Moral question

[Travis Hoffman]

I believe that immediate, respectful, and direct communication with the AP teacher is the best course of action, but students should be working on the assignment as they are doing this! For those students who actually complete this assignment, I pose the following course of action for consideration. I am curious to know what other mentors think of this idea.

Bottom line - for anyone who fears retribution upon reading this course of action and attempting it, keep in mind, you should not be penalized for completing your assignments properly. That is the original point the teacher was trying to make in the first place, no?

If any tinge of malfeasance or underhandedness were to be attributed to this approach, I would, at worst, classify this as a subtle form of "passive resistance". At best, a student is simply seeking to complete the assignment as directed.

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Requirement - "Signatures of two community members who can attest to the literary worthiness of your essay"

I would presume your AP teacher would agree that other English teachers at your school are "community members who can attest to the literary worthiness" of these essays? By seeking at least one of the signatures from your teacher's fellow coworkers, that might pique their interest enough to strike up a civil conversation about the nature of the assignment itself. It is, after all, a rather odd requirement - seeking signature approval of one's literary work. It's certainly nothing I've seen during my AP English days or in any college course I took. By seeking signature approval from this qualified source, you may open the door for them to learn the background info regarding the assignment and give them an opportunity to discreetly decide for themselves whether or not they feel it is too "punishing" a task given the time left in the school year. You are informing them with honest information, introducing the assignment into the "court of coworker opinion". Upon weighing the evidence, they may decide to privately talk with your AP teacher and serve as an ally as they try to smooth things out. Or they might agree with your AP teacher completely and take no action. Either way, you got one of your signatures, no? So check that requirement off the list.

This approach requires a calm, cool, and collected demeanor. A student should take great care to responsibly pursue the signature and provide "just the facts" about the assignment requirements to the hopeful signer. A student should not use the opportunity to "bash" the assignment or their AP teacher. They shouldn't whine, protest, or grandstand. They should just provide the facts....and hopefully obtain the signature they seek. Anything else is gravy.

I do believe this teacher stands to benefit from other people weighing in from different points of view on this topic. That would include the opinions of his fellow English Department coworkers.

[Cynette]

I agree with the majority that the essay itself is doable in the time alotted. I do find this clause quite interesting.

Failure to incorporate any one of the project requirements listed above will earn an automatic zero.

Given the amount of time left in your school year before grades are due, I find it hard to believe that a teacher will really WANT to read 30 essays of 4-5 pages in length and carefully identify all of the requirements to verify that you have included or excluded them. So he has made a large amount of work for himself. To assist him in this monumental task, I think you all should submit 10 page essays and take care to space the requirements throughout the entire essay to make sure all of it needs to be read to verify that the requirements were completed.