Two Good Things
First week of this school year -- if you can call three half-days a week -- is over, and it was really nice. That's always the case for the first couple of weeks until my less than stellar classroom management cues a few students in to the fact that they can be lax as fuck. Sigh. However, it was still a really nice first week, one of the most pleasant I can remember. Today, two things happened that make this weekend super nice, as well.
1) I may finally actually start and finish (and all between) Moby Dick. For Reasons, I was looking at my Audible books account, and searched that weighty tome, which I have tried to read so, so, so many times, never getting past past chapter three. There are more than twenty different versions... there are even at least twelve that are unabridged. How to choose? I asked the internet, and lo, the internet told me that what I should really check out is: Moby Dick: The Big Read (http://www.mobydickbigread.com/), which is all 137 (or 138? something like that) chapters read aloud by different Brit personalities, celebrities. I've heard of some of them (Benedict Cumberbatch, e.g.) but not most of them. Tilda Swinton reads the first chapter. Some guy who is brilliant, Nigel something, reads the third chapter. Nigel Williams. It's great! I will listen to it, slowly, over time. Such brilliant and hilarious writing. I mean, I KNEW that. I've read other Melville and loved it. But this, this novel has been my unconquerable mountain. Other books I've never read, I don't want to read (most things Russian, and does that include Nabokov's Lolita? I'm never going to read that either). (Or any James Joyce, tbh). But Moby Dick? I DO want to read that. And this may be the way. Perhaps I will report on it as I make my way through it. In 2018, my mom and I listened to A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles, read by Stephen Fry, and she loved it. I read all the Sherlock Holmes there was to read by the time I was ten, but it was very enjoyable to hear it in Fry's voice. He does one of the Moby Dick chapters, too.
2) I slept really late this Sunday morning, but ah, I was LESSON PLANNING. I often do lesson plan in bed, not gonna lie. And this morning, that time allowed me to at last figure out what I am going to do with my brand new class -- a 6th grade "Wheel" class, which means a [s]elective for one-third of the sixth graders, repeated twice more during the year. So I'll see all of them? And each class will have about 13 weeks? We're on a semester system, really, so it's going to be odd, when we do grades for this one class. I was told by the principal that the class is officially named "University of Diversity", and "you'll be great at it! It's like Sociology for Beginners!" I know nothing about sociology and do not want to know anything about sociology, much less make up curriculum for it from scratch. The person who taught it last year made it about... if I understood her correctly... code breaking, espionage, forensic science, and reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. Me? This is the 400th anniversary of slavery in the United States, so we're going to dissect racism and read Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I've taught many times (a long time ago) and which I have a class set of, along with an audible version, and lots of ideas. Hurrah, problem solved.
1) I may finally actually start and finish (and all between) Moby Dick. For Reasons, I was looking at my Audible books account, and searched that weighty tome, which I have tried to read so, so, so many times, never getting past past chapter three. There are more than twenty different versions... there are even at least twelve that are unabridged. How to choose? I asked the internet, and lo, the internet told me that what I should really check out is: Moby Dick: The Big Read (http://www.mobydickbigread.com/), which is all 137 (or 138? something like that) chapters read aloud by different Brit personalities, celebrities. I've heard of some of them (Benedict Cumberbatch, e.g.) but not most of them. Tilda Swinton reads the first chapter. Some guy who is brilliant, Nigel something, reads the third chapter. Nigel Williams. It's great! I will listen to it, slowly, over time. Such brilliant and hilarious writing. I mean, I KNEW that. I've read other Melville and loved it. But this, this novel has been my unconquerable mountain. Other books I've never read, I don't want to read (most things Russian, and does that include Nabokov's Lolita? I'm never going to read that either). (Or any James Joyce, tbh). But Moby Dick? I DO want to read that. And this may be the way. Perhaps I will report on it as I make my way through it. In 2018, my mom and I listened to A Study in Scarlet and The Hound of the Baskervilles, read by Stephen Fry, and she loved it. I read all the Sherlock Holmes there was to read by the time I was ten, but it was very enjoyable to hear it in Fry's voice. He does one of the Moby Dick chapters, too.
2) I slept really late this Sunday morning, but ah, I was LESSON PLANNING. I often do lesson plan in bed, not gonna lie. And this morning, that time allowed me to at last figure out what I am going to do with my brand new class -- a 6th grade "Wheel" class, which means a [s]elective for one-third of the sixth graders, repeated twice more during the year. So I'll see all of them? And each class will have about 13 weeks? We're on a semester system, really, so it's going to be odd, when we do grades for this one class. I was told by the principal that the class is officially named "University of Diversity", and "you'll be great at it! It's like Sociology for Beginners!" I know nothing about sociology and do not want to know anything about sociology, much less make up curriculum for it from scratch. The person who taught it last year made it about... if I understood her correctly... code breaking, espionage, forensic science, and reading The Hound of the Baskervilles. Me? This is the 400th anniversary of slavery in the United States, so we're going to dissect racism and read Mildred D. Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I've taught many times (a long time ago) and which I have a class set of, along with an audible version, and lots of ideas. Hurrah, problem solved.