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Possible Topics for “Mid-Term Break”

Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break” offers many possible topics to write a paragraph about.

By Friday my seniors will have to annotate Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break” as well as write an insightful paragraph about it. Writing about poetry is not easy for them, so to get them ready, to sort of grease the wheels, we did a little brainstorming for possible topics. The above photo shows what my whiteboard looks like after such a brainstorming session.

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Mid-Term Break

What my whiteboard looks like after we get done discussing possilbe meanings of the title of Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break.”

In my class the whiteboard is becoming more an essential tool for thought, helping us to capture what we think and challenging us to explain why we think it. For example, today my seniors read “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney as their poem of the week. In both periods we discussed the possible meanings of the title, which at first seems not at all related to the topic of a young boy who’s killed in an accident. But after scratching away at the surfaces, we began to see the title as rich in nuance and hidden meanings. The connotations of the three words almost overwhelm the poem itself. I wrote our brainstorming on the whiteboard and took a snapshot with my old digital camera.

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A Crate and an Unfinished Book

Nothing confounds writers more than the challenge of organizing drafts, notes, miscellaneous scribblings, odd jottings, etc. so that we can find the stuff and use it later. The book I’m writing now — A Thousand Words: Graphic Organizers in the English Classroom — grew organically over the course of four years, and finding the right system of organization has given me a feeling of pleasure and control and has even had an impact on how I organize materials for my teaching.

My Crate — and four years’ of work

I started working on this book during the 2006-07 school year in response to a need I felt English teachers have for reproducible graphic organizers — plus, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to have a teacher’s explanation of how they’re actually used in a real classroom with real students. The ready-made audience for the book also had a lot to do with my pursing it, of course. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that all of my writing and student examples are currently filed in this big plastic crate on my desk. I enjoy telling my students that there are many ways to think about “drafts,” for drafts can be a on piece of paper, stored on an electronic device, or even shoved into a huge crate.

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Classroom management isn’t easy

Students in Brent Walmsley's seventh-grade English class at Daniel Webster Middle School turn their attention elsewhere as the first-year teacher takes roll. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times / October 22, 2009)

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the difficulty of managing a classroom struck me as being spot on.

The article was right in mentioning that among the top reasons teachers fail and eventually leave the profession is their inability to manage their classrooms. In fact, according to the Times findings, the vast majority of California teachers who are fired and contest their termination are often cited for poor classroom management.

What can teachers do to manage their classes better? It’s not all that mysterious. As the article points out,

Teachers must be consistent in their message and consequences, lay a strong foundation of expectations early in the school year, follow through with promised punishments when children misbehave and remain dispassionate and unflappable.

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Last Full Day of School

Mr. Fasano jumps for joy.

You can tell it’s the last full day of school. Only two exam days (half days) left to go till summer.

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MLA Handbook Seventh Edition

The newest MLA Handbook

A lot has changed since I used the 1977 edition of the MLA Handbook to write my first undergraduate theses. (Keats was its subject, but what little could I have known about this marvelous of poets back then?) Funny, how I have vivid memories of the handbook’s now-archaic instructions for preparing the paper: use of a “fresh black ribbon and clean type are essential” and using “thin paper except for a carbon copy” was highly recommended. As a teacher, I can attest that today’s students have never fumbled with a black ribbon and have little understanding of how carbon copies work. In the thirty years since my undergraduate days in Flordia, there has been a seismic shift in the way students conduct research, find primary and secondary sources, gather and store information, and prepare a finished paper. I’m certainly grateful I had the MLA Handbook back then, and I cannot imagine completing a research project in today’s computerized world without the careful, concise Seventh Edition, which I purchased yesterday and have been poring over ever since. (Yes, we English teachers have a strange idea of what makes interesting reading.) As my students know, I’m finishing up a guide to MLA documentation which I hope to publish by early summer. It should prove helpful to my future students — after my current students battle-test my rough draft in the coming weeks.

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A&P Puppet Show (Student Project)

These guys did a very creative job and have given me a great idea for next year.

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John Adams and Emily Dickinson

John Adams

John Adams is one of the world’s greatest living composers, and one of my favorite compositions of his is Harmonium, his settings of texts by John Donne (“Negative Love”) and Emily Dickinson (“Because I Could Not Stop For Death” & “Wild Nights” ) for chorus and full orchestra. What follows is an audio interview with John Adams on KQED, in which he discusses Harmonium as well as the growth of what has come to be known as Minimalist music. On a personal note, Harmonium was my introduction to John Adams. I have a very fond memory of listening to this piece while driving out into the countryside north of Tampa, Florida. This must’ve been 1990-91. Wherever I was headed has faded from memory, but this music has stayed with me. That’s for sure.

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Gettysburg Address

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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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Jim Burke on using graphic organizers

Master teacher and author Jim Burke explains how to use a graphic organizer known as a Conversational Roundtable.

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