ESSAY II:  What Makes a Community?

Schedule

Date

Day 6 9/20

Homework Due

     Read Peck handout on community.  Read it as a reader who's interested in thinking about community issues, and write a response that is useful to you to think through these issues.  Then read it as a writer who will be coming up with your own categories to understand community or community/individual relations.  (The heads in Peck's chapter are categories that represent his way of dividing up the concept of community.  You will undergo the same process with the Essay I anthology.)
     Read class anthology that you'll receive as a Word attachment probably Friday.  Follow instructions I gave in class to read, annotate, notice patterns and do some focused freewriting to move towards an idea about community or community/individual.  We'll share your writings in class Monday.

In-Class Work

     Key question:  What makes a good idea?   Evaluate Peck's writing on community.  Work as a full class and in small groups to share discoveries about community or community/individual to lead to a good idea.  
     How do you document sources?
Day 7 9/22 First draft of Essay II, with metatext, and Works Cited page.   E-mail draft by noon.  Read Guidelines for peer reviewers in The Bedford Handbook, pages 43-48; be prepared to discuss in class the types of peer response you think you can make and the types you think will be difficult. Workshop of essay, full class and pairs/groups.   Preparation for reading handout.
Day 8
9/27		 Read Handbook, pages 41-53, on "Global Revisions."  Also, read excerpt from The Community in America, which gives a very different approach to thinking about community, a different way of classifying communities.  Focus particularly on pages 6-14.  What difficulties does Warren identify regarding the study of communities?  Have you found similar or different difficulties as you study your classmates' stories?  What do you think about his division of community life into five major functions?  What do you think about his "dimensions on which American communities differ"?  Are these ways of thinking about community useful--or do they leave out important aspects of community? Discuss Warren handout, especially in relation to your own way of thinking about community.  Possible editing exercise based on student problems.  Possible time for paired or individual work on revision of Essay II.
Day 9
9/29		 Final draft of Essay II, printed, with metatext.   E-mail draft, too.  Read Begin Essay III.

Requirements
*  Based upon your reading of your classmates’ stories, come up with an idea about what community is or about the relationship between community and the idividual; good ideas usually have some kind of tension in them, go beyond one-sided cliches, make you see why they're important.
*  Create an argument for this idea using the evidence from the stories, your own reflection upon that evidence, and transitions that lead the reader from one part of your argument to the next.
*  Quote or paraphrase from the primary sources (your classmates' stories), citing the authors and creating a Work Cited page (see Handbook, p. 585-586, 593, 598 (#14), and 626).
*  Give your essay a title that captures your idea and engages the reader
*  3-4 pages, double-spaced, typed, with metatext.