So I only got about 4.5 hours of sleep last night since I thought it would be a good idea to stay up and work on another Photo Story after working on my Storytelling for HOURS.
I guess it was worth it, because I personally think it turned out good (one minor glitch) and I got the seal of approval from the family!
So about this Storytelling, like I said in a previous post, I thought it was pretty simple to make.
Am I completely satisfied with it and want to show it to the entire world? No.
Do I think it is a decent enough piece, especially for a first try at such a thing? Yes.
Someone commented and said that since I said it was about my first year of teaching, I should focus on the eduational part of it. Well yeah, that was pretty terrible too since I had no idea what I was doing, 17 year old boys don't think they should listen to a 22 year old girl, I had no administrative support in anything, and the school in general pretty much sucks.
But I said that it took a personal toll, didn't I? I think that's more what I was wanting to focus on. I guess I should look more into adapting it to show exactly what I wanted, so I will have to think about how to do that.
My **nugget** I guess was that I wanted to show that I had a terrible first year of teaching with everything happening and it made me not want to teach. And then I realized they can't break me, and I am now back to being really excited about teaching!
I put in all of the personal things to kind of show that my life was going pretty shitty anyway, and then built up and tried to focus more (guess I need to find a way to emphasize this) on the investigation and all of that crap.
It wasn't really the students that did anything wrong. Yeah there were a couple shitheads that made things hard. Inappropriate boys made stupid comments without thinking about how they could hurt people(which doesn't travel well, especially when you are under investigation for misconduct). Bitchy little girls who are, well, bitchy (and unfortunately know they have power over you because they can say whatever they want... make up stuff that never happened, etc.). But overall, I had good kids.
I guess I will have to look at how to restructure, emphasize, highlight, add different photos, scrap something, IDK! I'll have to do something to get the message across a little better,
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Another (much better) Photo Story
So I had this idea come to me while I was doing my Digital Storytelling assignment, and I just couldn't sleep until I finished it. So here it is, almost 2 am, and I am just now getting to where I am ready for bed.
This is the story of my beautiful cousin Ciera, her husband Tinker, and their beautiful new baby, Dillon. Ciera tried for 4 years to have a baby. She had multiple miscarriages and finally turned to adoption. A previous attempt at adoption left them broken hearted and empty handed.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Dillon.
I took one of Ciera's Facebook status updates and used as the last slide because I thought it was really powerful and beautiful.
I'm so happy for this family to finally be complete!
And this time around, it was SO easy to make. I still used Movie Maker to put the scenes together. Added the audio to Audacity, formatted into a WAV and uploaded into Movie Maker, then turned it into a youtube video. So easy and fun to do.
This is the story of my beautiful cousin Ciera, her husband Tinker, and their beautiful new baby, Dillon. Ciera tried for 4 years to have a baby. She had multiple miscarriages and finally turned to adoption. A previous attempt at adoption left them broken hearted and empty handed.
And then, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Dillon.
I took one of Ciera's Facebook status updates and used as the last slide because I thought it was really powerful and beautiful.
I'm so happy for this family to finally be complete!
And this time around, it was SO easy to make. I still used Movie Maker to put the scenes together. Added the audio to Audacity, formatted into a WAV and uploaded into Movie Maker, then turned it into a youtube video. So easy and fun to do.
Digital Storytelling
This is my story created for the Digital Storytelling assignment.
It's titled "Moving On" and tells the story of my horrible first year of teaching.
So far, this has been my favorite assignment from the get go. I have enjoyed the others, but this was really fun to make. I liked being able to tell "my" story using voice, music, text, and photos.
I think this could be a really great assignment for the classroom. It fits in perfectly with the idea of memoir writing, and I am hoping to get enough time in the computer lab that I will be able to do this. I'm really excited about the possiblities that go with this.
In class we talked about different things our stories could be about. Then we narrowed them down to one and talked it out with a partner. I think most teachers have had that year from Hell, and while mine might not be the absolute worst (I mean, I didn't get fired) I think it ranks up there pretty high. I wanted to tell this story, because it has shaped not only who I am as a teacher, but who I am as a person. And I think a lot of people can relate to that on some level.
Putting it together was actually pretty easy, even with the bumps in the road I inevitably hit. I spent a lot of time gathering my pictures, and then I saved them to Flickr since I wouldn't have the same computer at home. I saved what I had already done in Movie Maker to my flash drive.
Of course when I got home, the new version of Movie Maker that I started on isn't compatable with the one on my computer, so I had to start all over. Oh and guess what, you can't right click and save photos on Flickr... so I had to gather all of my pictures all over again.
I have only used Movie Maker once before, and I don't remember it being exactly like this, so it took me a minute to figure it all out. I got all of my photos on there and then went through the timings until they were right.
I downloaded Audacity and did my recording, while playing music from my boyfriend's phone in the background. He's always so helpful, so I let him pick out the music, and I think it sounds pretty good with it. I played the movie I had been working on so that the voice matched the show. After it was recorded, I just had to export it into a WAV file, which was super easy, and I was good to go.
Back to Movie Maker to add the sound, and Viola! The movie was made and all I had to do was click the publish button and it linked it up to YouTube. It took a little while for it to publish on there, but it finally did and looks awesome.
After a day of good conversations with classmates where I was encouraged to "just try it" and some help from my boyfriend about not getting stressed, I felt much better about making this than I did the other assignments.
I'm actually going to go back and try my hand at Photo Story and podcasting again now that I feel less overwhelmed by it.
Day 3 is in the books, and who knows what Day 4 is going to bring!
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
And Day 2 Comes to a Close...
Today started off just like yesterday... with me totally lost and feeling like I was the only one who had no clue what was going on.
And then we had the amoeba of trust, where I voiced that I was completely lost, and everyone else gave some sort of insightful comment. Just a typical day in my life.
Today we worked on Photo Stories. I must say I liked them much more than podcasts. I am more of a visual person, so I liked being able to see things rather than hear them. And I think photos are much easier to manipulate than voice recordings.
I came prepared, with a couple different stories I could tell, just incase one of them didn't work out like I wanted. I "played" around with different things, and learned how to use some different programs to build my story.
I like Flickr. Easy to use and make a slideshow.
Google Presentation seemed easy enough to use, but it wouldn't accept all of my photo formats, so I had to scrap it.
Scribd wasn't very impressive, so I kind of scrapped it too.
I still love PowerPoint. So easy to use and navigate.
authorStream was really cool. Good to know that you can so easily make a video out of a powerpoint and then share it on places like mobile devices.
Overall, I would say today was alright. I'm still not super confident about stuff, but I think the more I mess around with stuff, the easier it will get.
I feel really rushed in this class. I know the overall theme of yesterday was podcasts, and today was photo stories, and tomorrow is going to focus on one main thing, and so on and so forth.
But like Keri was talking about before, I'm a smart person, and I don't like not getting it. My boyfriend bitches at me all the time for trying to take the easy way out. But I am used to things being easy. And if something wasn't easy, I would move on to something else because I think there is too much out there to experience to waste time on something you don't immediately enjoy.
But now, there is no moving on. I just have to buckle down and do it.
Will I use a podcast in my classroom? Most likely not.
Am I glad I at least know how to use it if for some reason I am told I have to? Absolutely.
I just need to learn to go into things with an open mind and open heart and take it for what it is. I didn't really know if I would enjoy SI this year, and look at all the wonderful things that came out of it.
Am I going to love every minute of this class? No.
Do I think kids love every minute of my class? No.
Am I getting to experience new things with new people? Yes.
Is that worth the pain in the ass that some of this technology is causing? ...... Yes.
Will I have a breakdown by the end of this? Maybe, but I will try to save that for after 4pm. :)
And then we had the amoeba of trust, where I voiced that I was completely lost, and everyone else gave some sort of insightful comment. Just a typical day in my life.
Today we worked on Photo Stories. I must say I liked them much more than podcasts. I am more of a visual person, so I liked being able to see things rather than hear them. And I think photos are much easier to manipulate than voice recordings.
I came prepared, with a couple different stories I could tell, just incase one of them didn't work out like I wanted. I "played" around with different things, and learned how to use some different programs to build my story.
I like Flickr. Easy to use and make a slideshow.
Google Presentation seemed easy enough to use, but it wouldn't accept all of my photo formats, so I had to scrap it.
Scribd wasn't very impressive, so I kind of scrapped it too.
I still love PowerPoint. So easy to use and navigate.
authorStream was really cool. Good to know that you can so easily make a video out of a powerpoint and then share it on places like mobile devices.
Overall, I would say today was alright. I'm still not super confident about stuff, but I think the more I mess around with stuff, the easier it will get.
I feel really rushed in this class. I know the overall theme of yesterday was podcasts, and today was photo stories, and tomorrow is going to focus on one main thing, and so on and so forth.
But like Keri was talking about before, I'm a smart person, and I don't like not getting it. My boyfriend bitches at me all the time for trying to take the easy way out. But I am used to things being easy. And if something wasn't easy, I would move on to something else because I think there is too much out there to experience to waste time on something you don't immediately enjoy.
But now, there is no moving on. I just have to buckle down and do it.
Will I use a podcast in my classroom? Most likely not.
Am I glad I at least know how to use it if for some reason I am told I have to? Absolutely.
I just need to learn to go into things with an open mind and open heart and take it for what it is. I didn't really know if I would enjoy SI this year, and look at all the wonderful things that came out of it.
Am I going to love every minute of this class? No.
Do I think kids love every minute of my class? No.
Am I getting to experience new things with new people? Yes.
Is that worth the pain in the ass that some of this technology is causing? ...... Yes.
Will I have a breakdown by the end of this? Maybe, but I will try to save that for after 4pm. :)
5 Frame Photo Story... and all that went with it
Final Photostory
The New Lord of the Flies
What a fun, crazy experience this was. While I can't say it was easier than the podcast, it was definitely more exciting.
Kyle was a really good sport, and the "story" concept was actually his idea. And of course I figured if he was going to put on camo face paint and crawl around pretending to shoot flies (instead of actually trying to shoot flies, which he does, a lot lately) I would definitely let him. I appreciated him helping to use Paint (which I remember now that I hate) in order to create the last photo.
We played around with a few different scenarios of what could happen in the story, but this was definitely the most fun one.
With the first photo story, I spent quite a while deciding which program to use. I ultimately went with Flickr because I could easily find it on Windows (as I hate Mac) and because some of the other programs I tried (such as google presentation) wouldn't let me use the last picture because it was originally made in Paint.
Once I decided on it, it was super easy to put the slideshow together. As something quick and dirty to get started, I liked it.
When it came to adding more to it, I had no idea if Flickr was even an option. Where could I put pictures, words, and music all together and then make it move from one to the other?
PowerPoint! Duh!
So I found some intersting music to add to it. Rehearsed the timings. Set the transitions. And then added it to my blog!
Oh wait, no I didn't!
This was the part that wasn't so super fun. I couldn't figure out how to get my PowerPoint.
I tried putting it on Scribd, but that didn't work. The pictures were all blurry and there was no sound.
So, after some searching for ways to put a powerpoint into a youtube video, I had not so awesome results.
I changed the format of the video on PP and then uploaded it to YouTube. Decent picture quality, but no sound.
Back to searching on ehow, and I came across an article about authorStream. This place was genius! So easy to turn it into a video straight from the original PP and then I can just add the link to my blog and it plays on their website just like it would on YouTube. And the pictures are good, and it saved my sound!
Overall, this was much more enjoyable than yesterday's assignment and I will probably make more!
The New Lord of the Flies
What a fun, crazy experience this was. While I can't say it was easier than the podcast, it was definitely more exciting.
Kyle was a really good sport, and the "story" concept was actually his idea. And of course I figured if he was going to put on camo face paint and crawl around pretending to shoot flies (instead of actually trying to shoot flies, which he does, a lot lately) I would definitely let him. I appreciated him helping to use Paint (which I remember now that I hate) in order to create the last photo.
We played around with a few different scenarios of what could happen in the story, but this was definitely the most fun one.
With the first photo story, I spent quite a while deciding which program to use. I ultimately went with Flickr because I could easily find it on Windows (as I hate Mac) and because some of the other programs I tried (such as google presentation) wouldn't let me use the last picture because it was originally made in Paint.
Once I decided on it, it was super easy to put the slideshow together. As something quick and dirty to get started, I liked it.
When it came to adding more to it, I had no idea if Flickr was even an option. Where could I put pictures, words, and music all together and then make it move from one to the other?
PowerPoint! Duh!
So I found some intersting music to add to it. Rehearsed the timings. Set the transitions. And then added it to my blog!
Oh wait, no I didn't!
This was the part that wasn't so super fun. I couldn't figure out how to get my PowerPoint.
I tried putting it on Scribd, but that didn't work. The pictures were all blurry and there was no sound.
So, after some searching for ways to put a powerpoint into a youtube video, I had not so awesome results.
I changed the format of the video on PP and then uploaded it to YouTube. Decent picture quality, but no sound.
Back to searching on ehow, and I came across an article about authorStream. This place was genius! So easy to turn it into a video straight from the original PP and then I can just add the link to my blog and it plays on their website just like it would on YouTube. And the pictures are good, and it saved my sound!
Overall, this was much more enjoyable than yesterday's assignment and I will probably make more!
Bastard Child of Anarchy
I started watching the HBO series Deadwood a few nights ago. I'm only in the first season, but I really like it. I think Historical Fiction is great. Makes all the crap we learned in high school actually seem interesting.
Anyway, I can't get over this cast. Lippy from Lonesome Dove. Blackbeard from Pirates of the Carribean. The dad from Beetlejuice. The badass from Justified. One of the Carradine brothers. And a handful from my all time favorite cast, Sons of Anarchy. They all come together to make a wild west full of guns, whores, and filthy language. I love it! (And I think Deadwood's use of the word "cunt" is rivaled only by that of SOA's creator Kurt Sutter on Twitter.)
Seeing all these people from SOA makes me super excited from September, when Season 5 will begin. Over the past few years, I've gotten really into that show. I think that motorcycle culture is completely fascinating, and I proudly wear my "What Would Gemma Do?" tee-shirt.
Why am I so attracted to this show? There's a few reasons.
One, Charlie Hunnam, who plays Jax, is gorgeous.
Two, I love motorcycles. I haven't really had a lot of good experiences with riding them, but I still love them.
Three, it's cool to see such dangerous stuff without really having to experience it. I worked at a bar, and the night that all the Vagos (who are completely dangerous criminals who have been associated with murder, rape, drug trafficing, etc) came in while I was wearing my SOA shirt, I was about to shit myself because I thought they would take offense. So I can't imagine actually seeing the stuff that they do first hand.
Four, it turned me on to Emma Goldman. While I may not agree with everything that she stood for, she was kind of a badass.
She had a quote that just spoke to me.
"Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…"
I don't know why, but I thought of Digital Writing kind of as the anarchy against the standard writing procedures.
For years it has seemed that there is a "governmental" rule for what writing is, how it should be taught, and how it should be assessed.
Digital Writing breaks all of that. It liberates us from the mind set of how we should be writing anad what we should produce. The body of writing comes in all of these new forms that reach all of these new people and places. There are no shackles and restraints in Digital Writing because the sky is the fricking limit! Just when you thought you knew the best way to do something, something new comes along. Not more 5 paragraph essays and 6+1 traits and all that bullshit that we had crammed down our throats and therefore felt the need to cram down the throats of our students.
I believe that Digital Writing does stand for order based on the free grouping of individuals.
We all have a mind. Let's use it.
Anyway, I can't get over this cast. Lippy from Lonesome Dove. Blackbeard from Pirates of the Carribean. The dad from Beetlejuice. The badass from Justified. One of the Carradine brothers. And a handful from my all time favorite cast, Sons of Anarchy. They all come together to make a wild west full of guns, whores, and filthy language. I love it! (And I think Deadwood's use of the word "cunt" is rivaled only by that of SOA's creator Kurt Sutter on Twitter.)
Seeing all these people from SOA makes me super excited from September, when Season 5 will begin. Over the past few years, I've gotten really into that show. I think that motorcycle culture is completely fascinating, and I proudly wear my "What Would Gemma Do?" tee-shirt.
Why am I so attracted to this show? There's a few reasons.
One, Charlie Hunnam, who plays Jax, is gorgeous.
Two, I love motorcycles. I haven't really had a lot of good experiences with riding them, but I still love them.
Three, it's cool to see such dangerous stuff without really having to experience it. I worked at a bar, and the night that all the Vagos (who are completely dangerous criminals who have been associated with murder, rape, drug trafficing, etc) came in while I was wearing my SOA shirt, I was about to shit myself because I thought they would take offense. So I can't imagine actually seeing the stuff that they do first hand.
Four, it turned me on to Emma Goldman. While I may not agree with everything that she stood for, she was kind of a badass.
She had a quote that just spoke to me.
"Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…"
I don't know why, but I thought of Digital Writing kind of as the anarchy against the standard writing procedures.
For years it has seemed that there is a "governmental" rule for what writing is, how it should be taught, and how it should be assessed.
Digital Writing breaks all of that. It liberates us from the mind set of how we should be writing anad what we should produce. The body of writing comes in all of these new forms that reach all of these new people and places. There are no shackles and restraints in Digital Writing because the sky is the fricking limit! Just when you thought you knew the best way to do something, something new comes along. Not more 5 paragraph essays and 6+1 traits and all that bullshit that we had crammed down our throats and therefore felt the need to cram down the throats of our students.
I believe that Digital Writing does stand for order based on the free grouping of individuals.
We all have a mind. Let's use it.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Podcast
Well, Brenden and I attempted to make a podcast. With no idea what in the world we were doing, we followed Keri's advice of making it like a conversation, and we rambled on for over 13 minutes talking about Facebook as digital writing, as well as other means of digital writing.
That was the easy part. It's so easy to have a conversation about something you know about or have an opinion about. The not easy part is trying to get it formatted into something that will be able to uploaded into my blog.
I am not a Mac person. I actually loathe Mac and it's non-right click button ass. But since I know nothing about these editing programs, and there was already one installed on the Mac side, I am trying to use it to my best ability.
Garageband is actually not too bad to use. I've used MovieMaker on my computer, so it's kind of like that, but still, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've managed to cut down our talking from 13 minutes to less than 5, but I still don't know if this is what we are supposed to even be doing.
I'm the kind of person that needs confirmation that I am doing things right, and I feel like I'm not doing anything right so far.
Maybe a few more minutes of editing and then attempting to upload it to my blog is what I need to make things feel right, but I kind of feel like I'm at a standstill right now.
I'm not a podcast kind of person. I hate hearing my own voice. I had to listen to NPR so much when I was doing my internship at Planned Parenthood that I haven't listened to it since. Listening to people talk without seeing them always makes me think of that cheesy Delilah radio show where she plays love songs and talks with a porn voice. (Maybe that's what I need to do to stand hearing my voice...)
I think it could be useful in some ways, but I don't know if I am up for it. We'll see.
Draft 1
Podcast 2
After all is said and done, now that I have 2 podcasts under my belt, I feel a little better about the process. Yay for learning something new today!
That was the easy part. It's so easy to have a conversation about something you know about or have an opinion about. The not easy part is trying to get it formatted into something that will be able to uploaded into my blog.
I am not a Mac person. I actually loathe Mac and it's non-right click button ass. But since I know nothing about these editing programs, and there was already one installed on the Mac side, I am trying to use it to my best ability.
Garageband is actually not too bad to use. I've used MovieMaker on my computer, so it's kind of like that, but still, I have no idea what I'm doing. I've managed to cut down our talking from 13 minutes to less than 5, but I still don't know if this is what we are supposed to even be doing.
I'm the kind of person that needs confirmation that I am doing things right, and I feel like I'm not doing anything right so far.
Maybe a few more minutes of editing and then attempting to upload it to my blog is what I need to make things feel right, but I kind of feel like I'm at a standstill right now.
I'm not a podcast kind of person. I hate hearing my own voice. I had to listen to NPR so much when I was doing my internship at Planned Parenthood that I haven't listened to it since. Listening to people talk without seeing them always makes me think of that cheesy Delilah radio show where she plays love songs and talks with a porn voice. (Maybe that's what I need to do to stand hearing my voice...)
I think it could be useful in some ways, but I don't know if I am up for it. We'll see.
Draft 1
Podcast 2
After all is said and done, now that I have 2 podcasts under my belt, I feel a little better about the process. Yay for learning something new today!
Friday, July 13, 2012
What's important
So as I'm sitting here trying to focus on all the things I should be doing, I can't get one thing out of my head. My dear friend, Cynthia. She's in her mid-30s. She's the life of the party. She's that crazy lady that is still so in love with and sexually attracted to her husband it kind of makes you sick. She has 2 awesome kids, and a step-son that is the cutest thing ever. She has an amazing house that her and her husband built. She's beautiful. And she's brilliant. She's a Process Coordinator for SPS, which is an incredibly tough job. Special Education takes special people to run it, and for her to be a big dog like that, you know she's amazing. She (obviously) has awesome friends.She's just got it all going for her.
She found out yesterday that she has a progressing Stage 3 Glial brain tumor. Almost her entire frontal lobe is covered by a tumor. They think they can remove a large portion of it without permanantly altering who she is.
How does life change that fast?
Earlier this year, Easter weekend actually, she started having major headaches. She got to the point where she couldn't even function. She came to Pipkin one day, and couldn't move or talk or function. I took her to the hospital and sat with her in the waiting room for hours until they finally admitted her. Her doctor had done and MRI and a CAT scan, and a PET scan, and even though they found the huge white spots on her brain, they refused to do anything about it. They said it wasn't cancer, and that they could give her pain medicine, but there wasn't really anything he could do.
Luckily, she found Dr. Sami, who is amazing, and he actually did his job. He found out the truth, although it wasn't what any of us wanted to hear.
It's completely scary to think that she had a tumor for that long and didn't know. It's terrible to think about how many people don't pursue it any more when a doctor says he can't do anything else. And it's completely horrifying to think about losing my friend.
Just makes you think about how tomorrow isn't guaranteed and we all need to really think about what is important to us. Since I love country music so much, let me cheesily quote Garth and think about "if tomorrow never comes."
She found out yesterday that she has a progressing Stage 3 Glial brain tumor. Almost her entire frontal lobe is covered by a tumor. They think they can remove a large portion of it without permanantly altering who she is.
How does life change that fast?
Earlier this year, Easter weekend actually, she started having major headaches. She got to the point where she couldn't even function. She came to Pipkin one day, and couldn't move or talk or function. I took her to the hospital and sat with her in the waiting room for hours until they finally admitted her. Her doctor had done and MRI and a CAT scan, and a PET scan, and even though they found the huge white spots on her brain, they refused to do anything about it. They said it wasn't cancer, and that they could give her pain medicine, but there wasn't really anything he could do.
Luckily, she found Dr. Sami, who is amazing, and he actually did his job. He found out the truth, although it wasn't what any of us wanted to hear.
It's completely scary to think that she had a tumor for that long and didn't know. It's terrible to think about how many people don't pursue it any more when a doctor says he can't do anything else. And it's completely horrifying to think about losing my friend.
Just makes you think about how tomorrow isn't guaranteed and we all need to really think about what is important to us. Since I love country music so much, let me cheesily quote Garth and think about "if tomorrow never comes."
Getting Started
This is my blog. La la la la. Julie's blog. :) If you sang that to the Elmo tune in your head, we should become friends. If not, we can still be friends, but you might not get me.
So I was trying to come up with a really cool blog title, and I came up with pretty much nothing.
I went with Chapter 27, because I love Holden Caulfield. I know I'm not a teenager anymore, but I totally get that teenage angst and not wanting to grow up. I agree that there are far too many phonys, and my cynicism sometimes keeps me at a distance from people. Life can be depressing, and sometimes it takes a lot to finally see how beautiful little things are. And like Holden, I use way more profanity than is needed.
I have another connection to Catcher in the Rye that makes it memorable to me. My first year teaching, I had Juniors. We read Catcher in the Rye, with me reading most of it outloud because they can't cuss without going into fits of giggles at age 17. Some of the kids hated it, some loved it, some must have slept through it.
January 27, 2010, I was reading his with my 6th hour kids. One of them asked if they were ever going to make a movie. I replied, "I'm sure they will after JD Salinger dies. And that could be any day, he's getting pretty old!"
During 7th hour, I had 2 of the kids from 6th hour come rushing in. JD Salinger was dead. How fricking ironic is that? The rest of that year, at least once a week, someone would ask me who I was going to kill today?
Guess you gotta be known for something.
So I was trying to come up with a really cool blog title, and I came up with pretty much nothing.
I went with Chapter 27, because I love Holden Caulfield. I know I'm not a teenager anymore, but I totally get that teenage angst and not wanting to grow up. I agree that there are far too many phonys, and my cynicism sometimes keeps me at a distance from people. Life can be depressing, and sometimes it takes a lot to finally see how beautiful little things are. And like Holden, I use way more profanity than is needed.
I have another connection to Catcher in the Rye that makes it memorable to me. My first year teaching, I had Juniors. We read Catcher in the Rye, with me reading most of it outloud because they can't cuss without going into fits of giggles at age 17. Some of the kids hated it, some loved it, some must have slept through it.
January 27, 2010, I was reading his with my 6th hour kids. One of them asked if they were ever going to make a movie. I replied, "I'm sure they will after JD Salinger dies. And that could be any day, he's getting pretty old!"
During 7th hour, I had 2 of the kids from 6th hour come rushing in. JD Salinger was dead. How fricking ironic is that? The rest of that year, at least once a week, someone would ask me who I was going to kill today?
Guess you gotta be known for something.
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