Expressing Creativity in the Vaguest Way Possible

So I teach 6th and 7th grade world studies; mostly 7th grade if you want to be specific.  I've barely seen my 6th graders for a variety of reasons that we won't get into, so this post focuses on my 7th graders.  Right now, my 7th graders are learning about Latin America.  We just wrapped up learning about the Mayans.  I wanted them to show me what they learned in a unique way, and I also wanted to give them as much freedom as possible.  In order to meet these needs, I came up with what can probably be called the vaguest processing assignment ever.

I introduced the lesson by explaining my thinking to my students.  I told them that I wanted to give them the chance to express themselves in the way they know they can be the most successful.  The assignment is as follows: students had to make some sort of visual representing the Mayan Empire.  The visual had to include at least four facts about the Mayans.  I reminded students that we had taken plenty of notes about the Mayans that provided them with more than enough information.

I really handed over control to my students.  I put the following list of visuals up on the board and told them to pick one.  If they had another idea, they just had to run it by me, and I ended up adding a few to the list throughout the day.

• Comic Strip
• Picture Book
• Brochure
• Advertisement
• Magazine
• Newsletter
• Poster
• Cartoon
• Postcard
• Board Game
• Instagram Posts
• Facebook Page
• Tumblr Page
• Snapchats
• Movie Poster
• Twitter Page

I put out all my art supplies, told students they could work with one other person if they wanted, but groups couldn't be any larger than two.

Over the two days I gave my students to work on this assignment, I was blown away by the output that they gave me.  I had two girls cut up their fashion magazines at home, compile them together into a Mayan themed magazine, complete with captions (that's where they worked in the required facts).  I had students make Instagrams, a few made brochures, one made a Tumblr.  I was blown away by the quality of the products.  This has shown me that if you give students the freedom to express themselves in the way they feel most comfortable with, the sky is the limit.

The Dangers of Conformity, According to Lois Lowry's The Giver

Dictionary.com defines conformity as “action in accord with prevailing social standards, attitudes, practices, etc.”  In our society, uniqueness and individuality is emphasized and encouraged, as long as it stays within the social norms.  Lois Lowry’s hit young adult novel The Giver gives readers a glimpse of what life can become if we focus too much on fitting in and making everyone the same.

Just a little bit of background for those of you who are unfamiliar with the novel.  The Giver follows Jonas, a 12 year old boy who lives in an unnamed futuristic society.  In this society, everything is decided for you, your job, your spouse, your children, even the day you die.  Memories of the past and the freedom that people used to enjoy are kept solely by an old man simply called “The Receiver”.  The Receiver is getting old though, and he needs someone else to take on his job of holding on to all the memories, both good and bad, from the past.  This is where Jonas comes in.  He is given the prestigious job of becoming the new Receiver and holding on to all the memories of the past.  As this happens, Jonas begins to question the world around him and the life he has.

In Jonas’ world, everything is monitored to ensure conformity.  Sometimes this is done covertly under the guise of daily tasks, other times it is more obvious.  Every morning, families sit together, share their dreams and discuss possible meanings.  It is assumed that these are monitored.  Sharing dreams also allows for “Stirrings” to be caught and quashed.  Stirring are essentially wet dreams.  Once a child reports to his that he has experienced a Stirring, they are given a pill every day to destroy sexual desire and ensure that procreation is only done by the designated women to prevent over population.  While it is never expressly stated what would happen if someone stopped taking “the pill”, it is implied that there is an underlying desire by children to start taking “the pill”, just like the rest of his friends.

Conformity is even stated bluntly by The Director, the woman who is in charge of Jonas’ community.  In a speech, she states how important it is to “curb any impulse that might set you apart from the group.”  Everyone in the Community agrees with this statement.  In their minds, it is better to fit in than stand out and be different.  Even standing out in the slightest way, for a good thing, is seen as awkward, uncomfortable, and unnecessary.  Through his training with the Giver, Jonas witnesses a birthday party.  Birthday parties are a foreign concept to Jonas, they make one person stand out from the crowd.  After seeing one, however, Jonas “understood the joy of being an individual, special and unique and proud.”  This is the beginning of Jonas questioning the world around him.  He begins to understand that being an individual isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if it worked in the past, why can’t it work now?  This is a concept we’ll come back to momentarily.

Conformity isn’t called “conformity” in Jonas’ world, but rather, the term “Sameness” is thrown around and has the same meaning.  The Elders spin Sameness in a way that makes it sound like it is absolutely necessary, and without it, the whole world would fall apart.  For example, hills and weather are done away with, all in the interest of Sameness.  Hills made it difficult to travel long distances, and weather made it difficult to grow crops year round and have enough food for everyone.  While these can be seen as positive results of Sameness, there is also a dark side.  The Giver talks about a time when people’s skin used to be different colors, but when Sameness came around, they got rid of the different races.  Basically, this society when through some sort of racial cleansing , although the Giver doesn’t go into detail.  This Sameness is terrifying and further pushes conformity on Jonas and the people around him.

Once Jonas starts receiving memories from the Giver, he starts to feel alienated from the people around him he used to think were his friends and family.  Jonas outright thinks to himself that “he couldn’t go back to the world of no feelings he had lived in so long.”  Later, Jonas finds that he can’t discuss his feelings at the end of the day with his family, which is a requirement in Jonas’ world, just like sharing dreams every morning.  He “experienced injustice and cruelty, and he had reacted with rage that welled up so passionately inside him that the thought of discussing it calmly at the evening meal was unthinkable.”  Jonas could no longer participate as a member of society.  The Giver attempts to explain it to Jonas, stating “the [everyone else] know nothing.”  Jonas and the Giver are the only ones (aside from the Elders who make these decisions) who are aware of feelings and how they are suppressed.

The Giver is one of my favorite books, I’ve read it at least three times and learned something new every time.  It has several poignant messages about the importance of individuality and warnings about future.  When I first read the book, I was 13.  Now, 10 years later, I can look at it with newfound knowledge and understanding.

Upping the Ante

So, about a week or so ago, my friend Melissa and I were complaining about the infamous "List" (she's the criminal mastermind behind this whole challenge).  We pointed out that there are some books missing from "The List" that should be on it.  This was a conversation we'd had before, so it wasn't anything new.  I honestly have no idea who came up with this idea, we'll call it a draw, but one of us decided it would be absolutely brilliant to add more books to the list.  At first, we thought that 50 books each (making the total to read a paltry 200 books).  That idea was thankfully scrapped, and we agreed that we'd each add 25 books, bringing the final sum to 150 books total.

Let me tell you, coming up with 25 books to read was a nightmare.  I had to think about what books weren't on the list that I wanted, and what books I've been meaning to read for a while but haven't.  I've had to modify the list since then, because one of the books I added literally can't be found.  Okay, that's a lie, it's on Amazon, but who wants to pay over $20 for a paperback, young adult book?  Yeah, thought so.  That's been my latest challenge, trying to figure out what book to replace it with.  It's not easy.  I keep telling myself that just because I don't put a book on "the List" doesn't mean I won't read it.  Knowing my friendship with Melissa, the loser (whoever it will be, but we all know that I'm going to win) will undoubtedly challenge the winner to some sort of rematch.  We've entered a vicious cycle here.  Melissa and I have been friends for 10 10 1/2 years and are both very bookish and very competitive.  It's definitely going to be interesting.

Celebrating My Birthday with King Arthur

Last night, to celebrate my birthday, a friend and I went out to see Monty Python’s Spamalot at a local dinner theater.  This our second time going to this theater in the past few months (we now have season tickets, so we’ll be going more often), and we were not disappointed.  Last time, we saw Les Miserables, so it was fun to see something a bit more cheerful this time around.

Spamalot is a musical based on Monty Python’s movie of the same name.  basically, it’s a parody of the legend of King Arthur, complete with singing, outrageous characters and numerous sexual references.  When on Broadway, Spamalot won a Tony Award in 2005 for Best Musical, and it had a very successful run.  I saw the show about a year ago while in college, but I wasn’t about to pass up on seeing it again.  As much as I didn’t like the movie, I have to admit that the musical is one of my favorites.

It’s funny, just yesterday I was thinking how whenever I’ve gone to Toby’s (the name of the dinner theater), I’ve never had a lead actor as a waiter.  Ironically, when we went to Toby’s last night, our waiter was none other than King Arthur himself.  Not only did our fabulous waiter play King Arthur, but when we saw Les Miserables in November, he played Javert.  We, of course told our waiter this.  I told him that I never really liked Javert until I saw his portrayal, it was that amazing.  Marius from Les Mis was also in the show again, and Fantine.  It was weird, seeing an actor we just saw blow it out of the water in what can probably be called the most serious Broadway musical in the past twenty years switch gears completely and play one of the goofiest roles ever.  It was highly entertaining and just showed the diversity actors need to possess in order to be successful in their field.

Overall, I thought the show was amazing.  It was hilarious, which is expected, the acting was superb, the costumes were amazing, the choreography wonderful.  Toby’s never disappoints when it comes to a show; they never disappoint when it comes to its performances.

Below you can find a clip of one of the songs from Spamalot.  While it’s not from Toby’s, it’s still a great performance nonetheless.

Slaughterhouse-Five: Cramming Too Much Into One Novel

Once again, another book off the list.  This one was one I bought a while ago with every intention of reading, I just never got around to it.  I’ve never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut before, but I did know a girl in high school who was obsessed with him, so I was going into it pretty excited.  I’ve heard this book be described as an anti-war novel, and, to be honest, I just didn’t see it.  That is, of course, unless the whole point is “people who come back from war are so damaged that they imagine they are abducted by aliens and can fall through time.”  If that’s what Vonnegut is trying to get at, then he hit the nail on the head.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it follows Billy Pilgrim, a soldier during World War II.  After the war, Billy is not only abducted by aliens and taken repeatedly to the planet Tralfamadore, but he also has the ability to fall through time (because being abducted by aliens isn’t weird enough).  The storyline bounces between Billy in the present and Billy reliving his past, where you gain a better sense of who he is as a person.  Part of the past Billy explores is his experience in Europe during World War II and the other half is Billy’s horrific marriage (he treats his wife horribly in my opinion) and his experiences on Tralfamadore. 

Now, the book isn’t very long.  My copy is only 215 pages.  With such a complicated storyline, that doesn’t give Vonnegut too much time to properly elaborate on either storyline, which is exactly the problem I discovered.  Neither storyline ended properly.  You had no idea what really happened to Billy on Tralfamadore, and his story of his experience during World War II was only partially explained (although much more than the Tralfamadore story).  In my opinion, this novel had the potential to be absolutely wonderful, had it just been either the World War II plot or the Tralfamadore plot, but both was too much in just 215 pages.

I also saw absolutely no point to Billy’s ability to travel through time.  That is, unless it’s merely symbolic of how fractured and broken his mind is.  I will admit, he seems to fall through time when he becomes stressed, and he always winds up in places related to what was just going on in the present.  It really looks like he has some sort of mental health problems, and he really isn’t falling through time but really retreating into the safety of his mind when life is too much to handle.

I’m not going to spend a lot more time on this book.  I didn’t really like it.  I’m not going to write off Kurt Vonnegut as a whole, though, I have a few other books by him that sound interesting, so I’m going to give them a shot at some point.

A Psychological Analysis of Winston Smith from Orwell's 1984

Let me start out by saying that, just like how I was not a physicist when reading A Brief History of Time, I was not a psychiatrist when I read 1984.  I just took one semester of psychology 101 my freshman year of college (so four years ago), and that was it.  With that being said, I have concluded that Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s 1984 has many severe mental problems as is made evident throughout the book.

Before I really get into my rant about Winston, let me give you a little bit of history about the relationship between myself at this particular book.  First of all, yes, this is another book off  “The List” as I have started calling it.  For the record, as of this very moment, I am in the lead and very proud of it.  Okay, enough gloating for now, there will be plenty of time for that when I win.  This is my third attempt to get through this book.  My first attempt was in 11^th grade when I was supposed to read it for an English assignment.  Each student in the class had to pick a different book and, from what I remember, analyze its symbolism or something like that.  I really don’t remember.  I did pull up my paper though, and browsed through it, and it basically talks about how the book is a warning for technology in the future.  I didn’t read the book.  I may have gotten through the first thirty pages or so (which is about 25 pages more than I read when I had to read Oliver Twist in 9^th grade…still got an A+ on the paper, Mr. Travers if you’re reading this, sorry!).  I still managed to get an A on the paper, but it was a pain to write since I had no idea where to even look for information.  I wouldn’t recommend it.  A year later in 12^th grade AP Literature, I was supposed to read 1984.  Yet again, I only got through the first 30 pages or so.  I simply could not read this book.  I found Winston un-relatable as a protagonist no matter how fascinating I found the use of technology and control.  All of this surprised me, because Animal Farm (also written by Orwell) is one of my all time favorite books.  I’ve been known to read it in one sitting on more than one occasion.  Even so, I just couldn’t get through 1984, no matter how hard I tried.  This time around, however, I didn’t have much of a choice.  I had to read this book, it’s on “The List” after all.

As I said at the beginning of my post, I found Winston Smith, the main character, to be a horrifically damaged man with numerous psychological problems.  You honestly don’t need to be a psychologist to figure that out.

First, I want to focus on Winston’s unusual, and very strong, violent tendencies.  There are two instances in the novel where Winston has extreme feelings towards someone he barely knows, or doesn’t even know at all.  In the first case, he exhibits these desires towards Julia, a woman who would later become his lover.  The first time he saw her, he described that he wanted to “flog her to death with a rubber truncheon.”  He continues to describe the terrible acts he would do to Julia, even though he has never actually spoken to her in his life.  Later, Winston describes the desire to smash “a pickaxe right into the middle of” the skull of a gentleman he didn’t even know.  These violent longings seem to focus on people Winston doesn’t know, while people he does know are fine.  it is almost as if Winston doesn’t trust anyone he doesn’t know and wants to destroy them.

In addition to extreme violent tendencies, Winston also displays other unusual symptoms of a possible underlying mental disorder.  He shows an overactive imagination.  While at work, he imagines that his coworker is working on the exact same project he is, although there is no proof of this.  Winston also exhibits signs of being overly paranoid.  After making eye contact, for a brief second, with a coworker and believes that the coworker instantly knows that he has his doubts about Big Brother and the government.  At the beginning of the novel and throughout the text, Winston starts doubting the government and very foundation of his world.  Orwell provides no reason for this, which leaves us to believe that it has come from nowhere.  He questions everything and even asks “Was life better before the Revolution than it is now?”  there is no way to know this answer, unfortunately, because the government has manipulated the past so much that it is unreliable.  Perhaps what is most disturbing is Winston’s lack of remorse.  He outright tells his lover that he wanted to “rape you and then murder you.  Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone.”  What makes this so disturbing is that his lover, Julia, doesn’t take any offense to this but rather stays by his side.  Later, Winston is talking to Julia about his long-lost wife, who may or may not be alive, and says that he wishes he had pushed his wife off a cliff when he had a chance, even though she hadn’t done anything to him.  Even as a child, Winston showed a startling lack of remorse.  Even though his young sister and mother were close to dying of starvation, he hoarded food for himself without a care in the world.

Overall, I found Winston to be incredibly disturbing.  He displayed a combination of extreme, unnecessary violence towards innocent victims, an overactive imagination and a lack of remorse.  While he was difficult to identify with as a character, he was interesting, albeit, confusing.

Reading Stephen Hawking (Cause I'm Totally Smart Like That)

About two weeks ago, Amazon.com released a list title "100 Books to Read in a Lifetime".  A close friend of mine (we've been friends for about ten years now) sent me the list with a proposed challenge: let's see who can read all 100 books first.  Seemed easy enough, I mean, it's only 100 books.  We agreed on a few simple rules to keep everything fair.

1. Any books we've already read we have to reread (that's 18 books in all for me)
2. We have to tell each other when we finish a book on the list so we can keep track of each other
3. We only have to read the first Lord of the Rings book (on the list it's listed as The Lord of the Rings and the trilogy was supposed to be published as one gigantic book at first, but that was too much for us to do)

I love to give commentaries on books and movies and television shows (I've been known to have a commentary while watching the TV Guide scroll by), so I thought it would be a good way to get back into blogging by blogging about the books I'm reading.  Some books I might not really have a lot to say about, but others I know I'll have lots to say.  We'll see how it goes.

I started off by identifying what books I already owned (quite a few).  I knocked a few short ones out of the way (I read The Great Gatsby and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone over a long weekend and found a copy of Goodnight Moon to get out of the way also).  My first really challenging book was Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.  I never took physics in high school or college, and for a very good reason.  I am horrible at math, and my science skills are just a tiny bit better.  Even so, I felt like reading this book would make me a little smarter about the world around me.  And, if all else fails, we did agree on reading the books, we never said we had to comprehend the books.

I will say one thing about this book before I get started: I was a little worried.  I was worried that Hawking was going to completely bash religion and say how there is no possible way a higher being could possibly exist.  I was completely and utterly shocked to find out that I was wrong.  Don't get me wrong, I only understood about 5% of the book (I did feel very smart walking around with it in my hands).  My friend put it best by saying, "Of course you don't understand it, it's Hawking.  Compared to him, everyone's dumb."  It did make me feel better about everything.

I've digressed.  I'm no math or science person.  I can tell you that I understood only about 5% of that book.  That 5%, however, I found to be very interesting.

First, I was surprised at Hawking’s ability to connect physics to religion.  I really thought that he would use this book to completely destroy religion and disprove any notion of a higher being.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Hawking implies that we should not attempt to understand some mysteries of the universe.  In fact he closes his book by saying, “Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist.  If we find the answer to that…then we would know the mind of God.”  Hawking also acknowledges that God may have created some of the laws of the universe and stepped back, allowing things to on a life of their own, which is why we don’t understand everything going on in the world around us.

Mixed in amongst the highly technical analyses of black holes, string theory and the like, Hawkings made sure to incorporate humor into his book.  It wasn’t very often, but it was sprinkled in there occasionally.  In one instance, Hawking talks about a long-running bet he has with a colleague about the existence of black holes.  Should Hawking win, he would get a four year subscription of a magazine (courtesy of his colleague), should his colleague win, he’ll get a year subscription of a different magazine (courtesy of Hawking).  Hawking also told a story about an article published in 1948 by a man named George Gamow and his student, Ralph Alpher.  Gamow convinced a colleague named Hans Bethe to add his name to the paper so the authors’ names would read Alpher, Bethe, Gamow, similar to the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha, Beta, Gamma.  The humor in the book was minimal, as it is meant to be a serious book, but what humor that was there was very amusing.

Like I’ve said a million times throughout this post, I actually understood very little of the book.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t understand any of it though.  There were some excellent points made.  First, Hawking pointed out that if the universe goes on infinitely in every direction, then every single point in the universe can be considered the center of the universe.  I tried that line on my mom, telling her that technically the universe does revolve around me…she didn’t buy it.

One thing Hawking also elaborated on was the size of the universe.  This is something that I’ve thought about a little bit in the past.  In the grand scheme of things, you and I and everything else around you isn’t even a microscopic speck compared to the universe.  As Hawking points out, “We now know that our galaxy is only one of some hundred thousand million that can be seen using modern telescopes, each galaxy itself containing some hundred thousand million stars.”  I’m not going to go into an “aliens are real” rant, because I really don’t know what I believe about that.  what I am going to do is point out that there is just so much out there, how can we be 100% certain that we are in fact alone in this massive universe?  Like I said, I’m not going to get into if aliens are real or not, because I don’t have a strong enough opinion either way to make an argument.

Overall, I’m sure I would have enjoyed Stephen Hawking’s book a lot more if I had some sort of understanding for physics.  Unfortunately, I don’t.  My only understanding of physics comes from the very basics taught to me in 9^th grade science.  Unfortunately, that was about 8½ years ago, so it’s been a while.  I do believe that Hawking does a fairly good job of explaining theoretical physics, I was just not the intended audience for the book.  If you do understand theoretical physics or aren’t completely clueless about stuff like that like I am, then the book would definitely be worth your time.