Week 4 (Sept. 20 – Sept. 26)

Table of contents

To-do and Weekly Schedule

Reminders

  1. Have you checked the syllabus? It’s shiny and new, and awaiting your comments! Use Hypothes.is group teaglobalhistory to leave comments and suggestions for improvement.
  2. Have you completed all the tasks from last week? (The feedback on the Orwell post, the Sunday post)? If not, catch up, or share with me why you are resistant to that particular task and we can maybe find something that better helps you develop your writing skills.
  3. Plan ahead: Get your Garden Hours in (Saturdays: 12-2, more options during the week coming soon), and if you attend events for the campus community (e.g. from Center for Ethics, etc), or performances on campus: write your event responses.

By Monday, 11:59PM

Peer feedback

You did a great job last week leaving comments, questions, suggestions for improvement etc. in the Hypothes.is comments. Remember to set the widget to the group teaglobalhistory, rather than “Public”!

Most of this week’s posts are about the history of tea, but there may be the odd earlier one, as students are sometimes catching up and they still can benefit from the feedback. And what can you do with the feedback? Why! Rewrite your post, or think about patterns you see in the feedback: can you implement any changes in a future writing task? Remember your writing portfolio is yours to shape, to fill, to rewrite and to make yours.

Like last week, below you find links to four blog posts from your fellow students. If one of the websites is your own, or it is twice the same person’s, refresh the page, and you should get new sites.

  • Post 1:
  • Post 2:
  • Post 3:
  • Post 4:

Leave feedback, questions, thoughts, insights about the contents of the posts of your fellow students using Hypothes.is group teaglobalhistory. You can ask for clarifications, point out similarities and differences with the material you covered, or with your interpretation. This should encourage you to return with different eyes to the original materials.

Use tags in Hypothes.is: question: If you have a question (obvious); answered: if you gave an answer to a question; info: if you provide more information, looking up additional facts, drawing on knowledge from other classes; and other tags you can think of. This will help us to navigate more quickly to the questions that still need answering.

Use the “Architect’s Model” of giving feedback, and engage with concrete issues. Go beyond “Yeah, I agree,” “I like” or “I think the same”, and instead explain why you have that reaction, or if you disagree, you can try to persuade the original poster of your idea or interpretation. You did a great job last week, thanks!!

Remember that Hypothes.is allows for hyperlinks, e.g. to materials that support your argument, or you can include pictures (memes!), videos etc. that help the original poster to learn more.

Checklist

I commented on four fellow students’ posts about the history of tea using the group teaglobalhistory in Hypothes.is.
I made sure to leave substantial comments that move the discussion forward and help to create better insights, and go beyond a “nice” or “great”. Be specific!
I left comments that I would like to receive myself: thoughtful, helpful, kind, but also pointing out errors so they can be fixed.

By Tuesday, 12:30PM

Reading: Lu Yu. The Classic of Tea: Origins & Rituals. Translated by Francis Ross Carpenter. 1st Ecco ed. Hopewell, N.J.: Ecco Press, 1974.

  • PDF: Remember you can find the username and password for our FYS PDF vault on the Canvas page with all the sensitive info via Modules on Canvas.
  • Background info: Long before Britain had George Orwell laying down the eleven golden rules, China had Lu Yu (733-804), the “saint of tea” according to later tradition. He was the first to create the link between Shen Nong (The Divine Husbandman) and the invention of tea. He was also very specific about the way tea should be grown, picked, prepared, and drunk, and collected all of that knowledge in the Classic of Tea (Chajing).
  • Read through the entire text, marking sentences or sections you find interesting, remarkable, or strange. You can select and highlight in the PDF itself.
    • In class we will focus on the sections “The Brewing of Tea” (pp. 103-113) and “Drinking the Tea” (pp. 115-119), but they will make more sense if you read through the entire text.
    • Pick out a few sentences that have your attention for a “pointing” exercise. You may select these from any part of the book.
    • Take good reading notes so you can refer with ease to specific passages you want to discuss in class, in particular in the two focus chapters.
    • Note: the illustrations date from a later period, not from the eighth century.
  • TIP: you can check what Wilkinson (see Week 2, Thursday) has to say about Lu Yu and the Classic of Tea (Chajing)

Thursday, 12:30PM

LOCATION CHANGE: HOFFMAN HOUSE Courtyard/Dining Room (accessible via parking lot on 23rd Street)

Reading to prepare: Appendix B in Martin, Laura C. A History of Tea: The Life and Times of the World’s Favorite Beverage. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2018.

  • PDF
  • look through the list of terms used by professional tea-tasters, and try to imagine what each of these terms would feel/taste like to you. Can you associate a(nother) food or drink with this descriptor?

Tea Tasting: We will try a variety of teas. Cups and tea are provided! 

  • Eat something before coming to class (breakfast, snack,…); it will make the tea tasting experience better.
  • Bring pen and paper: you will take tasting notes and use this for a writing exercise. I will print out some pages for everyone, but you may want to add more notes than I have pages for.

Friday, 11.59PM

First Reflection

WHEN By Friday, 11.59pm (but let me know if a later time works better for you)

WHAT We are now four weeks into the semester, and I would like you to take the time to reflect on your learning in this course and maybe even at college in general so far. Write a 500-800 word piece, engaging with at least two of the following sets of questions. Illustrate with concrete examples: show, don’t just tell!

  1. How have you engaged with the course materials? What would you like to improve in your preparation and participation (which includes commenting on posts, as well as the “regular” coming to class, participating in person, and ? What are you doing well?
  2. How have you treated the blog posts? Do you use them to dig deeper, have you gained new insights or perspectives on reading and writing analytically, or have you merely tried to get through it as fast as possible? When you look back on the posts you have written so far, and compare your work with others’, what do you observe?
  3. What have you learned in this course so far, in contents and/or in skills for writing/reading analytically? What are some of the threads or overarching topics you are interested in? What in your work so far makes you say: “yes, I am thinking like a college student/emerging writer”? Have you applied any of these skills in other courses?
  4. How would you evaluate your “thoughtful participation in the Learning Commons” so far? What have you done that fits with the syllabus description of that component, and how can you see yourself expanding that category and/or your participation?

WHY These reflections help me understand how you learn, and how I can best support your learning. I also hope you use this as a moment to think about your goals for the course, and, if necessary, how you can push the reset button on your engagement with the course, and commit anew to your goals for this course.

You will develop your metacognitive skills (knowing what you know) throughout the semester with a few more of these reflections, and we will use these to discuss your progress, and ultimately to come to an agreement about the grade to submit for mid-terms and finals. 

HOW Write as a blog post in Category FYS106; or email me a Word file; or share a Google doc.

Checklist

I wrote a reflection of 500-800 words on my learning in the course so far, using 2 of the 4 prompts provided
I made sure to use concrete examples from my blog or from class to illustrate my observations
I submitted the assignment in one of the requested formats:
– blog post in category FYS106 OR
– Word file emailed to Dr. D OR
– Google Doc shared with Dr. D

Sunday, 11.59PM

Writing exercise: Write a blog post of 200-400 words, and add it to category FYS106

  • OPTION 1: The translation of Lu Yu’s Classic of Tea contains (modern) illustrations. Pick two sentences (they don’t have to be connected) and find their accompanying illustrations. Do they correspond? Why (not)? Be specific: draw the reader’s attention to the details you use to make your judgement. Can you find better illustrations for those sentences? You can use your own art or photography skills, or find images online.
    • TIP: I added photos of the imperial tea tools to the slides from Tuesday: see slides 11–21!
    • When using images, it is always a good idea to include a caption, and a description, as well as a source. This makes your post more accessible (screen readers for visually impaired readers) and protects you against accusations of theft of intellectual property/plagiarism. Check out more on this WordPress Help post.
  • OPTION 2: Use Thursday’s tea tasting and your notes (and maybe even tea from your own collection?) to write about your experience doing a deep dive into the world of the tastes of tea. I encourage you to use the tea taste descriptors for vocabulary:
    • look and smell of tea leaves (dry, wet)
    • methods of preparation of the tea leaves
    • tastes (at first, when swallowing, aftertaste; first cup, second cup…)
    • effects on your body and mind
    • In addition you can also draw on Orwell and Lu Yu’s opinions, and join them in the debate about “a nice cup of tea”.
  • OPTION 3: Write both assignments, to get more writing practice

Add an image to brighten up your post and add a caption to the source as a hyperlinked text. If you refer to additional online materials, add them as hyperlinks in your text itself. Add a title, you can be creative! Include at the end a bibliography: a list of the works you consulted, quoted, or referenced, in alphabetical order of the surname of the author.

Where to find images: In addition to Google image, there are also copy-right free, public-domain images available through Trexler Library: https://libraryguides.muhlenberg.edu/open/images.

How: Remember: Don’t just write and post straight away. Instead, take the time to write a draft, maybe use the freewrite method on a key passage to create a few new ideas, and rewrite to help you clarify some ideas. You can draft and rewrite in Word or Google Docs, and then copy-paste to WordPress and tidy up the formatting.

Checklist:

I wrote a blog post of at least 200 words, and no more than 400 words, using one of the two available options (or I did both as separate blog posts)
I added it to the category FYS106 on my blog.
I added an image to the post, with ALT text describing the image, and a caption.
I included at the end a bibliography of the works I consulted or referred to.
I checked that my post appears on the internet the way I want.

Slides

Tuesday, Sept. 21: Classic of Tea

Where to get help