When
I designed this class, one of the most basic concepts that I was thinking about
was that students are more motivated to study subjects of their choice than
ones that we choose for them. Obviously,
they cannot always do so, nor would it be practical. Sometimes they need introductions to ideas to
even discover a concept that they would find fascinating. However, knowing that I was offering this
class to seniors made me confident that they were ready to delve into topics of
their choosing, at least in one class. I
hoped that they would not only be more interested but that they would also
choose to spend extra time on their work and read more than they would in a
typical English class. I decided that
eighty pages a week was on the high end of reading for a senior CP class at
Pentucket, so I set the bar at eighty pages a week, minimum. Of course, I didn’t really want students to
only read eighty pages a week, so I encouraged them to read as much as
possible, and here are the tallies from last week.
On
topics of their choice:
three
students read below the minimum
six students read the minimum
four
students read at least 100 pages
two
students read at least 125 pages
four students read at
least 150 pages
That means that the group was basically
split between students who read the minimum or below and students who went above
and beyond. I think that could be
better. I know that last week was the
first for writing two blog entries, though, so I’m encouraged that our page
numbers will start going up, and genuine passion will start to be the norm.
For my highlight this week, I chose
Michaela’s blog. I’ve enjoyed every
entry of hers so far, and I especially like the topic of happiness that she’s
been exploring in her first texts. Below
is her entry from last Friday, which is great, especially, in that she brings
in multiple sources.
Gretchen
Rubin’s life is turning around. She makes it a point the whole way through that
nothing about her life is less than it should be. She has every reason in the
world to be happy, and she is, but not as much as she could be. So far, she has
made progress in her happiness project. Jaime, her husband, also points out
that he can see the changes happening in her life. In order to get enough
knowledge for her project, she spent time researching the topic. She came
across many studies, books, and definitions. In attempts to understand this
kind of lifestyle myself, I watched a documentary suggested to me. This
documentary is called Happy, which streams on Netflix. This is
a documentary done by Roko Belic. Roko is an American film director. One of his
most famous works of art is Genghis Blues from 1999; this film
was nominated for an academy award for best documentary feature. He is well
known for traveling the globe in his documentaries. In the documentary Happy,
he travels to all different parts of the world to discover what happiness means
to people all over the world. This documentary held some incredible information
that was almost hard to believe. One family, who was living in a tent in the
Kolkata slums, is said to be just as happy as any American citizen.
The
film is so interesting and definitely worth the watch; anyone interested should
definitely not pass up this opportunity. However, I did not find the
documentary to relate to my book as much as I had hoped. The Happiness Project is about one woman’s mission to find a life
supply of happiness. The documentary, however, follows people’s lives that
don’t have much, or have lived through great tragedy, to find the things in
life that make them happy. There was an interesting parallel between the two of
them, though. Even though I did not find the documentary to be as helpful as I
had hoped, it was still definitely very astonishing. After I watched this
movie, I thought it might be interesting to get some reviews of this
documentary. I happened to find article writing by Roko Belic, himself, about
his movie and how it came about.
This is the link to
the article on the popular website, Huffington Post:
I
think the most interesting part of all of this is the inspiration behind the
movie, Roko Belic says “A dirt poor rickshaw puller in a slum in India once
told me he was the luckiest person alive. His hut was made out of bamboo sticks
and plastic tarps, with raw sewage trickling out front, but still, Manoj Singh
said he was happy, very happy, in fact. Though sometimes he only had only a few
bowls of rice to feed his family, he said ‘I feel that I am not poor, but I am
the richest person in the world’” (Belic, Roko). I think the most interesting
part of this whole quote is the very end. Sometimes the people who have the
least are the ones who find more joy in life; they are the ones who appreciate
the things in life that most people take advantage of. I found that throughout
the book, this seems to be something that Rubin tries to find a happy balance
in. It is shown throughout the book that she is trying to fix the small stuff
in attempts for overall happiness. As the book continues I am excited to see
how her next months are going to turn out.
Michaela is a
neat kid – very thoughtful, someone who is self-aware and
compassionate. I love working with her
and think that she’s really taking advantage of various features of the blog,
which is part of why hers is always so much fun to read! I did correct a few grammar mistakes when I
copied and pasted it, though; we all have improvements to be made.
This week I finished The
Vacationers. It wasn’t my favorite
book, but it did keep me interested. It has
less mystery than The One-Hundred Year House, but I felt more compassion
toward the characters. And the setting, Mallorca,
Spain, was magnificent. J I have several books to choose from to start
this weekend!
CJF
