Before I met Leah, I 'd never heard of saying “rabbit, rabbit” on the first of the month. Doing a little research, it turns out this is a tradition associated the most with Northern New England, which is quite a bit closer to the Boston area (where Leah grew up) than Oregon (where I grew …
Continue reading Rabbit! Rabbit! Happy First Day of December!
Some more notes on teaching “Macbeth”: First, don’t worry—my next post won’t be about this play. And second, though Shakespeare and his language are often seen as “high and mighty,” in so many ways “Macbeth” can shatter this illusion for inexperienced students. I’d say that’s for better, because I’m in favor of making all literature …
Continue reading Explain the Porter Monologue in “Macbeth” or Just Skip Over It?
I recently checked to see if my students were doing their “Macbeth” reading. The task was pretty simple—describe Lady Macbeth in just one word (a task which shouldn’t be too hard after reading two acts, considering how strong a character Lady Macbeth is). Some answers that I received: Angry Motivated Sinister Evil Malicious (that was …
So a follow up on teaching The Stranger by Albert Camus: what a success! Which initially surprised me, since I thought this would be a “we-need-to-read-this-novel-because-its-important-so-power-through-it” kind of text. Unfortunately, in high school this situation comes up every now and then. For younger students, it’s often with Shakespeare. Last year, it was with Washington Irving …
Continue reading Reading and Teaching The Stranger (Deuxième Partie) (Part Two!)
In my senior literature class we’re finishing up The Stranger, by Albert Camus. Believe it or not, but before this summer I’d never read the novel (there’s a lot of literature out there!). And I am absolutely loving it. Our copy was translated by Matthew Ward, which is a point worth noting—Camus wrote in French, …
Continue reading On Translating and Reading Camus’s The Stranger
With a recent post on Edgar Allan Poe, I thought I’d show off my Edgar Allan Poe mug. This beauty is my prized coffee-drinking apparatus. A teacher at school gave it to me, and it was the perfect gift because not only is it covered in great Poe quotes, but it's stocky and hard to …
Recently I wrote about both the well-received texts I taught this school year (Of Mice and Men, “The Cremation of Sam McGee”) and the “misses” (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Heart of Darkness). Not that anything here is to say that the “misses” weren’t texts students didn’t learn from. For example, though “Julius Caesar” can …
Continue reading Addendum: Texts I Taught This Year and EDGAR ALLAN POE
With finals going currently, here are some thoughts on novels, stories, and plays I used in my classroom over the last school year. It’s always interesting to experience something as a student and then as a teacher. Take Heart of Darkness: the dialogue is richer than what I remember from high school, and the novel is …
Continue reading The Great, the Good, and the OK: Texts I Taught This Year
Leah gave me a skull for Valentine’s Day. To be clear, Leah isn’t strange for giving it to me, and in fact, I don’t think I’m strange for wanting it. Earlier the skull caught my eye because I’m an English teacher and soon I’ll be teaching “Hamlet.” This is the play where Hamlet picks up …
Continue reading In Brief: Alas, Poor Yorick! (Valentine’s Present)
Concerning the last mini-post on snow, we ended up getting enough to shut down school for three days. Surprise! I measured at the mill and we had about six inches, which fits well with a map I found online. I’m going to call this eight in Oregon snow-inches, or twelve and a half in Massachusetts …
BATCH & NARRATIVE 