thoughts about ish
I don't remember when in my senior year 1984 was assigned to be read. Was it summer reading? Did we have to read it for class, but never actually talk about it? No idea, because I didn't read it... I was in AP Lit my senior year of high school and I absolutely did not want to read 1984. Mostly because I had read Animal Farm in my sophomore AP World History class and decided then that I hated George Orwell and nothing he wrote was going to be interesting to me. (By the way, I am pretty sure it was summer reading and I somehow managed to pass that assignment because I loved The Things They Carried. And I had really great friends who told me about the book so I could fake it til I made it.) Well... Here we are 10 years later (almost exactly 10 years later, gross) and I have just downloaded 1984 on my kindle. I put it on my list of 25 books I had to read this year. I've been thinking about this damn book for like six years and I wanted to challenge myself to actually complete it. I never got past the first chapter (probably not even page 3) and as someone who will possibly need to teach it one day, I should probably finish the book. It's easy to "fake it til you make it" when you're working for a grade, it's not so easy to teach kids to read deeper into the meaning of the text if you yourself have never opened the book. This isn't Shakespeare, we can't figure it out as we go.
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We assigned an article to the students to read and then respond to this week (and last week, but is that important?) and we get most of the articles we assign them from Kelly Gallagher's Article of The Week website. It's great. And I cannot wait to be doing this next year with my own classes every week. Or like every other week. I don't know. It didn't work that great last year when we did it, but then again we also were not very consistent with it.
Anyway, it's an articles that was posted a couple weeks ago so when I wrote my response I had to considering how things have actually been during this time. I definitely think I ramble and don't actually ever get to my point but it is sort of there... Maybe. I don't know. It depends how much stock you put into the COVID-19 pandemic. And if you ever understand what I'm trying to say. So enjoy. *I went to post this for JDKC and then realized this is not going to make any sense because I am referring to an article that no one would have ever read. So here it is: "How Long Will Schools Need to Be Closed. An Expert Weights In" At what point do I just create a whole page specifically for the Corona Chronicles? Like, if this goes on for the rest of the year we are gonna get to "issue 50" and that'll be a really cool feat - do I wait until then to move all of these to that page? Or is that going to be too much work? I'm gonna need to start posting some more original content to break up the misery of the Corona Chronicles.
Especially since today I literally wrote a nonsense post about the book I'm reading. I RAN OUT OF THINGS TO TELL THE KIDS AND I STARED AT MY DOCUMENT FOR AN HOUR.... An hour before I was just like "You know what? Fuck it... I'll write about the book I'm reading in the most vague way possible." If I was them I would stop reading today if they haven't already. Today was not my day. |
AuthorJust a 20something trying to get by in life. Archives
April 2020
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