April 24-April 28
Staff development is Thursday, April 27; then on Friday, April 28, I will be away at a conference. Take this time to work on your first draft of the research essay. It is due, with reviews attached of teachers in the Writing Center, for English 201, Monday, May 1; second draft, Wednesday, May 3, final draft, with another teacher and/or peer review attached Wednesday, May 10.

English 1A, Tuesday/Thursday, your draft for peer review is due, Thursday, May 9. The final draft is due Thursday, May 11.

Wednesday class: Your first draft for peer review is due, Wednesday, April 26; second draft is due Wednesday, May 3. Final draft is due, Wednesday, May 10.

The Writing Center is in L-234; 748-2132. There are evening hours M-Th.

It's time for the home stretch
Mood:  happy
I hope everyone had a relaxing Spring Recess. I was surprised to note, only three students posted their essays. Of the three, only one person identified herself. If you don't tell me who you are, I can't give you credit; also students were supposed to indicate what draft the paper was and the grade.

Get to it people: Love essay, Midterm, and CoM or RFR essays.

The research essay is due next week. The outline was due Thursday or Friday, April 27 or 28, but there is no school 4/27 and I am at a conference 4/28. Arrange to have a teacher critique your essay next week, sign it and then revise your essay with his or her comments in mind. I will not take essays that do not have a teacher/tutor's signature with comments.

Have the teacher or tutor look at your thesis, support, essay structure, coherence and logic. This draft is due, Monday or Tuesday, May 1 or 2.

It's your responsibility to keep up with dates. If one slips by and the assignment is not in, your grade suffers.

I will not take any research essays past the due date, so plan accordingly. One student in English 201 has completed his essay. I will ask him to post it after I read and grade it.

For the rest of the semester, English 201 will focus on completing the rest of WWT and CoM. We will apply some of the strategies learned in WWT in essays from CoM.

English 1A: we will practice creating and defending arguments; and perhaps look further at reasonable or rational thinking. Also, students will be encouraged to polish their skills where weak so they are prepared for further adventures.

The portfolio checklist is coming soon. I'm still working on the cyber-version of this. I'll keep you posted.

If you have any questions ask them, please, then look here for my response.

Teacher Favorites
You are such great writers that sometimes I ask for copies of work. Please post those essays here. Again indicate the assignment, date of assignment, and the grade history, which means what you did specifically to boost the grade.

If any of you have missed a lot of assignments, you can still pass the course. Come see me at my office hours, between classes MWF -- 12-1 p.m., or call me (510) 748-2131 and/or e-mail me wanda_sabir@yahoo.com.

Thanks!

Civil Rights Movement, Ready for Revolution, etc.
Post your Children of the Movement Essays here English 201 students, along with your earlier essays written in January defining the Civil Rights Movement.

English 1A students, post your Ready for Revolution essays here, along with your Steele essay, and your response to the Bayard Rustin film.

I will respond to essays with a grade, if the essay is a revision. Please indicate your grade on these essays and what draft it is.

Love Essays Posted
Post your revised love papers at this link by Friday, April 7. If this is a revision, post both drafts, so I can see what happened to the essay and assign a new grade. If this is the first draft, state at the end of the essay or at the beginning: I received a 4, 5, 6 etc., on this essay.

English 1A essays will be mixed in with English 201. Make certain you indicate the class.

Midterm Essays Posted by April 10
Post your revised midterm essays here. I will respond with a grade for each essay. Remember this class is an exercise in argument. Your essays are the proof or evidence required for the grade you say you earned in your portfolio -- no essays, no evidence.

April 3-7: Happy Spring!
It's been a couple of weeks since I checked in with folks. Hope you're surviving the semester now that spring is here, and have taken advantage of the rain -- collected in puddles along the rear of the campus...the fertile earth your feet sink into as you run across campus and the friendly geese who continue to fertilize the grasses.

We've been looking at argumentation. I showed a film on the topic and we've completed the chapter in Diana Hacker's Rules for Writers on Argument, completed and graded the exercises at the end of the chapter where students are asked to name the fallacious arguments.

The most common fallacies are: either/or p. 362, argument with missing claim p. 362, non-sequitar p. 363, untrue premise p. 363, false analogy p. 360, false cause and effect or post hoc, ergo proter hoc p. 360-1, biased language, language which is carries mostly negative connotations not based on fact p. 359,365, which includes a lot of things such as: hasty generalization p. 359, stereotypes p. 359, ad hominem where the person is attacked the argument p.365, transfer p. 365, bandwagon, and red herring p. 365. If you don't have Hacker, I copied this section for students. Ask me for a copy.

We watched a film by Jean Kilbourne called Killing Us Softly, a short video which looked at how sexuality, namely that of women and girls is used to sell products and its subtle influence on the way women and girls are perceived in American society.

This was accompanied by a essay: Propaganda Techniques by Barbara McClintock, which students were to read and notice the similarities between the propaganda techniques and the logic fallacies both material and formal, that is flaws in the way words are used --inductive reasoning and flaws in the form -- the major, minor or conclusion or deductive argument.

Students were to answer all the questions at the end of the McClintock essay, then choose one of the five writing assignments and respond in 250 words by Friday, March 31.

The initial planning sheet was due weeks ago, so Hacker: pp. 370-373 should be review. I have returned all of the IPS, I received.

Homework for March 29 and March 31 was to complete the bibliography and bring to class on Monday to share. See Hacker pp. 396-400.

Complete the schedule on page 370 also, and read pp. 370-395. You should be sleeping with this chapter under your pillow. If you do not own Hacker, go to the library borrow the book from the reference section and copy the chapter then put it under your pillow after you read it.

Go to the website for Hacker where indicated and practice: 373, 380, 386, 395, 402, 403, 406, 422, 432, 447. Also, use the College of Alameda website "library" for assistance on managing information, search engines and how to avoid plagiarism.

I posited the claim that all conflict was the result of miscommunication. We had just finished watching Brandy's video about two guys who wanted one girl, her choices and the guys' disagreement.

We defined the words "objective" and "disinterested" and came to the conclusion that to be objective one had to be interested and care about the outcome of whatever was being discussed.

I maintained that none of us is truly objective and knowing this helps us achieve a greater sense of objectivity because we are aware of the limited vision our rose-colored-glasses afford us... a.k.a. baggage: the experiences we've had which prejudice us, often unconsciously, towards the issue at hand.

Our innate biases, once recognized, help us move from a bigoted state to simply a place of "not knowing." How does the saying go? When one knows better one does better.

We can only hope the baggage will get lighter as more light comes in and our eyes see farther and more clearly despite the glasses which according to philosopher Emmanuel Kant we can't remove. Therein lies the handicap, if you believe his theory.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week we will have conferences, so bring in all your papers so we can talk about your work and how you can earn the grade you desire. Briefly, deep profound discussions which tackle complex ideas with acuity and grace will receive As. Such a paper shows the writer's expertise in handling her topic. The paper is structurally sound and is not ambiguous. See Clarity p. 83 in Hacker. Such papers do not have to be perfect, but they should be void of simple grammatical and errors such as: run-on sentences, sentence fragments, verb tense problems, subject-verb agreement problems, missing words, wrong words.There should be no structural errors. See Hacker: The Writing Process.

Bring your questions to the conference. You know how I feel about Cs. If you've done your best, a C grade is nothing to be ashamed of. C- is not a passing grade, so if your work is getting 3/4s then you should be worried. Passing grades are 4,5,6s.

For English 201 we have read and completed the Narrative, Description, Examples essays. We are in Chapter 4 now and your Process Essay will be due April 17 -- you can write it that day and turn it in Wednesday, April 19. It should be at least 500 words. We have read Corn Bread with Character, 12 Steps to Quit Smoking, How to Make a House Look Good in a Hurry.

Homework for April 5: How to Write a Personal Letter p. 143.

Children of the Movement: We completed The Next Generation. Students were to answer the questions posed in the assignment sheet for Julie Guyot and Andrew "Bo" Young III. This 500 word essay was due last week: March 26, 29 or 31.

Children of the Segregationists: Essay 1 pp. 119-130, was assigned. Please read it and the next essay on Ouida Barnett Atkins pp. 131-142 by April 19. For each essay write a brief summary of about 250 words. The summary is an essay not a paragraph.

Final Exam for English 201
Your final will look at the Civil Rights Movement from three perspectives: an academic scholar who put the movement in perspective, a parent whose child was profiled in CoM, a child of a CR Veteran. The question I want your paper to answer is, Where do we go from here?

Look at current pending legislation such as: the federal immigration bill being considered, the legislation passed which makes abortion illegal in the state of Denver?... etc., to couch your critique or analysis of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Segregationist Movement, and other movements then and now.

Films in English 1A
We watched the films: Shakespeare behind Bars in English 1A. The film look at the issue of rehabilitation, and the role theatre can and does play in the lives of the men profiled, many serving long sentences for violent crimes.

We explored the term in the Wednesday night class and used the class time to analysis the arguments the men posed to explain their thinking when they committed the crimes they were charged with. It is interesting to note, not one man spoke of wrongful conviction.

In the TTh English 1A class we also watch a film about DNA evidence used to exonerate innocent men who were serving terms for crimes they did not commit.

Earlier this semester we watched: King of the BINGO Game based on a short story by Ralph Elison, and The Murder of Emmitt Till. Papers were assigned for the Till film that discussed the concept of "strong women."

In the TTh English 1A we watched a film on Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin and responded to the film in essays discussing the debate Rustin had with Malcolm X or other essays posted at pbs.org.

Final Exam in English 1A
English 1A students will look at a big topic such as: war, prison, public education, poverty, electoral politics, hunger, family, and discuss it from the point of view of an expert, a primary source or case study, and from personal experience. This will be 3 pages.

In Dreams and Inward Journeys: Owning Your Own Shadow, assigned 3/21; Henry Jekyll's Full Statement p. 393; Being Black and Feeling Blue p. 406 assigned the day of midterm; Ideologies of Madness p. 418, assigned March 30; Us and Them p. 427, assigned 4/18; I Like Guys p. 349, assigned 4/25; A New Vision of Masculinity p. 358, assigned 4/27.

Wednesday night class, proceed chronologically in the assignments listed.

Crash Sample Essay, First Draft (Unedited)
So far, I have been pleased with the level of creativity and writing response to the essay topic: Racism and Bigotry as seen through the characters in the film: Crash. I am pleased that students watched the film, read reviews and other discussion about the film, watched interviews with actors and identified characters by name (and actors) in the essay. This shows a high level of competence and scholarship!

In my English 1A class last night, I had students both print copies of their essays and e-mail me a copy. I wanted to share an essay with you that worked structurally and also stylistically for those students who are still unclear about the assignment or how well you did. Models are often helpful. This is a first draft, so it's not perfect.I did tweak the thesis.

I graded the essays right away and each student has the opportunity to revise it for next week in this class. The essay I showed you has a "C-", because of the surface and grammatical errors. It could easily get a "B" once revised.

Thanks for sending me the "Love" essays. I'd like to do another anthology on these essays too, as well as a final compilation on the social entrepreneurs.

Please feel free to comment on the assignment and/or the essay.


John Doe
Eng 1A Midterm
Wed., March 15, 5-9 pm
Professor Wanda Sabir
Character: "Anthony"; actor: Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges

Film: “Crash” The Lion Gates’ Film

Untitled Essay

Two Police detectives, a Persian store owner, a Mexican locksmith, a Television director and his wife, two black car jackers, and two white cops. They all live in Los Angeles, and during the next 36 hours, “moving at the speed of life, they are bound to collide with each other. The Lion Gate Films’ “Crash” takes a provocative, unflinching look at the complexities of racial tolerance in contemporary American” (www.crashfilm.com). We find that race is an indicator of privilege or power in the film, yet people avoid to acting like racists, at least in public.

Anthony, a black car jacker, a memorable character in “Crash”, who claim that certain stereotype prejudiced blacks. First, blacks are high criminal rate, thus all blacks are dangerous and threaten. Second, blacks are always define in the low income level, thus they can’t get attention or service they deserved to receive. In “Crash”, Anthony play a significant role to argue that black people are stereotyped and treated unfairly in the area of class and race, crime and punishment.

How black people are treated unfairly? A memorable quote from “Crash” said Anthony, “That woman poured cup after cup to every white person around us. Did she even ask you if you wanted any? That waitress sized us up in two seconds. We are black and black people don’t tip”. As Anthony cannot receive service as the white people do, Anthony claim that he was treated unfairly because of black people don’t tip or black people are poor.

In contrast, Anthony also has taken advantage of the stereotype. As a car jacker, he didn’t feel guilty even when he knocked down an old man. Anthony has no moral idea as he think that he was treated unfairly. Anthony also feels very proud that he doesn’t jacked black people. Because of the stereotype of black people are always criminal, Anthony feel that he has no guilty to be a criminal.

An event that changes Anthony’s life is when he jacked the television director-Cameron’s car. Anthony did not jacked Cameron’s car because he does not jack black people but Cameron told him, “You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself”. After that, Anthony started to think about his life. Anthony began to face problems and not to use stereotype as excuses to be a criminal. At the last scene of the film, Anthony set several illegal immigrants free because he doesn’t want them being slave.

In “Crash”, multi –ethnic cast of characters’ struggle to overcome their weakness as Anthony does. In the gray between black and white, victim and aggressor, there are no easy answers. Just like Anthony, he may or may not be punish for his crime and he may or may not be success for his quitting of crime. Life is full of risk and probability, we are only human and we cannot figure out the answer over a hundred years. To conclude, stereotype of race can give disadvantages but stereotype of race can be an indicator of privilege or power.

Strong Women: Mamie Till Mobley
Essay due 3/10: Using Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley as an example, discuss the qualities of a strong woman. The essay should be 250-500 words min. Visit http://www.emmetttillstory.com/ and also pbs.org. Stanley Nelson also directed a film on Emmett Till.

English 201: Read the essay on Erica Abrams in CoM. Her mother Elaine Brown thinks she did a horrible job as a parent. Do you think she's too hard on herself? (You don't have to write a summary. I just want you to have a context to talk about Mrs. Till-Mobley.)

Extra Credit: Watch the six-part series on the white family who is camouflaged as black and the black family who is camouflaged as white. The show starts tonight, March 8, 10 p.m. on FX. You can make weekly entries or you can watch the entire series then analyze what issues came up for the participants around race, class and power, and how this is uniquely American.

Watch the film Crash this weekend. Everyone will be assigned their character to analyze in an essay. The question is: How is race an indicator of privilege or power? What does your character change to make him or herself more powerful? Does it work?

What role does your character carry in the story? What is his or her argument?

All Classes: Please email me a copy of your Love Essay. I want to put them in a book. I need them no later than Friday, March 17. Please send to wanda_sabir@yahoo.com

Out and about: Breaking Rank: Women of Color Soldiers Speak Out! The program is tonight, March 8, 6:30-9 p.m. at the First Unitarian Church, 685 14th Street, Oakland. For information visit www.coloredgirls.org or call(510)444-2700.

On Friday, March 10, 8:30-2:30 you can attend the "Sustainable Peralta Initiative" Conference at Laney College. If you go and write about it, you can have an excused absence. I will be showing the Oprah show where she hosted the Crash cast. We will have our midterm on Wednesday-Thursday, March 15-16. Students can bring in outlines, a thesis sentence, notes, and any other support materials such as film reviews, analysis or articles you'd like to cite.

Laney is also hosting a series of events for Women's Herstory Month. The Vagina Monologues are being performed Thursday-Friday, March 9-10. Visit http://laney.peralta.edu/womenherstoriesmonth

Homework for March 6, English 201
Read WWT pp. 97-98, 99-108. Bring in any questions you might have from the previous chapter "Description," or this one "Examples."

In CoM you should have read the Ralph David Abernathy III essay, pp. 49-57. Does he remind you a little of MLK III? Read Michael Julian Bond for Wednesday, pp. 58-67.

Write summaries for both.