Where in the world is....

Carmen Sandiego? or me....

Sorry i didn't make it to class today! I hope your peer reviewing went well. Please bring your final drafts to class on Thursday and be sure to email me if you are having trouble! And we will be discussing the Dostoevski excerpt on Thursday as well. 

Nicole, what do you think of having the movie day to watch To Kill a Mockingbird at your house on Tuesday? Any thoughts?

Have a great fat Tuesday guys! (Free pancakes at iHop!)

Dostoevsky

Hi guys! I hope your rough drafts for your papers are coming along nicely! For Tuesday, bring those in for a peer edit and also, I finally found a good copy of the Grand Inquisitor to post. So, if you'll read that for class discussion as well, we'll have a grand time! :)

The link is to the left under class documents. There's a bit of background at the beginning of your reading, but to add to that, Dostoevski was a Christian, so in the context of this novel, he gives this startling story to one of the athiestic brothers, Ivan. Ivan's goal is to mock and derail the religious beliefs of his younger brother by providing an argument of sorts against Christianity. See if you can figure out what Dostoevski is trying to accomplish by including this in his novel!

Blue Like Jazz

For Thursday, I'm going to bring an excerpt from Blue Like Jazz to class. This will be your reading assignment, and we'll talk about it from the religious perspective. 

Work on those thesis sentences and rough drafts! Please feel free to email me if you have any questions! Also, please vote for your choice of spring break dates! I'm flexible and want you guys to have the best option.

REMINDER: Rough draft on your paper due TUESDAY, Feb. 24th. And the final draft will be due Thurs., the 26th.

Lenses

I hope today was helpful in seeing how each of the literary lenses can allow you to see different aspects of the story in a new way. You all had tons of great thoughts to contribute to our analysis!

So, for Tuesday, we will finish the book and draw our final conclusions about the characters! 

Also, here is the paper assignment:

Choose one or two lenses from which to look at your paper, and construct a thesis sentence based on those lenses. If there's an aspect of the book you particularly like, you can apply the lenses to that aspect too! You might find out something interesting! 

Other information: the paper will need to be between 700-800 words long (roughly two-three pages), and the rough draft will be due the following Tuesday, Feb. 24th. And the final draft will be due Thurs., the 26th.

So bring those thesis sentences in on Tuesday, and I'll see ya then!

Remember Emerson

Please read chapters 17-23 for tomorrow! And I'll bring discussion items to class tomorrow. 

Stereo-types, Prejudices, and Fredrick Douglas

That was one of my favorite classes so far! Great thoughts and participation from everyone. :) Hopefully, reading about the consequences of thoughtless prejudices and stereotypes will help to keep us from repeating the sins of the past. There are always opportunities for our sinful hearts to demean and diminish the complexity of other human beings as such, and since we too have sinful hearts, it is good to be on guard against that tendancy. So, no more spitting in preppy guys' white mochas for me! ;) haha... 

But seriously, I hope the experiences of Fredrick Douglas will help you to understand the complexities of what takes place in our story, as well. 

So, assignment for Tuesday:

• Read chapters 12-16
  
• Turn in your papers with grammar corrections
  

Have a great weekend!

We're like mailmen

"Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night"... we're still having class, in case you were wondering. :D