Learning is Change

12.04.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Spelling Bee information and initial entrance test.

Core 1:

  1. Chapter 4 Comprehension Question: What is the real reason that Mrs. Logan didn’t want her kids to go to the Wallace store?
  2. How do you find out about a character that is silent, or nearly silent?
  3. What forms of resistance do (can) the Logans use to avoid servitude to the whites?

Core 2:

  1. Write/Discuss-On: How does Art’s drawings of the camps help to define the Nazi psychology?
  2. How do the flies interact with the modern characters? What is their true symbolic value at the end of the chapter?
  3. Read Chapter 3 and discuss trains, disease, and war.
  4. Homework: Read to the end of Chapter 3 and answer the following question:
    • How is war like a disease? (Use specific examples from chapter 3.)

Core 3:

  1. Write-On: Look for the best question that is on the other person’s short story. Write why you think it is a good question?
  2. Discuss the best question.

Core 4:

  1. What is the hierarchy of names at Cresthill?
  2. Why is it important to look at literature and life in a hierarchical manner?

12.01.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Look at and discuss first guest blogs.
  2.  Congratulate the Authenticity Award Recipients for the past two weeks.

Core 1:

  1. Write-On: When is revenge the sweetest?
  2. Discuss Chapter 3:
    •  Explain the trail of headlights that haunts Cassie at the end of the chapter.
  3. Chapter 4 in partners.

Core 2:

  1. Discuss-On: How do relationships change when your biggest worry is survival?
  2. Finish time flies looking for the traits of survival and further significance to the flies.

Core 3:

  1. Discuss-On: What should you be thinking about when you finish reading a short story?
  2. Continue asking and answering questions about “After I was Thrown in the River and Before I drowned.”

Core 4:

  1. Should Paul Dawson be fired?
  2. Making the N-word History.
  3. What is the Heirarchy of names in your book?

11.30.06

Core 1:

  1. Making the N-word History.
  2. What is Cresthill’s hierarchy of names?
  3. Read Chapter 3 and discuss the dignity of getting even.

Core 2:

  1. Look at Maus analysis on PotatoPotatoPugPug’s Blog.
  2. What else do these elements (flies, dead bodies, getting smaller, mouse masks, etc.) represent. Draw a flow chart of the representation.
  3. Read through “Time Flies.”
    • How do relationships change when your biggest worry is survival?

Core 3:

  1. Discuss-On: How do you know which questions are important enough to ask when you are reading?
  2. Continue asking questions and answering them within “After I was thrown into the river, and before I drowned.”

Core 4:

  1.  Should Paul Dawson be fired?
  2. Making the N-word History.
  3. What is Cresthill’s hierarchy of names?

11.29.06

Core 1:

  1. The context of Racial Slurs:
      • Why are they so powerful? Destructive?
      • What does it mean today? What did it mean in the 1930’s?
      • Who can say them?
      • How does it change the way we look at the characters in the book?
  2. Read Chapter 2.
    • What is the significance of the “burnings?”
    • Why do you think that Papa brought Mr. Morrison home?

Core 2:

  1. Write-On: What is the greatest indignity someone can force upon you?
  2. Read to the end of chapter 1 and write down all of the ways in which Vladek loses identity or gains it.

Core 3:

  1. Discuss-On: How do you get the most out of a short story?
  2. Read “After I was thrown into the river, and before I drowned.”

Core 4:

  1. The context of Racial Slurs:
    • Why are they so powerful? Destructive?
    • What does it mean today? What did it mean in the 1930’s?
    • Who can say them?
    • How does it change the way we look at the characters in our books?
  3. Make a case for firing or keeping the teacher at the high school.

11.28.06

 Cores 1-4:

  1. Vote on Guest Blogging Question:
    • How have you changed since you were in middle school?
    • What piece of advice do you wish you had when you were in middle school?
    • What is the most important decision you have ever made?
    • What is the one thing that you wish you could have done differently when you were in middle school?

Cores 1+4:

  1. Brainstorm blogging for books.
    • What questions can we ask that would be authentic?
    • How can we make these books our own?
  2. Celebrity commenting and Weekly Authentic-ing.

Core 2:

  1. Brainstorm blogging for graphic novels.
  2. Celebrity commenting and Weekly Authentic-ing.

Core 3:

  1. Celebrity commenting and Weekly Authentic-ing.

11.27.06

Core 1:

  1. Write-On: Why is the novel genre so powerful?
  2. Introduction to Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
  3. Go over my expectations for reading and engaging in the Novel.

Core 2:

  1. How big is the generation gap between you and your grandparents? How do you think your experience differs from theirs?
  2. What is a Graphic Novel? And why is it the best way to express a time of absolute tragedy, chaos, and change?

Core 3:

  1. Self-assess and reflection on essay writing:
    1. Think-on: Are you the best thinkers and persuaders of your generation? Why or why not?
    2. Go to http://bhwilkoff.edublogs.org
    3. Click on This Jotform Link.

Core 4:

  1. Write-On: What is your cultural perspective and bias?
    1. How can we talk about race, gender, religion, etc. without becoming offensive or overly sensitive/PC?
    2. What is the root of our biases?
  2. Introduction and preview of Multi-Cultural novel choices.
  3. Go over the expectations for the next two weeks.

11.21.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Discuss rules for guest blogging (something simple enough that even a parent could understand them).
  2. What is transliteracy? What does it challenge us to do?
  3. Develop proper usage for video in your blogs.
    • What about web junk?
    • The concept of building.
    • The concept of school appropriate.
  4. Nominate, Comment, Finish up and drafts before the holiday.

The Reality of Beauty

 


This video calls into question what we are willing to accept as reality. If we are willing to accept unreal beauty as something that we should strive for, what else will we accept? Do we have unreal expectations about money, politics, and love?

It is my position that entertainment is the driving force for the acceptance of unreality as reality. The reality shows of Cribs and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and even sitcoms such as How I Met your Mother and Two and a Half Men show us a distorted view of reality, but asks us to believe that it is real.

For the vast majority of us, there is no amount of hard work that will allow you to buy a 100 million dollar home. But even worse, most of the homes and cars displayed on Cribs are leased for the amount of time when the superstar is a superstar. Not even the most famous of our American celebrities can maintain an overly extravagant lifestyle for life.

Extreme Makeover seems to distort our concept of reality even further, though. It asks us to believe that if something bad happens to you, you will be repaid by the benevolent hand of a TV executive. If you lost a loved one to a long battle with cancer, you will receive a large house in return. This is not the case, no matter how much we may wish it were. Bad things will happen to all of us, and it is our responsibility to deal with them and work through them. No one is going to do the grieving for us.

As for the overly sexualized and stereotypical sitcoms that are on this season, reality seems to be the furthest thing from the minds of the writers for these shows. They are dedicated to bringing an escape from real relationships with actual emotions behind them. Instead, they show a flimsy and fake “dates” with multiple partners in each episode. It may be funny, but it certainly is not reality.

I know that I have not fully explored this topic, and this is for a reason. I hope that one of you will take up this idea and build upon it, either in support of my thesis or against it. I would love to start a great debate on the unreality of American entertainment, and this is my way of throwing down the gauntlet.

11.20.06

I am finally back for good. Thank you for still engaging in class even though I wasn’t here to enjoy all of the fruits of your labor. Don’t think that I forgot about any of you, though. Along with taking care of my wife and my daughter, I was still brainstorming quite a few things for us to do in the coming weeks, one of which you will see today. Although I only received good reports from the subs, I did want to remind you that my expectations are probably different than any sub’s could be. Interruptions or distractions from what we are doing in class are unacceptable. Let’s get back to what makes our language arts classes so great: focused discussion, insightful ideas, and collaboration with others.

Cores 1-4:

  1. Debrief last week: What did you learn? What didn’t you get? What do you want to expand upon?
  2. Introduce concept of Guest Blogging.
  3. Brainstorm people to ask to be in the panel of “Adults.”
  4. Brainstorm questions to ask panel of “Adults.”

(If we have time, The Authenticity Awards for last week are here.)

Guest Blogging

 

There is nothing so sinister as ignoring the wealth of voices around us: the ones that could make us laugh if we only knew the language, the ones that could make us think if we only had the time, and the ones that could make us learn if we only opened up our ears long enough to take in something new. It is true that the very purpose of our community is to hear each others’ true voices and learn something from them, but up until now we have only included voices from the classroom. No matter how outlandish your fiction may be or how much you talk about sports, you are still writing from a middle school perspective.

I happen to love the middle school perspective. It is so creative and thought provoking. It is the reason why I never plan on teaching at a high school. Yet, the middle school perspective has its limitations. I’m sure that I don’t need to enumerate them, but suffice it to say that even though I thought I knew everything when I was in the 8th grade, I actually didn’t. So, where do we get other perspectives? Well, we read good books, and we read interesting magazines. We watch terrible news channels, and we experience obnoxious movies. These pieces of entertainment, whether good or bad, all provide non-middle school perspectives, but there is only one problem with them: they weren’t written or performed just for us. All of the other perspectives in our lives are highly impersonal. Sure, we can relate to the characters in a book or we can understand that a news story will affect us personally, but they weren’t prepared in the same way that we prepare our Weekly Authentcs for one another each week. They weren’t prepared with just us in mind.

So, in order to correct this, in order to ensure that other perspectives drectly address us in the way that we address each other, I am introducing Guest Blogging into our community.

Each week, I will ask a group of “Adults” one question that you have voted on and at least one of them will respond in a blog post. You won’t know all of the people that I ask, and you won’t know who will answer. You will know, however, that each response from these other perspectives is just as authentic and sincere as the posts that we write each week.

I’m willing to bet that at this point you have at least two questions (although, you may have a heck of a lot more).

1. Who gets to be in this panel of “Adults?”

Well, anyone who wants to be. I will be asking parents, other teachers, administrators, professional bloggers, professional authors, and others to be asked the first batch of questions.

2. What kind of questions can we ask?

Pretty much anything that will get someone to tell a story, relive a memory, or relay some information. Things like, “What was the worst trouble that you ever got into, and what did you learn from it?” or “How did you deal with making friends in Middle School?” or “Is homework really important or are you just saying that so we don’t watch more TV?”

These guest bloggers are here for us to gain insight that we wouldn’t normally find. They are here so that we can listen to all of the voices around us, not just the ones that are standing in the front of the classroom or sitting in the back. We must use these voices, commenting on them and building upon them for these are the voices of our greater community, and to ignore them is to ignore the laughter, thought, and learning that comes along with them.