Eh 200 Summer 2010 Class 7

Housekeeping

Mini-Review: (Suggested: 5-10 Minutes)

The terms so far:

• PLAY: activities undertaken for amusement.

• INCOME: An individual’s financial means with respect to the financial means of other people within a given community or region.

• CLASS: An individual’s behavior with respect to the social standards of his or her community or region.

• LOW-CLASS: A selfish and potentially hurtful disregard for basic social standards.

• LOWER-INCOME: Generally, to lack the financial means to choose the materials one uses to meet basic needs: clothing, shelter, food, ect.

• SETTING: The geographic and social situation within which action occurs.

• BOREDOM:  The inability to demonstrate your desired level of “class” within a given “setting.”

• WORK: activities undertaken to maintain or advance a social position.

• TONE: An emotional quality or aspect of a literary work. The way the story or parts of the story makes you “feel.”

• ABSTRACT THINKING: Thinking characterized by the ability to use several concepts to make and understand arguments. The ability to understand the properties shared by a variety of specific items or events.

In-class Work: (Suggested: 10 Minutes)

• Look at your annotations. In your notebooks, create boxes for Setting, Class, Incomes, ect – fill these boxes with the relevant details you found in your annotations.

Group Work: (Suggested 10 Minutes)

• In your groups, I want you to discuss the following questions and come up with a statement for presentations:

• Part One) What does it mean to be a professional in the workforce?

• Part Two) What can “Mrs. Beazley’s Deeds” tell us about the basic struggles people may face when they aspire to a professional status? Use evidence from the boxes you just made in your notebooks.

Group Presentations: (5-10 minutes)

Class Discussion: (Suggested: 5 Minutes)

PROFESSIONAL: Someone who adheres to a specific set of ethical standards that privilege the interests of an occupation over  the interests of the worker.

WORKFORCE: An abstract concept that refers to all the individuals contributing to a nation’s economy at any one time.

In-Class Journal: (Suggested: 10 minutes)

How do people from different economic (income) backgrounds work? Describe to me how you envision lower-income, middle-income, and upper-income people your age working.  What are the similarities and differences?  Again, begin with definitions for these terms. We will discuss a class definition shortly.

Break

Group Discussion: (Suggested 5-10 Minutes)

Talk about the first difficult (notice that I did not say best or worst)job you held.  What was it about that job that you liked the most and least? Keep a list of your responses. Once you have done that, come up with a statement that identifies which income bracket that job might be associated with, and whether or not you would have considered yourself a professional in the workforce while you were working on this job.

Class Discussion: (Suggested: 5-10 Minutes)

How do you set up barriers between your work life and your non-work life? Why do we have these barriers, and why are they useful? What does it mean for someone to identify the “real world” as the work world? Where does that leave their “real life?”

In-class writing: (Suggested: 10 Minutes)

• How has your concept of work changed over the course of your life? Identify three major phases in your understanding of work.

Group Discussion:(Suggested: 10 Minutes)

• Discussion journal findings, and then take up a related question: how do your conceptions of class impact your understanding of work? What, if anything, does class have to do with work? Prepare a substantial two-paragraph presentation to deliver to the class. I will give you the needed time to do this.

Group Presentations: (5 minutes)

• No Leaning on the Podium

• No Hand in pockets

• No Hats

• Make meaningful eye contact with the audience

• Will be recorded for record, but will not be graded

Class Discussion of presentations (Suggested: 5 minutes)

• In-class journal: (Suggested: 5-7 minutes)

Relate the conversation we just had to two of the following three stories: “Mrs. Beazley’s Deeds,” “The Untold Lie,” and “The Gift of the Magi.”

Homework:

Two-Page Precis on “Mrs. Beazley’s Deeds”

Here, again, is the description of the Precis:

The Précis (Pray-SEE)

There are three simple parts to a Précis.

The point of a précis is to lay out an argument for an audience who needs to know about a text without reading the entire ten-, twelve- or twenty-page document. We have to inform the audience on the argument without “dumbing it down” or oversimplifying it!

To write a précis, you will need to incorporate direct quotations from a story to express those points that are better articulated by the author than you yourself could articulate them.

You will sometimes need to use words in quotes to emphasize the author’s original tone. It is hugely important that you do not comment on or editorialize the story. Do not use “I” anywhere in this piece.

You will need to paraphrase quite a bit in this document. The point here is to report on the narrator’s comments, and to leave your own opinions at the door (there will be time enough for voicing your opinions in the future).

The three parts of the précis: Situation, Issue, Thesis

*Each section should be titled as such. This is okay in a précis.

Situation

·         The very beginning of your précis.

·         It should lay out what the audience needs to know about the author, the full title (including subtitle), and whatever publication info you have in MLA style (except for the author’s name which should be done first name first).

·         Next, you need to establish the basic context for the writing: who is writing it (what do we know about the author and or his or her position, profession etc), to whom are they addressing the piece (audience), when was it written, and whether there is any particular EVENT that has driven this response. Some stories may have this, and some may not. You can expect to take the better part of a paragraph to convey this information.

·         SITUATE the writing for an audience who WILL NOT READ THE FULL STORY. What general information do they need to know about it in order to have a clear idea of what the story is about?

Section II

Issue

·         The author may use culturally specific lingo in the argument. You need to begin your ISSUE section by defining these terms for the contemporary reader. Clarify for the ready any terms or phrases you think may cause him or her difficulty.

·         Lay out the basic questions that the author addresses or raises about the nature of play (or work) and how it relates to lower-income financial status and setting.

·         END WITH THE MAJOR QUESTION ABOUT THE NATURE OF PLAY (or work) and how it relates to lower-income financial status and setting. The major issue question is the question the author attempts to illuminate.

Section III

Thesis

·         Thesis section. This is where the THESIS appears (the statement or argument the story appears to be making about the nature of play and its relationship to lower-income financial status and setting).

·         It is also where the other, secondary claims about the nature of play (or work) and its relationship to lower-income financial status and setting and evidence for those claims (as well as the major claim) will appear.

·         This is the lion’s share of the précis.

Beginning Paper Two:

Paper Two prompt. At this point, you have read three stories, all of which touch on issues related to play and work, though in different ways. You job is to draft a paper that clearly articulates how and why specific scenes from one of these stories either relate or do not relate to work as the concept can be related to concepts of income and class.

This paper will, again, require that you develop good working definitions for your key terms, and then that you develop your argument and explanations through close readings of the stories in question.

First two pages are due next class, and we will begin working on this today.