Pun Intended: Class Log & Discussions

90 journals later...

My eyeballs are about to fall out of my head.

Here's today's layout:

We practiced annotation.  We used "The Story of An Hour" and Toni Morrison's opening paragraph from her novel Sula for practice.  There was much discussion and rejoicing by the multitudes... or at least a few.

Then, to introduce Gabriel Garcia Marquez's story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," we read Jorge Luis Borges' poem "Afterglow," one of my favorites.  This was annotated as well. 

There was much annotation; take note.

I collected journals from 1st, 2nd and 3rd period.  I will get the rest on Thursday... if I recover.  So many new things I learned about myself... and my students. 

Friday: VOCABULARY TEST, 50 words.  Look alert.

The road taken

Today we took notes on the "inference umbrella."  Being able to infer is an active reading strategy as well as a necessary skill for truly understanding something as you read.  If you were absent, you need to borrow notes from a friend to copy.

We followed this with a look at Robert Frost's poem, The Road Not Taken.  We used an annotation strategy involving colored highlighters or pens to get into the poem and understand what he Frost might be saying.  My color scheme was as follows:

green = images        black = color images        red = actions          blue = figurative language

After looking at different parts of the poem and discussing it, you were supposed to write a few sentences, describing what you think Frost meant when he said "and that has made all the difference."  Use your new found inferring strategies.

Also - notice that Johnny Tremain is at his own road divergence, after losing his path towards becoming a silversmith.  What do you think he will do?  Infer!

Rage Rage

Today we organized our binders into 8 sections:

1) notes

2) journal/writing

3) independant reading

4) class novels

5) poetry

6) short stories

7) grammar

8) vocabulary

The syllabus signed by your parent, your map of "Brooklyn," and library card checks were all due/taken care of today.  If you didn't turn either of the assignments in - tough!  Remember, no late work will be accepted. 

After taking care of that business, we listened to Jackson Browne's song, "The Pretender."  We paired this with the poem, "Do Not Go Gentle," by Dylan Thomas, in order to talk about perserverance, independent thought, and whatever else came up in discussion.

Only the living attend my classes...

In all periods we mananged to finish up teacher/class/student/classmate expectations and move on to bigger and better things.  Expect a typed compilation of these to be coming soon to a desk near you. 

Today we read the story "Only The Dead Know Brooklyn" by Thomas Wolfe.  Remember - the "map" is not "Brooklyn," but it's always nice to have a "map" to help you navigate your own "Brooklyn."  With this in mind, your assignment was to draw your own map or pictoral representation of the "map" you have been given by teachers, parents, friends, religious groups, life experiences, etc.  You may depict your "map" however you like, but be sure you include short blurbs about each of your "locations."  You could also throw in a sentence or two about where you want to be going with your map.  We will revisit the maps you created at the end of the year.

Since we were talking about directions, cities and such, it was only appropriate to listen to Paolo Nutini's song "These Streets."

While we didn't read this in class, here is something to supplement our reading of Wolfe's story: Stevie Smith's Not Waving but Drowning.

Tomorrow's Friday!!

Ready for the weekend!

Today I passed out progress reports, (thank God for excel!), and allowed time to catch up on some missed work.  Then we read the short story "Much Ado About (Censored)" from the collection entitled 2041.  We paired this with a fine selection of palete cleansing texts concerning censorship and its role in the world we live in, vintage NCAA as well as some pro-censorship motherships, I mean web sites.  Good discussion, guys!  We had quite a few written questions following this, so we had time to work on that, and then closed with a few poems by the amazing Adrienne Rich.  We also got to read a little bit of A Long Way Gone.  See y'all Monday!

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!

Are you serious it's only Tuesday??

NLR English III: With a little (HAHA, try hours) of preparation, we were able to do a WHOOOOLE lot more today.  We started by defining our ten vocabulary words, which today were comprised of: epithet, fiction, folklore, folk tale, genre, hero/heroine, legend, motivation, myth, and nonfiction.  Then we read a chapter from How to Read Literature Like a Professor, entitled "He's blind for a reason, you know," to follow up our lesson on "Cathedrals" and introduce our Greek tragedy, Medea, (can you tell I'm on a Greek kick??  Porbrecitos...), which we read till break.  Then we resumed with some poetry from Edgar Allen Poe, Todd Alcott, and Big Pappa E to get an idea of the range of poets we will be covering.  We finished off with a look at nouns and pronouns, and used, (ideally) our extra time to begin reading The Catcher in the Rye, one of my favorite books. Wow, that's a lot of stuff.

UB Spanish: Test tomorrow!!  Did you get that yet??  Test tomorrow!!  Today we reviewed all verbs, and learned the verb "ir" (to go) and how to use it properly with constructions involving the word "a" (to or at).  We then played fly-swat vocabulary review.  Congrats to the winnders of five bonus quiz points.

UB Literature: Today we continued reading Oedipus Rex.  The tension was so thick you could have sliced it with a butter knife and served it on bread.  Or something.  All I know is, if I were Creon, I wouldn't want Oedipus for my friend!  Or brother-in-law.... or nephew... whatever.

Homework: I want you to think about the possibility that Euripides wrote this play as a warning against engaging too deeply in intellectual/philosophical pursuits.  His protaganist, Oedipus, was determined, even down right ready to maim and deface, anyone who stood in his way as he pursued the truth about himself.  In your blog, tell me what truth about himself does Oedipus discover?  How does his truth stand as a metaphor for the truth(s) that exist about ourselves?  Is it easy for people to face the true nature of themselves?  Why or why not?  Do most people ever even accomplish the act of facing their true selves?  Why or why not?  Do you know the absolute truth about yourself, and if not, would you want to?  How could you go about discovering it, (short of murder and accusations of treason, etc.), or if you feel you already have, how did you do it?

3rd day - going strong!

NLR Japan Excursion: Thank you so much Tim for the incredible demonstration and lesson on how to sketch, ink, and color anime cartoons!!

UB Spanish: Reviewed the basic parts of speech, personal pronouns (yo/tu/el/ella/nosotros/usted/ellos/ellas), and began to look at adjectives and how they must agree with the nouns they modify in both GENDER and QUANTITY.  Review the extra vocabulary sheets I handed out in order to start building a strong speaking base. 

UB Literature: We read T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land in conjunction with J.D. Salinger's short story, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." 

Homework: Finish reading James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" for class tomorrow.  Then, in your blogs, answer the following questions based on your own thoughts and responses to the story:

• Amiri Baraka, (Leroi Jones), a contemporary black writer, wrote the following words about bebop, or new jazz, music:
  • "Bebob rebelled against the absorption into garbage, monopoly music; it also signified a rebellion by the people who played the music, because it was not just the music that rebelled, as if the music had fallen out of the sky!  But even more, dig it, it signified a rebellion rising out of the masses themselves, since that is the source of social movement -- the people themselves."   (from Selected Plays and Prose)
• Think about how music contributes to both the plot and the characterization in the story.  How does Sonny react to the new jazz/bebop of the 1950S, compared to his brothers initial reaction?  Why do you think this is?
• We have been discussing the theme of alienation in the stories we have read; what type of alienation do each of the characters experience, both individually and collectively? 
• Think about the meaning of the term "grace."  Why is this the chosen name for the daughter who dies?  Why does the narrator contact Sonny only after this occurrence?  How does the concept of "grace" figure in to the remainder of the story?  Does grace's presence or lack thereof enhance the feeling of alienation in this story, or offer a redemption from it?  How so and why?