Thoughts as We Enter the Summer of 2010

So, for next year’s juniors this class will become AP Language and Composition, a year-long course packed with action, exertion, and analysis in writing – five days a week – mingled with our time-honored fixation on fiction: the literary work you’ve done so beautifully & faithfully in Honors Eleven.
It may dawn on some of you that the younger kids are getting a better deal. Therefore, to help quell at least some of your envy and, more importantly, to help you come back here next fall with hopes of prevailing as you seek to…
a) read British literature
b) write essays with coherence and fluency
c) succeed on an influential exam (AP Lit & Comp, next May)

…I offer three tips!! Are they consolation prizes? Maverick motivators? However you choose to interpret them, they are offered in loving friendship, on the strength of all that we have defined, dabbled in, discussed, divined, drawn, and - at the University Club - danced this year.

TIP #1: READ.
Your current favorite author is your most influential writing instructor. Whatever this author writes will influence phrases that emerge from your pen, more than anyone else can influence your writing at the time. Does this mean you’re in jeopardy if your current book is trash? Pulp fiction? Twilight VII!?! I respectfully beg to differ: “No.” You’re not trouble if you love to read and you read what you love.

But, no matter what you choose, make a point of reading critically. Thoughtful reading will help you savor Twilight VII, even as you contemplate moving on to bigger & better things. Reading science fiction will scaffold your reading next year as you ponder progenitors of Science Fiction in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and Metamorphosis, by Kafka. Spy novels will improve your inferential thinking. It’s a Win-Win proposition, and the list goes on!

Reading critically will prompt you to analyze, but it will also enhance your writing. If you listen as you read, you will “hear” the shape of rhetoric – the power of persuasion – in the arc of a well written line.

TIP #2: WRITE
Some believe, incorrectly(!), that I, Le Bratno-bere, do not maintain Facebook contact with Woodbury students because I abhor the thought of seeing people’s dirty laundry. Although that’s true – I do abhor the sight of dirty laundry – my real reason for shunning Facebook is my ongoing insistence that people write: that you send e-mails, cards, actual letters, and other forms of written expression. In other words, I want you to freakin’ WRITE. As Elizabeth Bishop said in her poem “One Art”: “Write it.” I WANT YOU TO WRITE.

If you write to me, for example, I will write back. I’ve been writing letters as my primary form of personal expression (i.e., even more than acting or the piano) for over fifty years. I’ve written a lot of letters, and I don’t mean to stop now. Write; then I’ll write back. And behold, a correspondence is born!

But don’t limit your output to correspondence with me. You may prefer writing to someone else. Think about the possibilities, boys and girls: love letters!! Whee!! And let’s not forget about some of the other great reasons for writing:
Collecting on a bad debt.
Telling a friend about a book you loved.
Sending a thank-you note
Enticing others to travel with you.
Relating (possibly “stretchin’” about) personal milestones at fishing, horse-back riding, or golf!
Politely inquiring among former teachers as to whether they might consider writing a college
letter of recommendation on your behalf
Making plans to attend the State Fair
The List Goes On!!!

If you go out of your way to write this summer, you will not embarrass yourself in English class next fall. If you fail to write, the opposite is almost sure to be the case.

TIP #3: PREVIEW THE AP LANG & COMP COURSE!!!
It’s being designed for next year’s juniors, but it’s going up – online, as a blog – now. And I’m saying it to you, not to them. Please, PLEASE consider following the blogs Ms. Dornfeld and I post this summer. You’ll be able to see and do several of our assignments. You’ll be privy to our key links: internet access to dweeby and writer-ly sites, glossaries, blogs, and the like (e.g., you can finally figure out how to use COMMAs).

You’ll see the AP Lang & Comp syllabus take shape. And you’ll obtain access to AP Central: the College Board’s site for both Lang & Comp and Lit & Comp.

These benefits come hand in hand with a selfish plea – to wit, that you use “Comments.” I’m going to leave “Comments On” as I compose blogs for AP Lang & Comp this summer, and I will naturally welcome your criticism and your participation. Next fall, Comments will be restricted, but members of our Honors Eleven classes are welcome to post throughout the summer, and I will cherish your thoughts.

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST
I cherish your thoughts. Yours are two of the most remarkable groups I have worked with. Your wit and wisdom have sustained me throughout a bizarre year: a year of triumphs, crises, laughter, losses, and debates. And your names (wait… are you Jack? Is it… ‘Chad’?) will forever be inscribed in my memories of the dearest and most talented students I have known.
Girl-teachers somehow get to say it more “legally,” and thus with less difficulty. Dude-teachers say it at their jeopardy, perhaps even at a painful cost; but I’ll say it anyway. I will always love all fifty-seven of you.

Sincerely, ~ Mr. B.