Crossroads School: Fragments

In my Film Studies class, about Citizen Kane (the first movie we watched in there):

"I don't get that movie at all... Something about a newspaper, Rosebud is a sled, I don't know...!" -K/D

Ah, if only you could hear the tone as well. It was absolutely hilarious, the desperate confusion and yet clarity with which he spoke.

* * *

One of my 11th-graders (Sweetpea), upon hearing about the Don Imus comments: "I didn't think what he said was that bad. I mean, I'm friends with white people and I know that you guys ain't racist. You just can't help bein' crazy."

* * *

An actual conversation that took place in class (as near to verbatim as I can remember it):

Me: "Do you know what the ones who skipped out on the draft and ran to Canada were called? ... ... Draft dodgers." (For some reason, after this explanation, I mentioned that Clinton was a draft dodger.)
LazyJ: "Ms. B, if Clinton ran for president again, would you vote for him? No, wait, are you going to vote for Hillary?"
Sweetpea: "Of course she is! Because she's a woman. Just like I'm voting for Obama because he's black."

I leapt in at this point to assure my students that I do not vote in accordance to skin color or physical sex and that they most certainly shouldn't either. We talked that out for a few moments, and then I posed the question of whether they thought a woman or a black man would be appointed to the office of president first.

All of my African American students immediately asserted that a woman would be voted in first. My other students didn't really respond. Then, LazyJ specified that he felt a black woman needs to be president before a black man ever is.

They're not voters yet, but they're going to be. Finding out their opinions was quite interesting.

* * *

We've lost another math teacher. I swear, the math position at my school is like the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts: apparently dangerous and it never stays filled. It's a real shame too, because this latest teacher was really doing a lot of good.

Two Links for Readers

Well, best start hiding your books. The Firemen are on their way:

Publisher makes lite work of the classics. For those of you who don't click on the link, allow me to say that this publisher got the brilliant idea to publish "Compact Editions" of class works such as Moby Dick, Anna Karenina, David Copperfield, etc. This means, essentially, that they're eliminating 40% of the books in order to make them more accessible.

Frankly, this is bullshit. As a writer, I am emphatically against other people deciding what does and does not belong in the final editions of my works. Note, however! I do recognize the value of editing, but not such mass butchery. If you don't want to read all of a book, skim. Don't permit someone to fix these books arbitrarily, cutting out entire subplots, chapters, etc., in the name of making something more "accessible." Some of the books on the publisher's list aren't even that complicated or inaccessible in the first place!

Argh. And no, I don't agree with abridged versions either.

Link found via this post on pegkerr's livejournal.


* * *

My best friend (crowley) provided this humorous link:
How To Use Analogies and Metaphors In Your Essay and Get National Fame.

I can't even choose which one is my favorite: there are too many horrible and equally amusing ones! I would really appreciate the creativity spent in coming up with these if they were intentional. The thought that they're unintentional would almost be too much to bear if I hadn't spent the last 8 months teaching high school English.

( The list, reproduced for you here... )