Tuesday's Plan

Okay. I bombed out with my whole knowledge verse imagination challenge for my Lit and Language 11 class.

We did indeed take a break from reading. However, we ended up just killing time. Now we just didn’t do anything. We did something, but it was nowhere near what I wanted to do.

We ended up watching The Sandlot and talking about (and writing about) rites of passage (and connecting it to the rites of passage in TKM).

However, it was not my original choice.

I’ll elaborate.

Originally, I devised and assignment where I had the class divided into small groups. I assigned each group a set of chapters from TKM.

For their chapters the students were asked to design a series of comic strips using comiclife. They had free reign concerning the content, captions (well, they had to have at least three quotes from the novel per page as well as summarization), design, colors, font, and, of course, pictures. Each student would be in charge of designing at least one page of the total comic strip for their chapter(s).

They could take images from the internet or they could take their own if they wanted to incorporate into their strips.

I figured this would not only get their imaginations involved but it would also be a great way to refresh their knowledge of book one. Then I’d print them out and adorn them all over the room, thereby also helping each other out to summarize the events and happenings of book one as well as seeing each other’s takes on the events and characters.

They wouldn’t have to read anything new and they would be free to internalize the events of the novel using their imaginations.

Well, that was the plan.

However, reality set in: the computer labs were all booked.

Panic set in.

What could I do? I had spent some time last night and this morning getting this new assignment designed.

So I was left with little time to pull something together.

That’s where The Sandlot came in. The kid love it. The prompt on rites of passage was easy enough of to come up with. In fact, it is one of my favorite prompts to read.

The kids will likely enjoy it, but it was not what I had in mind.

But you do the best with what you’re given, right?

At least they’ll get a break from reading and we’ll get more done than if we had a ‘make up’ day.

And the movie gave me an idea for a new way into the rite of passage topic – “Write about your first black eye.” I want to hear those stories.

*******

I’ve been asked to give the closing remarks at the honors banquet again this year.

I was the second choice. The other teacher wasn’t available, so they asked me to do it again.

Now I’ve just got to come up with some comments.

Last year I talked a little bit about the idea of flow as it relates to attaining happiness through a strong work ethic. It was – in a way – a bit of a downer for the kids. I wanted to wake them up a bit to the true reality of the world – not everyone will make six figures right out of college. That kind of dose of reality.

This year, though, I’m thinking of going in the opposite direction. I thought of the idea when I was reading Leon Botstein’s book last summer. He introduced me to the danger of becoming a crumudgeon as I got older. Too often as we grow old, we tend to romanticize our pasts or youths in an idealized manner. So we soon start thinking like, “You know when we were young, we never acted like these kids today” or “You know I had to work a lot harder when I was young than these kids today.” It’s the kind of thinking and world view that leads to the inevitable “the world is going to hell in a handbasket” type of mentality.

Of course, this type of thinking is often way to prevelant among teachers. But that just isn’t the way the world really is.

I began thinking of this when I read an article in Newsweek about the book The Dangerous Book for Boys. It talked about the book harkened back to the days of the old Boy Scouts. It mentioned how the Boy Scouts were started by a man who served in the Great War and was horrified at how weak and pathetic many of the soldiers he saw there were.

If those men who fought in that war were weak and pathetic, well . . . what does that say about those who fought on Omaha beach or in the Vietnam jungles or in deserts.

It hit me: we aren’t necessarily stronger or weaker. It’s all perception.

The kids today don’t really act all that differently that I did. It’s just that I’m older and my perspective has changed. The older I get, the more I miss my youth and the more I idealize it, even though it might not have been that ideal at all.

That is part of the phenomena that Botstein addresses in his book. We have all become too critical. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, but it always has been.

Today we fear the insurgents and terrorists, but when I was a kid during the Cold War we feared the Russians. Before that it was the Nazis and before that, well, I’m not sure, but there had to be someone.

Botstein applies this type of thinking specifically to American education. He posits that many politicians, administrators, professors, and teachers like to think of the “Golden Age” of American education as being in the ‘50s. People supposedly read more fluently, took school more seriously, appreciated their teachers more, behaved better, learned more, wrote more, and so on.

Yet, statistics just don’t prove that to be the case. In fact, fewer than half of all high school students from that time period graduated. Fewer read and even fewer wrote well. Plus, teachers could openly beat and threaten students.

So, why do we idealize that time period?

Well, it’s human nature to do so.

Think about it. Have you ever thought like that? Kids today . . . When I was your age . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen when you guys grow up . . .

*****

Fortutitous.

That’s what I think about showing The Sandlot. The kids are raptly watching.

Having seen it several times and having read TKM dozens of times, I’m amazed that how similar they are (I’ve never watched the film with TKM on my mind like this).

Like TKM where Jem and Scout have boundaries to their neighborhood (Ms. Dubose’s house and the Radley’s), well the boys in Sandlot have a boundary of their own: Mr. Mourdoe’s (the owner of the supposedly vicious dog, “The Beast.”)

Of course, a legend about the dog has grown over time. The boys tell it and retell it, blowing it out of proportion with each telling. Scout does the same thing when she talks about all the rumors about Boo (stabbing his father with a scissors and eating cats in the middle of the night) or Ms. Dubose (carrying a Civil War pistol).

One of the boys falls in love with the life guard and makes a daring attempt at a kiss. This can be contrasted to the innocent ‘marriage’ Dill and Scout enter into (we just read the part where Dill and Scout decide to get themselves a baby . . . only they believe there is an island where a man keeps all of the babies and you have to sail out there to get one). Jem too seems to have a crush on Miss Caroline, Scout’s teacher.

The boys’ passion for baseball parallels Dill, Jem, and Scout’s love for dreaming up plays and dramas about the Radleys, Mr. Avery, and Ms. Maudie.

The narrator’s voice is very much like Scout’s. In fact, the film is narrated as a flashback to the events of their childhood, just as Scout does in TKM.

The repercussions of Jem’s tirade with Miss Dubose could be compared to the fallout from when Smalls steals his step-father’s autographed baseball.

Then there is the climax, where the boys have their childhood illusion about the Beast and Mr. Mourdo shattered, just as Scout has her childhood illusion of Boo shattered.

Now The Sandlot shies away from the serious issues addressed in TKM, racism, rape, bigotry, death, social class, justice, and violence. But it would be interesting to see if students could apply those issues to The Sandlot and see how that would change the characters and story.

You certainly could do that. The ‘leader’ of the boys is a young Hispanic boy, who most certainly would have faced some racial slurs and bigotry. The main character, Smalls, has issues with his step-father. His mother was divorced – or maybe his father died – but that isn’t addressed.

Tomrrow we can discuss why these issues aren’t developed (well, it is a kid’s movie after all). We could discuss how it would be different if some of the serious issues of TKM were brought to The Sandlot.

Hmmmh.

That’s an interesting idea. In fact, I know of another movie that would work perfectly as an example of combining the innocent, rite of passage style of The Sandlot with some serious issues: Stand by Me.

Maybe we’ll show that at the end of the novel and try to make connections.

Maybe this assignmet isn’t as big of a waste as I thought it was originally.

Hmmmh.