Good Grammar, Charlie Brown

As I dashed across the room to seize the Mechanically Speaking text, it was not for my undying love of grammar that I stiff armed my colleagues aside and dove to ensure the text was mine. Oh no. I HATE grammar. Not really, I am just not very well versed or practiced in correct usage, but since in high school world these are signifiers of an hatred that burns brighter and deeper than a thousand suns, I guess I HATE grammar.

But, there is hope. I really loved our readings this week. The Bush article, in particular, gave me respite in understanding that grammar is a two way street composed of correct and incorrect usage. But, as noted, we often focus on the incorrect. This is probably why I had to restrain myself from bursting into tears at Crosswinds, while having flashbacks of Catholic nuns screaming at me what a hyperbole was and when to use an exclamation point! <---not correct. I am definitely a visual learner, and I think Bush also hits on one of my main developmental problems a young gramusketeer- we would drill and drill, but then leave what we had learned behind. I think one of the most valuable lessons I learned at Crosswinds was the benefit of having a word wall. Why not a grammar wall? The more we discuss language, the more I am finding that immersion is the key. I think being in the same room with large visual grammar definitions would be a big help for most students. And when they enter the revision process Harper discusses, they have both vocabulary and grammar resources starring them in the face, beginning for inclusion. And why not make it fun? These are a few of my all time favorite grammar cartoons. I am a huge nerd, I know. NOTE: These are probably not appropriate (use your teacher discretion) for middle school. The ALOT

How to use i.e. in a sentence

how to use an apostrophe

How to use a semicolon

So many ideas bulbs flashing.

I got really fired up while reading Ch. 5 in our Writing Process book. There were definitely potential summative assessments lurking behind every page. I have become slightly discouraged in Tracey's class this week becuase so much of what I am being told in her class is being trimmed down to only the most essential pieces in my cooperating teacher's class. Marcia is soley focused on getting our students to get their work done, understand the critical approach system they use in class, and, most importantly, pass her class. I don't blame her; ten percent of our in class time is spent getting the students to work on their assignments and get them turned in. This is not to say my student are lazy, or don't care (of course there are a few who have significant motivation problems despite intelligence), but 1/4 to 1/3 do have IEPs and need extra time and help on their assignments.

Because of the issue of completion and attendance I face (I have about 35% attendance first hour, generally), I really loved the various options Ch. 5 gave for research oriented, formal paper writing assignments. I think small assignments such as the listing assignments of main ideas would serve as excellent scaffolding assignments for my students who struggle with writing. I have been given the task of starting up a blog based assignment core for Frankenstein, and am wondering what I can steal, I mean use, from both chapter 5, AND elements of multi genre papers. I am starting to think that, perhaps, I could view the blog as a whole as a multigenre piece that will encompass different assignments I would again be adapting and stealing from our Blending Genre's text. I will do some work planning this weekend and post next week, so you guys (including Rick!) could give me some feedback. I started drafting some things out last night, and actually had a dream about it.

First Post for Rick's class!

Ugh, I am sorry all. I must have moved on from this page before my browser had saved all of my response because when I came back to review, it was gone :-( frustrating. Anyway, I will do my best to recall most of what I commented on.

First, I totally agree with both Tara and Rebecca about how much I enjoyed both the Atwell article and the Within and Beyond the Writing Process in the Secondary English Classroom. I particularly enjoyed reading Writing Process, first because chapter one has all of those amazing examples about students digging deep within themselves to produce astounding work. I started getting weepy when reading about Michael and his many writing assignments resulting in him making peace with his father abandoning him as a baby and then returning during his high school years. That is such a powerful story, and it brought up so many questions and conversations from last semester that we spoke about with regards to student sharing and how to deal with students who pour their heart out like that. It is definitely uncomfortable at first, but as we are being constantly reminded: Discomfort is good in education.

Secondly, I really enjoyed the Write/Think breaks that the book places throughout the reading. I admit, that sometimes when I read huge amounts of texts in the evening, my brain is not its sharpest, and sometimes it starts to skim. But, the Write/Thinks served as a mental stretch. It focused me on key points that had just been discussed and asked me to be reflective about my own experiences with a given topic. This is something I would very much like to steal for difficult or lengthy novels.

And of course, it was really great having chapter three give us a crash course in teaching writing as a process. I realized how long it had been since an instructor really laid out how to construct a paper in this kind of detail for me. It probably has not been done since high school, actually. So it was nice to be reminded of successful ways to frame what I (hopefully) do naturally at this point.

Lastly, I am enjoying the Romano text a great deal and really appreciate his humor and humility as a writer. Multigenre papers are extremely intriguing to me and I am excited at the prospect of assigning one to a class, but Jack's comment about state tests and the value of focusing on "traditional" papers has been nagging me the whole time I read Romano. I feel as though we may be in a time of flux on this issue and am interested in how this format develops over the next few years. My one issue with multigenre papers that I feel Romano is addressing to a certain extent is teaching students how to order the flow of items in a paper and creating successful transitions from piece to piece, otherwise the paper could seem like a disorganized portfolio.

Final Project!

Here is the fabulous Weebly page Eve Thomas and I have created for our Intersession Unit. It was a blast teaching the course and working with Patrick and Eve, and I actually really enjoy working with Weebly. I have begun to construct a teacher portfolio, which can be seen here (it is not done yet, though), and a performer portfolio, which I am still working on. All in all, the things I have learned in this class have been incredibly beneficial, and I am super happy to have had the experience with Dr. Beach and my colleagues! Have a wonderful winter break, everyone!

The Politics of Adaptation

Okay, I LOVE talking about adaptation. I actually wrote my senior thesis on “Me, Myself, and Isherwood”:
an Exploration of the Creation and Adaptation of “Christopher Isherwood.” In the paper I examined how Isherwood positioned himself as a fictional character in his Berlin Stories, to keep the implications from his life in Berlin as a gay man at a distance from the "real" Christopher Isherwood. From there, John van Druten took "Isherwood" from the book and adapted him to a more focused, refined, and stage friendly asexual character in I am a Camera, to Masteroff, Kander, and Ebb's Cabaret where "Isherwood" is now "Cliff" (all sorts of liminal sexual implications in the name...)and, although an admitted bisexual, engages in a sexual relationship with Sally.

I could go on for 50 pages. But, I will not.

Obviously, I think adaptations are incredibly important in literature for both literary and political reasons. I think teaching context along with tracking changes from adaptation to adaptation is essential to correctly framing the art of adapting work.

For lesson planning, I would love to bring in a director, like Jason Ballweber, and asking them how they get from the page to the stage, and how they manipulate a text to flesh out their vision:

Me and my multitude of music choices

So, I actually legitimately like a LOT of music. I really like classical and alternative, and classic rock, and would argue that I listen to these the most. I have not been to too many concerts in my life only Lady Gaga (which was incredible), Kings of Leon, Scissor Sisters, and Peaches/Bauhaus/Nine Inch Nails (I went for Peaches). I am obviously a big fan of campy music and one of my favorite bands of all time that reflects this sentiment are the Scissor Sisters. Other bands/artists I love and listen to frequently are Rufus Wainwright, CCRC, the Beatles, Mozart, Edith Piaf, Tegan and Sara, Lou Reed, The Ditty Bops, and Pink Floyd.

Here is one of my favorite Rufus Wainwright songs (of which there are many):
Hometown Waltz

I love this song because it encompasses all the lyricism, beautiful vocals, story, and whimsy that make Rufus Wainwright one of my favorite artists. He is so good at exploring, exploiting, and exploding genres and I just find him so dynamic. He also has a dreamy voice and is a vocal member and advocate of the GLBT community on top of everything else. I like this song specifically, because it has a plucky folk quality to it as well as a little Cajun quality with the accordion. I really like the juxtaposition of these genre markers commonly associated with "homey" American travel songs with the markers which describe Rufus's experience with home- Canada, gay communities, and destroying/leaving all remnants of his home.

Here are the lyrics for the song:

The drummers and jugglers of Montreal
Don't even exist at all
So I'm tearing up these tarot cards and Venetian clowns
Antique shops and alcoholic homosexuals

You may ask why I want to torch my home town
Partly it's bitterness and hopping 'round and 'round again
On Ontario Street looking up
Maybe I'll catch him on his way to the show

You travel the world and find all the answers
Everything operates on the unattainables
And then you hear your mother laugh attached to the phone
Could have walked around the block 'cause all roads lead to home

Say, will you ever ever ever know,
Ever ever ever fly away?
Will you ever ever ever go,
Ever ever ever find a way?

I think this song brings up really interesting questions about home and the American concept of "home" as being one singular place "rooted" to you. So, I would like to expose my students to a few traditional "home" songs and then show them Wainwright's response to that traditional concept. Then, I would have them compose their own "hometown waltz" and define how they view "home." Where is it? Who is there? Have they found it yet? Was a place they only occupied for a moment, or their entire lives? Is it a feeling? And, we could talk about waltz and ballad forms as a way to also teach the students about poetic/music forms.



This video I find extremely interesting because it is all about turning conventions on their head. It empowers the people generally oppressed or beaten down in traditional social structures such as the overweight high school girl, gay men in a formal setting, and people who have an "alternative" look- tattoos, piercings, etc. The video also flips traditionally masculine roles- the matador is hunted down, P!nk as a gangster, wrestler, terrorist organizer, and is put in a position of sexual power when she is shown in bed with loads of religious figures. That scene in itself turns all kinds of conventions on its head. And, what is really wonderful about P!nk is that she is this beautiful, talented, boisterous woman who is not afraid to laugh at herself and does not buy into the conventions of what is beautiful and what a woman should be. I really dig that. Yes, I would buy P!nk's album after seeing this video, and I think that because she makes herself so assessable to so many people, the music video does a really great job of promoting both P!nk and her values.

Documentary!

The documentary I watched was "Sick" Now, let me first say, that this is not a documentary I would recommend for most people. I am really interested in performance art and I think that work like Bob Flanagan's is both challenging and beautiful, but I fully understand that it is not for everyone.
The doc follows Robert Flanagan for, what turns out to be, the last year of his life. Bob was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at a young age and was told for his entire life that he would not be around for a very much longer. Because the condition left Bob in constant pain, he found that masochism was his only outlet for controlling the amount of pain his body underwent. In his own way, inflicting pain on his body was the only time Bob felt he had any control over his body. Bob wrote poetry about his condition and masochism and became well known for his tongue and cheek songs about CF in CF camps and youth organizations he worked with. Eventually, he also became quite well known in the S&M community for doing S&M performance art and eventually broke mainstream. He met his partner, Sheree Rose, also worked with him on his pieces. Always provocative, Bob presented his pieces at various venues and art museums across the nation. The end of the film is the end of Bob's life. The cameras are with him in his hospitol room when he passes away, and the camera also pans over his body in the morgue. What is both upsetting and fascinating about Bob's "work" is that-once he had left his body- he left behind a canvas. All his tattoos, piercings, and scars denote his process and experiences. It is an interesting film, to say the least, and I think it does do a good job of revealing the reality that Bob faced- what could be more real than death. The documentary also delves into the politics of the body by pushing the audience into questioning what makes us uncomfortable and why. Bob was uncomfortable for his entire life, but only by making his audience uncomfortable by manipulating his body in harmful ways was he able to make the audience understand the pain of cystic fibrosis.

Of course, I would never show this film to high school students in a classroom setting because it is so graphic and upsetting, however, I am very interested in showing students clips of docs or whole docs that present a slice of life to see if I can get them to think outside of their comfort zone and self understanding. For example, I would never put nails through my flesh, but in watching Bob's story, I am able to understand why he does. I understand that we are fundamentally different people, and am able to respect and empathize with how he expresses himself. Some docs I'd be interested in showing my students to try and get them to think outside themselves include- This American Life with Ira Glass, Small Town Gay Bar, True Life, the farmers interviews from Food Inc., Maxed Out, etc. I think a well designed graphic organizer and class discussions would be the best way to help students think of themselves in the world, rather than the world revolving around them.