Balboa 11th Grade Pathway Syllabus
Benedicto Thériault Gonzalez
Printer-Friendly Version

11th Grade Pathway Purpose:

Congratulations. You have joined a very challenging, adventurous, and eye-opening pathway. Being in WALC means that three of your six classes—American Literature, U.S. History, and Environmental Science—will share the same main ideas and concepts throughout the entire year. These ideas and concepts will come from our fourth classroom: the environment. Through our many field trips experiencing, studying, and learning from nature you will be introduced to four major themes: 1) Sense of Place 2) Balance and Imbalance 3) Interconnections and 4) Diversity. These environmental concepts will be studied more in depth in your Environmental Science class, and equally important, they will be used as a way to look at, explore, and analyze U.S. History and American Literature. The basic idea behind WALC is that we learn about nature and the environment and then use that learning to better understand the world, our selves, as well as become more successful students and people.

The big key to being successful in WALC is your understanding of these four concepts and making sure that you can perceive and articulate their connection to each WALC class and to yourself. In fact, by the end of the year, we expect you to be able to write a 10 to 15-page paper explaining exactly that, so be ready. We expect a lot out of our students, but we also plan to give plenty of support, and also plenty of experiences so that you can actually go through what we are teaching you instead of just reading it from a book, or hearing it from us. You probably will work harder for WALC than you have ever worked before, but you will learn more than you have ever learned before; you deserve no less. Welcome to WALC.

Pathway Learning Objectives:
By the end of senior year you should be able to do the following:

1. Develop and articulate your Sense of Place in ecological, historical, cultural, and personal terms.
2. Explore and articulate the forces that affect the balance and imbalance of communities and individuals in ecological, historical, and cultural terms.
3. Explore and articulate how organisms are interconnected by tracing the flow of energy
   derived from the sun as it moves between organisms within ecosystems.
4. Explore and explain how humans unlock or harness solar energy that has been “stored” in different forms while assessing the viability, sustainability, and ecological impact of utilizing each resource.
5. Explore and articulate the role and impact of diversity in the process that organisms and ecosystems develop to harness, use, and store the sun’s energy
6. Use ecology as a model to explore the concepts of interconnections and diversity as they pertain to history, culture, community, and self.

Materials to bring everyday:

• Balboa Planner (You will copy your homework everyday)
• Notebook
• Binder, with lined paper (for handouts and papers)
• Pen and Pencil
• Any books assigned at the time
• Any homework assignment due
• Texts:
  Environmental Science, Holt
  Silent Spring, Carson
  The Americans, Glencoe
  Language of Literature, McDougal Little
  
  *Plus all texts and handouts required in each individual WALC class.

Evaluation and Grading:
All assignments for the WALC Pathway are given a point value based on difficulty and effort required. Your grade depends what percent of the total points possible you are able to earn.
90—100% = A
80—89% = B
70—79% = C
60—69% = D
59% and below = F

Assignment Categories:
All assignments for each of your WALC classes fall under one of the following categories, adding up to your final grade:

Baseline Requirements:
The following projects are WALC-wide Baseline Requirements. You must complete them with a satisfactory grade in order to pass any of our classes. You will be given a detailed description of each.

1. Inventive Modeling Paper—due halfway through Fall Semester, 200 Points
2. Building the Perfect Paper—ongoing until you earn 200 Points
3. The Way to McLaren Park Group Project—due at the end of Fall Semester, 350 Points
4. McLaren Park Presentation to Sophomores—due halfway though Spring, 350 Points
5. Final Paper—due at the end of Spring Semester, 200 Points
6. WALC Journal—due at the end of Fall and at the end of Spring, 200 Points each time.

Participation:
Your participation points for each of the WALC classes will be affected by your attendance and performance during our WALC trips. Each type of trip and its point value is listed below:

1. Camping—300
2. Day Trip or Hiking—100
3. McLaren Habitat Restoration—50
   

Reading:
DEAR reading logs and your final DEAR assignments count for all of your WALC classes every single grading period regardless of which teacher is conducting DEAR at the time.

Other Class Assignments:
This category includes all other work in each class not falling under the above requirements such as vocabulary and spelling assignments, warm-up exercises, textbook review questions, free-writes, and short essays.

*Other Class Assignments and Homework are specific to each class only.