September 14, 2006

It was a day. We took the vocab quiz, studied subject and verb using the daily drill, and we continued with our readings. I am in an in between time, although the class is moving forward. I am trying to finish recording the first pieces, but I am trying to think about the next piece so that I will be ready. I guess this is what I enjoy about the job. I am a person who creates lessons from other lessons, namely literature and poetry. I create students who can express what they think. But first I have to get them to think!

I want to base the next piece from a Bob Dylan song, but all that seems to come to me are his protest songs from the early albums. The problem is the two pieces the students will have read in Reading are not really about protest. One is "Thank You, M'am" by Langston Hughes, and the other is "Names" by Julie Alverez. The first is about a woman who gives a boy (who was trying to steal her purse) dinner and a lesson. The second is about a girl from the Domican Republic as she struggles with her name and her roots in school in New York. They are not political in nature, but the authors were commenting on what they saw happening around them and to them.

I am thinking about a few songs where Dylan expresses his hope that things will change, especially in his times in 1962 and 1963 during the Civil Rights Movement, John F. Kennedy and war, and the need for freedom for those oppressed by forces greater than them. He saw that "The Times They Are A-Changin'." They needed to be changed.

We are to look at cause and effect. I wonder... How did the authors of the two stories express their ideas that something needed to change? How were they commenting on the world that was going on around them through their stories? What caused them to write? What forms of writing can be used to persuade? Did either of the stories move you? Maybe we could write either an autobiographical piece, or, if you can, a story with dialogue, where the goal of the piece is to make the reader think about how he/she views life/people/themself.

The hard part would be teaching the students how to look around themselves enough to reflect on that world. Maybe we could do a collage of photographs to brainstorm, a visual representation of what they notice about the world or what they would like to change.