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22803. arkymalarky - 11/3/2007 10:11:23 PM You can't possibly teach everything, so it's very easy to teach what you're familiar with. My weak area is modern lit, and AP is leaning more toward that, but the students' skills are what matters. The test will use obscure poems and passages anyway, even if the authors are well known. Spook can really give good teaching tips in that regard. 22804. arkymalarky - 11/3/2007 10:13:20 PM In fact, he has great tips in general and has helped Mose a lot. I thought she was going to go over the edge a few weeks ago, but she's doing better. My friend whose job she took doesn't miss it a bit. They will have to adjust that position next year or they're not going to be able to get anyone to fill it. 22805. arkymalarky - 11/3/2007 10:28:32 PM What do people here think should be absolutely required reading in high school? 22806. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:17:50 AM Catcher in the Rye 22807. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:19:21 AM I bought some EXCELLENT pain de mie today. Some surrender monkey from Bordeaux bought himself a specialty mill in Utah and opened two bakery cafes and a bistro in SF...
Tartines, baguettes, brioches ooo la la! 22808. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:24:38 AM I'm trying to recall some of the books assigned for summer reading..typically 4 assigned due first day of class...
A couple of Faulkners for sure
Senior year Ulysees may have been on the list
Red Badge of Courage 22809. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:25:38 AM We didn't read any Negro works tho Arky...perhaps you ought to sprinkle a little chocolate on there too!
22810. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:26:16 AM Invisible Man 22811. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:28:21 AM The Thanatos Syndrome.
If for no other reason than there's a scene at Parlange Plantation where I used to play as a child 22812. jexster - 11/4/2007 3:38:47 AM The Call of the Wild
Scarlet Letter 22813. Ms. No - 11/4/2007 4:26:39 AM Arky,
I'd love to get tips from Spook. Hell, I'd love to come "go to school" with the lot of you for a long weekend. I think I'll already be in the middle of classes next summer when you do your annual, though.
After taking today's tests I know exactly what you mean about obscure works by known authors. They had a Phyllis Wheatley poem that was pretty atypical of her...or, more to the point they were using her to highlight Englightenment Era themes, and that's not really what she was about. I mean, she's not particularly representative and especially not the piece they had us read. I just did the best I could through elimination of the two that wouldn't work at all and the mental coin toss over the other two answers.
I will say that I'm patting myself on the back for having signed up for the Linguistics course and the Standard Grammar and Usage this semester. I don't see how anyone could've passed the second exam without having studied Linguistics. Seriously, about 75% of that test was specialized knowledge and the whole time I'm sitting there gleefully answering questions on a subject I find fascinating but scratching my head over how they think most of it applies to what you actually teach in high school English classes --- unless they're thinking it should be a background for teaching ESL or something.
22814. arkymalarky - 11/4/2007 4:31:00 AM You can come absolutely anytime, No! We'll make a gathering if you plan a trip.
I can't imagine wrt the linguistics. My Enlgish major required one grammar course. I know more about grammar and linguistics from the Fray/Mote than anywhere else. 22815. arkymalarky - 11/4/2007 4:32:09 AM Jex, I thought about doing Invisible Man this year. I'm still thinking about it. 22816. arkymalarky - 11/4/2007 4:35:13 AM I never assigned summer readings in AP Enligsh. The kids deserve their summers as much as I do, and we read a whole lot during the year. They've been nervously eyeing The Brothers Karamazov on the bookshelf all fall, and a few have ventured to ask if we'd be reading it. They took it home Friday. They have a group discussion for a grade and an essay test on Candide, then we dive into Dostoevsky. 22817. wonkers2 - 11/4/2007 4:43:22 AM Leaves of Grass
Huckleberry Finn
Moby Dick
The Scarlett Letter
To Kill a Mockingbird
Some Hemingway short stories, e.g. "A Clean Well-lighted Place" "The Big Two-Hearted River"
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Faulkner
Eudora Welty's short stories
Flannery O'Connor
Carson McCullers
Crime and Punishment
The Brothers Karamazov
Some Edgar Alan Poe stories and poetry, eg "Anabel Lee"
George Orwell's "Shooting Elephants," "Animal Farm," 1984
Frost poems
Emily Dickinson poems
T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Edward Arlington Robinson poems
"The Invisible Man"
"Mutiny on the Bounty"
"Heart of Darkness"
"The Naked and the Dead"
22818. wonkers2 - 11/4/2007 4:47:26 AM "Rabbit Run"
"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"
"The Adventures of Augie March" (You could ask them to compare and contrast it with Huck Finn.)
"The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon
100 Years of Solitude
Don Quixote de La Mancha 22819. wonkers2 - 11/4/2007 4:51:08 AM Willa Cather's novels (my daughter loved them)
"The Sot Weed Factor" and short stories by John Barth
Salinger stories and "Catcher in the Rye" of course (Compare and contrast with Huck Finn and Augie March) 22820. wonkers2 - 11/4/2007 4:54:13 AM My suggestions go beyond Arky's "absolutely must reading" in high school. I read many of them in high school, and more later in a two semester American Lit class in college and more even later. Now I read mostly book reviews in the NYT and New York Review of Books. 22821. wonkers2 - 11/4/2007 5:45:15 AM Also, I would offer my English class an opportunity to read a few plays, e.g. Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," Tennessee Williams's "Glass Menagerie," and Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Commeth." 22822. arkymalarky - 11/4/2007 6:02:50 AM Great list Wonk!
I love Death of a Salesman, and I'm usually disappointed in how the kids respond to it.
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