Moving On In Life

We are all in positions right now where we are facing possibilities and our lives beyond high school. Our lives are shifting and it can be both exciting but extremely terrifying. Change is frightening, but it is also good. The natural course in our development is to break free and experience our lives through the judgement we have been raised with. Our time is now, whether we are ready or not. How do you feel about your preparedness for next year? Are you excited, scared, a mixture of both? In what ways have you been set up to excel with your future endeavors? How do you feel about making your own decisions? 

Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day in my eyes a very important day for moms but also for their family's. I would say I agree it is a very important day for the reasons of we are celebrating the life of our mothers and all they have ever done. I want to hear some of the reasons you feel we have Mother's Day. What makes Mother's Day so important in your life? Everyone has a special something that they remember about their mom when they were younger. What are some memories you have made with your mom? I know with my mom when I had just became old enough to go to kindergarten she would take me and drop me off. I would last only a couple minutes without my mom and I would start crying till I threw up and my teacher sent me home cause she thought I was sick. Then I was able to return to my mom. I was a mommas boy how many of you are mommas boy or girl? What are some important lessons your mom has taught? Has your mom had an impact on your life?

Hardships in Traveling

As we have recently read, the Joads lost their grampa to a stroke and their dog to a car while on the road to California. Travel in previous centuries and decades seems to have been more perilous than it is now. Do we face some of the same hardships on the road, or different ones? What has changed in recent years that helps negate some of the hardships of traveling for us?

Travel

As some of us have traveled to spend the weekend in Seattle, Washington, I thought we might discuss the reasons people travel. There are many reasons people travel, ranging from moving to vacation.  Recently travel has become much more for pleasure as opposed to need. A lot of one's childhood is spent in the back of a car, driving to a relative's home to visit. While it might seem like an eternity to the passengers in that car, it is what we learn about the people that measures the time. Do you think traveling together with your family helps you get to know the better? Why do you think humans travel in their time off? What created this idea? How has American culture benefited, or hindered this? When did the shift from traveling only when necessary to traveling for enjoyment occur?

Tradition

It's prom! All this preparing has gotten me thinking about traditions. "Proms" date all the way back to the 1800's, and originated from formal college dances. But proms were not recorded into high school yearbooks until the 1930's. Obviously, prom has been a thing for quite some time. I think that it is neat that, in this day and age, we still hold traditions. So what exactly is tradition? Why do we keep traditions? What are some traditions that have originated from today's modern culture?

Plays vs Musicals vs Movies

After watching Footloose, I could not help but wonder if a musical or a play does a better job at conveying its message. Which does a more effective job in your experiences? Sometimes I find a musical much easier to remember due to the music. Also do many movies of famous plays and musicals do it justice? Does it cause us to compare a movie to a play and vice versa? I know sometimes I just cannot help but compare them? Should one compare a play or musical to a movie? Does the message of a musical or play get through to the audience better in a movie or live? Do you prefer a live performance of a play or musical or do you prefer a movie version?

Standardized Tests

Since some of us are taking the AP English exam pretty soon, I figured we should discuss standardized testing. We have all taken standardized tests since from a very young age. I remember that the only good thing about the ISATs was that they gave us free gum. Did any of the tests that we took really measure our intelligence? I do not think that these tests accurately measure a persons intelligence since every person does not learn and process information the same way. This is like the quote by Albert Einstein, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Is this the same with the AP English exam or did it find a better way to judge intelligence? Do you think that these tests should have such a large impact on your future?

Sorry for the late posting everyone! Thanks to Colton I just found out it was my turn to blog.  Hopefully you can all get it done. I decided to stray away from poetry and what we have been learning and turn this week's discussion into one on families. We are all getting excited to graduate and leave. In most cases, we will all be going out and leaving our families. Right now we are all really looking forward to making our own decisions (I am anyway), but after a few months at college will we look back and miss our families? Will we appreciate everything they've done for us a little bit more? I've been thinking about this a lot since I will be leaving halfway across the world in a few months, and I want to know what you all think. Are we the kind of people today because of our parents? Do we think the same way? Where do our ethics come from? What roles do mothers and fathers play in their children's lives? How is a child impacted when one of these figures is missing in their life? Can someone act as a mother/father/bother/sister figure in someone's life?

Do We Really Seize the Day?

Everybody knows the common saying to go out and seize the day. We often go around saying carpe diem because it sounds both intelligent and optimistic. The saying is the definition of optimism. It is a positive message to send to others and to show a great way of life. Has it become too common though? Has it lost its meaning and definition? Does it serve as nothing more than a cliche to sound sophisticated or does it still hold meaning of optimism? When it is given out as advice, there is a definite chance that it flows over someone's head because it has become so main stream. Can you agree with this based off of your own experience? What does seizing the day actually mean to you? What does it look like? 

Continuing with Poetry

Poems have been around since the time we have been able to write and have had big impacts on culture, especially in the youth. Poetry is an outlet for kids when going through hardships in their life and helps to express happiness. How have poems affected you in your youth? Do you agree or disagree that they do affect us and have an impact on us? Would you say songs impact us more than poems? Do you feel that poems are over analyzed in school and why do we analyze them so much?

Poetry and Songs

Recently we've been studying poetry and songs that are alike. When you think about it, many songs that are within the same genre are quite similar, and many seem to play off of many emotions that were originally brought through by poetry. Do you think that many songs and genres were brought about by poetry and the emotion that authors used in their writing? How many songs do you think have been inspired by poetry itself, rather than just other songs? Are there any artists that could feasibly be using poetry as something to go off of for their genre of music now, or are they all just going off of songs made before?

Poetry is an expression of the author's feelings. The composition can be as simple or as complex as the emotion as it betrays. One can easily make light of an emotion or twist it into a much darker theme. Poems can also tell stories. Some stories are easily read while others are have to be pulled out, bit by bit and, put together. Songs just a easily mean something, because there is always a motive to write. Some significant event caused the author to pick up a pen and jot down his or her feelings at that moment. But the question stands, how do we know if they really meant that? If we look back at Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he urges us that if we think it means that it does. Do you agree with this? Is that red rock he just threw really his anger, or did the author just think that the rock should be red? What makes it easier to find what the author meant? What makes it harder? How much of our interpretations come from our experiences? Why is it that we all find different answers in the same symbol?

Discrimination/Racism

We all define people by the way they look or groups they belong to. Many of us do not like to think that we define people by these two things. It seems to me that discrimination and racism go hand in hand. Our society is always trying to make an effort to eliminate these things. President Lincoln gave an executive order to eliminate slavery. Even after this order, African Americans were still not treated as equal to whites. Not very long ago in our history, we had the civil rights movement. African Americans now have more rights than they ever have had before. Now, it seems that there is a gay rights movement. There seems to always be a group that wants more rights. People from the Middle East are often discriminated against at airports and many places within our country due to the World Trade Center attacks. Most of these people are completely innocent yet are discriminated against. Our society sees the flaws that a person has. Do you believe that racism will ever die out in our country? Will discrimination ever disappear? Even though many consider discrimination to be a bad thing, is it important to our national security? Could our country still be safe without discrimination? What rights battles do you see in our nation's future?

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Wow!  What an impressive singular performance by Cherita Armstrong!  I found the production today both poignant and enrapturing.  For this entry, I would like you to 1) summarize your five chapters for the rest of the class (we'll still talk about them later) and 2) give us your review of the production.

Recently, we have been learning more about slavery by reading Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. This is a story of incredible bravery, sacrifice, and hope. We are surrounded of stories of people showing the world that good still exists, yet the news media portrays the stories of crime and destruction. Personally, I enjoy hearing that people still have a sense of decent humanity in them. I am one of those rare people that hope for world peace. I am wondering why society likes to promote the bad and ignore the good. I understand that it is important to be well rounded in all happenings though. I want to know what your thoughts are on this topic. What stories do you like to hear? Do all the bad stories promote people to act in the same poor manner again? Why are there not more stories like Harriet Ann Jacobs?                    

Snow Falling on Salmon

Well, if Shakespeare had been a student in Salmon School District this past week, he may have amended the opening lines of Richard III to read something more akin to "Now is the winter of our discontent," due to the recent snow days.  I hope you have enjoyed your mini vacation and took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep or get ahead on some homework (or go sledding or make a snowman - or woman!).  Obviously, the days off will change our schedule for next week.  On Monday, you will present your outside reading books and chapters from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl; Tuesday, you will write the in-class essay on your book; and Wednesday, we will have the vocab. quiz and discuss the performance of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  Oh, and it's Sarah's week for the blog.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and may the snow be ever in your favor!

Love at First Sight

We discussed the themes of Twelfth Night in class recently and one of the ideas or themes that stuck out to me was love at first sight. Shakespeare seems to include this idea in more than one of his writings. Now a lot has changed since the time of Shakespeare, but is it possible to experience love at first sight? Can the appearance of a person be so powerful that it is possible to fall in love with them that very instant? What exactly has changed since the time of Shakespeare when dealing with love and marriages? What are the credentials of love? How can we tell if we truly love someone or just like someone? Do we all have a need to love and be loved? If so, why?

Poetry's Individuality

Since we are headed into poetry, I thought we could discuss our views on it. As we know, there are many different kinds of poetry, for example, the sonnet or haiku. Throughout our school years, we have learned about poetry in various English classes as well as literature and other forms of writing. Why do you think that people use poetry to express themselves rather than just writing a book or opinion article? Those are literature too... What kinds of an impact does poetry have on people? Do you think that the stories and expressions of people that are written with poems can be just as easily expressed through other forms of literature? Poetry can be such a deep and inspirational type of literature to read. Why is poetry such a unique form of literature and what makes it so unique?

Senior Projects

Since this is late going up and we didn't have class on Thursday, I'll give you until the end of the week to respond. Having just put a lot of thought and effort into your Senior Projects and followed them through to completion, I am interested in what the highlight of the process was for you, and what do you think is the ultimate purpose of having high school seniors complete a major project before graduating?  See you in class.