It's the books, stupid!

Carville keeps the Clinton staff on track
photo credit: kipbot.com

      Hopefully, all of my students know enough about contemporary American history to know about "It's the economy stupid!"

      Bill Clinton was trying to keep things in perspective during his first presidential run.  He knew that while Bush and the GOP were trying to make the election about a number of different things (taxes, defense, etc.), what Americans really cared about, and still care about, is jobs and the economy.  James Carville, a young politico at the time, now a famous pundit, put it up in the war room to keep everyone on track.

      I have been inundated by similar distraction lately, and I want to get myself on track.  My distraction has taken the form of the following, amazing, game-changing items.  I highly recommend them, if you have the means...

   Number 1: Motorola's Droid X.  I am now as cool as my students.  It's a slight improvement over my old flip phone with a broken casing and no battery life.  It takes HD video.  The display is absurd.  I can upload pictures directly to the web.  I am constantly connected to both my e-mail accounts, twitter, facebook, and every piece of information in the world.  Disclaimer: battery life is very poor.

photo credit: wired.com

    Number 2: A new Samsung netbook.  This I really like.  It's exactly what I need: portability, the internet.   I'm really committing to "the cloud" so a piece of hardware that gives me access to that is perfect.  It's not going to run Fallout 3, but that's probably better for me and my students.

photo credit: slashgear.com

   Number 3: An HD Flip Cam.  Lots of applications, especially for school.  I'm thinking about recording some lectures/discussions, putting them on the wiki.  It's great for personal use too.  Portable, easy to use.  A great tool.

photo credit: focalpoint-studios.net

   So where does "It's the Economy, Stupid," and "Pee Herman's Technological Playground" meet?  Glad you asked.

   During the break I've also been reading a wonderful, startling, captivating book called The Book Thief.  No spoilers, but it's set in Nazi Germany, it's narrated by the Grim Reaper, and it's stylistically fascinating.

Photo Credit: thebooksmugglers.com

A quick excerpt.  Death writes about the holocaust:

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born.  I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks.  I listened to their last, gasping cries.  Their vanishing words.  I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear.

...

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.

  Books like The Book Thief are why I love teaching.  A book that is so wonderful and terrible.  So beautiful and scary.

   A book should make you 10 years old.  It should make you wonder without shame or cynicism.  The Book Thief put me back to my childhood, trying to make sense of the world while staring through the glow-in-the-dark stars of my bunk bed.    

   Trust me, English class is about the books.  It's about experiencing a group of thoughts and words that stir something in you that is both transient and timeless.  It's about reading something that changes you.

   Technology and education is important to me.  Keeping my classroom  relevant is a priority.  Creating an educational environment that is about learning how to succeed tomorrow, and not yesterday, is critical.  Teaching a 16-17 year old in a way that makes him comfortable (rather than me), is a no-brainer. To do all of this, you need tools.    

   But, this is a reminder to myself.  And to you.  It's not the gadgets.  It's not being able to check my twitter (though communicating with Peter King and Laurie Halse Anderson is pretty cool).

 It's about the books, stupid.  It's always been about the books.  It always will be.

  I love Angry Birds, but it won't stir the soul...

Search for word frequency in over 5.2 million books? That looks marginally interesting...

This is the most amazing thing ever

Google Labs created a device that allows you to about 5.2 million digitized books for a single word in less than a second.  Let's go over that again, 5.2 million digitized books, less than a second.

Why is this important?  Well, let's say, like I did in college, you're studying the use of the word "monomania" in American culture.  You'd get an image like this:



Monomania is a term that became extremely popular extremely fast.  Invented in the 1820s, it grew in popularity with the reform of insanity and the creation of the asylum in the 1830s.  Panic in the lead up to the Civil War represents the pinnacle of fears regarding monomania.  

Let's say you're looking to compare the major sports in American culture for the last 200 years?



Baseball is a more published term than football?  Soccer is more written about than hockey?  No one cares about lacrosse?

What if you're interested in Melville studies:



Anything interesting here?  How about nobody talked about Melville until 60 years AFTER he wrote Moby-Dick?  Does his peak in popularity in the middle of WWII have to do with fears regarding dictators and the end of the world?  Is the book more popular than the author?


This is a cool toy, but what's the lesson here?

  You have resources regarding search and information that no one could have imagined 20 years ago.  Become fluent in these resources and you will find success. 

  Someone once said that knowledge is power.  That's wrong. The ability to find the right knowledge is power.  

Why this class is important and other thoughts on metacogntion



MC Escher: Metacognition
andrew.cmu.edu



  Quick vocab lesson to start: "metacognition."  Metacognition means to think about thinking.  Sounds like a very academic, stupid term.  I know the many times that I've heard it used by teachers/smart people, it's one of those cliches that mean nothing and make you seem observant.



  So why start with metacognition?  Because I am constantly thinking about your (my students, you young powerful learners) learning, your thinking.  And I think about my thinking about your thinking.  That's a lot of meta, a lot of cognition.

  I don't always come to the right conclusions.  I've had lots of bad ideas, missteps, poor lines of reasoning.  But I am thinking.  I think at home, I think at work, I think while I should probably be doing other things.  There are some drawbacks to that.  My classroom is not safe.  It's not as stable as some others.

  But I think the basic premise that teachers should be engaged in constant metacognition, constant evaluation of their classroom, of their teaching style, of their tools, their rapport with their kids, their curriculum, the books they teach, everything they do, is THE MOST CRITICAL trait in good teaching.



Evolution?
amorphia-apparel.com



   Look at other competitive fields.  In business, innovation is critical.  In coaching, teams are constantly trying to find the new best way.  In medicine, research is constantly being performed.  Animals evolve.  Things change.  

 



   Wherever you are in your life, whether you are a student, a teacher, a businessman, an entrepeneur, you better surround yourself with people who are constantly evaluating what they do.  You better be around people who are searching for new, ideas.  You better be hard on yourself.  You better question everything.  You better be willing to try 4 new things and be ok with 3 of them don't work.  Because that's progress.  That's learning. 

  That's what blogging is.  It can be trivial.  It can be informal.  It is not a 5 paragraph essay.  But blogging allows you to "teach yourself what to think."  It allows you to understand yourself, your mind, through writing.  Metacognition...dude...think about it.

Questions questions....

St. James High--Myrtle Beach SC

Here's a little bit about the school we are collaborating with...

Here's Ms. Kangarloo describing her school:

New Direct PostsHide All

Ms. Kangarloo to Me

Good Afternoon! I'm not sure if you know much about our area but I just wanted to share some information with our NJ classmates about our school in SC. We are a public high school in a "beach town" - Myrtle Beach, SC. We have just about 1500 students here and run grades 9-12. We are not diverse in the culture sense; however, the students come from very different households and have diverse goals. A lot of my students feel like school is a curse and we battle with dropouts throughout our area and state. What is great about this - is they are seeing that what we are doing is not unique to Myrtle Beach and I am not "hairwoman" assigning prompt after prompt :) Anyway, the kids are great though and their unique personalities (as you may be able to pick up on) make my days interesting and often times exciting.

44 minutes ago | Reply | Tag

Speak Loudly--Update

   We've been talking about a lot of important things recently in class.

  We've got the wikileaks thing going down--how wikis are going to change the world, how we are part of that change as a class.  I am amazed every day by the power of the internet.

   We're also reading Speak.  I think a lot of us are finding it a very powerful experience.  I know the poem "Listen" brought some emotions to the class that are pretty special.  It's an important book, I think many of us realize that.

   And then those two things, social media and literature combined.  I tweeted the following today:

@halseanderson I teach Speak to a class of all boys. Your poem "Listen" was extremely emotional and eye opening for them today. Thank you.

  I was communicating directly to an author.  Thanking her for her work.  Thanking her for creating art that changed my student's lives.  Amazing. 

   Better: she wrote back.

@MrFlynnWave Thank you for sharing that with me!

 Unreal...

I am so moved by this experience as an educator and a life-long learner right now, I hardly know how to express it.  I guess I just feel so blessed to be working at a time when this is possible.

  It truly is an amazing world out there.  Reading and writing helps us understand it and express it.  Days like today are why I love what I do.

SL/Speak Project Due Dates

SL and Speak Unit Projects/Values/Due Dates

Blogs:  (20 points each)

            2 posts

1. A post relating your choice reading with SL and Speak.  Previous blogging rubrics apply—writing sytle, unique voice, interesting, multimedia, links, tags,

            Due Monday Dec. 6^th (midnight)

2. A post which describes your personal feelings about the effectiveness of guilt or shame as a punishment technique.

            Due Monday Dec. 13^th (midnight)

Edmodo     (30 points)

-5 posts total.  1 per week.  Make them meaningful. Prompts will be given on site and explained in class.  2 posts will be included in your portfolio at the end of the unit. 

Glogster     (50 points)

-Your job is to create a poster that explains the changing meaning of a symbol throughout the novel.  You can pick one symbol by itself and show how it evolves, or you can trace how a symbol gets combined with other symbols to change its meaning.  

The requirements for the assignment will be
Quotes--at least 4.  Not long.  Maybe 1 word will do.  
-The quotes can be interpreted or explained with pictures, with short phrases, with video.  The quotes should be FELT, not analytically analyzed.  Play with font, color, orientation

Media--effective visual representations of the symbol and their changes
-This doesn’t have to be literal--pictures can substitute for emotions, etc...  Be creative as possible here

A clear sequence or timeline of ideas.
-You must show how the symbol evolves, changes, or is combined with other symbols to alter its meaning

With the glogster will be an accompanying write-up in which you do the following:
.  Cite all the media you use in your glog--website urls will do
.  Cite all the quotes you use from Speak

            Due Thursday Jan. 6th

Wiki Portfolio    (50 points)

            Your portfolio will be a printed out, stapled accumulation of wiki additions.  They will include:

                        3 close readings of the text

                        2 comments that build and synthesize other student’s ideas with your own

These will be graded as formal writing.  Take time to revise them if you need to.  These must be part of the wiki to count towards portfolio. 

            Your overall participation grade on the wiki (25 points) will also be totaled on this date

                        Due Monday January 10^th

Formal writing  (310 total pts)

          Essay will be a thesis of your own choosing, but should focus on one of the following topics

Symbolism: How a symbol changes or combines with another symbol or character.  The emphasis here is on seeing the symbol not as a static entity, but one with meaning that evolves throughout the text.

Characterization: How a character changes or combines with another character or symbol.  The emphasis is not on understanding the character as a static entity, but understanding the subtle relationships between characters and symbols and how those relationships can change the characters. 

Thesis—posted to wiki            (20 points)

Introduction—posted to wiki   (40 points)

First Draft—submitted to turnitin.com and shared on google docs with me and your writing partner  (60 points)

            Must include questions for writing partner in the form of comments

            Due Tuesday, December 14^th

Partner Revision—done via google docs (40 points)

            Meaningful revision, questions, suggestions in our partner’s work

            Due Tuesday January 5th

Final Draft—submitted to turnitin.com            (150 points)

                        Due Thursday January 13^th

Speak Loudly

  I know we haven't done a lot of reading in this book, but I think it's important to understand the power of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.  The book may not be Moby-Dick in terms of writing style, but it has touched many lives.

Here's a small example.  Feel free to contribute to "Speak up about Speak" if you want.

Credit: World Wide Lens Photography

 This small title has become a cultural phenomenon.  You must ask yourself: "Why?" "Why do so many people see themsleves in this book, even if I don't."


  Yes, the book's subject is Melinda and her rape.  But it's more than that.  It's about pain.  It's about silence.  It's about the false construction of ourselves we put into the world every day.  It's about how terrified we are to express who we really are, what we love, what we want to be.


  The book is sad.  The book is triumphant.  The book is a typical expression of what growing up is like for many students just like you.  


  Do not be afraid.  Speak Loudly.

SL/Speak Wiki

We will be using this wiki page in order to collaborate and comment on the numerous symbols in Speak and The Scarlet Letter.

A symbols is defined as: A physical object that represents something greater than it's physical presence, an idea, an emotion, a time period, a belief.

Great symbols are like jewels: they shine differently in different light.  A symbol could have one meaning in one part of the book, but be given a different meaning as the book progresses.

Classic symbols:
Sunlight


Dove:


Ring:

Junot Diaz! Straight outta Jersey...

Photo Credit: Artculture.com

Fast Food Nation Pre-Reading

The power of education!!! Is it that powerful?

Douglass Questions

What to the American Slave is the 4th of July?

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

Henry David Thoreau--Civil Disobedience

Rage Against the Machine...

Self-Reliance In-Class assignment

Here is the link to your In-Class assignment google doc.

Wordle--Self Reliance

  "Self Reliance" Wordle

   "Nature" Wordle

A "wordle" is a program that creates an image based on text that you feed into it.  It creates a word cloud where the words that are used most frequently (after filtering out commonly used words) are made larger and more prominent.

If this is all we saw from "Self-Reliance," what would we conclude about Emerson and his message? 

Here's a link to create your own wordles

  Thoreau "Walden"

    Moby-Dick Melville

Blogger vs. Groupfusion

Men, if you wish, please post your thoughts to the following document.  Do you prefer blogger.com over groupfusion?  Why?

Here's your link to the google doc

...it used to be science fiction.

 

ITW Review Links

Fellas, here are the links to your google docs study sheets:

H Block

J Block

Lunch Block

S Block

I walk into the wild...

...well, not really. 

  I walked into the woods behind the freshman soccer fields.  It felt pretty wild though.  I've run in that area before a number of times, but always on a path.  I remember thinking, stupidly, "I better make sure I go in a straight line so I can find my way back."  I was walking 200 yards... 

  Needless to say, my first couple thoughts as I strolled in the fresh, October air was how foolish this assignment was.  The whole concept of solitude here is a total farce.  I'm less than half a mile away from my car (which I still have many a monthly payment for), I have a cell phone on my person, and I'm going to BLOG about this later.  Let's be serious. 

  As I walked further, I found lots of reminders of human civilization.  Trash.  The sweet perfume of the outdoor latrine near the soccer fields.  A random steel well that is in the middle of the forest out there.  It made me sympathize with Chris McCandless.  How do you have a genuine wilderness experience?  Is it even possible? 

  As the pessimism raged, I found a rock near a streambed and sat down.  I started to think.  During football season, when my mind wanders it strays into the land of blocking and tackling.  I started thinking about our practice later today.  My girlfriend often comments that I go into my "village."  That's codeword for me not listening to whatever she's talking about.  A very common occurrence.  However, she's pretty much right.  My mind is hyperactive at times.  When I was a young kid I had a lot of trouble sleeping.  I would read until the wee hours of the morning just to take myself away from my own personal monologue.  I still do sometimes. 

Not just any tree...

  But then I saw a tree.  Yes, there are lots of trees in the forest.  But this one was straight.  Almost perfectly so.  And it was right in front of me.  I had walked past it on the way in unwittingly, but when I sat down, there it was.  It went up as perfect as a carpenter's square.  And that just amazed me.  It was so unified, one symmetrical trunk, reaching to the sky.  It was a living, organic thing, yet it seemed so right, as if it was put there as an example. 

  And then I started to look around more.  And I thought about what "Nature" is.  The big N.  There was just so much out there, so much life.  Green sprouts everywhere on the ground, tree branches yearning for light, birds chirping, brush, lichen.  The randomness out there, the lack of order really struck me.  Maybe nature is this chaos.  The lawful chaos that we are all a part of. 

  And then the school bell rang.  That's right.  The clock that chimes for every quarter of an hour at Delbarton.  I could hear it.  It totally screwed up my Zen moment.  What the hell. 



For serious, Delbarton?  Thanks. 



  As I walked out of the forest and back to my apartment, I looked at the soccer field.  What a juxtaposition that is to the disorderliness of the forest.  Perfect lines.  Right angles.  A completely clear, crested field. 

   It made me think how we love to create order as human beings.  We like to make sense of things. 

   I'm not sure Nature has a lot of answers, but maybe that's ok.  Melville once said, "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method." 

Will Richardson: You Know This is True

Will Richardson talks about changing conceptions of learning and teaching. How much of this stuff is obvious but we don't have the cajones to actually change? Students, you are a part of the change at Delbarton School. We are creating something different. Appreciate that!

You Know This is True

Breaking Down the Thesis

Break it down!

Breaking down the thesis for a longer essay

Who wants a cool T-shirt?

Introducing the Full Novel-T League from Novel T on Vimeo.

Krakauer Penn 2

This is really worth watching.

This is a longer version of Penn and Krakauer

Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn hang out together...

Sean Penn, director of Into the Wild, and Jon Krakauer, writer of Into the Wild, featured in a show on the Sundance Channel.

Ben Franklin is awesome....

I Am Third

  I've been reading this book I Am Third, by Gale Sayers.  It's one of those books that I think is important for all men to read at some point in their life.  A book that is almost a religious text.

  I get a lot of the books you guys read throughout the year on ebay.  I buy what's called "book lots," assortments of books on the cheap.  (Yes, I buy these books with my own money.  Appreciate.)  This came in a "football" lot.  I thought a bunch of football books would be a great addition to my library.

  I started off kind of slow with this book.  It's written in a pretty straightforward style--almost simplistic.  I normally don't like books that are so "here it is."  I like figurative language and lots of stuff that makes you think.

  However, once I got into this thing, it's really affected me as a person.  Gale Sayers lived by a mantra, a mantra which should be familiar to you guys as Delbarton students: I AM THIRD.  That is, God is first, my friends are second, and I am third.  It's a motto the Brian Fleury used to live by, and encouraged everyone around him to live by. 



You can find the book on Amazon.com

  It seems so simple, almost boy-scouty.  But I got to thinking, how much do I put others ahead of myself in my life.  Admittedly, I'm a pretty self-absorbed person.  When something interferes with my teaching or my coach, it really pisses me off.  I have a big ego.

  And here was this guy, Gale Sayers, maybe the greatest running back of his time.  But he's not some big Terrel Owens kind of guy.  He's got a job in the off-season, a great family man, and he just wants to do his best and compete for his team.  He doesn't consider himself special, just blessed.  When his career is cut short (HE MADE THE HALL OF FAME AFTER 5 YEARS OF PLAYING!), he doesn't blame anyone, he doesn't get angry, he just accepts it.

  I think sometimes we make life very complicated.  It's not.  We make it complicated because we don't have the courage to just do the right thing and hold ourselves accountable when we don't. 

  It's not often you read a book that affects the way you interact with the world, but that should be your goal.  Don't just read for entertainment.  Read for enlightenment, read for change, read to become a better person. 



This is why they called him "Magic."  LEGIT!

Coach Desplaines' favorite video

Screw it, Red Bull time...

What makes a blog?

Ok, this is supposed to be the big example post for my classroom.  "See kids, here's a perfect example of exactly what I want you to do.  I am perfection; envy me."  . . . not exactly.
  In truth I'm as new to this blogging thing as all of my students.  I've read blogs, I know what one is, I can define what I would like to see, but I've never done it before.  This is just my deal, my experience, how I manifested my reading experience onto a web page.  Everyone is different, that's the great thing about it.
  

  So, to answer the question at hand...something about summer reading experience...my most potent reading experience came from reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind in Italy. 

  I went to Italy with my girlfriend during the no contact period, and boy was it great.  No teenagers (at least none that I was responsible for), and tons of food.  One day I counted that we stopped to eat 8 times.  That's a lot of antipasto.

   Now, I don't know how many of you actually read The Boy who Harnessed the Wind, but I recommend it highly.  It's a touching book that has a lot to say.  In it, there's an enormous famine.  I've never experienced anything like this, but William describes it in heartwrenching detail.  I got very emotional and very invested listening to William describe how his family and his country suffered, all over something so simple.  For William, every minute of every day was spent thinking about eating.  Hmmm...sounds familiar. 

  
   So did I feel guilty as a rich westerner, stuffing my face while reading about an African famine.  Yeah, I guess I did, but my real emotion wasn't so cliched.  Being in a culture (Italian), that treated food with such reverence and care, that had the entire day built around meals, made me really appreciate what it is to eat, to have nourishment.  As Catholics, we're supposed to thank God for our "daily bread," but how many of us are really sincere with that thanks?  Not me, certainly.  Food is one of those things that we all take for granted, yet it's THE thing, the most important thing in our lives.  We can be deprived of anything besides food. 
  I don't have a whole lot of real cogent political thought on this matter.  I'm not big into action or politics or "we should be doing this."  But it really makes you think: before we help anybody with anything...shouldn't we be helping people get their "daily bread?"  What could be more worthwhile?
  With that in mind, here's a here's a really cool website called "Free Rice."  You answer basic questions and for every question you answer right, the website donates 10 grains of  rice to people who need it.  Try the "grammar" or "vocabulary."  Make sure to change the level to "5."

What should I read next?

I don't know how this website works, but it's pretty cool.  Just type in the book you just read and it will spit out a bunch of books you might be interested in.  There are a lot of amazing websites out there...


What should I read next?

American Dream

I found this website on American Dream. It's an article from cnn. Here it is:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/06/24/mexico.amputees/?hpt=C1&fbid=qoBnGEeQMD-