Truthful Tuesday

I’ve always had a bit of a lyrical fascination with Bread’s song “If”.

“Why?” you may ask?

Well, because I’m a big fan of parallelism.

Huh?

It goes like this:

One line says “If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you?”

The If/Then statement relies on the repetition of the verb paint.

However, another line in the song begins “If a face can launch a thousand ships…”

With the same basic sentence structure (stop laughing, let me finish), the line SHOULD end “then why can’t I launch you?”

But no. David Gates opts for a more romantic (and infinitely less hilarious) line. Some nonsense like “where do I go?” or something. See, I’m not really sure how that line ends, because I’m always singing “Then why can’t I launch you?”

(I’m guessing you stopped reading after the fourth line or so. Such is Tumblr.)

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Seems that Anne is making an Existential statement about Tuesday and/or the truth.

Seems that Anne is making an Existential statement about Tuesday and/or the truth.

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Truthful Tuesday - Five-Paragraph Essays

A little while ago, Trey posted his disbelief that teachers still make kids write five-paragraph essays. And while I can understand his frustration that education hasn’t moved on since he (and I) were in school, as a high school English teacher, I am in a unique position to understand the merits of this practice. So, at the risk of sounding like “the man”, I’ll offer some thoughts on the five-paragraph essay.

By the time I get students in high school, most of them can manage the mechanics of writing (spelling, grammar, and punctuation), so the five-paragraph essay doesn’t focus on these. Instead, the single biggest issue these students have is the inability to focus their thoughts in order to make a clearly supported point or sustain a logically sequential argument. And these two skills are rapidly disappearing in the ADD generation as evidenced by our plummeting Math and Science scores (two disciplines which rely most heavily on logic and sequential arguments).

Taught correctly, the five paragraph essay allows students time to brainstorm, organize, write, and revise a piece of work that they are simply incapable of generating in a single burst. When mastered, the writing process is something that these students can take with them their entire lives and scale up as needed. After all, the exact same process is used on a five-paragraph essay as is used in college on a twenty-page paper or Master’s Thesis or in the business world on a PowerPoint presentation (hell, I even used it in this blog post).

Unfortunately, this process is seen as old and antiquated because in a world of brave new teaching strategies, it is the one carryover from previous generations. However, it is still around because it works. And while it seems strict and rigid and everyone complains about it, most of the complaints are because it’s a difficult skill to master and kids (and I won’t even say kids “these days” because it was the same when I was in school) are trained to give easy answers and essays require sustained attention and thought and are a multi-step process. The best thing I can do is reward them for using the process by giving them credit for every step and show them that in the end the process works.

So while the kids (and parents) mumble and grumble about writing a five-paragraph essay, the simple fact is this: in order to teach kids about how to write CONTENT as opposed to mechanics and to help foster organized and sequential thought, nothing better has come along. And I doubt anything ever will.

(And by the way Trey, no hard feelings about your post. I hear this ALL the time!) 

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Truthful Tuesday

I need someone to keep me from doing stupid things.

Strippers need not apply.

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Truthful Tuesday

  • I will be in Buffalo in four days (not like I’m counting or anything) and will get together with my family and some old friends and meet with my Thesis Advisors to complete this thing that I’ve been “working on” for over ten years. Finally. 
  • Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go to any of the Buffalo Sabres playoff games because, well, they didn’t make the playoffs. Do you think I jinxed them when, last July when they were signing their free agents, I announced that this June I would be at a Stanley Cup celebration in Buffalo?
  • I have no idea what I’m teaching tomorrow. I have my two small, low-level classes and they just finished research projects, presentations, and a paper. I don’t want to start anything new because we’ll be on vacation in three days and their attention span barely lasts from class to class, let alone over a week and a half. It may be movie time.
  • That’s enough truth for one day. Hope you could handle it all. 

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Truthful Tuesday

Good News:

  • I got a new lamp!

Bad News:

  • I need a root canal. 

Bad news, I think you’ve won this round…

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Truthful Tuesday

Sorry for all the reblogs, but you guys made my dash awesome today!

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Truthful Tuesday

I’ve been there

And you been here

But we ain’t had no time to drink that beer

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Truthful Tuesday

Harry Potter is the longest trilogy EVER!

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