Checking in with how the year is going

I've taken a Sick Day this week, the result of a bad cold that I can't seem to shake. I went back today, but it was probably too early, because I left with a fever up over 100 in the afternoon after my last class. I'm not sure if I'll make it in tomorrow; my dept head tells me I shouldn't, but I don't want to be charged for another "occasion" (an instance when you're out) for the same illness just because I tried to go back too soon. Plus, I'll be out next week for my sister's wedding (non-instructional days, though), and I don't want to develop some sort of reputation for being out too much.

Persepolis is coming to a close with the 9th graders. The book has been a great teach, and this has been the best time I've had teaching it. This is perhaps because I'm actually, really teaching it this year, when I feel like in the past, because it was at the end of the year, I spent more time assigning it and making sure they read it. It turns out, it's a pretty tough book, a perfect text for figuring out literal versus inferential and making students get inside the mind of the author. Just like, say, To Kill a Mockingbird, the kids have to analyze what a child is thinking about complex issues, and this is challenging. We are so quick to assign books with child narrators because it might be 'easier', but it's not -- there's a whole new level of understanding and analysis the kids have to break down.

Now we're onto research, which is hella frustrating in a school without much technology. That's a drawback with working so lockstep with colleagues on the same courseteam - the lack of resources. We basically have one computer lab available, so we clearly can't all use it at the same time. So, my research might be done with... I don't know. And that's what it feels like too often. I have never figured out a good way to do research, especially when 350 9th graders (100 of them mine) are working on similar research projects at once.

With the seniors, we are finishing up James Baldwin. I veered away from my schedule a little bit towards the end of the unit but am doing a good job of getting back on track. On Friday, students will be turning in their essays written in the style of James Baldwin. Next Friday, they'll be turning in their 1500-word analytic essays tracing an idea of Baldwin's through three of his essays. We studied Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, and The Fire Next Time, so we covered about ten years of Baldwin's work, and, again, I'm amazed he's not taught more in U.S. schools. Frankly, I think I will teach his work every year from now on. It's that visceral, that good, plus that approachable and analyzable for high school students. (By the way, that last sentence, with all its anaphora, was written in the style of Baldwin.)