English 1010 Syllabus - Spring, 2009
Salt Lake Community College
“Writing today is not a frill for the few but
an essential skill for the many.”
– National Commission on Writing
Instructor:
Emily Parrish (eparrish@graniteschools.org)
Taylorsville High School, H211
Course Description:
English 1010 is composition for college freshman. This class is taught with the same
assignments and textbook as English 1010 at Salt Lake Community College, and the credit on your
transcript from SLCC will go with you to any further education you pursue. In this course, we will
focus on reading and writing non-fiction with the necessary skills for many of the literacy skills you will
need in college. My hope is that you will be more prepared for college and for the advanced academic
skills which will be required.
You have chosen to take this course—a college-level course with college-level workloads and
expectations—while still in high school. This opportunity for earning college credit in high school
comes with certain responsibilities that are separate from your other high school tasks. You are
expected to conduct yourself as a college student by taking responsibility for your classroom behavior,
completing both the assigned reading and the written homework in a timely fashion, and acting as a
collaborator in the assigned group activities. We will be using the college textbook and will complete
the same assignments that the college class does. And, just to make things interesting, the grade you
earn in this class will follow you to college on your transcript. A failure here could have a negative
impact on your future financial aid applications, as well as your college GPA.
Of course, though, you won’t fail here. As a high school student, you are ready to take on this
challenging material. And as a teacher, I am pleased to offer you the opportunity to prepare yourself for
next stage in your academic life.
My syllabus should answer most questions that you have about my policies and procedures, so
read it carefully. I hope that you will have a better idea of what you can expect from this class.
I follow the four major expectations of the SLCC English 1010 course:

Rhetorical Strategies: If you can recognize the rhetorical strategies of others and then
use these models to teach yourself how to adapt your writing tasks to their own situations,
you will be a more versatile and skilled writer. You should be able to recognize a task’s
purpose, audience and genre before you begin, and then you should be able to see how
different rhetorical strategies will allow you to accomplish your goals effectively. (This
sounds easy, but it is no small task. It takes a great deal of thought and practice to make
this look effortless.)

Critical Thinking: Writing gives you an avenue to practice your critical thinking skills
and then a forum for sharing your critical thought processes with others. The specific
critical thinking skills we will focus on are summary, analysis, synthesis, and
argumentation. (Again, no small skill set.)

Composing Processes: The writing process that you have been studying throughout your
school experiences will be following you into all stages of your post-high school writing
tasks as well. We will look at invention, drafting, revision, editing, peer feedback, and
self-assessment as methods that you can and will use to become a stellar writer.

Conventions of Writing: Your greatest ideas cannot be understood unless you put them
in comprehensible, grammatical format for your audience. As you enter the college
world, you also have to consider the needs of research writing—citing multiple sources,
documentation methods, attribution—and follow the conventions of this type of prose.
We will be adding this study to our list.
Thus, as you can see, this class will be ambitious. At the end, you will be able to assess an
assigned writing task, complete the steps in a writing process, produce well-written and thoughtful
prose, assess your own meta-cognitive process, and leap tall buildings in a single bound (super-hero
outfit optional).
Text and Materials:
 Writing: A Guide for College and Beyond by Lester Faigley
 Writer’s notebook for class notes, vocabulary study, etc.
 A large binder for your senior portfolio
 Computer access
Grading Scale:
94% —100% =
A
73% — 76%
90% — 93% =
A70% — 72%
87% — 89% =
B+
67% — 69%
83% — 86% =
B
63% — 66%
80% — 82% =
B60% — 62%
77% — 79% =
C+
Below 60%
Senior Portfolio Not Turned In =
I
Grades:
=
=
=
=
=
=
C
CD+
D
DF
Your grade will be earned as follows:
35% —
Notebook, class work, and responses
35% —
Essays and major projects
30% —
Participation in class and group projects
Class Rules:
 Please do NOT bring food or drinks into the classroom. If you have a bowl of cereal that you are
trying to finish, you will have to eat it in the hall. If you are late for class, you will be marked
tardy, even if you are in the hallway, clearly visible, wolfing down your Captain Crunch as fast
as your little teeth will allow. (I know that this sounds crazy, but it happens more than you might
know.) You may bring water, as long as it is in a closed container and won’t make a mess on the
desks, carpet, or your papers.
 No cell phones, hand-held organizers, I-Pods, MP-3 players, CD players, earphones, headphones,
etc. etc. allowed in the classroom. (Even if you think class is over and you can just jam for a
minute or two...you can’t.)
 If you want to take the hall pass, you must surrender your cell phone. I will not be the patsy who
allows you to go out into the hall to talk on the phone as though something else is more
interesting than my class. (As if!)
 Be prepared for class. I don’t like to lend out my hall pass for someone who forgot to bring an
assignment or book to class. You’re in high school, headed for college, for pete’s sake. Come to
class prepared!
 Be respectful when others are speaking in class. (This is not really a problem, thus far. I’m
assuming that you will want to listen to others as you would want them to listen to you.)
 Work is due at the beginning of the class period listed. After this, all late work incurs a late
penalty.
 I do not chew gum, but I have no real objection to gum in my class as long as it is invisible,
inaudible, and inodorous to me. (Please don’t pop it. And don’t put it under the desks or drop it
on the floor. And if I ask you to get rid of it, don’t swallow it. You know that it sits in your
stomach for seven years, right?)
Attendance:
Attendance is required for success in this course. Take this opportunity to really prepare yourself
for your post-high school life. The habits that you establish now will follow you to college where they
will either help you to be successful or they will hinder your progress. Missing class means that you
miss discussion, group activities, and essential information about deadlines, assignments, and up-coming
events. Moreover, the class misses you. You are a member of a group, and your opinions and ideas are
important to us…Now, with that said, what happens if you do miss class?
 I follow Taylorsville High School’s attendance policy for excused and unexcused absences and
tardies. At four absences, whether excused or unexcused, your citizenship grade will fall to a 0.
For unexcused absences, even just one, your citizenship grade will fall to a 1. Of course, you
may attend ASD (After School Detention) to remediate these absences. From no tardies to three,
I will not change your citizenship grade for attendance; however, if you go to four, I have no
choice but to give you a 1 in citizenship, and five tardies will earn you a 0. You may attend ASD
to remediate the tardies, but it would just be a lot easier to get to class on time, don’t you think?
 You earn participation points for being in class every day. If you miss class, you must find a
way to verify to me that this absence was excused, and I will excuse the points. But there is no
way to earn them back if you aren’t in class.
 You are responsible for keeping track of what we are doing in class, so if you miss, make sure
that you know what we are going to do that day. Furthermore, if you are going to be gone for
any length of time, you are responsible for finding a “study buddy” to help you with notes and
assignments. If you miss, for example, a fascinating discussion on some controversial topic, I
will not repeat that discussion for you. You will need to get that information from a classmate.
 If you miss class for a school excused absence, you are still required to make up any in-class
work, any assignments due, or anything else that happens. Again, you will need a study buddy
to help you with the notes or information from class.
 If you have an assignment due on a day when you have an excused absence, you have three
calendar days to turn it in for full credit.
 However, if you are going to be out of school on the day that a major assignment is due, (You
will recognize the major assignments because they are called MAJOR WRITING PROJECTS.)
you must find a way to get that assignment to me before 2:30 P.M. After that, unless you
actually bring me the lung that you barfed up, or a considerable bribe, (okay, I was kidding about
the bribe part) it will not be accepted.
 You should probably also be aware of this: I try to update the grades in the computer as often as I
can. But when you turn in work that is not with the class set, I quite often do not get to sorting
through that “late” pile until I absolutely have to, which is usually the day that grades are due. If
you are one of those people who monitors your grade obsessively, you will see the “M” on the
grade sheet until the late work has been recorded, often the last day of the term. (Of course, if
you are the type who obsessively monitors your grade, you probably aren’t the type to turn in
late work.) Please do not keep nagging me about taking care of the late work. I’ll get to it when
I get to it. If you want your grade to be updated regularly, don’t turn anything in late!
Punctuality:
Being tardy is a great way to lose participation points. You will lose five of your twenty daily
points for being late. Besides, it is just bad manners to come in late. You miss important information or
instructions, and you interrupt things. Tardiness affects your grade through the participation points and
it affects your citizenship grade. I follow Granite School District’s policy on tardiness and citizenship.
The Attendance Bump:
If you are not absent more than three times in a term, and you have not been tardy, I will give
you the attendance bump. You will get “bumped” one full grade (from a B- to a B, for example) when I
post grades.
Academic Integrity:
I hate to even have to mention this problem in my class, because I want to believe that everyone
is in school to gain an education, but every year, I hear more and more stories about how hard students
work at cheating, much harder than they would have to work if they just did the assignments. So, I must
acknowledge that students will be tempted and students will cheat. Please don’t let it be you, okay?
To try and keep this problem from my classroom, I will follow the following policy. First of all,
if I see you cheating on a test or quiz in class, I will be so disappointed. I will discuss my suspicions
with you before giving you the big 0 on the test. If it happens a second time, I will be even more
disappointed, and I’ll have to make a call home. If I find that you have plagiarized a paper or purchased
a paper from some paper-writing organization on the web, I’ll be disappointed and you’ll get a big 0 on
a major assignment. And I’ll be mad because I had to grade work from someone who wasn’t even you.
(Believe it or not, I can usually tell the difference between your writing and the writing of someone else
who is writing in your stead.)
I’m always surprised when students come to me and tell me that someone else in the class or one
of their friends is cheating on an assignment or quiz, and you might be surprised to find out that your
peers are really concerned about others getting away with doing such shoddy work. I usually find out
that someone has cheated, and I’m always disappointed, and even if you get away with it, the guilt will
follow you FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. (I know this. I feel tremendous guilt for every teacher I
ever disappointed.)
Late Work:
I accept late work. I’ve tried to discourage it because I think it sets up sloppy academic habits,
but let’s face it, someone always has a good excuse, so I’ve decided that I will take the work. But...it
will cost you. For each assignment turned in late, you will lose between 10% and 25%, depending on
how big the assignment is. My cut-off for assignments is 2:30 on the day that the assignment is due.
As I pointed out previously, though there is one IMPORTANT EXCEPTION to the late work
policy. In this class, we have four MAJOR WRITING PROJECTS (MWPs), and THESE MAJOR
WRITING PROJECTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED LATE!! If you are not in school on the day the
MWP is due, and you have a valid reason for not being in school or a parent/guardian excuse, you need
to find a way to get that portfolio to me by 2:30 P.M. You can leave it in the school office, you can send
it with a friend, or if you have a really strong carrier pigeon, you can send it straight to my window. But
it must be in my hands on the due date or it will be a “0.” Please don’t test me on this. I have had A
level students fall to C level, and C level students have jeopardized their graduation by missing this
deadline.
Tutoring:
If you have a failing grade at mid-term, you will be required to attend TAAP on Tuesday after
school. You will attend weekly until your grade is passing. Failure to attend will earn you an
administrative referral. Because I am here on Tuesdays for TAAP, that will also be the time that I am
available for make-up quizzes, etc. If you have other questions or issues to discuss with me, that is the
time I am available. (It’s also a good time to talk about that bribe you’ve been contemplating…)
A Final Message to Parents/Guardians of My Students:
First of all, thanks for reading my disclosure. You won’t believe the number of students who tell
me that no parent ever reads disclosure statements. Of course, they also tell me that they don’t read
them either, so I can only assume that most disclosures are not that entertaining. I look forward to
meeting with you at Parent/Teacher Conferences in September.
I have a number of responsibilities here at Taylorsville High, and I can get pretty busy as the
year moves along. But be assured that teaching your student is the most important and the best part of
my job, and I’m looking forward to getting to know her or him. I want you to know that I think that you
and I are partners in this educational endeavor that your student is undertaking this year, and I hope that
we can be cooperative. I commend you for encouraging your student to challenge himself or herself
with a college-level course while still in high school. I think this is a great way to show your student
that she or he is capable of meeting academic challenges.
Since this is a college-level class, I always assume that parents will want students to handle the
issues that may come up throughout the year. I think it is good practice for them. However, you may
want to contact me, or I may want to get in touch with you. So I’m asking that all parents send me an
email acknowledging the disclosure. In this way, I can set up an address book in my email so that I can
contact you easily. In your email, please include your and your student’s full name and what class your
student is in. (Email return addresses don’t always match the student names on my list.) Your student
will receive 25 bonus points when I receive your email, so here is a chance to get that grade started off
with a gift from you.
Another important aspect of our parent/teacher communication is with Gradebook. Through
Gradebook, you and your student can see the assignments made in class and the point value attached to
them. School policy is for teachers to update Gradebook on every 2 nd and 4th Friday of the month, so
you will be able to see how your student is doing. Gradebook also has a feature that opens an email to
me directly.
If you do not have an email account, or you wish to communicate with me in another manner,
please send an acknowledgement on a note with the preferred method of communication such as a cell
phone or daytime phone number. Such a note is worth the same 25 bonus points.
In addition to my email, which I try to read daily, I can be reached through written
communication through your student, through the school’s phone system, or by signal fire. (That last
one probably won’t work so well, though, because I don’t get outside much.) I usually read my email
first thing in the morning, and I will respond promptly to all questions and concerns if I can.