A Taste of What's Down the Road

Yesterday, I welcomed the students into the blog that I so lovingly maintained with my Senior Project class for the last three years.  Blogger was good, but its access became increasingly erratic; often, the students and I would try to log on only to see that something mysterious blocked it. 

In the spirit of taking risks and trying new stuff, I told everyone that we're going to build our personal websites, which will have a blogging component, and we can find the free source at Weebly http://www.weebly.com/ . We won't start building our sites until after break.

Once we return, we will officially begin the Senior Project portion of the year.  Each week, you will complete three to five entries,  one of which will require you to find an article, podcast, or video that relates to your project's theme.  Today, I will introduce you to TED talks http://www.ted.com/ , an engaging site that provides a treasure trove of stuff that will help you become your own best teacher.  The people on this site teach us how to think.

For now, let's watch the following video about empathy, then respond to it. Strive to use at least 5 - 7 sentences in Socrative.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sam_richards_a_radical_experiment_in_empathy.html

Your response should address any of the following or both:

Describe your gut response.  What stands out in your mind the most?  What stimulated you in a visceral way?

Explain how the concept of empathy connects to your project's theme.  How can people affiliated with your project be more successful if they are empathetic?

Message to Mentors

Hi All:

 

We're getting to a very exciting time in the Senior Project experience, and your mentee is going to need you for inspiration and guidance more than ever. Attached, you will find a grid indicating student presentation times. This is a very big deal because none of them have controlled a classroom filled with adults and students for the better part of an hour.

 

At this point, I've told the students that they need to plan and create a session that will fill 45 minutes as they share what they have created, how they have grown, and what they have learned over the last few months. They need to go into the Disney trip with much off the planning under their belts.

 

Here are some tips:

• When you see them this week, ask to see their presentation brochures.
• Help them chart out how they will fill the time and exactly what product/information they will present. Remember how it was during our first year in front of a class?
• Encourage them to see their SPONSORS to consult about content and generate ideas.
• Please take time to look at their recent blog entries and make thoughtful comments.

 

Ask Mr. Snyder and me ANY questions.

Thanks for what you do for our students!

 

Larry

 

 

 

 

 

Snakes!

During our Senior Project nature walk, I found inspiration in the unlikeliest place. While poking around in the forest beside a reservoir pond clogged with chirping frogs, I encountered two massive black snakes unlike anything I had ever encountered in nature. Here I was, picking up sticks, thinking about making some kind of connection to the project, and here were two Northern Black Racers or Eastern Hognose snakes!

I called over two of my strapping male students to help me inspect my new find, and they took one look, gasped, and quickly skipped away. Miss Robertson, our nature junkie, fortunately got a good look at them.

Sometimes excitement and novelty pops out of the most unlikliest places.  I'm so glad that we took our walk and we need to do it again.

Chatting in the Classroom

Hello colleagues:

My fourteen year-old daughter prefers having on-line chats with her friends rather than speaking to them on the phone.  I suspect that most of my students feel the same way, so I'm beginning to harness their skill at chatting to take our academic game to a higher level. So many of our students excel at keeping focused on videos while simultaneously chatting with a friend or two, so why not use this skill in the classroom as a communication tool?

I will show you how Today's Meet can facilitate intelligent dialogue, thoughtful questions, and creative connections the next time you show a video, play a song, or have read-alouds. In one of my ENG 10 classes, I have seen one of my quietest students, who has real challenges with the language, go from zero to sixty with the "Power of the Chat," becoming something of a class leader whenever we do this.

Please go to the following chatroom I prepared, and we will use the power of chat to enable our students to become better oral readers and critical thinkers: http://todaysmeet.com/teacherchat

A Message from Snyder and Abrams

Dear Senior Project Students:

Here's what's hot.  Your finished research paper is due Thursday, April 28th and I want it submitted via Google docs.  Make sure that the first page features the final outline as per the sample, and you should have an additional 5-6 pages of research paper and on top of that I need to see a properly structured "Works Cited" page.

Make sure that you have a great working outline by April 1st.

By Friday, May 6th, you need to invite two teachers and an administrator to see your project which will be about 45 minutes.  Usually, we do this during lunch (5th or 6th period). Sometimes students show their presentation in the media center or in the auditorium. Your mentor should be there, but this is not a must.

You will have the chance to create a program that will be something like a playbill, which will be distributed before your presentation.

Mr. Snyder and I will schedule actual presentation times for everybody by May 6th. 

Take care.

Miracle Worker Vocab

Once again, here is my word from last week.  Follow my format exactly.  This means to use caps where you see caps, dashes where you see dashes, parenthesis where you see parenthesis, etc!  Give us your best word and make sure that your custom-made sentence features more commas than periods.  Use the compact comma summary sheet!

Abrams - VERTIGINOUS - adj. - dizzying, giddy, lightheaded from great heights.


"Ferguson discovers that the SuperKids, students with vertiginous GPAs and board scores, can still fail to get into their first choices and end up at "safety" schools" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Icarus, undaunted by his vertiginous flight toward the sun, foolishly ignored his father's warnings because he let his adolescent impulse for foolish risk-taking get the best of him, and he paid for his hubris by eventually plunging to his death.

ENG 10, GIVE ME THE VOCAB

Hi Gang!
Look at the four vocab words that I just handed back. Select the SAT word that with which you feel most comfortable.  Enter it in my comments section exactly as per my model.


Abrams - VERTIGINOUS - adj - dizzying, giddy, lightheaded from great heights.

"Ferguson discovers that the SuperKids, students with vertiginous GPAs and board scores, can still fail to get into their first choices and end up at "safety" schools" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

Icarus, undaunted by his vertiginous flight toward the sun, foolishly ignored his father's warnings because he let his adolescent impulse for foolish risk-taking get the best of him, and he paid for his hubris by eventually plunging to his death.

Anthony Wellington

How lucky we were today that Mr. Anthony Wellington, a professional musician, came to talk to us.  There are literally millions of teenage and college-age musicians who jam in bands and in garages, and millions more who dabble in the safety of their homes, and still countless others who enter their adult years playing music, often just scraping by.  Anthony is in that rare class who has reached a vertiginous level which far transcends the status of being just another musician; he has gone to the Grammies, he makes six figures, and he has a sterling reputation.  Professional teachers are everywhere, but professional musicians are rare breed.

I heard snickering after I asked him what magazine and books he reads.  I'll bet a few of the students thought I was crazy because, after all, this is not what one asks a professional musician who is the quintessence of cool. I knew that Anthony was a thinking man, and I know that congruent thinkers and speakers read. A lot. 


Anthony listed an armful of music magazines and journals that fill his mailbox.  A spiritual man, he mentioned that he reads widely about world religions, and then he listed many titles and authors who write about the psychology of music and success.  My hope is that many of the students realized that reading is power, and this is the stuff that puts our guest in a league above other musicians who couldn't care less about reading or deep thoughts.  Here are some of his recently read, favorite books:

Sources

By the weekend, it is imperative that you have at least 10 good sources that answer your working thesis. You may have to read/skim a couple dozen articles before your find the right handful Let your mentor help search, ask me and I'll help, if you're stuck, and yes, for now it's okay to modify your thesis if you think it will be a dead end.

I need to see URLs that will lead me right to the articles, websites, or video links.  To keep better track of them, you need to rename them so that they are not big, clunky thinks followed by hundreds of numbers and characters.

Check out the search engines on the following:
Magazines related to your working thesis
EBSCO
Sirs
Grolier
The New York Times
TedTalks
npr.org

A final stage note...

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”- Jack London

Since about half the senior project class had a role in Seussical, I couldn't let the opportunity to blog about it slip by.  Sometime over the weekend,  London's familiar quote popped into my mind, and just now I connected it to the transformative, magical experience that was the show.  

I've forgotten exactly where I encountered the quote during the last few days (the whole weekend was a busy, happy blur), but I can say that it became highlighted in my mind after I read Essence's blog this morning.  She is the first of you to discuss how it built her confidence.

In my universe here at LHS, I've seen hundreds of students go after inspiration with the proverbial club as they audition for shows and see them through until the final, glorious curtain call.  Performing in a show takes such courage and commitment, regardless of whether the student is a lead or a walk-on.  Hopefully, the experience that was Seussical will be the inspirational vehicle that will let our students soar to new heights, and I am sure that the sweet residue of the show will be apparent in their presentations. 

You can't wait for inspiration, whether it's for the research paper or the final project presentation; you have to go after it with a club. How and where will you find yours?

A Sunday Trip To Princeton

Today, my son participated in a piano festival up in Princeton at the Westminster Choir College of Rider University http://www.rider.edu/wcc.  It's not what you're thinking.  Robert did not sit at a glistening baby grand up on stage, performing for an auditorium filled with parents and patrons.  Instead it was a session with an audience of three:  his adoring parents and a professor from the college who critiqued the two pieces he had memorized.  

Yes, piano lessons for the last four years have a been a sacrifice of time and money, but this is a pleasure.  Like any good parent, I like to live vicariously through my children and to see them master a skill like musical performance is a joy. When it comes to reading musical notes, I am a stone cold illiterate.

Afterwards, we meandered around Princeton's campus and visited the Princeton Museum http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/ .  What a gem of a place, packed with art and scupture from around the world.  The collection spanned centuries, from ancient Greek pottery shards to Basquiat! It was a thoroughly enjoyable day.

A pic of me at the Princeton Museum!

Lemonade Out of Lemons

The aggravation has ended thanks to our IT department.  They cracked the code that had been ruining Blogger for us in the high school.  Yes, I felt hamstrung for the last couple weeks, completely frustrated because Blogger was out of commission here in the school, and the students get graded for the quality and frequency of their blogs. 

During the Bloggerless times, several students had recommended Tumblr, a blogging service that seems a little more shinier and nimbler than what I'm now using.  I registered and gave it a try, and it does have some advantages over Blogger; however, I think for now I'm going to be doing most of my academic blogging with my first love.

Where's the lemonade you ask? If some of my students want to make their entries happen via Tumblr, no problem!  Do I shop at one grocery store? I go to Shop Rite, Wegmans, and Pathmarksd! Do I use one exclusive gas station? No!  Do I read one newspaper? Heck no! My students have taught me to be open to different options and I think our on-line journaling will be enriched if people find a blogging vehicle that best suits them. 

I need to know who is going to stick with what service, and I need to get comfortable being linked with the folks who chose tumblr.

Alternative to Sponsor Visits?

As I  enjoy my third year teaching Senior Project, experience has taught me that an occasional week may crop up when students can't see their sponsor for reasons ranging from snowstorms to accidents to miscommunication to sponsor unavailability, and so on.  This morning, while shaving, I had an epiphany; have them select and visit a sponsor on-line if the visit falls through!  Where can they find a sponsor ?  TEDtalks can be a starter.

My friend Mr. Carrol actually turned me on to this site: http://www.ted.com/talks . Go to it and you will find gifted speakers who serve as experts in their fields.   The longer talks are only 20 minutes.  Some of them are so great that they can be life transforming!

While we're at it, the students can make digital field trips to other great sites where they can meet experts in their Senior Project fields. Yes, there's quality video out there that Youtube just doesn't have. Try any of the following and type something relevant in the search engines:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml

http://www.charlierose.com/

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/sunday/main3445.shtml

Students, this is alternative to missing a sponsor visit through no fault of your own.  Make sure to be thoughtful when you write up your Sponsor Visit # ? blog.  Include what you learn, how you were inspired, or what you would like to ask your field's expert.   You must also include the link so that the rest of us can watch it if we choose.  You may use these resource as material for "Connections Blogs."  Have fun and here's to a lifetime of learning.

Getting Older

Back when I was younger, I had a tendency to lie about my age - a lot.  I always made sure to add another year to my real age.  It all started in 4th grade or so.  Being older, in  my mind, was synonymous with maturity, and I wanted so much to be a mature responsible kid.   I learned to round my age up because I've never been particularly good at lying.  Nine and a half became ten.  Later, sixteen became seventeen. Needless to say, I no longer tack on that extra year.  I've run about half the race.

This picture is about thirty-five years old, give a couple years.  My family lived in Latham, NY, a suburb just outside of Albany.  As I look at the photo, I want to ask my younger self questions because I've forgotten so much of what I liked and disliked when I was seven.  What are your favorite TV shows besides Sesame Street, Mr. Rodgers, and the Electric Company? What do you do with your spare time?  How much money did you get for the tooth? What do you want to be when you grow up?  A teacher? A scientist?  I think back then I wanted to be a firefighter.  My youth is all very hazy.

Lately, I've become more aware of aging.  For example, I'll go to a mall and look around and realize that I'm now older than most of the people browsing in the stores and milling about.  The really old folks sometimes seem that they're from another world. I combat the aging process by working on maintaining a "young" brain, and I owe this ability to working around teenagers all day. I let their vigor and optimism rub off on me.

"Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes..."  Ecclesiates 11:9

Spiderman! Spiderman!

If I were 20 years younger, I might feel differently about Spiderman, but here goes: I'm ambivalent.

My hat's off to the creative genius who pulled the story of Arachne, the hurbristic weaver, out of Greek mythology to give her a grand role on Broadway as Spiderman's ancestor, mentor, and muse.

On one hand, I reveled in the special effects, the flash, and the panache, just like nearly everyone else in the audience. Never before have I seen human beings "fly" (the aerial flight fight between Spiderman and the Green Goblin will always be with me), nor have I seen live theater that so artfully blends a comic book medium with actual theater. The chameleon-like sets had a magical life of their own, blending light and digital art like nobody's business. I could wax on and on about the splendiferous costumes and the impeccable dancing. The way that the director spliced two human dancers together to create an eight-legged arachnid, and the other scene in which dancers used four life-sized puppet legs, all wearing stolen shoes, captivated me. Truly, this was more than a play; it was an experience.

Alas, this is an experience that I will perhaps see once in my life; I do not have a hankering for a second experience, and perhaps I can blame it on my age, although I'm not yet a crusty old man, and my sense of what a Broadway show should be.

When I leave a show, I expect to hear the songs echoing in my head. This is the hallmark of a great score, and I didn't get this from Spiderman, which is disappointing because I went in with a bias; I was a hardcore U2 fan back in 1983, and I have most of their albums. U2 created the show's soundtrack, and Julie Taymore planted an electrified band bristling with high octane guitars practically on center stage. They seemed out of place to me, and this made me wonder about the ego of The Edge, allowing him to vicariously and visibly share the action with Spidey, Peter, and MJ.

If only we had more cohesive story-line and a credible, despicable villain on the order of Scar from The Lion King. If only the music weren't so loud and if only I weren't blinded a few times by lights that should have been on a baseball field for a night game. This is where I sound like the old man I don't want to become.

I wish this show only the best. I hope that it pulls hundreds of thousands of young people into its spellbinding net, people who otherwise wouldn't invest the money or time to see a Broadway show. Hopefully, if they get jazzed about Spiderman, they will be open to experiencing the classics like Sunset Boulevard, Camelot, and Ragtime - shows that have a story and a score.

MY MLK Day

I put the gauntlet down last week by requiring my students to avoid floating through MLK day brain dead. I encouraged them to educate themselves and learn something about Dr. King's life and/or the Civil Rights Movement.

I chose to head straight to a magnificent primary source: this morning I read King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail." It took me about a half hour to process the essay, and I really thought about his message to various ministers in the Birmingham community. So many of them resented that he, an outsider from Atlanta, had the chutzpah to demonstrate in Birmingham.

I was most impressed with King's measured tone, punctuating his lucid arguments to resist unjust laws, quoting from the Bible, Socrates, Aquinas, St. Augustine, Jefferson, Lincoln, and a plethora of other greats. Honestly, one could design a course of intensive study to last months just based on this historic letter.

I have always cherished the quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," but I had little idea that it was from "The Letter."

Read it for yourself, and don't wait until the next MLK day to do it!

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Bearing Witness

My freshman English class is reading 1984 by George Orwell, and one of its major themes has to do with totalitarian regimes needing to scrub the memories of its citizens in order to stay in control. Big Brother's government demands a population of non-thinkers, people who know nothing of past unpleasantness or inconvenient truths about the world around them.

Leonard Pitts Jr., one of my favorite editorial writers, bemoans how in the African-American community there is a pervasive feeling of needing to forget the hell inflicted upon blacks during the Jim Crow South, and he mentions that in his own community there remains a "marked tendency to avoid the grit, gristle, and grime of our own history." He begins his article by admiring how Jews obsess about remembering the details of the Holocaust, deftly institutionalizing it, and educating others so that such a thing cannot happen again to them.

Millions of Americans today suffered terribly under Jim Crow, and untold thousands felt the heat of having neighbors and family members lynched. Pitts' article certainly serves as a wake-up call; we need to fight deliberate and accidental amnesia by being educated, critical thinkers. Could forgetting and failing to educate ourselves usher in a time when Americans again live in fear of being lynched or "vaporized?" Are Jim Crow and Big Brother relatives?

Read Pitts' article for yourself.

Using Voicethread to Teach Inferno