Week 1 Assignments

Someone wrote to ask for further information about this week's assignments so I thought posting it here couldn't hurt. [R]est assured that this class will prepare you not only for future classes but for life by polishing your solution-finding, communication and collaboration skills using as many resources as we can in the short time we have together. This week's assignments are to start keeping a daily journal. It works for many people to write first thing in the morning about whatever is on their minds upon waking. They write about dreams, plans for the day, past arguments, what they'd like for dinner or what they're reading in this or other classes. It doesn't matter what you write about nor whether its clear or grammatically correct. It just matters that you discipline yourself to show up consistently to examine your own thinking. At the end of the week you will post a four-sentence paragraph summarizing your daily writing for the week and see how classmates have used the discipline in their lives, making sure to respond to at least two of their posts. Next, you will select three themes of literature and include them with your introduction. I have uploaded a file of themes since the link to the website seems to be unreliable so you can disregard the mention of three lists in the Welcome announcement & voice memo. After that, you will begin reading and taking notes on the first assigned reading, Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark, so that next week, when the Reading Journals are due, you'll be ready to post your thinking about it. A sample reading journal from another literature class will be made available shortly. I recently took a break from teaching Black Writers to design and deliver a course on Migrant Writers as our world continues to shrink and our survival depends on our ability to see each other clearly and work together effectively. Our stories, after all, are fundamentally the same. I hope this helps. I will post it on the course blog in case someone else would like to hear the instructions again or said differently. Looking forward! Dr. Laing Urbina