Peace brotha

Thanks for the music and the memories Michael. Those sweet soul tunes and deep funky grooves will stay with me forever.

Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals

Thank you Andy Samberg. This gets funnier each time I watch it. (And I've watched it a lot.)



Say hi to your mother for me.

Meme: Passion Quilt

Fellow edublogger Ms. Ward tagged me with this meme (like Ms. Ward, this was my first too). The meme's task was to "find or design a graphic that depicts the one idea you hope your students leave your classroom with."

I chose the above image of Bruce Lee. While I certainly agree with the quote from the picture, my favorite Bruce Lee quote is "no way as way, no limitation as limitation." Check out this unedited "lost interview"of Bruce Lee from 1971, where he speaks about his life and martial arts philosophy.

"No way as way, no limitation as limitation" relates directly to the way I view writing instruction. Each of us has our own way of conceptualizing ideas and transmitting them to the written word. I think the more in-touch we become with the way we think and organize and access ideas, the closer we become to closing the gap between thought and expression. As Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed once said, "between thought and expression, there lies a lifetime."

At the beginning of the year, I tell my students one of our goals will be to narrow that gap, and that our methods will be largely subjective.

***

In an effort to keep this meme going, I am going to "tag" five other bloggers I enjoy reading:

1) Bruce Schauble at Throughlines
2) Mr. McNamar at The Daily Grind
3) Seth at Teacher in Disguise
4) Brad at The Lamppost Blog
5) Dana Huff at huffenglish.com

THE RULES:

Post a picture or create your own image that captures what YOU are most passionate for students to learn about

Give your picture a short title

Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt”

Link back to this blog entry

Include links to 5 people in your professional learning network

Star Wars Public Service Announcement

I've been too caught up in the February grind to post as frequently as I'd like. The upcoming vacation should give me time to write, read, and reflect. I'll also be able to tackle the 60-something short stories that need grading, and take stock of how I'm progressing through my Old Man and the Sea and Macbeth units.

Today a friend e-mailed me the link to the following public service announcement that features our favorite intergalactic gang of bounty hunters and misfits. Twenty-nine years later, the message is still, unfortunately, much needed.

Van Down by the River

Anyone familiar with Saturday Night Live is acquainted with motivational speaker Matt Foley. Click here for the transcript of the famous "Van Down by the River" sketch, where Chris Farley's irrepressible Foley gives a motivational speech on the perils of drug use to teenagers Brian and Stacy, played by David Spade and Christina Applegate.

One of these days I'd like to hone my acting chops and do my best Foley impersonation before the seniors in my World Literature class. There's no doubt some of the themes would resonate.

Great moments in guidance counseling

Certainly I am biased as a high school teacher, but this has to be one of the funniest SNL skits in a few years. It features Lebron James.

The movie moaner

Last night I saw La Vie En Rose, the hard-hitting portrayal of singer Edith Piaf's rise from the streets of Paris to the stages of New York City. The movie was bold and graphic, illustrating the depths one can sink to in this life, be it of neglect, drug abuse, heartache, or self-loathing.

About 15 minutes into the film, a woman in her early 50's entered the theater - which was less than half full - walked in front of me and my fiancee, and sat down next to me. I thought this was a bit strange.

The woman then proceeded to make loud moans and gasps whenever anything slightly dramatic happened. Given that this was a dramatic movie, and dramatic things were happening about once every 30 seconds, the woman's grunts, exclamations, and utterances were, to put it mildly, making me uncomfortable.

Every time I would look in her direction, I would see her wearing a narcotic smile and staring intently at the screen. She was completely oblivious to the sounds she was making, or was pretending to be oblivious. My fiancee even "shusshhed" her, but to no avail.

At one point I thought of asking her to be quiet, but I didn't want to cause a scene. My fiancee and I ended up moving forward a few rows, and although we weren't fully out of her range, we did enjoy the rest of the film.

This encounter with the movie moaner made me think about my methods of classroom management. I'm the type of person who would prefer to ignore a behavior until it goes away rather than react like a volcano at any annoyance or distraction. I, frankly, don't enjoy confrontation, and have never viewed myself as a type A authority, like a policeman or Army sergeant.

I don't like yelling at people because it raises my blood pressure and causes me to get tight in the chest. I believe that reason and understanding are the keys to resolving conflicts and disputes, not "because I said so." I've always been unimpressed with people who give orders and demands without proper justification. As a teacher I do my best to explain everything that we do in the classroom. Sometimes the students don't really care why, and in that case we just roll with it. But if they ever want to know my reasoning for teaching a novel a certain way or giving a specific assignment, I am happy to share my thought process with them (and how that process aligns with school and state curricula). I feel it's something they deserve.

Sometimes there are moments when I have to put my foot down and kick a student out of the room. I don't like to do it. I want my students to stay in the room and take part in whatever activity or lesson we have planned for that day. But when a student ceases to be reasonable, and is distracting his or her classmates from learning, and attempts at redirecting the student have failed, the student has got to go.

Had the movie moaner been one of my students, I would have politely asked her to listen and watch the movie quietly. If she continued moaning, I would have given her a clear warning so she knew the next offense would result in a disciplinary measure. If the warning didn't work, and she moaned again, I would write the name "Movie Moaner" in my "detention den" (a small rectangular box in the bottom right corner of my board) and send her to the hallway.

Once the movie moaner came after school for a 20-minute detention, I would remove her name from the board. If she didn't show up, the next time she moaned after receiving a warning she would be sent to our school's Planning Room, rather than the hallway. The Planning Room is staffed by a professional who telephones the student's parents and explains the offense. A trip to the PR is accompanied by an office detention, and negates a student's opportunity to participate in any extra-curricular activities planned for that day.

I probably sent 15 students to the PR my first year of teaching at my current school. Last year I didn't send any. I don't know what this year will bring, but I'm hoping that I can provide students with such an intellectually engaging class that they'll have little time or inclination for disruptive behavior.

Of course, regardless of what I create for my students, there will be a handful of movie moaners I'll need to deal with over the course of the year. Here's hoping reason and understanding can prevail. If not, one of us is going to have to change seats. And I'll tell you right now, it ain't gonna be me!

(Those last two sentences were written in my tuff-as-nails persona. Quite intimidating, eh?)

Read a book

How effective do you think this video is in getting reluctant readers to dive into a work of literature? WARNING: Contains explicit lyrics and is not appropriate for children (or, for that matter, most adults).

A personal aside on explicit lyrics: In 9th grade I was one of the first members of my class to own Body Count, a rap album that contained a number of highly controversial songs, the titles of which I am not going to list. I initially enjoyed listening to the record because of its shock value and "taboo" status, but over time I grew disinterested.

I don't think the vulgar language contained in the following video is necessary to communicate its positive message that reading is beneficial, but perhaps others will find that this "gloves off" approach to lyrical composition works.

* FINAL DISCLAIMER * Mr. B-G does not condone the use of offensive language in his classroom.

Leaders, Sox, and Movies

A few days ago I watched Bobby, the poignant recreation of the hours leading up to U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5th, 1968.

Simply put: We need more leaders like him, and we needed them seven years ago...

Yesterday I went to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox take on the Toronto Blue Jays (Sox won 7-4). It had been a few years since I'd been to a Sox game, and it was great to soak in the electric atmosphere that is home to the Green Monster.

Tomorrow I head to Gloucester's Good Harbor Beach for a week of reading and relaxing by the surf. It is here that I plan to tackle more of my summer reading, do some shoreline jogging, and catch a few movies, specifically Ocean's 13, Knocked Up, and Chuck & Larry. Come August, it will be time for the Bourne Ultimatum.

Releasing the Chi

For some reason I can't seem to get enough of the following William Shatner remix from Late Night with Conan O'Brien: