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Feb5 thoughts for the morning
1. Those so-called “student ratings” on the Rate My Teacher site? I actually think most of them are posted by teachers. In fact, some teachers openly admit to rating themselves or their colleagues.
2. Amy Bishop, the professor who killed her colleagues in Alabama? Were there just not enough red flags about this woman?
3. I’m reading the new Jim Burke book about guiding students toward inquiry, and while it’s excellent so far, I still think needs to be more of an emphasis on actual analysis of literature. Some of our colleagues in other departments who (jokingly, ahem) accuse us of being too touchy-feely may have a point. Sometimes we are made to ask our students in English Literature classes how they “feel” about Lenny and George, or Odysseus, or Victor Frankenstein. We ask them to make connections that are ridiculously superficial (“I can connect to Holden because I went to New York last Christmas”) and call it proficient. What I want my students to be able to do is to explain in writing why Holden behaves as he does, and how Salinger uses voice and diction and structure to create this very real person. History teachers don’t ask their students to say how they feel about the Industrial Revolution, they ask them to analyze it and use textual evidence. English teachers should do the same.
4. My whole house smells like Lush!
5. Almost finished with Anne Tyler’s latest, Noah’s Compass. Unless it suddenly gets really awful in the last few pages, I don’t understand the negative reviews on Amazon. I’m enjoying the book, as I do pretty much all of Tyler’s work. One of the reviewers on Amazon complained because there wasn’t even a character named Noah in the book.
Following
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But seriously, how fucking great is it that baseball’s back?
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dance, dance, wherever you may be. i am the lord of the dance, said he
Father Jim, my childhood...
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