Email check & Essay rubric

The following 56 people are on the emergency email list. If your name is NOT here, I strongly, STRONGLY suggest you send me an email before the end of the week. I will probably never need to use it, but IF a situation ever arose where I needed to contact you urgently via email, it could make a tremendous difference. My philosophy is that it's always best to be prepared for all possibilities. (There's more stuff beneath the list, make sure you read it.)

Aieman Zehra
Alex Ho
Alex Kwon
Alexandria Smith
Amber Serpa
Amy Dunford
Amy Scott
Anne Tran
Bharathi Ramachandran
Brian McMahon
Britt Higgins
Christy Bauer
Dave Kwong
David Hoang
Disha Gandhi
Elise Bandy
Elizabeth Tse
Eric Yang
Felicia Chow
Geoffrey Liou
Himanshi Arora
Holly Burgess
Ilham Awad
Jackie Eugster
James Ching
Jennifer Hudiono
Johnny Li
Josh Yim
Kavyashree Thota
Kristina Schenck
Lane Prescott
Lydia Cuarezma
Martha Perez
Mary Wheeler
Michelle Griffith
Patrick Flynn
Quanisha Smith
Rabell Afridi
Rachel Geyer
Raymond Kyaw
Rebecca Kennedy
Robert Pipes
Sai Devana
Saloni Shah
Samantha Ho
Saranya Nandagopal
Sergio Puno
Shelby Steadman
Shelley Lai
Shikha Sheth
Stephanie Tung
Stevie Walsh
Vanathi Ganesh
Veniamin Meyerzon
Vivian Zhang
Willie Du

The multiple choice diagnostic has been scored, and you all did much better than I had hoped. Of the 90 people who took the MC, only 17 did not score above 50% (26/51). If you are one of those 17, please come see me on Monday to discuss whether you want to remain in the class.

I want to emphasize that a low diagnostic score does NOT mean that you should drop the class, just that you have to be prepared to work a lot harder to catch up on skills and confidence if you want to pass the exam in May. We have plenty of time for a committed, hardworking student to improve enough to score at least a 3...but if you don't want to work that hard, say so (and I won't judge you if you don't, we all have different priorities in life, I promise I won't be insulted if you decide that you'd rather spend your time and energy somewhere else). You have to be honest about it, though...don't tell me you want to do it if you don't. Don't tell me you just had a bad day if you're simply not prepared. Don't bs me, it wastes your time and mine.

In 2004, I had a student who scored very poorly on the diagnostic--well below 50%, like less than 20%--and he wanted to drop the class. Fortunately, because he had been in my college prep sophomore class, he talked to me about it before he went to see the counselor, and I was able to convince him to stay. This kid was amazing...he'd come to the U.S. in the middle of his freshman year with virtually NO English. In my sophomore class, he earned a C for first semester (understandable, being here for less than a year) but by June, he was a solid A student. 18 months in the United States, and he was outperforming most of the native English speakers in his classes.

I promised him that if he came to me whenever he felt like he was struggling, I would help him pass that exam. And he did...I reviewed his exams with him a few times, gave him a couple of extra writing exercises...and he PASSED, with a 3. I think that was an incredible accomplishment...when he took the AP exam, he'd been in the U.S. for just over three years!

You know what he's doing now? He graduated from college in 3.5 years, got married this summer (to his high school sweetheart) and is now a first year Ph.D student in Chemistry at UCLA. Pretty impressive, don't you think?

So, my point is, you can do it if you want to, but you have to really want to.

Finally, I'm working on your diagnostic essays this weekend, but I can't promise they'll be done by Monday. I am going to post the rubric I'm using to score them below, so you understand why you got the score you did. Please review the criteria, and think honestly about where your essay would've fallen on the rubric. I hope you won't be unpleasantly surprised.

The first link is the overview page, you can click on "Scoring Guidelines," "Scoring Commentary," and "Sample Responses Q1," but I am also pasting in the individual links below:

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/exam/exam_questions/2002.html#name03

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/members/repository/ap03_sg_english_lit_26432.pdf

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap03_comment_english__27945.pdf

http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap03_english_lit_q1_28066.pdf

Hope your weekend is restful and rejuvenating...we have a busy week ahead.