 virtues

4. Setting up your own virtue charts, which you'll be keeping until January 30

• Set up a 2nd Semester folder inside your American Lit folder.

• Start a document called "Virtue Chart" and place it in your 2nd semester folder.

• Click here to check out mine (feel free to use it as a template if you wish).

• A few suggestions on your virtue charts:

• When choosing verbs, go with "I will..." (studies show this leads to greater success in attaining goals).
• Explain carefully what each goal personally means to you.
• Be specific in your expectations; make them as measurable as you can.

5. Perusing the second semester syllabus and website

6. Watching the Harvard 2016 graduation speech (a spoken-word poem by Donovan Livingston)

• "Education is no equalizer; rather, it is the sleep that precedes the American Dream."

• "I've been the black hole in the classroom for far too long, absorbing everything without allowing my light to escape. But those days are done. I belong among the stars, and so do you."

• Understand: What do these lines mean? What do they mean to you?

• Reflect: Is your education empowering you or disempowering you? Did it empower your parents? Your grandparents? Your great-grandparents? In general, is public education (did)empowering America?

HW:

1. Please have your parents/guardians sign the class syllabus. Due Thursday, Jan 12.

2. Consider purchasing your own copies of The Color of Water (James McBride) and The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald).