History of Pre-Institute

One of the traditions of the Summer Institute is to start each day with a history of the previous day. Each history is created by one member of the group in whatever format they would like. As a result the history becomes a way to showcase yourself as a writer and to try out new ideas, genres, and formats. The history is intended to be a fun way to reconnect with the learning we have done.

We write histories for a variety of reasons: they help us to remember what we have been thinking about, they entertain, inform, or challenge us, they help the writer to synthesize a day's worth of learning into a short presentation, and they allow us to explore different ways to present information. By sharing our histories on the blog we create an archive of our experience and help those who are not in the room connect with the work we are doing.

For the history of Pre-institute I chose to develop a demo that focuses on close reading strategies. We used our notes about identity as the text for this demo. We read and annotated the text, shared our thinking on the text, and then synthesized that thinking in the form of a poem. The poems we wrote are shared in the comments below. I hope you enjoy reading them!