The Blind Men and the Elephant

Poetry has entertained and informed readers for centuries. “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” by John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) is one such poem. Read the poem (twice if necessary) to see if you can understand its point. Merriam-Webster Online or Dictionary. com may assist you in defining any unfamiliar words that the poem may use. Some of the words you may need to look up include theologic (theological, theology), disputants, ween, rail, and prate.

When you finish reading the poem, post a comment, together with your teammates, that responds to the following questions:

1. What do you think is the point of the poem? Briefly explain.
2. What connection can you make between the AP report that follows and the poem? Discuss.

To answer question #2, read the following AP report:

In the northern Iraq attack, armed men stopped the bus as it was carrying workers from a textile factory in Mosul to their hometown of Bashika, which has a mixed population of Christians and Yazidis – a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians.

The gunmen checked the passengers’ identification cards, then asked all Christians to get off the bus, police Brig. Mohammed al-Wagga said. With the Yazidis still inside, the gunmen drove them to eastern Mosul, where they were lined up along a wall and shot to death, al-Wagga said.

After the killings, hundreds of angry chanting Yazidis took to the streets of Bashika in protest. Shops were shuttered and many Muslim residents closed themselves in their homes, fearing reprisal attacks. Police set up additional checkpoints across the city.

Bashika is about 80 percent Yazidi, 15 percent Christian and five percent Muslim.

Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a police spokesman for Ninevah province, said the executions were in response to the killing two weeks ago of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam after she fell in love with a Muslim and ran off with him. Her relatives had disapproved of the match and dragged her back to Bashika, where she was stoned to death, he said.

Here’s a step-by-step summary of what you must do for this assignment:

1. Read “The Blind Men and the Elephant” (more than once if necessary).
2. Look up the definitions of any unfamiliar words in the poem.
3. Read the AP report quoted above.
4. Discuss the point of the poem with your teammates and try to see a connection between the poem and the report.
5. Together with your teammates, write two paragraphs, the first of which explaining the point of the poem, and the second discussing the connection between the poem and the AP report.
6. All members of your group should then revise, edit, and proofread the paragraphs before submitting them as a comment to this post. Put the names of all members of your group in the name field and submit your paragraphs.

This I Believe: Your Favorite Essay

If you’ve started this activity, then you’ve finished writing your response to Becky Herz’s “My Husband Will Call Me Tomorrow.” Your next task is to go back to the This I Believe website and listen to and read several other essays. Keep a few notes about what you’ve read and listened to, and keep track of your favorites. Please don’t discuss what you’ve read with classmates; allow yourself and others to discover essays to read on their own. Each essay at This I Believe has a brief blurb that indicates what it’s about. Read the blurb to get a sense of the essay and to see whether or not you want to read and listen to it.

There will be another writing assignment connected to this activity next week, and you’ll return here at that time to find out what it is.

After you’ve listened to and read several other essays, complete the following task:

1. Select one essay to write a two-paragraph reaction to. Use Word.
2. In the first paragraph, summarize what the writer said. Focus on his or her important details. Remember, this paragraph is a summary. Caution: do not plagiarize your summary; it must be in your own words.
3. In the second paragraph, write what you think and feel about the essay. The approach used for Becky Herz’s essay would be fine.
4. Carefully proofread your Word document. Make sure it’s in block format. Save the Word document to your network file, and then copy and paste it here at this post.

Once others have submitted their paragraphs, read what they’ve written and please comment. If their brief reactions are well-written, they may persuade you to read and listen to the essay they wrote about, which you then may do.

This I Believe

Every Monday morning, National Public Radio broadcasts an essay called “This I Believe.” The writer of the essay, different each week, covers a topic that he or she wishes to speak about. The organization that creates the NPR broadcasts says, “This I Believe is a national media project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives.”

Many of the essays are quite moving and are read aloud by the essayist on the air. One particular essay, broadcast in early January, struck me as worthy of our attention. It’s called “My Husband Will Call Me Tomorrow” by Becky Herz. Ms. Herz’s husband has been serving a fourteen-month tour of duty in Iraq. His tour of duty is scheduled to end in May or June.

What is your task?

1. First, using headphones, listen to Ms. Herz read her essay. As you listen, imagine that you or you and a friend are sitting with her and her baby in her kitchen, and she’s speaking her essay to you. You may read and listen to the essay more than once if you wish.
2. Next, write a one to two paragraph response to her essay in Word. Format your paragraph(s) in block style and single space. Be certain your paragraphs have a topic sentence and develop your thoughts adequately. Focus on how Ms. Herz’s message makes you feel.
3. When you’ve finished your response, proofread it carefully, save it to your network drive, and then copy and paste it as a comment to this post. You may have to do some reformatting of your paragraphs once you’ve pasted them to make them look presentable.

A few questions that you may want to think about before writing your response:

• What terrifies Ms. Herz?
• What does Ms. Herz believe that she must continue to hope for, both for her sake and her daughter’s?
• Why does Ms. Herz repeat throughout her essay “I believe my husband will call me tomorrow”?
• If you knew someone in the armed forces who was serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, how would you feel about their absence?

Remember, proofread your response carefully before submitting your comment. You may, of course, read your classmates’ responses once they’ve been posted. You may also listen to and read other essays from This I Believe.

School Uniforms for Hilbert Students? Yes or No

A few weeks ago, Hilbert 8th graders wrote essays on the topic of school uniforms.  Neither the school board nor the administration is proposing that students wear school uniforms to school; the subject was simply offered to students as a writing prompt.  Their essays have been graded, and they’ve made some revisions and fixed most of the mistakes in mechanics, grammar, usage, and spelling (MUGS).  What follows are their essays.  Simply click the title to this post, and you can get to the essays.

Anyone, adults or students, should feel free to comment about what students have written.  To make a comment, simply scroll to the bottom till you reach text boxes for recording your name ( if you’re a student, first name and first initial of last name only, please) and comments (you only need to fill in the name field and the comment box), type your comment in, and submit it. Because this is a moderated blog, I have to approve all comments before they’re actually posted.  I know these 8th graders would enjoy reading what you have to say about their views.

Mr. Seybert

Who’s Left an Imprint on Your Life?

Recently, we’ve been reading Roald Dahl’s memoirs entitled Boy: Tales of Childhood. In it, he brings to life the people who left an imprint upon him, from parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, to friends like Thwaites and an old hag, as Dahl calls her, like Mrs. Pratchett. The chapters of his book read like a series of personal narratives, depicting the early years of his life and the lessons learned. It occurred to me to wonder who has left a memorable imprint upon you? What is this person like? What have you learned from the experience of knowing him or her?

Write a short composition (three to five paragraphs) about a person who has affected your life. Use good sensory details to discuss him or her, and pick someone you care about, someone who has left an imprint on you, someone living or deceased. Follow this procedure for this assignment:

1. You may begin by recording your thoughts in MS Word. Once you’ve finished your short composition, have at least one other person in class read it to suggest revisions and to help with MUGS errors.
2. Save the Word document to your network drive.
3. Next, copy and paste your composition from Word into Notepad and adjust any spacing problems as necessary. Save your Notepad document to your network drive.
4. Last, copy and paste your Notepad document into the comments field of this blog and adjust any spacing problems. Proofread one more time and submit.

Your composition should be posted as a comment to this post by Friday, Dec. 22. A first draft should be done by Wednesday.

What follows is a model essay of someone who affected my life in a positive way. I hope you enjoy reading it.

My teammates and I first met Coach F., a young, new assistant football coach, recently married to Wanda, from Pennsylvania, at football practice in late August of 1965. He had just graduated from a university in California, and my father, the Superintendent of Schools for the school district at the time, had just hired him to teach business education and to coach football not more than a couple of days before the start of football practice that August. Leastways, that’s what I recall more than forty years later.

He took to us immediately and we to him, and we caught his enthusiasm and spirit from the get-go. The head coach, Mark O., another coach and teacher, since deceased, who also left a lasting impression, had given Coach F. the backfield to coach. But Coach F. wasn’t satisfied with what he judged as our lack of spirit. One of the first drills we backs did for him was a series of short forty-yard wind sprints. We lined up, got in our three-point stances, and he blew the whistle. Off we raced, but silently. He blew the whistle to stop us and wanted to know what was wrong. “Nothing, coach,” we said, shrugging our shoulders and wondering what he was getting at. He looked at us and said that, where he came from, football players made more noise than that.

We lined up again, he blew his whistle, and off we raced again, this time with what we thought was a loud yell. He blew his whistle right away, stopped us, and with hands on hips, gave us an unmistakable look, a look that said, “That’s the best you can do?” He then told us that he wanted to hear what we were made of, what we were. He wanted a roar, not some weak-kneed yell that could be knocked down and tackled easily. We understood and lined up again. This time when we took off, and all the subsequent times that week, we roared. And roared. Many years later, I’ve realized what he was teaching us: that whatever you do in life, go after it, with energy and effort, with spirit, care about it, and when you’re a part of a team, act like it. If you fail, so what. Get back up and try again. What more valuable lessons can any teacher give? It may have taken me a while to learn them, but thanks, Coach.

Mr. Seybert

Sure, you can trust grammar check…

Think that Microsoft Word’s grammar check can find and fix your errors in grammar?  ‘Fraid not.  Relying on Word to write grammatically may result in more, not fewer, mistakes.  When a professor from the University of Washington met with a student whose composition was “riddled with bad grammar,” the student retorted that she had scanned her writing with Microsoft’s grammar check.  The professor decided to see just how accurate the grammar check was and typed in this “sentence”:  “Microsoft the company should big improve Word grammar check.”  Huh?  Yes, exactly, yet grammar check showed no errors.  And if you copied and pasted that sentence into Word today, grammar check would still show no errors.  Sure, go ahead; trust those green underlines to find and fix your errors.  See where it gets you.

(from NPR’s Morning Edition, March 29, 2005.)

Eternal Sleep on the Job

As indicated in my last comment at the post entitled “A Horseman in the Sky,” most of us had a solid understanding of the principal irony in the story. It was situational irony, and Carter Druse’s having to cause his own father’s death was certainly unexpected. “A Horseman in the Sky” shows how fate sometimes plays with us.

Another, more hidden irony also reveals itself to us upon story’s conclusion. To understand it, we have to go back to the beginning of the story and pay close attention to the first and seventh paragraphs (the seventh begins with “So Carter Druse, bowing reverently to his father, . . .”) and remember what Carter Druse was doing when we first encounter him at his post at the height of that terrifying cliff.

Together with your teammate, see if you can figure out what this other irony of the story is and post your response in a well-written paragraph (one paragraph between the two of you, with both names in the name field). Use Notepad to first record your thoughts and then paste to the Comments section of this post. Remember to have a topic sentence for the paragraph and make certain you’ve used details from the story to support your explanation. Proofread carefully before you submit your comment.

Mr. Seybert

“A Horseman in the Sky”

In “A Horseman in the Sky,” by Ambrose Bierce, we learn that the Union soldier Carter Druse, the main character, must shoot the horseman sitting astride his steed at the top of a cliff overlooking a valley far below. He anguishes over such a terrible duty, but in the end remembers his Confederate father’s words: “. . . and whatever may occur, do what you conceive to be your duty.” Carter does his duty and pulls the trigger but shoots the horse, sending horse and rider over the cliff — a horseman in the sky — to their deaths. At story’s end, we learn from Carter that the rider atop the horse was his father.

In a paragraph, explain the terrible irony that we readers realize at story’s end. In a second paragraph, discuss whether Carter Druse did the right and noble thing. Would you have been able to do what he did?

Compose your paragraphs in Notepad first and save the document as horseman. Before posting your comment, have two other classmates, whom I will assign, read and proof your response. Last, proofread your own paragraphs one last time and then post them. Remember, each paragraph must have a topic sentence, and all the other sentences in the paragraph must develop that topic.

Post Your News Article Summaries Here

Visit the Potpourri tab frequently at the eBoard site (password=helios) and you’ll find special challenges to complete that could add additional bonus points to your grade. These challenge assignments, however, must be completed on your own time, not class time. Class time means from 8:00-11:50 a.m., and from 12:25-3:04 p.m. I will no longer accept any submissions during those times whether you have your other work done or not. If you want to participate, then make your submissions before classes begin in the morning, at activity period, or after school. Submissions may also be made from home if you have an Internet connection. You must follow directions to get full credit.

The bonus point challenge for writing news article summaries has permanently migrated to this space from the eBoard site (password=helios), the “Potpourri” tab. Directions for completing this challenge are now located at this blog in the Pages category in the sidebar. Simply look for “Bonus Point Challenge: Rules for News Summaries” and click it. You’ll be taken to the directions for completing this challenge. Come back here to post your news article summary. Simply click “Comments,” fill in your first name and the first initial of your last name, and post your summary (you may alternatively submit your summary on paper — see directions).

Who Is Mildred Fish Harnack?

Every year Wisconsin school calendars honor a woman by the name of Mildred Fish Harnack by naming a day, September 16^th, Mildred Fish Harnack Day. If you have ever read anything about her, she is indeed worthy of the honor. Your job? First, browse and read “Honoring Mildred Fish Harnack.” No, you do not have to read the whole site, unless you want to; but do browse and read enough to get an idea about why this woman is honored with her own special day. Second, in a comment to this post, explain why this woman deserves this honor and describe two interesting facts you learned about her. Make certain you write in sentences and paragraph form. Proofread your comment before submitting it.

Mr. Seybert