Major Assignments

Essay 1: Personal Education Narrative

For this essay, you will write about a significant event or events that impacted the way you view education and/ or school. Think about the examples we’ve read in class: they talk about significant events in-depth, using concrete, significant detail—and then they explain why those events were important—not just to the writer but to the reader as well. What can your experiences with education tell your audience about the education system in America, for example? Or about language? Or about the ways we learn? You want your reader to come out of your narrative having learned something or thinking about things in a new way.

You may want to write about:

  • An event in your educational career that was particularly formative
  • A specific literacy/ learning event that let you to become the thinker you are today
  • The first time you had a profound experience related to language or learning

Whatever the context you choose from the examples above, you should:

  • Talk about how the event shaped your relationship to school or education in general
  • Talk about how your particular experience relates to some of the bigger social and cultural issues we discussed in class, such as race, the education system, Standard Written English (SWE), etc.
  • Reflect upon how your experience has enabled you to understand something specific about reading, writing, learning, or language AND how that understanding reflects on the communities/ world you inhabit

Grading Criteria:

Successful essays will:

  • Develop an overall point or the significance of your narrative
  • Include concrete, significant detail – paint a picture
  • Describe a focused event or a connected series of events
  • Be well structured, with each paragraph developing one idea and clear transitions between paragraphs
  • Use clear, effective sentence structure and vocabulary
  • Be carefully proof-read and free of sloppy errors
  • Include a paragraph memo that explains how you went from your first to your final draft and how you feel about your essay – what you like, what you’re unsure of, etc.
  • The essay (without the memo) – at least 750 words/ 3 pages

This assignment adapted from Prof. Jacquelyn Blain’s ENG 1101 at City Tech in Fall 2020:

Prompt:

We have read two accounts of Hostos’s history. Drawing on specific insights and quotes from the readings, craft a thesis-driven three-page essay that lays out the connections between the historical context of the Save Hostos Movement and your own educational journey. Identify the struggles, triumphs, and strategies employed during this movement and connect or relate these moments to your experiences as a learner or to your impressions of Hostos today. 

Some questions you may want to consider:

  • How has learning the history of the Save Hostos movement made you think differently about Hostos as an institution? 
  • How has learning the history changed your relationship to Hostos? 
  • How are the past challenges that Hostos faced or strategies for change students and professors employed  similar to what you see and experience at Hostos today?

Successful essays will:

  • Have a clearly defined argument or thesis laid out in the introduction
  • Include a road map in the introduction that lets the reader know what to expect in the coming paragraphs
  • Include concrete, significant details and quotes
  • Be well structured, with each paragraph developing one idea and clear transitions between paragraphs
  • Tie each paragraph back to the argument or thesis
  • Use clear, effective sentence structure and vocabulary
  • Be carefully proof-read and free of sloppy errors
  • Be at least 750 words/ 3 pages

Sample Annotated Bibliography and source (you will need 3 sources): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_Nd86Z5KOf9sjIdnJJFjyvPf70Hi8DSMvPnEEO5YfQw/edit?usp=sharing

Task: you will develop your research skills by creating an annotated bibliography on a topic related to your first essay. You will be developing your research skills in this assignment by coming up with a research question, using the library to find sources, and synthesizing multiple sources into a coherent argument. 

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a list of sources in alphabetical order, each with an explanatory paragraph underneath. For this assignment, the paragraph attending each source will provide a brief summary of your source and explain how it helps you to answer your research question.

Components of the assignment:

  • A research question
  • One paragraph that presents a working answer to your research question, and reflects on how doing the research helped you to understand your first essay in a new or different way. If you could re-do your first essay, is there anything you would change about it now that you know what you know about your research question? 
  • Three sources listed in alphabetical order, presented in MLA format, with a paragraph underneath that summarizes the source and explains how it helps you answer the research question.  
  • At least one source should be a primary source. At least one source should be a secondary source. 

Possible broad topics (note these are not research questions. A research question asks something specific and discoverable about a topic):

  • The community college movement of the 1960’s and 70’s
  • The context of activism in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in the south Bronx
  • The fiscal crisis of the 1970’s in NYC
  • The history of free tuition 
  • The south Bronx in the 1970’s

Possible research questions:

  • What were the characteristics of the South Bronx that Hostos’s creation  was designed to address in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s?
  • How does the fight to Save Hostos relate to other activism occurring in the South Bronx in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s?

Coming Soon!