Pun Intended: Class Log & Discussions

The Last Week!

After the excitement of last week, let's finish with a smooth run.  Today we finally finished Lysistrata and took our test on it, then had time to catch up on unfinished work.  After break we read Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proprosal" and answered some questions about that famous bit of classic satirical Swift, (I love him).  We then filled out our ten vocabulary words and (ideally) read Catcher in the Rye.  There was LOTS of make up time today and last Friday, so I don't want to see any missing assignments from ANYONE. 

Crash & Burn

As may be apparent, I did not update this page yesterday.  That is because my computer, may it rest in peace, died a slow and tortured death on Tuesday night while I was at the theater seeing "Transformers."  I am lucky to have my files recovered.  The world is lucky I have my files recovered.  Some one would have paid. 

Yesterday afternoon was spent (literally) replacing my computer that was an HP from their summer 04 runway.  This one on my lap is a new HP, and it is pretty and glossy.  Goodbye paycheck.

Anyway, back to business.

Wednesday: We watched Everything is Illuminated, based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, a discussed how to "read film."  Of course there was a fun worksheet to accompany our journey through the Ukraine.  We finished off the day with some vocabulary and Catcher in the Rye.

Thursday: We read an excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's book A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas, then answered some questions about what makes a "counter" culture and what gives different artifacts and ideas from a particular culture their value.  We followed this up with a look at some more slam poetry by authors featured in the books Spoken Word Revolution and Aloud, as well as a poem by Fayetteville's Russ Ritter, and, most importantly, there was even some semi-slam, mostly not, poems by me, because as I always say - I love a good little jolt of public humiliation.  We then wrote our own poems following the example of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself."  After break we closed with some grammar, vocabulary, and came close to finishing Lysistrata.  Thank you to all of our boys who bravely took on the roles of angry Grecian women.

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts

Just in case some of you thought my coconut story from yesterday was completely fictional, I have pictorial proof.  See below.  (Sound random?  We were reading A Long Way Gone on Monday morning, and the narrator spoke about eating coconuts.  Having tried to break one open with friends JUST THE NIGHT BEFORE - I decided to weigh in on the difficulties of coconut eating).

Anyways, back to the matter at hand.  In class today we continued reading ALWG, then took a look at other literature-with-a-cause.  We read Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce Et Decorum Est."  We paired this with a side of Picasso's "Guernica," compliments of the Toronto Star and its article about the UN covering the famous image during the announcement that the US would invade Iraq back in 2003.  If they were really afraid that the image would inspire anti-war sentiments simply from its presence in the room, then talk about the power of the paint brush!  IE the artist's message, IE all artists, writers, etc.  Go literature!  We followed this up with a nice course of Walt Whitman and his "Song of Myself," which helped us write our own "Name" poems.  This is a lesson that will be continued later this week.  After the interim we concluded with some nice vocabulary and our reading of the play Lysistrata.  Wow I'm tired!  Too bad raw coconut milk, as I so bitterly discovered, is sour and gross.  I guess it's "pass the orange juice" for my evening refreshment.

North Little Rock English III

Last Friday was the final day of Upward Bound, so no more literature and Spanish; bye guys!  In NLR summer school we took a test over Medea, created our own dramatic Greek tragedies, and took a look at the book When Rap Music Had a Conscious to talk about socially conscious art forms. 

Then I left for the weekend and got myself roasted in the sun, ouch!  Pass the lotion.

Today: Bringing us up to speed, today we continued to read A Long Way Gone, and read some articles concerning the civil war that took place in Sierra Leone, as well as the child soldiers who fought there.  Then we got an introduction to John Donne and his metaphysical poetry, (he's my fave!).  In the afternoon we picked up our ten vocabulary words, and then cast parts to begin reading Aristophenes' Greek comedy Lysistrata.  May the week commence!