Finally, a book about teaching English by an actual English teacher! OK, hyperbole aside, I do value the insights Kelly Gallagher put into his book, Deeper Reading. He addresses many of the issues that I have had with teacher preparation programs. The colleges and universities give you tons of theory and concepts, which are valuable and give teaching a credible background of research and knowledge, but it doesn’t tell you what to do when you’re faced with teaching The Scarlet Letter to Juniors on Monday. […]
A Rose among Thorns: Sacajawea and the Corps of Discovery
I first came across Sacajawea living in Washington state. Of course it was her name in a textbook, but I thought it was intriguing that a woman would be willing to travel with a group of men to places she had never been. And not only was she the only woman, she was the only Native American in that group too. Sadly, I never encountered her again outside of textbooks and museums. Living in the Northwest you come across a lot of Lewis and Clark […]
America, F!@#k Yeah!
As I’ve mentioned in several of my previous posts, I’m trying to read more works that are written by or feature Native Americans. The latest book I read is a brief history of the Cherokee nation. Even though it’s brief it’s packed with facts that I never knew. And once again I’m disappointed that my education never told me such facts as the Cherokees actually had a capital city, were the first to have a written alphabet, and developed a political system based on the […]
Feminist Heroine or Romanticized Damsel in Distress?
I don’t know when it started really, but I’ve always had a fascination with the Cajuns. The music, the food, the language, the history all of it has intrigued me. Maybe because they are one of the last links between Europe and the U.S. that we still have and maybe it’s because they’re the “underdogs” of the colonial struggle between France and the U.K. in North America. Actually, I think it’s all of the above. The name “Cajun” is a shortened version of the French […]
The Road Goes Ever On and On
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien is one of those books I’ve only read three times, but I feel like I know it so much better as if I’ve read it twenty times. Maybe it’s because I’ve read it that many times and seen the movies (which are not an improvement on the books). But I think it’s because Tolkien does such a good job of opening up this world to the readers and keeping the plot simple enough that we have time to stop and […]
Same Song, Different Translation
It’s sad to say that as an English teacher, I’ve never made it all the way through Beowulf. My first encounter with Beowulf was the movie with the gold-dipped-naked-animated Angelina Jolie version (late 2000′s?). It was a laugh. Not because it was a comedy, but because it was so over the top. Campy, poor writing, melodramatic, you name it. So when I started teaching, I just used an abridged version of the epic. But anyone who’s ever read something that’s been abridged knows that there’s […]
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