where in the world have you been?

The map below shows where we have gone this year–in short stories, poems, plays, and novels.  Now, you and I are moving on, remembering our time together.

Have fun, work hard, and be good.  When in doubt, recall our course’s essential questions: Who am I? What are my primary responsibilities to myself and the communities in which I live?  What does wisdom look like?  Thank you.

From now on, to contact me, please use this email address: bllbrwn423@gmail.com.  Thanks again.

 

Heads Up: Exam Preamble

The first inside page of your exam appears below.  Please ask, if you have any questions about what you will be asked to sign.  Thank you.

 

Exam Preamble. May 2018

Acknowledgments: Philosophy and Policy

You need to recognize your own interpretations. Knee deep in the digital revolution, you need guided experience of meaningful struggle because the media-saturated culture is relentlessly telling you what to think.

Struggle is natural.  Everyone has his or her own struggles.  Don’t run away from your intellectual struggles by borrowing someone else’s solution.  Stay with the problem. Work through it. I want to know your ideas, your own way of seeing things.  

 

Plus, it is unfair and dishonest to present someone else’s ideas as your own, when you have found them in a source other than your own mind, our class discussions or the literature we have been studying.  

I know the creative ways you respond to various questions.  I know this because I have read your earlier writings. Creative, confident and honest students make a difference in this world.  When you clearly express your individual, independent perspectives, the world grows smarter and stronger.

 

I confirm that I have read and understand the above paragraph.

Also, I understand that if I should access any online source(s), which Mr. Brown discourages, I am responsible for acknowledging the source(s) in the acknowledgment-footer of my exam.  Failure to do so will result in an exam failure and further disciplinary action.

Student signature___________________________________________(date)______________

agenda W/Th Apr 25/6: Poetry Day, Zambia, NYC, and Scotland

learning goal: Do Macbeth’s words and actions in Act 5 indicate a chiastic structure to the overall play?

Table of Contents: McKay, Corso, Ferlinghetti; quatrain, couplet, end rhyme, free verse

1. Poetry Outloud story

Zambia story

Claude McKay’s “America”

two student recitations  (Jackson, Niermeyer)

2. Conscience in the news

Conscience in the news

 

3. Macbeth’s behavior–how much a match? (5.2.1 ff.)  film? 

How much or how little does the following description fit Macbeth:

“Overcoming his queasiness, the soldier ends up submitting to the order, and is then haunted by the thought that he’s colluded in a crime” (E. Press, Beautiful Souls, 7).

agenda M/T Apr 23/4: Lady Macbeth

learning goal: what is a chiastic story structure? how much does Shakespeare’s play Macbeth fit this structure?

preview/questions about upcoming Poetry Day assignments; review feedback on last original poem)

5.1 moving the needle on Lady Macbeth’s conscience meter

film interpretation of 5.1

moving on to next scenes 5.2 ff.

 

 

due next Poetry Day, W/Th Apr 25/6

1. Your original fear poem, which got its start from a piece of two-dimensional student art in the halls of Groesbeck or Riley.  The presence of fear emerges from the poem, in either a large or small way.  Ideally, the speaker is someone or something other than you.  Use at least ten lines for this poem.
2. A CORE Reflection on any of the original poems you have written this, but have not yet reflected on with a PDF.  The list of possible poems for this CORE Reflection includes the fear poem.

 

For your fear poem, please print one for your Poetry Folder, and submit a copy to TURNITIN.

Please submit the CORE Reflection to TURNITIN.

Both the poem and reflection are due by the start of Poetry Day (Wed/Thu Apr 25/6).

 

 

agenda T/W Mar 20/1: Poetry Day, meter

learning goal: what situations are best expressed in this meter?  what kinds of tone or mood does this meter create? (meter TBA)

Poetry Day Table of Contents: Wm. Blake, E.A. Poe; meter, syllable, stress, foot

two-sample-poems exercise

the return of the wyrd sisters (1.3)

 

due M/T Feb 26/7: revised KR paragraph

If you did not submit your revised KR paragraph during the Th/F class (Feb 22/3), please do so before your M/T class begins–to the TURNITIN box labelled “revised KR paragraph.”  This revised paragraph goes in the major-grade category.

Be VERY sure to acknowledge classmate(s) or others who helped you revise this paragraph.  In addition, be sure to acknowledge, in the required footer, any other source of ideas or details in the paragraph.

agenda T/W Jan 30/31: read in KR

When we started the novel last week, I stated the obvious: it takes time to read a novel, especially one this long, and especially for slow reader like myself.  Mr. Turtle the Reader, they call me, but boy do I enjoy reading.  What an amazing phenomenon–that people can make ink spots in a page and take us into an imaginary world where we see and feel things.

Therefore, this class period gives you time–simply to read.  No emails due by the end of class.  This IS time, however, to read–rather than to catch up on Math or World History.  (BTW, this novel does contain some world history.)

While you read during this period, take notes as you will–remembering tips you picked up conversations last class.  Start looking for occasional connections between notes in this second quadrant and those in the first.

Above all, enjoy the reading.  Dive in early, so that you have a solid block of time to involve your mind and heart in this story from Khaled Hosseini.  He and I both thank you.

agenda M/T Jan 22/3: setting in THE KITE RUNNER

learning goal: pick one element of cultural setting and explain how that element relates to a major conflict in the novel

booklet-bookmarks: distribution, explanation

list of elements available in class on “setting-sheets”*

teacher demonstrates how to use one of the setting-sheets

individual time to prepare and submit setting-sheets

individual time to read

 

*these elements will be available during class, on separate sheets:

Setting in The Kite Runner

5 King Nadr Shah (assassinated 1933)

6 Herati rug

7 Hazara

8 Shi’a

9 Pashtuns

11 Bamiyan

19 Sherjangi (Battle of the Poems)

19 Rumi’s Masnawi

24 Zahir Shah (1933-73)

26 Rio Bravo (with John Wayne)

26 The Magnificent Seven

29 Shahnamah (10^th c.)

29 “Rostam and Sohrab” (story in the Shahnamah, 10^th c.)

36 Daoud Khan’s coup (17 June 1973)

62 a Koran ayat

70 namaz

76 Eid Al-Adha, or (in Afghani) Eid-e-Qorban

agenda Fri Jan 19 (H block only)

goals:

1. make sure people have either submitted initially-emailed Whale Rider paragraph to TURNITIN, or have plans to finish watching this film
2. make sure people either have in hand their own copy The Kite Runner, or know where theirs is
3. let those with their novel in hand begin reading