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World Studies Essential Questions
Who am I? Who are you? Who are we?
How do we form a successful class, community, society?
How do I tell a story? How do I become an author?
How are these questions related?
Goals for World Studies:
By the end of this class:
1) You will have a thorough grounding in the core works of Western Civilization (500-1500 A.D.)
2) You will have an equally thorough grounding in essential study skills (organization, note-taking,
active reading, research)
3) You will have a deeper understanding of non-western cultures and religions
4) You will become a more effective writer, a more careful reader, a more confident speaker, and a
more tenacious thinker
5) You will become a wiser, more discerning consumer of media; one who understands the larger
historical context of current events
6) You will understand how to tell a story and how to be an author (and to discern authorial intent)
7) You will become the author of your own education
8) You will think about your own thinking and become more aware of how you learn best
9) You will take collective ownership for the mission of our class: to gain deeper understanding
10) You will become equally comfortable and adept at zooming IN (to analyze specific
details/evidence in a work of art/literature/history) and zooming OUT (to see the big picture, the
MOWAW, connections between works and disciplines, and to gain both critical
distance/perspective and metacognitive self-awareness).
11) You will develop FLEXPERTISE, the ability to see connections beteen and across works and
disciplines.
12) You will cultivate the “incurable, fearless habit of asking questions.”
13) You will…[insert your own goals here]_____________________________________________.
Teaching Philosophy: “Always I encourage, always.”—W.B. Yeats
"Life is where you get to be both the main character and the author at the same time."-- Jean Paul Sartre
“Joan Didion, in her White Album, once wrote, ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We interpret what
we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, if we are writers, by the imposition of a
narrative line upon disparate images...’ I think, however, that we are all writers really--authors of our own selfnarratives.”—David Dunbar
Course Overview and Key Works:
This year we will focus on the East during the first semester, the West during the second semester, then end
the year with a capstone unit on encounters between the East and West. Here is a rough outline for our year:
Semester 1: The East
Unit 1: Africa
Unit 2: India
Unit 3: China and East Asia
Semester 2: The West
Unit 4: Early Christianity
Unit 5: Medieval Europe
Unit 6: The Middle East (Islam and Judaism)
Unit 7: East Meets West (Capstone)
Over the course of the year you will receive many handouts from both of your instructors, and many
handouts will be posted on Mr. Gregory’s website. In addition to these extra readings, here are the major texts
you will be required to own and which you must be prepared to bring to class on short notice:
History: Strayer, Ways of the World: A Brief Global History: Volume 1: to 1500
Literature: Hesse, Siddhartha; Achebe, Things Fall Apart; Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice; The
Norton Anthology of World Lit. Volume B; MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
Notebook and Materials:
You will keep one large, highly organized three-ring binder for this course. You should plan to use dividers to
create one section per unit. You should bring your binder to class every day and keep it stocked with an
ample supply of loose-leaf paper. Periodically you will be graded on the contents and organization of your
notebook.
Journals:
We would like you to have a journal that stays in the classroom. You will use this journal on a regular basis
for informal in-class writings about course content. Details about the specific kind of journal will be provided
later, but know that these “writing-to-learn” assignments will play an important role in this course. We will
write in these journals almost every day, and you will use these entries on your mid-year and final exams.
FreeForums Fridays:
You will be asked to post weekly (for class every Friday) to our class FreeForums site. Often you will be
asked to respond to the posts made by your peers (and this often will include students from other sections of
World Studies).
Story Saturdays:
For class every Saturday, you will actively read and thoroughly annotate a short story. Mr. Gregory will
evaluate the quantity and quality of your annotations (each annotation will be worth 20 points). The purpose
of these weekly annotations is to hone your active reading skills and to help you answer the following
questions:
1. What story is the author telling?
2. How is the author telling this story? (What techniques is the author using?)
3. Why is the author telling this story? (How does the author want the audience to respond? What is
the author’s intent?)
4. To whom is the author telling the story? (Who is the audience?)
5. How can I tell a story like this?
I will select the best annotation each Saturday, scan it, and have the class annotate the annotations. The
original author will thus receive feedback from the entire class.
Monthly Map Quizzes: http://www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz/
For each unit we will have a map quiz. You will be responsible for learning the basic geography of the region
we are studying. Every student will keep taking an on-line quiz on the region until they earn a perfect score.
You may take the quiz as many times as you like, but you will need to keep taking it until you earn a perfect
score.
Data Days:
On a weekly basis, we will analyze data from charts, graphs, polls, and maps. We will practice reading such
data closely and carefully, with a balance of openness and skepticism. We will wrestle to draw conclusions
from such data and look for connections to other sources of information and other works we have studied.
We may work in teams to read, analyze, and present findings about these charts. And we may even create our
own graphs to organize and present data visually: http://davidwarlick.com/graphicaday/
Grading:
General Philosophy
The penalty for late assignments is one full letter grade (10 pts.) for every day that an assignment is overdue.
You should plan to spend an average of 30-45 minutes a day on homework for both the English and the
history components of this class—that is, you will have up to an hour and a half of WS homework every
night of the week. Once a week, however, no homework will be assigned. If a reading assignment takes you
longer than 45 minutes for a single night, you should let your teachers know so they can adjust the length of
the reading assignments or give you extra time to complete the reading.
Grading Breakdown
You will receive detailed information for each semester on the relative weight of important assignments.
Here is a general guide to serve as a point of departure:
- Quizzes, Harkness discussions, active reading checks, and other short assignments will be worth 10 points.
- Current Events reports, story annotations, freeforums posts, binder checks, map quizzes, and other
medium-sized assignments will be worth 20-50 points
- Shorter papers, timed essays, tests, and major presentations will be worth 100 points
- Research papers and semester projects will be worth between 200 and 300 points.
Honor Code:
Students are expected to observe all points of the Honor Code as they apply to World Studies. Specifically,
students should not cheat as it is defined in the honor code: “Cheating is giving or receiving unauthorized aid
or information in one’s academic work. Plagiarism or claiming the work of another as one’s own is both
cheating and stealing.” If a student is ever in doubt about what constitutes plagiarism, he or she should
consult a teacher. Accidental plagiarism is still an honor offense.
Harkness Discussions
Every year on teacher evaluations we see the same thing: half the students want MORE Harkness discussions,
and half the students want FEWER. So we know that some students love ‘em, and some students hate ‘em.
Regardless of which group you find yourself in, this discussion format is here to stay because it is one of the
best ways to develop many of the skills we are after in this course. So whether you enjoy these discussions or
find them frustrating, keep in mind that the goal is to hone everyone’s thinking skills. To that end, we will
use the following codes to assess how well we are practicing these thinking skills in our discussions:
Individual Goals:
T = text (referred to the text)
A = additive (you added, built upon, deepened, extended, complicated a previous comment)
S = synthesized (you connected several comments, identified a theme or pattern among comments)
Q = question (you raised an interesting question that led to a productive line of thinking)
F = focus (you re-directed and re-focused the conversation back to the text or back to the previous comment)
L = listening (your comment showed that you were listening very carefully to a previous comment)
M = meta (you went meta; you got us thinking about our own thinking process)
K = knot (you zeroed in on a knotty, problematic passage in the text that raised new and interesting questions)
E = elevated (you elevated the level of discourse; you shifted the direction of the discussion in a meaningful way)
C = connection (you made a thoughtful connection to a previous work we have read)
U = understanding (you asked a clarifying question to make sure we understood a comment fully)
Class Goals:
1. Everyone participates equally; no one dominates
2. We stay focused on the text
3. We ask the deepest, most interesting, most important, most sophisticated questions of the text
4. We stick with each question long enough to explore it fully
5. We listen carefully and respond to others
6. We maintain a respectful tone and a spirit of collective inquiry
7. We take collective ownership of our own learning (and don’t need Mr. G. to jump in)
8. We move (as a group and individually) steadily toward deeper understanding
Authoring Our Own Learning & Collective Ownership
Did we create the third thing? Did we deepen our collective understanding?
Did I contribute, add, play my unique role, help others play better, learn more?
If our class is an orchestra, which instrument are you? What role do you play? How are you instrumental in
our collective success? If our class is a cathedral, what feature are you? A flying buttress (because you support
class discussions with textual evidence), or a rose window (because you shed light on what’s most important,
but you are sensitive and fragile), or a vaulted arch (because you connect the comments of your classmates in
ways that strengthen our collective understanding).
When you are playing, do other students/players play/learn better?
Connecting to the College Office’s “Who Am I, Where Am I Going?” questions:
Dear Parents of Fourth Formers:
During this introduction, we used the metaphor of the "Road Trip" to provide some context for this
undertaking:
> Where are you now?
> Where do you want to go?
> How do you get there?
> What do you need for the journey?
> Who's driving?
As a way to evoke some answers to those rhetorical questions, we gave the students the task of completing
three separate but related online assessments: a "Personality Type" evaluation, a "Career Interest" profiler,
and a "Career Cluster" finder. Ideally, the results of these assessments will help students to answer those first
two questions: "Who am I?" and "Where do I want to go?" Though these are imperfect tools, they do
prompt students to look ahead and consider possibilities.
In answer to the "How do I get there?" and "What do I need?" questions, we encouraged students to think
about their personal investment in high school and their personal aspirations for college.
The "Who's driving?" portion of the "Road Trip" metaphor is a significant question to consider -- both for
students and for their parents. As we pointed out to the Fourth Formers, this is the time in their lives when
they complete the transition from "the car-seat in the back" to "the driver's seat in the front." That new role
can (and should) be somewhat daunting for a sixteen year old. Similarly, it can (and will) be somewhat nervewracking for the parents of those sixteen year olds! Nonetheless, it is appropriate that over the next three and
a half years that transition be made. Parents should (and will) continue to be involved; it is the students
themselves, however, who must eventually be sitting behind the wheel.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a World Studies Scholar
Here is one of your final exam essay questions:
Imagine that you have been hired as an educational consultant to write a detailed report about a student. This
report will be given to this student’s teacher next year. This student is you, but you must write about yourself
in the third person. [For example, you would write: “Claire demonstrated her ability to make connections
between works when she wrote this in her Beowulf essay…”]
After thoroughly reviewing this student’s journal and writing portfolio, you must cite specific evidence of this
student’s ability to do the following:
___1. Provide large amounts of specific textual evidence
___2. Provide a 3:1 ratio of deep and thorough analysis to specific textual evidence
___3. Logically organize his/her ideas to make his/her argument more convincing
___4. Use style to enhance the effectiveness of his/her argument (word choice, sentence
structure/variety, figurative language, rhetorical/literary devices)
___5. Make connections between different works from this year (and/or previous years)
___6. Apply works we have studied to his/her own life; show how they have impacted him/her
personally.
___7. Think about his/her own thinking (metacognitive).
You must also point to specific places where this students has…
___8. Shown growth as a writer and as a thinker over the course of the year.
___9. Has helped the class as a whole deepen their collective understanding. You must come up
with a metaphor or an analogy to describe the role this student played in his or her class (for example,
“If this class were a gothic cathedral, Connor would have been a flying buttress, always providing
specific textual evidence to support arguments”]
Lastly, you should include…
___10. What this student should be most proud of as a thinker, writer, and classmate (point to
specific examples, lines)
___11. An overall summary for next year’s teacher, or the MOSAW (meaning of the student as a
whole)
___12. Specific recommendations for Mr. Bonner, Mr. Pharr, and Ms. Connors for how to help this student
next year. What does this student need most? What kinds of activities, assignments, methods should
these teachers use next year to help this student learn?
___13. X-factor info: ie., this student always falls asleep in class; make sure to bring gum to help her stay
awake.