Today's lesson is . . .

Hey.

So, sorry I have not blogged in a while. I've been a bit busy. Who reads this anyway? So, we're wrapping it up down at CRLS (where I teach summer school). I had a big day of teaching today. We all took one whole week to plan this summer and then John decided that we should each take a day to teach on our own. Usually we have a day willed with three or four parts to it and we divvy that up. So, my day was today. I also had a big, lame-ass paper due today too. I actually got a good portion of it done on Monday (which is very unlike me) but merely in anticipation of me having to plan a whole day of activities and execute them. So, after teaching and after our class on ELL (English Language Learners) I just stayed at Gutman Library and finished my paper at 'round 8:30. Not too bad. Got home, ate, worked on my lesson a bit. Watched Stella at 10:30. If you don't know Stella yet, check it out. It's a comedy trio consisting of David Wain, Michael Showalter, and (my favorite) Michael Ian Black (yes, the boys from Wet Hot). The comedy is a bit strange, but it still makes me happy.

Anyway, today's lesson. My focus was teaching my kids (who range from 9th to 12th grade in the same class, yup, World Lit I) how to reveal character/personalities through dialogue in writing. I started with a scene from my favorite movie Out of Sight. I used the first scene with J Lo and Dennis Farina. It's a good scene cuz it's easy to find the relationship between them and how her father cares that she's dating a married guy. The TV I had playing the movie was faced away from the kids, actually, so they could only hear it (cruel, I know). I gave them a dialogue I typed up of the scene and then led a discussion about how they could tell various things from the dialogue. It went fairly well. I played the movie a second time and then asked them even deeper questions.

Next, I gave the class a dialogue I wrote the night before. I just made it up, but it's pretty scand'lous. (Leave a comment if you want me to post it). The kids got way into it. They had a great group discussion. Well, some of the kids had an excellent group discussion. Half probably said nothing. But, I think it was bearable for them to watch, at least. Entertaining at the very worst.

Lastly, I told them to pair up and grab two characters from one pile and a conflict from the other. They then had to write a dialogue where the reader had to figure out what the people were like and what was going on without explicitly saying it. It was pretty successful. After they wrote them, they switched with another group and answered some questions (the same kind of questions I had been asking from the beginning). It was good. Some of the stories were pretty good. This one kid, Jonathan, is real quiet but way beyond the level of our class. He is going into 10th grade I believe, but dropped out of school for a year. He's been shy and has not made many friends. Today, though, he led his group (they had the only group of 3) and they had a real interesting story. It was a corrupt cop and law-abiding cop at a car accident (they picked those randomly). Neilsen, another kid in the group, said he wanted to read the story, but kept stumbling because Jonathan wrote it. At one point, Neilsen said, "none of . . . none of . . . is that a p?" to Jonathan. Jonathan took it and read it, he said something to the effect of, "hey, none of your . . . fucking business" which was what he wrote. That was fine. I told them the characters could swear if it was necessary and was what the character was like. He ended up reading the rest of it with other swears and stuff, but it was a good story and I think the other kids actually listened to it. Since he's so nice and shy, a lot of the, well, let's say, more assertive kids kind of overshadow him. He had a good moment where he stepped up and did a good job.

That's all for now. I have to take a shower, I've got a lady comin' over *wink wink*. Kelly's flying in tonight at 10. I'm stoked. It'll be fun. Plus, today was really my last day teaching for the summer. I just have one more class at Harvard and then we have a big ole party at Pizzeria Uno's. We had one about month ago and it was sweet. They bought probably 60 pizzas over the course of 3 or 4 hours, and endless soda. We have to pay for our own booze. Although, at the beginning of the year, they had a party and I actually got a little buzzed from it. They had so much food and alcohol it was actually strange.

Hey, since I talk to almost no one that I know from the Midwest, leave some comments and ask me some direct questions about what it's like out here. Plus, it'd be good to hear from you.