YourEnglishClassDotCom

The Death of David Foster Wallace

I’ve hesitated to post this video here, only because enough has been said this past week about the death of this amazing writer. Time magazine in its obituary of Wallace called him a genius, and he was. No denying that, especially if you take the time to watch this interview with Charlie Rose; this interview is the best one out there.

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The Crucible Page

I’m in the process of moving all of The Crucible material to The Crucible page. See the link on the above navigation menu.

Roller Pigeons

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Sometimes I’ll read something in the newspaper that’ll bring back memories of my own childhood, like the recent article in the LA Times about Bobby Wilson, a.k.a. Kill Kill, who has been a roller pigeon fancier since he was a little boy in the projects in Watts. He made some bad decisions growing up, ended up in prison for a while, but his hobby pigeons and their freewheeling somersaults helped straighten out his life. Now he’s passing on his expertise to young guys like Taisean Williams. I raised homing pigeons when I was young. Indeed, whiling away the hours in the pigeon coop I’d built in our backyard was the idyll of my youth. I’m going to show this remarkable little video to my students and have them write about whatever hobby they have or something they do “to keep them out of trouble.”

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Reading Inventory

This assignment is past due, but since some of you might need a few visuals to help you complete this, here goes.

Take a piece of color cardstock, fold it, and on the front of it write the title (Reading Inventory, Reading Log, or your own title), paste a picture of yourself, and write your name.

Example of page one

To be continued . . .

Young Goodman Brown

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I found the above video on a blog called protozoic, a very strange and clever place indeed.

Click here for a handout we’re going to use when reading Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The following audio is an unabridged reading of the story. We will begin reading this story tomorrow and my hope is to use the audio as support.

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Letter of Introduction

The Letter of Introduction is due tomorrow. Please see the Handouts page to get a copy of the framework. Also, the course syllabus is finally ready (see Handouts page).

Today we began viewing Salem Witch Trials from the people at The History Channel. Students answered questions on the provided worksheet (sorry, but I don’t have a pdf of this). I’m showing this video to give students the background necessary to understand our first major unit, which covers Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

Puritans and The Crucible

I spent some time this three-day weekend thinking about what changes I’m going to make in my teaching of the Puritans in general and The Crucible in particular. Since this is my third straight year teaching this unit, I should have some fairly concrete ideas. And I do. I’m essentially going to weave in more of the historical information (additional readings should help), use as much audio and video support as I can muster (this page will prove helpful as always), and change my approach to the McCarthyism business of the 1950s. Instead of reading the usual boring stuff about Senator Joseph McCarthy, I think we’ll view one of the many wonderful films dealing with themes of McCarthyism. We should be able to get a good essay out of all this material when we’re done.