Surgery News
Just a quick update for those interested: my son’s surgery went off without a hitch. He’s convalescing nicely. I hope everyone had a nice break and worked well today. (Disneyland was great, by the way.)
I’ll try to update the assignments and work record on each of your class pages and post some notes when I return to Tucson on Wednesday. Do your best until then and I’ll see you Thursday and Friday.
Best,
Girard
APELC Class Notes
Objective: APELCers differentiated levels of critical thinking in a text.
APELCers, I asked you to focus your efforts on an analytical text today and highlight various levels of critical thinking you encountered as you read. We had a discussion of thesis statements when I asked you to identify and defend your best candidate for a thesis statement in the Ayad piece. We’ll complete the activity next class when you’ll analyze Ayad’s logoi, that is, her organizational choices or how she arranged her evidence and analysis in support of her thesis.
Remember that College Night is tomorrow evening at the TCC. Please attend this important event if you can, even if you already have your post-secondary trajectory set. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans, a deranged and debauched artist once sang, and I encourage you to stay open to all possibilities.
By the by, here’s the talk by Mike Rowe of Discovery’s Dirty Jobs I mentioned in class in which he celebrates the working man. Be forewarned he does relate a frank, but humorous story of a lamb castration he was involved in for the show. (The story, properly an anecdote, is actually one of the major logoi of the story and helps make his point.)
Don’t forget to attend your reading. See you next class.
ANOTHER VISIT. I almost forgot to mention again second period Rhiannon’s mom’s visit to class today. I’m excited when parents take time to visit you in class to watch us work. Bring your moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives to T-12; we can always benefit from their experience and participation.
I’m Back
As I mentioned near the close of my English 9 and APELC reflections (the last two posts), I will indeed be back at CDO for the 2009-2010 school year. I was in communication with administrators while I was in Europe with Team AZ and I actually re-interviewed for my position (a necessary in the hiring protocols) from the patio of our hotel in Kalambaka, Greece. After many months of anxiety and doubt, I got the call from Mr. Enright the night we arrived in Athens that the position was mine.
I and my family are happy we’re still Dorados, and I’m eager to start the school year. For those that always ask Debabu and Zufan are doing well; we’re having a great summer now that the immediate problem of my employment has disappeared.
I hope you, my former students, will stop by T-12 (I have to put it all back up again!) when you have a few minutes to say “Hi”. I’ll look forward to seeing you beginning the end of next week.
Until then, I hope you’ll make the most of your remaining days of summer.
Best.
Next Year
As most of you are aware and as I’ve explained to some of you, my future as a teacher at CDO is highly dubious. Every day it becomes more likely that I’ll not be invited back to teach for 2009-2010. To quell any misunderstandings, I thought I’d elaborate that my imminent departure is a matter of budget and not behavior. I’m not in trouble and haven’t done anything (at least to my knowledge) to earn the disfavor of any body in authority.
The fact is the Arizona legislature has decided to cut education spending and so districts have had to similarly cut costs which means thousands of teachers and other school personnel across the state are facing unemployment. Sadly (for me and Mrs. Girard and Debabu and Zufan, anyway) I’m one of those affected. If I’ve seemed distracted and have been more behind than usual in getting work back to you for the past while, this is the reason and I hope you’ll accept my apologies.
Of course, it’s my first desire to stay at CDO. I was whole-heartedly looking forward to working with the unprecedented 110 students who registered for Advanced Placement English Language and Composition next year. I’ve enjoyed designing and building APELC these last two years and I’ll miss the opportunity to work with new students and siblings of students-past for whom I’ve been preparing a revised curriculum next. As I understand the class-assignments for 2009-2010, the sections comprised of those future APELCers will now most likely be split among two teachers.
I also regret that I’ll miss the chance to work with this year’s freshmen I’ve identified as potential-APELCers their junior and senior years. And certainly I’ll miss all of the students that have ever spent time in and even those who just pass by T-12 every day.
We still have two weeks left though, and so there’s no time or effort to waste. Stay focused and do your best on the remaining tasks and this school year’ll be over before you know it.
It’s good to be a Dorado.