This week we are developing tattoo analyses in English 008. In my sample writing, I shared my admiration for Angelina Jolie. Below is my sample introductory paragraph I will post in my blog. Below that, I provide my sample conclusion paragraph. I like Angelina's tattoos, but I'm an English teacher - I think if you have something important to say, you should write it. I look forward to reading Angelina's memoir.
Baseball is a metaphor for life. Today my students vote for their Girl, Interrupted MVP. They are to review the memoir they read this semester and select the most valuable part: scene, character, idea, conversation, quotation. Just like in baseball, there are no clear-cut, agreed-upon guidelines for defining “valuable.” It’s up to each student to write a 300- to 500-word justification of their choice. This is very cool. They make it very personal. Everyone seems to “hit” something different. Here is mine:
Wait! I just asked to my students to scour Girl, Interrupted for scenes, characters, events, conversations that would make the basis of a their soundtrack selection. They are going to match their music with meaningful ideas from the book.
I’ve already seen students make use of the Red Hot Chile Peppers song “Porcelin” to represent Susanna’s inner turmoil in the book. They quote one of the band members explaining how the song expresses “the beauty and tragedy and glory all wrapped into one.” It’s about a new mother battling drug addiction while trying to take care of her baby. “Drifting and floating and fading away…” the song goes. That’s not bad.
Here I go with James Taylor. I found him on page on page 48. He was a patient at the same mental hospital that housed Susanna Kaysen. How can you beat that?
When you read, do you ever tap your foot? Does music ever spark an idea in your head? Can you come up with a song or an artist that blends music and literature? Joyce Carol Oates wrote one of her most enduring works of short fiction after hearing Bob Dylan on the radio.
In a few of my English classes, we are going the other way. We are developing a soundtrack for the memoir we read this semester: Girl, Interrupted. Students are choosing a song or an artist to best represent a passage from the book. It’s fun and thought-provoking. I have seen some students express important meaning with hardcore gangster rap songs. Occasionally, I’ll get someone from another class touch upon the same idea with Taylor Swift. How cool is that?
Here I’m going with the Beatles’ Dear Prudence. I mean, all you need is Love.
It's my favorite time of the semester. We all vote for MVP of our reading. The Most Valuable Part. To tell you the truth, most of the time I have to vote for my students. Each of them seems to come up with something different.
Summer is almost over. We are finishing our research papers on mental health disorders. Time flies when you are having fun. I was looking up Kurt Cobain on the internet but found Huck Finn. This gave me a great idea...
It's been three days since the accident and I still can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I can hear the sound of the train approaching us, getting closer and louder, the wheels scraping on the metal train tracks, the pessimistic look of despair on their faces, and worst of all, the piercing scream that still haunts my ears
My mother, the only parent I know, is both a mom and a dad to me. Both of my parents would work, but even then my father would demand for my mothers paychecks. He'd use that money to get totally wasted, and it went on for a while like this....
In the book “Motorcycle Ride on the Sea of Tranquility” the most valuable part is when Chuy offered a ride to Yoli on his motorcycle through many places of the San Diego city. no. Yoli thought she hadn’t heard him right...
On November, 1993 both my father and brother started the Richard McGee Correctional Basic Correctional Academy....
For America in the novel The Tortilla Curtain, Being married to Candido is like carrying a backpack full of bricks all day long....
My mother had struggled her whole life to make us happy. Being a single mother of two with two jobs was almost impossible yet it was her daily routine....
My father's addiction has had significant effects in my life. My father's alcohol abuse has made me realize what I want in my life and what I don’t want....
After the bell had rung, I quickly got to my seat, of course being tardy was probably a bad first impression because as soon as I picked a desk to sit at my teacher was glaring at me. He then began to yell at me saying how it was an essential to be on time to his class. This was my first encounter with my economics teacher and I already knew it was going to be a long year. Little did I know that Jack had a specific purpose in my life and although he was scary to me at first, he soon became my strongest adult in my life. As the years went by, I got to know Mr. Little and we became the greatest of friends. Once Jack Little passed away, I had a different perspective on the little amount of time we all have to live...
After living three years in this country, it was important for me to realize that I needed to go to school to learn English. I was feeling like I was illiterate and deaf. When my husband was in work I was afraid to answer the phone, or afraid to go outside. I remember the day when I had my first daughter, I was in pain in the hospital and my new born daughter was crying; the hospital was cold, with a pale color on the walls, and its smell was like alcohol. There were nurses walking on the long and bright hallway. You can hear the nurses talking morning and night. I couldn’t express myself and talk for my daughter that was crying...
