It’s the last day of school. It’s the last day of final exams.
What??
How did we get here?
Not to sound lame, but I’m mostly sad about this. Although I’m relieved that the end of grading is in sight, I know that in two weeks or so I will be bored out of my mind and ready to get back in the classroom.
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Speaking of grading.
The more tired I get, the more snarky my comments seem to become.
Witness:
Whoah there, Ms. Shea.
But really. Some of these illogical assumptions are starting to get to me.
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Don’t worry. They know I’m not completely evil. Witness this gem from… let’s call him Jimmy*. This is part of his Reading Strategies booklet.
Note that despite my scary appearance (I am the figure on the right) I am “not evil”.
Casey Hamilton?
Let’s just say he was an example I gave in class while I was trying to explain to them that Dante’s love-from-afar for Beatrice is not creepy.
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So this whole Dante unit has made me really excited for next year. And although I think it was a good idea to save him for last few weeks for these kids, I’m beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t start off with Dante right off the bat.
The text is so challenging that students really have only two choices: actually USE the reading strategies I teach them and try and try and try and try… or give up and fail.
It sort of puts school into starker terms.
Maybe that would be too much of a baptism by fire in August, but it would be a great vehicle to teach the future sophomores HOW to read right away. Then, when they encounter “less-challenging” texts like Antigone and Julius Caesar later in the year, they will know what to do.
Hmm.
Thoughts?
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Either way, I’m going to go pretty heavy on the reading strategies at the beginning of the year. And I think I will ask my friend and the junior English teacher if I can borrow some of my former students so they can do some presentations on reading strategies for my new kids.
Some of those kids did such an AMAZING job with their Reading Strategies booklets. They explained things far better than I could (or did).
Adam*, in particular, really impressed me with his sensitivity to his audience. He knew exactly the “type” of student he was speaking to (read: every type) and he did a lovely job addressing their fears and frustrations.
Exhibit A:
Look at how he made copies of Longfellow’s translation of Dante and then demonstrated what annotating looks like.
Exhibit B:
Sorry, high school moms.
Exhibit C:
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I suppose I’m pretty much letting my kids write this blog post for me. But I’m so proud of them. So I’m going to keep doing it.
From Molly*:
Again:
And Adam insists you should be “sassy” with the text. It helps to prevent you from getting bored as you read tough material:
Sarah* has some advice for you on the difference between “good” and “bad” annotations:
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Okay, I guess I should go back to grading my final exams now.
Happy weekend everyone! And happy end to the school year!
So Tom asked me what the highlight of my day was yesterday.
I have two:
1) During Maria’s 7th hour class, which is pretty huge, I got to walk around and help some of the kids. These are current sophomores, so I never taught them when I was at this school, but they seemed to accept the fact that I knew what I was talking about. So when I knelt by their desks when they raised their hands, their surprise was quickly replaced with matter-of-fact questions. “Yes ma’am, I don’t get this.” “Thank you, ma’am.” “Can you come see?”
In Colorado, some of them (especially the boys) call me “Miss.” “Yes, miss.” “Okay, miss.”
2) After the Mass last night, we stood outside the church talking to one of the parents. Most people had left by then. All of a sudden, the door opened and one of the graduating seniors walked up to me, gave me a quick hug, and left almost before I had time to say hello to him. He had not come up to me earlier when most of the others had. In fact, I haven’t talked to him much since his sophomore year when he and the “three musketeers” used to hang out in my classroom using my trashcan for paper basketball.
So great. I’m so blessed to have known these kids.
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the door to my old classroom
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Myriad conversations with students I had here in LA and in CO have come to mind when I read this really great article from a college professor’s perspective on the ridiculously challenging art of grading. It’s very applicable to secondary (and, I’m guessing elementary) school as well.
Where did students get the gumption to treat a grade as the opening move in a set of negotiations? As a professor, there is little worse than spending an entire semester attempting to connect about a subject you find both interesting and important, only to have them ignore everything you do until the moment their GPA is affected. And then, of course, it’s war. (Schuman)
Schuman admits that she inflates her grades, and explains why she feels she has to do this. When I first started teaching I was determined not to do this.
And then I realized life is a bit more complicated.
This is what I think grades “mean”:
A = Demonstrates exceptional mastery
B = Exceeds expectations
C = Meets expectations; that is, achieves the lesson goal.
D = Does not meet expectations; that is, does not demonstrate ability to do what I taught them to do.
F = Earns failing grade.
This is also the description I put on all my rubrics and the description whispering in my mind as I grade all my tests.
But then there is also this:
A = Demonstrates exceptional mastery for this student.
B = Exceeds expectations for this student.
C = Meets expectations / demonstrates achievement of lesson goal – at the level this student is capable of.
D = Does not meet expectations / This student does not adequately use whatever gifts she has been given to demonstrate achievement of the goal.
F = Earns failing grade / This student demonstrates profound lack of understanding of lesson plan goal or profound negligence. Basically, he did not really try.
Because, you know, Honors Student A writes an “A” essay that looks VERY different from ELL struggling student B — and yet Student B may have “demonstrated exceptional mastery” with the lesson goal within the context of her particular challenges and current skills.
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“Ms. Shea, Teacher X doesn’t teach writing like you did. She says ‘A is B because of 123’ is too basic, middle school stuff.”
“Yeah but I still used it!”
“And I used the format you taught us anyway but she took points off!”
I cringed.
Yes, I know ‘A is B because of 123’ is the basic middle-school formula for thesis statements. But I teach it to my high school kids as a starting point because they need it. You have to learn to walk before you can learn to run, people.
Once they master that version, I try to get them to leave it behind as soon as possible. “You don’t need this formula any more. I want you to write a thesis statement without using it. Change the words.”
I think that’s one of the downfalls of one teacher having the same kids 2 years in a row. They got used to me, and no matter how many times I told them “this is just ONE right way to write an essay. There are others,” they seem to believe that their new teacher (the third this year) is wrong and I am right.
I encountered this a lot during my first year. “But Ms. X always said…” “We never did it this way before…” “We used to listen to music every Friday, can’t we go back to that?”
Sigh.
One of the things you have to teach students is how to be a student. For better or for worse, that means being flexible enough to adapt to different teachers different expectations.
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Maria is doing something really cool right now.
It’s a simple idea, but I’ve actually never done it.
I’m totally stealing this from her.
She has a series of questions on the board. The kids are answering them in groups. But here’s the catch:
They have to receive teacher approval on their answer to every question before the assignment is considered complete.
So this is what happens:
They work in their groups. One of them brings up the paper. “Ms. Lynch, is this right?” She will look at it and say, “Try again. Look at the second part of your answer.”
This starts to happen more and more.
“Good job, you got it!”
The groups begin to feel competitive. They begin to walk more quickly to Ms. Lynch. Then they run.
“Ms. Lynch, Ms. Lynch! Is this it?”
“Almost. Try again!”
They run back to their groups and scribble furiously. They laugh in frustration.
I love it.
“You guys gotta try this…!”
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This is the song I sang before I came to teach in Louisiana:
Actually, it’s also the song I sing before I do anything scary – like when I went to college, flew to Italy, began ACE, moved to Colorado…
Look. It’s me and my guitar. And the bag I bring with me when I move all around the country.
…
…And this is what I said after my first day of school here in Louisiana:
(and, let’s be honest, almost every day after that):
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“Week before last I went to Wesleyan and read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” After it I went to one of the classes where I was asked questions. There were a couple of young teachers there and one of them, an earnest type, started asking the questions. “Miss O’Connor,” he said, “why was the Misfit’s hat black?” I said most countrymen in Georgia wore black hats. He looked pretty disappointed. Then he said, “Miss O’Connor, the Misfit represents Christ, does he not?” “He does not,” I said. He looked crushed. “Well, Miss O’Connor,” he said, “what is the significance of the Misfit’s hat?” I said it was to cover his head; and after that he left me alone. Anyway, that’s what’s happening to the teaching of literature.” (Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being)
The BEST THING happened to me the other day at school.
You know, it’s the end of the year. Everyone’s tired. Burnt out. Ready for summer. The kids are struggling through hell… Dante’s hell, that is… and I have been so proud of them for working so hard with such a challenging work.
We had a fishbowl discussion the other day in class. Two students raised their hands and asked me, “Hey, Ms. Shea. Are we going to be reading The Purgatorio and The Paradiso?”
“Sadly, no,” I said. “But I love The Purgatorio. It’s my favorite part of Dante’s poem.”
“Man,” one of them sighed. “I really want to know what happens next!”
“Yeah. So, if we buy a copy of those two books and read them this summer, and we email you with questions, would you email us back?”
…
I was so happy I almost fell off the desk I was sitting on. AND THESE WERE NOT MY HONORS STUDENTS. These were not my “I love to read” students. These were my struggling kids, who used to say The Inferno was way too hard… but who had decided to try. Sticky notes and annotations colored the pages of their books. They had come in for extra help a few times — completely voluntarily.
And now they want to read The Purgatorio and The Paradiso this summer… well, just because.
Psh. Who says teaching kids skills and reading strategies and how to “interact with challenging text” Common Core style cannot also, at the same time, encourage a love for goodness, truth and beauty?
“Yes!” I said. “Yes!”
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So, I may or may not have played this video in all of my sophomore classes today…
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My friend Katie, also a UD grad, has a great post for Teacher Appreciation Week (yes, that was this week!):
[…] here we are, two years into my unexpected teaching career and 165 students call me “Miss Prejean” every day and I’m slowly learning the ups and downs of the job. Here’s what I’ve figured out: I hate being a teacher. I love teaching.
Go read the rest!
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So I have been trying to pray St. Ignatius’ Examen every night before bed, and I had a really strange experience with it.
For those of you who don’t know, the steps of the Examen are roughly these:
1. Place yourself in God’s presence.
2. Think of the ways, both big and small, that He has been present to you. Thank Him for these gifts of the day.
3. Review your day slowly from beginning to end. Think about the ways that you loved God and others or failed to.
4. Ask for forgiveness / Act of Contrition.
5. Make resolutions and ask for help tomorrow.
On Tuesday I was having one of those not-so-great days. I wasn’t feeling very good about myself. I did not feel like praying. But I tried anyway. And I was a little shocked by the fact that as I tried to review my day for the gifts God had given me, and the ways that He had been present to me, I keep feeling worse and worse.
I thought of my students, and how I love them, and immediately two students came to mind who have not been getting along, and I realized how negligent I had been. I hadn’t even moved their seats away from each other. I was just letting the comments and the annoying interruptions continue. One of the students has a lot of emotional issues, and the other student bullies him because it is easy. The former student has begun saying really concerning things under his breath. And I have done nothing about it. I am a horrible teacher. How can I say I really love them when I let something like that continue? What if something happens? What if they get into a fight — or one of them seeks revenge in some way? And I could have stopped it?
I felt horrible.
I thought about lots of other gifts too – good things sprinkled throughout my day – but each time, I immediately thought about a way I had failed.
I stopped in the middle of prayer and was like, “Whoah. This isn’t supposed to be happening, is it?”
I tried again. But it happened again, almost immediately.
After a while, I finally said, “Okay, God. I’m sorry. I’m going to just go to sleep now.”
It was strange and kind of disturbing.
A few days later, during our bimonthly bible study, I brought this up to my friends. One of them came up to me right before leaving and said the exact same thing has happened to her while trying to pray the Examen. And she said quite simply, “That’s not God, Maura. That’s the Accuser.”
The Accuser? Oh yeah, right. The devil. Really?
She continued, “God is gentleman, and he is very kind with us. Often I just say, ‘Lord, please show me where I could have served you better today. Where do you want me to improve?’ It’s often in places I never expected. And he is always gentle. That other feeling — that does not come from Him. Discouragement, despair — that’s not God.”
Her words were so helpful to me. I prayed that night, and the same thing started happening again, but then I just redirected my attention to God. “God, you are a gentleman, and you are much more merciful to me than I could ever be.” It was kind of a struggle, but it helped to realize that some of those thoughts weren’t coming from God.
Funny how I’m teaching my students about The Inferno, and yet forgetting that the evil one is real and wants to sabotage our efforts and discourage us.
Pope Francis says the same. All the time. He’s always referring to the devil and how tricky he is. None of our bad, self-abasing thoughts come from God. Many of them may come from ourselves. But sometimes they come from the outside.
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On that note:
via Fr. Robert Barron
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That night I couldn’t (or didn’t) finish my Examen, I picked up a book to get my mind off of it.
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.
I finished it that night because I couldn’t sleep.
It’s so good. So, so good. Please do yourself a favor and read it.
A taste:
I wish I could leave you certain of the images in my mind, because they are so beautiful that I hate to think they will be extinguished when I am. Well, but again, this life has its own mortal loveliness. And memory is not strictly mortal in its nature, either. It is a strange thing, after all, to be able to return to a moment, when it can hardly be said to have any reality at all, even in its passing. A moment is such a slight thing. I mean, that its abiding is a most gracious reprieve. (Robinson, Gilead)
And:
“A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension.” (Ibid)
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Lastly, a great article over at Ignatius Insight about suffering and art:
In my last 7 Quick Takes post, two weeks ago, I asked readers for their opinions about some posts I am thinking of doing:
I’m gathering ideas for several different upcoming blog posts, but I wanted to ask if there is any topic in particular that you would like to see explored.
Here are some things I’m thinking of writing about:
1. More About the Common Core and its Implications for Catholic Education
2. Vocation – Br. Justin Hannegan has a disquieting thesis about discernment that all of us should take into consideration. I’ve been meditating on this for a while, and though I am not expert on vocations by any means, I thought I’d tackle it.
3. My Top 10 Pieces of Advice for Teachers – which is kind of funny, because I’m not exactly a veteran teacher myself…
4. Should certain books be excluded from Catholic high school classrooms? If so, any notable ones? Why? – This has become rather a sticky issue at my own school, and though I know the sad majority of Catholic high schools don’t take their identity too seriously anyway, I thought it might be useful to ponder for those of us who do kind of care about being “Catholic” and what that means. For example, one parent does not think Homer is appropriate. (!)
5. Why Anthony Esolen isn’t completely right about writing … See what I did there?
(me, Mysteries and Manners)
In the comments, I got some great responses and also quite a few on Facebook, so I am going to do my best to start turning out some of these ideas.
However, I am extending the invitation again, and adding a couple of more topic ideas:
6. The role of entertainment in secondary education – To what extent are teachers responsible for making their classes “fun”? What does appropriate “fun” look like? Should we even care about being “fun” (the academic word for it now is “engaging”) as prevailing Education theories insist?
7. A response to this interesting post by community college professor Chris Cook: “Thence to a Lightness: The Madness of English 201”
A taste of his argument:
Writing about literature, however, is not the same thing as reading it. Not everyone needs to know how to do that. In fact, almost no-one does. We don’t make people who want to be professors learn how to take apart and rebuild an engine, so why do we make people who want to be mechanics learn how to review a body of scholarship, pick out relevant quotations, and format them properly as citations and sources in support of an argumentative thesis? (Cook, “Thence to a Lightness”)
9. How do I make my subject “Catholic” when I don’t teach religion? Do I just make sure to have my students pray at the beginning of class and that’s it? Or sometimes have “religion” days and incorporate some kind of reading from the Gospel or the catechism? How do I make my classroom Catholic?
Let me know what you think – and if you have any other ideas!
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On religion in public schools:
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Once again, Faith and Memory go together.
Pope Francis gave an amazing homily at the Easter Vigil, meditating on Matthew’s resurrection account, and a particular part of that account I had never thought about very much before. He tells all of us to ask ourselves: “Where is my Galilee?”
Galilee is the place where they were first called, where everything began! To return there, to return to the place where they were originally called. Jesus had walked along the shores of the lake as the fishermen were casting their nets. He had called them, and they left everything and followed him (cf. Mt 4:18-22).
[…]
For each of us, too, there is a “Galilee” at the origin of our journey with Jesus.
(Pope Francis, Easter Vigil Homily 2014)
Go read it!
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My dad sent me a beautiful poem by John Updike: Seven Stanzas at Easter. I have been reading this poem in different ways with my kids every day this week for prayer.
I love this part:
And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom.
(John Updike)
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From the ever lovable and incisive GK Chesterton, via Ignatius Insight:
It’s really hard to be Catholic sometimes because it involves so much obedience, and obedience isn’t popular or cool. It makes you look like a sheep sometimes. Especially when you’re following a huge ancient corrupt sinful institution like the Church.
On the other hand: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).
Given the glaring facts that America remains a very unequal society, with strikingly low levels of social mobility, what’s needed is a set of policies that promote upward movement from the bottom, and, at the same time, has more appeal to Americans who find racial preferences objectionable. Fortunately, such an approach is readily available: race-blind affirmative action that helps poor and disadvantaged people get ahead regardless of their skin color and ethnic origin. (Cassidy)
Hmm…
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Pope John Paul the Great and Pope John XXIII, pray for us!
So often, it is women who are the first witnesses of the Resurrection…
Still, she said, she and her husband did not have the money to pay for more tests to verify the healing, but eventually her doctor did an MRI. “He was shocked,” she said. “My husband wondered why he wasn’t saying anything and I said, ‘because I’ve been healed through the intercession of John Paul II.'” (via Catholic News Agency, “Women recount the stories of healing through the intercession of popes”)
My friend Oscar has just started an awesome new website about education that you should check out! It’s called The McGuffey Reader, named after William Holmes McGuffey.
From the “About” Section of the site:
An independent organization committed to the improvement of local schools and to the reform of education in America, The Mcguffey Reader is the first ever online space for the exchange of school-specific solutions, and a source for the latest in education news, policies, and pedagogies that are currently changing education. (The McGuffey Reader About Page)
Some teachers ask me incredulously why I often wear heels when I teach. Aren’t I just asking for sore feet?
Well, yes.
But I began wearing heels because, during my first year of teaching, I was so much SHORTER than the huge senior boys who came marching into my classroom.
And I realized as well that a decisive click click click on the classroom floor, or in the hallways, can have a surpassing amount of power.
Although of course “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Especially the responsibility of not tripping and falling during class. THAT has almost happened.
Very, very interesting. You hear in homilies and articles all the time how “the internet” and its forms of social media have ironically only isolated us from one another–but Mrs. Sigillito (!) challenges that oft-repeated narrative:
I believe that social media have the capacity to help establish new forms of community that fulfill our innate desire to be part of a group that is larger than ourselves, but small enough to for us to be known, accepted, and loved. (Sigillito via Public Discourse)
She gives some great examples:
Blogs like these document the place where the rubber meets the road. They take general political and religious statements about the importance of the family and they make them real, personal, and incarnate. It’s one thing forHumanae Vitae to explain why contraception is wrong; it’s another thing to read the words of a woman who’s struggling to keep the faith through her fourth or fifth surprise pregnancy. And because blogs express their authors’ personalities so strongly, they provide a powerful opportunity to encounter others. (Ibid)
Bottom line: go read it.
Her article also gives me some hope and encouragement about my own blogging here. One wonders, at times, what the point is of sharing one’s musings with a silent computer scene… until you get a comment here or there that acknowledges that someone else has felt the same way, or has come to see things differently or more clearly because of what you said.
source: gabrielweinberg.com
As I learned in ACE , community can come in all sorts of strange shapes and sizes. And yet God can work through them–even through the Internet.
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Speaking of blogging…
I’m gathering ideas for several different upcoming blog posts, but I wanted to ask if there is any topic in particular that you would like to see explored.
Here are some things I’m thinking of writing about:
1. More About the Common Core and its Implications for Catholic Education
2. Vocation – Br. Justin Hannegan has a disquieting thesis about discernment that all of us should take into consideration. I’ve been meditating on this for a while, and though I am not expert on vocations by any means, I thought I’d tackle it.
3. My Top 10 Pieces of Advice for Teachers – which is kind of funny, because I’m not exactly a veteran teacher myself…
4. Should certain books be excluded from Catholic high school classrooms? If so, any notable ones? Why? – This has become rather a sticky issue at my own school, and though I know the sad majority of Catholic high schools don’t take their identity too seriously anyway, I thought it might be useful to ponder for those of us who do kind of care about being “Catholic” and what that means. For example, one parent does not think Homer is appropriate. (!)
5. Why Anthony Esolen isn’t completely right about writing … See what I did there?
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Well, I’m not going to go into a very long tirade about writing right now…
But I am going to venture into a little one.
I had a student from another English class ask me for help with her paper. Long story short, I didn’t think this student really had a thesis statement at all. I thought her thesis was basically a universal truth that any sane person who read her novel would agree with, and therefore wasn’t really worth writing about.
And then her current English teacher told me her thesis was absolutely fine, because this wasn’t supposed to be a “persuasive essay” anyway. It was an “analysis” essay.
I swallowed my astonishment, and then began to doubt everything I ever knew (and, honestly, everything I have ever taught) about essay writing.
Okay. I know Middle School teachers are taught to teach different “genres” of essay writing: the Descriptive Essay, the Analysis Essay, the ever-revolting Compare-and-Contrast Essay, the Personal Essay, the Persuasive Essay… which seems rather silly in a way. The only benefit I can see from over-complicating essays like this is teaching kids how to take purpose and audience into account. That’s a good thing, but I don’t think you need to make up fake essay genres for that.
But here’s my problem.
To me, an essay–even a thesis for that matter–is nothing at all if it does not argue something.
To me, ALL essays are persuasive essays.
Describe something? Okay, well prove why this thing is best described in this way.
Compare and contrast? Basically it’s just a list of stuff if you don’t throw in an argument somewhere–this thing is BETTER than that thing, or this character achieves X whereas the other one doesn’t.
Personal Essay? It’s just a journal entry if you aren’t trying to teach your reader or yourself something true about human life.
Am I wrong? Am I missing something? Is this just me?
ESSAYS MUST BE PERSUASIVE.
*Caveat: I said essays. Not necessarily science research papers. But even then…
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A little Calvin and Hobbes to put writing back into perspective:
source: moonlightandhershadow.blogspot.com
Once in a while my students will try something like this. Thing is, I’ve tried it before myself. And ya can’t BS a BS-er.
My students are finishing up Julius Caesar and preparing for their speech recitations on Monday. That’s right – they have to memorize a speech from the play and deliver it to the class. The minimum requirement (for a C grade on that particular section of the rubric) is 10 lines. But a few of them are tackling Mark Antony’s entire speech, or Brutus’, or Cassius’ manipulative tirade back in Act 1.
Here’s one of the best speeches ever, performed by one of the best actors ever – Marlon Brando as Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 2:
Here’s another version we looked at in class that shows a much more emotional Mark Antony. This Mark Antony seems genuinely upset that Caesar has been murdered. He is a lot more sympathetic and seems a lot less sneaky than Marlon Brando’s version:
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Funny story.
So when I first showed the second video by the Royal Shakespeare Company (above) to my classes, my 6th hour class started whispering and laughing.
It didn’t take more than 2 seconds to figure out what was amusing them so much.
I rolled my eyes and said to them – “Okay, the cast is black. Get over it, people.”
“Ms. Shea, are you showing us this version because we’re your ‘black’ class?” one of my black students asked. Everyone laughed, including me.
“No, I’ve been showing this version to all my classes today.”
It’s strange to me. The school I teach at now is very diverse, and so race is an issue that people laugh about more than anything else. I had to correct a student a few weeks ago for pretending to be a slave and bowing before her white master (she was black, her friend was white). But the issue seems so distant to many of my students here. They don’t know why I take it so seriously. “Come on, Ms. Shea. We’re just kidding.”
It’s like they think racism doesn’t exist anymore.
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In Louisiana, my students were not laughing when we were discussing racism in Huckleberry Finn, and whether or not they thought it was okay for Mark Twain to repeatedly employ the “N” word. They were very divided about the issue. And some of them got angry. And it was uncomfortable because it’s something that continually brims beneath the surface but no one ever wants to talk about.
source: wikipedia A less-than-favorable portrayal of Jim.
Back in liberal, middle class Boston I was taught that race doesn’t–or shouldn’t–matter.
But then I became a teacher and have realized that it does matter, whether we like it or not.
This may be controversial of me to say, but I’m going to say it anyway:
In my experience I have found that students who don’t know how to “speak white” and “talk white” are at a huge disadvantage. English is, like it or not, a white man’s language. It has evolved and changed over time, certainly, and will continue to do so. But as of right now, my Mexican students, black students, foreign students from Korea and Poland and Argentina and various other parts of the world will always struggle in school if they do not learn how to “speak white” and “talk white.” As an English teacher, it’s not just my job to teach all my students correct grammar and good writing habits. I also have to teach them the rules of the game, whether or not we really like the rules.
Some of my non-white students (both here and in Louisiana) know how to negotiate these boundaries and play the game from both sides. But the ones that don’t know how, or refuse to accommodate, tend to really struggle in school. They don’t speak “white English” at home or with their friends, and therefore they have difficulty using it at school.
I mean, I guess I do believe there is such a thing as “proper English,” but I am well-aware it is far more fluid and arbitrary than a lot of people think it is.
The Pope went on to express how when Moses prayed, he did so freely, courageously and with insistence, stating that prayer ought to be a “negotiation with God” to which we bring our “arguments.”
[…]
Drawing attention to how the scripture passaged describes Moses as speaking to God “face to face, like a friend,” the pontiff observed “This is how prayer should be: free, insistent, with debate, and should also scold “the Lord a little: ‘But, you promised me this, and you haven’t done it…’”
“Open the heart to this prayer,” he implored of those in attendance, stating that after his encounter with God “Moses came down from the mountain invigorated: ‘I have known the Lord more.’” (Catholic News Agency)
Wow. Some theologians and experts on spirituality might be rather uncomfortable with “scolding” the Lord and “arguing” or even “negotiating” with Him.
And yet I think Francis is right. Prayer must be honest. Too often I think we (Catholics in particular) dress up our prayers with pieties that aren’t really true. I would venture to say it is better to pray “Lord, I don’t feel like doing your Will right now. Help me to want to. But I don’t feel like it” than to pray “Lord, thy will be done” inauthentically.
On the other hand, one of the reasons we pray “The Our Father” is so that our desires can be formed and shaped by Jesus’ words. We want to be able to say “Thy will be done” with all of our hearts.
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Via Leah Libresco at Unequally Yoked: “every story Jesus tells and enacts is really a story about the Mass:”
The Healing of the Deaf-Mute Man. I love this story, because it summarizes the entire Gospel. Jesus heals us, and says Ephphatha, be open. Be open! Be open to grace. Be open to the Gospel. (By the way, the grace of God opens us, but then it’s up to us to cooperate with that grace. #CatholicPitches) What else happens? Jesus puts his saliva on the man’s lips and tongue. What an incredible gesture! I can’t ever shake that image. Jesus and the deaf-mute man, face to face. Jesus licking his fingers and putting his saliva on him. Imagine Jesus Christ, the Lord, touching your lips so tenderly. It’s a kiss. In some ways, it’s even more intimate than a kiss. He’s the Word of God! He doesn’t need to mess around with saliva to heal a deaf-mute man. But he wants to! It’s communion. Jesus puts His body on the man’s tongue. That’s what opens him. He receives the Body of Christ.
The Emmaus Pilgrims. This is the most striking one. The story of the Emmaus Pilgrims is one of my favorite from the entire Bible. Are we not all the Emmaus Pilgrims, wandering around, totally clueless, with Jesus walking on our side, and us not noticing Him? That’s the superficial (and true) meaning of that story. The other superficial (and true) meaning of that story is that, yes, Jesus of Nazareth really did bodily rise from the dead–people saw it. But what is the story of the Emmaus Pilgrims? What is its structure, its nature? It’s a Mass! It follows the Order of the Mass. First the Pilgrims hear Scripture, and expository preaching on Scripture. Then they come to a table, for what? The Eucharist! Jesus blesses the bread and the wine, and that’s when their eyes are opened. What just happened? Christ the High Priest performed the sacrament of the Eucharist! You just got ephphatha’d, bro. (“Everything in the Gospels is About the Mass”)
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Also via Leah Libresco, but I really couldn’t resist posting this one:
I’ve always dreaded being asked for my “teaching philosophy.”
For years, I gave nonsense or scattershot answers. “Logic and critical thinking are paramount.” “I care more about conceptual understanding than computational skill.” “A balanced, student-centered approach is always best.” “We buzzword to buzzword, not for the buzzword, but for the buzzword.” At best, each of my disjointed half-theories captured only a piece of the puzzle.
Worse still, none of my replies explained why I devote so much class time to plain old practice. If I was such an enlightened liberal educator, why did I assign repetitive computations for homework? On the other hand, if I was a traditionalist at heart, why did I fall head-over-heels for high-minded progressive rhetoric? Was I an old-school wolf, a new-school lamb, or some strange chimera? (Math With Bad Drawings)
Hm.
I wonder what I would say my “teaching philosophy” is…
Here is what my great and wise professor, Robert Hollander, had to say about the University of Dallas. Let his words ring in your ears, American bishops whom I want so badly to love and to follow in the fight for things both human and divine, and who so often let me down:
“After my first visit to UD in the spring of 2005, I came upon my friend and colleague, Alban Forcione, surely one of the five or fewer greatest scholars of Cervantes alive, [and told him] that we had wasted our lives teaching in the Ivy League and that I had found the place at which we could have spent our careers with better effect.” (Esolen, “On the Academic Hostility to Great Literature”)
As my friend Shelley would say:
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But wait…
As much as I agree with the core (get it?) of Esolen’s argument, there are parts I am not so sure about.
Let’s define a few terms first:
The Core (n) – the 60 credit hour sequence of classes taken by all students at the University of Dallas, regardless of major, predominantly in their freshman and sophomore years. Eg: Literary Traditions I-IV, Philosophy of Man, Western Theological Tradition, etc.
The Common Core (n) – “an education initiative in the United States that details what K-12 students should know in English language arts and mathematics at the end of each grade. The initiative is sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and seeks to establish consistent education standards across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit-bearing courses at two- or four-year college programs or enter the workforce” (via Wikipedia)
The Common “Corpse” (n) – Anthony Esolen’s nickname for the Common Core (see above), reflecting his belief (and the belief of many Catholics) that this education initiative undermines not only the Catholic identity of schools, but the very purpose of authentic education itself
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Okay.
Now, in the aforementioned article, Esolen’s chief purpose is not to criticize the Common Core, although he does do this as a way of opening. You can view his much more comprehensive (and, at times, compelling) arguments here:
I am a high school English teacher, and last year I was encouraged to implement Common Core Standards in my lesson objectives. Thus, I cannot really speak to ALL the standards, but I am familiar with the grades 9-12 Language Arts standards.
source: politichicks.tv
THE BAD:
1) Common Core has mysteriously descended upon most of the states without any kind of debate or voter input. States’ Rights Advocates are rightly suspicious and annoyed of this top-down Federalizing of education.
2) “Follow the money,” as a wise person recently reminded me. Common Core is largely funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You may draw your own conclusions. Moreover, the biggest reason it was so quickly (and almost universally) adopted is that President Obama offered the states an extra competitive edge in their applications for “Race to the Top” federal grants if they adopted the Common Core Standards by August 2010. Hm.
3) It is true that the Common Core seems to prize “informational texts.” This is especially evident on their “recommended” reading lists and options for teachers. Many people are worried that this is to the exclusion of “literary texts.”
4) Many Catholics object to the content of some of the recommended texts as being inappropriate or indoctrinating students into secular agendas.
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THE GOOD:
1) One reason for the unifying of educational standards is rather practical. Some states have horrible and confusingly-worded standards, period. Or they have such an overwhelming number of standards that teachers look at them, groan, and then move on with their lesson planning either cherry picking a few numbers here and there or ignoring them altogether. The Common Core tries to simplify and streamline the standards so that they are much easier to understand and thus to implement in one’s actual classroom teaching.
2) Another reason for the unifying of educational standards is also practical. In previous decades, when people stayed put and were educated in their home states at least through high school, they could follow a coherent set of standards that (supposedly) guided a coherent curriculum (a particular sequence in Math classes, for example). But recently, since so many people do NOT stay in one state and are often educated in several states over time, there were a lot of issues with different students encountering the same skills over again at a different grade level, or skipping them altogether. Common Core says, “okay. By the end of 6th grade, everybody has to have mastered A, B and C.” So even if they move to a school in a different state, these students will be on the same track.
My conclusion, as of today. (Although I am open to your comments and to learning more. I don’t pretend to have this all figured out.)
1) The Common Core is a tool, that, like all tools, can be used for good or for evil. It may not even be a very good tool, but it is definitely better than some.
2) The “recommended” texts are just that. Recommended. And, as a high school teacher, I can tell you that Educational fads and theories “recommend” all sorts of silly things all the time that a reasonable person can confidently ignore. This is not a good reason to adopt the CC, but it is a good reason to not freak out.
3) Esolen seems to suggest that the Common Core itself is the source of a lot of current and potential problems. But I see it as more a symptom of our flawed notions of education than anything else.
4) Catholic Schools are in a privileged position because we are NOT required to adhere to state or national standards by law. Unfortunately, in order to seem “competitive” it seems a lot of Catholic schools are dumbly nodding their heads and saying “oh yes, we have Common Core too. Don’t worry, your kids will be well-prepared for college just like everybody else.” But this is 1) just marketing and 2) rather beside the point. Catholic Schools have a responsibility to educate the human person from a supernatural perspective that is utterly antithetical to many secular alternatives, not just the Common Core.
5) If anything, the Common Core at least is forcing some Catholic schools to re-examine their identities and the purpose of Catholic Education to begin with–which is a very good thing.
6) With Saint Paul, we can “examine everything carefully” and “hold fast to what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). We don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater out of fear and knee-jerk reactions to a complex problem.
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So my “Quick Takes” basically turned into a discussion of the Common Core. Whoops.
Outside the Supreme Court some women held signs saying, “Birth control is not my boss’ business.” You are completely correct! So stop asking your boss to pay for it.
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The best piece of advice I have received recently came from a good friend. During a homily at Mass, she said the priest was discussing how overwhelming Lent can be sometimes, especially after the first few weeks when you have failed in your promises and resolutions.
He has some simple words that I have been repeating to myself a lot:
Two UD alums just lost their 3 year old and 6 year old daughters in a car accident the other day. Please pray for them and consider participating in this fund for them.
Lewis said, when his wife died: “I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate if they do, and if they don’t.”
I’ve found that suffering of this magnitude often is best respected with silence — the silence of Mary watching her Son on the cross, perhaps even the mysterious silence of God the Father that drives all of us–His Son included–into anguish and loneliness and fear.
Some people conclude that this silence reveals absence. They ask “why” and of course receive no answer.
Others discover in the silence the gaze from Jesus on his cross.
C. S. Lewis describes grief better than most people–but only because, in this book, he was describing it from the inside:
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?” (Lewis, A Grief Observed)
“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.” (Ibid)
“It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.” (Ibid)
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Also, I’m not going to apologize for being a “downer” in a (normally lighthearted) Quick Takes post. It is okay to be sad. And it is good to grieve for others. I don’t know whether it helps in any practical way, but it seems to me rather a matter of justice that we give up our own happiness sometimes to grieve for the pain of others, even those we do not know.
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The Pope (as usual) has challenging things to say that we ought to listen to. (Yes I’m okay with ending some of my sentences with a preposition.)
He says (as others have said) that when we rely on other things or people besides God, we become pagans, because we turn these other things or people into idols.
But then he makes a really interesting point about being a pagan and how it affects our identity.
When we cease to trust in God, when we cease to call God “Father,” we begin to see ourselves differently too:
“Do I still have a name or have I begun to lose my name and … call myself ‘I’? I, me, with me, for me, only ‘I’? For me, for me . . . always that self-centeredness: ‘I.’”
Without God, or with God pushed to the periphery, we think of ourselves only as an “I”. And spite Martin Buber’s beautiful reflections on the “I-Thou” relationship, which Pope Benedict mentioned quite a lot in his writings, Pope Francis here suggests that all of this “I” and “me” is actually deceptive. We are thinking about ourselves all wrong.
Only in God do we receive our true name, which is not “I” or “me,” but “Son,” he said, according to Vatican Radio. But when we place our trust in others, our accomplishments, or even ourselves, we lose sight of our true worth as a child of God. (Catholic News Agency)
My true name is not among the names I (!) use all the time: I, me, my etc.
It is “Son” or “Daughter.”
We recognize our true identity with that name.
And this is beautiful:
“If one of us in life, having so much trust in man and in ourselves, we end up losing the name, losing this dignity, there is still a chance to say this word that is more than magic, it is more, it is strong: ‘Father.’”
“He always waits for us to open a door that we do not see and says to us: ‘Son.’”
I will be returning to Louisiana at the end of the year to see some of my former students graduate! They were sophomores during my first year in ACE, and now they’re all grown up.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to see them!
And MORE good news:
Although for a while there was some serious doubt that ACE teachers would be returning to the Diocese of Baton Rouge…….
Some miracle happened and so they are!
I am so happy that my former school and the other schools ACE serves in that diocese will continue to receive support from new teachers. We’re not perfect, and we don’t know everything, but ACE teachers bring a lot of love to the table.
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Speaking of ACE…
The ACE Bus, on it’s national tour, came to Colorado last week and I was able to reconnect with some amazing people and meet former ACE teachers who live out here.
It has been a busy, busy week. I’ve been pushing myself to go out and meet new people and it has been lots of fun, but my Introversion is kicking in big time.
My friend Maria just emailed me these beautiful words from Blessed John Paul II:
It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. – JP2
I was thinking about these words a lot yesterday, especially in their relation to Lent. During Lent we try to give up good things— Lent isn’t about dieting or eliminating bad habits, but about giving up activities, objects and experiences that are not in themselves bad. When we miss them, we miss something good — but hopefully we remember that what we really miss is Jesus.
For example, I’m giving up wine because I really love wine. But if all I do on a Friday evening is complain, “ugh, I wish Lent were over so I could go have a glass of wine,” I’m totally missing the point. Giving up wine means nothing if I am not thereby trying to embrace Jesus, and remember that he is the “True Vine” and the true source of our joy.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, also a Catholic, joined the speaker in his invitation.
“Whether inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, who cared for all of God’s creation, or by St. Joseph, protector of the church,” Pelosi said, “Pope Francis has lived his values and upheld his promise to be a moral force, to protect the poor and the needy, to serve as a champion of the less fortunate, and to promote love and understanding among faiths and nations.” (ABC News)
Do you ever get the feeling some people don’t know what they’re asking for?
… “Whether inspired by Moses, who cared for God’s Law, or by David, protector of the Chosen People,” Head of the Pharisees said, “Jesus has lived his values and upheld his promise to be a moral force, to protect the Temple, to serve as the champion of his oppressed people, and to overthrow the Romans…”
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Speaking of Romans –
Tomorrow is the Ides of March!
Sadly, it’s a Saturday, and so my sophomores and I will have to assassinate the dictator on Monday.
When I choose against the light, it usually doesn’t feel like I’m picking darkness, but security or simplicity. There’s an attraction in having everything settled, even if it’s being settled for the worse (“I can’t count on anyone” “People just don’t like me” “I’ll never get along with her” etc). I sometimes prefer to circumscribe my relationships and my options, even if I might accidentally be throwing out a positive outcome.
And this has me written all over it:
But, in order to be a better person, I have to be a little comfortable being unsettled and in progress.
I hate being uncomfortable. I don’t know if this has always been true about me, but it is becoming increasingly true. It’s not so much that I go out of my way to sin or do bad things, it’s more that I can’t be bothered to change my habits or (God forbid) go out of my comfort zone to do the right thing.
Maybe this longing for comfort comes with age?
I appreciate little things more now. I LOVE sleep. And good food. And good drinks. And conversations, and sitting on the couch and reading, and sleeping in, and talking-on-the-phone-only-with-people-I-talk-to-all-the-time-so-it’s-not-awkward.
But this longing for comfort is a big occasion of sin for me, because I allow it to eclipse any desire to change, to reach out, to push myself.
Lent is a good time to consider these things.
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Ms. Libresco’s words remind me of one of my favorite prayers, by Pierre Tielhard de Chardin:
Patient Trust
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
“Accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.”
So difficult – especially, I think, for young adults as we try to figure out “who we are supposed to be,” what our “vocation” is, et cetera.
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Lastly, a shout out to two of my friends and fellow graduates of the University of Dallas: Molly O’Connor and Kaitlyn Willy who just started a wonderful project called Spiritual Uprising:
Spiritual Uprising aims to inspire and renew your creative and spiritual sides by providing a monthly retreat in the form of an e-magazine, blog, and weekly newsletter. (via tumblr site)
In Creative Writing, we are working on murder mystery stories. What’s so interesting to me about this genre is how particular it is. You just have to have certain strict elements to make this type of story work. For instance:
Objects. Objects are crucial to murder mysteries in a way that they are not to basically any other type of fiction. Obviously “the murder weapon” is often important, but more crucially, the plot itself is almost always driven by the discovery of objects–physical clues that lead the protagonist to the truth.
Think: in the first episode of the new Sherlock series, what object is crucial?
source: sherlockology.com
Yup. The pink suitcase. It’s essential. If the murderer had not forgotten leave the pink suitcase with the body, it would have been nearly impossible to prove that the lady had not committed suicide. But since the pink suitcase was missing, and Holmes knew (by the splash of dirty water on her left ankle) that she had been dragging a suitcase behind her in the rain, the so-called “suicide” had to involve at least one other person on the scene–the murderer.
Still not convinced?
Think: In almost every Columbo episode, an object (or objects) plays a crucial role in Columbo’s deciphering of the facts versus the story given by the murderer.
In the episode we watched in class, for example, we see Columbo reading a newspaper while the police scurry about the house and the medical examiner peers over the body. As usual, Columbo gets some weird glances for seeming to be so uninterested in what is most important.
But, in his characteristic way, there is always just “one more thing” that Columbo has questions about. In this case, he has questions about the newspaper. The murderer claimed she had not left the house all day and there was no one else who came to see her. The newspaper must have been delivered to the house, she said.
Ah– but only morning editions of the paper are delivered. The evening edition had to have been bought by someone at a drug store or grocery, proving that the murderer had, in fact, left the house even though she claimed not to.
So the challenge for my students is to recognize–and utilize–the importance of objects in their own murder mystery stories. Most really good mysteries rely upon them.
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Speaking of objects, I wrote a paper in college tracing the development of the novel by looking at how objects are treated in four specific works: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Gustave Flaubert’s novella A Simple Heart, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.
The objects I consider in these works are, respectively: Mr. Darcy’s portrait, Felicite’s green parrot, the coffin and Our Lady’s tilma.
What’s interesting is how these four works suggest the increasing importance of objects in novels over time. Jane Austen (1775-1817) and other early novelists (Phillip Sidney, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Laurence Sterne, Anthony Trollope) almost never talk about objects because they are more interested in ideas, concepts, conversation, and character. This is why the scene where Elizabeth experiences a revelation about Mr. Darcy while looking at his painted portrait is so interesting; it is very unusual for Austen and most other early novelists. By the time we get to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, objects are everywhere.
The biggest exception I can think of to this rule about early novelists is in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), where one of the best scenes in this early novel is about the main character salvaging various objects from the wreck of his ship. But the story still centers around his inner thoughts and religious conversion. Moreover, in most of these early novels, the narrator (even if she is not directly involved in the action of the story) uses 1st person–giving a sense of subjectivity rather than objectivity.
By the time we reach Flaubert and his parrot, however, objects become a lot more prominent in novels—perhaps partially due to the increasing influence of the Industrial Revolution and advances in science and what is “objectively” real. Think of the significance of the scarlet letter in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous work (1850), or the whale (is it okay to say it functions as an object?) and Captain Ahab’s wooden leg in Moby Dick (1851). Even in very interior and psychologically-driven novels, like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), objects (and characters’ interpretations of them) feature very prominently.
By the time we get to Faulkner, the 18th and early 19th century subjectivity of the opinionated (and often 1st person narrator) begins to be fused with the objective mid-18th through late 20th century objective third person. Faulkner, Virgina Woolf and James Joyce and other adventurers into streams of consciousness and human interiority combine an emphasis on the external world with and its tenuous relationship to the internal world of the human mind.
I haven’t read as much post-modern fiction, but I would guess the relationship between character and object has already begun to change very significantly.
All of this is not to say that objects should “mean” something in a story– but rather that looking at the way an author presents objects tells us a lot about the his epistemology– what human beings can know about reality.
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Obviously my above argument is fraught with holes and exceptions, but I think the general idea holds.
All tests of the Myers-Briggs ilk are tautologies. They are tautological because their results cannot exceed my input. If out of 100 questions, I 100 times affirm that I am likely to grow angry over criticism and confrontation, all my 100-question test-result really says is that “I am likely to grow angry over criticism and confrontation.” Sure, a test may express its tautological conclusions in words that sound like it has digested our answers and excreted some new diamond — as when we tell a test in 100 different ways that we are most likely to look outwardly than inwardly, and it tells us we are an “extrovert” — but closer inspection reveals that this new “identity” is no more than a simplified expression of what we usually do — an “extrovert” is defined as a person more likely to look outwardly than inwardly. The problem with test-takers is that we conflate words which summarize and offer back to us our habits with words that serve as identities given to us by the test. (BadCatholic, “Magic and Myers-Briggs”)
Hmm.
It is true that we should not so easily conflate “habit” with “identity” (although immediately Flannery O’Connor’s Habit of Being comes to mind).
But on the other hand: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle, anyone?
UPDATE: Or, as Molly pointed out to me, not actually Aristotle, but Will Durant’s characterization in The Story of Philosophy.
#whathappenswhenyouhaveUDfriends
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On the one year (!) anniversary of Pope Benedict’s official retirement, via Catholic News Agency:
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Back to objects.
An excerpt from my essay:
For Felicite, however, this [relationship between a human being and an object] is more complex, and for Flaubert (or at least for his narrator) objects seem to gather more levels of meaning than they do for Austen. The portrait of Darcy in Pride and Prejudice is simply a description of him—its meaning lies in its accurate rendering and its ability to convey something of his inner character to Elizabeth. But the picture of the Holy Spirit and the stuffed parrot have a more complex relationship to one another and to Felicite—because that very relationship exists only in her perception: “In her mind, the one became associated with the other, the parrot becoming sanctified by connection with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit in turn acquiring added life and meaning” (SH 35). The picture of the Holy Spirit is not a portrait of the parrot—yet the two objects acquire a kind of correspondence in Felicity’s “mind,” in her imaginative awareness. In Flaubert’s story the object’s significance is also much more subjectively determined; Darcy’s portrait would represent Darcy to almost everyone in Austen’s world (albeit to a lesser degree than to Elizabeth), but we may safely assume that the stuffed parrot would suggest the Holy Spirit only to Felicite. (Shea, “People and Things: Epistemological Possibility and Limit in Austen, Flaubert, Faulkner and Cather”)
Next time you read a really good novel, notice any and all objects presented. Do they figure prominently in the plot? Do they reveal something about how characters come to know the truth about themselves or about one another?
Are objects prominently featured at all?
Why?
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Also, here is the most fascinating article to appear on my newsfeed this week (and, thanks to my very interesting friends, that is saying a lot):
This article features sliced bread, Betty White, the pyramids of Egypt, the Chicago Cubs, and other notables.
Excerpt:
Not everyone can be a world history master, especially when we tend to learn about it in specifically segmented classes like “European History” or “American Revolutionary History.” Maybe you have an exceptional grasp on the global historical timeline. But for those of us who don’t, the list below, inspired by a recent Reddit thread called “What are two events that took place in the same time in history but don’t seem like they would have?” puts key historical moments into some much-needed context. (huffingtonpost.com)
Mysteries and Manners 