Of Work and Poets

Today - the first Monday of September - is a national holiday - LABOR DAY.  The mail will not run today, the banks are closed, and at least some of your parents are probably home from work.  What is Labor Day and how did it become a holiday?

Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement - something we have not talked about yet, but it is on the horizon.  It is a day set aside to celebrate the contributions of American workers to the strength and prosperity of this country.  The first Labor Day was celebrated in New York in 1882 and in the next three years it grew in popularity to become a "working man's" holiday throughout the entire country.

Today I heard a poem on the radio by our new Poet Laureate, Philip Levine.  He is known as the poet of the 'industrial heartland' and the poem I heard is titled 'What Work Is'.  You can hear the entire interview and Levine reading the poem HERE.  If you want to hear more about his work when he was younger you can listen to Terry Gross's interview HERE.   (Whenever you have the opportunity to hear a poet read his own work take advantage!)

What Work Is

We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is—if you’re

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

Feeling the light rain falling like mist

into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother

ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,

and of course it’s someone else’s brother,

narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin

that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

a man is waiting who will say, “No,

we’re not hiring today,” for any

reason he wants. You love your brother,

now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,

who’s not beside you or behind or

ahead because he’s home trying to   

sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.

Works eight hours a night so he can sing

Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him

you loved him, held his wide shoulders,

opened your eyes wide and said those words,

and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never

done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you’re too young or too dumb,

not because you’re jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,   

just because you don’t know what work is.

Blog Tools

You will notice I made some changes to the blog.  I want it to be useful to you.  In the right hand column there is a RSS feed for This Day in History from the History Channel.  You can click on the link and see other events that happened on this day.

Just below that you will see a link - History According to Bob.  Bob Packett is a history professor and he publishes free history podcasts.  Our family listens to him frequently and we own several of his cds.  He is currently in the midst of a series on the Civil War, and he also just released a cd collection of his French and Indian War podcasts.  His podcasts are usually 10 minutes each or less and I highly recommend them!

I have also added an email gadget.  Each of you are already signed up to recieve the posts to your email accounts, but now if your parents also want to recieve posts they can sign up for them using this gadget.  (This one allows for an unlimited number of email addresses.)

There is also a Featured Political Cartoon.  When I can find appropriate cartoons I will post cartoons from the time period we are studying otherwise they will be current ones.

You will also find a link to the Roadmap Website for your convenience.

September 3, 1783

You'll be reading about it before you know it... and it happened exactly 228 years ago.  The Treaty of Paris was signed on THIS DAY IN HISTORY!  (It ended the Revolutionary War.)

French and Indian War Map

Thank you, Trey for sharing this map.  I think you can click on it to make it larger...

How many of you know how to comment on a blog?  If you do, check in to this post with a 'Got it!' or 'Hello'.  I'm trying to figure out how much technology you guys can handle and what your comfort levels are.

Opportunity Grades

I have finalized my grading scale for your opporunities.  This scale will be in effect for the first semester or until I publicize a change.  I estimate that students will take around 28 opportunities during the year.  I will calculate their grade based on their 20 highest scores.  Opportunities are a total of 25% of a students grade.

I am not going to change the difficulty of the questions, but I am giving students who achieve at least 1/2 of the points of each opportunity (a 2 or above) more grace as shown below.  I'm doing this while you are learning a new way of reading and studying.  Over the next few weeks students who recieve more than two or three of scores below a 2 either aren't doing the Active Reading style encouraged or need further assistance.  I will be seeking out those students privately. 

A+  (4)
A    (3.5)
A-   (3)
B+  (2.5)
C    (2)
C-   (1.5)
D    (1)
D-  (.5)
F    (0)

Occasionally I'm going to misword a question or write something that could be easily misunderstood.  If I see a pattern of students misunderstand a question or a portion of a question I will throw out that question/point.  If that is the case the following grading system will apply based on a 3 point scale:

A+  (none awarded unless all other answers or parts are EXCEPTIONAL!)
A    (3)
A-   (2.5)
B     (2)
B-   (1.5)
C    (1)
D+  (.5)
D    (0) - only if the student attempted to answer.  If no attempt was made an F will be given even if a point/question is thrown out.

If you have questions or concerns please contact me.

Opportunities 1 & 2

This post is to show you what my expectations were for the last two opportunities that you have taken and encourage you to dig in for the upcoming 3rd.  I thought my map might amuse you - I did not practice drawing the map as I asked you guys to do - you can tell I really don't know what Central America, South America and Canada look like - I just have a vague concept from memory.  Some indian tribes and explorers I confuse and am unsure about without looking - still!

Opportunity 1


For the last opportunity I gave you a list of possible questions - and gave you a hint to be prepared to answer not just the easy ones.  (That meant be prepared to answer the harder ones!)  As you can see below all of the information to answer this question was in the text - I've provided page numbers for your convenience.  You will notice however that all of the information is not on the same page - it's not a simple look at the question, find that part of the text and copy down the answer.  You will not have any (very few at least) questions like that in the next two years.

That's why its' VERY, VERY important that you begin to learn to read in a different way.  I know that it is possible for every one of you to read this weeks Bennett homework in one hour or less.  Very few of you (maybe none - I certainly can't) can read it once in an hour or less and be able to retain the information and answer the questions (which requires you to grasp the ideas and think about what you've read).  That's why I'm asking you to do different levels of reading.  I expect you to spend at least 3 hours each week - reading slowly for understanding/misunderstanding, scan reading for information (timeline/important people), and a deeper reading of portions of the text working through your questions. 

Please read your text slowly - break it into small bites/bytes.  After each one stop and see if you can repeat to yourself what you just read.  Then move onto the next chunk taking breaks every 25 minutes.  This is how you read the text the first time.  That 'repeating to yourself' has a special name - 'narrating'.  In order for you to learn something your brain actually goes through a physical change.  You can retain information for a short period without your brain making the effort to 'change', but then it falls out like sand in a sieve!  When you narrate (a form of paraphrasing) your brain must act on what you've read.  That acting causes a physical change in your brain which causes you to LEARN not just retain.  You then own it - you've made it yours!

This is ACTIVE reading not PASSIVE reading.

PLEASE DON'T BE A PASSIVE READER!
Opportunity 2

Propaganda & Doth

(This word was on more than one persons vocabulary list this week!)

(Someone asked in class if this poster was a political cartoon.  I said that it was a better example of propaganda)

Propaganda
Communicating information in a way that tries to influence the opinion of your audience.  Propaganda is not impartial or objective.  There is an agenda being promoted, either subtly or overtly (look those words up if needed).  By definition propaganda is technically a neutral term - you could be influencing your audience for their good.  The connotation (look it up) of this word now, however, thanks to it's most manipulative masters like Hitler, Mussolini, Mao Tse Tung and currently Kim Jong-il is negative.  But it's not just the bad guys who used it - the US produced a lot of propaganda during WWII so that citizens would support the war effort and buy US War Bonds among other things.  (I was surprised recently to find this message even in reruns of Lassie!)  You could argue that Benjamin Franklin’s political cartoon of the segmented snake was propaganda.

Doth

Ok, this one requires a little grammar (something I'm just beginning to see the value and worth of).  'Doth' is a present tense of the word 'do'.  It is a holdover from Old or Middle English.  You'll hear it in familiar quotes like this one from Shakespeare:  "The lady doth protest too much," or in poems like "How doth your garden grow?".  Sometimes it is used instead of puting a present tense 's' on a verb like in protest and sometimes it literally replaces the word does!  I'm curious whose word this was and where you read it.  Was it someone reading Irving?