Category Archives: Announcements

Conquering Summer: Giving it the Old College Try

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Books and mortarboardJust back from an evening walk in the neighborhood. It’s a great night. Sunny. Slightly breezy. By Texas standards, reasonably cool. People are riding bikes, walking dogs, throwing Frisbees and playing soccer.

What a great summer!

Cicero’s Academy is having a great summer too. We are at the beginning of July, and about halfway through our summer workshop schedule. We are having fun, and if students aren’t careful, we will all learn something before we’re done.

We learned about the importance of asking “why” to add detail in the Developing the Intermediate Writer workshop. The story of Captain Why battling the evil Doctor Nottanuf (think about it) frames the central assignment of turning a paragraph’s worth of ideas into a five paragraph essay.

We learned the power of persuasion in the Essay Writing and Introduction to Persuasion workshop. We learned the essay structure and then put it to work crafting arguments about why Sherlock Holmes is a great detective and why O. Henry’s short stories parallel his life.

The summer schedule leads up to our college-bound workshops. On July 13, we begin Essay Writing for the College Bound, a workshop that focuses on the SAT/ACT and AP essay formats. The goal is to write a quality essay fast. We will drill students in writing essays in 25 minutes, or a set of essays in 2 hours in the case of the Advanced Placement exams. You might have heard that the testing services are no longer requiring these sections as part of the standard test, but don’t be fooled. The top colleges still require them.

We will follow that up on August 4 with a one-day workshop that covers the college application essay. It’s a slightly different beast and we will explain how to navigate its nuances. Students attending this workshop can submit for critique as many drafts of college application essays as they like until September 31.

College graduation ceremonies are still fresh in our recent memories and commencement speeches are still making the rounds on social media. Let’s see, what would we want to tell students heading out into life…

That Time Again

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IMG_1518To catch you up on things around Cicero’s Academy:

The bluebonnets are in blossom and so are summer plans. We have posted the summer workshop schedule. We begin the summer with the younger students and “Developing the Intermediate Writer,” a workshop designed to help students who have mastered core skills in sentences and paragraphs and help them transition to writing essays and working with bigger ideas of their own choosing. We then move to “Essay Writing and Introduction to Persuasion,” a workshop aimed at the advanced middle school and high school student that needs to sharpen the skills of making an argument. The schedule closes in late July with “Essay Writing for the College Bound,” a workshop aimed at timed writings in the style of the SAT test and Advanced Placement tests. While there is a bit of change afoot in whether the writing portions of the SAT will be required in the future, a quick Google shows that the top schools are still requiring those portions of the standard tests.

Assuming we survive all that, summer will lead to fall and we have some plans for fall as well. Learning to write requires writing consistently and internalizing all the basic parts of the writing process that we teach. We have had several students over the past few years come back for tutoring as a refresher course on the taxonomy and habits we teach. We will be offering some online lesson plans on a subscription basis, geared toward reinforcing the themes of the summer workshops. We have long wanted to move at least a portion of what we do online and this is the year to make that a reality. We will learn as we go and add more options and classes online over time.

Lastly, students have long referred to John as “Mr. T.” He warns them that he will not show up to class wearing a bad mohawk and 40 pounds of necklaces (he also worries that one day that pop culture reference will no longer work and he will be officially, hopelessly and irretrievably old). Students can now call him “Dr. T” as he finished his Ph.D. at the University of Texas in the fall. Did it feel like we went a bit silent in 2014? Writing a 200 page book on globalization and its impact on language habits will do that to you.

Summertime News

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P1010829Summer is approaching and Cicero’s Academy™ is heating up.

You asked for it and now we are announcing our summer schedule of workshops. Check here to find overviews and timing for a series of workshops: Developing the Intermediate Writer, Introduction to Public Speaking, Essay Writing/Introduction to Persuasion, Essay Writing for the College-Bound Student, and a set of one-day workshops on specific aspects of writing. We’re excited about the schedule and hope to see you. If the timing of the workshops does not quite fit, we can refashion them as a tutoring schedule to fit your life.

Cicero’s Academy™ helps students develop rhetorical skills—writing an essay, persuading an audience, developing an idea—once they have mastered the mechanics of writing such as punctuation, grammar, subject-verb-object construction and other core skills. As students develop, their need to communicate ideas requires more than just understanding certain rules. They need to understand how to use information and stimulate an audience. They learn that through experience, feedback and the fun of working with ideas.

Building on Success

This is the second summer we have offered the Essay Writing for the College Bound workshop. We appreciate the students that kept us informed of their achievements in the SAT, ACT and AP exams as well as the college application essay. Lots of hard work paid off for several students.

Yet, it starts younger than that.

We think of communication as a life skill. Students spend a lot of time responding to assignments when they write or speak. We encourage them to go beyond just regurgitating information. When the boss asks for an opinion about something, the boss wants more than just a list of facts. Students are encouraged to do something with the information they have, craft a view of the world that is their own.

The Developing the Intermediate Writer workshop takes students from roughly 5th grade through middle school and introduces them to the 5-paragraph essay format. Our Essay Writing and Introduction to Persuasion workshop teaches the high school student how to use information, perform a literary analysis and persuade an audience their view of the world is valid. The Introduction to Public Speaking workshop applies the same skills to making speeches.

We will focus on the building blocks of a great essay in the 1-day workshops. Students might be a little bleary-eyed after a few hours of writing just introductions to essays, but they will understand what makes a great essay at the end of the day.

See you this summer.

Summer Sequels and Cicero

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Movie PopcornSummer blockbusters are upon us. “Iron Man 3” boasts more suits than a Nordstrom’s Rack sale. “Star Trek Into Darkness” finds Capt. Kirk wondering why Sherlock Holmes is attacking the Enterprise. The “Man of Steel” seeks acceptance in a complex world where both his fathers played Robin Hood.

And Cicero’s Academy™ is back with a series of workshops and a new ongoing service.

We truly appreciate your patience and continuing engagement. Long story short, Cicero’s Academy™ kept a low profile in recent months while John finished a draft of his dissertation. The draft is done, edits are underway and summer is approaching.

Thank you for your patience. We will now continue with our regular programming.

We’re excited about the summer workshops and look forward to seeing you and your students there. June’s public speaking workshop was designed on the heels of the professional speaking class John led at St. Edwards University this spring. The intermediate workshop in July reprises a workshop from last summer. The August workshop is geared toward preparing high school students for the time-constrained writing efforts required in advanced placement and SAT testing, as well as the art and science of the college application’s personal essay.

We are also experimenting with new ways to stay connected beyond hands-on workshops and tutoring as well as support you in your everyday schooling efforts. This summer we are launching the Essay Doctor service. This is how it works:

You, or your child’s teacher, assign your student an essay project in the normal course of schooling. The subject might be history, science, literature or whatever. If you want an outside perspective on the writing quality of the essay, send it to us and we will evaluate it with specific comments, similar to the portfolio evaluation we do at the end of our Introduction to Persuasion workshop. You might just want a second opinion or to augment another curriculum.  The teacher remains in control of the assignment. We simply provide an extra set of eyes on the quality of the writing and help identify areas of improvement for follow-up assignments.

Responding to your suggestions, we’re also trying to streamline the pesky administrative part of Cicero’s Academy™ by adding payment by PayPal for your convenience. We’ll be upgrading the site further, adding sections with content of interest from around the web.

It’s summer in Austin and things are heating up.