Blogging Around

Jenna's blog post, entitled "Best of Week: School Board Issue" identifies Mr. Allen's challenge to us to defend Cathedral despite the characters' drug use as the best idea/question of the week. She claims that this story clearly doesn't center around the use of drugs and alcohol, but rather they just help establish the setting and the characters' frame of mind. She also points out that we, as TV-watching teenagers, are exposed to much more information about drug and alcohol use than in a short story in English class.

I commented:

"Jenna,

Your defense of Cathedral and its mention of drug and alcohol use was a great articulation of not only everything we discussed in class, but great points of your own as well. I definitely agree that we are exposed to a fusillade (good use of vocab!) of drug imagery, paraphanalia, etc in the media and in high school. It seems futile to worry about an old short story in English class. In fact, I tend to think that reading about drug and alcohol use in candid and educated ways actually helps teens decide to say no to drugs moreso than just not talking about it.

I also think that, in the end, the story casts a negative light, and rightly so, on drug and alcohol use. The narrator tells us how lonely he is at night, just smoking pot, drining boos, and watching TV. This affects his relationship with his wife, and even gives him crazy dreams. None of that really appeals to me, or should appeal to anybody.

Good job!

Daniel"

Jamie's blog post, entitled "What if?: We got graded on collaboration," explores the idea of education centered more around collaboration between students to study and learn rather than the final product, like a test or presentation. She noticed that we, as a class, collaborated very well preparing for our daunting Heart of Darkness test. If only we could be graded on that awesome work instead of a test.

I commented:

"Jamie,

I agree with you that collaboration should take a more central role in both the educational experience as well as the grades. I'm very interested to see how that would work out, seeing as that would require Mr. Allen to basically be on skype with us, observing our chats. That grading process would have to be refined, of course, but I think your proposal is note-worthy.

I can't help but think that many of our teachers would have a real problem with grading based on collaboration. I think Mr. Allen is probably an exception among most teachers, who feel that the only objective way to evaluate students is with a number and a letter. So I believe that many teachers would have to be replaced (or just reeducated).

I believe that your idea will eventually emerge as a more prevalent form of education and evaluation. Until then, it's all tests. But I think we can use our collaboration to help our test grades.

Great job!

Daniel"