Here, Jess Claesson and I work to support an overwhelmed student by sending weekly updates on her progress. In the second, Robin Christy and I connect on the best approach to adapt the curriculum for a student who we expect would find the assigned book and its content particularly challenging.
From: Stephen Keedy
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2018 9:12:16 PM
To: Robin Christy
Cc: Jess Claesson
Subject: RE: CJ
I sat down with Cole a couple days ago about the Death of a Salesman paper. We wrote out a thesis together focusing just on the play and left out the Marxism portion. He really wanted to add the Marxism theory in but agreed to write only about the play and if he had some extra time he would go back and work with Marxism.
He was so adamant about including the theory in the essay that I’m a little worried about his reaction to a separate assignment for the book. Maybe we can meet Monday and work out a short story/play assignment then? I can put something together this weekend as a staring place.
From: Robin Christy
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2018 8:45 PM
To: Stephen Keedy <skeedy@eastsideprep.org>
Cc: Jess Claesson <JClaesson@eastsideprep.org>
Subject: CJ
Hey! Jess brought it to my attention that you guys will be starting The Sound and the Fury in class on Tuesday and I wanted to check in to figure out how we want to craft Cole’s individual experience while the rest of the class is reading the book. I know that we had talked about having him watch/read a couple of plays to replace TSATF and then apply some portion of the theories that had been discussed in class to these plays. Jess let me know that Cole had a really hard time grappling with Marxist theory and is wondering if pulling the theory into his writing will be accessible to Cole? We can try to hash this out a bit later – I don’t think that he needs to know exactly what he will be doing with the plays that he reads immediately – he just needs to know which one to start with.
Do you have an idea of what play would be a good one for him to focus on first? If we can convey that info to him ASAP, that would be great. My apologies that I was not paying enough attention to know that TSATF was starting next week and we are now in a rush to figure out options for Cole. Unfortunately, I will not be at school tomorrow as I have a conference to attend. I would be more than happy to meet before or after school if that works for you! I can also come back to school to meet and miss part of the conference if necessary – I just don’t want to dump this whole thing in your lap. If you have an idea of how this could roll out, I am also happy to write up the plan and send it to Cole.
Let me know what you think – Robin