MCCC English Department Lesson Graffiti

I stole this from my mom, who taught 11th-grade English for Medina City Schools for many years... This is a multi-media exploration of various short YouTube video clips and a podcast that allows students to see the evolution of the American Dream and how the American family has changed over the decades. This would be a great way to kick off any piece of literature that is tied to the American Dream! Evolution of the American Family

Today I wanted to share some thoughts on Beowulf .  I love teaching Beowulf even though the poem often tells more than shows, our text translations are not always the best, even when translated into modern English it can be a tough read, and, well, it is really, really, like seriously REALLY old. In fact, it is Old English old.  I think it is worth teaching; even though, I disagree with the reason many teachers, including one of my greatest teachers Mr. Clark, use when teaching the poem.  The common justification for teaching seniors across our great nation every year is that Beowulf is the first story we have written in English: "Hey kids today we are going to read something important because it WAS THE FIRST ENGLISH STORY EVER WRITTEN." That does not seem like a ringing endorsement to me. Further, I don't like having to "sell" my students on what we are studying. I like it when the story sells itself. The problem of course is that Beowulf does not exactly sel...

I "stole" this idea from Elliot Zetzer, who teaches CCP at an all-boys school and was searching for a way to motivate his students to contribute to his discussions in a Socratic Seminar. Elliot's take was MLB, which I will include here. Currently I have a hoop in the room, so I changed it to NBA. I've found this works well when encouraging discussion of a common classroom text, such as novel, poem, article, story, etc.  Elliot admitted his boys were motivated by their stats, which he would calculate daily. This sounded like a lot of math to me, so I adapted it to the NBA. I have a hoop in my room where we shot our disinfectant-soaked towels during COVID.  At its best, this is what it looks like in my room - split the class into two teams, usually right down the middle. Name a team captain for each team. Flip a coin or have a shoot-off for first possession. Inbound the ball to the captain. From there they can "shoot" (speak), or pass the ball to a teammate. T...