what are you doing up?

Look at the post time.  This isn't a good idea.  Go back to sleep.

october 18

JOURNAL TOPIC:
We attach a lot of importance to achievements like making money, or getting famous, or even a high G.P.A.  What is your greatest accomplishment so far?  Agree or disagree with Emerson: "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. This essay ain't for children
3. Pro Tools: Mind maps
4. Preview: Brain with 72 legs

HW:
1. Post something interesting about the Literature Analysis book you're currently reading (title: SOMETHING INTERESTING ABOUT THE BOOK I'M READING)
2. Research mind map tools and come to class tomorrow (Wednesday) prepared to advocate for one

october 17

JOURNAL TOPIC:
Choose your own.  What's on your mind?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Self-Reliance: Notes about Literature Analysis and Big Questions
3. Self-Reliance: Notes about resumes and cover letters

HW:
Have you done Literature Analysis #2?  Select a book for Literature Analysis #3 and post about your choice tonight.

october 14

This morning I was preparing for class when I kept getting interrupted.  It occurred to me that all of our communication-- and sometimes, even the way we see each other-- are products of our culture, our environment, where we live, and what we have to do every day.

As I struggled to regain my focus on today's class, I found myself wondering what Ralph Waldo Emerson would have to say about this.  It's all good and fine to study the "Romantics" or the "Transcendentalists" as a unit of an American Literature class, but does his thinking still apply today or was he just another product of his time, a museum relic that reminds us of what no longer exists?

I'm going to think on this more over the weekend.

In the meantime, it's now 8:24 AM and students are walking in.  How can I make a meaningful connection between where we've been and where we're going in our thinking?

How about this:  we're learning about language and American storytelling.  The presidential election is giving a master class.  The candidates are symptoms, products of the organizations that nominated them, and they speak speak to motivate their target audiences.  But for all the talk it's 1.0.  None of us feel like we're part of a Democratic Dialogue that might actually lead the candidates or the public to greater understanding or better policy.

So, this period, we get our say.  Please take out a piece of paper and write either/both candidates a letter in which you:

• summarize what you understand about them so far
• evaluate them-- yes, JUDGE them-- for their speech and actions as you understand them
• tell them what you need them to know about your future and their role in it

Then we'll have a conversation.

And I'll think more on Emerson and the rest over the weekend.

emerson on self-reliance

Self-Reliance

from Essays: First Series (1841)

(Republished with gratitude from http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm)

"Ne te quaesiveris extra."

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
           Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune

Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.

ESSAY II Self-Reliance
I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come

october 13

JOURNAL TOPIC:

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”  What does this mean to you?  How can you do this in a world that seems to pressure you in so many ways to be something else?


AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. "Art of Hosting" quiz
3. Vocabulary Q&A
4. Independent work/collaboration time

• yesterday's work
• preview Emerson's "On Self-Reliance"

5. Post. (Post. Post.)

october 12

I won't be in class today.  Since we talked yesterday about creating community online and offline, and since this course is all about the stories we Americans tell, and since the best way to help other people feel comfortable to disclose their thoughts and feelings is to disclose our own, I'm suggesting that today we do something a little different.  Below is a prompt designed to get you thinking by sharing something I'm thinking.  I'm asking that you do three things with it:

1. Please write about it in your journal.
2. Please comment to this post (you can use what you write in your journal, or share a shorter version)
3. Please post to your blog about it (title: MY AMERICAN VOICE) -- you can share what you wrote in your journal, you can think out loud about the democratic process we use in this course, you can think about other situations in which you have had to decide whether to speak up or stay silent, or you can add to the topic by adding your own flavor.  Please make sure to use at least three of the principles you learned by reading "The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online" and please get at least five people to comment to your post.  You can share your blog link via text/email/social media, you can find other members' blogs and comment to theirs with a link to your own, or you can invite people the old-fashioned way-- walk up and ask them in person! :)

MY AMERICAN VOICE
When is it important to speak up, and when is it important to observe quietly?

I'm feeling conflicted and I'm interested in your perspectives.  I noticed that the course blog just tipped 30k page views.  I feel a responsibility as an American teaching a course with the word "American" in the title.  Much of the literature we read focuses on political action and self-actualization.  I am aware that we are in the final month of a presidential election that has very big consequences.  I am also aware that public school teachers are discouraged from expressing opinions about politics in view of students.

So: when do you speak up?  Do you consider it a responsibility or an inconvenience?  Do you speak up when you see someone weak being bullied or abused by someone strong?  Do you speak up when you see someone taking out their temper on another person?  Do you speak up when you see someone cheating (in school or in a relationship)?  Do you speak up when you see someone being unkind?

How do you speak up?  Are your words necessary, true, kind, and timely?  Do you think before you speak?  Do you reflect on your words after you say them?  How would other people describe the way you talk?

There is no right or wrong here.  There is no "how to" lesson.  This is an opportunity for all of us to learn from each other.  I'm interested in your thoughts.  My prediction is that we will all learn something important.