To try and break up “To Kill a Mockingbird,” I thought of an interesting writing idea (actually, I think I got it from the RRVWP) for my Lit and Language 11 class. There was a line in Ch. 3 where Atticus tells Scout – after her disastrous first day of school – that she can’t expect Ms. Caroline to learn all of Maycomb’s ways in just one day. After having read the novel – oh, about 50 times – I realized that I never noticed this little passage before. Yet, it is important.
Here is poor Ms. Caroline trying to teach her first class and having no idea about the ways of her students. She tries to present the material, but without knowledge of her students – and their lives and homes – her attempt to teach them is futile.
This got me thinking about some of our own ways here or in Minnesota. If someone came here from, say, another country or even another part of our country, what would they find odd about us? What would they need to know about us?
I devised a prompt that called for students to devise a list of ten “ways” of ours. Then I charged them with choosing one and exploring their thoughts on it.
Kritie and I came up with a couple things –
The ways of MN –
1. Everyone knows what the word “oofda” means.
2. Everyone secretly hopes for a blizzard warning and no school or work.
3. Everyone knows to have plenty of insect repellant on hand in the summer.
4. Everyone knows that one can fish in both the summer and winter.
5. MN holds the record for the coldest as well as the hottest recorded
temperature. It has actually snowed, rained and reached high temps in the
70's all in one week.
6. Though we hate to admit it, we do talk like the folks in the movie
"Fargo."
7. Minnesota "Nice"-we have a very hard time being outride rude to others
8. Most of our meals tend to be yellow-chicken, potatoes, corn, casseroles,
bread.
Needless to say, I was really looking forward to seeing what the kids came up with. However, I neglected to remember (imagine that) that juniors have registration today. So my class is missing about 20 students. That leaves me with roughly twelve juniors who registered this morning.
What a pickle. Do we forge ahead with the assignment, knowing that most will miss it and have to make it up on their own – and I was really looking forward to a good discussion of their lists? Do we waste a day and wait for them? Well, we wasted the day.
I thought of a couple of ‘fun’ activities I had stashed away for moments like these and we did those instead. Of course, that left us with about half an hour of dead time – not good when the new quarter is only a day old, but it is what it is.
*****
Thinking about that line from Atticus concerning Miss Caroline, I am reminded of a book I would love to write: Teaching and To Kill a Mockingbird. Every time I read it, I find quite an interesting commentary (whether intentional or not – I don’t know) on education.
I’ll put that up on the shelf of pipe dreams.
*****
I found myself in a bit of a sticky situation earlier today. It seems that the local community college has given us the go ahead for a College Composition II course. When the juniors registered for their senior classes, many noticed this new class. However, it runs opposite of AP English.
During my prep many of my former students popped in wanting to know if I taught College Comp II. I told them that as far as I knew, I was. However, another teacher here (who would be great at teaching the class, which is more research based than the College Comp I class I now teach) is close to getting her master’s in English. So she could end up teaching it.
Then the students asked me if they should take College Comp II or AP English. I told them that I wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten foot pole. I advised them to go home and talk it over with their parents and make an informed decision.
That’s all I need – to start pitting one program against another.
But it was nice to see so many kids interested in taking another class like Comp I, which was not as hard as AP, but which was certainly quite difficult.
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