Mother/Partner tongue policy in the JFK English department
- A disapproving gasp
- suggested that being allowed to visit the familiarity of their mother tongue in order to decode what they see happening in English
- I have to agree based on my own experiences learning deutsch...if I'm allowed to use my own languages syntax or semantics in order to understand german's then it makes it easier. (i.e., subject verb, adj, adj, adj, infinitive)
- I asked about the best approach for correcting syntax in a writing sample.
- (my process has been to underline the error and then "syntax" in the margin
- they suggested targeting "repeat offenders" i.e. "The americans felt the urge to make even more organizations to control the living of the japanese, which indirectly forbid them to live at the east coast."
- is changed to, "Americans were urged to make more organizations which directly restricted Japanese people, but these same tactics also indirectly affected where Japanese decided to live."
- which also reminded me that I'm compiling a list of "words we always mess up!" and I will put it in the drive for anyone who wants to add to it.
- the rest was promotional propaganda
Peter Dalglish: UN Habitat
- Vigilante Educator: sends volunteers to remote areas to help disseminate best practices
- results in an organic saturation of "IB" practices throughout a given region
- I've contacted him because of the responses I've gotten from the students in my AP/Leistenskurs to "the combine" and adorno's "Culture Industry."
Google sites:
- private pages only accessible to you and student
- blogs that are done thru "announcements" tab on GS that are open to the class
- I post student blogs on my site too
- forms
- student foldres
Writing using evidence:
- The use of "I" in an essay.
- common practice at university level is "you are the authority" of your thesis...follows the IB policy of "Student as Knower," thru the Theory of Knowledge aspect.
- University first two years professors are assigning 3-5 page research essays with emphasis on depth and specificity
- 5 weeks working on getting a thesis (Specific and Narrow; Researchable Question) SNRQ
- thru a variety of FFW's (Focused Free Writes)
Derivations:
I struggle with helping kids design their own theses.
I realized....
- How much internalizing, digesting, examining marginalized aspects, I am doing while I read a text.
- I come with 44 years of life experiences
- I carry with me my own tools of deconstruction methods, i.e. the critical lens with which I examine a text is finely tuned via education, self-interest, and teaching for 6 years
- I have an agenda when I read and have a bank of "signifiers" that when I see them in texts I know seemingly instinctually how to develop a critique of the text...none of the above are instinctual they are learned....hence the problem a 12 to 18 year old kid has with coming up with a provocative thesis.
- Thesis is something that you have to craft thru introspective interactive prior knowledge experiences (experiences is a verb)
- Diane and Julia (what question do you have?
- FFW's
- Your predicted answer
- an imaginary interview with someone who might have the answer
- an argument you can imagine occurs between you and the interviewee
- an invented news story related to your question
- an invented dialogue in which you discuss your SNRQ at a coffee shop
- your proposal of your SNRQ to an organization for funding
- re-read
- use those insights to write a new SNRQ
- Rinse and repeat (Ideating)
- Should a thesis be polarizing?
- If kids are using the rubric as much as we are...what's the impact of them knowing that a strong thesis is only even considered as part of the score in two areas/aspects/boxes on the rubric?
- A good thesis is invaluable to.......(fill in the rest)
Placement of the lilacs in a vase upon the bar means a small remnant of leaf and stem in sandstone. Mars rover. Such is prose to the moment or in conversation. Do you speak the language? Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Does one get caught up in nationalistic themes, past history? The Zen of the moment rests in the cracking of your wrist at the office table, sans Cooney. You know better than most, yet the cards held to the breast are all deuces and of the wrong suit.
ReplyDeleteSon’s writing on the office paper in black pen, notes on Catcher. The things one can fit into a singular backpack. The river and reeds. De Kooning or Pollack buying paint. Mic this. Be ready to speak when spoken to. Be in a good mood and be healed of all your afflictions. God knows you’ve been through the wringer. Unfold the newly printed book. Read. Laugh out loud at the pattern. Los Angeles is a social experiment.
So this is spring. Youth pushes forward willing to speak. My father once told me in my twenties the older you get the more young people there are. I tie a fisherman’s knot, bait the hook and cast in. We are hiking the banks of the Deschutes in early spring and Barth is with us. The last time we’ll do such a hike. I am self-conscious still of my divorce and of the pain I carry. Yet at the car I laugh and talk of Chi Gong.
The mountains call more than than the cities. It has been many years since Spieth Road and Kent State University yet still I lean on using such words. I remember Heaven and Angel and the Grateful Dead kids. I remember the row boat drifted ashore on the banks of Brady Lake and how we made our own. Stolen twenty pound wax blocks carved into sculpture. I am at the campfire ring at the edge of the lake telling Relitz I would better off heading up into the mountains alone for a few years. Go then.
Prose is not poetry. Yet the beer gets drank all the same. I remember age ten my granddad would catch raccoon in his have-a-heart trap and we would head out to the reservoir some 10 miles away in his Jeep and release them. Wonder how many of them made the journey back. This too was in Portage County, my memories there.