Mrs. Stubbs's English Blog: Two Weeks to Go for Term One

Well, we just finished one of our busier weeks for the term, and I'm hoping that this week will be a bit more calm (though goodness knows that it's usually not). Lots of projects and end of unit assessments came in, we had an assembly in the middle of the week, and we started into new units. Needless to say, I have lots to correct, so I'll be using my Sunday for that.

Let's start with English 9. We have finally finished with Flowers for Algernon, so we took the test on Thursday. On Friday we began brainstorming ideas for a complex paper that will analyze symbolism and theme. I walk them through every step, so this coming week we will outline it and write it. I do all of this in class so that if they have questions, I'm immediately available to answer them. We'll then compare and contrast the themes in Flowers with that of a short movie.

In English 9, we completed an online vocabulary quiz on Monday, turned in our Type 4 Beowulf Eulogies on Tuesday, worked on the Coats of Arms/Type 3 paragraph, and turned in the independent reading projects on Friday. I gave them this weekend off because that was a tremendous amount of work! In the meantime, we started the "Prologue" for The Canterbury Tales, which we read in class together. We will continue and finish it this coming week, along with a sampling of one of the tales. They were very happy to move from the rows of desks for assessment back into their "pods" (yes, I call them pod-people).

As mentioned, we had an assembly on Wednesday to listen to motivational speaker Joel Penton, who is a former football player at Ohio State. One of my favorite moments was when he brought a current student of mine out of the crowd to stand next to him (and harrass him just a bit as a UofM fan).

Finally, just to share, I had a fabulous experience yesterday. I drove down to Bowling Green State University in Ohio to visit AHS alum RJ Seibert. He was very excited to make the drum corp for the BGSU band, and since his school was playing my alma mater, it seemed like a great opportunity to go visit. Here is RJ marching into the stadium:

After we watched the pre-game show, the first half, and the half-time show, we were freezing to death so we went to the car and toured their campus. It's very pretty and clean, and we had a good time getting out of the car to walk a little bit of it. After the game was over, RJ met up with us and gave us a "backstage" tour of the music building. I think he donated about two hours to showing us around, which we really appreciated! He was a perfect host and showed my son how to play many of the percussion instruments, plus we got to walk backstage in one of the theaters that was being set up for a concert, and then he took us to a music lab where the keyboards are connected to computers and they can do all sorts of fancy, fabulous things:

Here's RJ showing my son what they can do in this lab.

We had such a good time, and what a wonderful way to see the success that Airport alumni have when they leave us. RJ is a credit to his family, to ACS, and to his community. What a great Saturday!

I hope everyone has a great Sunday, and an even better week! Enjoy!