January 8, 2013 (sent January 20, 2013; revised
January 23, 2013)
Dear Students:
This semester is pretty auspicious, so I hesitate to veer from the norm and not capitalize on the historic events of the day, yet I shall. Why would the framers of our Constitution include the words in the same breath as “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men (and women and girls and boys of course) are created equal— It took a minute well really centuries for the fairer sex to get equal consideration as people equal to men. Did you know that the question was raised when President Johnson signed the Equal Rights Amendment?
But back to the line in question: “That all are endowed with inalienable rights, among them: life, liberty and the pursuit of ‘happyness’” (a la Will Smith (smile).
What is it about happiness that makes it a worthy pursuit, which means one should consciously strive to achieve it? If one is unhappy, what does that do to the collective or society?
Is happiness something one can share or is it a selfish pursuit that inherently just benefits its seeker? Can one be too happy? How does one balance this happiness thing with the potential for doldrums or routine?
Well, on my way to the funeral of the matriarch in my family last November, I picked up a book at the San Francisco airport called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I thought immediately that perhaps we could spend Spring Semester pursuing our inalienable right while getting paid for it (smile).
Grades are the paycheck, right?
Rubin spent a year on her Happiness Project, so we are just going to fast forward her project with the hopes that students might continue on their own for the rest of the year into January 2014.
Since I am waiting to start my Happiness Project with you, I am not sure how mine will look either, but we will have Rubin’s as a model, along with others students will research “happiness”, interview “happy people” and draw inferences from the research to support arguments and hypothesis on this elusive yet important phenomenon, HAPPINESS.
All five classes will read The Happiness Project, what we do with the book will vary though. In English 5 the query will look at defining Happiness; and writing multiple arguments using happiness as the topic: Rogerian, Aristotelian, and Toulmin. Out textbook: Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, will give us the terms so that we can become more conversant around the topic of argument or critical thinking.
In English 5 we will also read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Tim Wise’s Dear White America. A lot of work for 3 units (smile).
If everything we do is connected in some way to this “alienable right,” then what would Baldwin say to this happiness question? What would the white America Wise addresses say?
What would Martin King say or our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln?
According to the film, Lincoln, perhaps the president would say, passing the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution which ended the war, would make and did make him happy.
Similarly, Martin King, the great Civil Rights leader might say that passing legislation that ensured that citizens would not be treated differently based on the color of their skin, would make him happy.
As we look at great people and lesser known persons this semester, perhaps people closest to us, we might find that the path to happiness, while varied and uneven and often difficult to tread , the result for at least Martin King and Abraham Lincoln, the Dali Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi, Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker and Frederick Douglass, and Huey P. Newton, Kwami Ture or Kathleen Cleaver.
How does your pursuit of happiness overlap or cover similar territory? At the end of the first quarter of this year long journey we shall see.
The persons (2-3) we chose to investigate regarding this thing called “happiness,” can be both historic and contemporary, which means that one subject can be dead the other alive. One of these people has to have written a book about their “pursuit” or journey.
In English 1A students will read selected essays from Models for Writers (Hybrid English 1A), 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology (all other English 1As) and from Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence 1818-1913 edited by Alice Moore Dunbar. Again students will be responsible for researching 2-3 persons who exemplify happy people (smile).
The Happiness Project will consist of journals and reflections and short essays, plus a self-reflection on your plan for happiness over the coming year or 12 months, similar to Gretchen Rubin’s. All of these writings will be pulled together in a class portfolio which students will share toward the end of the semester at a poster presentation. We will invite the Alameda citizenry and the Peralta college community to join us.
All the classes, both English 1A and English 5 will present together that evening.
Other texts are our trusty grammar style book, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers, English 1A, and They Say, I Say for non-Hybrid English 1A as well. A college dictionary is also required for English 1A and English 5. Again, English 5 will use Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, Sixth Edition, Sheila Cooper and Rosemary Patton. (Do not purchase earlier or later versions.) Hacker is recommended for English 5. However, any other grammar style book a student owns with updated MLA guidelines is fine for use.
One complaint I get regarding my teaching style is that students are asked to juggle multiple balls simultaneously – at certain times during the semester, students will be reading more than one text and working on more than one piece of writing—not due at the same time, but overlapping. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the beast—while we work on developing our writing muscles with nutritional reading such as the essays and books I have already mentioned, students will be thinking about their own happiness (smile) and how they plan to shape their literature study for the 2-3 essays profiling happy people this semester. Again for English 1A, students need to read a book connected to the topic as well. Rubin has a great glossary, but it is not exhaustive.
When one thinks about Django, Tarantino’s block buster, the protagonist’s happiness is linked to that of his wife. As long as Hildy is enslaved, he is not free nor happy. Doc’s happiness is linked to Django, whom he freed, but more so, Doc comes to realize that when one deals in flesh, whether that is as a bounty hunter or as a slave master, one’s hands are dirty, the type of dirt one cannot wash off. His commitment to Django is a way to cleanse his soul.
Is the hero’s journey or quest to attain happiness or is happiness bound to the journey not the destination? Martin King said in his last speech before he was killed, that he might not get to the Promised Land with us, but the absence of a milk honey payoff was fine for him.
When one’s soul is satisfied, is that happiness? Is this how people who are terminally ill, give us hope? Think about Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
As with all great academic plans, success is measured by how engaged students are by the process. I hope everyone finds the idea of researching how one pursues his or her bliss in an academic forum intriguing and fun. Granted you will be writing papers and reading books and essays to learn more about the subject, but Rubin’s year long journey has met rave reviews and she even has a website which we will visit for support (smile).
Each class has a blog where I post summaries of the class, along with assignments. Last semesters we spent quite a bit of time in groups and students seemed to really enjoy this process of peer to peer work. Also towards the end of the first quarter we start to spend time in a classroom with technology. Students who have laptops are encouraged to bring them to class.
English 5
http://sabirscoaenglish5.blogspot.com/
Dear Students:
This semester is pretty auspicious, so I hesitate to veer from the norm and not capitalize on the historic events of the day, yet I shall. Why would the framers of our Constitution include the words in the same breath as “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men (and women and girls and boys of course) are created equal— It took a minute well really centuries for the fairer sex to get equal consideration as people equal to men. Did you know that the question was raised when President Johnson signed the Equal Rights Amendment?
But back to the line in question: “That all are endowed with inalienable rights, among them: life, liberty and the pursuit of ‘happyness’” (a la Will Smith (smile).
What is it about happiness that makes it a worthy pursuit, which means one should consciously strive to achieve it? If one is unhappy, what does that do to the collective or society?
Is happiness something one can share or is it a selfish pursuit that inherently just benefits its seeker? Can one be too happy? How does one balance this happiness thing with the potential for doldrums or routine?
Well, on my way to the funeral of the matriarch in my family last November, I picked up a book at the San Francisco airport called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I thought immediately that perhaps we could spend Spring Semester pursuing our inalienable right while getting paid for it (smile).
Grades are the paycheck, right?
Rubin spent a year on her Happiness Project, so we are just going to fast forward her project with the hopes that students might continue on their own for the rest of the year into January 2014.
Since I am waiting to start my Happiness Project with you, I am not sure how mine will look either, but we will have Rubin’s as a model, along with others students will research “happiness”, interview “happy people” and draw inferences from the research to support arguments and hypothesis on this elusive yet important phenomenon, HAPPINESS.
All five classes will read The Happiness Project, what we do with the book will vary though. In English 5 the query will look at defining Happiness; and writing multiple arguments using happiness as the topic: Rogerian, Aristotelian, and Toulmin. Out textbook: Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, will give us the terms so that we can become more conversant around the topic of argument or critical thinking.
In English 5 we will also read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Tim Wise’s Dear White America. A lot of work for 3 units (smile).
If everything we do is connected in some way to this “alienable right,” then what would Baldwin say to this happiness question? What would the white America Wise addresses say?
What would Martin King say or our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln?
According to the film, Lincoln, perhaps the president would say, passing the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution which ended the war, would make and did make him happy.
Similarly, Martin King, the great Civil Rights leader might say that passing legislation that ensured that citizens would not be treated differently based on the color of their skin, would make him happy.
As we look at great people and lesser known persons this semester, perhaps people closest to us, we might find that the path to happiness, while varied and uneven and often difficult to tread , the result for at least Martin King and Abraham Lincoln, the Dali Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi, Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker and Frederick Douglass, and Huey P. Newton, Kwami Ture or Kathleen Cleaver.
How does your pursuit of happiness overlap or cover similar territory? At the end of the first quarter of this year long journey we shall see.
The persons (2-3) we chose to investigate regarding this thing called “happiness,” can be both historic and contemporary, which means that one subject can be dead the other alive. One of these people has to have written a book about their “pursuit” or journey.
In English 1A students will read selected essays from Models for Writers (Hybrid English 1A), 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology (all other English 1As) and from Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence 1818-1913 edited by Alice Moore Dunbar. Again students will be responsible for researching 2-3 persons who exemplify happy people (smile).
The Happiness Project will consist of journals and reflections and short essays, plus a self-reflection on your plan for happiness over the coming year or 12 months, similar to Gretchen Rubin’s. All of these writings will be pulled together in a class portfolio which students will share toward the end of the semester at a poster presentation. We will invite the Alameda citizenry and the Peralta college community to join us.
All the classes, both English 1A and English 5 will present together that evening.
Other texts are our trusty grammar style book, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers, English 1A, and They Say, I Say for non-Hybrid English 1A as well. A college dictionary is also required for English 1A and English 5. Again, English 5 will use Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, Sixth Edition, Sheila Cooper and Rosemary Patton. (Do not purchase earlier or later versions.) Hacker is recommended for English 5. However, any other grammar style book a student owns with updated MLA guidelines is fine for use.
One complaint I get regarding my teaching style is that students are asked to juggle multiple balls simultaneously – at certain times during the semester, students will be reading more than one text and working on more than one piece of writing—not due at the same time, but overlapping. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the beast—while we work on developing our writing muscles with nutritional reading such as the essays and books I have already mentioned, students will be thinking about their own happiness (smile) and how they plan to shape their literature study for the 2-3 essays profiling happy people this semester. Again for English 1A, students need to read a book connected to the topic as well. Rubin has a great glossary, but it is not exhaustive.
When one thinks about Django, Tarantino’s block buster, the protagonist’s happiness is linked to that of his wife. As long as Hildy is enslaved, he is not free nor happy. Doc’s happiness is linked to Django, whom he freed, but more so, Doc comes to realize that when one deals in flesh, whether that is as a bounty hunter or as a slave master, one’s hands are dirty, the type of dirt one cannot wash off. His commitment to Django is a way to cleanse his soul.
Is the hero’s journey or quest to attain happiness or is happiness bound to the journey not the destination? Martin King said in his last speech before he was killed, that he might not get to the Promised Land with us, but the absence of a milk honey payoff was fine for him.
When one’s soul is satisfied, is that happiness? Is this how people who are terminally ill, give us hope? Think about Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.
As with all great academic plans, success is measured by how engaged students are by the process. I hope everyone finds the idea of researching how one pursues his or her bliss in an academic forum intriguing and fun. Granted you will be writing papers and reading books and essays to learn more about the subject, but Rubin’s year long journey has met rave reviews and she even has a website which we will visit for support (smile).
Each class has a blog where I post summaries of the class, along with assignments. Last semesters we spent quite a bit of time in groups and students seemed to really enjoy this process of peer to peer work. Also towards the end of the first quarter we start to spend time in a classroom with technology. Students who have laptops are encouraged to bring them to class.
English 5
http://sabirscoaenglish5.blogspot.com/
English 5 Class code: 20134 11-12:15 TTh in A-202 Texts:
Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, 6th Edition. There is a 7th edition, get the older one. Here is a link to used copies: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Logically-Thinking-Critically-Edition/dp/B0058GX0SA
A Grammar Style Book. I recommend Hacker: Rules for Writers: Seventh Edition by Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers
Tim Wise's Dear White America
James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time
Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project
All English classes for Week beginning January 21, 2013
We will read selected essays to review basic writing concepts and forms (handouts and links to on-line sources).
If students are technically challenged or impaired, he or
she can get help in the Writing Center and in the Open Lab, both located on the
second floor of the Learning Resource Center (LRC). The library is on the first
floor. There is a Student Meet and Greet this Friday afternoon, January 18,
2013.
I will return to Alameda, Tuesday evening, so my MTWTh English 1A and TTh English 5 classes will meet me Thursday. I have a call out to a faulty person to stand in for me, but all they will do is give you a copy of this letter, tell you to check the blog for the first assignment, which is a reading assignment. (No one responded to my request last week, so there will be no one to meet you and give you this letter. Do not come to class Tuesday.)
They will also have paper copies of the essay I’d like students to read and reflect on. Books are coming in late, I was told, so if students like you can order the books on your own. Models has an e-format, which seems perfect for a Hybrid class.
Peace and Blessings,
Professor Wanda Sabir
I will return to Alameda, Tuesday evening, so my MTWTh English 1A and TTh English 5 classes will meet me Thursday. I have a call out to a faulty person to stand in for me, but all they will do is give you a copy of this letter, tell you to check the blog for the first assignment, which is a reading assignment. (No one responded to my request last week, so there will be no one to meet you and give you this letter. Do not come to class Tuesday.)
They will also have paper copies of the essay I’d like students to read and reflect on. Books are coming in late, I was told, so if students like you can order the books on your own. Models has an e-format, which seems perfect for a Hybrid class.
Peace and Blessings,
Professor Wanda Sabir
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