Blogging Around

1. Chelsea's blog - Connections: Collaboration in the Classroom, Collaboration on the Court

She talks about how learning how to work together on the volleyball court finds its way into the classroom.

Chelsea, you spoke words of wisdom :) I was especially struck by the part about how there are some leaders and some followers, neither one is better, but both have to work together for the team to be successful. I think that it's really important for there to be both in any sort of group. People forget that the followers make the leaders the leaders. Without the followers who would lead?

I've been on teams before where I've been a leader, and teams where I've been a follower. Last hockey season, I played on a U19 team with a bunch of seniors. As the youngest person on the team, I knew that my job was to follow the older girls. If I had tried to lead in any way shape or form, the dynamics of our team would have erupted into flames because nobody would have listened to me, and the leaders would have had problems with it as well.

In contrast, this year, I am playing at the U16 level again. I am one of the oldest people and a captain, people look to me to set the tempo. The other captain and I played badly today, everyone played badly, and now it's our job to fix it because we are the leaders.

The point I'm really trying to make here is that both leaders and followers have important positions in a group. Like Chelsea said, neither is better than the other. And the most important thing, I think, is being able to recognize your job and do it well, and, hopefully, the group will prosper accordingly.


2. Rebekah's blog - iMedia: STOMP

She reflects on how she never liked the STOMP commercials before movies, and, as time went on, she began to understand and appreciate the music.

Oh my gosh! I always loved those STOMP commercials before the movies because they reminded me of elementry school. My music teacher used to always make us watch STOMP videos, and, at first, I hated them too. But as the years went on we used to look forward to seeing what crazy idea that we never would think of STOMP had dreamed up this time. I guess that I miss them because they remind me of simpler times without essays, PLAN tests, GPAs, and PreCalculus books when we could just sit back and learn for the sake of learning. I didn't realize it, but STOMP itself is a great illustrator of that.

iMedia: Wexford Carol

“Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.” ~Calvin Coolidge

“Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity." ~Don Cupitt


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0hpX0tuHY&feature=related

The Wexford Carol is a traditional Irish Christmas song (although some say it's not originally Irish). But, nonetheless, it is my favorite holiday hymn because it reminds me of what Christmas is really about. I'm absolutely infatuated by medieval and renaissance music; it's so wise and aged, yet I don't see it as antiquated. I think that any modern person can love it, the same way every person in the world who celebrates Christmas today should always keep the historical and spiritual meaning behind the day in mind.

Nowadays, everyone is too wrapped up in the material aspects of Christmas that they forget what it's really about. Even if you aren't intensely religious, Christmas is about faith; it's about reflection and celebration; Christmas is about giving, and Christmas is about love. With all of the glitz, glamour, and commercial aspects that department stores and companies bring to Christmas it is truly hard for anyone to sort through it all and find the actual core of the holiday.

Now, I'm not saying that Santa Claus is wrong, or to stop decorating your tree and go to church, because I love getting presents, singing "Grandma got run over by a reindeer...", and shopping, with all of the lights and decorations, a week before Christmas too. But, this season, even if it's just for a second, make sure that you reflect, make sure you give for the sake of giving, and, most importantly, make sure that you listen.

Connection: King Lear and Poverty

I have to admit, Shakespeare is hard to read sometimes; the complexity and hidden meaning around every corner, the puns you don't get the first time, the characters that don't make sense, the language that just can't be English. But the way that people keep recreating his works in new ways, they way his old tales are being turned into modern stories, is illuminating, and it shows the utter timelessness of his creations. It's not even just stories, I honestly believe that, if you look hard enough, you can see views on real world problems hidden beneath the sonnets and sexual innuendos. So far, in Lear, I see current issue after current issue after current issue manifesting itself in Lear and Cornwall, the Fool and Cordelia, Gonerial and Edgar. Could Shakespeare really see the future? Or did he just have a time machine...?

One such issue is poverty. When Lear split up his kingdom and said that he will spend time living with each of his daughters, anger raged inside of me. First of all, I will just say that, "...a nation divided cannot stand," and let Abe be the voice of reason here. But, more infuriatingly, he's just being lazy; he doesn't want to be responsible for his land anymore, so he wraps it up in bubble wrap, shoves it in a box, throws some packing peanuts in, gets some old wrapping paper out of the closet, makes a cute little present out of it all, with a bow and everything, and ships the pieces off to his daughters' castles, where they each eagerly open their neatly wrapped presents on the dinner table, ignorantly unaware of the ticking bomb they've received.

Today, people acknowledge that people are starving all around the world but they either, put on a sad face when they see a Christian Children's Fund commercial and then do absolutely nothing, or send the problem, and their conscious, off to someone else with a little bit of money. This issue too, comes down to laziness. We don't want to put the work into end poverty and hunger because it's just too hard; we say it can't be done. Here's an idea: stop shoving money in peoples' faces and start showing them how to use it. Yes, you, and yes, it won't be a walk in the park. Money obviously doesn't solve anything because there's still a little girl in Ghana who's going to sleep cold and hungry tonight; the only way to get anywhere in life is hard work. The only reason we say it's impossible is to make ourselves feel better because we, so far, have failed.

Just like Lear, who goes through hell because of his decision, the world, as a whole, will never become an Eden, and everyone will never be truly at peace, until we can fix this problem. Lear's laziness may have cost his personal comfort, but poverty and hunger go much farther, to people on every corner of the globe, people of every age, every race, every religion, sex, and background. Lear's story is a omen, a foreshadowing of what's to come. But more, it's a plea: please don't be as stupid as Lear, get off you butt and face you life, and all that comes with it, be it the good or the bad, head on.

Dialectics: School and Hockey

"Growing up, if I hadn't had sports, I don't know where I'd be. God only knows what street corners I'd have been standing on and God only knows what I'd have been doing, but instead I played hockey and went to school and stayed out of trouble." ~Bobby Orr



Right now, hockey and school are the two most important things to me. I live to play hockey; I have to go to school. I say, "I do well in school so I can play hockey," and it's true.

There's so many people that I know that just focus on one or the other and, with a few exceptions, I don't think any of them are truly happy. The level I play at is filled with D1 prospects and girls who are hoping to play in the Olympics someday. All they ever think about and do is play hockey, but their grades suck, and it's not because they're not smart, it's because they think that their only ticket into college is hockey. They've been ignoring their schoolwork while they go off to tournaments in Boston, Toronto, Detroit, and St. Paul for so long that they don't even know how to be a good student anymore; they're stuck with what they've got. A bad game in front of a scout for them is like getting a sub-par score on the ACT for anyone else; their future is depending on it and that's just not gonna cut it. Ultimately, they've made a choice between hockey and school, and it's too late by 11th grade for them to turn that around.

On the other hand, there's so many people that I know from school who's only focus is what grade they got on their reading quiz. School is their sport, and they have practice 24/7. Every little grade counts and there's always room for improvement. The downside of this attitude is, of course, that nothing is ever good enough. Their lives are consumed with grades, books, tests, and nothing else. I don't even know what they do on the weekends or for fun... extra credit maybe??

Personally, I consider myself lucky because, even though they encourage me to be the best athlete I can be, my parents have never settled for anything but excellent grades. The fact that I'm not going to be playing hockey if I get bad grades is overtly evident in my life. My mom always says that I'm going to get far with my "brains not my brawn," which I concede is probably true, but that doesn't change the fact that I love hockey a thousand times more than I like school.

I know that not everyone will believe me on this one but there was a time around seventh and eighth grade when I didn't want to work in school, and all I thought about was going to the rink; all I did was practice my slapshot; all I did was stickhandle. Luckily for me, it was middle school and I could have gotten As with a blindfold on, earphones in, and my arms tied behind my back. But my parents noticed my lack of effort, and they made me realize that hockey can't be the priority because I'm not going to get into college and get a job because of it; school has to be the focus.

I'm mature enough now to agree with them, and I think that I've found the perfect balance between the two. Yes, it does suck to have to write your English paper on a plane on the way to Connecticut. Yes, being tired on Mondays from a long weekend on the road, or during the week from late night practices, and having to concentrate in French class, when all you want to do is sleep, does suck. No, sleeping on hotel mattresses every other weekend isn't always fun. But I love hockey and I do it all so I can play. The best feeling in the world is walking onto that plane or driving away in that car with some hardware, eagerly awaiting next weekend's tournament because you know that you're going to get some more (although that usually lasts for a few minutes before you realize you have to study for your history exam... and do your chem report.) Honestly, I think that I have to work harder than most other Academy students, or honors students, or elite level hockey players because I excel in both academics and hockey; I'm motivated to work harder in school because I want so desperately to play. And, in the end, it's worth all of that time, all of those miles, all of those late nights and early mornings, essay revisions, flashcards, and bruises to hold that championship trophy in one hand and that report card gleaming with a 4.8 in the other.

Metacognition: Kite Runner Essay

"Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing." ~Melinda Haynes

For me, writing has been almost like breathing for as long as I can remember. Even in first, second, third grade, I would put my pencil to the paper and the words would flow out, almost effortlessly. Now, I'm definitely not saying that it's easy for me, or I'm a novelist already. But, unlike math and science, which come naturally to other people, writing is second nature to me. In fact, I'm writing this right now and my fingers haven't stopped typing since I wrote the first word. But, this is the kind of writing I like; writing in which my voice can be clearly heard; writing where I can be me. All throughout middle school, and into high school, most of the writing we had to do bored me. The teachers are unknowingly forcing you into writing in that "generic" way we discussed in class today. So when I heard about this paper, I have to admit that I was not overly excited. Not even close. I was actually dreading it.

Now, again, writing comes easily to me compared to other things. I could crack off that five paragraph paper with ease, but I didn't enjoy it; even last year, I didn't enjoy it. I was definitely expecting writing this Kite Runner essay to be the same exact way. When I started writing it, on Tuesday, which, in and of itself, is an accomplishment for me and my record of extreme procrastination, I discovered something that I didn't expect to, I wasn't having a terrible time. Like Mr. Allen said, the evidence plan was the hard part, the writing was the fun part. And I am not an overtly happy or optimistic person in any sense of the words, I tend to look on the bleak side of things, but I was almost enjoying myself. No joke.

I spent a better part of the next day trying to figure out why, besides the evidence plan, I was not burning up with hate for this paper. The only answer I really have is that I liked what I was writing about, it wasn't some stupid thesis from a book I hated about characters that I thought were uninteresting and dumb. The more and more I wrote the paper, the more I became engrossed with explaining to not just Mr. Allen, but "The World," why it is mostly Baba's fault that Amir could not find redemption. So many emotions and thoughts were swimming around my head that my fingers and the keyboard keys could not keep up with my mind.

That, is a great feeling. And, for a piece of writing like this, I've never felt that before. Ever. As a matter of fact, I feel enlightened. Absolutely everything about that process surprised me; I liked absolutely everything; nothing could have worked better. I'm absolutely not kidding. Thank you evidence plan, thank you Mr. Allen, thank you Khaled Hossieni, thank you Kite Runner, thank you Amir. Even thank you Baba...

Blogging Around: Rachel and Lindsay

1. Rachel’s Blog - Connection: Lion King and Kite Runner

She talks about how Amir and Simba are both living in their fathers' shadows and how it affects them

I can definitely see the connection here. I would even go as far as to say that Amir and Simba are both hindered by their “oh so great” fathers. Amir constantly feels as if he is worth nothing because he isn’t enough like Baba, and Simba struggles to be the great man/lion (??) that his father wants him to be.

I can definitely relate to this because of my relationship with my brother. When I was little all I wanted to do was be just like him. At school, I was constantly compared to him; everyone expected that I would be just like him. Now, I know that this sounds like every younger sibling’s debocle, but you don’t know my brother. In high school, he was one of those guys that walked through the halls and everyone gave a shout out to, or high-fived, all the girls said hi ;). He’s funny; he’s smart; everyone likes him. We are similar in some ways, but totally the opposite in some. I always sort of felt like I should be more like him; if I didn’t do everything the same way, I wasn’t as good, I had done something wrong. Yet, I eventually learned that my brother had his strengths and so do I, and there’s no rule about them being different.

2. Lindsay’s Blog – Best of the Week: The “Real” Afghans

She tells us about how learning about the history of Afghanistan was helpful to better understand the way Hosseini wrote the novel in regards to the setting

This is some good insight. The part about how we criticized Amir and called him a whiny brat definitely struck a chord with me. All along I have been saying that we don’t truly understand why Amir is the way he is. We’re not in his position, and we can’t say what we would have done in the same situation. The biggest part, which is explained very well here, is that we don’t live in a world where there are Pashtuns and Hazaras. In America, everyone is American, no matter your heritage. Yet, the social divide that Amir and Hassan struggle with is realer than our reality television. Was it right for Amir, a Pashtun, to abandon Hassan, the Hazara boy? No. But, in some sense, didn’t he abide by the societal standards? I definitely am not saying that Amir should have watched Hassan get raped. My point is that we don’t live in 1970s Afghanistan, therefore there is no way for us to fully condemn Amir for his actions because we don’t know, for sure, that we wouldn’t have done the same thing ourselves. All over the world there are dynamics that we can’t begin to understand, and it is the effects of those dynamics that we most frequently and profoundly unfairly criticize.

It Matters: Rhythm, Writing, and... DVRs?

"I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called 'brightness,' but that doesn't work." ~Gallagher


When I was in kindergarten my mom started reading me novels. By first grade, I was reading them to her. For years, we sat, every night, on my mom's bed, and read to each other, indulging our imaginations and filling our minds with the words, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters of stories that neither of us ever wanted to desert. By middle school, life was too complicated and our nightly ritual was too extracurricular to carry on, yet I still found solace in that world of literature, learning from those years, and my mom, that a book is the greatest companion for any occasion, and that one's list of future literary pursuits is infinitely long.

In class we have been talking a lot about the rhythm of words, the excitement of writing, and the importance of literature. Although, I fear, that many of my classmates don't find it useful or interesting, our analyzing of the works of great authors, and our examination of their technique, fuels my mind, body, and soul. The careful craft and deliberate placing of sounds, words, and phrases is fascinating and eye-opening. All of those years that I felt an intense love for the writing that I was reading, but couldn't place my finger on the reason, are beginning to make sense. It's this "stuff" that we're being educated on that induces the, what I like to call, "Paperback Coma" one sinks into after putting down an intricately and artfully constructed novel, one that makes you mystified, yet leaves you contemplating anything and everything you already know.

On the other hand, in our world today, this new generation, my generation, rarely reads for pleasure. And if we do, it's not the craft and meaning that matters, it's the ending. Terribly written novels are lounging atop the best-seller list because the plot is so ridiculous that you never see what's coming next, as exemplified by the Twilight phenomenon. These novels have neither rhyme, rhythm, nor reason, the very things that, as we are learning, make a book a masterpiece. In fact, literature is being reduced to such diminutive crap that anyone can write a book, including Kathy Griffin. Novel writing is no longer an art; it's a hobby, or a way for people, who no one cares about, to tell a story... about something that no one cares about.

Thanks to television, our attention spans are shrinking so steadily that these "horror stories" are all that we can handle when regarding written word, that is if people are even sitting down to read something. It seems like people are more concerned and interested in the new season of "Gossip Girl", who Paris Hilton's new BFF is, and whether or not that blond girl dies on "Grey's Anatomy," than what Khaled Hosseni is trying to say about modern Afghanistan in The Kite Runner, or how How To Kill a Mockingbird is a microcosm for an important part of American history. Television has become the major focus in peoples' lives, a space that was previously occupied by family, religion, enlightenment, or social obligations. These LCDs and flat screens have hounded our intelligence into such prostration that our minds will only accept novels like The Clique or television shows about celebrities. I'm not trying to say that watching TV and reading Twilight is going to kill you or render your status as a functioning member of society false. But if all you do is sit in front of the screen and have never read Shakespeare in your life, a not so uncommon fate, I can't say the same... Some critics will argue that television is a great invention. I agree, it is. They will say that it doesn't hurt you. Depending on the amount and how you spend the rest of your life, not really. But I will ask them, are we smarter because of TV? No. Are we happier? No. Has it, that little black box we love so much, caused a demise in the quality of written word and our thirst for it? Absolutely, one-hundred percent, yes.

If you take a poll of ten high school students I bet you any money that at least seven of them don't like to read. I'd say that eight of them have never heard of Jane Austen. Four of them probably don't know that The Da Vinci Code was a book before a movie. And you know what? I feel bad for them. I pity them because they are missing out on the wondrous, illuminating world that is great literature. If, in thirty years, my generation has achieved world peace and ended poverty because we watched television and read Red Carpet Suicide by Perez Hilton, I'm going to eat my words. But, on the other hand, in thirty years, if our world falls apart at the seams because my generation was too addicted to television and blinded by appalling literature to read War and Peace, I'm going feel at fault for not stopping us on our destructive path. In the meantime, I'm going to continue my literary and scholarly quest to greater knowledge and understanding, while a lot of my compadrés watch "Whose Line is it Anyway?". I may not have all the answers for the world yet, but for right now I'll busy myself with writing a letter to my mom, explaining to her why the most important thing she ever gave me was her love of reading good books. It will start something like this: Dear Mom, I am so glad that my happiness does not depend on the competency of our DVR...

Best of the Week: Afghanistan

Our class discussion on Friday with both Mr. Williams and Mr. Allen really forced me into pondering territory and war. How does it affect people? Since I've never lived in a war zone myself, it's a foreign, yet intriguing concept.

I believe that it was Jordyn who started the discussion on how Amir's two only vivid images of Afghanistan are of the Soviet occupied chaos of the late 70s and 80s and the Taliban ridden streets of his homeland twenty years later. The one question that kept popping into my mind was, what can Amir possibly view home as? Is it a safe place? Because personally for me, it's a haven. Because, for Amir, there must be constant images of men with guns and people lying in the streets for him to remember. Call me crazy but that's definitely not an "Eden-esque" picture of home. So, if Amir's view of home really is twisted, how is it affecting his adult-self? Does he feel at peace with his wife? Is he ever relaxed?

Furthermore, I must say that I am totally and utterly empathetic towards the Afghan people. How dare these outsiders, these British, these Russians, these Pakistanis and Saudis, come into their cities, their country, their homeland, the land of their fathers (and mothers :) ) and stake claim, pretending like it's not Afghan property. How dare they insult the Afghans by insinuating that they don't know how to govern and use it? I've never lived through a war and the last time that America was invaded was something like the War of 1812, but I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins and the outrage writhing about inside when I read, or even think of, the Red Army marching through the streets of Kabul with their sky-high tanks just because they can, pretending as if it is rightfully theirs. It's called Afghanistan for a reason, it's the land of Afghans.

As for me, in my life, I'm the kind of person that acts and thinks about it later. But next time I think of taking something that is someone else's in any way, shape or form, I'll bet you that I will think twice. Because, you know what? If I do take claim of their property, however little it might be, they have the all the right in the world to fight me without thinking twice, or even once.

Change of Mind: The Dialectics of Choice

So far, in the Kite Runner an underlying theme has emerged. Choice. Baba chooses to not understand Amir. Amir chooses to run away from the atrosity that transpired in that alley. Hassan chooses to keep his mouth shut and be loyal to Amir until the very end. Without the choices these characters make there would be no story. Without the choices they make, there would be no reason for this book.

Prior to reading this book, I thought that good people, when confronted with a life-altering choice in which right and wrong were lucidly apparent, would always choose to do the right thing. If they didn't? They, simply put, weren't good people. And I hate, bad people. Looking back on the chapters we have already read in Hosseni's fake memoir, I'm struck by two incompatable feelings, that of the former and that of bottomless empathy for Amir, a phenomenon in its own right, because I am quite often the one who critizes the character and despises their choices. Yet, for some odd reason, I don't hate Amir. I don' think that he's an indulged, pompous brat. In fact, I think that he is genuinely a good person. We've actually had some heated discussions on the bus about him, and I'm the only one who's playing defense. I know that Hosseni is intentionally creating an enviorment where the reader thrives off of their hatred for the main character, but I'm just not taking the bait. I hate his pipe-smoking, soccer-loving, overtly goddless, hipocritically philanthropic father, but I sympathize with Amir, the story-writing boy who stood by and watched his childhood-playmate get raped.

So then how can I still believe that good people always make the right decision when faced with adversity? There, lies the key to my change of mind. I can't. There's no way that I can fully believe in that and Amir's righteousness. Consquently, I have come to the dialectic conclusion that good people, which I believe Amir to be, will make the blatantly wrong choice in some grave situations. Yet, the defining characteristic of their true virtue versus malevolance, is that they recognize their error and its gravity, it haunts them, and from that disturbance, they grow. Amir, I can confidently say, has picturesqly exemplified this, giving a story for those mere words.

I honestly don't know how this realization will affect my daily life or interpretation of literature. But, in terms of the Kite Runner I hope that it will give me solice in my compassion for Amir. Hopefully, I will no longer feel hypocritical in my unwavreing loyalty for the bookish boy who made the wrong choice, and belief in his morality.