tannertan36
Xuebing Du
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Love Begins
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
noise dept.
hello vonnie
PR's Tumblrdome
One Nice Bug Per Day
Sweet Seals For You, Always
trying on a metaphor
roma★
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
Cosimo Galluzzi
wallacepolsom
we're not kids anymore.
Not today Justin
Origami Around
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@crystalleab
A Girl Named Blue
She felt everything deeply, this girl named Blue. She was a mystery to many, her best friends deep and true. When her eyes shimmered in fury, to her private garden she withdrew. Honeysuckle hung thick on vines, in the bed daisies grew, on picket fences roses climbed, she breathed in gratitude. Full on she faced the golden sun hung high in the azure sky. She said, “I feel you, Dear One, Be well. Love and…
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“Today, I want you to compare the tone of Nina Simone’s 1965 song ‘Feeling Good’ and Michael Bublé’s 2010 version,” I say. I stand at the front of my classroom, in between the projector screen with frozen images of the two artists and my computer where I have sound files cued up and ready.
(I’m thinking of my fellow educators here as the school year begins once more. I’ve used this lesson in my high school English classrooms, and I must credit Ms. Sandra Effinger for the original plan. I start with a National Public Radio segment called “Vocal Impressions: Hearing Voices” from All Things Considered. First, we discuss tone, and Ms. Effie has some nice handouts with lists of tone words. We also discuss NPR—like “Who can tell me what NPR stands for?”)
“NPR invited listeners to take part in an originality experiment to describe how different voices sound. I’m inviting you to take part in that experiment. I’ll play a clip, and you write down whatever words or phrases come to mind, and then we’ll compare yours to the NPR Responses. This first voice belongs to Morgan Freeman. Talk to people near you about who Morgan Freeman is and then raise your hand if you can tell me something about him.”
Class continues in the way. In addition to Freeman, students listen to the voices of Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, and Patsy Cline. With each new voice, we compare student descriptions to the NPR audience responses. The class works to top their previous originality with each round.
“Great, you guys!” I say, “Now, we’re ready for Nina Simone. Do you know her? She’s a black American woman who first recorded this song in 1965. Think about her style, her tempo, and what she repeats. List words and phrases that convey her attitude. Here’s a copy you can write on. Michael Bublé’s version is on the other side.” And I press play.
Feeling Good
Nina Simone
Birds flying high you know how I feel Sun in the sky you know how I feel Breeze driftin’ on by you know how I feel
It’s a new dawn It’s a new day It’s a new life for me yeah
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me Ouh And I’m feeling good
Fish in the sea, you know how I feel River running free, you know how I feel Blossom on the tree, you know how I feel
It’s a new dawn It’s a new day It’s a new life For me And I’m feeling good
Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don’t you know Butterflies all havin’ fun, you know what I mean Sleep in peace when day is done, that’s what I mean And this old world, is a new world And a bold world for me
Stars when you shine, you know how I feel Scent of the pine, you know how I feel Oh freedom is mine And I know how I feel
It’s a new dawn It’s a new day It’s a new life For me
And I’m feeling good
It’s fun to watch their little faces light up when the horns start. Afterward, we share some words. “The blues…strength…painful…broken…sadness,” they say.
“Okay, same thing for Michael Bublé. What do you know about him?” I say, and then we discuss some obvious and not so obvious differences. “He’s Canadian, and this is 2010.”
“Let’s hear some of your words,” I say.
They say, “Positive…inspired…optimistic…upbeat…smooth like silk.”
“Okay, now I want you to take your lists and combine your words into an adjective-noun phrase. You might have to play with the parts of speech to make it work. For example, optimistic and upbeat are both adjectives. How do we make optimistic a noun?”
They raise their hands. “Optimist…optimism,” they say.
“Perfect, now add upbeat to that. Upbeat optimism. That sounds sophisticated, right? Now do the same thing for Nina Simone. Do you need to hear it again?” I say.
It’s always a unanimous “YES!” They don’t even realize they’re learning. Ha! And the beauty is, this game could go on and on. Every Monday could be “Remake Monday,” and we can always start with music, and we can always think about “Feeling Good” no matter our circumstances. There is so much power in choosing our attitudes. What I’ve always loved about teaching English is the inherent opportunity to teach psychology. And they don’t even realize. Ha! (I take that back. Some do catch on when they start to know me.)
Eventually, we make it to something like the example below (which may have been written by a teacher), but then the next time around, maybe they work with a partner, and then the next time they’re on their own. After twenty years in the classroom, I’ve discovered kids need this sort of gradual release when trying something new or even when revisiting skills after a long summer. Oh, and I might have a great handout for Verbs to Use When Writing about Literature.
“Feeling Good” with Simone and Bublé
With virtually identical lyrics, Michael Bublé’s performance of “Feeling Good” conjures inspired positivity while Nina Simone’s rendition portrays bluesy strength. Elements of nature relate to each artist. Bublé sings of birds, the sun, fish, and the river knowing “how [he] feel[s]” as well as the dragonfly and butterflies knowing “what [he] mean[s].” The natural world not only influences his mood but identifies with Bublé’s upbeat optimism of each new day.
The racial injustice that ignited the civil rights movement in the U.S. underscores Simone’s broken tone. Her tangible sadness stands in stark contrast to Bublé’s zeal. Her heart-rending tenor conveys that nature knows and empathizes with her woes. When Simone sings, “It’s a new dawn/It’s a new day/It’s a new life/For me/And I’m feeling good,” her tone reveals both her suppressed pain and her resolute strength. Not only does her “new life” imply that she will overcome the past, but she “feel[s] good” and determined for a better tomorrow.
It's just another Re-make Monday! “Today, I want you to compare the tone of Nina Simone’s 1965 song ‘Feeling Good’ and Michael Bublé’s 2010 version,” I say.
Tainted Love
Photo by Natasha Fernandez on Pexels.com
It was deep autumn of 1988, my first semester away at college, when I popped some ecstasy and danced my ass off to Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.” The pill-popping wasn’t a habit, just an experience. I don’t say this to be cool or convey shame. Our pasts do not define us. I often think how the sum of our parts makes up the whole of our being and how life is…
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Hotel California
Photo by Erica Zhao on Pexels.com
My sister Liz loves “Hotel California” and the Eagles, and my bro-in-law loves her. So much that he flew her to the Big Apple last Valentine’s Day to see the Eagles at Madison Square Garden. How romantic is that?
A collaboration of all five Eagles of that era: Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Don Felder, and Randy Meisner, The Hotel California album was…
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Hit the Road Jack
Photo by Ricardo Esquivel on Pexels.com
The Ray Charles version of “Hit the Road Jack” takes me back. On most of the family vacations of my youth, we hit the road, and I eventually made it through the entire lower forty-eight via car. As for Ray Charles, blindness and heroin addiction aside, he revolutionized American music. “Hit the Road Jack” topped the BillboardHot 100 on October 9, 1961…
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Come Sit with Maya Angelou
Sometimes I sit with Maya Angelou. Dr. Maya Angelou. I mean, I sit on my couch with my laptop in my lap, my left knee bent, my left heel tucked under my right butt cheek, and Maya Angelou on YouTube (three and a half minutes below). She is probably the wisest, most accessible, most inspirational person I know. God rest her soul.
I…
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Unknown Legend
Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young (of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young) penned “Unknown Legend” and released it on his solo album Harvest Moon in 1992.
I was 22 and not listening. Somehow it seems songs, like other messages and people, appear when we need them.
The first time I heard the song was in the 2008 movie Rachel…
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Ode to My Bestie
Ode to My Bestie
I love telling people how I crashed her party and met her on the day she turned five. It was July the Fourteenth, Nineteen Seventy-Five. She was blonde haired, tiny, and hazel eyed— my new friend, Denise. In school we shared home rooms— First grade with Mrs. Shaffer, second grade with Mrs. Goff third grade with Mrs. Lane and so on and so forth through senior year.
Nineteen years
ticked away. The Class of…
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Kafka's Metamorphosis on the Shore
Kafka’s Metamorphosis on the Shore
Have you ever read a book that you loved so much? Except there is almost no way to adequately explain. Like if you tried, people might think there’s something wrong with your brain. For me, that’s Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.
Mind-bending, for sure.
Fifteen-year-old Kafka Tamura runs away to escape his father’s house and an Oedipal prophecy and to search for his long-lost mother and…
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Let Freedom Ring!
It was 1976. The United States bicentennial celebration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. And a colossal family road trip for me. From the Oklahoma panhandle to the East Coast. I was six.
The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing 27 colonial grievances against King George III and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of…
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Malicious Friends
I don’t know about you, but I get a shit ton of fake friend requests on Facebook and Instagram, so many that I started keeping track for like a month. Then I Googled the phenomenon for insight. Andy O’Donnell of Livewire says that some are scammersto gain access to personal information that might set you up for a phishing attack, a cyber attack via e-mail claiming to be from a valid financial or…
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Villanelle The crack is moving down the wall.Defective plaster isn’t all the cause.We must remain until the roof falls in.
The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began,though the voices around you…
Meet Laura-Jane Barber
Laura-Jane was a Spanish teacher back in Plano, a Dallas suburb where I taught English for fourteen years. At our high school, her mailbox always topped mine in the teacher workroom. Barber. Byers. And although we worked on separate sides of the building, we often chatted while picking up our mail or making copies. We still chat via Facebook and now on WordPress, too, and I’ve found her words…
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Meet Kionna Walker LeMalle
Kionna is my close friend, my classmate, a fellow educator, a motivational speaker, a mother and a writer, like me. She calls me her “soul sister,” and I love her with my whole heart. We are the same in so many ways—except for the color of our skin and our experiences based on race.
I’ve been quiet about the Ahmaud Arbery case, not because it doesn’t move me but because it almost breaks me.…
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Meet Jessica Cobbs
Ten years ago, Jessica was my student. Now she’s an actress and a model using her voice and calling for change.
I don’t say much because I like to stay in silence. I’ve been told many times—your nickname should be MIA or ghost but when I need to speak I will and I will state all facts because I’ve watched for years, studied for so long, and witnessed first hand!
7 years old (Louisiana) – my…
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A Day in the Classroom
Back in the fall, I had the privilege to spend twelve weeks as a long-term sub for a good friend and former teaching peer while she took her maternity leave. In English II, our students studied culture, exploring their own backgrounds and heritage before reading Robert Lake’s essay, “An Indian Father’s Plea.” It’s not a piece that students love, but it serves as a study of persuasive writing and…
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