Whichever, it's here: Halloween weekend, the end of October (a month that, I think you will agree, flashed by, just as I said it would). It is the weekend when ghosts and goblins and witches and vampires and beasties of every ilk carrying little plastic bags roam the twilight streets looking for candy handouts. So beware!
Did you see the Halloweeen video I posted last week? If not, here it is again:
Anyway...
So, while you're all out watching playoff games and getting sugar highs, keep some classroom issues in mind:
CW: Organize your pieces. We're going to take stock next week as we learn about the upcoming portfolios. Also: here, finally, is a letter!!!
E3H: We've been watching Sunday In the Park With George, Act One to see an obsessive artist in action. Don't forget that Art 3.0 can still be done. Also, I am working on your Asher papers. And you should ALL come in on Monday with approved poems and probably a strong idea of how you intend to handle your fantasia. (Note: we will meet in the classroom.)
E2CP: Read through Chapter 8. Email me the outline for feedback. Once you have feedback, you may proceed with draft one.
I am about to have a perfect afternoon: go to a wake and then go to the dentist. Just what everyone dreams of, right? And I get to live it!
At least grading essays when I get home should be some fun...
CW: today was a counselor session...was it a joy? tomorrow I will likely miss at least half of the class for a funeral. when i get there, i'll try to do some conferencing. you do conferencing while i am not there!
E3H: we went over grading rubric for the fantasia; we'll be in 208 on monday in order to make sure everyone can do at least rudimentary work with powerpoint. in the interim, we began watching sunday in the park with george, which is about an artist's obsession with making art. sound familiar?
E2CP: only one person did the outlining assignment correctly...sort of...so we went over that minutely (and redefined transcendentalism while we were at it). do that assignment over this evening. and read HF through Ch. 4 while you're at it. :-)
Turns out that it is a complete bunch of hooey! Yep, a whole lot of internet malarky. Just a big glop of digital gobbledegook and I fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Why?
Because it was cool. I wanted it to be true. That I think is why we believe things a lot of the time: either they fit into our general scheme of how the world works so we accept them without question or they are just cool enough that we want them to be true so we don't bother to question them. And this one was so very not true that I feel sort of silly having been taken in.
The truth? Far from happening only once every 823 years, the heralded five F-S-S weekend thingie happened earlier in 2010, in January to be precise, and also the previous May, to name just a couple of examples. Doesn't take much research, actually: just scroll a calendar program backwards looking for months that begin on a Friday and see if they have 31 days.
Arrgh.
Ah well...I'm allowed to be stupid once in a while too. :-)
(Thanks to Matt Phillips for pointing out the reality! X cred to you for catching me in such a monumental goofup!)
CW: we're doing more an more revisions...
E3H: check out the rules about how to create your own fantasias...start working on picking a poem. (Your selections have to be approved by me.) Draft one of essays due TOMORROW.
E2CP: start reading Huckleberry Finn; thesis paragraphs and outlines of essays due TODAY.
So there! And considering that I heard on the news this morning that it is gong to be a cold, snowy winter due to the effects of the same El Nina that kept us dry and warm this summer, I guess I'll take a slightly elongated October.
:-)
Anyway...
Here is thestuff you need to know:
CW: It's been a great week. Have a great weekend. Do lots and lots of revisions and get your binders in order; bring everything in on Monday!
E3H: It's time for an Asher Lev essay. The assignment is this:In My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok shows us an internal battle between faith and tradition on the one hand and personal freedom and artistic passion on the other. In a 2-3 page essay, explore one specific element of the book that illustrates this dynamic. As I have said several times, your specific topic ought to be a single element of the book that somehow appeals to you. Be as inventive in your approach as you want to be, but be sure that you are on topic. A draft is due to me no later than Wednesday. I will read these in the order they come in, so earlier is better.(Also remember that WW is Monday, so an x.0 draft is due.)
E2CP: It's time for a third essay for you! Your assignment will be based on Our Town, Harold and Maude, and/or the Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. You are going to have quite a bit of flexibility here, so choose the topic that you can write about best, OK? There are three possible selections, and I am linking each to helpful selections from the text. (Here are theThoreau/Emerson quotations, for those of you who never seem to be able to locate them.)
In what ways can we considerHarold and Maudea modern Transcendentalist film?
In what ways do the themes of Harold and Maude echo the themes of Our Town?
The thesis paragraph of this essay is due to be emailed to me by SUNDAY NIGHT along with an OUTLINE of the rest of the essay, including significant quotations you believe will probably help you in each paragraph.
We will discuss these on Monday and then proceed to write the rough drafts Monday night.
Hello, there. Dracula here. Yes, that Dracula. The one you're thinking of. Dude with the teeth. Right.
Now, from the start, let me say this: I need to clear up a few misconceptions. I am not writing in a ridiculously overdone Transylvanian accent. For crying out loud, people, give it a rest: I'm 500 years old and I only come out at night. I think I'm capable of learning a few new accents in all that spare time. And anyway, I have never--not once--uttered those Bela Lugosian words "I vant to drink your bloooood" that so many vampirephile losers love to say as soon as they stick a pair of fake fangs into their mouths. Give me a break! As if I would ever need to tell someone such a thing. My victims all come to me willingly. They want me to drink their blood.
Oh, and sleeping in a coffin? Who comes up with this crap? Why in the world would I sleep in a coffin when your century has such incredibly comfortable mattresses? And the pillows! I mean: pillows that conform to the shape of my head! I want to find the person who invented these things and make him even richer than he probably is already. It's true I can't come out in the day, but not because I'd burn to a cinder. It's just that, as I noted, I'm 500 years old. You know I have pretty darned good mind powers--cultivated them over the centuries--but it's all I can do to make myself seem dashing with the shadows to help. In the sunlight...well, let's just say that George Romero could use me as an extra in one of his Living Dead movies and no one would need to worry about makeup. I hate sunlight.
And that crap about vampires sparkling like diamonds? Makes me want to find Stephenie Meyer and bite her. Hard.
The whole vamp craze right now is pretty silly, if you want to know the truth. The Cullens and the Salvatores wouldn't have stood a chance in my heyday. But what the heck: they make for some fun entertainment for the kids I guess. No harm no foul. And I lovedBuffy the Vampire Slayer! What a hoot! All those vamps obliterating into dust when they were staked! Hilarious! You know what actually would happen if you staked a vampire? He'd pull it out. Might say something meaningful like "ouch." Probably nothing that would pass muster with Buffy's screenwriters though. I really did love that show: great stuff, though the hordes of evil vamps were just pain silly.
I never met an evil vampire, actually. Never met a demon either. Got together for dinner with several other vamps a few months ago--whole nice buffet thing with a roast and lots of side dishes and some nice wines from California and a kick butt selection of desserts (we don't just drink blood)--and I asked them too. Nope: no one had ever seen an demons anywhere. I'm inclined to believe that it's all a fable. But go ahead, if you want: believe it. Dress up as goblins or ghouls for Halloween.
Or evil vampires coming to drink your blood without your permission.
Who knows? If you want it, we may come.
CW: finish the collage poem and ready it for attachment to the collage.
I have that song in my head and it won't let go. And you know what? I don't want it to! I have not heard a song in a long time that so instantly just moved me and infected me. I think the last one was a song from Pfish which, if nothing else, tells you that my musical taste is all over the map.
Anyway...
I think it is wonderful and cool that those Broadway stars got together to record something to benefit the Trevor Project. Lots of celebrities (and random regular folks, including yours truly) have uploaded videos with their own personal "It gets better" messages for our LGBT youth. Some tell poignant stories; some are just personal statements from those who have been there and gotten through it, coming out on the other side to discover the truth behind the lyrics of the song. So thanks, Broadway kids: what a gift you've given us all!
Sadly for you all, we're reaching the end of a literature unit in both core classes, so for the moment at least, it gets really just a tad on the uglier side, actually. :-) Read on for specifics.
CW: Now you are basically fine. You have your collages (if you were in class today). Your job? Use every image and word on them to create a poem. (Nothing overwhelming or anything.) If you need to finish your collage at home, do not add anything to it. It is important that you limit yourself to the ten minutes of collecting images and words that we did in class. :-)
E3H: As to you guys: Well, I'd say that the discussions are definitely "getting better." 7th period was pretty tremendous today, and 1st seemed to start to wake up much more than usual. Nice! To reiterate the HW: review all sections dealing with the mythic ancestor. Go online and post (in the new section about the MA) your thoughts, ideas, and concerns about Asher's relationship to this figure who is so important to him and the story. I am expecting to see most of you there tonight, since no one was able to make new posts last night, and I assume that you all were simply unable to do so; therefore I am assuming that you can tonight. :-) Also: start considering topics for essays. I will post some from last year online.
E2CP: And finally, for the end game of Our Town, we have another little paragraph to write, this time about Simon Stimson's little diatribe at the end of the play. Julia Gibbs tells him that it's "not the whole truth" and he does not argue with her. What are we to make of this exchange in light of all that has happened with Emily and her 12th birthday? Try to bring that difficult memory into your response...
Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another (or your first) year at LFHS.
What you have heard is true. The English teacher has lost her ever-loving mind and is not going to be giving any grades at all in her classes this year. Not. One.
There will be no percentages, no numbers, no scores, no letters, no anything that will count toward anything that will end up being averaged for a final grade. But before you call in the men with the white coats, let me explain:
As I hope you have read in the doc your son or daughter (I have always hated the phrase "your student" when addressed to a parent) should have showed you, there is a wealth of research that indicates that grades--or the need to achieve them--are the single greatest thing that stand in the way of a great education. Studies show that the most influential thing a teacher can do to help a student grow academically is to allow him or her to self-grade. Most teachers would rather climb Mt. Everest dressed only in a swimsuit.
But the thing is: our academic system is severely broken. We say that our goal is to get our students to master Common Core Standards, and that is all well and good. But if that is truly the goal, then why do we care how long it takes them to master them? I'm serious. Think about it this way:
Try to remember back to when you were learning how to ride a bike. Oh, it was scary. You needed all kinds of support at first, lots of help from Daddy or Mommy. Then they let go and you were very, very wobbly. Probably you fell off, maybe several times. It took quite a while before you completely mastered the skill. But when you had...you had it down perfectly for the rest of your life.
Now imagine if you were being graded on that learning experience the way schools grade you. We would not score those first scaffolding attempts with Mommy and Daddy, but then...oh, you failed those quizzes when you fell off. And those wobbly rides? C's at best. Then a bunch of B's probably before you finally settled into 100% forever. But if we graded you right at that point, you'd probably average, oh, 83% or so. Why?You've mastered the skill perfectly. So why do you not get 100% if that is what we say we care about? Why on earth do we care about all those earlier times when you didn't have it down yet?
That will be what we go for here. Students will know what the goals are. They will understand what an "A" student looks like. And they will know when they have mastered an objective. Those who do so earlier than others will become tutors to those who have not yet done it: everyone gains from this and the newly learned skills, instead of being quickly forgotten as things studied for a test usually are, will continue being applied as masters tutor their classmates.
That is an awful lot to imagine will happen because I don't give grades this year, but what the heck: if you don't dream big, you never win big, right? The research is behind this, as is the school administration. I'm happy--well, actually I am excited--to pilot this concept at LFHS. As always, I'm glad to discuss this or anything else with you.
