What's In A Name?

This is a picture of me. Okay, technically this isn't true. But this IS a picture of Greg McCandless. Greg McCandless is a professor in a music school in Appalachia. When you type "Greg McCandless" into Google Images- this is the first picture to come up. The second picture that comes up isn't me either. It's some other Greg McCandless who seems to be a soldier with a Twitter account. The fifth picture is actually me- the REAL Greg McCandless- or at least the Greg McCandless that is real to me.

In our discussion of The Namesake, we have spent a good portion of our time talking about names and why they do or do not matter. For this week's blog, I want you to reflect on your own name. Is there a story behind it or did your parents just pick it at random. Do you think your name fits you? Has it ever held you back or made you feel insecure? Why do you think that Gogol finds his name to be such a hindrance?

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

Last week in English II we began reading Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 novel The Namesake. Spanning several decades from the late 1960's through the year 2000, the novel follows the Ganguli family, who move to the United States from India. The novel focuses on their eldest son Gogol (named after Nikolai Gogol, the 19th century Russian author) and his struggles and successes trying to balance the traditional expectations of his parents with those of his native country as a first-generation American.

Sage Hill School has a very diverse student population. As such, many of our own students are also first-generation Americans. I look forward to hearing their perspectives as we begin our discussion of the novel.

I am not a first-generation American; I'm a Western European mutt- mostly German, English and Irish. My father's paternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland to the United States in the late 1910's and established himself as one of the first blacksmiths in Rancho Cucamonga, California- the town I later grew up in. My paternal grandmother was adopted, so we don't really know what my background is through her, but her adoptive father was Adolph Leuizinger, one of the founding fathers of the El Segundo area of Los Angeles and the namesake for Leuizinger High School in Inglewood, California.

While I'm probably more German and English than I am Irish, for whatever reason growing up we celebrated our Irish heritage the most. My guess is that because my last name is Irish we just identified with this more. Or there's just more Irish schwag. (You don't see a whole lot of "Kiss Me, I'm German" t-shirts or mugs). But we weren't even really good at that- my mom never cooked cabbage and sometimes we even forgot to wear green on St. Patrick's Day. To be honest, I think of myself as more "Californian" than anything else.

For this week's blog, I want you to explore a bit of your chosen heritage. For some of you this is going to be your family's ethnic or national background. For others, you might not know or maybe are more closely tied to something other than your genetic material. Maybe you had an Italian godmother who taught you to cook fresh pasta or you lived abroad for some time in your life and find yourself more at home in that culture rather than your native one. Is who you are different from how you identify yourself? What does "heritage" and "tradition" mean to you? Do your parents or grandparents have different values from you and, if so, how does that impact your life?

Can I Get An [Eye] Witness???

During Friday's English II class I ran a little experiment. Unbeknownst to my students, I had arranged earlier in the day for one of my colleagues to "interrupt" class in order to borrow something from me. During the "interruption", my colleague and I exchanged a little banter and then she was on her way. Fifteen  later, I handed out a piece of paper to the students and asked them to interview the person sitting next to them, asking them to recall everything they could remember about that interaction.

Whereas some students could recall many details of the experience with great detail, others were less confident in their memories or were confident about details that were entirely wrong. I performed this experiment because, in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the narrator is seeking accounts from eyewitnesses about an event that took place nearly twenty years before. We, as readers, might get frustrated by the conflicting memories of different characters until we realize that we ourselves are not invulnerable to misremembering something.

This very issue is something that people in the world of criminal justice deal with every day, and psychologists are constantly evaluating the validity of eyewitness testimony as well. For this week's blog post, I want students to not only reflect on the experiment that I ran in class today but also to watch the video (produced by the National Science Foundation) below, and offer their thoughts and impressions. What about the experiment that I ran in class surprised you? What did you get right and what did you get wrong? What did you learn from the video? Was any of the information offered new or surprising to you? How do you look at eyewitness testimony differently now and how will this impact your reading of the novel?

Honor (?) Killing?

As we continue our reading of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold, we are beginning to better understand the supposed motives of the Vicario twins in their murder of Santiago Nasar. We now know that Angela Vicario is returned to her family the day after her wedding, shamed by the fact that she was not a virgin at the time of her marriage. She names Santiago Nasar as the man who took her virginity, setting a sequence of events in motion that ultimately ends with Santiago Nasar's death.

In Chapter 3, which we are reading this week, we learn that Angela's brothers, Pedro and Pablo, feel compelled to kill Santiago Nasar because it is a manner of honor. Their sister has been dishonored and thus, they must return balance to the community by righting that wrong. Which begs the question, is Santiago Nasar's murder, in fact, an honor killing?

For this week's blog post, I want you to watch the video below which gives a modern, informative understanding of what constitutes an "honor killing" and the reasons why one might take place. After watching the video, I want you to decide whether or not Santiago Nasar's murder constitutes an "honor killing", justifying why or why not with evidence from the video. I also would like for you to spend a few sentences reflecting on what you learned from the video and how it makes you feel.

The Bystander Effect

This week we will be starting Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold in English II. Marquez, often considered the grandfather of magical realism, gives us the story of the killing of Santiago Nasar in a small Colombian village. Before he is killed, multiple members of the community know about the plot to murder him, but no one acts to save him. Santiago seems to be well-liked by members of the community, so we, as readers, must ask ourselves why no one steps in to save Santiago.

The "bystander effect" is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to a group of people refusing to help during an emergency situation at risk of becoming involved. Based off of the bystander effect, it is believed that the average person only helps about 20% of the time if other people are around and that, in the face of an emergency, a distressed person is less likely to be helped if others are around.

For this week's blog prompt, I want you to think about the bystander effect. I'm going to give you a hypothetical situation in which you write a 1-2 paragraph response explaining how you would act and why.

Here is the hypothetical situation:

Suppose you are a prairie dog assigned to guard duty with other prairie dogs from your town. When you see a predator coming you have two choices: sound the alarm or remain silent. If you sound the alarm, you help ensure the safety of the other prairie dogs, but you also encourage the predator to come for you. For you, it is safer to remain silent, but if all guards remain silent, everyone is less safe, including you. What should you do when you see a predator?

#MeToo

In English II, we are reading William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and often it might be easy to dismiss some of the misogynistic behavior of some of the play's characters as typical of a time, many years ago, when women were truly oppressed by an unfair, patriarchal society. We can roll our eyes and pat our backs on how far we have come. And, in many ways, things are incredibly better for women in terms of empowerment and agency compared with 16th-century England.

And yet, we are reading the play in the midst of the  #MeToo movement, a tremendously powerful national conversation taking place about sexual harassment and abuse, as well as the power structures that still seem to exist which force women to feel pressured to remain silent in the face of male oppression. Maybe what has been most fascinating about the rise of this movement is that, like a small crack causing a whole dam to burst, once one woman came forward with a story, hundreds, if not thousands of women, echoed her experience with similar stories of their own.

I am sure there is a lot we can say about this very big and very complex conversation, but I think it might be interesting to try and focus it back to Katherine and The Taming of the Shrew. Last week, you looked at production posters for the play and there seemed to be the common theme of the power of a woman's voice as well as man's futile attempts to silence it. And yet, the common theme of the #MeToo movement seems to be that women continue to feel the pressure to remain silent and that men are often successful in doing so. What do you think Katherine (and/or Petruchio, for that matter) would have to say about #MeToo? Are we getting closer to an equilibrium where women's and men's voices are equal in their power and agency? How can your generation improve on the steps previous generations have made in this area? As always, please be respectful and empathetic in your responses.

Production Values

 In English II we are kicking off the second semester with William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Set in the Italian town of Padua, the play is one of Shakespeare's most produced comedies and centers around a beautiful, yet outspoken, young woman named Katherine whose father cannot find a man to marry her because of her "shrewish" ways. This proves problematic for the many suitors who wish to woo Katherine's younger, and milder, sister Bianca, who cannot be married until her older sister is betrothed.

In our first discussions of this text, I told students that, in a modern context particularly, this is a "problematic" comedy in the sense that the main plot revolves around a woman needing to be tamed in order to find a suitable mate. In a current era that aims for equality amongst the sexes, for many, this is a hard pill to swallow. Thus, I challenge students to always question Shakespeare's intentions in writing this play as we move through it. Should we take the play literally or is he offering some sort of social commentary on the role of women and the way they are viewed by men?

For our first blog post related to this text, I want students to explore the ways that different productions have framed this oft-produced play. Above, you will find six different posters for various recent productions of The Taming of the Shrew. For this blog post, I want students to discuss what thematic commonalities they see shared amongst the various posters. Are there certain themes that seem to be present in each poster? Which poster seems the most intriguing? What about it sparks your interest? Finally, what were your first impressions when you heard about the plot of the play? Do these posters reinforce or challenge those first impressions you had?