a small petition
Please forgive my work in progress... Forgive me as I mess around with my template, etc. I'll get it looking like I want it to look, soon I hope. I know very little about HTML and CSS, but I know more now than I ever thought I would know or care to know. It might have been easier to just start over and build my own template.
The two main plans for now are to change the color of that orange box in the top right corner and to figure out how to put some of MY pictures in the header around the title. If you have any idea how to do this, please let me know! And, if the columns are too wide for your browser screen and you have to scroll left to right to see everything, please let me know that as well!
questions
Today, our topic was research papers and how to write a bibliography...
- A question I asked in class today, with a variety of student responses:
If you were to write a paper, given the topic "Emily Dickinson and her poetry," how long would your paper need to be to thoroughly cover the topic?
Answers: 2 pages, 21oo pages, 5-10 pages, 50 pages, 4 pages.
Most of my students were certain they could thoroughly exhaust the topic in less than 20 pages. We have a long way to go.
- Questions asked of me in class today: Yep, we definitely have a long way to go.
How does acid rain cause a frog to have 18 legs?
Has Kevin Bacon fallen off the face of the planet since "Footloose?"
If the ghosts are so important in the Harry Potter books, why does Nearly Headless Nick show up in the first movie and then none of the ghosts show up again until the Goblet of Fire?
Who was Henry IV?
Can I ask you a theological question?
Is the only reason we write bibliographies to keep us from plagiarizing?
Have you ever successfully played "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?"
Why was the Gospel of Judas found in Egypt? The Dead Sea Scrolls and other books of the Bible were found in Israel and the Bible happened in Israel, so why is all the stuff they're finding now in Egypt?
Did you know that the back of Newman's salad dressing says "Don't dilute us like Brutus?"
Who is Kevin Bacon?
newton's first law of motion
Last night, I was overcome by Newton's first law of motion: Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. There was no force applied to me strong enough to get me out of (not off of) my red couch. I finished the book I have been reading, thoroughy enjoying it. But now I have the task of picking a new book to read. This is always difficult for me. I have tons of books on my shelves, but often I choose to read the books that I do not yet own.
That made me ponder the books that I have and why I have so many I have not read. Here are the tabulations I made, excluding anthologies and reference works:
- Books I've read: 143
- Books I've started reading and never finished (5 pages into to 3/4 of the way finished): 55
- Never even opened: 96
yet another reason
to love Google!
Check it out- so much easier than any teacher hosting page I've found yet.
what I learned today
A few small things I learned to day that made me (mostly) happy:
- where people in Decatur grocery shop (I have often pondered where people who live downtown grocery shop as I can only think of 2 groceries stores relatively close to downtown, but I had never pondered where people in Decatur grocery shopped even though I could not have pointed to a grocery store there until I found the Kroger on Commerce today)
- where the Decatur cemetery is
- where I would buy a townhouse if I could afford to
- there's a Fellini's in Decatur
- how truly cool and thoughtful the people who founded Paste Magazine are
- how truly uncool and thoughtless I am
vocation
Today is Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ. He is risen, he is risen indeed! A combination of things have led to this post: the assurance of pardon during worship, from I Corinthians 15 and further thoughts on it, lunch with my grandmother and 2 aunts and a long drive back from Athens, a couple other posts I read today, and my own random thoughts while I was running.
As I write over and over, one thing that I am certain of in my life is my vocation- that it is truly the Lord's calling on my life that I teach ninth grade English. When I hear about most urban ministry opportunities, I don't feel all that compelled to be involved in them, because my job IS my ministry. I just happen to get paid for it. (Someone call me out here if I'm way off, fo' real.) Really, I can do nothing else.
After my wallet was stolen from my classroom in August and I had my brief epistemological crisis, I learned a few things more deeply. First, I had to go back to the email I had written to Graham that same day at noon, when I boldly proclaimed that I knew, at least vocationally, that I was in the center of God's will for me. How did I know this? Because I know my Creator and I understand (in part) his redemptive plan for the world. As I grow in my knowledge of him and his plan, I also grow in my understanding of my (SINFUL!) self and my place in his plan.
Second thing that became truer than ever was Philippians 1:21, "to live is Christ and to die is gain." My job is not about me keeping kids engaged or about how much my students learn about tone, similes, and expository essays, its about my redeeming my corner of Christ's kingdom. It all goes back to the chief end of man- am I glorifying Christ and enjoying him in my vocation?
Thirdly, how this relates to Easter, I Corinthians 15- if Christ has not been raised, then my faith is in vain, my faith is futile because I am still in my sins. Oh, he is risen indeed! If he is not, there is no reason for me to go to work everyday, no reason for me to find any joy in anything I do, no reason for me to enjoy literature, etc. It is all in vain. I see the depravity in the world around me, in myself, and without the resurrection we are lost.
And so I was thinking as I ran, why are so many Christians unsatisfied in their jobs? Why have they not "found themselves?" Rather, not found their place in the kingdom, the place where they are glorifying and
enjoying the risen Savior as they redeem his kingdom? Not found their vocation, their calling?
the rumors are true
Yes, folks, in my opinion at least, Hanks is better than Jakes. I went for the Key Lime Pie, a flavor I have always loved at Jakes, so that I could make a fair comparison. Hanks is better- better consistency, creamier, more flavor throughout, and with pieces of key lime pie throughout.
I HAVE MY CAR BACK!!!!!!!
why I teach
The first day back after Spring Break is usually pretty rough. Mine started off so- my body was still on Central Time after my friend
Sarah's wedding this weekend in Memphis when my alarm went off at 5:30 and then there were the copy machine issues. But then my students came and I was reminded why I teach. We're still reading poetry and my love for it grows daily! Knowing today would be a rough day for me, I scheduled student presentations for the first few days back. Their assignment was to find a poem they liked, any poem, read it to the class, and then spend about 5 minutes teaching it and leading a short discussion. Granted, for the most part the "teaching" part may not have gone so well, but the discussions they led re-cemented my vision for my place as a teacher.
It started second period with a student informing the rest of us that once cemented, you can change anyone's views on anything, specifically race. In a moment of strong emotion I told him that if that were true, then I needed to quit my job immediately. Oh, I hope he understood what I meant. Next class, someone had chosen
Amazing Grace, which turned in to a student-led discussion of what grace is and how it had changed John Newton from a slave trader into an evangelical.
This afternoon, after a poem discussing the nature of truth, a student shared a poem entitled
My Cross which talked about the whole Romans 7, two natures at war within us thing and began his presentation saying, "I am a Christian and this poem reflects the struggle I have everyday over what the right thing to do is." I wanted to jump out of my seat and scream, "I'm there!! I feel you! I understand!" He asked the class if they had similar struggles with anything and a girl raised her hand and told the class that she knew she should love reading the Bible as a Christian, but it was hard and she doesn't like to do it. Numerous students nodded heads in agreement. And this is in my PUBLIC SCHOOL classroom. I just sat back and let it happen. And I applaud the bravery of the student who shared his faith so openly with his peers.
Every student who shared a poem explained that they had picked the poem because its meaning related to their life in some way, reflected their thoughts and feelings. I wanted to jump and down for joy!! I don't think they know that now they understand what "theme" is, that underlying universal idea in a work, nor do they know that I have accomplished my goal for this poetry unit: Each student found
one poem that they liked, was able to glean meaning from it, and saw that it really does reflect real life.
So even though I told them that we would be going full force for the last 35 days of school, in reality, they have acheived what the goals I had in mind for them.
A Bizarre (Typical?) Day
While today's turns of events were a bit bizarre, they weren't
all that out of the ordinary for a day in my life. Kate, Laura, and I went hiking. They're turning into my
hiking buddies. It seems that the 2 things that make my breaks from school vacations are shopping and hiking. This time I have done both!! We went out to Lithonia, to find these 2 mountains I wanted to hike, Arabia and Bradley. Most people laughed at me, for talking about mountains in Dekalb Co., because you can't see them from Stone Mountain and therefore they can't be all that mountainous. True. But, as it turns out, neither can you see Stone Mountain from either of their peaks.
Problems started immediately- a bad set of directions. Thanks to Nathan for saving the day and getting us back on track, after a good half hour of driving aimlessly around outer-Dekalb. We finally arrive at the "Arabian Mountains," as Kate called them, and cannot figure out where the trail is. We see the mountain, but the trails are NOT well marked. We could see the mountain, so we just started walking up it. Kate decided to create some trail markers for others.
It was beautiful!! Much more flora that Stone Mountain! Well, Bradley Mtn was beautiful. Arabia Mtn has been mined excessively, so it looks pretty sad. A fair amount of plant life has grown back, but there are piles of wasted rock lying around, looking desolate. We spent quite awhile just wandering around, taking in the scenery. The rocks all sounded hollow when you threw them or jumped on them or hit them against each other. Why? Are they really hollow? What kind of rocks are they? What are they made out of?
And taking silly pictures, of course.
When we decided it was time to go home, we still hadn't found a trail, so we decided to follow the sound of the rooster crowing... into someone's backyard. Whoops!! We finally made it back to the parking lot, having added Hank's ice cream as the incentive to find our way down the mountain. Finally, I was going to make it to Hank's. Driving back, (a different route from any that we had taken to get there), we saw quite a few houses that were constructed from the rock quarried from the mountains. And, alas, my trip to Hank's is not yet to be. As we headed toward i-20, Laura remembered she had tickets to the Fox tonight and we had to rush back home.
Brasstown Bald, here we come!
writing poetry
As I teach poetry, I make my students write some of it as well. Many of them write it anyway and are excited to finally do something that interests them in my class. Others are VERY resistant to it. Knowing that it was the day before Spring Break and they were losing their minds, we wrote some on Friday. For one class, I made them pick a familiar word from the dictionary and write it down. They then had to write down the next 4 entries and compose a poem using those 5 words. The poems ranged from things like "smooch" to "shoplifting." You see where their brains are. They were
hilarious!
But I am a hypocrite. I make my students write poetry, but I don't/ won't write it myself. Sure, I might write the 5 dictionary entry kind, but little past that. The nature of poetry is to convey experience and emotion, especially the personal kind. That just screams "Be Vulnerable" to me. And therefore, I do not write poetry. The fear of someone seeing something that expressed my deepest emotions and most special memories and not thinking it was good is too strong. I'm also even afraid to express these thoughts on paper- that makes them more real and that too is scary.
However, for a number of reasons, I have been contemplating the ode of late. Were I to write poetry, I would start with odes. Here are a number of things I have considered writing odes to lately...
- avocados
- Dodge Neons
- spring!
- daylight savings time
- ultimate frisbee
- mexican food
- Atlanta
- JJ Redick
mildly disappointed
I have to say, I'm a little disappointed in Google. It is April Fool's Day and they created an elaborate April Fool's Day prank last year. Not to mention that they added 2MB to my gmail address. So this morning, when I woke up for the 3rd time and decided I should actually get out of bed, one of my first thoughts was, "Its April Fool's Day, let's see what Google has done." Followed shortly there after by "Thank goodness I don't have to deal with my crazy students on April Fool's." Followed by "Why am I awake, its Spring Break?!"
Anyway, there's nothing. So disappointing. Or maybe there is something and I'm not alert enough to have noticed. This is always a possibility.
1 Comments:
Courtney, thanks for the comment! I'll definitely be checking out your blog! I really like the look of it. I'm mortally afraid of HTML and CSS, but I secretly want to learn it.
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