UNITS · The Forge

UNITS

Tab 06 / 11 · Per-Unit Cards U2–U8

PER-UNIT
CARDS

U2–U8 at a glance: book, trait, priority questions, signature failure, reading stress, workshop overlays.

11 Tabs

START WHY MENTORS WEEKS CYCLE UNITS WORKSHOPS FINALE PROTOCOLS FADE DICT

UNITS · opener

Units — How to Read a Card

THE FORGE · MENTOR GUIDE

Each card gives you the unit at a glance: when it runs, the book and trait, the fade phase, which debate questions to prioritize, the signature failure for this unit and its fix, the reading-window stress note, and any workshop overlay. Pair each card with that unit's Reading-Guide-[Book] and Unit-[N]-Debate-Questions.

The eight books, at a glance

Unit	Trait	Book	Fade phase
U1	Discipline	Project Hail Mary	Demo
U2	Perseverance	Little Women	Handoff
U3	Interdependence	The Boys in the Boat	Warm Fade
U4	Resilience	Pride and Prejudice	Warm Fade
U5	Acceptance	A Man for All Seasons	Independent
U6	Courage	All the Light We Cannot See	Independent
U7	Hope	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Emergency Only
U8	Moral Courage	A Good Man Is Hard to Find	Emergency Only

Reading order is the spineUnit 1 (Project Hail Mary) is the fully-worked example in the WEEKS tab. The cards that follow cover U2–U8, same three-week rhythm, new book, a little less mentor each time.

UNITS · 40

Units

UNIT 2

PERSEVERANCE

Little Women

WEEKS 5–7OCT 13 / 20 / 27FADE: HANDOFF

Lens

What perseverance costs the people around you, not just you.

Priority questions

Q2 (The Cost) is the formal in-class debate; Q4 (The Ledger) is the emotional anchor; Q1 (The Right Call) warms up. (Order: Q2, Q4, Q1.)

Affirmative position

(Q2) Jo's perseverance was selfish, she left for New York while Beth was already declining, and it took Beth's death to make her quit her ambition.

Signature failure → fix

The debate lives in the back half of the book, which is exactly where students are most likely to have skimmed or fallen behind. Fix: at the Arms Room reading check, ask one specific plot-anchor question from the final reading days to surface who has actually finished before the Forge.

Reading note

Little Women is long (~500 pp) and runs back-to-back with Project Hail Mary, the heaviest reading stretch of the year. Send the Project Hail Mary reading guide to families in August so students arrive Week 1 having read it.

Workshop overlay

Forge Workshop 1 replaces Story Forge at the Week 7 Tavern (Oct 27).

Handoff note

The first unit students moderate. Forge Coach sits beside the moderator with a whisper-card, present, but not running it.

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UNIT 3

Units

INTERDEPENDENCE

The Boys in the Boat

WEEKS 8–10NOV 3 / 10 / 17FADE: WARM FADE

Lens

What you build with a crew that none of you could build alone.

Priority questions

Q2 (The Swing) is the formal in-class debate; Q4 (The Trust) is the emotional anchor; Q1 (The Boat) warms up. (Order: Q2, Q4, Q1.)

Affirmative position

(Q2) The swing erases the self, true interdependence demands surrendering yourself to the boat, not just cooperating with it.

Signature failure → fix

Interdependence debates collapse into “teamwork is good” platitudes. Fix: force every claim to name a specific dependency from the boat, who carried whom, and what it cost. No generic “they worked together.”

Reading note

3 clean weeks before Thanksgiving break (no school Nov 24). Finish the book before the break, not during it.

Fade note

Forge Coach moves outside the circle. Intervene only on a genuine crisis. Text Coach still juries.

UNITS · 42

Units

UNIT 4

RESILIENCE

Pride and Prejudice

WEEKS 11–13DEC 1 / 8 / 15FADE: WARM FADE

Lens

Being underestimated, and what you hold onto when you are.

Priority & timeline

Watch the timeline. Proposals come in order: Ch. 19 (Mr. Collins), Ch. 34 (Darcy's first, refused), Ch. 58 (Darcy's second, accepted, after the Lady Catherine confrontation). Do not let a debater claim Darcy “defied his aunt and proposed” before the confrontation. The order matters.

Signature failure → fix

The December momentum unit, exploited slack kills it. The 48-hour hard prep deadline starts here (U4+). Forge Coach states it in days and hours and holds the line; a missed deadline means jury or bench, not debate. No exceptions, holidays included.

Reading note

Shortest book (~270 pp) but the most calendar-stressed window (holidays + break right after on Dec 22). Front-load the reading early in the three weeks.

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UNIT 5

Units

ACCEPTANCE

A Man for All Seasons

WEEKS 14–16JAN 5 / 12 / 19FADE: INDEPENDENT

Lens

Accepting what you cannot control without changing who you are.

Priority questions

Q2 (The Silence) is the formal debate, silence as argument, the year's sharpest legal-distinction question; Q4 (The Family) is the anchor; Q1 (The Oath) warms up. (Order: Q2, Q4, Q1.)

Affirmative position

(Q2) More's silence was a weapon aimed at the King, not neutral principle, he was the greatest lawyer in England and knew exactly what his silence implied.

Signature failure → fix

Students read More's silence as passivity. Fix: the Skill Layer should teach strategic silence: More's refusal to speak IS the argument. Anchor it to the trial scene.

Reading note

A play (~150 pp), so it absorbs the 1-week semester gap (Jan 12 → Jan 19) well. The U5 Forge is the last day of Fall semester; the U5 Tavern opens Spring. Reading for U6 (All the Light, the year's longest) should begin during the U5 Tavern.

Workshop overlay

Forge Workshop 2 replaces Story Forge at the Week 16 Tavern (Jan 19). A natural post-break reset.

Fade note

Mentors are now Independent: Forge Coach outside the circle, emergency only; Text Coach juries like a student; Weaver runs 1:1 conferences.

UNITS · 44

Units

UNIT 6

COURAGE

All the Light We Cannot See

WEEKS 17–19JAN 26 / FEB 2 / FEB 9FADE: INDEPENDENT

Lens

The cost and sacrifice of courage under occupation.

Priority questions

Q2 (The Tracker Question) is the formal debate; Q4 (The Resistance Question) is the anchor; Q1 (The Frederick Question) warms up. (Order: Q2, Q4, Q1.)

Affirmative position

(Q2) Werner was complicit, full stop, one brave ending at Saint-Malo doesn't balance a ledger of years spent tracking resistance signals to their deaths.

Signature failure → fix

The book's structure (130+ short chapters, two timelines) makes students cherry-pick scenes out of order. Fix: Text Coach requires every quote to carry its timeline marker (Saint-Malo 1944 vs. the lead-up) so claims stay anchored.

Reading note

Longest book of the year (~530 pp) in 3 uninterrupted weeks. No break cushion, hold the nightly pace hard.

Fade note

Still Independent. If the room runs clean here, you are on track to fully fade by U7.

UNITS · 45

UNIT 7

Units

HOPE

The Picture of Dorian Gray

WEEKS 20–22FEB 23 / MAR 2 / MAR 9FADE: EMERGENCY ONLY

Lens

Discovering that what you hoped for wasn't what you thought, choosing the harder truth over the comfortable surface.

Priority questions

Q1 (The Portrait) is the formal debate and the sharpest, who bears the blame for Dorian's corruption; Q3 (The Wish) is the anchor. Q2 (The Corruptor), the Lord Henry “manipulation vs. revelation” question, is strong but sensitive: preview it with your co-mentor, avoid the modern “grooming” framing, keep it textual. (Order: Q1, Q3, Q2.)

Affirmative position

(Q1) Basil is the villain, his portrait is what let Dorian see and worship his own beauty for the first time; without it, there was nothing to wish on.

Signature failure → fix

Students moralize (“vanity is bad”) instead of arguing. Fix: the Skill Layer should model holding a position you find distasteful, argue Lord Henry's side well, on the text, without endorsing it.

Reading note

~250 pp in 3 weeks before Spring Break. A comfortable pace.

Workshop overlay

Forge Workshop 3 replaces Story Forge at the Week 22 Tavern (Mar 9), the last workshop before the final project; it is a draft intensive.

Fade note

Emergency Only. Forge Coach in the corner or absent. Students run the room start to finish.

UNITS · 46

Units

UNIT 8

MORAL COURAGE

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

WEEKS 23–25MAR 16 / 23 / 30FADE: EMERGENCY ONLY

Lens

The moment of recognition, seeing something true about another person that reveals something true about yourself, and acting on it in time.

Priority questions

U8 set, The Moment of Grace (formal), The Reach (emotional anchor). The pedagogical hook is “does late courage still count?”

Affirmative position

(Q1) The grandmother's final act was real moral courage, not panic, she claimed kinship with The Misfit instead of continuing to manipulate him.

⚠Spoiler embargo

The September student binder deletes O'Connor's ending on purpose. Do not reveal the grandmother's death or The Misfit's final line in any handout. The full caveat lives only in the Weaver's U8 Tavern script, deliver it live, not in print. The Story Layer prompt deliberately inverts the ending (students write the version where recognition comes early enough to act).

Signature failure → fix

The story is short and dense; students read it once and think they're done. Fix: the reading guide uses “excavation” framing, read in one sitting, then revisit across the days with deeper focus. Hold them to the re-reads.

Reading note

A three-text trio, not a story collection: O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find (anchor, debated), Tolstoy's God Sees the Truth But Waits (second text; in the Document Study Reader), and a Bonhoeffer After Ten Years excerpt (document study, pre-read at home from the Document Study Reader and discussed in class). Load is light. Final Forge begins after Spring Break (no school Apr 6).

Fade note

Last unit. By now you are likely more audience than coach, and if you still step in here and there, that is not a failure. The fade is a direction, not a verdict.

UNITS · 47