Stress- Spencer

The way i got through  much if junior year was coming a lot of stress. i often have very interesting ways of dealing with large amounts of stress. I will get up from my work and pace around my room and even sometimes i will throw a ball around my room and against the wall. This is the best way for me to deal with large amounts of work. I guess you could say it worked for me simply because I am happy with the way things went this year.

I would say I also managed by just calming down and always putting HW first. It is rewarding when I finish my rok and then know that I am able to go hang out and do things and live freely. I work to that as my goal. Also, I tried to stop procrastinating and would just do my assignments on time and that typically paid off this year for me.

Help! -Hope Reed

I felt really prepared for the AP test. I think that your most effective ways of teaching was through giving us constant feedback through AP practice multiple choice questions and free responses. I honestly felt like I knew exactly how to write each essay, and I was very comfortable writing it in the amount of time given. However, one thing that could've possibly been better was the multiple choice. I feel like taking them and then vaguely going over them afterwards could've been done a little more thoroughly. At the beginning of each semester, for example, I feel like we should have gone through some sections together as a class. Because after I've taken a practice test, I've forgotten everything each question was about, but if we worked on it together the first time we've seen it, we can eliminate the wrong choices and clear confusions before we actually answered them.

I do feel as if I passed. And I thank you so much for that, because in many classes I don't know how the AP tests are even structured, so I'm glad we did many practice questions. That was great. And the writing part was very easy for me. I also liked the book by John Trimble (I think), it kind of blew my mind because it was basically telling me break every rule I ever learned, but it is WAY more fun to write that way.

Help! I need somebody. Help! - Rachel Bragg

I have never been good at writing, but I have seen my writing grow in this class. The repeated timed writings helped me find my own writing style because before this class I didn't write much in my classes. I did the minimum quality writing I needed to get an A and moved on. I have learned how I need to organize my thoughts before writing and the writing with style book helped me by giving me little tips to use while writing an essay. I think what you are doing to teach writing helps a lot to break a student from writing 5 paragraph standard essays because that's all I knew before this class.


I wish we would have focused more on the multiple choice because at the beginning of the year you said that we should make progress and our scores should increase but my scores stayed the same. You could do something as simple as reviewing the style/types of questions they ask. But personally I didn't feel as prepared for the multiple choice part of the AP Test.


Everything else was very effective, and I appreciate the work you do as a teacher. Have a wonderful summer!

17: Horray for hollywood Maggie Arvin

Future - Rachel Bragg

I don't really want to talk about my junior year. It happened, it's almost over. But I will talk about my summer, because I am quite excited about it.


At the end of April, I found out that I did not make it into GSP, which I wasn't too upset about because it meant that I am able to be a counselor at the summer camp I enjoy working at in the summers. I work at Bluegrass Christian Camp for 7/11 camp which is for children ages 7 to 11. I enjoy the community there and all of the other employees, it makes the job fun.


I also found out at the end of April that the city pools were in need of lifeguards, and I have wanted to be a lifeguard since I was little, swimming on the YMCA swim team. I found a certification class in Georgetown and spent 4 days pulling bodies out of the water and putting air into dummies so that I can get paid 9 dollars and hour to watch at people swim. And I'm actually really excited about it. This will be my first paying job and I enjoy being outside in the summer, as long as I don't get burnt.

ASSIGNMENT 26: TYLER ROSENKRANTZ

There is one thing that stuck out to me with this prompt, and that was the in class writing. It was not fun at all, but it was very helpful. We would sit there for days on end grading and discussing people's essays and it was painful but it helped. It was very helpful to look at essays like anya's and it showed me what i needed to develop more in my writing and understanding. Thanks for the wonderful year mr. logsdon, its been real!!!

ASSIGNMENT 25: TYLER ROSENKRANTZ

I am taking 5 AP tests. Kind of stressful. And there's not a great way to relieve stress either, because i have been very busy with band and then you stay up late at night trying to study and cram for these tests. One good coping mechanism that ive found is just giving up and doing no homework and accepting your fate and going to bed. One night i went to bed at 7:20 and it was amazing. Also pretty sure i am not gonna pass the AP Physics C test.

ASSIGNMENT 24: TYLER ROSENKRANTZ

Well first off, everyone was right. Junior year is EASILY the hardest year by far. It was so exhausting, and stressful. It still is! I think the first half of my year was pretty successful. I managed to stay organized and got most of my work turned in, to a certain extent. However in this second semester i have gotten lazy, especially at the end of the year. With my participation in the pit musical and my 5 AP test i have been at school very little and done very little homework, but i'm making it.
This summer i will be at GSA and i am SOOoOOOOO excited. It's going to be life changing and amazing and i can't wait. Im also excited for senior year because half of my day will be spent in the band room!

Help! I Need Somebody. Help!- Braeden Bowen

When I started this school year, I was less than excited to find out that I had to scrap everything I had learned the previous two years. Verbose, lengthy phrases shoved into a 5-paragraph form had to be simplified and spread out to make essays more "organic." It took me a long time to truly break free from that 5-paragraph style, and more emphasis on the purpose and effectiveness of the organic style might be beneficial for next year's kids.

Another thing I would like next year's group to understand is why. For most of the year, I felt like the changes I made to my writing were arbitrary and not truly important, and it wasn't until saw how fluidity impacts the audience's understanding of the overall piece did I begin to formulate my essays on a lack of formulation.

I enjoyed grading essays and found it very helpful for making small tweaks to my writing. I do wish, however, that we could have received more direct feedback from you besides the comments you make in class and the occasional edited papers we received.

Lastly, I also enjoyed our final projects for both semesters, and I enjoyed researching my topic for both projects. I do wish, however, that they had been better incorporated into the things we do throughout the year and not just sprung on us at the last second. As much fun as they were to make, a speech and a PSA really had nothing to do with the other things we did in class.

Thank you for a great year of English, I really do think I learned a lot!

Assignment 24 Spencer Parsons

i loved junior year and I also did not love junior year. Some aspects of it made me really unhappy because of how difficult certain classes were, but i grew a lot this year. I learned not to take certain things for granted any more. I am now much more capable of handling myself and knowing when I need to try harder. As for this summer, i am going to being doing a lot of traveling. Also im just so hype for senior year. My friend group has become sooo tight and that will only get better next year. Its gonna stink when we all got to college but I dont have to worry about that right now. this summer i cannot wait to go to young life camp. It is the best week of the whole summer and of my life. I am also getting to go on a father son fishing trip to canada soon which will be great fun. I am just ready for this week to be over! Bring on summer!

ASSIGNMENT 23: TYLER ROSENKRANTZ

My playlist is probably a little bit biased, because my playlist is the perfect playlist for a jazz trumpet player, which i happen to be.

Playlist:
1. Gospel John
2. Chameleon
3. Birdland
4.MacArthur Park
5. Give it One

This playlist is heavily influenced by maynard ferguson, one of the craziest jazz trumpet players of all time. This creates a perfect playlist because these are all fast high tempo high energy songs. All of these songs are also led by a screaming lead trumpet part, which is exactly what jazz songs need!!

Assignment 26: Jordan Strange

This class was super enjoyable and laid back but also challenging and made me a better writer.

I really enjoyed everything that you did to prepare us for the essays on the AP exams. I liked how we got to hear feedback from most of our classmates; it was super helpful. Every activity that we did was in some way useful and helped me improve multiple things. One of the things I really learned to enjoy was the Socratic seminars. Although I hated how we had to type out some questions and answer them, I loved the actual seminar part, to an extent. It was so neat, specially when the questions got deep and people became vulnerable. It really was a great activity.

I also thought that the amount of times we did practice exams was just the right amount, and they were spaced out well and weren't overwhelming.

I would've preferred that we had gotten more experience with videos before we were given the task of creating one for a final. I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I wish this wouldn't have been the time for figuring everything out.

Overall, this class was effective and fun, and I can say I've learned a lot. Thanks for a great year.

Help! I need somebody. Help!- Morgan Lakofka

A few things I found effective this year were the amount of essays we wrote, reading about writing composition, practice tests, and socratic seminars. Reading the book at the beginning of the year helped better prepare me to write the essays we practiced for the ap test. It taught me how to write a successful opening and closing and helped me break the traditional 5 paragraph essay style. The practice tests gave me an idea of how the test would look but I think they would have been more beneficial if we took them more often and spent more time going over commonly missed answers. I think the amount of time spent on essays was effective and grading was very clear for what to expect on the exam. After taking the test, it would’ve been helpful to review essay styles that we went over at the beginning of the year. I also found the socratic seminars effective but it would’ve been more effective to do them earlier in the year instead of right before the exam. 

Assignment 26: Spencer Parsons

I think that the test was very easy. We were all very prepared for it. I think if we could be better prepared for one area it would be the multiple choice section. We put a ton of stress on writing all the time and that was no problem for the test. I know that the test has a lot more elaboration on the writing section but the multiple choice section was a tad harder. However, there is no real problem with the way that Mr. Logsdon prepares us. Maybe you could go over the actual questions a bit more instead of only unleashing us onto the practice test but it was still fine. I loved junior year english class and i am very excited to show my PSA this week. It was a fun year and it is hard to feel unprepared for the test with Mr. Logsdon's awesome teaching.

ASSIGNMENT 22: TYLER ROSENKRANTZ

If i could be any character i would be superman. Superman is hands down my favorite superhero of all time. There are people that don't like superman, but when i asked them why their only reason was because he's too perfect. Which is exactly why i would be superman. He's tall and strong and he can fly. Like who doesn't want to be able to fly?! That amazing. You could literally fly anywhere. And he's bulletproof, and heat vision, and x ray vision, super strength, super hearing, he's amazing. Who wouldn't want to be superman? There is no other superhero in existence that could go toe to toe with superman. Doomsday doesn't count. :)

Help! I need somebody. Help!-Matthew Telfer

I have genuinely enjoyed AP English this year. I have seen notable improvement in my writing and I contribute that to the constant writing we do in class. Yet, I struggled early in the year because of my lack of knowledge of rhetorical devices. I had trouble locating and analyzing rhetorical devices in the numerous essays we examined in class. Therefore, it would be beneficial if you went over each specific rhetorical device that could be found in an AP essay and explain its effect.

However, I did appreciate the ACT English practice we did in the second semester and believe it could be expanded. The ACT practice could start earlier in the second semester which may help improve the student's scores a little more.

I would have liked to work in smaller groups a couple of more times to grade the essays. Personally I thought the medium-sized groups provided the most effective feedback for my essays. In the classroom discussions, I was not able to defend the decisions I made when I wrote my essays yet I was able to defend myself in the medium sized groups because it was a more intimate atmosphere.

The Future- Morgan Lakofka

Junior year flew by in a blink of the eye. One of the major success I’ve had is staying in school and getting decent grades in most of my classes. The biggest accomplishment is surviving physics. I have also branched out a lot and started participating in many new school activities. I joined the French club and the art club and I stage managed two of the school plays as well as worked on the crew for a third play and I also joined cross country.  One of my failures this year was my math grade, I didn’t actually fail, but it was not sub-par. A major lesson learned is not to procrastinate apush unit assignments which I will pass on to in a tip to upcoming juniors. Another lesson learned is how to take a derivative of a fraction and will now never be able to sing the song Row Your Boat without thinking about it thanks to Mrs. Deweese. For senior year, I want to maintain a good gpa and take more art classes. 

help -catherine van tatenhove

I hate taking the derivative of a function. I hate calculating the velocity of objects. But, I love to write. I came to Henry Clay for the Liberal Arts Academy. And, I admit that the English experience I have had over the past three years has been disappointing. I wanted to read more books and take less multiple choice tests. I wanted to see rough drafts turn into final drafts instead of timed writings turn into typed papers with 2.6 at the top.
However, (and that's a big however) what I wanted I figured out weren't the only effective methods in improving my writing. I struggle with these hard working teachers having to teach to a test. But, your class was the one AP class I had this year where not only did I feel prepared for the AP test, but I also felt like my writing/my knowledge of the course material had significantly improved.
When we grade papers as a class while referring to the benchmarks the class learns a lot, and I think when we do it as an entire class instead of breaking up into smaller groups the class gets even more out of it. I do think less time could be spent on Writing with Style. I actually got a lot out of the book, but I know it can get boring quickly. So, students would have a better appreciation for the book if the most memorable points were highlighted briefly.
That being said, I would like to thank you for always keeping class entertaining, and for solidifying my love for writing. You rock Mr. Logsdon keep doing what you're doing.

Assignment 26: Classy Critique - Evan Hays

Mr. Logsdon,
I'd like these criticisms to be preceded that though I hate calling myself "different" or trying to distinguish myself from my comrades in the classroom, I must acknowledge that my learning style, especially in the field of analysis and argument may be differently developed.

I really enjoyed your class, in the words of Christopher Hitchens, "I am a writer in the sense of what I am, not what I do". Though I can say that last year I really started developing my writing, this year I really began enjoying it. The art of communication is one that I take great pleasure in accomplishing, even though my specialty is vagueness I think. And this is where my one major recommendation comes from.
I felt the Socratic seminars were too structured. Perhaps that was by necessity. You had to take a grade on them and we had to prove that we read the texts, but I think it eliminated some of the richness of it. Yes, some students need more time to develop and analyze the documents before they discuss them,but I think there is a real benefit to both sow and reap through spontaneity. If you haven't already built your argument before coming into class, it will always be easier to build an idea of interpretation that includes other students points of view.
Of course, take these with a grain of salt. I must admit that I've never really been a student to draw within the lines very well, and many others probably benefited from the prerequisites. But you asked for honesty and I can honestly say I have given it all year without a thought of stopping now. Your class was wonderful Mr. Logsdon, and a respite from all of the seemingly endless slew of nary-applicable pseudo-knowledge that was somehow seemingly learned without a hears width of real thought. Thank you for your class, sir.

With gratitude,
A learner

the future- catherine van tatenhove

As I head into the last 4 days of my Junior year of high school I'm overwhelmed with a feeling of success. However, it isn't the success I would have thought I would be celebrating when I began this year. I didn't maintain the perfect 4.0. I didn't get a perfect ACT score. I didn’t get fives on all my AP tests. I should have spent more time studying and less time up at 4 am watching documentaries and reading books. I should have done a lot of things. But, I didn't, and I still succeeded. I succeeded because I realized that a number on the top of my transcript doesn't define my future. I found where I excelled and started to focus on that without dwelling on the all too present fact that I may never be a star on Mrs. Dewees's wall. Because the fact is this year has been a success because I learned to surround myself with people who believe and have the same values and goals as me. People who make you believe in something even if you aren’t sure what that is. I learned that high school drama may be apart of every angsty teens life, but the only thing you can control is how your respond to it. It isn’t profound. It’s actually pretty cliche. But, thank you junior year. Thank you for bringing me new friendships and unbeatable memories. Now, if only I can figure out a mentoring project, and/or how to speak French for my three week trip to France......