June 15, 1999
In response to your questions (or at least the first one), the one word which sums up this year in English would have to be "innovative". This year was not necessarily different than my previous experiences in English classes, but rather the approach that the curriculum was met by was new, innovative. The principle reason for the innovativeness of this year was the Internet portfolio, which opened up an unknown world to me (which I am proud to say I became reasonably acclimated to). I hope to set up my own site (devoted to Star Wars naturally) eventually.
This year in English lived up to most of my expectations. I had expected that the year would be full of reading and writing which would become painful to me. This was achieved, and the writing was painful too me (but it always is), however, I was surprised by the speed that the novels and stories were read. I mean, we read at least three novels in two months at the beginning of the year. In freshmen year English, I doubt we read that many novels in the first semester. I had expected to have to do independent reading like I did last year (completely isolated from the learning in class), but you were clever enough (devious enough?) to tell us that we would not be doing independent reading, and yet still get us to read at least six independent novels which were "linked" to the curriculum. Clever, I have to say. The class did not fall short of my expectations but normally went over what I had expected that we would do (for example, I thought that the reading of The Catcher in The Rye would be a simple analysis of that one book instead of a comparison of three).
Now I have to touch on the digital portfolio, because I feel it would be the one thing that I will remember (and probably the only thing that I will use) from this English class. You should definitely keep doing the Internet portfolio and promote it use in all of the english classrooms because it defeats the agony caused by the traditional portfolio and teaches a useful skill to its user (I know that I will definitely use this year and in later years). I can only hope that you will be successful in selling this idea to the teachers in the rest of the English department, so that I do not have to do a traditional portfolio in American Literature.
Having praised your English curriculum for the last couple of paragraphs it is now time to submit any gripes, complaints, or "improvements" that I feel could be used in the English class for next year's sophomores (not that I want to help them out at all). First off, you have the nasty habit of assigning huge projects without any warning. The research project came in this manner, and I ha little time to mentally prepare myself to accept the burden. Same goes for the Asher project. The quickness of these projects assignments caused much pain among myself and my classmates (not that it harmed my ability to do the project). Another spot for improvement is the number of journals which we had to do. There comes a point when writing journals that no new inferences or pieces of enlightenment can be found. I feel that you should limit the number of journals per book to three or five, and then maybe find some other form of writing to fill the rest of your writing requirement.
That is all that I have to say on the year. I am a concise writer (or maybe my brain is on vacation already). Have a good summer, and I will see you next year or on line in 2003 for Episode 2 tickets.
Sincerely,
Pete Yemc