It’s probably the highlight of the year for me, and it’s definitely the most enjoyable assignment to assess. At the end of every year, I have my English I Honors students — students who skip eighth-grade English and go straight to ninth-grade Honors English — write letters to next year’s students. The reason is simple: because the class is a high school honors class, I try always to teach it with that degree of rigor, and often students are not prepared for the challenges I place before them through the year.

“If you’re used to doing the bare minimum in English and getting easy A’s, you’ll be in for a rude shock if you have those expectations of this class,” I tell students every year. But in the past, I found students didn’t necessarily believe me, so I decided to call in expert witnesses to testify: students who had already made it through 180 days with me.

“Listen to what your peers have to say about this class,” I now tell them, handing out letters that include single paragraphs longer than the whole essays that most of the students write at the beginning of the year.

• Mr. Scott will not stand for the pitiful, tiny blurbs of writing you may claim to be a paragraph.
• Throughout the year you will get to know Mr. Scott and his ways of teaching very well, and I am sorry to say, that although he is an outstanding teacher and great person, he will make your experience wonderfully miserable, in the sense that there is plenty of work, so you will have no free time, and it is hard, grueling work.
• He is the first teacher I know of to ever use technology like he does.  On his website he posts that day’s lesson and homework, so if you were absent, all you would need to do is check his website.
• Remember you always have something to look forward to in his class.
• Mr. Scott is very kind and will help you as much as possible. He will not tell you, you can’t do something when he knows you can. You will have to want to learn to make it possible. This class is challenging, but if you show how hard you can work and how smart you are, it will fly by and if you put in the effort, you can do it.
• You are a shell and English 1 is trying to crack you. If you slack you will crack and if you crack you will just do horribly bad.
• How are you doing now?  Because how you feel now is not how you’re going to feel when you actually start your school work with your dear teacher Mr. Scott, just look at him doesn’t  he just look so nice and harmless?  Well think again your time with him is going to be crazy.

Some are simply funny:

• Congratulations on managing to get into or possibly being forcefully pushed into English 1!
• You will love this class with all your heart, and banish it to the deepest depths of Hell at the same time.
• English 1 will be likely be one of the most horrifying, exhausting, heart-wrenching, head pounding years of your life. Let’s just say that this class is going to be rather ambiguous.