Welcome to Tools of Human Understanding, a Watauga College course designed to enhance both your analytic reading skills and your writing skills. Over the
semester we will read and write a lot, and by semester’s end you should be more proficient in both skills, with spill-over benefit for Stories and your other
classes.

Grading will be A, B, C, D, F, with your Tools grade averaging with other grades for your final grade in the six or ten hour Watauga block. The final grade for
Tools will be determined by a combination of your product grades (papers and presentations) and process grades (attendance, admit/exit cards, participation in
class discussions and activities, attitude). These elements can combine in a variety of ways, but generally the breakdown is about 75 % product and 25 %
process. Since the process grade is so significant and participation is heavily dependent upon attendance, I will impose an attendance policy. You will be
allowed three absences to handle personal emergencies (illness, family crises, court appearances, etc.); additionally, tardies will accrue to constitute additional
absences (5 tardies will equal one absence). Perfect attendance will enhance your final grade (I will push your average up gone grade increment for perfect
attendance), and excessive absences will penalize your final grade.

The product portion of your grade will be based on your papers and presentations. These will be several short papers about the readings and about the
University Convocation (attendance at the Convocation, the Forum that afternoon, and the play are mandatory). There will also be a longer paper near the end
of the semester that will focus on a theme for which you will draw support from several of the books that we will have read. The procedure for the papers will
be that you will draft the papers, do peer editing in brief sessions in class, then turn in a revised draft which I will mark. Several of these drafts (all drafts) will be
then revised into final versions to be turned in as portfolios at mid-term and the end of the semester. In addition your will work on a Power Point or poster
presentation about a topic relevant to your theme or to some aspect of the course.

The readings of the course are designed to be complimentary to one another. Generally through all of them, we will focus on what the text tells us, or implies,
about the value of paying close attention to our surroundings and to ourselves as actors and objects in that environment. We will include both summer reading
books (the University's A Lesson Before Dying as well as the Watauga book Prodigal Summer). We will read selections from The Store of Joys, a book of
essays, poems, and stories to accompany works of art from the North Carolina Museum of Art. Also we will read T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, as well as
Thoreau's Walden, and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Required texts:

Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Eliot. T. S. Four Quartets

Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying

Kingsolver, Barbara. Prodigal Summer

Paschal, Huston, Ed. The Store of Joys

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden; or Life in the Woods

Other required materials:

Computer disk for saving drafts of papers

Composition Book (see example first day) for doing in-class and out of class journal writing

4 x 6 index cards for admit/exit cards

 Course Calendar

                    (Subject to change, but generally indicates the order and amount of time we will spend on various topics):

Week 1 Aug. 16-20    Course intro; assignments from Store and Four Quartets.

Week 2 Aug. 23-27    Retreat (short writing assignment to become first paper), assignments from Store and Four Quartets, begin discussing A Lesson

Week 3 Aug 28-Sept 4    Discussions of A Lesson; peer editing of draft of first paper on Aug. 28; revised draft of first paper on retreat due Aug 30

Week 4 Sept. 6-11    Convocation, assignments from Store and Four Quartets; library day

Week 5 Sept. 13-17    Walden; peer editing of second paper on A Lesson/Gaines on Sept 13; revised draft due Sept 17

Week 6 Sept. 18-24    Finish Walden; assignments from Store and Four Quartets

Week 7 Sept. 25-Oct 2    Assignments from Store and Four Quartets; work of paper 3 which will develop a journal entry into a paper; peer editing of draft Sept 27; revised draft due Oct 2

Week 8 Oct. 8-11    Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; first portfolio due October 11

Week 9 Oct. 15-16    Pilgrim

Week 10 Oct. 22-25    Prodigal Summer; review Power Point; begin work on paper 4, a comparison of Walden and Pilgrim; peer editing on Oct 23; revised draft due Oct 29

Week 11 Oct. 29-Nov. 1    Prodigal Summer; begin Power Point presentations

Week 12 Nov 5-8    Finish Power Point presentations; discuss themes from the readings; workshop on developing paper 5, the major thematic paper

Week 13 Nov. 12-15    Peer editing for thematic paper; discuss writing assessment papers; revised draft of paper 5 due Nov 15

Week 14 Nov. 19-20    Peer editing of assessment papers

Week 15 Nov. 26-29    Peer work with Stories papers; assignments from Store and Four Quartets; portfolio 2 due Nov. 29

Week 16 Dec. 3-4    Assignments from Store and Four Quartets; wrap up of course

Exams: