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This I Believe Audio

I plan to share the following This I Believe essays from National Public Radio (NPR) with my seniors. It’s all part of their final project, but it’s more than that. This is something I have to do before sending them off into the adult world. It’s funny because I have no set of guidelines, no rubric, nothing but the beauty of these heartfelt essays to listen to and reflect upon. I believe they are all I need to instruct my students.

They are simple.

They are brutally honest.

They are profound.

Creative Solutions To Life’s Challenges
Frank X Walker, March 27, 2006

Poet Frank X Walker believes artists aren’t the only creative people. He says barbers, cooks, janitors and kids enrich the world with their creativity as much as the painters, sculptors and writers.

The People Who Love You When No One Else Will
Cecile Gilmer, March 6, 2006

When her biological family fell apart, Cecile Gilmer found a new family. She believes the love and kindness these chosen “relatives” gave her allowed her to become an open and loving person.

Tomorrow Will Be A Better Dayl
Josh Rittenberg, February 27, 2006

What kind of world are we leaving younger generations? Manhattan teenager Josh Rittenberg says all parents worry about their children’s futures. But he believes he and his peers will see a better world.

The Power Of Mysteries
Alan Lightman, January 2, 2006

Childhood wonder at the stars fueled Alan Lightman’s interest in science. Now an astrophysicist and novelist, Lightman believes our greatest creativity, in science and art, comes from awe at the unknown.

There Is No Job More Important Than Parenting
Benjamin Carson, October 10, 2005

Even as a child, Benjamin Carson wanted to be a doctor. Now a renowned pediatric neurosurgeon, Carson believes he owes his success to his mother, a domestic who received only a third-grade education.

Numbers Don’t Lie
Martha Stark, May 15, 2006

New York City Finance Commissioner Martha Stark believes in numbers. Whether they are lotto tickets, school grades or municipal tax revenues, she says numbers shape our lives more than we realize.

I Will Take My Voice Back
Quique Aviles, July 31, 2006

For years, Quique Aviles was two people: one who was a successful poet, and one who was a crack addict. Now he believes his art and the connections it gives him to other people can help save his life.

A Duty to Family, Heritage and Country
Ying Ying Yu, July 17, 2006

Ying Ying Yu has a maturity beyond her years. The 13-year old immigrant from China believes she has a duty to honor the sacrifices made by her parents, her ancestors, her teachers and her homeland.

A Concise Guide to MLA Style and Documentation

Cover of my MLA book

Okay, I’ve written a small book to help my students write their research papers. In the thirty years since my undergraduate days in Florida, there has been a seismic shift in the way students conduct research, find primary and secondary sources, gather and store information, and write their papers. 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.

My experience as a teacher, however, is that many students struggle with understanding even the basics of MLA style. That’s why I wrote this book, and students using it to help them write their research papers can rest assured that it was teacher designed and student tested in the classroom. My eleventh-graders are never shy about revealing their confusion, and their input helped me see immediately what needed improving. Because of their involvement, the strengths of this book are theirs; its weaknesses, mine.

The book should be available by the end of August, just in time for the upcoming school year. And believe me, I fully intend to use it as a textbook in my classroom. When it comes to my students and teaching them to write research papers, I can’t think of a better book to use.

Dashiell Hammett

Mystery writer Dashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894. The three film adaptations of his most famous story, The Maltese Falcon, became staples of the film noir genre. His romantic relationship with Lillian Hellman, a well-known playwright, inspired The Thin Man, a story featuring heroine Nora Charles. The film adaptation of this novel was so successful that it spawned multiple sequels. Hammett was the founding father of the “hard-boiled” mystery, a subgenre characterized by its gritty characters and depictions of events.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

An original drawing from Mark Twain’s collection Sketches New and Old, in which “The Jumping Frog” was published in English, in French, and then back into English.

“The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” was first published in 1865 and in many ways put Mark Twain on the literary map. Twain in fact owed his earliest national audience and critical success to his skillful retelling of this story as part of his onstage performances as a lecturer. It has been published under several titles: “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,” and “The Jumping Frog.” In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley, a degenerate gambler who’d wager on anything.

A humourous tale stemming from this story is the one about the French translation. Upon discovering a French translation of this story, Twain re-translated the story, verbatum and with the French grammar and syntax intact, back into English. He then published all three versions under the title The Jumping Frog [pdf file].

Listen to the audio book:

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Waiting on a Friend

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Single by Rolling Stones
from the album Tattoo You

Watching girls go passing by
It aint the latest thing
Im just standing in a doorway
Im just trying to make some sense
Out of these girls go passing by
The tales they tell of men
Im not waiting on a lady
Im just waiting on a friend

A smile relieves a heart that grieves
Remember what I said
Im not waiting on a lady
Im just waiting on a friend
Im just waiting on a friend

Dont need a whore
I dont need no booze
Dont need a virgin priest
But I need someone I can cry to
I need someone to protect
Making love and breaking hearts
It is a game for youth
But Im not waiting on a lady
Im just waiting on a friend

“What a Wonderful World”

This song has a hopeful and optimistic tone with regard to the future, and beautifully illuminates Emerson’s idea about finding “the journey’s end in every step of the road” (from Emerson’s “Experience”).

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I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Dixie Chicks and Transcendentalism

I love this song, especially the stuff about striking out on your own, chasing a dream, and finding your place in the sun – pure transcendentalism.

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“Wide Open Spaces”

Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed

[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes

As her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leaving my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes
She knows the highest stakes

Emerson’s First Step to Successful Living

DEVELOP SELF-RELIANCE

Be Who You Really Are

I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.
—“Self-Reliance”

Fear, Fear, and More Fear

We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.
—“Self-Reliance”

Approval Seeking: Our Psychic Plague

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
—“Self-Reliance”

Conformity—the Roadblock to Self-Reliance

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
—“Self-Reliance”

The Danger of “Reactive” Nonconformity

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it.
—“Self-Reliance”

Conformity Drains Power

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles.
—“Self-Reliance”

Free at Last

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
—“Self-Reliance”

Society’s Resistance to Self-Reliance

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
—“Self-Reliance”

One Step at a Time

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
—“Self-Reliance”

Dead Poets Society Review Questions

1. In the space below, create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast Welton Academy with your school.

2. What, if anything, is missing from the boys’ education at Welton? What do you feel is overemphasised?

3. Look at Keating’s first two lessons. Why are the boys so readily on-side with Keating? Is this believable? Who leads their cause? Why? (Consider the kinds of lessons the boys are used to).

4. Outline Keating’s philosophy of life.

5. At the first re-convening of the Dead Poets Society Neil reads a Tennyson poem that ends with the line: “To strive, to seek and not to yield.”
Explain how these words prove to be ironic as far as Neil is concerned.

6. Contrast Charlie’s action near the end of the film (when the boys are pressured to betray Keating and each other) with those of Knox and Todd.

7. What is the point of the following exchange between Cameron and Mr Nolan in the final scene of the film?

Cameron: …we’ve covered the romantics, and some of the chapters on post-civil war literature.
Nolan: What about the realists?
Cameron: I believe we skipped most of that, Sir.

8. Complete these sentences in a way that sums up for you the theme of this film:
(a) This film is about…
(b) The film-maker’s view is that people should…
(c) He believes that people can… And that people should not…

9. To what extent is this influence (Keating’s) on adolescents dangerous? (Remember Keating’s admonition to Charlie / Nuanda about being stupid?)

10. What justifications can you find for the repressive attitude of the school towards its pupils?

11. How much parental involvement is healthy in a child or teen’s life?

12. Have you ever felt pressure from your parents? Explain.

13. In your opinion, why isn’t something done to save Keating’s job?

14. In an essay of at least two paragraphs (separate sheet), answer the following questions: What are the three most important functions of a high school education? How well do you think Buena Park High School fulfils these purposes?

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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