LANGUAGE ARTS-NEW MEXICO

The Cell Phone Classics

From United Press International: 

Wordy classics retold in shorthand
LONDON, Nov. 18 (UPI) --

Some of the most complicated and wordy works of English literature are being compressed to fit the tiny screens of mobile telephones.

Imagine the labyrinth of plots in "Bleak House" and the epic verse of "Paradise Lost" slimmed down with the jerky speedwriting of text messages. The most famous line in "Hamlet" would read: 2b?Ntb?=? The ending to "Jane Eyre" -- MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus.

A texted summary of "Romeo and Juliet" would read:

FeudTween2hses--Montague& Capulet. RomeoM falls_<3w/_ JulietC@mary Secretly Bt R kils J's Coz&isbanishd. J fakes Death, As Part of Plan2b-w/R Bt_leter Bt It Nvr Reachs Him. Evry1confuzd-- bothLuvrs kil Emselves.

The service is being launched by the student phone service dot mobile, the London Guardian says. It has heavyweight backing from John Sutherland, the Lord Northcliffe professor emeritus of English literature at University College London.

Anna Quindlen on Teaching

Last week's Newsweek (November 28, 2005) has an excellent essay on teaching, by columnist Anna Quindlen.  Writing as a non-teacher to an audience of non-teachers, she makes a case for the importance of understanding and appreciating what teachers do. 

The Wages of Teaching

By Anna Quindlen

A couple of years ago I spent the day at an elementary school in New Jersey. It was a nice average school, a square and solid building with that patented classroom aroma of disinfectant and chalk, chock-full of reasonably well-behaved kids from middle-class families. I handled three classes, and by the time I staggered out the door I wanted to lie down for the rest of the day.

Teaching's the toughest job there is. In his new memoir, "Teacher Man," Frank McCourt recalls telling his students, "Teaching is harder than working on docks and warehouses." Not to mention writing a column. I can stare off into the middle distance with my chin in my hand any time. But you go mentally south for five minutes in front of a class of fifth graders, and you are sunk.

The average new teacher today makes just under $30,000 a year, which may not look too bad for a twentysomething with no mortgage and no kids. But soon enough the newbies realize that they can make more money and not work anywhere near as hard elsewhere. After a lifetime of hearing the old legends about cushy hours and summer vacations, they figure out that early mornings are for students who need extra help, evenings are for test corrections and lesson plans, and weekends and summers are for second and even third jobs to try to pay the bills.

According to the Department of Education, one in every five teachers leaves after the first year, and almost twice as many leave within three. If any business had that rate of turnover, someone would do something smart and strategic to fix it. This isn't any business. It's the most important business around, the gardeners of the landscape of the human race

Read the rest here.

English Expo XVII

It's not too early to begin thinking about attending English Expo.  Sponsored by the New Mexico Council of Teachers of English, English Expo provides an opportunity for middle school and high school students to compete in 23 different events.  Contests range from poetry writing to storytelling to poster design to proofreading.  This year's Expo will be held on Saturday, February 26, 2006, at La Cueva High School in Albuquerque.  For more information, click here.

American Life in Poetry, November 25, 2005

American Life in Poetry is a weekly column featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet, introduced by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  Consider sharing Kooser's selections with your students.

American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Massachusetts poet J. Lorraine Brown has used an unusual image in "Tintype on the Pond, 1925." This poem, like many others, offers us a unique experience, presented as a gift, for us to respond to as we will. We need not ferret out a hidden message. How many of us will recall this little scene the next time we see ice skates or a Sunday-dinner roast?

Tintype on the Pond, 1925

Believe it or not,
the old woman said,
and I tried to picture it:
a girl,
the polished white ribs of a roast
tied to her boots with twine,
the twine coated with candle wax
so she could glide
uninterrupted across the ice--
my mother,
skating on bones.

Reprinted from "Eclipse" by permission of the author. Poem copyright (c) 2004 by J. Lorraine Brown. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

National Book Awards

The National Book Awards were announced in New York City last week.  They went to Europe Central
by Wiliam Vollmann (for fiction); The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (for nonfiction); The Penderwicks:  A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits and a Very Interesting Boy byJeanne Birdsall (for young people's literature); and Migration:  New and Selected Poems by W.S. Merwin (for poetry). 

National Poetry Reading Contest

From the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Associated Press.

NEA to sponsor poetry reading contest
By Hillel Italie, Associated Press

NEW YORK — The National Endowment for the Arts and the publisher of Poetry Magazine have organized a national poetry reading competition for high school students, with the winner receiving a $20,000 college scholarship.

"There's a twofold importance in a program like this," Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, told The Associated Press.

"One half is education; students come into contact with great poetry and language and learn it by heart. There's also an equal, and often overlooked practical importance. It will improve the student's command of language, and will provide much needed training for speaking in public."

The program, co-sponsored by the NEA and the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, was officially announced Thursday in Pittsburgh at the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English.

"Poetry Out Loud: The National Recitation Contest" expands upon a pilot program for which competitions were held last year in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

The contests, which start in early 2006, will take place in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, from local classroom readings to state finals, in April, then national finals, scheduled for May 16 in Washington. 

More here.

American Life in Poetry, November 18, 2005

American Life in Poetry is a weekly column featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet, introduced by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  Consider sharing Kooser's selections with your students.

American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

In this poem by Pittsburgh resident Jim Daniels, a father struggles to heal his son's grief after an incident at school. The poem reminds us that when we're young little things can hurt in a big way.

Dim

Today my son realized someone's smarter
than him. Not me or his mom --
he still thinks we know everything --
one of the other kids, Nathan. Making fun
of him at the computer terminal
for screwing up at the math game.
Other kids laughing at him. Second grade.
I'm never gonna be as smart as him,
he says.        
        I'm never gonna be as smart
as half my students if we're talking
IQs. He doesn't want me to explain.
He wants me to acknowledge
that he's dumb. He's lying in bed
and taking his glasses off and on,
trying to get them perfectly clean
for the morning. I'm looking around
his dark room for a joke or some
decent words to lay on him. His eyes
are glassy with almost-tears. Second grade.
The world wants to call on him.
I take his hand in mine.

Reprinted from "The Paterson Literary Review," No. 32, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2004 by Jim Daniels, whose most recent book is "Show and Tell: New and Selected Poems" University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.

Birthday Books

Los Alamos resident Kathryn Gursky's 2,300 book home library was destroyed in the May 2000 Los Alamos fires.  The New York Times reports on what her husband did to replace it.

One Well-Read Home Has Some New Pets: 1,082 Penguins
By EDWARD WYATT November 14, 2005

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Nov. 11 - Rushing to evacuate her home as a forest fire lapped at the edges of this high-desert town in May 2000, Kathryn Gursky took with her just one book, a British edition of "The World of Pooh," by A. A. Milne, bought when she and her husband were vacationing in Dorset some 11 years earlier.

When she returned to Los Alamos after the fire, Ms. Gursky, a 49-year-old former librarian, found that the rest of her 2,300-volume personal library had burned, along with her house and everything in it.

Thousands of scorched tree trunks still range up the hillside across the street from Ms. Gursky's new home here, but inside the house, her library is well on the way to recovery. In September, Ms. Gursky received a birthday gift from her husband that earned her the envy of her book-loving friends: the complete collection of the Penguin Classics Library, 1,082 books sold only by Amazon.com for nearly $8,000.

Penguin Classics, the paperback volumes with the familiar black spine and the orange and black penguin logo, are known to generations of former students who struggled through Dickens and dozed through Henry James in school. While plenty of competitors also sell collections of classics, including Random House (Modern Library, Everyman's Library and Bantam Classics), Oxford University Press (World Classics), the Library of America and Barnes & Noble, arguably none is as instantly recognizable or as renowned as the Penguin Classics.

More here.

NCLB and Teacher Contracts

Most of what appears on this site is about the teaching and learning of English language arts, but this piece on how the "No Child Left Behind" law is figuring into teacher contract talks seemed worth posting.  From CBS and the Associated Press:

(AP) The homecoming game has been canceled and parents are running out of ways to keep cranky kids entertained because of a teacher strike in which a key sticking point is more than just a local issue: the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

In school districts around the country, the Bush administration's centerpiece education law is beginning to emerge as an issue at the bargaining table.

In Sandy's 4,200-student Oregon Trail District, where the strike is in its third week, teachers are afraid they will be replaced, transferred or otherwise penalized if they, their students or their schools fail to measure up under the law, which sets stringent new standards for performance.

While salary and benefits are also stumbling blocks in the dispute, the 216 striking teachers and the school board in this city of 5,400 people about 40 miles from Portland are wrangling over contract language related to No Child Left Behind. Several marathon bargaining sessions have stretched into the wee hours.  More here.

American Life in Poetry, November 11, 2005

American Life in Poetry is a weekly column featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet, introduced by U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser.  Consider sharing Kooser's selections with your students.

American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Katy Giebenhain, an American living in Berlin, Germany, depicts a ritual that many diabetics undergo several times per day: testing one's blood sugar. The poet shows us new ways of looking at what can be an uncomfortable chore by comparing it to other things: tapping trees for syrup, checking oil levels in a car, milking a cow.

Glucose Self-Monitoring

A stabbing in miniature, it is,
a tiny crime,
my own blood parceled
drop by drop and set
on the flickering tongue
of this machine.
It is the spout-punching of trees
for syrup new and smooth
and sweeter
than nature ever intended.
It is Sleeping Beauty's curse
and fascination.
It is the dipstick measuring of oil
from the Buick's throat,
the necessary maintenance.
It is every vampire movie ever made.
Hand, my martyr without lips,
my quiet cow.
I'll milk your fingertips
for all they're worth.
For what they're worth.
Something like a harvest, it is,
a tiny crime.

Reprinted from "Best of Prairie Schooner: Fiction and Poetry," University of Nebraska Press, 2001, by permission of the author, whose most recent book is "Good Morning and Good Night", University of Illinois Press, 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.