Jan 12
tengrrlChildren's/YA Lit, journal, picture books
got loads of cleaning and organizing done, though no real
writing. looking for some kind of small magnetic board for the office,
but all i seem able to find are big magnetic white boards. not exactly
the ideal solution
have been thinking about the MLK lesson plan that i’ve been
working on. letting it simmer mainly. i’m still sort of between feeling
unsure if it’s a useful lesson or just a lesson with a social agenda without
any other real purpose. 
i
have it has a 3-5 lesson focusing on the Martin’s
Big Words book. have students talk about the notion of ‘big’ words
and then go out to choose their own ‘big’ words. the other alternative
is to give them MLK quotes and have them choose ‘big’ words which they
compose into a found poem, or something of that sort. i dunno. maybe it’s
just that the theory section seems so gaggy to me right now:
To talk about Dr. King’s life is to talk about horrible
things: racism, bombings, murders, assassination. Yet it is also to
discuss wonderful things: love, peace, harmony, pride, determination.
What do we tell children about the "bad" things in the world?
How can we "give [them] hope… provide [them] with reasons to
embrace life and its possibilities" (Stanley 41)?
Ultimately, Stanley resolves, "Education is the only solution
that I know to these dilemmas. Education, understood not as technique
or training, not as schooling, but as part and parcel of ‘the engagement
of being human,’ i.e., the shared act of making meaning of meanings
inherited from others" (41).
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the NCTE Executive
Committee issued a statement
that concluded similarly: "We assert that the long-term response
to violence and cruelty — indeed the only truly effective response
— is education, an education in which social justice and the dignity
of all people are held paramount."
In this activity, students focus on this kind of educational goals.
Through an exploration of Dr. King’s use of non-violence protest and
the power of words as a weapon for social justice, students learn
more about Dr. King’s life and think about their own impact on the
future. And by turning from King’s words to their own hopes for the
future, the activity makes specifically highlights hope for the future.
Further Reading
Stanley, Timothy J. 1999. "A
Letter to My Children: Historical Memory and the Silences of Childhood."
Teaching for a Tolerant World, Grades K-6: Essays and Resources.
Ed. Judith P. Robertson. Urbana: NCTE. Pp. 34-44.
Stanley’s article focuses on talking
to his children about whether Nazis are "bad guys." While
not directly about King or African American history, the piece is
a relevant discussion of the things that we do and do not talk to
children and students about, when we discuss the, how we discuss them,
and why we discuss them.
i dunno. it’s ok i guess but it feels so PC instead of sounding like me. it’s like i’m not even there. some stuffy theory paraphraser is. or maybe the problem is that i’m trying to justify teaching MLK rather than why we’re teaching about the idea of "big" words and such. i don’t have to finish it till at least tomorrow.
Jan 12
tengrrljournal
finally slept. have been working on laundry, unpacking, cleaning. wrote to rich this morning about quoting from his email. i’m not sure what i’m writing here. personal ramblings. maybe they don’t belong online. of course, that’s why i want to dig into what rich is saying, details at blogger, and so on. but for now, i need to get back to unpacking and such.
Jan 12
tengrrljournal, My Writing
i wonder if people who can sleep through the night appreciate how lucky they are. you really have to go through the endless nights of waking up every two or three hours. and the long gaps spent trying to fall asleep. trying to situate your arms and hands and legs so that they won’t creep into uncomfortable positions and wake you any sooner than you’ll already waken.
so this time i’m out of bed, i unpacked some more stuff, the candles essentially. they’re in the bottom of the china cabinet. now if i could only get the china unpacked from the boxes it moved here in three years ago. i must have the slowest progress of anyone i know. though if you count the fact that i get out of bed every two or three hours and unpack something perhaps you can say i’m at least persistent.
i feel almost like macbeth. just without the guilt of murdering folks. i have plenty of guilt—that chapter promised to mday that will likely never materialize, book proposals promised to pete, unwritten letters, unwashed clothes, undone to-dos. i’m just not murdering folks. i’ll go back to bed, and tasks i can’t even think of now will begin marching through my head, telling me how simple they would be to write, to accomplish. i do a thousand things in those moments when i’m not asleep, lying there in the bed and make plans to do a thousand more. so simple they seem and yet when i get up, as hard to accomplish as sleep is to find.
Jan 12
tengrrlUncategorized
i hate when i can’t sleep. ok, partly, i have a headache; but also, i’m just lying in there thinking about all the things that i should be writing and am not. when i come out to the keyboard are any of those brilliant sentences still in my head? of course not. i can’t even completely remember what the sentences were about. i guess one of the more important things was trying to figure out how to explain what on earth i’m doing here. writing this stuff that is. i want to refer to an email rich sent me, but i need to write him and ask if it’s ok. writing that would require way more concentrating than i want to do right now though. hmm.
Jan 12
tengrrlMy Writing
this is about the 3 millionth try at getting this page set
up. today was my great-grandmother’s birthday. maybe that means i can
run out to the store tomorrow and buy birthday cake and celebrate. well,
or, i could work on the 15million things on my to-do list. and it’s been
what? months and months since a list of ten. i need to get my technotes
on here too. but it’s bedtime for now.
