What organization would suit your needs?

Assisting Mr. Hertli → Last time assisting Mr. Hertli → Reading atlas → Young and old → Appreciation of life

How are you starting your draft? What process works for you?

For Peer Response questions for Erin’s assignment, see Peer Response: Recalling an Experience.

What do you want to ask your readers?

Would any of the general comments about Erin’s draft also apply to your draft?

In order to fully appreciate something, to realize its value, one often must experience its Peer: You got the reflection part started right away.beginning and its end. For example, to learn and appreciate all the material in a textbook chapter, reading and understanding must take place from the introduction to the conclusion. Instructor: Good idea to draw readers in with analogies.A book is not enjoyable if you do not read from start to finish, nor is a movie cut short before the ending is revealed. My appreciation of life came in a most unexpected connection between life’s beginning and its end.

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Peer: I highlighted how you arranged the details to lead us into the house. Good progression. I can really see the scene here.Instructor: Effective visual details here.Mr. Hertli was a brilliant old Swiss man whom I assisted every week for the last two years of my high school career. He lived 25 minutes away from my home, down a winding road surrounded by trees, grazing horses, and the occasional house. Trees arched over his steep driveway, as if bowing to all who enter, welcoming anyone with insight, help, or simply company. Mr. Hertli’s house was of a very traditional build, and was surrounded by nature. Goats fed on grasses and horses galloped and played within a fenced-off grazing area. Ducks swam on a pond and dozens of sun-colored butterflies danced around bunches of tall purple flowers between which a few stepping-stones were nestled, as a walkway to the front door.

3

Inside sat Mr. Hertli, always rocking in a chair and listening to books-on-tape in one of the various languages familiar to him. Peer: I like how you led up to him. You even got his history in with the shoes!Instructor: Try Edit/Find to catch repetition.He was very tall, thin, and elderly, and wore dress slacks and a suit jacket no matter what the occasion. His leather shoes were obviously very old, and showed scuffs and wear which told stories of Switzerland, war, research, and accomplishment. Mr. Hertli also wore very dark sunglasses morning and evening to protect the mere one or two percent of his eyesight that had not yet been stolen from him by macular degeneration.

4

Mr. Hertli was an accomplished man. He had been through immigration, Peer: The details here end on a big point.served the United States in war, earned various degrees, had written a book on evolution and creationism, and was fighting for his life against a terminal lung disease. He was extremely intelligentPeer: I could see him in ¶3. Now I feel like I know him, too., and it was my job to read him scientific journals and books, record information and data for his next work-in-progress, manage his correspondence, fill out paperwork, dispense his medications, and do nearly all the things a blind person can not do alone.

5

One particular day, I was assisting Mr. Hertli in his office. Crimson carpeting lined the floor of the tiny literature-crammed room. Journals and books lay sprawled on every surface, and there was barely room for a computer on a desk and two chairs somewhere in all the mess. A cord around Mr. Hertli’s head fed oxygen through his nose, while the other end trailed out the door, down the steps, and into the living room where an oxygen-dispensing machine always sat, always humming. We sorted through music, storing old German and Swiss instrumental classics on a new device for the blind which stored numerous songs, audio books, and other audio literature for playback. As we waited for the media to download into the device, Mr. Hertli inquired about recent political events concerning the country of Georgia. Instructor: Does everything here support your main idea? Could you be more selective to sharpen your focus?He desired to know the geographic location of Georgia.“Read the atlas,” he said, and although I had grown to understand and love his thick European accent, I sat staring at him in bafflement at his words, which he, fortunately, could not see. I reached under a desk and pushed past books about Darwin, God, evolution, and history, and found a large, blue-covered atlas, aged by years of learning, discovery, and research. Peer: The quotes are good, but the whole ¶ seems long—maybe split it? Or drop some detail?Brushing the dust off, I opened the book to the index, and searched for “Georgia.” I turned to the page to which the index directed me, and unsuccessfully tried to describe Georgia’s relation to Turkey, Russia, and Azerbajan.“Show me,” he said. Show him! How could I, for he could not see, after all, and now I had to find a way to make him see?!

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I placed the wide atlas across his wobbly knees, in his lap, facing him. Taking his hand, I slowly directed Mr. Hertli’s finger around the perimeter of each country, saying, “This is Turkey. To the east, here is Georgia.” He pointed and repeated the countries back to me, and I asserted that, yes, that was Peer: Spelled right?Azerbajan or Russia.

7

It was as though I were teaching a small child, who could not Peer: When I read your draft online, my software said this was a fragment. Is it? Are fragments OK in here?read, and who did not know the least about geography. And how strange it was to be feeling such a way. After all, I was helping a well-educated, cultured man, in this most elementary, basic way. In this aged man, nearing the end of his life, I saw the character of a young boy, beginning to learn a concept new to him.

8

This would be the last time I helped Mr. Hertli, as I would be beginning college just a few days later. Mr. Hertli was now completely blind. LikeInstructor: More reflection here on the significance? a mother afraid to send her child to school for the first time, I was afraid to cease my assistance of this somewhat helpless man. ForPeer: I get what you’re saying, but maybe explain it more? This flat statement seems too abrupt. when I had seen this connection—the young, new child in the old, I came to realize just how valuable life itself is.

What have your readers noted or suggested for your draft?

PEER

I really think you did a good job creating the experience. You’re a very descriptive writer, and I liked being able to imagine the experience—the road, the animals, the flowers by the house. I also liked how you used contrasting paragraphs—long paragraph 5 to explain the situation and then short paragraph 6 for the outcome. (But I still think 5 might be too wordy.) You got the reflection part started at the beginning, too, so I knew you were thinking about it. I just wasn’t that sure about how you ended with it. My own son traces things with his hands, so I could see what you meant about Mr. Hertli, but I expected you to explain it more. Maybe you could add here to make the conclusion stronger when you revise.

What has your instructor suggested about your draft?

INSTRUCTOR

Erin, you’ve selected and developed a provocative experience that changed your thinking. However, readers need more explanation and interpretation to share the intensity of your experience. If you explained its significance more fully, your conclusion would be more compelling. I’m wondering if you’re trying to find that significance by synthesizing—the reading and thinking skill we discussed in class last week. You seem to be pulling together your actual experience with Mr. Hertli and your insight about the young child who grew up to be this man in order to develop a new idea that goes beyond them. Besides strengthening your concluding reflections as you revise, look also at your fine selection of details. They enrich your description, but try to make sure that all of them are forceful and relevant.

Learning by Doing Responding as a Peer

If Erin were in your class, what questions would you want to ask her? What advice for her revision would you supply in your peer response?