I found this ancient set of crayons 🖍 in the faculty room at work. I work as an English and Ethics teacher at a Pre-K through Twelfth-grade independent school in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens. The school is old and worn, and I sometimes find artifacts in drawers or closets. Hence, this find. Notice the font for “orange” on the right hand of the crayon in the bottom right hand of this photograph. #coloringtime #prangcrayons
Stones of Erasmus — Just plain good writing, teaching, thinking, doing, making, being, dreaming, seeing, feeling, building, creating, reading
11.12.18
Found Object: Ancient Set of Crayons Found at Garden School
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I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
11.11.18
Lesson Plan: Teaching the Industrial Revolution Using William Blake’s poem “London”
But I like my students to work with primary sources. It's important to show students how historical events mattered to the people living at that time. What would it have been like to live in London at that time?
So I planned two 45 minute lessons (total of 90 minutes) to look at William Blake's poem "London". I have taught Blake before - but for this lesson, I wanted to show how Blake use poetry to criticize society and the inherent hypocrisy he witnessed in 1790s London when he was living the capital.
We read the poem together and I made sure students see what the poem looked like when Blake published it. One cool thing about Blake is that he was a printmaker and he self-published all of his own books - and illustrated them.
We look at the illustrated version and I ask students to point out what they notice. We then read the poem together and then using a document camera we work on annotating the text. I have prepared a bunch of my own annotations to guide the process but I make sure that students add their own insights as well!
After we annotate the text kids work in small groups to work on further diving into the text using 11 reading comprehension questions I prepared. They then report back and we have a class discussion using 9 discussion questions I came up with to help students make more connections from the text to the world.
I'm proud of my students thinking and I'm thinking if you want to try teaching "London" to your student you can download the resource I packaged as a printable PDF on Teachers Pay Teachers.
I hope you enjoy using this resource and of course I'd love to know what you think. Leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
3.11.18
Aesthetic Thursday: A Dandelion Flower Grows on the Side of the Fall River Road in the Rocky Mountain National Park
I took this photograph back in the Summer of 2008 - I had discovered this field of dandelions on the Fall River Road, a windy road in the Rocky Mountains - west of Fort Collins. I think I got a decent shot of the flower - which I can’t identify but let’s call it a Rocky Mountain Dandelion.
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Labels:
flowers,
grass,
green,
happiness,
instagram,
journal,
nature,
outdoors,
photo,
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I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
Compare and Contrast: How the Song "Teenage Dirtbag" was made into a Choir Version to Advance a Documentary on Bullying in American Schools
"Teenage Dirtbag"
It's a rather heteronormative narrative - but I have a crush on this song - maybe because the song talks about "getting into tube socks" and references "Iron Maiden" - and its an elegy to unrequited love - with a twist at the end. This is to all the teenage dirtbags out there. Also - Wheatus's song was the song attached to the movie Loser - as you can see by the music video.
A couple of years ago I went to a professional development workshop on peer-to-peer bullying in American schools. The presenters screened the documentary film Bully. The opening song is a choir version of "Teenage Dirtbag". I immediately recognized it and I thought it was an apt song to cover the phenomenon of bullying as it relates to school life.
As a teacher, I often encounter bullying. What pains me the most about bullying is that often the targets of bullying are exceptional children, "the teenage dirtbags" that often go unnoticed.
Choral Version of "Teenage Dirtbag"
Watch the following choir version and hearken to the facts. We can be a voice for those who are tormented because they are gay, queer, brown, different, black, non-gender conforming, or just don't fit in (according to whatever social norms are popular right now).
It's a rather heteronormative narrative - but I have a crush on this song - maybe because the song talks about "getting into tube socks" and references "Iron Maiden" - and its an elegy to unrequited love - with a twist at the end. This is to all the teenage dirtbags out there. Also - Wheatus's song was the song attached to the movie Loser - as you can see by the music video.
A couple of years ago I went to a professional development workshop on peer-to-peer bullying in American schools. The presenters screened the documentary film Bully. The opening song is a choir version of "Teenage Dirtbag". I immediately recognized it and I thought it was an apt song to cover the phenomenon of bullying as it relates to school life.
As a teacher, I often encounter bullying. What pains me the most about bullying is that often the targets of bullying are exceptional children, "the teenage dirtbags" that often go unnoticed.
Choral Version of "Teenage Dirtbag"
Watch the following choir version and hearken to the facts. We can be a voice for those who are tormented because they are gay, queer, brown, different, black, non-gender conforming, or just don't fit in (according to whatever social norms are popular right now).
Labels:
bullying,
documentary,
high school,
Music,
Video & Media
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
31.10.18
Third Grader Channels Pennywise the Clown at the Annual Halloween Parade in Jackson Heights, Queens
Annual Jackson Heights Halloween Parade
In Jackson Heights, every year on Halloween, the local "Beautification Society" hosts a parade on 37th Avenue. My school participates, so I have, for the last several years, marched in the parade. I love seeing the kids and adults who have lined the street, mostly dressed up and in a spirit of "being costumed." I feel like when kids, especially, wear costumes, it can be a moment to channel creative energy and to pretend to be someone you're not.
Third Grader Channels Pennywise the Clown
One kid I met on the route was dressed up as Pennywise the Clown — there were several permutations of this character, a malevolent force in Stephen King's novel-made-movie IT. I was struck by this Third-grader wild abandon into the role, like the video, posted below, demonstrates. Happy Halloween!
In Jackson Heights, every year on Halloween, the local "Beautification Society" hosts a parade on 37th Avenue. My school participates, so I have, for the last several years, marched in the parade. I love seeing the kids and adults who have lined the street, mostly dressed up and in a spirit of "being costumed." I feel like when kids, especially, wear costumes, it can be a moment to channel creative energy and to pretend to be someone you're not.
Third Grader Channels Pennywise the Clown
One kid I met on the route was dressed up as Pennywise the Clown — there were several permutations of this character, a malevolent force in Stephen King's novel-made-movie IT. I was struck by this Third-grader wild abandon into the role, like the video, posted below, demonstrates. Happy Halloween!
Labels:
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imagination,
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Queens,
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I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
29.10.18
Two Photographs: Push (推) and Pull (拉)
I was walking on Bowery on a Fall day in Lower Manhattan and I was struck by the simplicity (and pragmatism) of these two opposite facing signs stuck to a store window written in Mandarin Chinese and English.
"Push" 推 |
"Pull" 拉 |
Labels:
Art & Music,
language,
new york city,
photograph,
pull,
push
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
28.10.18
GIF: Teachers Do Lunch Duty!
I don't like doing lunch duty. However, I love the teachers who I share lunch duty responsibilities with every day. One teacher has been a teacher for fifty years. That's an accomplishment. The other teacher is my work wife. We're married according to the holy vows of accredited teacher-marriage. The other teacher is my roommate. We share a room, boo. And the last teacher is a science teacher who enjoys eating his lunch with us. Love Y'all! *besos*
Labels:
duty,
gif,
lunch,
school,
Teaching & Education
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
27.10.18
On a Trip to Mystic, Connecticut I Ran into Versions of American History
Can you see Manhattan? |
So, what did we do in Mystic? We stayed at the Mystic Seaport Museum which is really a cool place - much more relaxed than any museum I have been to in a long time. It is a reconstructed nineteenth-century seaport town. It's replete with an apothecary, a maritime general store, a slew of interpreters who pamper you with their stories of sea life, whale blubber stories, and facts about forecastles, moorings, and ghosts. Our crew — including me — slept on the Joseph Conrad — which is a wooden Danish training vessel that at one point sunk — killing twenty-two boys — then resurrected from the sea — then a U.S. President salvaged it and christened it as a National Historic Landmark - so it is permanently moored at the Seaport. I like history, and I like even more how history gets told, gets packaged, and is applied to how we think about the world we live in today.
There is the ship Amistad moored at Mystic. It's a slave ship that was the site of a slave rebellion. Today it sits gleaming and speaks of liberty and the promise of change. However, its rewarding story belies the tragedy of the Middle Passage that claimed millions. Mystic also has a reconstructed version of the Mayflower - it is called the Mayflower II, and it is being revamped and polished for a celebration in 2020 celebrating the original ship's voyage four hundred years ago. The kids on our trip know these stories, and they see in these stories a symbol of religious freedom. However, I am confident that the Europeans who came to the New World were not as pure in their pursuit of liberty and the right to equality as we would like to paint them as in the history books.
You can also see a whaling ship in Mystic - and if you are a good sailor, you might get to talk to a re-enactor. We met a jolly lady who was presenting herself as an immigrant to Mystic who arrived in the 1870s. She had left Alaska after it was sold by the Russians to the United States. She spoke of her voyage, a trip from the islands of Alaska, down to Panama, through the canal, past Jamaica, and then up the Atlantic coast to Long Island Sound. I liked hanging out with the kids. They're city kids — most of the lot — so they were into running around, kicking a soccer ball on the village green - and feeling the cold October air in their face. It is kinda crazy to be chaperoning twelve-year-old kids for forty-eight hours straight, but I loved their energy. Kids that age are full of energy but no focus. It's refreshing.
Hey. If you know all the answers, then you're a fool, right?
There is the ship Amistad moored at Mystic. It's a slave ship that was the site of a slave rebellion. Today it sits gleaming and speaks of liberty and the promise of change. However, its rewarding story belies the tragedy of the Middle Passage that claimed millions. Mystic also has a reconstructed version of the Mayflower - it is called the Mayflower II, and it is being revamped and polished for a celebration in 2020 celebrating the original ship's voyage four hundred years ago. The kids on our trip know these stories, and they see in these stories a symbol of religious freedom. However, I am confident that the Europeans who came to the New World were not as pure in their pursuit of liberty and the right to equality as we would like to paint them as in the history books.
You can also see a whaling ship in Mystic - and if you are a good sailor, you might get to talk to a re-enactor. We met a jolly lady who was presenting herself as an immigrant to Mystic who arrived in the 1870s. She had left Alaska after it was sold by the Russians to the United States. She spoke of her voyage, a trip from the islands of Alaska, down to Panama, through the canal, past Jamaica, and then up the Atlantic coast to Long Island Sound. I liked hanging out with the kids. They're city kids — most of the lot — so they were into running around, kicking a soccer ball on the village green - and feeling the cold October air in their face. It is kinda crazy to be chaperoning twelve-year-old kids for forty-eight hours straight, but I loved their energy. Kids that age are full of energy but no focus. It's refreshing.
Hey. If you know all the answers, then you're a fool, right?
Image Source: Greig Roselli © 2018
Labels:
Connecticut,
education,
field trip,
history,
kids,
mystic,
school,
Teaching & Education
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
8.10.18
Travel Diary: Waiting for the Train in Hudson, New York
In this post, I post a video of my Mom and me waiting for the train — we saw the Adirondack pass through, and then, later, we hopped onto the Empire Service.
Watching the New York-bound Adirondack Amtrak train load up passengers and disembark. It left us alone on the platform waiting for the Empire Service to Poughkeepsie.
Hudson, NY
Hudson boasts a small platform for Amtrack trains north of New York City. Because of its proximity to the city and to the shores of the Hudson station, the little station serves three Amtrak lines to Vermont, Montreal, Niagara Falls, and Toronto, respectively. The town itself is quaint, and it boasts a charming business district.
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I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
29.9.18
With the Ubiquity of Electronic Devices That Can Seamlessly Stream Any Content Folks Are Going to Digital Media for All Their Heartache Problems
I went to the bank today to cash a money order. There was a twenty-person long line. I almost bailed on the line but I decided to wait it out. "Twenty-minute wait - right? I can do it."
I was amused by a tween who was sitting in the windowsill intent on his Smartphone. He was watching an animated video with a voiceover. The voice was a woman's. She was talking about a breakup with her boyfriend. He had delivered the news through a long text *animation of a long text*. She was heartbroken *animation of a heart breaking in two*. The voiceover was very adult sounding and since the tween hadn't plugged in his earbuds the volume was audible. He never looked up from his screen. Watching the tween watching his phone it was like he was externalizing his inner turmoil for everyone to see and hear. The voiceover was so audible and the tween's intent stare so intense - it was the muse-en-scene of a performance piece. Maybe the tween had had a recent breakup with a girl and in his confusion and heartache, he googled YouTube videos related to breaking up. He wasn't reading an article in a magazine nor was he talking to a friend - he was watching a video that he and I and everyone in the damn line could hear. By the time I reached the cashier and scooped up my money - I turned around to see if he was still sitting in the windowsill. It was empty. So long fellow. I hope time heals a broken heart.
Labels:
breakup,
heartache,
Journal & Rants,
performance,
tween,
YouTube
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
26.9.18
Do You Have a Comfort Pose?
My Comfort Pose. It's called chin-tucked-in-a-turtleneck pose. |
I have several comfort poses, actually. Some I've abandoned. Others I’ve kept on. In high school, for example, I carried books close to my chest. All the time. No matter where I was I had a hunky book attached to me. I don't traverse the traffic of my adult life in exactly the same way. Now, I go to my books. I keep them around. I put them in satchels or in the bathroom. I'm a teacher so I've taken to creating a space in my classroom where I showcase books. It’s a professional showcase. But it’s also for comfort.
Most of us want to be comforted so we tend to comfort ourselves in the absence of other's care. And with others, we play with the scripts that comforted us and we play around with what works - and abandon what doesn't.
Hey! What's your comfort pose? I'd love to know in the comments.
Labels:
comfort,
Journal & Rants,
photograph,
posture,
psychology
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
25.9.18
Forty-Three Year Anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show
"Don't Dream it. Be it."
Dr. Frankenfurter, The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Patricia Quinn, Tim Curry, and Nell Campbell in The Rocky Horror Picture Show © 1975 |
Labels:
cinema,
Movies & TV,
quotes,
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
I am an educator and a writer. I was born in Louisiana and I now live in the Big Apple. My heart beats to the rhythm of "Ain't No Place to Pee on Mardi Gras Day". My style is of the hot sauce variety. I love philosophy sprinkles and a hot cup of café au lait.
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